jforbess.org

40 km before breakfast. In the rain. I got my first flat
tire. Luckily, a family in a pickup truck decided to stop and ask if I
need a ride someplace dry to change my tire. I gratefully accepted, as
the highway I had to travel was scary and full of logging trucks. They
bought me lunch at the fish and chip place. They were totally good
Samaritans. And Christian.

They dropped me off at the i-centre, and I checked my email to find
that my WWOOFing opportunities in Whangarei were non-existant. Found a
backpackers. Found an internet shop. Found a Burger
Wisconsin. Apparently the hamburger was invented in Seymour,
Wisconsin. I think that’s where my great-grandmother was born.

The other girl in the hostel room is watching some TV show on her Macbook just like I am. The only difference is, I’m using headphones, and she’s not. Why does she think it’s okay to blast her show through the room?

Tomorrow I will bus to Thames. I hope the WWOOFing opportunities shape
up further south. If not, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. It’s not
quite the money, it’s a little more the lack of meaningful social
interaction. I need to make time every day to write, if I’m not seeing
New Zealand.

I thought of revisiting the Waitangi Treaty House, but the back road
was gravel and full of construction. So I didn’t. Lame breakfast, but
entertained the server and the table next to me.

Ferry to Russell was nice. Chatted with couple from Seattle who’d just
arrived. I purchased two apples, a can of beans and a bag of peanuts
for $NZ3.50. Shockingly frugal.

I’d been warned about the hills, and they were fierce. There were some
more of the happiest cows in the world. These get to see the sun
rise over the Pacific.

I shoehorned my tent into a tiny lawn a block away from the
ocean. There was a swimming pool but it was too chilly. And it’s no
fun to swim by yourself.

I could hear the ocean from my tent. Until it started pouring. My tent
could have used a little structural support to survive the winds, but
it didn’t drip more than it had through Midwestern thunderstorms.

I gratefully accepted a ride over the 8 km of gravel, and ended up 37
km down the road in Kerikeri, a pretty little town. It’s the center of
a citrus and kiwi ag community, and if I wanted to pick oranges
between April and August, it would be a nice place to be.

A vegetarian breakfast including tempeh instead of bacon. Very nice. A
lot of internet. Very nice. A book exchange, four books for two. Very
nice. I was missing a Chaco out of my cargo net. Possibly the item of
clothing I would most miss. I walked the path I took from breakfast to
internet and didn’t see it. Perhaps I lost it in the car, wrestling
the trailer in and out of the back seat of a coupe. Julia the German
worked behind a fish counter at a supermarket. That was easy enough to
find. And lo, it was in her back seat. Thank the lord. I forget if it
was the same foot as the last Chaco I lost.

It was only 22 km to the campground I had decided to stay at, partly
for the cheapness and partly for the brewpub next door. The brewpub
next door was closed. C’est la vie.

On my way to the dairy in search of baked beans that didn’t suck, I
heard a motorcycle wipe out, and saw the guy dragging his bike to the
side of the road and crawl into the bushes to recover. Somehow his
friends were right behind him, and dragged his bike towards their
truck. The front wheel was totally de-spoked. I asked if I could help
hesitantly, but was ignored. I hate to ask people if I can help while
they are working through their immediate pain, but if I just stand
there and wait, I’m just a voyeur.

On the walk home from the dairy there was a nice view of Haruru
Falls. Pronounced like Shawano, Wisconsin, in that the middle syllable
isn’t pronounced. I think.

I need to call some WWOOF hosts. I need to either WWOOF in Whangarei
or get a bus south. Getting out of Northland wouldn’t be the worst
thing. I still have a lot of the country to see.

I just saw a hedgehog in nature. Well, in the camp’s parking lot. It
was moving very slowly. I hope it wasn’t hurt.

Yeah, I hate it here. Good thing this wasn’t my first WWOOF
experience. Everyone smokes and my bed is in the common area, so I
can’t even hide from it. I did spend a good amount of time outside
reading.

It rained in the morning, so I was lucky to be sleeping inside. Robert
and Julia came over from down the hill for a couple of cuppas and a
couple of smokes. They took the German girls to Kerikeri for a look
around and some grocery shopping. I just wanted to get my work
done. We started hauling firewood around 10am. First we drove about
300 meters down the hill to get the other 4WD truck, a Land
Rover older than the one Jofish’s dad bought. Or at least in much
worse condition. Missing a door. Probably full of squirrels
nests. Then we drove it up the hill to get firewood. Then we drove it
down the hill to chop it. Then we drove a different car back up the
hill with the chopped firewood. At some point I started just walking
instead of driving with Allen. Alternative energy my ass. He is just
interested in his waterwheel because he’s interested in gadgets. Oh,
and he’s cheap.

Then I had to mow along the fence to clear grass so we could plant
some gum tree seedlings. I was in a horrible mood at that point, and I
kept asking myself why I wasn’t just sucking it up, and getting in the
zen. And I kept telling myself, “Because you haven’t had anything to
eat today.” Because Allen hadn’t offered, and I hadn’t really thought
to ask until we were heading down the hill to chop wood (with a
petrol-powered table saw).

Goddamn internal combustion. Not that I didn’t recognize it was pretty
critical for the wood cutting. But Allen watched 5 hours of tv a
night. And he had to turn on his diesel generator to provide power for
that. His waterwheel wasn’t enough. Eew. Luckily the next door
neighbors had a bonfire. That was nice. But they had their stereo up
so loud it was hard to have a conversation.

So, to sum up: smoking, driving, tv, and no food. I hope that it gets
better after this.

Well, given two WWOOF experiences, I can say this: people who are
afraid of spiders shouldn’t WWOOF, or camp, for that matter. Good
thing I like spiders. Also, it’s possible there are more posh WWOOF
accomodations. Certainly the current set are amusingly eccentric.

It was a great day of biking. 80 km biked, at an average speed of over
16 kmph. I think that the tailwind helped, but the hills were rolling,
so that I often could coast most of the way up.

I tracked down Allen, my WWOOF host, to a farm on highway 10. He was
visiting with his friend, Joe, whose daughter, Bonita, had three
thrushes in her hair, and an opossum on her arm. I have seen a
bunch of possums on the road. Here in New Zealand they have fuzzy
tails, except for the underside, where they use it to hang from
branches. They are still pests. Allen’s biggest complaint is that they
eat the peel off of lemons on the tree, ruining them.

We threw my bike in the back of Allen’s pickup, and drove 8 km on
gravel to his house. 4 km up and 4 km down. Very very very curvy. I
was glad to avoid biking it.

Allen turned on the diesel generator at about 6pm to “top up the
batteries” and turned on the television. It’s still on at 10pm. It was
on all through dinner. Also, he smokes. I’m not going to be here so
long. Gah. I was worrying a bit about arranging my next WWOOF from
here, as I’m sure there’s no cell coverage, and I haven’t received any
email back. But I realized I can just head out, go to the Bay of
Islands, and chill for a bit.

His dog Maggie is cute. Two German girls showed up today, too. They
seem to have troubling understanding his English, which I have to
admit can be pretty difficult for me to understand. Fast, choppy
sentences, and full of slang.

The waterwheel is homemade, based around a washing machine motor. The
water is heated with a woodstove, which he also used to slowcook a pot
of goulash. The philosophy of permaculture is here, but so is the
packrat mentality. There are dead cars all over. There is an old coal
stove that can be used for BBQ on top, and the hot air is vented to
run through an outdoor bathtub to heat it, and the smoke heads to the
smoking box, for fish. Of course, there is junk on the top of the
stove, so it couldn’t be used immediately, and the outdoor bath is
full of algae.

Also, interestingly, Allen has been barefoot all day. Even into the
grocery store. Driving touchy manual pickups, walking around the
property. It’s part of the culture. Adrian was inspired to walk around
Kaitaia barefoot by all the Maori kids, but gave up within 5 meters,
from the rock embedded in his heel and the stickiness.

5 km of gravel in the morning makes paved hills feel easy. I decided
at the last minute to head to the Karikari Peninsula, to the DoC
campsite, meaning cold showers and water you need to boil, but normal
toilets. I thought embracing nature and hopefully avoiding tourists
would be nice. A eucalyptus-lined road and 4 km of gravel did give way
to a very nice beach. Unfortunately, I read the signs and found myself
with a white man’s burden: the Iwi would prefer no one use the beach,
as there are past burials in ancient? history there. However, “the
Crown” has determined that legally anyone can use the stretch of sand
between high and low tide. So I kept to that stretch of sand, but
still felt guilty. Blah. The beach was so beautiful I wasn’t going to
avoid it completely. It was a perfect circle, maybe two-thirds
complete, with a fine sandy beach bookended by cliffs. The blue sky
reflected on the water, and the water was clear enough to reflect back
those beautiful aquas and turquoises. I even put my bathing suit on to
try to get some sun. Too bad I slathered my belly with too much
sunscreen. It’s never going to get tan. Ever. Better than burning, I
guess.

I have determined one bad thing about New Zealand. It’s too easy to
sunburn. As someone from a cold state, I like to worship the sun when
it is available. Unfortunately, here you have to slather up and cover
yourself with hats and long sleeves and gloves. Especially with the
Mediterranean climate, which basically means that if you’re not in the
sun, it’s brisk, this sun avoidance doesn’t work for me.

I did my good biker’s deed for the week. A boy had broken his chain
and his grandmother came over to see if I could help. My Alien(tm)
tool has a chain tool, so after hemming and hawing, I realized that we
could just take out a section and make the chain shorter, which would
work fine for a day or two, provided the boy stayed in the smaller
gears. It was definitely a case of too many cooks, since we managed to
put the chain through incorrectly, missing one of the feeds in the
derailleur, even though the boy pointed it out only to be shushed by
his grandmother. I think they were just too worried about bothering
me. Oh well. It was easily fixed. The chain tool worked great,
especially with other people holding the derailleur to minimize the
pull. And it was nice to know how I would deal if my chain broke on
the road. When the grandmother asked me what I would do, my initial
response was, “I’d cry, I guess.”

Canned chili is debatably tolerable. Too sweet, not cuminy enough. I
added a bunch of salted cashews and it was much nicer. I ate too many
gingernut cookies. I am never eating the Sichuan sweet potato noodles
again. They were disgusting, here and Paparoa. I wondered if I had added
the dessicant accidentally.

Five hours of killing Queen Anne’s Lace helped me realize the thought
process one goes through as a Nazi following orders. First you think,
“Kill that kind. Hmm. It doesn’t seem so bad, I wonder why I have to
kill it?” Then you think, “Ooh, I took out that one efficiently. I’m a
good little weeder.” Then you start shredding the other plants trying
to get one bad plant that’s hiding among them. Then you think,
“Goddamn plants, why are there so many of you? My back hurts and I
can’t stop until I’ve killed all of you.”

Then, as an insight to the American military problem, you think,
“Well, I didn’t get all the roots of that one, but *I’m* not going to
have to dig up the next generation.”

Then, you start thinking about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, just
following orders, which leads them to their deaths, and how they
justified it to themselves with lines like, “There are wheels within
wheels… it’s all done for us…” And how the American public is
reassuring themselves in the exact same way over our horrible foreign,
environmental and monetary policy.

Adrian climbed trees when I took a potty break. He also was delighted
by the call of a bird, later identified as a tui by Jen. It has at
least four very different sounds, and seems to be totally undecided
about which to use. I think it also exists in America, because it
sounds familiar to me.

After lunch there was a car ride into Kaitaia. I hit the secondhand
bookshop for some murder mysteries, and wandered around with Adrian. I
bought some beer, and was carded at the grocery store. The drinking
age in New Zealand is 18. When the clerk looked at my passport, she
started sputtering. “31? You just turned 31 a few days ago? I
definitely called that wrong.” I attribute about half of the age
confusion to the fact that I was standing next to Adrian, but he
doesn’t look that young himself.

Adrian and I sat outside to check out the stars, which were
awesome. There is a hillside to the south, hiding the Southern Cross
during the early evening, so we didn’t end up finding it until just
before we turned in for the night. Orion was in perfect position,
though, and the last of the Leonids were streaking across the sky
occasionally. The twinkle on the stars in the sky is amazing here. I
wonder if it is different because of the lack of an ozone layer, or
some other difference in the atmosphere, ionosphere or
magnetosphere. Sirius, in particular, is amazing low on the
horizon. It twinkles through the whole rainbow. Betelgeuse looked
particularly red as it twinkled.

We also saw a number of satellites. One was surprisingly bright for a
short time. I wonder if that was an Iridium. I forgot all of what John
Boudreau told me about the satellites, apparently.

I expanded Adrian’s knowledge of the stars. He was a camp counselor a
year ago, and told all of his campers that the Pleiades was the Little
Dipper. Apparently one person had corrected him, but was unable to
offer a better suggestion for what the Little Dipper was, suggesting
what was actually the Big Dipper, so Adrian didn’t believe him.

The Magellanic clouds are really amazing. Totally different from
everything you see in the north. The Southern Cross has a neat nebula
next to it, too. Beautiful.

Awake at first light. Ish. Breakfast at 7:30, weeding at 8. An hour
and a half of weeding the driveway, followed by raking up grass
clippings and moving them to the compost heap at the top of the
hill. The raking and gathering fell into the New Zealand extreme sport
category as the lawn was on a very steep hill. Huge sacks of grass get
heavy. Having one’s compost heap at the top of the hill doesn’t seem
ideal.

Then off to behead some more Queen Anne’s Lace for half an hour and
then lunch. The nice thing about going off to kill Queen Anne’s Lace
is that there is a five minute walk to the pasture. Adrian and I
agreed that Jen and Murray needed a goat to get rid of their Queen
Anne’s Lace. Apparently it is a nuisance weed that horses don’t eat. I
don’t know about any other grazers. It’s called carrot weed here.

Then to lunch, which is cauliflower curry casserole. The food around
here seems to be fairly influenced by raw food thinking. Lots of
sprouted seeds and nuts. Fairly tasty. A nice change from all the eggs
and bacon I have been eating, actually.

Then nothing. Sitting around. I took a shower and Adrian experimented
with flour, sugar, water and apples. On my advice, he added a bunch of
butter to the flour, and ended up with fairly tasty apple pastries. I
felt proud to be a mentor to such a success.

Then off to the waterfall. It’s amazingly picturesque. The sun was
streaming through the trees, the water was flowing, the rocks dividing
up the swimming holes into big, bigger and biggest were delightfully
mossy. We planned to return when the sun might be in a better spot for
illumination.

We returned to find the sun was no better placed, but at least I had a camera.

I had my first day of WWOOFing. For those of you inclined to think I’m
mad, off on some quixotic journey, you will appreciate that I spent my
first twenty minutes or so weeding a driveway. Apparently the grass
runners break up the gravel bed.

Then I went and pulled blackberry canes out. And thistles. And Queen
Anne’s Lace. It was a bit sad.

The landowners, Jen and Murray are nice. We have lunch and dinner up
in the house with them. The WWOOFers sleep down in the
bunkhouse. There are two tiny rooms with two bunk beds each. Luckily,
there are only two of us right now, so we each get our own room. The
other WWOOFer is an 18 year old Canadian, Adrian. Luckily, he also embraces the philosophy of getting up early to get one’s hours in before lunch.

I arrived around noon, because there wasn’t anything to keep me in
Kaitaia or Awhanui, though I tried. Apparently there was a secondhand
bookshop in Kaitaia that I missed. Too bad.

I settled in, had lunch, and started weeding.

I worked with Terry, a neighbor who comes up to help with the farm
four days a week, to fight the blackberries. He was surprisingly
chatty and friendly, contrary to my experience with taciturn
farmers. Then I found out he just moved up from Auckland in May. He
had been a field installer of satellite dishes. He ended up getting
called back down just as I arrived to fix one of the dishes that had
been damaged in the storm the day I arrived in Auckland.

Adrian and I got along well, as he just finished an epic camping trip
in Big Sur around November 1. We compared notes and photos. He and his
half brother went backpacking around, including the two day hike to the
hot springs.

Two nights sleeping in a bed and I wake up with a crick in my neck?
Luckily, the biking today was ideal. Rolling hills. I managed an
average speed of 15.6 kmph over 71 km. Very nice. Not much in the way
of headwinds, either.

It was beautifully sunny when I got up at 7:40, but by the time I’d
used the internet and packed, it was cloudy, and even rained for about
15 seconds while I waited under a tree at the bottom of the driveway.

Breakfast was 6 km away, and it was a nice one. I think it’s time to
stop having bacon every time, though. Ella sang “The Lady is a Tramp”
while I paid for my meal. I got a double chocolate banana muffin and a
slice of fruit cake like Jofish’s mum makes to go. It went well with a
ginger beer, but not as well as with tea and Cheshire cheese.

There was an odd bird with blue and black feathers and a white sac
under its neck. It was behaving like a bee, sipping nectar out of each
flower. I’ll have to look up what it is when I get internet.

The German biker is at the same campground here in Ahipara. He said he
walked up that last hill before town. I can’t even really remember the
last hill. It was kind of a pain, but not that bad.

I’ve been spoiled by the Californian coast. Totally spoiled. The drama
of the Big Sur coast made the flat sands of the head of 90 Mile Beach
rather bland.