Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Possoms
Walking back from campus the other day at about 9:30. Marc and I saw something fall out of a tree ahead of us - a 7 meter fall - hit the pavement with a crack and lie there. I figured it was someone climbing the tree and dropped a shoe. As we got closer this thing it looked around and got up and staggered off the path - clearly still stunned and making the weirdest noise. Neither of us could really believe what had just happened. We laughed and wrote it off as an anomaly. A couple days later I was walking back and it happened again - different tree and a smaller possum, but one definitely fell out of a tree and landed right in front of me then ran off and climbed the tree again. I can't figure what to make of it.
St Paddy's Day
Bought some Speights Dark - one of the best brews one can get in NZ. Got to the Bog - Irish Pub at 10:30. They had a fiddle group playing who were really good. Paid for a Guiness with 10$ note and got 12.50$ in change - was pretty stoked about that. Hung out for a while at the Bog and then headed back up to Parnell, ended the night with a couple fiddle tunes on the lawn at 2 in the morning, everyone seemed pretty cool with it - I got a round of applause as I retired at the suprisingly congenial request of my RA.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Hitching
car plans fell through when we couldn't find a fourth and it was too expensive for just the three of us. Cara and I decided to hitch and see where we could get to. I took a bus to her homestay after not being able to find a tent for an extra 2 hours. We got started at 3:30 (only 3 hours after what we wanted) and took a bus from Pt. Chev to Titiranga. Bought some food and headed out on the road. it was first time either of us had hitched and it felt really weird to stick our thumbs out as we walked. the third car stopped for us - we had only walked about 30 seconds - and offered a ride. It was a mother with her 2 year-old son, Colm, and 7 year old daughter, Sophie. She was only going half the way to Huia but agreed to take us the whole way. she seemed really nice and pointed out that it was probably good that I had a girl with me as I wouldn't be picked up otherwise. She pointed out some good routes for us to take and gave us some advice and dropped us off at this little store by the Bryan Bay. We bought a local trail map from the store and some bug repellent and started walking around the bay, ended up walking pretty much straight across it since the tide was so low and it was so shallow it only came up to our ankles. On the other side we found an estuary and tramped up it for a bit then continued up the road towards where the store owner said a forest service office was. The wardens were having a afternoon drink but one came out and answered some questions for us. She said that we should stay at a farm campsite that had shelter for us and that a ranger would come by in the morning and charge us 5$ apiece. We ended up hanging the hammock in the barnyard so we wouldn't get rained on and heading down to the beach for dinner. We ate, searched for crabs for a while and headed back to bed. We were the only ones at the farm except for the pig, a cow, a herd of sheep, some chickens, roosters and four turkeys. 
There were no people. We both slept in the hammock - a tough feat to be sure, but it's good to know that it's possible. and in the morning I went for a run. We started hiking again by 10 the next morning, the ranger never turned up so we didn't pay, and we started hiking along the coast road to little huia. it is really beautiful country over there and it's really interesting that as small a town as huia is such a big spot on the map - it goes to show how unurbainzed new Zealand actually is. just past little huia another lady picked us up and took us the rest of the way to Whatipu. She had spent a year hitching around Australia and always tries to pick up hitchhikers when she can. She was heading into the bush for a weekend after spending the week helping her daughter move in Auckland. I would guess she was around 50 and heading out for a solo tramp - I was very impressed. She pointed us towards some caves outside of Whatipu - which was nothing more than a trail head at the end of the road, but from the map looked like a city. 
We headed to the caves, planning to see them and then cross and area marked 'lagoon/swamp' to the beach (as the ranger told us the night before) and hike up the beach to a town called Karekare. The caves were very impressive, they were really deep and cara was much more into that than I - never having liked pitch black caves with only one light myself, and she did some meditating, while I sat waiting and sweating. Once we left the caves we confronted the 'lagoon/swamp' this turned out to be better and worse than we predicted. It was completely dry, so there were no water crossings and we didn't have to worry about getting packs wet, however, it was full of this cactus like plant that was horribly painful, also there was this grass stuff that would form pillows - it looked like the ground had these rises in it but when you stepped on them your foot would go straight through a great way to roll an ankle. I felt like Lewis and Clark upon coming to the top of a thorn covered sand dune, expecting the beach on the other side and seeing nothing but a sea of more thorn-dunes extending on as far as we could see. By the time we reached the actual beach, we were completely cut and scratched and embedded with thorns and all kinds of crazy shit. The beach it's self was nice, it extended on forever and was rippling with hear waves, it took 20 minutes to walk straight across from the thorn dunes to the water. Then we hiked north along the beach for a couple hours, which was completely deceptive as the scenery never changed. Also we were hiking barefoot which ended up giving me foot problems the next few days, as I didn't realize how far without shoes I had gone. We finally came to this guy walking down the shore out in the middle of nowhere and stopped him to ask the location of a trail going into the bush away from the beach that would lead us ultimately to Karekare. We learned that Karekare was similar to Whatipu in that it was a glorified trail head and not to expect any food to buy there, the nearest food was in the town of Piha, another 5k beyond karekare. He also pointed out the trailhead - all we had to do was recross the lagoon swamp which was wet this time, and I'm very glad that there were no leeches. We reached the trail head to discover that it went straight up for about 2k until leveling off and heading across to karekare. It climbed mt. zion, to a height of 273m and there was no leveling off before the top. When we reached karekare we both just crashed in the grass of the park by the parking lot. About 5 minutes after we sat down a man asked where we were hiking to and agreed to give us a ride. We accepted, still thinking that this trip had been far to easy. He (~45) was with some family friends - a grandma (~65) and her granddaughters, who were both really crazy. The girls, Analiese and Stephanie (i think) were 11 and 14 and quite feisty. The little one looked cara up and down and asked "are you posh?" she then turned to me and after inspecting me for a minute asked "do you clean your teeth?" Cara's response was: "what does that even mean?" mine was: "not since this morning - why?" She then proceeded to inform us that she was a daredevil and enjoyed doing crazy things, or as her sister termed it: putting herself at risk. the grandma promptly started in on the fine line between putting yourself at risk and yet not killing yourself since there are people in the world who care about you. Cara and I - the two hitchhikers with out a plan on where we were going, who hadn't really even told anyone we were going anywhere - Cara and I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation. The guy - Bill - was really friendly and took us to a lookout over the town and bay of Piha, it was very beautiful and Analiese entertained herself by rolling down the hill on the side of road - while her grandmother complained about grass stains. Bill dropped us off by the beach in piha and we explored the town and found a place to eat then went to look for a campground for the night. The lady at the public campground told us about a forest service one up the road that we could use and not have to pay for if we got far enough back so the ranger didn't see us in the morning, we looked for it but couldn't find it and ended up sleeping in the public campground on the lawn - keeping one eye open all night for rain, which would have ruined the sleeping bags. The next morning we hung out at the beach and by 2:30 decided that it was time to start heading back, we had class the next day at noon and weren't sure ow easy it would be to hitch along piha road. we were expecting to get a lift to titrangi and then spend the night on the beach and take the bus early in the morning, what we didn't realize is that Piha is where all the aucklanders go on the weekend so the first car who passed us picked us up and dropped us off on the corner of parnell and ayr street - about 2 minutes walk from home. Dave was our driver and he had been in piha training for a 100k race in a few weeks. He was a lawyer in the city who just graduated and was saving money till he could go out and spend a couple years doing something sweet, in the mean time he was training for an ultra. He seemed like a great guy and knew cara's Buddhist teacher by name so they had a nice chat. We agreed to go out and run sometime and maybe go drinking. We got out of the car and just laughed back and forth at each other that it was soo easy and we made it. It was the weirdest feeling to realise that we had one of the best weekends one can hope for: met kiwis, saw the New Zealand bush, slept in a barnyard with the pig, explored a bunch of caves, and only spent 50$ (including a 10$ map) between the two of us.
There were no people. We both slept in the hammock - a tough feat to be sure, but it's good to know that it's possible. and in the morning I went for a run. We started hiking again by 10 the next morning, the ranger never turned up so we didn't pay, and we started hiking along the coast road to little huia. it is really beautiful country over there and it's really interesting that as small a town as huia is such a big spot on the map - it goes to show how unurbainzed new Zealand actually is. just past little huia another lady picked us up and took us the rest of the way to Whatipu. She had spent a year hitching around Australia and always tries to pick up hitchhikers when she can. She was heading into the bush for a weekend after spending the week helping her daughter move in Auckland. I would guess she was around 50 and heading out for a solo tramp - I was very impressed. She pointed us towards some caves outside of Whatipu - which was nothing more than a trail head at the end of the road, but from the map looked like a city. 
We headed to the caves, planning to see them and then cross and area marked 'lagoon/swamp' to the beach (as the ranger told us the night before) and hike up the beach to a town called Karekare. The caves were very impressive, they were really deep and cara was much more into that than I - never having liked pitch black caves with only one light myself, and she did some meditating, while I sat waiting and sweating. Once we left the caves we confronted the 'lagoon/swamp' this turned out to be better and worse than we predicted. It was completely dry, so there were no water crossings and we didn't have to worry about getting packs wet, however, it was full of this cactus like plant that was horribly painful, also there was this grass stuff that would form pillows - it looked like the ground had these rises in it but when you stepped on them your foot would go straight through a great way to roll an ankle. I felt like Lewis and Clark upon coming to the top of a thorn covered sand dune, expecting the beach on the other side and seeing nothing but a sea of more thorn-dunes extending on as far as we could see. By the time we reached the actual beach, we were completely cut and scratched and embedded with thorns and all kinds of crazy shit. The beach it's self was nice, it extended on forever and was rippling with hear waves, it took 20 minutes to walk straight across from the thorn dunes to the water. Then we hiked north along the beach for a couple hours, which was completely deceptive as the scenery never changed. Also we were hiking barefoot which ended up giving me foot problems the next few days, as I didn't realize how far without shoes I had gone. We finally came to this guy walking down the shore out in the middle of nowhere and stopped him to ask the location of a trail going into the bush away from the beach that would lead us ultimately to Karekare. We learned that Karekare was similar to Whatipu in that it was a glorified trail head and not to expect any food to buy there, the nearest food was in the town of Piha, another 5k beyond karekare. He also pointed out the trailhead - all we had to do was recross the lagoon swamp which was wet this time, and I'm very glad that there were no leeches. We reached the trail head to discover that it went straight up for about 2k until leveling off and heading across to karekare. It climbed mt. zion, to a height of 273m and there was no leveling off before the top. When we reached karekare we both just crashed in the grass of the park by the parking lot. About 5 minutes after we sat down a man asked where we were hiking to and agreed to give us a ride. We accepted, still thinking that this trip had been far to easy. He (~45) was with some family friends - a grandma (~65) and her granddaughters, who were both really crazy. The girls, Analiese and Stephanie (i think) were 11 and 14 and quite feisty. The little one looked cara up and down and asked "are you posh?" she then turned to me and after inspecting me for a minute asked "do you clean your teeth?" Cara's response was: "what does that even mean?" mine was: "not since this morning - why?" She then proceeded to inform us that she was a daredevil and enjoyed doing crazy things, or as her sister termed it: putting herself at risk. the grandma promptly started in on the fine line between putting yourself at risk and yet not killing yourself since there are people in the world who care about you. Cara and I - the two hitchhikers with out a plan on where we were going, who hadn't really even told anyone we were going anywhere - Cara and I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation. The guy - Bill - was really friendly and took us to a lookout over the town and bay of Piha, it was very beautiful and Analiese entertained herself by rolling down the hill on the side of road - while her grandmother complained about grass stains. Bill dropped us off by the beach in piha and we explored the town and found a place to eat then went to look for a campground for the night. The lady at the public campground told us about a forest service one up the road that we could use and not have to pay for if we got far enough back so the ranger didn't see us in the morning, we looked for it but couldn't find it and ended up sleeping in the public campground on the lawn - keeping one eye open all night for rain, which would have ruined the sleeping bags. The next morning we hung out at the beach and by 2:30 decided that it was time to start heading back, we had class the next day at noon and weren't sure ow easy it would be to hitch along piha road. we were expecting to get a lift to titrangi and then spend the night on the beach and take the bus early in the morning, what we didn't realize is that Piha is where all the aucklanders go on the weekend so the first car who passed us picked us up and dropped us off on the corner of parnell and ayr street - about 2 minutes walk from home. Dave was our driver and he had been in piha training for a 100k race in a few weeks. He was a lawyer in the city who just graduated and was saving money till he could go out and spend a couple years doing something sweet, in the mean time he was training for an ultra. He seemed like a great guy and knew cara's Buddhist teacher by name so they had a nice chat. We agreed to go out and run sometime and maybe go drinking. We got out of the car and just laughed back and forth at each other that it was soo easy and we made it. It was the weirdest feeling to realise that we had one of the best weekends one can hope for: met kiwis, saw the New Zealand bush, slept in a barnyard with the pig, explored a bunch of caves, and only spent 50$ (including a 10$ map) between the two of us.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Running
So I decided not to talk too much about running in this, as athleticore has everything that one needs to see, but my life has quickly deteriorated (or maybe evolved?) into the life of a professional runner. I've gotten up every morning for the past week and gone for some sort of run, thought about running all day and prepared for the next mornings runs. At the moment I'm refiguring some shit so that I can run in the evenings as well. When I'm not running, I've read 'Once a Runner', am halfway through 'No Bugles, No Drums', with 'John Walker, Champion' in the queue. In between all the thoughts on running, I have been going to class and studying, but at this point there isn't much to do and I only have 8 hours of lecture a week (including wednesedays and fridays completely off). I found a series of races in Auckland - 4 actually - that are all 5k or 10k. The first is on Sunday in 3 weeks, I'm gonna try and make it to most of them, but the weekends are good for tramping and fishing. so we'll see which wins out. I did find a track, it's just a chalk line on the pitch in the domain, but I'm pretty sure that it is close to accurate (why wouldn't it be?), I'm also pretty sure that when Snell talks about doing his running in the domain, that is where it is, as none of the other domains have anything close. It is quite an experience to read about the runs he did and then go and run there myself. Although the cars will not stop for you, it is crazy to run somewhere that you don't have the right of way, I'm pretty sure that I'll get hit sometime; I almost did this morning - hope it's not bad when it happens.
Also been climbing almost every day, if only for a few hours, I'm gonna start putting that up ion athleticore as well. Sent some good routes, but nothing major yet.
Also been climbing almost every day, if only for a few hours, I'm gonna start putting that up ion athleticore as well. Sent some good routes, but nothing major yet.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Devonport
Took the Ferry over to Devonport the other day, met up with Jay and Bron. Took a nice long walk on the beach from the bus stop to Bron's parents house. On the way there was a rare books store that happened to have 'No Bugles, No Drums' for 40$. I am now the proud owner of that as well as another called 'John Walker; Champion'. Devonport and Takapuna were great little towns, beautiful beaches and a lot of sailing. Bron's parents were really cool, her mom is a painter and her dad is a book publisher (who actually had the rights to publish NBND until the author bailed out on him - he was cooled off by the time I showed up with the book, but was quite angry when it happened). They were great people. Then we headed over to Bron's sisters place for dinner and I got to meet thier family, including two college (what americans call high school) age kids, a 4th year and a 2(?) year. Both of whom were really cool. Andrew, the older, is a dancer and I hope to get to see him dance at some point. Dinner was great, and I hope to be invited back at some point.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Climbing
the climbing wall finally opened, it's good but kinda small. climbed for about 4 hours yesterday with Tex and Cara, then got pissed and shot the shit for a while. I've been carrying my climbing gear around with me, it's probably a good thing that there's no wall at ROC. I'm still amazed how much they drink here, although most of the cheap beer isn't all that bad - much better than genny light. there are so many foreigners living in parnell that I haven't met that many kiwis, but I'm working on it, joined a kayak club and a climbing club to that end.
started running again, still pretty short stuff, but I'm getting back into it. that the pedestrians have to yeild to traffic is still triping me out. It's really easy to tell who the foreigners are when they cross the street - we're the ones swiveling our heads back and forth trying to figure out which way the traffic is coming from.
Classes are sounding really good. Philosophy is a huge class, but the material should be a good intro to the take five program that I'll be doing next year. Antarctica is totally online, there is no formal lecture, just a question and answer session, so I'll have to stay up on that, I imagine that I'll have the tendancy to put it off and say - write a blog or some other such nonsense. The ecology classes are gonna be sweet, the kids in marine ecology seem like tools (frat boys) but the ones in freshwater are cool, and the topics seem really sweet, not to mention the field trips, and the profs are great.
it is really weird to not have a meal plan, having to cook every meal for myself is a lot to think about, I feel like I've been eating a lot, but I've still been really hungry, maybe it's just the stress of being in a new place.
started running again, still pretty short stuff, but I'm getting back into it. that the pedestrians have to yeild to traffic is still triping me out. It's really easy to tell who the foreigners are when they cross the street - we're the ones swiveling our heads back and forth trying to figure out which way the traffic is coming from.
Classes are sounding really good. Philosophy is a huge class, but the material should be a good intro to the take five program that I'll be doing next year. Antarctica is totally online, there is no formal lecture, just a question and answer session, so I'll have to stay up on that, I imagine that I'll have the tendancy to put it off and say - write a blog or some other such nonsense. The ecology classes are gonna be sweet, the kids in marine ecology seem like tools (frat boys) but the ones in freshwater are cool, and the topics seem really sweet, not to mention the field trips, and the profs are great.
it is really weird to not have a meal plan, having to cook every meal for myself is a lot to think about, I feel like I've been eating a lot, but I've still been really hungry, maybe it's just the stress of being in a new place.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Whakatane Camping trip
wow, a lot to say, I don't even know where to start. the camping trip went really well. we ended up getting a late start out (organising five people with hangovers is never easy) and didn't arrive until it was about an hour till dark (the hike to the first cabin claimed to be 3 hours). The guy who sold me the fishing licence said that it would be a good idea to buy a local a pack of beer and ask them to watch the car otherwise it might not run when we got back, so we found an old Maori lady and paid her 40$ to let us park on her property til we got back, which was really sketchy; we were pretty sure that we had paid her to sell off pieces of our car. as we started hiking we realized that the DOC (department of conservation) wasn't too interested in marking the trails and as it was dark enough that we were hiking with headlamps we inevitably missed the a turn in our trail. We doubled back a couple times and ended up in some Maori's pasture chasing his sheep around and catching glimpses of possums in the forest. We finally found the trail and hiked for another half hour before becoming so mixed up with the sheep trails that we decided to stop for the night. we didn't have a tent as we were expecting to sleep in a hut so we just bedded down on the hill under the palm trees, and tried to sleep. This would have been easier if the girls didn't keep hearing things and freaking out. Once dawn came we got up and backtracked till we found the trail - it turned out that we were only on the actual trail for about 5 minutes before missing a turn and following a sheep track for an hour. The trail did turn out to be pretty well marked in the day time and we were able to get to the cabin by midday, stopping only to swim, eat blackberries, rest, eat more blackberries, take pictures, change shoes, swim again, and eat more blackberries. That morning taught me a lot about tramping with girls.
The cabin was really nice, especially after staying the night on the forest floor, and we had a very pleasant evening. I went fishing and caught the only fish of the trip and quite possibly the biggest fish I will ever see. It was a ~30 inch rainbow. We ate it for dinner as selling trout in NZ is illegal and the only way to be able to eat trout here is to catch it yourself. It was delicious. I didn't get another bite for the rest of the trip. I think that someone had fished there before me and pulled them all out, and either he missed the one I got or put it back.
The next day we hiked up to the rapids and spent some time there fishing (again unproductively) and eating and climbing. The girls decided that they wanted to quit the trip early and go back to town to get on the piss (NZ for 'go to the bars and drink beer') so they left us there and the guys messed around some more and then hiked back to the cabin. That night was uneventful and the next morning I fished and we left. There was a wire bridge that we had to cross which turned out to be pretty sweet and we got back to the Maori village as it just started to rain. The girls were nowhere to be seen. By the time they showed up we were completely soaked and slightly annoyed. We got back to town at 10:30 and slept.
It was a great trip.
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