jforbess.org

I’m back in fighting shape. I biked 110 km today, and I was still
happy at the end. Yay. I wonder how long I’ll keep it up. I think I do
better in rolling hills. More interesting, changing physical load, and
a decent amount of coasting. Also, for the last 25 km, I pumped up all
of my tires to the correct pressure. A little harder on the bumps, but
definitely faster.

Today I just biked through rolling hills and talked to bikers. Two
guys from Christchurch showed up as I was finishing my lunch, so I sat
around and chatted with them. They had started at Picton, and were
headed to Bluff, which is the full length of the South Island. They
were doing about 130 km a day, and traveling very light, staying in
backpackers. Seemed like a nice trip. One of them ran into a childhood
friend at the cafe, who was on a roadtrip, and had some fresh apples
with him, so we all got an early season apple, just off the tree. I
love fresh apples. And I got to eat them all through September,
October and November. And now it’s apple season in February. Lucky me.

Then a guy from California showed up and we chatted with him. He was
cycling all around the South Island. He’d biked around the North
Island two years ago, and from Vancouver to Mexico and California to
Maine last year. I think he was retired.

I thought he’d catch me up, since he was also headed north, but we
just met up in Ross, where he was staying the night, and I was
stopping for an ice cream. I’d already gone 80 km, but it wasn’t 4pm
yet, and it was only 25 km to Hokitika, so I decided to break my cycle
of stopping so early, and pushed on. Especially since I knew it was
flat. And it was about an hour and a half later that I pulled into the
camp grounds in Hokitika.

I really was dreading the two and a half 400 m peaks between Fox and
Franz Josef towns. The hills that kicked my butt three days before
were only 200 m peaks. I told myself I could stay in Franz if I felt
the need. The half an hour I ended up spending in Franz was really
more than enough. It was very much a town of tour buses. At least Fox
was just a tourist town, rather than a tour bus town. I think that’s
the difference between Queenstown and Wanaka, too. Breckenridge vs
Aspen.

Anyway. I got breakfast (eggs with hollandaise!) and ended up chatting
with a guy who was biking about 200 km per day. He was part of a tour,
but the tour was only doing about 50 km per day. He just stopped
riding the bus, and biked himself from hotel to hotel. Plus some
extra. I questioned the intelligence of signing up for a tour that
wasn’t designed for his interests, and he said, well, he’d just signed
up for it about two weeks before, and they did book all of his
hotels.

Then to Franz, taking the two and a half peaks nice and easy. (The
half comes from the fact that the third peak is only about 100 m up
from the saddle, but with at least a 200 m drop on the other side. I
was going the easier direction. Yay.)

I got to Whataroa before 4pm, though I didn’t realize it. I pitched my
tent behind the hotel/pub for $5, and did my laundry for
free. Unfortunately it rained in the middle of the night. Two
rain-free nights in a hostel, and then some rain. Wah.

I’ve been having a problem being done biking too early, and then
getting my shower and dinner done and being reading to sleep with two
hours of light yet. And then when it’s time to go to sleep I’m not
sleepy. So much for 70 km of biking curing insomnia.

Can we go ice climbing in Vietnam, Death? Because ice climbing rocks.

I’ve read so many stories of mountaineering, fictional and non, that I
decided to try ice climbing on the Fox Glacier instead of a normal
walk. Partly because I figured the group is smaller, so the experience
is better. Partly because my kayaking guide in Doubtful Sound said it
was great. But mostly because Kim Stanley Robinson has written too
many books about people using crampons and ice axes, and I wanted to
know what they were like, even though I find rock climbing too
frustrating to be fun.

It turns out ice climbing is different enough to be awesome for me. I
think the key points are that you can make a hold where you want one,
instead of having to torque your body around a given point, and that
the position your hand has to hold to hold an ice axe is easier for me
than dangling by my fingertips. Obviously, as the routes become
trickier, the choice of where to kick in or throw your axe becomes
less arbitrary, especially if you want to save your energy for an all
day climb. I even had a bit of a problem because there was a big
hollow in the hardest climb of the day, making it hard to figure out
where to put my feet to get past it.

I also found it easier to remind myself to hold most of my weight in
my legs. Also, I weigh less, probably, and my arms and abs are
probably stronger (thanks yoga and kayaking), so my whole body can do
more of what I ask it. My abs got sorer and sorer the next day, so I’d
definitely used them. Also, my knees and calves ended up black and
blue.

Anyway, the glacier was pretty and blue. I have photos of me using ice
axes to crawl up the wall of a cravasse. Aw yeah.

I was a lame traveler and sat with my laptop and watched episodes of
Scrubs. But I did it outside where I could watch the sunset,
too, and stopped the show and contemplated nature for awhile. It was a
great sunset.

Worst day ever.

There’s something about the fourth day on the road where I start to
feel as though all the motorists on the road are incompetent boobs who
think it’s funny to thread the needle, passing me and the oncoming car
at the same time. Fuckers.

It was a flat 70 km, there was breakfast 8 km in. It was sunny for the
most part. I was just in a horrible mood. Cars became The Enemy. The
ones who passed me with less than a meter to spare when there was no
oncoming traffic started to get yelled at.

Then when I got to Fox Glacier, I made the mistake of booking a room
at the hostel because the motorcamp looked too far away on the map. In
retrospect I think it was less than half a kilometer away. I think I
need the mental distance I would have gotten with a tent site more
than a dorm room. The hostel doesn’t have a washer and dryer, which I
was depending on. My dorm room doesn’t even lock. I was in such a
pissy mood that I started whining to myself that the shower had too
much water pressure and it was too hot. (I did manage to adjust those
parameters to suit.)

Then the internet cafe had all but two computers out of service, and a
huge line of people waiting.

The general store was nice though. It had The Economist, with a cover
article about “The Greening of America”. And a good selection of food
for lunch for Ice Climbing tomorrow. I need to get pepped up for
that. Must be a happy camper. Must be.

I did hit Happy Hour at the nice restaurant. Beer was cheaper.

I wonder if I’m going to give up and bus any of the distance between
here and Picton. The tourbuses are getting thick on the ground. The
road is two lanes with no shoulders, and the buses barely fit in the
lane. The campervans are either really nice or totally oblivious. As
are the regular cars.

Oh, and one good thing about today: I saw a native pigeon swoop up and
stall out and then kind of kamikazi towards the forest. It was neat.

Well, it only poured while I was eating breakfast. The rest of the
time the rain was just kind of misty. I guess that’s lucky. If only
I’d dawdled in Haast. I got to Lake Paringa around 4:30 or so, having
had an hour and a half tramp looking for penguins (no luck), and the
sky was blue less than an hour later.

What is it with Kiwi Eggs Benedict? The menu said salmon or bacon, I
told the waitress “bacon”, and I got Eggs Benedict with salmon on top
and bacon on the bottom. I also got double muffins. Maybe they felt
sorry for the cyclist in the pouring rain.

I finished Candide at breakfast. After all of Candide’s
adventures, he realizes all of his adventures and philosophizing were
for naught. The true joy of life is staying home and cultivating one’s
garden. Sounds like something I should have learned by now.

Only on the West Coast would they have a 500 m one lane bridge. I hate
one lane bridges as a bicyclist, because I throw off everyone’s
timing. Usually it’s not a problem because the bridges are really
short, but 500 m is HALF A KILOMETER. There were two passing bays, and
I think that I waited before getting on the bridge, and in both of the
passing bays. Blah. Did I mention it was raining?

I knew there were some steep hills before Lake Moeringi from my guide
book. I couldn’t remember how many, and how tall. I was not pleased by
the outcome (3.5 ish, very). I was grumpier than Death on Bonny Doon
Rd, and a hell of alot whinier. Luckily there was no one to hear me.

I didn’t feel lucky when it came time to tramp to the beach to check
out the very rare Fiordland crested penguins, but I knew I’d kick
myself if I didn’t try. The walk through the temperate rainforest was
beautiful and sandfly free, so it wasn’t a waste. Green and burnt
orange ferns. Translucent ferny mosses and mossy ferns.

The beach was kind of California-esque, with big rocks out in the
surf, but it was covered in sandflies and the penguins weren’t
anywhere obvious so I departed quickly.

Between Eggs Benedict at 9:30 and arriving at Lake Paringa at 4:30, I
ate an apple. I did drink almost a liter of water, though. I biked 56
km, I think. I’ll do better tomorrow. Maybe.

Oh yeah, the temperate rainforest doesn’t smell nice. Like pee. Or
musk. I noticed it yesterday and it held through today.

The packing soundtrack today was supplied by a set of bagpipes. A good
morning instrument. Plus the piper was playing peppier songs, not so
many dirges. Not that I could identify the tunes. I suck at that. But
they were familiar.

I appreciated the downhill quality of today. I have to give the
Wanaka-to-Haast bike ride two thumbs up. I guess I lucked out by
avoiding strong northwesterly winds, which would have been killer
headwinds. Ironically (stay with me, usage snobs), the fact that there
was little headwind to speak of is worth documenting. Ha!

Ok, I’m a nerd. In fact, one of the ways I distracted myself today was
by trying to figure out if I use more or less petroleum to propel
myself via bicycle than a car. Since food calories are 10 to 1
petroleum to biological. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how many joules
are in a liter of gas, so I’ll have to plug in that number when I find
some internet.

Assume I use between 2000 and 4000 extra calories to propel myself 70
km. Let’s go with the bigger number for the sake of argument. That
translates to 16000 kilojoules (NZ food is labelled in kJ, and there
are approximately 4 kJ to a food calorie (actually Calorie, actually
kilo calorie. Goddamn Imperial system.) That means 160k kJ of
petroleum was used, assuming I’m not searching out local organic
food. (Sometimes I do, but it’s hard.) How efficient would a car have
to be to match that? I’ll even translate it in to miles per gallon for
all you Americans, once I get that key number. (Hmm. 35
MJ/liter. Looks like the Toyota Camary is rated at 5.9 liters per 100
kilometers, which is 144.55 MJ per 70 km. Time to start eating only
organic local food, I guess.

Wow. This is a very peppy entry. I’m writing it after consuming a can
of beans, a can of corn, at least three spoonfuls of peanut butter, at
least three spoonfuls of manuka honey, two apples, half a sesame bar,
a package of oriental ramen and half a chocolate bar. My blood sugar
was low today (9 Feb), and I have to bike 70 km tomorrow with very few
food stops. Luckily it’s going to be pretty flat.

But back to 8 feb. Downhill to Haast. A few cars did cut it pretty
close on the corners. Damn them. The glacial stream was a beautiful
aqua yet flinty blue. The sandflies made stopping to eat unpleasant.

I treated myself to a hostel in Haast because the forecast said
rain. And rain it did. I was so smug. [I shared a room with a German
girl. She went hiking up to the hot pools on the
Copland Track (terminates at Mt Cook. I think Mt Cook is Mt Doom. Not
positive about that. I’ve avoided all LOTR site info.)

I thought of treating myself to a beer, just to relax those biking
muscles that were wondering why I was back to tormenting them. I
walked past the pub and the fryolater smell turned me away. Luckily
there was a supermarket selling Mac’s Black and plums and apples. That
and some ramen was awesome. And a chocolate bar. Organic chocolate
from Oregon. Dagoba, take me away. The transport miles probably
chipped into that 10 petroleum calories per food calorie.

Well, I managed to leave Wanaka by ten to one today. Yes, that’s
right, almost an hour after noon. And I had over 65 km to go. Luckily,
the hills were rolling, and they all felt shorter and shallower going
up than down. Shocking. I think I made it to Makarora by 6pm or so.

The ride was beautiful, first alongside Lake Hawea, then crossing back
over to Lake Wanaka. I saw a huge trout in the lake looking down
during my apple break. The water was a beautiful blue.

I’m sitting in my tent right now, and a quail just hopped by. The
little curling feather on its forehead makes it look like a flapper. A
few other birds I can’t identify are hopping around in the underbush
at the foot of my tent. I can hear the native pigeons and the tui. The
native pigeons coo even more softly than the morning (mourning?) doves
back home. The tui is the beautiful black and blue bird with a white
balloon at the throat I saw back up on the west coast of the North
Island. It eats nectar, and has a call like a person running through
all of the ringtones on her cellphone, except pleasant. A bunny just
hopped by, barely visible in the twilight except for the bright white
tail. It managed to get some height on those hops. I watched the
sunset out my tent door. The weather is supposed to turn bad tomorrow
evening, but it was beautiful this evening.

Before I left today I spent far too much time on the internet. But it
had to last me for awhile. I suspect the internet coverage on the West
Coast will be a bit less than spectacular.

Then I had to change my rear tire. A puncture had weakened the tire
itself, so it was bulging. I cursed the mechanic who had mended my
internal hub, since he’d tightened the bolts holding the wheel on too
much for me and my stamped metal wrench. Luckily, I found a mallet on
the tool bench.

I ended up with grease all over my hands and ankles. Who uses her
ankles to change a tire? Apparently I do. Later I realized I should
have put my contact lenses in before changing the tire. Oh well. If it
hadn’t come off with soap, it wasn’t going to come off with saline.

It was finally a hot day. Possibly 30. The breeze was cool in the
morning, though there wasn’t much of it once I started biking. It was
warmer in the afternoon, meaning it was from the northwest, which
meant headwinds! Today they weren’t too bad, but tomorrow….well, at
least I’m gaining 200 m and dropping 500 m. I just have to worry about
the lack of butt calluses, seeing as how I’ve spent a week not biking
again.

Today I woke up, did laundry, realized it wasn’t yet sunny on the deck
where I would air dry it. I was still waffling as to whether I would
leave on my bike today. I had a lot of errands to do. When I realized
that it was noon, I still had to change my rear tire (odd bulge,
definite puncture, but still holding pressure) and pack, and there was
no place to stop closer than 65 km at least, I decided to chill, and
catch up with my blog.

I caught Julia online, which was cool.

I’ve written a ton of blog entries. I still haven’t changed my tire.

I IM’d Death about various supplies and travel arrangements. We’re
going to be landing in Phnom Penh on 2 March, and leaving Hanoi 30
March. Should be awesome. I need to listen to my vietnamese
lessons. And buy a shockingly large amount of travel gear in
Wellington. Apparently tank tops, capris and bike shorts don’t cut it
in malaria land.

I’ll be dropping my stuff in Sydney, and returning there after
Vietnam. Ehren, of Vicaribus fame, will be there visiting a friend,
and I’m planning to hang out for a week or so. Then I may swing
through Hawaii on my way to SF. Then there’s thoughts of Steer Roast
and then a beautiful May wedding in Madison, WI to attend. At some
point the job search will commence.

Dinner ended up being more new potatoes from Rowan’s garden, boiled,
then fluffed, as I learned how from Delia Smith(!) (very British Julia
Child, maybe?) so long ago on TV in Belgium. It turns out fluffing
allows the potatoes to suck up olive oil as well as fat from the beef
or lamb roast. (Rhys did it too, for his lamb roast in Christchurch.)

I pulled myself out of bed, packed up, walked to town to ascertain
where I should be catching the bus back to Queenstown. The guy asked
where I’d told them to pick me up. I stared at him, said, “I don’t
know, that’s why I’m here.” (I booked it roundtrip, perhaps that is
not normal.) He called, I found out that it was nearby, I would be
able to fit in a viewing of the movie, Ata Whenua, filmed by a helicopter pilot
who’d flown for over 20 years in Fiordland. Highly recommended by
everyone, including people on my kayaking trip. Plus I could get a
latte there. And a chocolate chip cookie. It ended up being a private
screening just for me, since no one else was trying to get the cheap
show at 9am Sunday morning. A very plush theatre, built just to show
the movie. (They also show feature films twice a day.)

I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad I saw it after my kayaking trips. I think
that they offer different perspectives, but I might have found the
kayaking trip too slow if I’d seen the movie first. I think Dusky
Sound was less stunning than Doubtful.

The bus went through Mossburn, which was having an open house for its
new wind farm. The street were packed, and there was a whole festival
of tents up. Crazy for a town of 500 or something.

I was only in Queenstown for less than an hour, and I was hungry, so I
didn’t get a chance to look for a pair of cheap sunglasses.

The bus ride back included a good conversation with an Aussie who was
here for the mountains. He loves sun and mountains, and I told him to
move to Colorado. He was planning to catch a helicopter up to the
glacier at about 2000 m, and climb to 3000 m, provided he could find
some partners. Rock climbing is interesting that way, the way you
can’t do it alone, but it’s fairly easy to find partners wherever you
go.

Arriving in Wanaka, I stopped in the organic grocery for some apples
and plums. Despite looking dodgy, especially the plums, they were
really tasty.

Up for a doctor’s appointment at 9:15. I’m going to Vietnam with Death
in March (news flash!), and needed a prescription for
anti-malarials. Sadly, the receptionist who made my appointment was
not completely informed, and the fact that there was no travel nurse
on duty meant that the travel doctor wouldn’t see me.

So I busted over to the i-centre to see if there was a shuttle that
would take me to the Rob Roy Glacier walk. And there was. In fifteen
minutes. So I busted back to the house to put on hiking boots. Didn’t
have anything in the house to bring to eat. Thought, it’s only a three
hour hike, and two hour-long drives, and I have water, no problem.

The drive up was a bit disturbing. Crop dusting happening just down
the valley from where we were hiking. Just some fertilizer. Some
phosphates. You know, so the sheep had tasty grass to eat. The driver
tried to make it sound good.

Apparently the river we drove along was so high last week during the
rain that all of the gravelbeds in the middle were covered. Looking at
the river that was impressive.

The hike was great. Through sheepy paddocks, across a swing bridge,
up through rain forest, and up to the tree line to see the
glacier. Most of the time it was along a glacial stream or rather,
torrent. Some girls went for a dip at the top of the track. I only
heard the shrieks.

I started out hiking with some other women on the shuttle, but decided
that I was at a pace where I couldn’t dawdle (I was in front), and I
wasn’t enjoying the scenery, so I dropped back. Much better. Stopping
every 20 m or so to look at a flower or the glacier hanging over the
valley, or the streamlet I was crossing, or the kea in the middle of
the path. (Smart kea, when I was coming back through, it was picking
up the crumbs from an energy bar a woman was eating. Not sure if the
crumbs were dropped on purpose or not.) Apparently one of the kea at
the top of the track stole a sandwich right from beside two women as
one reached for her camera. Faster than the other could swat it.

Some of the sheep along the drive had been recently shorn. They looked
sunburned, poor things.

Anyway, we stopped on the way back to admire the view, when really all
I wanted was to get home. Then the bus wouldn’t start, so we had to
admire the view some more. I walked away from the group because I
wasn’t in the mood for making-the-best-of-it small talk. Which means
of course that the bus driver comes over to me to make sure I’m
ok. Gah. He offered me a candy bar which I was too stupid and proud to
take. If I’d known it was going to be *another* hour before I got home
I would have.

Then someone came out to tug the bus for a rolling start. Which
worked. So then we dropped everyone else off, and changed the bus to
drop me off. Except there was a group of Chinese tourists in that
shuttle who had to be taken to their hotel first. Which was the
opposite direction, and then he had to talk to them and call his other
partner to try to sign them up to shuttle them tomorrow. I was really
unhappy when he got back in the car, when he offered to take me some
place to get something for my headache I pretty much whined, “I just
want to go home.” When he got me to my house, I ran upstairs, got the
voucher, shoved it at him while he was on the phone again, and ran
back upstairs.

I pumped my bloodsugar up with a cracker and pickle. Then bread with
olive oil. Then a Magnum Mini praise be to Rowan. Then I sat, drank
some water, and gathered my strength to take a shower. I got dinner at
the recommended cafe downtown, and was pleased with how much flavor
they could give a plain fillet of sole with beans and new potatoes.