Nothing is Certain.

Australia is great!

I had booked a hostel before I left NZ and was supposed to get picked up from the airport by their shuttle, but due to some weird cloaking effect I had, it took me 5 calls to the hostel to have them send the shuttle before they gave up. They claimed they had sent the shuttle out every time I called. There was a specific place I was supposed to stand, and I stood there for over 2 hours. I told them what color shirt and jacket I had on, but it just wasn’t working out. Finally they told me to just get another shuttle and they would give me the would give me 8.80 when I got to the hostel. Which was strange because the shuttle was supposed to cost 12 dollars. I guess they were sorry, but not completely sorry.

Even then things didn’t work out very well. I walked over an told the shuttle booking guy that I needed a ride and he told me to go back to where I had been for the last 2 hours and he’d let me know when the shuttle guy was there.

When the guy showed up, he took his time actually having us go out and get in the shuttle, I guess he was hoping for more fares or something.

To get to the shuttle we had to walk and walk because they thing wasn’t parked anywhere near the arrival gates, fortunately I had to smarts to have gotten one of the luggage carts and I wasn’t lugging my monstrous backpack around on my shoulders.

Then when we got out there and I tried to pay him there were more problems.

He wanted $14, $2 more than I was going to pay for the other shuttle. That wasn’t the problem though. The problem was that the ATM had given me $50s and he didn’t have any change.

There was another person in the same boat as me. This girl had been waiting for almost as long as I had, but they weren’t going to the same place as I was. She also needed to pay the driver, but all she had was a $20.

The driver took one of my $50s to one of the other drivers to try to get change, but he came back with two $20s and a $10, which didn’t help at all. I told the driver that I could get change from the hostel when he dropped me off. He seemed to agree and off we went. After a few blocks he told me and the girl that he would only charge us $10 each, so I gave the girl a $10 and she gave the driver $20. That was great for me because I was getting $8.80 when I got to the hostel!

Then the driver pulled over and turned around! He had gotten a call on his radio and there were three people at the domestic gates that needed a ride and he had three spots left. We got to the gate where two of the people were waiting, they got loaded in and then the driver disappeared to look for the third, and didn’t come back for almost half and hour!

Eventually, I did get to my hostel, which was the second cheapest one I could find, and it live up to that title in every way.

But, Sydney is great! I didn’t realize at the time, the time being the entire last month, but I think New Zealand was stressing me out on some level. Finally in Australia, I walked outside, it was after 8pm, and there were shops open!! And there were people walking around all over there place, and cars, and the buildings were more than 3 stories tall! I was so happy I went to a restaurant I’d seen all over NZ that I’d never gone to, called Nando’s. I got a veggieburger and chips and then poured hot sauce on the chips that was so hot it made my lips feel like they were bleeding, but it was delicious. I’ve rediscovered something that I already knew, but I guess hadn’t noticed was true to such a great extent. I’m a city mouse. I need a certain level of civilization to be fully content. As much fun as I did have in NZ, at some level I’d not been happy.

Even better I seemed to be staying very close to the Asian part of town. There were internet cafes and even stores called Shibuya and Harijuku.

And I found a comicbook store!

The next day I left Sydney to go to Canberra, where I have friends that I’d met on 3 other continents! I’ll be back in Sydney for a week or so before I leave Australia.

Tomorrow I will regale you all with random thoughts and observation I had on that first day in Australia.

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Australia, shuttle

So there’s been some hold up. I’ve been having a good time in Australia and not spending a whole lot of time putting up pictures on Facebook or updating this here thing.

Part of the problem was my bungy jumping post just wasn’t panning out.

I have part of it written, but it wasn’t really flowing.

There is a part of me that think this is because I glossed over the thing when it was actually happening. I spent a lot of time both not thinking about it and trying to psych myself up about it that when it actually happened it was a bit of a blur. I enjoyed it, but it was all over so fast.

Now I’m going to have to do it again. At some point. It was so fast I might just forgo bungy all together and move up to skydiving. When I compare my video to my friend Nat’s skydive video, there is a lot more falling in hers.

Which is strange because she says that she’s never bungy. There are actually a lot of people who say they would be way more willing to jump out of a plane than bungy. There are two major reasons that most people say this.

The first is safety. They think they are safer skydiving. For me I like to be able to see the rope firmly attached to me and the thing I’m jumping off of. That seems safer than jumping out of a plane in the hope that there is actually a parachute crammed into that backpack you have on, and that it will open with no problems.

The second thing that they prefer about skydiving is the other guy that’s strapped to you. They like the fact that they don’t actually have to make the final decision to jump.

They prefer murder to suicide.

That wasn’t a problem for me… is that a problem itself?

Before I left for my trip there was a thought in the back of my head that I would probably bungy jump. While I was on the North Island I still thought I was going to do it.

When I got to the South Island, I was not longer that sure. I felt like I really didn’t care that much one way or the other.

I really don’t like doing things because they are something “you must do”, just like I won’t read classic books that I have no interest in.

Then, after my glacier hike I started looking at the brochures and by dinner I was pretty sure I was going to do it.

I got really nervous when I booked the jump, partly because it looked like they were going to have an opening for me that day, and I needed a day to prepare, which in hindsight might have been the problem. I prepared too much.

Everywhere I went I was already seeing myself after the jump doing the same things perfectly safe. I was already past the jump a day before it happened. When I would get a twinge of what I was planning to do I’d stop and imagine myself on the platform ready to jump, “yeah, I can do this, no problem” I’d think.

I wasn’t feeling nervous when I got out to the jump point, and I got strapped in and jumped without hesitation, partially to get it over with and partially to keep myself from noticing what I was about to do.

I did a lovely swan dive and it wasn’t until halfway down that it sunk in.

On the video you can see it. About half way down my swan dive becomes mad flailing for a moment as I try to stop myself in midair like Bugs Bunny. Then my arms move back into swan dive position.

Also I cussed, and I think I might have thrown up the tiniest bit. ALSO!, and I just realized what this was, at the bottom a weird thought stuck me. I didn’t know where it can from and I can’t really tell you clearly what it was, but…

For a second I think I thought I was a baby.

It just now came to me that my life must have decided to flash before my eyes! Just as I got to the bottom of my fall. So I only got the very beginning before my brain figured out that I wasn’t going to die.

Thank goodness that wore off quick…

So, anyway, that’s why there’s not post about my bungy jump. Sorry.

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bungy

I didn’t have internet for a couple days so This is even a older post than I hoped, More to come.

I’m currently in the Christchurch International Airport, waiting for my flight to Australia, but I still haven’t told you about the last week or so, and a lot has happened.

After Christchurch I went to Greymouth, where I tried to waterproof my hair. Also there I spent an evening with a couple of girls from Spain, who are living in Australia at the moment, taking English classes. We went to dinner at a pizza parlor in town and I taught then all sorts of useful English, such as: radical, tubular, and cowabunga, now they can communicate with both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Bart Simpson. I also taught them the difference between a girlfriend and a friend that’s a girl, and why they don’t need to introduce each other as “my female friend __________”. This came from their teacher in Australia. They have “amiga/amigo” in Spanish and they were trying to figure out how to express the gender of their friends in English, I told them it wasn’t important.

I also taught them how to say “I don’t know” in Korean (which I used on a couple of Korean ladies who were waiting for the same train as me in Christchurch, at which time I was told I needed to add “yo” to the end if I was talking to an elder.)

And I taught them “excuse me” in Japanese. This was hilarious to them.

It seems the Japanese word for excuse me sounds very close to a rough and slangy way to tell someone they are flat chested in Spanish. Basically it’s like saying, “You have no boobs.”

When I left Greymouth I took the bus to Franz Josef which is where the better (so everyone has told me) of the two glaciers is.

Franz Josef Glacier is surrounded by a sub tropical rain forest. So as you walk around the city of Franz Josef, which is very small, you are surrounded by tropical vegetation, ferns and vines and palm trees, but it’s very cold, and of in the distance above the jungle, are snow covered mountains, and the glacier itself.

I decided to take the heli-hike, because a) you go up much higher onto the glacier, right below the dangerous, avalanche bit where the ice is constantly breaking off and tumbling down the mountain. And b) I’d never been on a helicopter before.

I was not disappointed with either the glacier or the ride up.

There are actually two companies that take helicopters up to the glacier, but they are just different sides of the same counter in one building, that’s how small Franz Josef is. They were short on passengers so the two companies consolidated the trips and I ended up taking the helicopter up with only two other passengers, Alfred and Christine from Singapore. I so awesomely got to show off my stupid American lack of geographical knowledge when I asked them about Chinese visas, thinking that Singapore was part of China, but I think I was able to play it off so that they didn’t notice.

The pilot made the trip very exciting, going quickly up and down, and banking sharply for no reason other than to make the ride more like a roller coaster. When we took off we were treated to a rainbow, which became a circle, I’d never seen a rainbow that arced more than 180 degrees before, but as we pasted over the rainforest the rainbow continued on beneath us. Then suddenly we were in a rainstorm that pounded on the glass all around us, and then before I could even fully be disappointed that it was going to be raining on our glacier hike, we were out of it.

As we came around the side of the mountain I got to see the glacier for the first time. It didn’t seem as big as I thought it would, but then after flying over it for a while, the pilot pointed out to place on the ice that we would be landing. There was a group waiting to be picked up and I suddenly realized how big the glacier really was and how high up we really were. They people looked like specks, I was instantly more impressed and marveled at the optical illusion my brain was playing on me. The glacier had nothing to reference for size, but the tiny, tiny flea people on its surface.

We flew over and past them to the part of the glacier that hadn’t broken off to tumble down to the lower section.  Up here the ice was broken and jagged peaks. The curve of the mountain caused the ice to crack up both laterally and longitudinally. Without people or anything else to reference for size I don’t know how big the shards were, but I imagine they were probably enormous.

The pilot weaved back and forth over the top of the glacier; each time he banked dramatically making the helicopter seem to go almost completely sideways.

Eventually, we landed and were escorted down the ice, away from the helicopter and it’s blades, to a crate full of spikes to strap to the bottom of our boots.

The spikes were amazing! Tied down tight to the boot, they grip the ice with near perfection. I was running and jumping and scrambling up and down slopes of ice as though it were a rocky dirt hill.

Because there were only three of us on this tour and we were all young and fit we got to see a lot more of the glacier than they usually have time for. We were able to go all the way up one side, across to the other side and then wind our way back down to the helicopter landing zone.

Our guide, Greg, took us through ice caves and canyons, up and down and all over.  He had an ice pickaxe that he used to check the stability of the ice blocks in front of us, and if the ice over the many streams was thick enough. Even still Alfred had an uncanny knack for finding thin ice any way. After the second time he went through the ice almost to the top of his boot, and Greg told him that one particular stream was deeper than he was, Alfred became a lot more cautious.

The ice was actually blue. I didn’t find out until days later on my way back to Christchurch that this was due to minerals that where in the rock that the glacier was moving over. As the ice ground the rock into dust, the minerals mixed with the ice and made it blue. There are many lakes and streams on the south island that have this same blue color.

When we got to the end of the tour and got back to the helicopter, Greg told us that he would not be coming back with us, he was going to walk down the glacier. He told us that if he ran and jumped the cracks he could make it in a little more than an hour, but this time he was training a new guide, so they were going to play it like he was leading a tour back. That meant it would take them 5 or more hours of lowering themselves down into the canyons and climbing back out the other side. It sounded like great fun to me. I asked what it takes to be a guide. He told me that if I wanted to be a guide they would probably hire me, all the training was on the job. So there’s one more job to put on my list of possibilities.

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glacier, helicopter, Singapore

This was a story I told to Mandy on IM. She said that I needed to copy/paste it to my blog, so here it is:

First though a little bit of back story.

As you know I dropped my car off the day before yesterday. So yesterday was the first day I traveled with my backpack on my back and not in the trunk of my car.

One day doing that and I’m ready to send half my stuff home.

Today I went around Greymouth looking for a cheap way to send things home.

It seems that such a thing does not exist in New Zealand, at least not in Greymouth, and thus we come to the beginning of our tale. Now, without further ado, the instant message story:

While I was looking for other possibilities for what to do about my luggage, I thought maybe if I was just able to pack it tighter… So I was looking for some of those vacuum pack things, that you squeeze the air out of, like the ones my mom bought for me, but I didn’t use, and ended up leaving in Mandy’s garage. As I walked down the street I happened to catch my new waterproof jacket on a sharp metal road sign and rip an L shaped hole in the sleeve about the size of a dime.

So once I found the vacuum bags and bought one to test out, I went in search of something to repair my jacket, I took my time but the only thing I could find that I felt confident would do the trick was this liquid rubber sealant stuff that was 20 NZD. I went ahead and bought it because I thought, “who knows if I’ll need to seal something else on my trip, might as well get it…”

I came back to the hostel and immediately got on the internet and forgot all about the jacket. When I got ready to leave the room again, I got ready to go out, and remembered that I hadn’t sealed my jacket. I needed to do that right away so it would have time to dry before I left tomorrow morning.

I read the instructions which included if sealant comes in contact with skin wash immediately with plenty of water. When I opened the tube the sealant started oozing out! The only thing I could think to do was catch it on my finger. So I used the sealant on my finger to fix the hole, but some motion of my hand made that finger come in contact with my hair. so I quickly ran my other hand’s fingers through my hair to try to get it out and ended up spreading it around, and onto the fingers of my other hand. I finished sealing the jacket as fast as I could, set it down, and went into the bathroom where washing with plenty of water seemed to do nothing but make the waterproof sealant set faster.

—

There you have it. I don’t know what will become of that section of hair yet. Fortunately it’s just the end inch or less of a section of hair in the front right by the part, so I might be able to cut it off if I need to without much problem. Unfortunately, while I was writing the IM story to Mandy it began to rain rather hard, and I can’t use my rain jacket until the morning. At least I still have one package of ramen noodles left.

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hair, jacket, sealant