New Zealand, properly explained

The boots the boot

2011-01-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

Hiking boots are predominately designed for people without pinky toes. Unfortunately that is one body modification I have not undertaken yet: I even still have my appendix and the least pain in my abdomen is a terror to me since I am rarely adequately insured. For similar reasons it would be cheaper to give the boots the boot than that to the toes, and so I returned to the store, secure with box and receipt, and leaned my bike against the counter. (If you must ask, my bike was a bit upset that we would not be cycling to Whakapapa due to the exchange, and fears of Highway One. The bicycle was not afraid: it has never been. It has always just wanted to go, and there it had to wait wondering what parts would be removed to facilitate its alternate transport.)

"There's just one problem, mate," the cashier said, "these are worn, I can't sell these as new boots." I feared as much. I had nightmares about it, and the oracle when I visited had pronounced the fate: even my fortune cookies recently have been less than positive. "I'm sorry, mate," he said, and I looked into his eyes and he was very, very sorry. But there was nothing I could do, I had to drop the boots.

Oh it would have been so easy! Did I neglect to listen to my toes on that fateful day when I tried on every shoe in the shop? Was I too concerned with vague comparisons with every other boot, the fit in thumb toe in heel, the grip, the secure feeling of a shoe about the ankle? I told him it was my fault, not his, but he just frowned his eyes. He was so disappointed.

The cashier was disappointed, my bike was disappointed, even I was disappointed. When I walked out among the crowds that day there was just that vague sense of disapproval, not of me, but of my purchase; they expected so much more of me. A pigeon looked at me briefly then averted its gaze, shaking it head o slightly. The green man on the walk sign had a bit less spring in his step, and the clouds hung in the sky a meter lower than the day before.

I had not only failed myself, but generations and generations before me. My grandparents expected more of me; their grandparents more as well. My teachers, laboring every school day and night to educate me, for this one moment when I might have to purchase boots, and to purchase the correct pair; that had all been in vain. If only I could go back and buy the half-size larger, even though I had never needed a size 10 1/2 before and even now the thought of it makes me think I must have enormou, clown-like feet! If only my predecessors and teachers could go back and correct that little blind spot in the manner of boot-buying, perhaps all would be a bit better: more smiles on motorists faces and less honking, and the baby on the corner might have one less tear on its face.

President Obama and Queen Elizabeth II were both disappointed in me. Christ, hanging on the cross, bore that exact thorn or nail corresponding to my mis-purchase. My friends were disappointed; my co-workers were. The readers of my blog were disappointed. I was disappointed; my bike was; the cashier was. I've said that. The cow that provided the leather was disappointed. VISA was disappointed. Every boot suit to fit was disappointed, and every foot that would have fit the boot was disappointed as well. It is hard to get the scale of it: Stalin was disappointed, Napoleon was disappointed, Saddam Hussein was disappointed. I disappointed the King: Elvis. So much had gone wrong when I bought the boot, and then worn it, not on carpet in the hostel but on hot tracks through the woods.

I sold the boots into the rental fleet at a reduced price. I escaped to the other side of town and bought boots: big boots -- boots that fit. I hid and fled town on the Naked Bus, and talked to a woman who had not yet learned of my mistake.

Craters of the Moon

2011-01-13T11:46:00.000-08:00

But Taupo reached too high -- it exploded, again and again, raining down fragments like memory throughout the landscape, which still boils and steams in the shadows of its history. The craters of the moon gurgle in the night, a few hours return from Huka falls if you can navigate the natural logic of the logging roads (now graded by cycle difficulty).

The land, like Cherry Island, is held privately. Cherry Island used to house a nature park on its flats, where small children would pet smaller birds while their parents drank tea, but now all one can do is read: keep out, private property, keep out, keep out, keep out. "'Nature Park' closed." A gang of youths cling to skateboards and sit in front of the barred bridge to the island, where an old woman looks warily from her house.

The craters have a different fate. Every day at quarter to six a great siren rises over the landscape and the paying tourists begin their migration back to cars and campers, and at six the cry is raised again and the landscape is utterly barren. Feign ignorance, or better yet, _be_ ignorant, and there remain old back doors from when the land was public. One just says, "No bicycles permitted", nothing against public entry, so you climb around the barbed wire there and tramp over the warm ground which crumbles under your feet to reach the boardwalk.

Then you are in and you haven't paid a red ten-cent piece.

There is little to commend to the place other than the pervasive smell of sulfur wafting into your hair and clothes and exploring that until your next wash. The field is large, but Yellowstone is larger. The features are unique but so is every place. The feeling creeps from below, through your feet, that you are not meant to be here, that neither land nor persons want you, and that generator purring in the distance belongs to some force which has you in its grasp.

So it is back around the barbed wire and the replanted woods, over the churning falls and through the unset, passing the hot springs where empty beer bottles congregate, and meandering through the darkened town. That is Taupo, where everything costs money but may not be for sale, and the tourists lust for adventure like caged animals.

I had to find my own way out.

Invisible Monkeys

2011-01-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

I have yet to see any monkeys in New Zealand, outside of the zoological gardens of Auckland. These gardens do not count. They are the kind of place where you would grow trees of monkeys, cutting them off at the tail when ripe, rather than herds lazily grazing the hillside, bleating in distress and satisfaction, if you know what I mean. (I can see by the reflection of your face in the monitor that you do not. Don't worry, this is a phase that will pass on your way to enlightenment.)

As I said, I have not yet seen monkeys, but evidence of their existence is all around. You can hardly stick your head into a forest without hearing a constant clicking sound, not rising and falling in waves like American crickets, but steady, and positional, like each click wants to clearly specify its location in space-time, and a forest positioning system could be built based on the regularity.

The reason I have not seen these monkeys is that they are invisible. That is the only conclusion that fits the evidence. They eat wallabies and throw the carcasses on the road. They shrink themselves to the size of mice and sneak into my pack to steal peanuts and eat my swim trunks. They send rabbits running down the highway as messengers. They light their tiny blue fairy lights in the forest at night to lure unwary travelers, and hold beeping, burbling councils high in the treetops to decide how to dispose of them. If you survive the night, it only means the pacifist and "continued studies" factions have won the debate -- for now.

Entire cultures have risen and fallen in the darkness of those forests, in fear of the invisible green monkeys, eyes crooked, tongues ever hanging out in gossip. But what can I do, as a mere traveler to this land, to free the people from this reign of terror, when I cannot even see the enemy?

I need to find some wizened old person to offer me cryptic advice on how I can rise above my station and save these people. I met two today; their advice amounted to: "wear stronger sunscreen" and "there's a hostel over there." I have taken this advice to heart and hope to make further progress tomorrow, perhaps with the help of magical items provided by supernatural persons. Only time can tell: I am, until then, only a servant to the historic powers of goodness.

Best shortcut ever?

2011-01-04T01:59:00.000-08:00

30km to the next town. That's normally not something to complain about, but the bike has its own mind about which hills are easy and which are hard.

Oh, you know, let me throw some background on NZ roads at you.

The roads are signed all sorts of different ways, but from a user's perspective, the differences are minimal. All roads are two lanes, with or without a dashed white line down the center, with essentially no shoulders. More impressive sounding names, such as "Highway 1", indicate greater traffic and aspirations but no greater width or speed limits. Perhaps the lesser roads, which cyclists avoiding the holiday traffic on 1 are likely to use, are hillier. Perhaps much hillier.

My map made me an incredible bargain. There was a bike trail, in its planning stages, running the length of the river that I would otherwise have to bike a long hilly loop around. I suspected the trail to be flatter, since it was pictured as abutting the river, and thus quicker, or at least a welcome respite from traffic. And that it existed could not be denied, because it was right there, running alongside the road where the map called it, and I had seen numerous signs and brochures describing it.

You already know how the story ends: the trail decayed as I distanced further from the highway, losing first its fine gravel cover and then entering spotty sections of sand. The design was full of climbs and downhills that I'm sure a mountain biker would appreciate, but for the most part I felt I was pushing my road bike through the wrong side of a Mountain Dew commercial.

It ended on a logging road, which had a huge tree down across it. To be frank, this detour was beginning to get awesome. I had to break out a huge section of the tree to roll my bike through it, and the road kept getting increasingly remote. Then there was this part where I was desperate for water, and all I could find, because the river had completely vanished, was this tiny red stream -- but when I drew the water it was yellow. This tiny stream ran through an enormous logging valley utterly devoid of shade; there were only dead stumps and dirt all around, and I had to circle three quarters of it with no shade, and --

Wait, I think I forgot what blog this was. Shades of "a little floating adventure" are haunting the page. Let me exorcise them here. Basically, what I'm saying is there is a huge marketing opportunity for drink dealers in the middle of that dry valley. Call it the Draughts of Mordor, and sell it to lost cyclists. It fits, because a more desperate landscape I have not ever seen. I'm not saying that you'd make money every day, but you could get pretty good rates on what you have, and perhaps even charge for your air-conditioning services and sunscreen.

(But, secretly, the adventure continued. It was the kind of trip that feels awesome because you know that the misery is limited and the stories aren't; that even when the camp site you were completely relying on for water and toilet is on the wrong side of the river, the tiny scratch of earth you can make to lay your head on will be just as comfortable, and as you go to sleep you are surrounded by this blue glow -- just these tiny blue dots in the darkness, on the ground -- glowing out of attraction or death, because they seem to peep out from where you disturbed the earth, and they drown out the stars, if any, above you, and all other concerns, like where your next sip of water will come from. Just sleep.)

That little booth in Mordor can sell run-on sentences to make Henry James drool, because they seem to be in plenty supply in New Zealand. You know what? Let's get back on track here. What eats are worthy for an enterprising entrepreneur to take over in this country? Let's look at a couple alternatives:

Burger Fuel: This chain produces bizarre concoctions Dagwood never dreamed of. First struggle to fit the sandwich into your mouth, second grab a hundred napkins to wipe the beet juice off yourself. Verdict: worth further investigation.

Hell's Pizza: With a stark red and black decor and menu items named after the seven deadly sins, this is a restaurant chain sure to keep the children asking uncomfortable questions. Posing as a gourmet pizza joint, it falls short in this goal. In Minneapolis, Luce is never more than a scenic walk away and has superior taste and texture in every way. Verdict: pass.

Looking-glass land

2011-01-01T00:18:00.000-08:00

I had a long post planned about the arbitrary nature of the left-handed driving rule. Surely all reasonable people (e.g. Americans) can agree that driving on the right is the right thing to do. Is it mere affectation that causes the Kiwi nature to favor the left side of the road? Is this simply a rebellion against the natural, American way of things? The surprising answer to these questions will be given below.

When I was walking about in central Auckland, there was a certain direction, toward the harbor that I consistently thought of as "south". This despite the maps that clearly showed the harbor at the top, with a big "N" arrow pointing in that direction. Was it merely because that direction was downhill, and I associated down with south? The answer to this question would have to wait until an epiphanous moment.

The night of December the 31st I found a delightful campsite near Kawakawa Bay. It was the kind of campsite almost ideal for bicycle camping because while being close to the road, and thus easy to push one's bicycle to, it was also behind a ridge and thick vegetation and thus completely invisible to the passing motorist. There I set up camp, eschewing shelter for the night to sleep instead under the strange stars, as mediated by the trees and mosquito netting. Needless to say matters of direction were near to mind.

It was when the fireworks started, pounding through the forest and into the sensitive corners of my mind that I realized the true nature of things. The sun here is predominantly from the north, rather than the south, and so subconsciously I assigned the opposite cardinal directions to north and south. Needless to say east and west were always clear, since the sun still rises from the same direction. It all came together: the reversal of one of the cardinal directions, the inverted phases of the moon, the reversed direction of driving: New Zealand is like a mirror world, what physicists would call a parity inversion. New Zealand may not drastically differ from the US, but it is like the same land as seen in a mirror.

There is one difficulty with this, which is that Kiwis maintain the same names for left and right, clothes button on the same side, and the direction of writing remains the same. This could perhaps be explained by noting that these are only cultural differences, and in fact cultural directions imported from abroad, like me. The natural order of things, comprising shadows and the driving direction, are reversed.

There is only one way to satisfy this question completely, and that relies on the fact that the fundamental force of nature known as "weak" exhibits parity effects. If my conjecture is correct, and all natural directions are here reversed, parity-breaking weak force experiments should here be reverse of those in the United States. If anyone can find an appropriate experiment I can conduct, costing less than $100 and taking at most 2kg of materials, I will be sure to conduct it here in the wild and confirm or disprove this conjecture.

please do not

2010-12-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

It only takes on person abusing it, for everyone to lose their feeding ice cream to shark privileges.

How to ride a bus in Auckland

2010-12-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

You just have to decide where you are going. Really, you just have to decide. Really, as a tourist you have no particular reason to go anywhere, so the first thing you have to do is to decide which place will be the most impressive today. Then, you go to google maps and let it decide what buses you need to take to get there. This will give you a more efficient route than they might give you at the Brittomart station, and google is faster anyway.

So much for the easy part.

Once you know where you are going, you must board the bus and tell the driver where you think he should let you off. You have to tell him because the buses use a graded price system, so the distance to the destination affects the price in an obscure way. But this just opens the first stage of negotiations. The bus driver will then tell you in turn that, first, this bus doesn't go there; second, that place does not exist; and third, wouldn't you be better off taking a cab, you sweet little thing, because this public transport thing just seems a bit beyond you?

You must hold your ground. The game is to find the first stop after your destination that the bus driver will admit to servicing. I've found that gesturing at a vague region on a map does wonders, but then the driver will charge for the furthest stop in that area. Eventually the bus driver will name some price that doesn't appear on the rate table, and you pay it. In return you receive a short string of dental floss which is supposed proof of payment, but I have never been able to study it under a powerful enough microscope to determine what the words, if any, say.

Now that you've earned the right to ride the bus, all you have to do is wait for your stop to approach. The more vehemently the driver denied such a stop existing, the larger the sign giving the name of the stop, which is exactly the name you tried running by the driver earlier.

All that's left to do then is press the stop button and hope the bus doesn't go too much further. For extra credit, you can read the timetable on the bus stop on the way back and verify that the bus does, indeed, stop there.

Tarini

2010-12-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

290$NZ from Adventure Cycle, with guaranteed 50% buyback. I expect at least two major breakdowns.

"Kia ora," or, Utterly Defenseless

2010-12-26T14:30:00.000-08:00

My infiltration of the Newish Zealandish nation was well-planned. I packed a variety of papers offering a plausible itinerary of my travels, including manufactured names and addresses associated with phone numbers of confidants who can vouch for the trip. This after all, is what you typically need for traveling between the United States and Canada, and moreover you must have it memorized so that you can repeat it verbatim while being hosed naked in their interrogation chambers. Any mis-step and you will be sent to Gitmo or one of the CIA's black sites for further processing.

New Zealand doesn't care for such proper, well-regarded defense procedures. They instead caqll you to their little booths, squint at your "Unetid Staats" passport without a glance at you, and send you on your way. I exaggerate of course. Other travelers report that they may occasionally ask about camping equipment or fruit, which the Newish Zealandish have a particular fear of: throughout customs and immigration there are posters of decaying, vampiric, zombified fruit as if ready to attack, which apparently is what the Newish Zealandish people think of when they think of fruit. It is probably best that on a reconnaissance mission such as this I did not bring anything to set off their fruit detectors; my AR-17 got through without any difficulties.

Don't think this open attitude is limited to their immigration checkpoints. Everywhere you go in New Zealand people will greet you with the traditional, unpronounceable welcome "kia ora," which, applying my investigative and literary skills, roughly translates to: "Please take whatever you want, just don't throw any fruit at me." And so it was, I went to a stand, showed my over-21 ID and purchased a holster and a banana, and nobody gave me any trouble the entire day of my arrival.

There you have it: New Zealand is an utterly defenseless, virgin land ripe for the taking, with its unplowed skyscrapers and parking meters, its open fields of concrete, and extinct species of giant birds.

Categories, properly explained

2010-12-21T17:12:00.000-08:00

It pleasures me greatly to be writing this to you, dearest of readers. I have written this blog just for you. For I know that in the days to come you will look at the tags on these blogged posts I will so painstakingly have constructed for you, and you will read them, and then you will look at the categorization of the post, and you will say: "What most blasted tarnation is this in my feed? Lorrie, get the gun." But never fear, when that day comes, merely return to this page (bookmark it, perhaps, or engrave it on your laptop, or commit it to memory; in fact, I have composed a poem for it:

Eitch, teeteepee, colon,
Slash slash enzee
Explained! dot.
Blog's pot dot.
Com slash!
Twenty ten slash twelve slash!
Categories dash,
Properly dash,
Explained dot.
Eitch
Tee
Em
Ell.

(Which as you can see is by no means difficult to remember.)) and review the following categories:

quaint: Aren't foreign countries so cute and quirky? Their people look so adorable when they go about their normal, day-to-day lives in their fascinating little ways. It's nice to know that wherever you go in the world, you can meet people just like yourself, only not nearly as sophisticated.
monkeys: I have it on good faith that New Zealand has no native land mammals, which only raises the question: "Well, what kind of monkeys do they have, any way?" I will keep you up to date on this important environmental question.
colonial: There are so many business opportunities in strange lands for a clever entrepreneur such as yourself! In these posts, I will discuss the treasures of the islands, from rich mineral and labor resources ripe for the taking to the native weapons and strategic defenses (if any).
moving: Traveling has its perks, from stench-filled buses to photogenic scenery conveniently placed near parking lots. It's important to create as many significant experiences as possible in the allotted time: you are trying to impress your friends, aren't you?
horrible: We all know that countries overseas permit all manner of primitive and unstylish practices that we should stamp out, if only our military were not nearly so underfunded. Let me tell you, whenever I get that spidey sense of something evil and un-American it is my duty to blog it for you.
whoah: If there's one thing about long journeys I love, it's that inevitable delightful occasion when Deep Stuff Happens. If I don't have supernatural enlightenment on some wind warped peak, then I'm sure to run into some pitiable person with a challenging life who will teach me far more than I could ever repay. How wonderful!

This list seems good to me now, sir or ma'am reader, I have sat back and stared at it for 5 minutes in awe of the completeness it represents. However, should I ever need to add new categories to this list, I shall try to edit this post to ensure that they all remain properly explained.

huh: For example, I just realized that I needed a category for all this introductory and about informational blogging matter that folks love to read, so I just added it.

Lorem ipsum

2010-12-21T16:25:00.001-08:00

It has been well, and truly stated:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Well, now, what are we to do with that? Most blogs hit you with that icy blast of perverted Latin and expect you to line your birdhouse, build your doghouse, and instruct your children by it, but in the light of the flickering television set, why should they listen to you instead? This blog will not now leave you empty-handed, for this blog is about proper explanation of these matters to AMERICANS. And while most Americans don't have time to nulla pariatur, when I say to you instead,

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

You see, now that nonsense has been explained properly so any proper American can understand it during a commercial break. Is it football season in America? Yes, and yet we can still read blogs, as long as they are short. Is it football season in New Zealand? I don't know, but when I find out I can explain that to you, properly. In American.

Testing, testing,

2010-12-21T15:32:00.001-08:00

One two three. FFFshhshsss. Turn it down, Jim. Testing, testing. OK, up a bit. Testing, testing, one two three. That sound good to you? Alright, let's rock!