I Bet I Was a Lousy Submarine Captain in a Former Life
OK so lots has transpired in the past few weeks.
Bill, comrade, and travelling companion has returned home to be with his family after the death of his grandmother last week. This is an obvious drag, compounded by how much time we have left on our visas and how much more we had hoped to do. His return is uncertain at best and not terribly likely, and of course everyone we've befriended here misses him all ready.
Now the Lighter SideAlso on the list weeks chore list is a couple days work on the motorcycle. Just Thursday afternoon I went for a ride up the stunning Rees river valley.
Wide glacial carved valleys with braided stream beds and running up toward jagged glacial ice fall, and serrated ridge lines. Confidence high. Cocky, but cautious after coming off the bike a week prior. As I was putting one soggy boot in front of the other , something in the deep ether reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation and the Grisswald Family Truckster mangled in the desert. Chevy Chase's voice echoing in my head.
Russ: Wow Dad we must have gone like fifty yards!
Clark: Nothing to be proud of Russ.
[Russ exits]
Clark: ...fifty yards.
While the KLR hadn't flown through the air I was 50 yards down stream of where the bike and I first entered the Reese river.
Having all ready crossed it once successfully I was confident that that I could navigate a second section in continuing my quest up the valley in the early afternoon. On the first crossing I went perpendicular to the stream in a direct line. This got a bit dicey as the current pushed me off course a bit, but while disconcerting I knew that I could counter act it next time. The channel depth was about hub high on the bike, about half way up my shins, but wide, the river perhaps sixty feet.
Upon the second crossing which was only minutes after the first I lined up an even wider section of river in order to shallow the depth but also take the crossing at an angle with the current. With the bike in first, revs as high as I could take them with out blasting into the river and splashing too much water into the grill I crept. Three quarters of the way across I hit the channel, and the bottom dropped out, only another 4 inches and with the engine sputtering I got all but the rear wheel out of the main push and I can practically reach the shore but I need to parallel the shore to exit. The bike sputters and dies. My momentum gone I'm leaned downstream holding the bike at an angle, my downstream leg holding us up. A minute or two passes and the strength of the current is to much. I can not restart then engine and gun it out because the rear will likely slip and drop the running engine into the water sucking water into the engine which it will try to compress with disastrous results.My strength gone, and unable to dismount and push, I'm resigned to setting the bike down in the water, where the current takes hold and leisurely carries the bike down stream. I dance around it, mind racing; "Don't get trapped by the bike." "Don't try to lift it against the current."
After a few minutes the bike has been spun with the help of the current and pinned against a large smooth rock just bellow the surface. I pivot the bike on the rock and work to haul the bike up parallel to the current and facing upstream. I am spent now. I have bike up and I'm in the middle of the river. No way to start it, no way to turn it. I must back it down stream angling toward the bank I came from. This takes ages, I'm weak from the struggle of the last ten minutes and I move slow and steady to the bank, water swirling around my boots and over the knees of my riding pants. Out of the water and I push the bike well up the shore out of reach of a possible storm surge in the water level. Draining the muffler results in a liter of water or more. There is no drying this bike out. I quickly strip out of my ridding gear, now steaming hot. I'm soaked from the waist down and so I ring everything out and shed the insulated pants I'm wearing. Back into the boots, ridding pants and a t shirt I collect everything I can carry in my Camel Back; my fleece pants and top, a juice box, my leatherman, a wee flashlight, baseball cap, sunglasses and my ipod. Yes my pore ipod carelessly left in the tank bag, submerged as long as the bike, scorecard reading BIG ADVENTURE 2 - ELECTRONIC LUXURIES 0. Beginning to think about how long it's gonna take to hike out of here. Can't be more than three hours to highway, five or six hours all the way to town. Most likely will run into other trail users, plenty of water, and we're away.
I walk an hour and a half before meeting a German man driving a sedan down this "Remote Backcountry Road/ Deep Fords Common". I hope it's a rental, but I don't bother to ask, he would hardly understand, and he's only going to make it another couple of minutes in a car. In his broken smiling English he explains that he's going to go ahead and take pictures then in a couple hours turn around and if I'm still walking he'll pick me up. I guess he's still bitter we won.
10 minutes pass and I'm approached by a Dept of Conservation Truck. Sweet Salvation! "Sorry mate, no can do...got explosives in the truck, can't pick anyone up. ... some one will be along shortly you should be fine." GET FUCKED BUDDY. Fortunately he was right and around the corner a small wagon has turned around at the first sign of water and is heading back to town. I dine on a hasty lunch with the wagon's inhabitants Nathan and Vanessa. Nate is off for a walk, Vanessa back toward town. I get back to Glenorchy after a half hours drive and wait to hitch back to queenstown.
The world suddenly shrinks. I get picked up in Queenstown by a couple of Bostonians, Geoff and Shalagh (Shayla). We talk for about a half hour on the long drive back to town and eventually we get around to the fact that Geoff once worked for Labatt Blue. Funny because I used to play hockey for the Labatt Blue Tailgators, who got the jerseys from a Labatts marketing exec on the way out. Geoff instantly knows I play for the same team as Frank Urban, as he got the jerseys for Frank. Back in town the three of us sit in the dying sun and drink beers at Monty's.
The following day I mount a rescue mission with my friend Woody's truck, Tim's Trailer, and Woody's roommates Rod, Claire and Gen for tactical support and videography. We drive to the bike having left the trailer at a washed out section of road and I pilot the bike under the power of the truck and two straps. A successful recovery mission. The bike is scheduled for the shop to be drained and dried but recent events make that somewhat challenging.
Tastes Like Peanut Butter Huh?
Well not to have my life ruined by one bad decision. I took off on a five or longer day tour on the bike. You see I got my case adjourned for three weeks so as to consult a lawyer and stay free for three precious weeks of summer. First off was the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival March 11th,(
http://www.wildfoods.co.nz/wildfoods/) where 18000 or so brave souls decend on a modest west coast town to get a little rowdy and eat things that you might see in the roadkill cookbook or a bad episode of Fear Factor.
I rode about 9 and 1/2 hours from Queenstown up through Wanaka and Haast up to the famous Fox and Frans Joseph Glaciers and then into Hokitika for Friday night, the festival kicking off that night but primarilly running Saturday into the night. I didn't see a damn thing on the way.
The west coast is lush and green for a reason, and every inch of that reason filled my boots that day, fogged my visor and chilled me from the inside out as water exploited every gap in my defenses. My ominous rugged indestructable motocross boots giving way first, I guess there's no easy way to water proof the seams between leather and plastic.
Not long after I was ammusing my self by sending tidal waves from heel to toe and back with each sequence of gear shifts, I was flanked by water infiltrating the fly of my riding pants. One solitary droplet led the way as I felt it roll over my unmentionable bits. Drop after drop and eventually a steady trickle developed. I figured that If I stood up every once and I while I could get a better view of the impromptu waterfalls bursting through gaps in the moss and fern covered bedrock of the steep canyon walls. This would also allow me to keep water from pooling in my lap. Unfortunatley this little manuver also dumped the water which had pooled in the interior of my pants down both legs and into my boots. The trasfer water now warmed by my crotch to the rest of my legs actually causes momentary glee.
I had to make several long stops to warm up (drying out no longer an option) which made my 6 hour planned trip far longer. I will admit to having some nice moments when the sunset broke through the clouds for fleeting glimpses of color through fingers of rain and fog.
To get a picture of the scene at Wildfoods immagine a football field with an inner and outer ring of tents. One corner has a stage and contstant music or dancing or poetry or some such nonsense spewing from an M.C.. Seething arround you are groups of people of all ages, half of which are in costumes of some sort, beer in one hand grotesque snack in the other. A dozen people in O.R. scrubs, a dozen in commando uniforms which occasionally make mock raids on another group of commandos, school girls, thirty men matching hawain shirts, roman gladiators, bumble bees, cowboys in pink button down dress shirts tied in front labeled "Brokeback Hokitika", a lot of mullets...but not in costume...and the one commonallity between everyone are Gum Boots. No mater the costume the veterans ward off a soggy muddy field and rain with big black rubber goloshes. Luckily there isn't a cloud in the sky and a rawkus buzz permiated by gasps, oohhs, ahhs, cheers, and wretching dry heaves surrounds us. Game on.
I was with a group of folks I know from town and first we went straight for a Gin Trap to lubricate our inhibitions. Your choice of an Appricot, slice of Pineapple, or slice of Peach is drowned in Gin for days or weeks and finnally deliverd straight to your gullet and proceeding to your head at a warp speed.
Whitebait patties. Whitebait are ittybitty fish, white in color and about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter, perhaps an inch long and go quite well in a pancake of sorts until you look down at this pancake/hashbrown delight and notice a dozen black pinhead eyes starring back from your first bite. Here is my frist lesson that it's not what you can taste it's what you can see and what you picture you're eating that determines if you'll vommit or not, but nausea gives way to laughter seeing an eye ball caught in someone's teeth.
That inittal wave of nausea passes and I power through the thing to give the fleeting appearnce that I am in fact a man.
To pass time we head to the Montieths Beer Tent, and then eat some "Wild Beef" steak sandwiches. I'll dispense with the borring edibles as I can hear dear freind Catherine's voice "Hightlights Dusty, Hightlights."
- Fresh Scallops
- Ostrich Pie
- Chocolate Frog/Spicy Choclate Frog
- Kaluha and Milk (straight from Bessie the Cow - but no you don't suck on the teat John)
- Venison (They farm deer here - lots of them)
Mountain Oysters do not taste like chicken unless the chicken has been seasoned like fajitas and has the consistency of shirmp.
A HuHu Grub is roomered to tase like Peanut Butter. This comming from a country that has peanut butter, but rarely uses it should be a sign that it won't. The grubs come in various sizes but for $5 the man with the axe standing in a pile of choped wood will split timber untill he finds a live grub the size of your pinky and indistinquishable from a wavy, thick cut french fry, with a tinny black beak. First they wriggle in your fingers, then if you get it in your mouth and don't dispatch of it quickly it's gonna nip you with it's wee black beak. I waste no time and pop the thing like a minerature water balloon. There is no taste untill you crunch on the beak. There must be a peanut butter flavor in their some where, but I'm not going for a second one to find it.
Moving up in bravery scale we go straight for a fish eye. Not a small eye that might pretend to be caviar but a large eye from a Jim Fish. Colors of a Mushroom, water filled, and the size of a hockey puck before they're fried. After cooking they are about like a golf ball. I watch one of our group start to chew on one and his mouth shoots open spilling indistinquishable bits into the grass. One thing catches my eye. It is identicall in size, color and shape to a hard boiled egg yoke. I have concerns. Not to be outdone I mosey up with a buddy and we order.
My tounge instantly recognizes the flavor of well used grill, but evertything else is indistinquishible. Soggy, slimmy plastic covered mushroom bits crunch but don't break appart for some time and that egg yoke has the resilancy of a rubber ball (I'm guessing it's the optic nerve). The process takes minutes, it seems like ten, but I finish it and henceforth mushrooms and boiled eggs will make me gag.
I follow that up with an Eel's spine. This is easily described. Battered, fried, fish bones with a delightful honeymustard sauce and lemon. Best used for toothpicks.
Between tasty treats most of the time is spent in line for the john, buying beers, and listening to people account what they've eaten, while live bands play satelite stages. One of the better events I've ever been to.
Send Lawyers Guns and Money...Again
Right. So I've allways said that stupidity should be painfull. Or costly, preferably even both. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut all those times.
Two Fridays ago I finished my last day at work for a six week break to see the rest of the South Island while I could still do so on the bike. I popped into town for a bite to eat and to watch the Supper 14 rugby at the Pig n' Whistle. Well as luck would have it a bunch of the gang was there and even a couple good looking girls from Idaho. Well, we got to talking and playing the who do ya know game and as it happens they went to highschool with John Grossman, CU Buff hockeyplayer you may recall...Good times. After about 6 hours of drinking, as many beers and a shot of Jagermeister, I got dumb D.U.M. dumb. The girls had had enough and I was off to my own devices. Well, as it happens I wasn't much in the mood to keep drinking and apparently not to wait for a cab either. I jumped on the bike.
Knowingly rolling the dice, I was out on the road and doing just fine, until of course I crossed paths with the funny colored prowler of the Queenstown Lakes Dist. Motorway Patrol. As the officer passed, in his white cruiser addorned with huge blue and orange chickelit paint job, my heart skiped a little beat but I wasn't two concerned as his lights didn't come on right away and I wasn't speeding; well I thought I wasn't speeding. Apparently as we encountered one another I was still in the 50kph zone and not the 80kph. Having rounded the bend I continued at my 83kph thinking I had dodged a bullet when low and behold my mirrors lit up with party lights. Stuffed.
The officer went through his usuall routine, asking why the hury and where are you going. I was a little to flustered to make any case for my self even though in retrospect I think I could have bluffed my way out of it and I addmited to comming from the pubs to which he replied "Well I only stopped you for speeding, and you seem quite with it but...blow into this." Deffinately Stuffed.
Back to the station for a definitive test. Two results, lowest score wins. Highest possible score to drive away: 400 mg/l. My lowest. 625mg/l. A high score would be 800 to 1000.
Well there was a lot of thinking about what to do (cut losses and go to Australia? buy my way into a restricted lisence? ) and after going for my first court appearance I appealed for an adjournment to see a lawyer and get three free weeks to tour before sentencing. Having spoken to a couple lawyers now I think I'm going to pay my fines and will get 3 to 6 months with my lisence revoked. So I'll most likely move into town and go to bar work full time, skiing days and bumming rides. A costly lesson, allthough not painful or deadly which at the end of the day is the most important.
Wide glacial carved valleys with braided stream beds and running up toward jagged glacial ice fall, and serrated ridge lines. Confidence high. Cocky, but cautious after coming off the bike a week prior. As I was putting one soggy boot in front of the other , something in the deep ether reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation and the Grisswald Family Truckster mangled in the desert. Chevy Chase's voice echoing in my head.
Having all ready crossed it once successfully I was confident that that I could navigate a second section in continuing my quest up the valley in the early afternoon. On the first crossing I went perpendicular to the stream in a direct line. This got a bit dicey as the current pushed me off course a bit, but while disconcerting I knew that I could counter act it next time. The channel depth was about hub high on the bike, about half way up my shins, but wide, the river perhaps sixty feet.
