Entry 57: Black Magic Love Song

I went to see Stone Temple Pilots on Thursday here in Newcastle, and tonight I’m going to see Santana (and The Doobie Brothers) at a winery just outside town. I haven’t been to a big concert in years, and suddenly I’m going to two in three days.

STP was awesome. It’s relatively recently that I’ve come to enjoy their music. When they first became popular in the mid-90s I didn’t like them much. I liked Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and I felt like STP was a rip-off – a band without much originality cashing in on the grunge boom. But, I don’t think that anymore (or maybe I’m just sentimental for anything of that era). Anyway, they rocked the Newcastle Entertainment Center on Thursday.



They’re a band where were I know 95% of their songs, but I couldn’t tell you the names or the albums, and I only have a vague idea of the lyrics (“where you going for tomorrow, where you going with the master plan… and I feel, and I feel that the dogs begin to get her… whoa-oa… why do you even care…”). They pretty much played all their hits, which is good. Nobody likes seeing a classic band that plays stuff off their “new album”. Give us the goods. I understand that they’ve played those songs thousands of times and are probably bored with them, but you know what? 99% of the paying audience does the same job everyday, and it’s a lot less fun than being a rock star.

Also, there are few things I find more pretentious than when a band or a musician turns against their mainstream hits. Like, I heard an interview with Buster Poindexter who called “Hot Hot Hot” “the bane of my existence” – c’mon man, really? I prefer Michael Stipes’ attitude. When an interviewer apologetically explained that she was going to play a bit of “Losing My Religion”, he said there was no need to apologize. He said that he really liked that song, was proud of it, and would love to hear it. As well he should. Sure, it got played to death on the radio in the early 90s, and people got tired of it, but it’s still a damn good song.

Anyway, in other news, I went to a potluck last night. I brought this beet road salad that S makes sometimes. It’s easy and delicious. Here are the ingredients: canned beets, apples. That’s it. You put them in a food processor and serve it with cashews. Bon appetit. There was another beet root salad there that looked more interesting (it had potato and carrot and stuff in it), but mine was way, way better, and I’m not just saying that.

I was slightly apprehensive about going, because I don’t know the host or hostess very well, and sometimes math functions can be sort of awkward, but it turned out to be fun. The host is a bit on the eccentric side. He’s super smart and quite well-known in the math world. He’s the type of guy the university brings in, gives a fancy title to, and says, “Alright, just do whatever you want.” He sorta looks like Comic Book Store Guy on “The Simpson’s” – a little thinner and no beard, but he has the balding/pony tail look, he always has on a t-shirt, sandals, and shorts (or those pajama-looking weightlifting pants). Unlike the Comic Book Store Guy he wears glasses and a lot of jewelry (earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, etc.). Also, occasionally, he wears a backpack with a built in water bladder and uses it just in his day-to-day activities. Like, he can’t be bothered going to the water fountain or a faucet.

Anyway, he’s a nice, if unusual, guy (his wife is nice and unusual, as well), and he has a nice house. Although I would suggest, next time they have a party to clean out the cat box. I went to use the toilet and nearly threw up from the smell. I looked down and saw a mountain of cat turds. It was disgusting. I just walked out and found a different bathroom (this one had a pair of undies hanging on the towel rack). Seriously, I’m not saying you have to make your bathroom spic-and-span, but at least take the necessary steps so that people can enter it without gagging.

There is a guy in the department who is really overweight, I mean super obese, and I always watch how he functions with a sort of macabre curiosity. He has to go about things in a different way, because he is so big. Normal movements appear to be a struggle. He can’t just sit down like a typical person. He has to position the chair in a special way and then maneuver himself in, and he doesn’t really fit in a standard chair, so he has to sorta sit on the very front and lean back, so that his legs aren’t pinched by the arm rests.

The other day, as I was going to the bathroom in the department, I saw him walking up the stairs, and he was really struggling. A few minutes later he came into the bathroom. He was pouring sweat and completely winded. He had to grasp the sink with both hands and lean over it to catch his breath. This, after walking seven steps, going up approximately three feet. It was a bit shocking and sad to watch.

The thing is, when you get that big, it’s probably extremely hard to lose weight, because what can you do? You can’t exercise properly, if you can’t even walk from the parking lot to your office with needing a break. I think you have to start thinking about some sort of surgical procedure at that point. You have to do something, because you simply can’t put that type of strain on your body and expect to see many golden years.

Anyway, I started watching “The Ricky Gervais Show”. It’s hysterical. It was originally created as a series of podcasts, but the podcasts were so successful that they made them into TV shows. Each episode is Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant (Gervais’s partner in writing “The Office”), and this guy Karl Pilkington having a conversation, which is put to animation. Most the humor comes from Pilkington who says the stupidest, most inane (yet somehow profound) things, like when told that an octopus’ testicles we’re in its head, Pilkington said something, like, “Eh… not that impressive really, because an octopuses is just a big head with legs, innit?” And then later he questions why seals exist, saying something like, “We’ve got a fish, we’ve a dog. Why do we need a combination of the two?”

There is some debate about whether Karl is being genuine and the discussions are really off the cuff or whether it’s an act and everything is scripted (both Gervais and Merchant adamantly deny that they are scripted). I tend to think it’s mostly genuine. Sure, everybody is trying to be funny, and Karl probably isn’t as dumb as comes off. Everybody is playing it up, but I don’t think you could call it “an act”. If it’s an act, then Karl Pilkington is the greatest straight man ever, and should move to LA and become a huge movie star. Anyway, I recommend the show, for anybody interested in some low-key hilarity.






OK, gotta go. Santana awaits. “You’ve got to change your evil ways… baby… before I stop loving you…” It’s raining right now, heavily, and the concert is outdoors. The tickets say explicit, the show goes on, rain or shine, I’m pulling for the latter. Hopefully it lets up.

Entry 56: An Interview and a Non-Dream

I had a phone interview this morning for a job with a company in the States. My advisor set it up for me. It went well. I feel like it went “OK”, but generally I (and most everybody else) is a bit too negative with such things, so I’ll upgrade it to “well” (I’m not bumping it up to “great”). The company looks fantastic, and the work would be right in my wheelhouse. I did my best to demonstrate that I would be a good fit there. But…

Everybody has a big but,* and this time I have two. The first is that the company is located in an area where it would be unlikely/impossible for S to find work in her field and in an area we wouldn’t particularly want to live long-term (it’s in the South, that’s as specific as I want to get). The second is that they would prefer to hire somebody now.

Concerning the first but, the company seemed open to, at least considering, the idea of telecommuting, at least after some initial period. Maybe I could work onsite for a year or so and then work remotely. Concerning the latter, I can’t do too much about this. I’m honoring my contract here and then going to India until the beginning/middle of August. There isn’t much wiggle room here. In a follow up email, I indicated that, if hired, I would be willing to do whatever I could from Australia (reading documents, learning about the project I’d be working on, etc.) until I arrived back in the States, but that’s never ideal. Anyway, he said that he’d talk to his team leaders and get back to me. So, we shall see.

[I don't like big buts, and I cannot lie, you other brothers can't deny, that when a sitch comes by, with some itty-bitty doubt, and some things not worked out, you get solicitous!]

Changing topics, I came up with an idea for a bad sitcom, which is only worth mentioning because I did so completely in my sleep. Every now and then, I have these prolonged moments where I actually think in my sleep. It’s different from dreaming in the typical sense, because in my dreams nothing is logical or linear or particularly intelligible. In these non-dreams, I think normal thoughts like when I’m awake, but my ability to assess my thoughts is out of whack. I think everything is brilliant. Then when I wake up, I’m disappointed, because I realize it’s not brilliant at all. In fact, it’s terrible. Once I non-dreamed an entire stand-up comedy routine. I only remember one “joke”.

“It turns out Mary was robbing Peter to pay Paul… it broke up the band.”

Like I indicated, it’s not exactly Carlin-esque material.

Anyway, here’s my sitcom idea. The main character is a young wannabe hotshot financial wizard. I’ll call him Aziz, because I non-dreamed that he’d be played by comedian Aziz Ansari. Aziz is a big-business, big-money capitalist, but he’s likable (a la Jack Donaghy and Alex P. Keaton). He’s super arrogant, but he’s actually not very smart, even about finance. He doesn’t get this though and often gets in over his head, which will be the source of much hilarity.

The back story for Aziz is that fresh out of grad school he took a low-level job with a huge financial company. When his company got caught in an Enron-like accounting scandal, Aziz was duped into being the fall guy, even though he was just a peon in the company and had nothing to do with it. Now, he’s marred for life and un-hirable, so he has to rely on his wife to work while he stays at home to take care of their young twins (and they are cute!). The humor in the show comes from Aziz continually losing money in the stock market (much to his wife’s dismay!), and from his unconventional (yet oddly effective) parenting techniques. He's a real fish out of water trying to fit in with the stay-at-home-mom crowd!

Anyway, that’s the sitcom idea I non-dreamed. I wouldn’t watch it, but then again I don’t really like sitcoms. Even the ones I did once like (“30 Rock”, “The Office”) are getting bad and should probably just retire with dignity. “The Big Bang Theory” and “Modern Family” are OK, but a lot of the time I can see the jokes on those shows coming from a mile away. Plus, I absolutely hate the laugh track on "The Big Bang Theory".

[The star of my sitcom.]

Actually, I was thinking that sitcoms are a lot like NFL running backs, in that they both have extremely short shelf-lives. It’s rare to get one that is good for many seasons. Also,they often go bad seemingly overnight, and they often run well past their primes (ahem… “The Simpsons”). The good ones usually have a solid, but not great rookie season, and then peak over the next two to three seasons. If you get six good seasons of out of a sitcom or a running back, it’s a successful career. Most of them don’t even last that long. Hmm… this seems like a good idea for a Bill Simmons-esque sports column: compare the careers of legendary running backs to those of classic sitcoms. (“Cheers would be Walter Payton, because…”)

In real sports news: March Madness! Although, it’s kind of depressing, because I can’t watch any of the games, and nobody cares about it here, so what’s the point? I didn't even fill out a bracket this year. I’ll follow it, but it’s just not the same.

In other sports news, my ultimate Frisbee team is a respectable 3-3. We played the top team this week and nearly beat them. We won the first game (you play 3 games to 5 points and whoever wins 2 or 3 games wins the match) 5-4, then nearly won the second game (and the match), but lost 4-5, and then we got crushed 1-5 in the last game. They just wore us down. It didn’t help that we only had one sub. I was too tired to play hard at the end, as was everybody else on our team. Anyway, it’s been fun so far.

Well, that about does it for this post.

*I took this line from “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”. I tried to find the clip on youtube, but was unable to do so. Instead, I’ll link to this painful clip of Pee-wee on “Monday Night Raw”. Apparently, this is what you end up doing when you’re a flash-in-the-pan star, get caught masturbating in an adult theater, and then go back to doing a character you’re too old to play by 25 years.

[I remember seeing this mugshot the summer I ended elementary school. Talk about innocence lost.]

Entry 55: Olio

I went to brunch in Stockton last weekend with some folks. Stockton is an island across the Hunter River from Newcastle. There are bridges into it, but we took the ferry. There is nothing particularly interesting about Stockton, but it was somewhere new to go, so I went. At brunch, I ordered pancakes and didn’t particularly enjoy them. They were too cakey and sweet, and they didn’t serve the syrup on the side, so I couldn’t ration it out properly. The side of bacon was the only saving grace of the meal.

Anyway, a few pics.

[The ferry to Stockton from Newcastle.]

[An aerial shot of Stockton I pulled off the Internet.]

[A big ship photographed from Stockton.]

[NBA legend John Stockton. The best white American basketball player of the past 20 years, and the last guy to rock the nuthugger shorts.]

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I haven’t been sleeping enough lately. Midnight is really the cut off for me and for a variety of reasons (most of which involve me and crossword puzzles), I haven’t been hitting that mark recently. S is away at the moment, which throws me off a little bit, but it’s mostly just that I don’t like going to bed at night. I once heard somebody say, when you go to bed, the night wins. That’s how it feels to me.

As a result of going to bed late, I’ve been tired at work which hurts my production. On Wednesday, I felt hung over all day, and I didn’t have a single sip of alcohol the night before. From a productivity standpoint, I would probably be better off sleeping in when I’m that tired and going in to work late, but I’m worried that that’s a slippery slope. I want to maintain normal working hours. I don’t want to slide back into the 12pm – 4am hours I carried for much of grad school.

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I started a new thing: not showering. OK, that’s not completely accurate. I just shower less, and when I do it’s a quick rinse-soap-rinse. I only shampoo about twice a week now. It’s going good so far. I don’t feel nor appear any less clean, and I don’t waste a bunch of time scrubbing myself with all sorts of exfoliants and cleansers just because “society” says I have to.

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I’ve been following this Scott Walker/Wisconsin story a little bit. I’m disappointed in the outcome. In general, I have mixed feelings about unions, but agree whole-heartedly with the following commentary by Paul Krugman.

“Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.”

This move is an obvious power grab for Walker and his big-money financiers (the Koch Brothers). It only ostensibly has to do with balancing the state budget. This is made glaringly obvious by the fact that the unions were willing to make big concessions, but Walker refused to negotiate with them. It’s amazing to me that everybody doesn’t see right through Walker’s bullshit.

I read a piece about how some democrats are calling this "a gift", saying essentially that Walker won the battle at the expense of the war, because this new law will be such a big rallying point. It sounds like a lot of spin to me, but this article by respected analyst Nate Silver indicates that there could be some truth to it.

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I mentioned Paul Krugman above. I used to listen to him when he would appear on the old “The O’Franken Factor” (what a great radio program that was), but only recently have I started reading his column (and blog) regularly. I highly recommend him. He’s the mainstream columnist whose political views are the closest to my own (great minds think alike). He’s left-leaning, but doesn’t give dems a pass on anything, and he doesn’t automatically vilify republicans and big business. He’s just a good thinker and a solid columnist. Actually, we could use people like him in office, but I think people like him are turned off by the idea of holding office, which is part of the reason we have such shit leaders.

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Speaking of great minds I caught an “error” in a rerun of the TV show “The Big Bang Theory”. In the episode, Sheldon has to teach a class. Afterward, Howard asks Sheldon, “So, how did your lecture go?” To which Sheldon responds, “In a word, triumphant.” Would somebody as smart and pedantic as Dr. Sheldon Cooper really use the adjective “triumphant” when the adverb “triumphantly” is appropriate? That’s what we should all be asking ourselves right now.

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I had to change a password today as part of a regular security update. I hate doing this. Somebody needs to invent some way that people can have online security without having to remember a bunch of passwords, because it’s a serious hassle. Also, why can’t we just come to a password consensus about the characters that can / have to be in a password (some can’t have numbers, some must have numbers, some must have a capital letter, some aren’t case sensitive, some require a non-alpha, non-numeric character, etc.). I don’t think any characters should have to be in a password. Doesn’t this shrink the password search space, thus making things less secure? If you have a 4-10 character password and any one of those characters can be a number, then that will give you more possibilities than if one of those characters must be a number. Therefore, it seems to me, the former is more secure than the latter. So why do so many sites require the latter in the name of security?

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Mike Tyson has to be one of the funniest dudes of all time. Sadly, most of the time he doesn't know he's being funny (or he's the greatest Andy Kaufman-esque comedian ever). Watch this clip of him on Ellen. The funny part starts at 1:45. He must mean The Michelin Man?

Entry 54: New Zealand Trip III (Queenstown)

Note: this is part three of a three-part post. To read the earlier entries click here.

[The founder of Queenstown William Gilbert Rees and his trusty sidekick, uh, Rammy.]

The plan, after hiking the Routeburn, was to stay in Queenstown for a day and then fly to Christchurch for a few days. In light of current events, however, that wasn’t happening. In fact, the hotel at which we were supposed to stay was (and still is, so far as I know) on the verge of collapse. Here’s a picture I pulled off the Web. The hotel is the tall building in the background.

[Earthquake-caused wreckage near the Grand Chancellor hotel]

So, we changed our plans and just stayed in Queenstown for an additional two days, which worked out great, because Queenstown is beautiful and there is a lot to do there. Also, we cut out a plane trip and half a day of travel by staying. I feel slightly guilty because our earthquake-caused “problems” meant that we had to spend another few days in a great city having fun, while for many inhabitants of Christchurch it means that they are without a home or without electricity or worse. But, what can you do?

In Queenstown, nearly every type of adventure activity you could ask for is available. Bungee jumping, sky diving, zip lining, jet boating, paragliding, so on and so on. They’ve got it all. Personally, I’m not much of a thrill seeker. It’s not a fear thing. It’s more of a the-payoff-doesn’t-seem-worth-the-effort-and-money thing. But, when in Rome…

T, S, and I decided to give jet boating a go (A and St were doing some sort of package adventure deal they had booked prior). Jet boating is pretty much just what you’d think it would be. You get into a jet powered boat (see below) and zoom around for twenty minutes. Because the boat doesn’t have a propeller, it can go in extremely shallow water. The drivers get ridiculously close to the rock walls of the river (the Shotover River as it were) and frequently do 360-spins. They also stop periodically to talk a little about the history of the river. It was once the sight of a major gold boom, and apparently, you can still find bits of gold in it. Our driver said that he personally panhandled there once and did OK. Overall, jet boating was pretty fun – a solid B.

[Some pics from the Web of jet boating on the Shotover River]

That night T and I went out for a few beers and were having a fine time until two very drunk “locals” decided to join us. One of them was a complete tool. The other one was actually alright, other than his suspect choice of drinking buddy. The tool was tolerable at first. He was kind of annoying, but also kind of goofy and funny. Very quickly, however, the funny wore off and the annoying being more pronounced. He crossed a line when he called Barack Obama a n------.

Me: C’mon man, you can’t use that word. It’s offensive.

Tool: To who?

Me: To me.

Tool: Why mate? You’re white. Just stating a fact. You’ve got a n------ president.

Me (to T): I’m leaving. I can’t sit here with this guy anymore.

T: Yes, let’s finish our beers and go. (We pound beers.)

Me (to Tool): I know you probably think you’re being funny, but you’re just being an asshole.

Tool: Yep, pretty much.

Me: I’m being serious. I think you’re an asshole.

Tool: Pretty much.

Tool’s Friend: Yeah, mate. Why do you do this?

Tool (to me): Sorry mate. (He puts out his hand to shake, looking sincerely penitent.)

Me: I’m not shaking your hand. You’re an asshole. I don’t want to shake your hand, and I don’t want to drink here with you. (T and I get up and leave.)

I was legitimately fired up from this incident when I left the pub, but thankfully I’m not the staying mad type. It was too nice of a night and I was in too beautiful of a place to stay pissed off about nonsense.

[Who could be mad in a place like this?]

Anyway, on to more pleasant topics.

The next day, all five of us rented a car (driven by yours truly) and set out for a cruise of Doubtful Sound. We wanted to go to the more famous Milford Sound, but it was a five hour drive as opposed to a two and a half hour drive. “Sound” apparently is an inapt term as both Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound are actually fjords in a part of New Zealand called (aptly) Fiordland.

We drove to a tiny town called Manapouri, where we took a shuttle boat to the Wilmot Pass. From there we boarded a tour bus (guided by a very unfunny old man who constantly tried to be funny) and explored the pass. There wasn’t much to see, because the weather, like our first day on the Routeburn Track, was rainy and foggy. The “highlight” of the bus ride was a tour through the Manapouri Hydroelectric Power Station.

[The inner workings of Manapouri Hydroelectric Station.]

[One of the few decent shots I got along the bus tour of Wilmot Pass near Doubtful Sound]

The views didn’t improve much once we got out on the sound. Gray weather is apparently very typical of Fiordland and our time there provided no exception. I wouldn’t have objected to a little more sun, but at least we got an authentic experience. We saw some interesting wildlife too. I’m certainly no ornithologist, but supposedly New Zealand is home to some really cool birds. (The coolest one, the moa, a 12-foot, 500-pound ratite, has been extinct for several hundred years, probably due to being overhunted.) At one point our boat pulled up very close to a small tree-covered island and the captain cut the engines so that we could “listen to the birds in their natural habitat”. It sounded a lot like the chirping I hear every morning outside my bedroom window. It was a little nicer though, because I wasn’t trying to sleep.

One funny thing about the cruise is that we were by far the youngest people on it. We were joking that when you're looking into booking an excursion the proprietors should have to provide you with the average age of past participants. I'm guessing for this one it would be somewhere in the mid-60s.

Also, on the drive back from the cruise a spontaneous game of hypothetical questions broke out. Here are some of the questions we posed.

If you could only pick one, would you rather have a child or have a life partner?

If you could only pick one for the rest of your life, would you pick kissing or sex?

If you could only pick one for the rest of your life, would you pick boobs or beer? (This one made T get embarrassed, which was quite funny.)

Would you give up all TV shows in any form (TV, online, DVD, etc.) for the rest of your life for $1 million?

Would you rather drink a glass of teriyaki sauce mixed with milk or eat a napkin doused in ketchup? (This one was mine, inspired by some real-life teenage events.)

Anyway, here are some pics from the cruise.

[Doubtful Sound]

[An albatross (the white speck in the middle) above Doubtful Sound]

[Somebody thought the Dread Pirate Roberts was following us. "Inconceivable!" I said.]

[Fiordland crested penguins]

[Some lazy-ass sea lions on a rock]

[One good thing about the rain, is that the waterfalls come out in full force.]

[A cool artsy shot of some old people taking a photo a waterfall (taken by S)]

The next day we all took the gondola up to the Skyline complex of Queenstown where we did a bunch of activities. My favorite was the zip lining. It was a lot of fun, and it seemed to be run by a good company. All the guides were funny and friendly and they put forth a message of eco-friendliness and sustainability.

[T zip lining upside down]

[A nice shot I took between the trees on one of the zip line platforms]

We also did this thing everybody called luging, but it seemed closer to soapbox racing to me. (You weren’t lying down, which I think is a necessary aspect of luging.) It was fun, but nothing special. I was annoyed because we only bought two runs and they made us do one of them on the beginner (i.e., sucky) track.

[A pic I got from the Internet of the "luge" course]

The last activity we did was paragliding. This is where you strap yourself to a dude with a giant parachute and jump off a cliff. It was pretty cool. It certainly provided some spectacular views. It was like at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when the Wonkavator busts out of the factory and they are floating above the city. It was a little bit scary (you are dropping from hundreds of feet in the air after all), but not too bad. I think I would like activities like this more if I could do them myself. I don’t like having to go with a guide. It makes me feel awkward. Although, it’s probably better to have a guide, at least at first, so that I don’t, you know, kill myself.

[Some dude who paraglided before me]

Well, that was our trip to New Zealand.

[A final shot of the Queenstown waterfront]

Entry 53: New Zealand Trip II (The Routeburn)

Note: this is part two of a three part post. Click here for part one.

[A couple of vistas overlooking Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown, NZ.]

We got in to Queenstown, New Zealand around 2:30pm. There were five of us, me, S, my colleague and friend T (who met us at the airport in Sydney), S’s friend A, and A’s friend St. A and St were on vacation from the States touring the ANZ region. We were all setting out at 7am the next morning to hike the Routeburn Track, so we rented gear, bought supplies, ate a big meal, and then went straight to the hotel to get some much needed (at least for S and I) sleep.

The trail we hiked is three days and the first day didn’t go great. It was raining and foggy. I didn’t mind the rain too much, even though I was in sneakers which aren’t exactly waterproof, but the fog really sucked. It completely obscured the views. A lot of the hike was through the forest, so there wasn’t a whole lot to see, but every now and then you’d get to a clearing, look out into an abyss of gray, and think, “Wow, I bet this would be awesome if I could see further than two freakin’ feet in front of me!”

[This was my view from the Routeburn Track the first day.]

Also, it became apparent on the first day that the hike was going to be a struggle for S and St. It wasn’t so much of a physical problem (you only walk 6-7 miles a day and you can go slowly), but more of a mental problem. They just didn’t like it.

[A beautiful and huge waterfall along the Routeburn Track. The orange marker in the lower left corner gives you some perspective of its size.]

For S, it didn’t help that she was woefully underequipped. I thought that I was bad because I forget to bring a flashlight, but I was Meriwether Lewis compared to S. For starters, she didn’t want to carry a big load, so she just had a little Jansport backpack, which isn’t waterproof, so a bunch of her clothes got soaked. Also, she didn’t rent a rain jacket, because she had a (cheap) poncho, which tore almost instantly after putting it on, so she got soaked. Also, she only had ankle socks so her feet chafed in her boots. Also… Actually, I’d better stop there. She sometimes reads this thing.

Along the trail there are shelters with mattresses, toilets, and gas stoves, so you aren’t really roughing it. However, the shelters are only heated by a small stove that everybody piles around so it was tough to get dry, and sleeping on a foam mattress with no pillow in a room with fifty other people isn’t exactly ideal. You can definitely hear people snoring (which sucks), but one thing I noticed is that you can’t smell other people’s gas (which is good). I think it gets trapped in the sleeping bag, like neon in a fluorescent bulb.

[The sun shining down on Lake Mackenzie]

On the second day, T and I started off with an hour side trip to a rock with a big split in it that isn’t really all that neat. As we were heading back into the camp, we ran into S and St who were supposed to be on their way along the main trail in the other direction.

[Lake Harris]

Me: Hey, what are you guys doing?

Them: We’re going home?

Me: What? How? We’re in the middle of the trail.

Them: We’re hiking back the other direction to The Divide (where we started) then we’re taking a bus back to Queenstown.

I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t budge. I didn’t like the idea. I wasn’t worried about the hiking. It’s virtually impossible to lose the trail and you encounter tons of people in either direction, so they wouldn’t get stranded in the woods. But, from The Divide it’s a three hour charter bus ride to Queenstown, and they didn’t have a booking, and they didn’t know exactly where and when the buses run.

Me: How are you going to get back to Queenstown? Your bus reservations are for tomorrow from the other side of the trail.

Them: Buses go back and forth all the time. We’ll catch one. We’ll cry if we have to.

Me: Where’s A? Does she know you guys are leaving?

Them: No. She was ahead of us. You guys have to tell her.

And that was that. I was a bit annoyed to be honest, but ultimately it ended up not being a big deal. T, A, and I finished out the hike and met S and St in Queenstown. (Incidentally, S and St weren’t able to catch a bus all the way to Queenstown from The Divide and had to spend the night in a small town called Te Anau.) If it was only S or only St, I bet that one person would have just finished out the hike, but with two of them, no way. They were able to feed off each other and tap into their hate, turning the other against hiking like the Emperor turning Anakin to the dark side.

Anyway, the rest of the hike was gorgeous. It was forecasted to rain, but didn’t. The second day trail was quite mountainous and basically one long breathtaking view. The track was relatively easy too. There were a few parts that made me sweat, but for the most part we could just cruise along comfortably. In fact, we were routinely well under the estimated times from checkpoint to checkpoint.

The second night T taught A and I a card game popular in Germany called skat. It was fun, but quite complicated, and apparently extremely difficult to master. It’s intricacy and T’s best attempts to explain them to us, became an ongoing joke for the rest of the trip.

The third and final day was the easiest. It was almost all downhill (which actually was bad for A as walking downhill aggravated her injury) and shorter than the other legs. I don’t really have anything else to say about the hike, so I’ll post a few more pics and wrap it up.

[A stream along the Routeburn Track]

[A shot overlooking Routeburn Flats Camp and environs]

[A beautiful blue stream along the Routeburn Track]

Entry 52: New Zealand Trip Part I (If Only We Can Get to Sydney)

I didn’t think that getting from Newcastle to Sydney would prove to be the most difficult leg of our trip to New Zealand, but so it was. We set out from Newcastle at 7pm February 23 and didn’t arrive in Sydney until 3:15am the next day. How does that happen? Through a perfect syzygy of bad luck, bad timing, and bad schedule reading.

There were three trains that we could catch (7, 7:30, 8:30) that would get us to Sydney Central Station, at a somewhat reasonable hour. (We had booked a hostel for the night so that we could catch a 7am flight.) We missed the first train because S misread the schedule (a minor mistake), then we got on the wrong train, because I messed up (a big mistake). I quickly realized my error and we got off, but it was at some stop in the middle of nowhere (Tarro, Au., pop. 1,558), and the next train back to where we started didn’t come until 9:15 (it was currently about 7:50), which meant, not only were we missing the 8:30 train to Sydney, we were missing the next train to Sydney at 9:30 as well. This was unacceptable as the following train didn’t come until 2:30am, which would put us at the airport a little after 6am (if we were lucky), much too late for our international flight.

So, we called a cab to pick us up at Tarro to take us back to the Hamilton train station (in Newcastle) to catch the 9:30 train to Sydney. Since hailing a cab from a deserted train station in Tarro, Australia at 8pm on a Wednesday, is not the most expedient process in the world (how I missed living in the heart of DC at that moment), we were quite worried that we wouldn’t make it. But lo and behold, the taxi came before too long and we were back at Hamilton station around 9:15.

Another thing I should mention is that this whole time we were accompanied by a bag lady. When we were first setting out she asked us if we were going to Sydney and I said yes, so she followed us, which obviously was a mistake. When I realized I had led her astray, I felt badly about it, so I told her to get off at Tarro, and then we took her back to Hamilton in the cab with us. She gave us some trinkets and a book of Jane Austen excerpts as a thank you, which was a nice enough gesture, but we ultimate threw these items away because we didn’t have room (nor the desire to make room) in our luggage for them. We repeatedly tried to not take them, but she insisted. Sadly, you could tell that this poor woman was used to lifetime of people shitting on her, because all we did was not completely diss her (seriously, how big of a dick would I have to be to leave her on a train going nowhere near her destination, or at an empty train station in the middle of god knows where), and she treated us like we were great philanthropists.

So, we make it back to Hamilton Station and catch the 9:30 train to Sydney, end of story, right? Nope. As the astute reader might realize, this would put us in Sydney a little after midnight, not at 3:15am like I previously stated. It turned out that all remaining trains to Sydney were canceled until dawn – track maintenance. We would have to take a bus, a bus that didn’t leave for another two hours, and not a bus to Sydney, a bus to Wyong. From Wyong we could take the train, but not to Sydney, to Hornsby. From Hornsby we could finally take the bus to Sydney, but not to Central Station, to Times Square about a 20 minute walk to Central.

Ironically, by the time we finally get to Central Station (around 3:45) we are too early to catch the airport connector (first one is at 4:45). Exhausted and not particularly keen on spending an hour waiting at Central among the drug-addled miscreants who populate the station during the dead of the night, we decided to cab it to the airport. We arrive before security opens.

Our total trip: walk to Civic Station, take wrong train to Tarro Station, take cab to Hamilton Station, take bus to Wyong Station, take train to Hornsby Station, take bus to Times Square, walk to Central Station, take cab to airport.

Total time: 8 hours 15 minutes.

Total money spent: $185 AUD ($90 for a hostel we didn’t use, $15 for train tickets, $35 for a cab ride we didn’t need, $45 for cab ride to the airport).

Total percentage of me that was pissed off: 10%.

Total percentage of me that thought the whole thing was ridiculously funny: 20%.

Total percentage of me that just wanted to eff-ing sleep: 70%.