The distances I'll go to avoid finding a career

2008-06-10T11:02:00.004-04:00

Durham, NC, USA

I want to clarify something so all y'all don't get the wrong idea.

Some people have referred to me as a seasoned traveller, and that as such, I'm a good packer which is by many accounts true. I can go on a week's vacation with a single duffel bag and not feel a pinch¹, I know enough to not attempt to bring a near-empty toothpaste tube on a flight (which, even though it CLEARLY contains less than the allowed 3 ounces, SAYS, say, 12 ounces and is therefore banned), and I ~~always~~ usually manage to bring enough knitting to keep myself entertained.

Well. I'm on a trip to the NC shore for Trevor and Andrea's wedding. It's just a few days at the shore, but I decided to extend the trip and see some friends in Greensboro, Chapel Hill, and Durham while I'm here. I didn't check the weather before I left -- I never do (which ended up being a bit of a problem in New Zealand. I froze for the first month, not realizing how chilly their fall weather can be), but just packed generally-all-weather gear that would be good for layering, plus a nice dress for the cenermony.

These are the contents of my bag:
- 4 tank tops: 1 cotton, 3 wool (thin wool is better than cotton in warm weather. Seriously. Wool actually wicks sweat away instead of just getting damp and clammy like cotton).
- 2 pairs jeans
- 1 pair decent-looking trousers
- 1 pair trousers for dancing, which could double as decent-looking trousers
- 2 t-shirts
- 1 sports bra
- 1 dress
- 1 wool long-sleeved shirt for cool nights
- 1 fleece zip-up hoodie for tank-top modesty and also cool nights
- 1 fancy dress/t-shirt in case the wedding guests/I decide to go casual
- 1 pair comfortable but nice-looking shoes (worn all the time, so don't go in the bag).
- Assorted underoos (I don't buy into the 1-pair-of-underwear-for-a-vacation nonsense. Underwear takes up very little room, and is the only bit of clothing that really NEEDS to be washed before re-wearing. Bringing multiple pairs involves less washing. Plus, what if they don't dry in time? The quick-dry pairs I've bought have never been quick-dry).

See? Easy. A little heavier than I usually pack (I had my car with me, so that allowed for some decadent packing), but not bad.

What I didn't realize -- because I didn't check the weather -- is that NC this week has been subject to a blistering heat wave. It's been in the upper 90's, sometimes reaching into the hundreds, with humidity of approiximately swimming pool percent. Ask me how often I've needed that fleece hoodie. (Actually, the long-sleeved wool shirt came in handy as a pillow covering when I stayed with a friend who didn't use her air conditioning. See: sweat wicking).

That planning is pretty poor in itself, but here's the best part. Here's the list of things I forgot to bring:

- 1 swim suit
- 1 pair flip flops, or other beach shoes
- sun screen
- a towel
- SHORTS (save 1 pair of gauchos that were designated pyjamas because they're falling apart)

Apparently I somehow managed to ignore the whole "shore" aspect of the trip².

Some seasoned traveller I am.

Congratulations, T&A. I love you both like whoa.

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¹ Of course, I also don't mind wearing the same shirt/jeans repeatedly without washing them, which makes for easier packing.

² Although in my defense when I was young "shore" meant the Jersy shore, which had little to nothing to do with swimming.

2007-12-18T16:30:00.002-05:00

Albert Park Backpackers, Auckland, NZ

While I was in Taupo, one of my roommates, dubbed “Canada” for obvious reasons (or “Canadia,” when we were feeling cheeky) asked where I was going next, and I said Taurangi. When he asked what I was planning to do while there, I said I was thinking of doing the Tongariro Crossing, a day-long section of a 4-day hike through, you guessed it, the Tongariro National Park. “Don’t people usually do that from here?” he asked. “Um…” I very cunningly replied.

Turns out you can do the Tongariro Crossing from Taupo, but you have to get up about an hour earlier to catch the shuttle bus. I don’t like getting up early regardless, much less for a 18.5 km hike.

Did I not mention it was 18.5 km? It was 18.5 km. 11.49 miles. 1,967 meters, 6,453.4 feet up. Over volcanoes. Did I not mention it was over volcanoes? It was over volcanoes. Hiking. 11.49 miles. 6,453 feet up. Me. Seriously.

If you mention that you’re interested in going you get buried by various pamphlets that make you think that maybe this hike isn’t such a good idea. There are delightful snippets like “steep volcanic terrain,” “It is important to have appropriate outdoor clothing, equipment and fitness,” “be ready for any conditions,” “weather can change with alarming speed,” “there is no drinking water available between Mangatepopo and Keteahi huts,” “accidents can occur on tracks when trampers misjudge loose rocks or go sliding down the volcanic slopes, so watch your step,” – I could keep going, but I’m pretty sure you get the idea.

You also get a giant list of things to bring, including “gloves or mittens.” It being early summer I didn’t bring those, but my hostel supplied me with some red, waterproof over-pants. I tried the pants on, and if I pulled the elastic waistband up all the way I could theoretically go out with nothing else on and not get arrested. I didn’t, though. I also decided that my sneakers were good enough (they recommended sturdy boots), brought a band-aid in place of the first-aid kit, and neglected bringing a compass, but I did have 3 wool shirts and lots of food and water. (In the winter you should also bring an ice axe, crampons, and snow gaiters, and you can also consider – in any season! – bringing an avalanche probe/snow shovel and/or an avalanche transceiver).

I settled into my hostel – Extreme Backpackers – one of the few in New Zealand with its own climbing wall. It has a nice courtyard for lounging, so long as it isn’t raining, and some of the most sterile dorm rooms I’ve seen so far. I had a nice chat with a couple who had done the crossing that day, and were celebrating with fish and chips for dinner, They highly recommended it. The dinner, I mean. Well, and the walk, too, but emphasized the fish and chips.

One $35 shuttle booking later, I climbed into bed early and chatted with a roommate who was also planning on tramping his knees off the following day. We woke at 5-fucking-30am, and grabbed some breakfast before climbing into our shuttle bus. We ended up doing the first section of the walk together, noting that the first bit of the hike was supposed to be the worst. I had no idea.

At 6:57am we started our trek.

See this?

That’s a rather far view of the climb. The BAD climb. Unfortunately I was too busy trying to get oxygen back into my lungs to take too many photos of what I later learned is called the Devil’s Staircase, but here’s an idea:

That’s the view down. See how tiny those people are? It should give you some idea of perspective and steepness. Maybe. But it’s a bitch of a climb over loose rocks and dirt. My climbing partner stuck with me for a while, before finally taking off. As I climbed I decided that I probably could’ve lived without the little bit of character that would inevitabely follow the hike, but was too far up to go back.

When you finally (finally) get to the top (they recommend allowing 45 minutes to an hour to get up the Devil’s Staircase, and I won’t tell you how long it took me) you get greeted with this sign:

Volcanic Gas Hazard. Due to the increase of seisemic activity you are warned Not To Enter the Mt Ngauruhoe Craters.

Mt Ngauruhoe is a side walk up the side of Lord of the Rings’ Mount Doom (really!). It takes about 3 hours return (purportedly), climbing up a path of loose rock and dirt, combined with warnings of falling rocks kicked down by climbers up ahead. When the weather is clear there are, rumor has it, spectacular views, as well as the crater of Mt Ngauruhoe itself. Because it was cloudy (ahem), I decided to bypass the extra climb.

While I was taking a break, trying to regain control of my lungs I ended up in a political discussion with two Irish chaps. We complained together about the state of the American government (and, interestingly enough, what they said wasn’t nearly as harsh as things I’ve heard Americans say). They gave me some shortbread, I said I’d see them later, and took off down this way:

Believe it or not, this picture has not been sepia-toned. It really does look like that. And when I was in the middle I stopped, realizing that no one else was around (I might’ve also been a little concerned that I wasn’t going the right way), and realized it was completely silent. I’ve never been somewhere so quiet.

As I was getting to that short climb at the back, a chap who was doing the four-day hike encouraged me up. I asked if it was worth it. He said yes.

The view back over what I’d done was pretty good, too.

And then I saw that there was more climbing ahead.

Damn it.

After some more astonishing views

is the aptly-named Red Crater.

It’s surrealistically red and has an opening that would make Georgia O’Keefe proud. I just stood with my jaw dropped that something natural could make something like that, and that I was standing so close to it.

Then, of course, having climbed so far up, the only logical next step was to go down. Way down.

The ground is so loose that every step sinks about four inches into the dust and silt. I only fell once, and was pleased that no one seemed to see it. For the first half I took all my years of skiing training under Hans Ze Skiing Instructor (my dad) (who is not, for the record, named Hans) I turned my body towards the mountain, and slalomed back and forth down the hill. When it got a little more stable I was able to stride down.

See the ground in the bottom right corner? That’s the grade and consistency of the trail. But once I did, finally, make it down (and without killing myself!), I got to see the Emerald Lakes.

It being cloudy it wasn’t quite as spectacular as it would be on a sunny day, but it was still pretty good.

I caught up again with the Irish chaps and spent the rest of the hike with them.

It being foggy there wasn’t too much to see.

Once we got under the clouds again the views opened up again.

We stopped for lunch at the Ketetahi Hut, which is near some more volcanic (or at least thermal) activity, where I ran into a woman that I’d met in Taupo.

She eventually joined the two Irishmen and me for the remainder of the hike down, down, down the hill.

And down,

and down.

We made it down in good time, half an hour early for the 3pm bus, and sat and chatted for a while.

But OH! Let me just tell you about what happened on the bus ride home. Well, first I couldn’t figure out which bus was mine because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the outside of the bus I’d climbed into at 6am looked like. How could I possibly be expected to remember that?

I did manage to find the bus, and found myself behind someone who I can only guess is from Europe somewhere (he may have told me from where, but I can’t remember). He got into a conversation with the gentleman in front of him, an American. This, it turned out, was a mistake. Y’see, they started talking about the environment, and it turned out that the American was a stereotypical caricature of an American. Not by looks, per se, but certainly in attitude. He wasn’t sure that global warming existed, and if it did, he wasn’t entirely sure that it was due to humans, and if it was due to humans he wasn’t entirely sure it was a bad thing. Not only that, but he read this book, and it turns out that species aren’t going extinct as fast as they (“they” being scientists, I suppose) say they are – it is, as he put it, “bullshit.”

The chap in front of me tried to disagree, and eventually the American decided he couldn’t continue the conversation, and even put his hand up to show he was done. When the European tried to bring up sports as a safer topic, the American held his fist up, said the name of some (American) football team, and refused to say more. The European tried to ask the American’s young companion (either daughter or girlfriend) her opinion on the environment, and she smiled, shrugged, and said she didn’t know.

When they got off the bus I told the European that he’d done an admirable job. He told me that all the Americans he’d encountered had been like that. I assured him that I wasn’t, and promised that there are some people in my country with some sense in their heads, or at least a capacity to disagree civilly.

I would also like to note that the American couple went on the trip with just shorts and fleece jackets, no food, and one bottle of water between them.

I always like knowing I’m not the least prepared.

And the fish and chips were delicious.

2007-12-16T20:47:00.000-05:00

Albert Park Backpackers, Auckland, NZ

I’ve mentioned once or twice how bad my sense of direction is, but in Taupo it’s completely nonexistent. I got lost so many times before finally finding my hostel, the Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat. Yes, it’s really called that.

There’s not a whole lot to do in Taupo except see the lake. I saw the lake.

The real entertainment, however, were my roommates. I managed to find myself in a dorm with four men, who, I was warned, had the tendency to be a little wild. I took my chances. They were nice enough, and long-termers who managed to NOT sprawl over everything.

In every few hostels there’s the problem of long-termers. They’re people who have found a job in the area, aren’t planning to stay too long, but have been there long enough that their belongings have oozed onto every chair (if there’s a chair) and into every crevice, and over every bunk-rung. It makes it hard to figure out which bed is actually free, and where one’s own, neatly (ahem) packed belongings might find a spare square foot or three.

Point being, they’re deeply annoying.

At any rate, these chaps were fine, compared to some I’ve seen. I was taking a nap one afternoon when one of them came in, and since he was cute we chatted a while, and he regaled me with story after story about various times and places that he’d gotten drunk/stoned on herbal pills.

There are, mostly in the cities, shops selling party pills, these herbal (“herbal”?) pills that are supposed to be illegal already, I believe, but from what I hear they’re having some trouble with it. So if you want to have a “herbal high,” whatever that means, now’s the time, apparently.

So it was boring.

One of the others was showing off an… extremely intimate series of text messages that he was getting from a woman that he’d, ah, befriended a few days prior. Since English wasn’t his first language, and since he wasn’t experienced in writing such explicit texts (and apparently had no imagination) he decided to have one of our other roommates compose a message, and add to the bottom “I had someone else write this.”

I told him that was a terrible idea, and he didn’t get why, so I explained that she just might not appreciate the fact that he was showing her texts to everyone, he said, “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

I honestly wish I was kidding.

In the meantime I learned how to snap beer bottle caps so they fly across the room, got nicknamed “America,” and met a Canadian who actually knew what contra dancing is (it wasn’t one of my roommates). Since, as I’ve heard, more people collect stamps than contra dance, this is saying something.

2007-12-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

Mousetrap Backpackers, Paihia, NZ

The excitement in Napier is that back in the 1930’s it crumbled to the ground thanks to a giant earthquake. A bunch of money later the town (city?) was rebuilt in major art deco fashion.

The problem is that since most of the pertinent buildings are in the center of the business district, and most of them are two stories high, the storefronts have been ruined by becoming, well, modern storefronts.

So to get a sense of the way things were you have to keep your eyes up. It’s very touristy.

Like Oamaru, Napier seems stuck on the fact that their home is embodies a time period, and just hasn’t moved on from there. There are plenty of costume and antique shops where you can pick up classic clothing.

It made me covet a wool cloche hat something fierce.

Unlike Oamaru, people in Napier don’t walk around in period costume, but I like to think that they get together once a month and have a Roaring 40’s party, complete with Charleston dancing and cigarettes in long holders. There can’t be enough of a market for antique and costume shops otherwise, can there? Surely not.

One shop was even selling those spangly headbands with feathers on the side like flappers used to wear, and oh I wanted one! Never mind that I would never actually get up the courage to wear it, or that I could even necessarily get it home in one piece, I just wanted it. It didn’t matter.

I did manage to abstain, though. Because that's fun.

Another thing about New Zealand is that there have been a number of very large sculptures made from corrugated tin. I don’t know if this is a cultural thing or what, but it surprises me every time.

And I saw a guy bathing his dog in a fountain. Apparently the dog had found something rather smelly to roll in.

The real excitement about Napier, however, is something that most people don’t think to do. It’s in the Lonely Planet, but when I mentioned it to people they said that if they’d heard of it it’d never occurred to them to go.

It’s the Penguin Recovery Workshop at Marineland. It might sound a little boring in that educational kind of way (or educational in that boring kind of way), but it was fantastic. Marineland is part rehabilitation center for marine wildlife, part Sea World, but much smaller. Injured marine life is brought to them, and if they can rehabilitate and release, they do, but if the animal can be rehabilitated and can’t be returned to the wild then they keep them at Marineland where they either hang out in their pens (getting fresh sea water, which is filtered through the sea floor and pumped into their pools) or they get trained and put on performances.

The penguins don’t perform. I don’t think it’s their “thing,” regardless of what Mr. Popper would have you believe.

So. I was the only person doing the tour that day, and was met by two penguin wranglers who looked to be about sixteen, which made me feel old and weird, but whatever. They took me into the kitchen and showed me the various kinds of fish that all the animals get, pointing out which were the “McDonald’s” fish, which the penguins loved but if they got too much of it they wouldn’t eat anything else and would, of course, get fat. And perhaps make a documentary about it, I don’t know.

They grabbed a bucket of fish slices and invited me into the first penguin area. This is Twiggy:

Twiggy would hang around for the food.

I was told who each penguin was, and why he or she was there (one has a hunchback, one has a cricked neck). They weren’t terribly interested in coming over for food (they’re very shy, you see), but I got to feed one or two, and watch as they got tossed in the water to get some exercise.

Then we walked over to say hi to the gannets. They only have a few that belong at Marineland, and a bunch fly in and stay for the posh life.

They said something about this black one, but – heh – I don’t remember what it was, aside from the fact that it was a fair bit older than most, and also is very pretty.

We hopped into penguin enclosure number two, where there was another set of penguins waiting for food. Well, not really “waiting,” since they never got the nerve to come over to me on their own, but they ate when they were wrangled to my feet for a snack.

It’s important to read signs, you know.

This is Draco.

Named, indeed, for the Harry Potter villain because he’s not so thrilled about being held, and has a tendency to poo on people. It was okay; I was thrilled enough for both of us. I fed him some fish, and he routinely mistook my fingers for food.

That’s right, I’ve been nibbled by a penguin. It was awesome. AND he didn’t poo on me, so that’s pretty good too.

The next stop on the tour was the very incapacitated penguin pen. This held one penguin with a flipper missing, one with a flipper AND an eye missing, and Gonzo, who was without a lower beak, thanks to some errant fishing line. He really did look like Gonzo from the muppets.

They’d never make it in the wild, but they were doing just fine at Marineland. Gonzo took a while, but finally learned how to eat, by hooking his beak over someone’s finger and gulping down the fish offered with the other hand.

See how the pool behind me is round? Know why? It’s for the penguins with one flipper. Because they swim in circles. That made me laugh far more than is polite. And then the penguin pooed on me. I guess he didn’t think it was so funny.

I got to meet the quarantined penguins as well, and then wander the park. The animals there are hilarious. From hearing-impaired seals lazing about,

to seals with itchy noses,

to the princess seal who whines until she gets what she wants.

When the show started one of the seals would hang out by the door, watch the dolphins and seals perform, and bray. I’m not sure if it was jealousy or protest.

Speaking of jealousy, I don’t think I wanted to work with animals more than when I saw this:

She’s a trainer and was great with them, showing how the huge male sea lions could talk, answer questions (pointing down was shaking their head no, pointing up was nodding), and do flips. I talked to her for while, and realized that if I was going to find myself stuck in anywhere in New Zealand it just might be there.

The reason I surely wouldn’t stay in Napier is that on Sundays the church bells start ringing at nine am and go on for a half hour. I would go some kinds of crazy.

Another charmer at Napier’s Marineland was a cockatoo who may actually just have a day cage there (a woman came by and took him away after a while). I was watching him and whistling, making due note of the “Bobby bites sometimes!” warning in the cage, when Bobby came over and said hello.

“Hi!,” I replied.

“Give us a scratch?” he said, cocking his head. “Oh ho ho ho,” I laughed, and braved that very large beak that parrots are wont to have, and skritched his neck. He tucked his head down and lifted some of his feathers to give me better access. Birds have very soft skin, I’ll have you know.

Some women saw me with my hands in the cage and came over. Bobby saw them and walked over. “Give us a scratch?” he charmed, offering his neck.

I’m in love with that bird.

Later I saw the women who had led me around take the quarantined penguins out for their daily exercise. There’s a waist-high pool in the middle of the walkway, filled with fish, and the penguins get tossed in one at a time. When they get to the edge they’re put right back into the middle again. After a few minutes they’re pulled out and toweled off gently, then put back into their pens.

My hostel, the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, was mediocre. The living room looked rather spectacular, with very high ceilings, stylish (well, by 1930’s-1940’s standards) fireplaces, and pool table. My bedroom was small and packed tight with two bunk beds. Luckily enough I was the only one in there. I don’t know where anyone else would’ve put their luggage. I only stayed one night, and for the life of me now can’t remember why. I moved to Wally’s Backpackers, which may or may not have been a good idea.

It had just been purchased not a month before I showed up, and some of the transitions were a little sticky yet. Even so, for a supposedly established place it seemed pretty devoid of decoration. And it needed new carpeting something fierce. Oop, apparently it just opened it 2003. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

I didn’t get a great feeling from the owner, but that may have just been a reaction to his constant socks-and-sandals fashion abomination. Lonely Planet calls it “slick urban hostelling.” Clearly our definitions differ.

2007-12-08T20:02:00.000-05:00

Loft 109 Backpackers, Tauranga, NZ

The Laughing Kiwi, for the record, is pretty nice. I met an excellent Polish chap -- M -- who, over two hours or so, borrowed much of my music for his mp3 player and subsequently, accidentally, erased it all two days later. His traveling makes mine look amateurish. He, M, doesn’t much like traveling in New Zealand because it’s too easy. It’s easy to find a room, to get food, to get from place to place.

This new perspective left me blinking and stupefied. I mean, sure, challenge is good, but… but… I mean… Well. There you go. And he is clearly not a woman.

Which is not to say that women aren’t adventurous, but that being female adds safety issues that are generally compounded in places where the “travel challenge” is higher.

I went back to Picton and spent the night at The Villa – the same hostel that I’d been to on the first go ‘round. It was my last stop on the south island. I’d been feeling really disappointed about leaving the south island because it’s been so damn good (even with the ease of hostel locating), but I heard there could be good parts of the north island, too.

As I was sitting in the hallway using the hostel computer for internet a woman walked in that I recognized. She had been one of my roommates at the Laughing Kiwi in Motueka.

I did most of the things there were to do in Picton when I’d been there previously, so I made myself some dinner and ended up chatting with an older American couple that was staying in the hostel. And when I say older, I mean that they were over 75 (they’d mentioned that they were – I wasn’t speculating). When it rains it pours, I suppose, because there were two other women of… non-traditional hostel age range staying there that night. I’m not sure I’d even seen one before then. After 40 people usually stay in motels.

He was rather quiet, and she was very talkative and I spent most of the evening listening to her various stories and opinions. Her husband was telling me a story of someone he met on a plane. They talked, as you do, during the flight, and he said “It was so nice to visit with him,” as though the guy had come by for tea. I thought was just the most charming thing.

I had time to kill before my ferry, and so wandered around the two main streets. There wasn’t anything particular of note (I went back to the bakerij and it was still awesome), except this:

It’s a war memorial to the “Glorious Dead” upon which they’ve put giant tinsel Christmas decorations.

I guess the glorious dead like to get gussied up for the holidays too.

I took the Interislander ferry on this trip (I took Bluebridge last time), and it was interesting to compare the two. Interislander smelled much better, but charged $10 to watch the videos they had on (Elizabeth and Die Hard 4). They also had lots more options for food, including a café, a different café with more selection, and a pub (complete with dark woods and stained glass). But I thought the viewing deck for the Bluebridge was better – more spacious and located at the front of the boat.

In the lobby of the ferry terminal I – again – ran into someone I knew – the very knowledgeable woman from Nelson, L, who helped me figure out what town I should go to for my Abel Tasman trek (the town whose name I got wrong and subsequently didn’t go to). We spent most of the trip on the upper deck, huddling away from the wind and trying to combat motion sickness.

The nice thing about arriving in Wellington was that I still (mostly) remembered where I was going. I went back to the Cambridge hotel, unfortunately not back to my single room, but to the backpacker rooms. I booked a single night, not sure if I wanted to stick around longer. The room was lovely – giant ceilings, exposed beams, and wooden walls, but not in that hideous 1970’s way, but in the older, architecturally authentic way. They assigned beds, which was stupid, but no one paid attention to the booking, so there.

The kitchen, however, was filthy. Really disgusting. And there was almost no lounging room. So it wasn’t all good.

And who did I see coming in the door but the same woman who I’d met up with in both Picton and Motueka. We were roommates for the third hostel in a row.

We ended up going out to dinner, and as we were sitting I spotted L of Nelson and the ferry, and she joined us for dinner.

New Zealand can be really small sometimes.

What I didn’t know, when I checked into the Cambridge Hotel, was that the LA Galaxy soccer (or “football,” if you’re one o’ them un-AmERican types) team was coming to Welly and playing some team or other the next day or so, and oh my god, David Beckham was coming, isn’t that exciting, and beds were going fast. I tried to book my bed for the next night and couldn’t. I had to call the YHA (Youth Hostel Association) hostel down the street.

The YHA was bright, spacious, and clean, but totally devoid of character. M met up with me there, and as he re-uploaded music onto his mp3 player I watched a gang of schoolchildren on a field trip act out various skits in the dining room. Strange to think that on a school trip they’d have the kids stay in a hostel, but I suppose it’s cheaper that way.

It was six floors, though. That’s a lot of hostel beds. And there didn’t seem to be much-if-any interaction between people who didn’t already know each other. Lovely. But at least I got in.

Small victories.

2007-12-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat, Napier, NZ

One long bus ride later I was in Nelson. Since funds have been, um, waning, I didn’t have anything major planned – just a night’s stopover before heading out to do Abel Tasman Park in some manner, though I hadn’t yet figured out how or where that was going to happen.

See, all the information about Abel Tasman is really confusing. It’s advertised everywhere, with these impossibly gorgeous photos of boats in water so clear it looks like they (the boats) are floating, and wee, adorable, big-eyed seals perched on the end kayaks. Everywhere. Seriously. But there’s no obvious town near to Abel Tasman to use as a base, and almost everyone does a 3+ day hike through the park, which I wasn’t planning to do, but there was some noise about permits and camping and aqua taxis and it was all terribly confusing.

Eventually I found that Lonely Planet said Marahau was a decent jumping off place for Abel Tasman, since most of the kayak/aqua taxis/whatever else were based there. So that was one thing more or less sorted. Maybe.

I asked a number of people about it, and couldn’t really get a handle on how this park thing could be done – until I got to Nelson. I stayed at Accents On the Park, which Lonely Planet says “feels more like a guesthouse than a hostel,” which is a lie. It’s pretty big, but decent enough, I guess. Anyway, one of my roommates had actually worked there for 9 months and knew plenty about this whole Abel Tasman thing.

She said Marahau was a good idea, and there are easy ways to figure out day kayak trips, which is what I wanted. Sorted.

(Biggest danged aloe plant I’ve ever seen. See that gap on the right? I could stand under that).

Since I didn’t get into Nelson until after the info centers were closed and I prefer to make bus reservations with them than online or over the phone (I feel better with a confirming piece of paper in my hand), I ended up staying in Nelson two nights. I got along very well with L, the woman who’d worked there before, and S, who was in the bunk under mine.

Determined to not spend too much money, S and I wandered to a used bookstore, and – okay. Okay. The price of books here is outrageous. Completely outrageous. A new paperback is NZ$30-35. I’d finished my book ages ago and couldn’t bring myself to buy any more because they’re so heinously expensive. Most at the used bookstore were $10-12, which was okay. I tried to sell the one book I had bought new here (The Big Twitch, NZ$36) and he offered me $6 for it. I laughed in his face.

By which I of course mean I politely declined.

Then lunch and a good long wander. We compared educational systems – she’s German (yes, lots of German travelers here) – and GOD it’s not fair. They pay something like 500 euro for a semester’s education. That’s so little! Bah. Jerks.

We went to the beach to read in the sun, and (and I’m so tan! Whee!) I gave up after about 20 minutes, because – thanks to the breeze – no way I sat kept the sand out of my face. I watched the sand build up on my bag and on my feet before deciding to walk back. We’d taken the bus out with the plan to walk back. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The only bonus to the walk of eternal punishment was that as I passed some waterfront bar and heard The Hobnail Boots doing a sound check for their performance that night. If I hadn’t been tight on moneys and completely uninterested in walking back I would’ve gone to the concert. But I enjoyed listening to them play “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” even if I couldn’t see them.

Oh, and I got sunburned on the walk, too. That was nice. Humph.

On Saturday morning I went to the Nelson Market, which involves lots of crafts and food. Nothing much to note about that. I had a crêpe; it was good.

I’d gone to the info center on Friday and bought my ticket, and on Saturday, a few hours before I was to leave, I realized I’d bought it for the wrong place. I’d been planning to go to Marahau, and had bought my ticket for Motueka (ma-tu-EE-ka). It wasn’t that big a deal – they were close together, and in fact, Motueka offered better hostel options, but I still felt pretty stupid.

(Nelson)

I got myself a bed at the Laughing Kiwi backpackers and got myself booked for a kayaking trip the next day. Turns out one of the kayaking companies Had bought up the rest of them just the month before, so it was difficult to get recommendations for which trip would be good, especially since it still kept all the different companies open since they attracted different types of people. So even though it was all one company there were still maybe five options of sub-companies to go through, with 3-6 day trips each to choose from. I chose the Kaiteriteri company and their… what was it called… Full Day Royale with Cheese. Something royale with cheese.

I went to The Warehouse – NZ’s equivalent of Wal-Mart – for a sun hat, bug repellant (which was on the same shelves as the insecticide, which made me a little concerned), and water. The Warehouse ("where everyone gets a bargain") sucks, but I needed cheap and there it was. I’m so ashamed.

OH! I didn’t get any sunscreen (I had some already), but that reminds me – their sunscreen only goes up to SPF 30. Nothing higher. Weird.

The bus picked me up at, oh, 8:30am or so from the hostel. I boarded and was struck by some of the surliest holiday faces I’ve ever seen. I’m not really a morning person either, but crikey.

If you’ve ever had a teenager you know the morning face. Teenagers can’t really recognize it among their peers, but if you’ve been an adult and faced with a teenager before 10am then you know the face I mean. And – oh. They looked like… how to put this… They looked like the type of people for whom MTV, reality shows, and "bacardi breezers" are made. They looked like they came from the Kiwi Experience bus– and, it turns out, some of them were.

The Kiwi Experience bus caters to… the more… social 20-30-something crowd. Rumor has it – and this is just a rumor, emphasis on rumor, though I could totally see it being true – they sometimes have kegs on the back of their busses. Because the best way to spend a vacation is drunk.

ANYWAY. I was sitting there, fairly bright-eyed (I think I just heard my parents snort derisively at the thought of me being bright-eyed at that hour), terrified that I would have to spend the day with these people. As we checked in and paid whatever we had yet to pay they stood around with their giant sunglasses (okay, I have a pair of those too, though not with me, which is a shame because the sunglasses I have look really dreadful on me) and short shorts and hangover chic, making me tired just to be around them.

Maybe I’m a little cruel; I can’t be sure.

By miracle of miracles they weren’t on my trip. I was sent over to the beach where I met the two guides, What’s His Face and That Other Guy, who was decked out in pyjamas and a flow-y, flowery robe. They handed me a cricket bat (those are heavy) and tossed a tennis ball to me until two others on our trip showed up.

We hopped onto an aqua taxi and took off for Bark Bay, where we unloaded and met the other three members of our crew. One of them was a woman I’d met in Punakaiki. I’m really glad she remembered where we’d met, because it would’ve driven me absolutely insane.

Kayaking is hard. If you were wondering.

It was a really nice trip – What’s His Face and That Other Guy were really excellent guides and very funny. After lunch they had us hit the tennis ball again with a half an oar (they didn’t bring the cricket bat).

Lunch was catered, and the drinks were pretty fancypants – they foamed milk for my coffee, and then sprinkled chocolate on top. I’ve been to coffee shops that haven’t done that much.

There were only eight of us – guides included – in four double sea kayaks. In the second hour or so we had a good wind and ended up sailing for a while. We got all the kayaks together (“rafted up”), then the front outside two held the bottom of a tarp, the other ends of which were tied to the ends of oars and held up from the back outside two. The inner folks had the task of holding the kayaks together.

I wish I’d gotten a picture, but I was busy holding the end of the tarp.

It was a gorgeous day, I didn’t get burnt, and only got bit by bugs a little bit (sandflies, for the record, are evil, evil creatures). We saw – and smelled some seals (none got up on our kayaks, dang it) (I think that happens 1. very infrequently, and 2. only when there are young, curious, and not terribly bright seals around) (it’s getting near mating season, which explained the extra pheromone-based funk that we smelled) and a bunch of cormorants.

Interesting facts: Shag = cormorant, which is one of two or three web-footed birds that can land in trees.

We saw split apple rock, which… you know. Was good. Big.

And boy did I sleep well that night.

2007-12-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat, Napier, NZ

In retrospect I decided that I hadn’t seen enough of the park. The One Day Royale With Cheese (which didn’t actually involve cheese, which is a gross oversight on their part), touted as their longest single-day trip, covered a lot of ~~ground~~ water without a lot of moseying. I wanted to mosey around the shores. I like moseying.

After having the owner of the Laughing Kiwi explain to me very slowly and with much repetition how the aqua taxis worked I had her book me on the cheapest one. Kayaking is not only hard, but expensive too.

I’d get picked up by the bus at 8am and taken to the aqua taxi in Marahau, which would shuttle me up to Anchorage Bay, and then I’d do the 4-ish hour walk back to Marahau and get the bus back home.

Problem was that the taxi was at nine and the bus home didn’t leave until 4:30, which left me seven hours to do a four hour walk. The Laughing Kiwi owner winced when she saw that, and told me to take it “real cruisey.” The woman at the Aqua Taxi office said the same thing.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the way I tend to walk. When most people, it seems, hike, they keep their head down and power through. When I was walking to Bob’s Bay with C in Picton I noticed that she sure didn’t take her time. She just went. I like to loaf my way through walks, to make sure I don’t miss any views or neat moss or anything. While I wasn’t sure I could fill up an extra 3.5 hours with my moseying, I at least had that advantage.

First thing I did, while walking barefoot on the beach, was to step on some gorse. Gorse, if you didn’t know, is a bitch of a plant brought over by the English ages ago for hedge purposes. It’s all thorns. All of it. Horrible little needle-y thorns. And I stepped on it. Why they think or thought it would make a good hedge I certainly don’t know (though I suppose it’s some kind of security), but it loves this climate and is everywhere, including, at that time, lodged in the bottom of my foot.

And then I broke a blister. I hobbled to the start of the trail. Only a four-hour journey to go. Well done.

The first clamber from the beach to the upper path was a little rough, but it was fairly smooth sailing from there on out.

They don’t tell you about the flies, though. Not so much the sandflies, which get enough (just about) press, but on open, dry paths like this:

the flies just swarm. They didn’t bother with me (they did bump into me every now and again), but it was pretty gross.

That being said, the walk was glorious, and I was really happy to be doing it alone. I liked moving at my own pace, and stopping every four or five seconds for another picture.

The problem with pictures of, say, the beach was that there were usually trees in the way.

And yes, the water really is that color.

While it’s the smallest of NZ’s national parks (I think that’s what I was told) it’s also one of the most popular. I’m really lucky that I got to be there before the crowds – I can’t imagine what it would be like with more boats and more people.

I didn’t get passed too often, but always made sure to let people go by, and give them plenty of time to create some distance between us.

This is where I had lunch:

And it’s also where I met the biggest danged seagull I’ve ever seen. I don’t have any pictures with scale, but its body was about the size of a football.

A guy came down and had lunch a few feet away, but we maintained respectful silence.

We caught up later and ended up walking together for a while. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I preferred to walk alone, but managed to ditch him after not too long. Nice guy, to be sure, but not the right time.

Near the end of the walk I ducked down to one of the beaches, got into my swimsuit, and ventured into the water. With partly cloudy skies and the shade of the woods I wasn’t really warm enough for it, but I’d brought my suit the whole way, and I was going to use it, damn it. Besides, the water was just too pretty to not get in at least once.

And holy hell it was cold. The water was very shallow for the first dozen or so meters, and I couldn’t bear to just dive in. Too shallow. Yes. That’s it. I crouched down once or twice, but often popped up so quickly my suit was barely damp. Finally I managed to submerge (mostly – my hair stayed dry), then, gasping with the frigidity, paddled a meter or two, then booked it back out to my towel and dry clothes.

At the last stretch I acquired another companion, a French chap. We finished off the trail and practiced our respective alternative languages for a while, then I was off to my bus (I’d managed to mosey away the time very well – only had to wait about a half hour).

I don’t know if there’s something in the water in Abel Tasman, but everyone with whom I had business – the guides, the kayak office women, and my bus driver from that day all remembered my name. I’m sure they had it written down somewhere – their hands, maybe – but it was still a little surprising.

Unfortunately, it didn’t rub off on me. I still can’t remember names to save my life.

So I did get to see more of the park – sort of. While I was hoping to get to browse through the inlets and beaches the path that I took doesn’t really venture down to the beach terribly often. In retrospect a slower kayak trip might’ve been a better bet. Hindsight. You know.

2007-12-02T17:30:00.000-05:00

The Villa Backpackers, Picton, NZ

There’s not much on the (one) main street in Punakaiki, Two cafés, one of which has a gift shop, and one of which has “groceries,” which means white bread, milk, eggs, some canned food, and lots of candy bars.

Speaking of eggs, they don’t refrigerate theirs here. It’s weird. In the supermarket they’re just on the shelves like cereal or something. Really weird.

Anyway. So. Not much obvious in Punakaiki, consumer-wise. Busses stop for an hour or two for lunch and so people can see the pancake rocks and blowholes.

The time to see them is during a rough low tide, when the waves crash up through the rocks.

I stayed in one of the two(ish) hostels in town, and ended up staying three nights instead of the planned two. The beach is gorgeous, and it’s really comfortable.

While there I went on what was, according to the map, a 15 minute walk through the bush, down to the beach and some limestone cliffs. What the map didn’t say was that it was a 30 minute walk to the 15-minute walk. Sneaky. Very sneaky.

No tremendously exciting stories from Punakaiki. A few games of Jenga that got pretty heated. The team from Holland trounced the team from America, even though there were two of us and one of him. That was a little embarrassing. But we finished it with a few beers at the local pub, so that was okay. Oh, and there were clear nights and shooting stars, which were pretty excellent.

In Punakaiki I managed to get hold of a contra dancer I know from NC – R – whose partner – S – lives in NZ. He’d said he’d be in the country starting in October, but I’d had his email address wrong and couldn’t get hold of him. Turned out, by freak chance, that his partner lived an hour from where I was staying. An hour in the wrong direction, but there it was.

They invited me to stay with them a few nights, and so I got a lift from the other member of Team America: Jenga-Style to Greymouth. He’s a very nice chap, but very talkative, and kept driving team Holland and I around and around Greymouth. I’ll tell you what there is to do and see in Greymouth: nothing. There is nothing in Greymouth. I know, because I had to spend 5 hours there, waiting until it was time to meet up with S. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t said something he would still be driving us around today.

R and S fed me whitebait, which, if you don’t know (I didn’t) is some variety of baby fish, served, in this context, in an omelet. I didn’t think it added much to the flavor, and knowing that all the little black specks in it were eyes, and seeing all the little fish bodies, wondering if that little extra texture was their bones, creeped me out pretty well. I don’t think I’ll be eating it again.

I hope I didn’t ruin it for any of you.

After a few days S dropped me back in Greymouth where I spent another 5 hours waiting for my bus. Seriously. Another 5 hours.

2007-11-22T10:09:00.001-05:00

Greymouth Public Library, Greymouth

A lazy, quiet evening in Fox Glacier village, then off the next day to Hokitika. The main tourist-style reason to go there is to buy pounamu (greenstone/jade). They also have a nice beach and really excellent sunsets. Greenstone is a major part of Maori culture and you see it everywhere in New Zealand.

If you’re more craftily inclined you can go to Just Jade Experience, where you can design your own piece and it gets carved for you, and then you spend the rest of the day hand-polishing it. Sort of – from what I hear the chap who does the carving is a little picky about what you design, and if he thinks it’s too complicated or whatever he may try to modify it. OR you can go to Bonz ‘n’ Stonz, which is a nicer workshop where you can design whatever you like and do all the work yourself instead of having the interesting part done for you. (There’s some entertaining drama between the two shops – go to Bonz ‘n’ Stonz and ask about it).

I met two people while I was there, and we, plus another, ended up going out for drinks and dinner that night. No terribly entertaining stories from that, but I did learn that there’s a New Zealand sheep farming board game, which sounds pretty awesome.

And the place I stayed. OH the place I stayed. This is what Lonely Planet has to say about Stumpers: “Stumpers has clean, neat, reasonably priced rooms above its café-bar. Doubles have TVs, dorms have a maximum of three beds; most rooms have shared facilities (this was pub accommodation before Kerouac invented backpackers).”

Now, how true it is that Kerouac invented backpackers I don’t know, but what I do know is that the author of that little description did not actually stay there. It’s true my room had three beds, and they had a ton of bedcovers, which was excellent. HOWEVER, as for the rest of it, they LIE.

You might want to get some tea. I’ll wait here.

Well. FIRST I went in, and there was no one at the reception desk. There was a sign saying if they weren’t there, to go into the café and ask. Fine. I went into the café and said hey, I’d like to check in. They said there was someone at the reception desk. I said no, there’s not. They said, yes there is, she just went back there. Fine. I went back to the reception desk. It was empty. And remained empty.

I rang their bell, and no one came. A chap at the internet kiosk suggested I go into the café, as the sign said. I said I had. I rang the stupid bell again, and FINALLY someone showed up. I had to write out my credit card number for security, I suppose, in case I decided to glue all the furniture to the ceiling or similar, never mind that no one else requires that. She told me that if anyone else showed up I might have to share the room, and I refrained from telling her, “Duh.”

THEN she said my room might not be ready (apparently she couldn’t be bothered to check), so I couldn’t get in until 2, which left me about three hours to kill. Fine. Whatever. I could, she said, leave my bags under the stairs until I came back and she would watch them. You know, because she’s been doing such a good job of watching the office.

I came back a little before 2 (the office was empty) and got into my room. Cramped, but fine. It had a sink, which was moderately exciting, though the foot of my bed was pressed right up against it. I unpacked the yoghurt I’d bought while waiting for the room to be ready, and went a-hunting for the kitchen. Down the hallway was a glorified closet with a sink, a very mini fridge, and some errant silverware and dishes. I went back downstairs and rang the bell.

“Is there no full kitchen?” She looked shocked. “No, this isn’t a backpackers. It’s a hotel.”

A hotel. Oh really. Go read the Lonely Planet description – no indication that that was a possibility, and nowhere on the “hotel” does it indicate that it’s anything but a backpackers.

Fine. Fine. I’ll just eat out then. See if I care.

After a walk on the beach to watch the sunset I ended up consoling myself with a very tasty steak dinner at the attached bar. And I got half a beer for free when I pointed out to them that the bottle they’d given me was two months past its “best by” date. I found myself to be a very delightful, if quiet, date.

I slept very well and woke up early, which is a good thing because one of the cleaners came into my room at 7:45am. Just walked right in, saw me, apologized, and left.

I still have yet to figure out why she was coming into the room since none of the beds had to be made up. Or why it would’ve been so hard to, I don’t know, knock. Or what the hell she thought I was doing up so early.

And she did it again the next morning.

I won’t even mention how they don’t have a phone for customer use, and how when I asked to use the office phone she looked as though I was planning to call order every set of tv-based, but-wait-there's-more knives and hair products and charge them all COD. I’ve never seen someone look as frequently stricken as that woman did. Sheesh.

(Also, the most hilarious thing about Hokitika? Is this:

You know what it is? I mean, obviously it's an eco center where you can see kiwi and fish and what have you, but you know what else it is? A yarn shop. I am not even kidding. You can see kiwi, and then buy yarn).

2007-11-22T10:09:00.000-05:00

Greymouth Public Library, Greymouth, NZ

The other trip I took while in Queenstown was a day trip to Milford Sound. Turns out that Milford Sound isn’t a sound at all, but a fjord. The difference being that a sound is created by… um. What was it? I think glacier wearing a u-shaped path into the ground, whereas a fjord involves water creating a v-shaped path. But don’t quote me on that. Maybe I should look that one up. Mm.

Right. Fjord = glacier.

At any rate, for Milford Sound there are no words, so here, have some pictures (click the photo for almost all of them – I look a LOT of pictures):

I took an extra day in Queenstown to relax (also I hadn’t booked a bus ticket, so I was pretty well stuck), and then headed up to Fox Glacier. There are two neighboring glaciers on the west coast – Fox and Franz Josef. Not much of a difference as to which you visit, but Fox is a little smaller.

This is Fox Glacier village:

All of Fox Glacier village. Two dairies, a few cafés/restaurants, and an info center where you can book your preferred glacier climbing experience. One hostel. The hostel – Ivory Towers Lodge – wasn’t too bad. My (small) room had only two bunks, the kitchen was well laid out, there was a nice dog, it was clean, and the guys running it were friendly. As always, though, a hostel can vary enormously depending on the people who are staying there.

So. One of my roommates – the woman sleeping on the bunk above me – was lovely. Friendly German woman whom I enjoyed talking to very much. That being said, she not only snored, but talked and laughed in her sleep. And she, um, was not the most fragrantly inclined person I’ve ever met. If you follow. Also on the first night one of my other roommates decided to leave the window way open, and since I couldn’t figure out how to turn the heater on (at 1:30am), I froze.

There was also some graffiti on the underside of the bunk above me about how menstruation was a virus and turns women into bitches and/or lesbians, or some such thing. There are quality people the world over, I tell you what.

Oh, and two of my beers were stolen. That was good, too.

But still! A fine time. No, seriously.

I decided on the half-day glacier walk since I’d been pretty tired. Other options were a full-day walk and a helicopter hike thing. The helicopter would’ve been the best (and coolest – I’ve never been in a helicopter), but it also cost a small fortune (upwards of $275).

They gear you up with thick wooly socks (washed once a week, they said! Thanks, guys!) and boots, and offer packs and windproof jackets if you need them. Considering my penchant for being piteously underdressed, I grabbed an extra jacket, thereby ensuring that it was warm and sunny the whole afternoon. Never mind that when I was wearing it I looked like a giant black sausage (ew), and when I took both my jackets off and tied them around my waist I added a good 6” to either side of my hips. Which is very appealing these days.

AND they have you tuck your trousers into your socks so they don’t get wet. That’s hot.

2007-11-13T16:32:00.001-05:00

Ivory Towers Lodge, Fox Glacier Village, NZ

I don’t have much to say about Dunedin itself. It was a city. Had a museum. You know. My hostel, Chalet Lodge or house or what have you, was quite nice. No bunks, only five beds in the room (and it was quiet, so I only had one roommate per night), AND they did my laundry for $5. It was pretty sweet, especially since there was something in my bag that didn’t smell so good. They even have a ghost there, and a sign that all ghost sightings were to be reported to the manager. Only problem was that it was up a beast of a hill, but it seemed that the only quiet, smallish hostels were indeed up beasts of hills.

BUT, the good part about Dunedin was that though the magic of the internet I got hooked up with S, who invited me over for dinner with her family two nights in a row. She and her husband C have two kids who think that visitors are the coolest ever and did I want to see this pokemon game and look at this dance and it was all very entertaining. S even let me embarrass myself heartily on her spinning wheel. It trounced me and I was demoted to spindle practice.

As a quick aside I’d like to note that if there’s anyone out there with an entrepreneurial spirit, you should think about bringing bathroom ventilator fans to this country. In lieu of fans they just leave the bathroom window open. Now, I’m all for saving the planet and whatever, but one of the main places I want warm is the bathroom, thank you very much. So, you know, if you’re into that sort of thing, go for it.

Right! Anyway. After the second dinner with S and her family, we went to my first knit night. It was small but friendly, and nice to be around so many knitters. I managed to almost finish a sock, which got completely ripped out the next day. Alas.

From Dunedin I went to Queenstown, a place I was steeling myself to have to endure rather than relax in. Lonely Planet had it described as adrenaline-junkie, party-animal town, which, as you may have gathered, is not so much my scene. Fact remained, however, that there were plenty of athletically-inclined things to do there, from bungee jumping (oh HELL no)¹, a canyon swing (a “bungee variation,” according to Lonely Planet), jet boating, white-water rafting, river surfing & sledging (sledge = sled), skydiving (NO), and plenty of other things, all of which are quite expensive ($100+).

I decided to be frugal and pick two. With the canyoning ticket, the trip to Milford Sound, and the hostel I was spending $350 for 2.5 days in Queenstown. Ouch.

That being said, canyoning was awesome. And terrifying at points. I didn’t know much about it, and actually have no idea why I picked it over all the other non-height-based options, but after I got the brochure (after I booked it) I started to get worried that I wasn’t going to be fit enough to do it. There was noise about how you should be an active adult, and considering I couldn’t make it up the bitch of a hill getting to my Queenstown hostel (well done, self, picking hostel on a worse slope than the one from the night before) I wasn’t feeling terribly “active,” and there were noises about climbs and other things that I wasn’t fully sure I was able to do, and what if they had to stay behind because of me? Augh, that would be so embarrassing, and maybe I should just cancel now and hide under my bed for the rest of my trip. Or intentionally sprain an ankle or something.

I did go, and the first thing they did was to suit us up in the appropriate protective gear – oop, no, the first thing was to have us sign away our right to sue them should they screw up and break our legs or kill us or whatever. Woo hoo! Love those. Right. So, full body wetsuit, socks, booties, head sock, harness, life jacket, and helmet. I felt like the queen of style, right there, let me tell you.

After a brief hike through the woods they had us submerge in glacier water 6º C, or –595º F – the water we would be spending the trip trudging through – and then climb a ridiculously steep hill to a zipline. I haven’t done a zipline since middle school, and all I remember was that I spent most of it backwards and trying to turn myself the right way around. This go around was about the same.

Then they had us abseil/rappel down a vertical (vertical) cliff. For those who aren’t In The Know, abseiling involves attaching yourself to a rope and having someone lower you down the cliff while you walk backwards, perpendicular to the rock. Ha.

The trip involved a couple of slides, and at one we couldn’t quite see what we were in for, but followed directions just the same. They held our life jackets, we crossed our legs and arms, and they let go. Next thing you know it’s not the easy drop you were thinking, and your sinuses are packed with water. Mine felt larger when it was over, and I haven’t been nearly so congested since. Scrambling to the surface and looking back you realize the it’s actually quite a fall and what were they thinking and GOLLY that was cool.

Some (easier) slides and jumps later there’s the option of climbing up to a ledge, what I estimated to be about 4 meters high, and jumping off into the water. Being a little delirious from having an unstuffed nose for once, I decided to go. After climbing up a vertical cliff face involving clipping carabineers to safety lines and hauling oneself up with ropes and things, you look out what is, in fact, a six meter drop, eeeeee.

It turns out that my comfort level for jumping into water is at about four meters. When I’ve gone that far and still haven’t hit the water I panic. Lived to tell the tale, though, and enjoyed the adrenaline rush.

And I might’ve come out and hugged the rocks, laughing and wide-eyed with terror.

The other zipline offered a little more responsibility than I was happy about. We ziplined over the deepest pool, then unhooked our safety ‘beener, pulled on the rope that was keeping us in the same place, and lowered ourselves down to the pool.

As soon as I undid the knot that would allow me to get down my lifejacket shifted right up under my chin, which was very attractive, which is, of course, when the camera got pulled out. Foxy lady!

The final jump was about as high as the previous big jump, but more exciting because you had to be specific about where you jumped so as to not hit a rock, and had to bend your knees, because the water wasn’t tremendously deep. I almost didn’t do it, but did, and may have yelled “ OH FUCK!” on the way down. I also jumped wrong, but managed to keep from injuring myself.

(My “oh my god I’m alive I just might vomit” face)

A few more easy slides and the group emerged the freezing water fast friends. The fear and cold bonded us together. They don’t have you wear gloves because you need to have good grips on the rock (I guess), and their recommended method of warming up your hands is to straighten your arms at your sides, hands flat and pointing out, and pumping your shoulders up and down. I came out of a pool at one point to find four of my compatriots standing in a line, arms straight down, hands out, bouncing their shoulders. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time, and I told them they looked like a chorus line. One guy started can-canning.

My fears about being too weak were denied, though it’s three days later and I’m still sore. Two women didn’t make it through – they (or maybe just one, and her friend joined out of solidarity) was too freaked out by the heights and who knows what else.

A German woman on the trip, K, and I decided to go out for a coffee after the trip, and we found a café and sat as close to the fire as we possibly could to warm up.

We ended up getting dinner as well, and I splurged because it’s not often I actually allow myself to do that. It did involve some measure of plugging my ears and going LA LA LA LA NOT THINKING ABOUT MONEY LA LA LA.

During dinner we discussed tattoos, and I learned that the popular tattoo for women these days – the one on the coccyx – what some of us in America call the “tramp stamp” is, in Germany, called “arschgweih.” Literally, “ass horns.” HA!

We went to a bar afterwards (LA LA LA LA LA LA LA) and played no small amount of pool. A Dutch gentleman who was being summarily ignored by his two young companions was watching us play, and I think my lack of natural billiards-ability was causing him actual physical pain.

In the end I was reminded why I don’t go out to loud, busy pubs at night, and was happy to head to bed early. I took two Sudafed to keep the snoring/7am sneezing down, and while my body felt like a sacka hammers, I couldn’t sleep. I saw 4:30am and was awake before my 7:30 alarm. Nice.

¹ When I told my mom that I was headed to the bungee-jumping capitol of the world she said “Don’t do it,” in that mom-to three-year-old-with-a-hand-in-the-cookie-jar voice. “Or at least don’t tell me about it.”

2007-11-13T16:32:00.000-05:00

Ivory Towers Lodge, Fox Glacier Village, NZ

About Oamaru Lonely Planet says “At first glance, it might not look like there’s a lot going on in Oamaru.” This is true. It took me about two days to find little interesting spots as they’re not often well marked. Oamaru was doing decently well in the 1920’s, and the town seems to have not evolved since. Indeed, some people still wear Victorian clothing to work (really), your purchases are often wrapped up with brown paper and string (seriously), and there’s a yearly penny-farthing bicycle race in town. A penny-farthing bicycle, by the way, is the kind that has a giant front wheel and a tiny back wheel.

As a result the town is used as a filming location pretty frequently. In fact, while I was there they were filming some movie called “Wife’s Flight” or something, in which some women leave Wales(?) to come to New Zealand to be with their husbands. Or something. In the scene I watched being filmed, a guy got onto a bus. But it was set in the 1950’s(?) so it was very exciting.

The main thing to do in Oamaru is to see the penguins, so I got myself a ticket and got myself on the proper bus. First stop is to see the yellow-eyed penguins, who are the rarest penguins.

To see them you get to spend an hour on top of a cliff in the cold wind – in a blind, if you wish, which blocks NO wind, thank you very much –

and wait for them to swim out of the water, toddle along the beach, and disappear.

They say that the penguins then climb the cliffs to their nests where they meet their mates with dinner, but since it’s a hella steep cliff and I didn’t actually see them climbing up, I’m pretty sure there’s an elevator in there somewhere.

We only saw four or five, but that’s about average for nighttime viewings.

Then off to the blue penguin colony where they have stadium seating, and a guide who, J and I decided, moonlighted as a children’s storyteller. She was very emphatic and exuberant, you see. After some chatting she directed our sights out to sea where you could see a small, dark cloud of water working its way towards the shore. From the waves spilled perhaps fifty tiny penguins, who wobbled their way up a cement ramp, over the road, and over to their nesting boxes. They immediately started chattering in that “Hi honey, I’m home!” kind of way. Sometimes they paused in the road for a “Same time tomorrow, Fred?” “See you then, Bob,” exchange.

Then they went into the boxes, came out of their boxes, wandered around, got into scuffles with each other, and wandered around some more, yammering loudly the whole time.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine tiny, snuggly blue penguins.

I have several million photos to upload, so this might take a while. Bear with me.

2007-11-04T12:08:00.000-05:00

Fraureisehaus, Christchurch, NZ

I’m at a loss of things to do until my 3pm bus to Oamaru (oma-ROO), so onward and upward.

This is actually my third stop in Christchurch. The first I didn’t think I’d stick around, but at 6:20pm I was browsing the internet for local swing dances and found a big workshop happening that night, starting at 6:30. I checked my watch, booked it upstairs to get my shoes, and took off into the night.

Two lindy hop workshops later I learned there were more workshops and a dance the next night, so I decided to stick around. Budgetary concerns kept me from the next workshops ($20 each adds up, even when hostel living is relatively inexpensive), so I just went to the dance. It’s a small scene, but generally friendly (for the uninitiated, it’s much easier to get into a dance scene if you’re relatively competent at the relevant style of dance).

J told me that I had to go to Cave Stream while I was around. I had no idea what it was, but apparently it was one of the coolest things to do. Unfortunately, and naturally, you can’t get there without a car, and it’s a fair bit of trouble getting there by bus as you’d have to ask especially to get dropped off nearby, and then walk. But! He might be taking the lindy teacher who was there for the workshops next Tuesday, so if they went and I was around I could tag along. That, combined with my offer and acceptance to teach a workshop for the Charleston Stroll at the classes the next week, and my interest in seeing Akaroa, led to me heading to the Information building the next morning.

I got there, bags in tow, at 10:05am, and asked for a ticket to Akaroa. The woman’s face fell – the last bus had left at 10am. Superb. I bought a ticket for the next day instead, and hauled my things back to Fraureisehaus. A whole day now at my disposal I checked my email, and learned that the leaders of the local swing dance couldn’t make my workshop happen, and so they were sorry but they had to cancel. Things were going my way!

(The view down to Akaroa)

The bus ride to Akaroa went off without a hitch and I settled myself into Chez La Mer backpackers. I booked myself for a Swimming With Dolphins tour for the following morning and wandered up and down the one main road in Akaroa. J sent me a text and said Cave Stream was on for the following Tuesday if I was interested.

Swimming With Dolphins was cancelled in the morning due to bad weather (just as well since it was freezing cold and cloudy), so I rebooked and went back to bed for another two and a half hours.

It was sunny and warm the next afternoon when I got suited up for dolphin-related adventures. The company takes a picture of you in your wetsuit before you head out, and takes another picture of the boat heading out. It was far more successful than my last venture. They managed to find two Hector’s dolphins who seemed interested, and they dumped us in the water, and we bobbed around as the dolphins wove in between us.

A tip, should you ever go swimming with Hector’s dolphins (unlikely, since they’re only found off the coast of New Zealand, but just in case) – bring along two small rocks to clack together under water. They think it’s the most fascinating thing. They also seem to like bright colors which does no one any good since you’re likely going to be wearing the tour’s black wetsuits. Different species like different things. Dusky dolphins (which are found in Kaikoura, which I almost got to swim with) like it when you squeak and hum and generally make a ruckus into your snorkel. Bottlenose dolphins like quiet. Who knew?

On the ride back in I chatted with a fellow scuba diver (he’d brought his own suit with bright green on the sleeves – he was very popular with the dolphins) who told me I absolutely had to dive the Poor Knight’s Islands, which north of the north island. Suddenly I’m thinking three months isn’t enough time. And we saw a penguin. It was cute.

There was little other excitement in Akaroa – it’s just quiet and calm and lovely there. Monday I went back to Christchurch and to Fraureisehaus. I asked J what to wear for the trip, and he said shorts and a t-shirt would be fine. Shorts. Great. I didn’t have shorts. Well, I did, but they weren’t terribly flattering. So Tuesday morning I raced around Christchurch trying to find a not-awful pair of shorts that didn’t cost $100. Not as easy as it sounds.

(Outside of the cave)

At noon I met up with J, and we picked up S before heading off to Cave Stream. Cave Stream, it seems, is an underground cave with a stream and a series of waterfalls running through it. You start at the exit (really) and climb through the water, up the waterfalls (1-1.5 meter high) before climbing a ladder and emerging at the other end. Seems backwards to me, but what did I know? I read the sign outside that said you should wear a long sleeved shirt – I didn’t have one – and a hat – didn’t have one of those either – and recommended closed shoes with thick socks – I was wearing sandals and feeling woefully unprepared.

We pranced down a steep hill to the mouth of the cave. It should be noted that it’s a mountain stream, and with the warm weather the snow on top was melting. And heading into the stream. T-shirt and shorts. What a splendid idea.

The first pool is the deepest, and where you gauge everyone’s comfort (according to the sign) and the feasibility of the tramp (slosh?). Normally the pool is waist deep. When we were there it came up to J’s armpits. J is not a short man. I’m short. We aborted the walk.

Instead we walked to the other end to see how going was from that direction. At the entrance is a waterfall maybe 3 meters high with a ladder at the side for clambering purposes.

WHY NO, I DON'T MIND HEIGHTS, HA HA HA.

J made it all the way down the ladder before deciding that the force of the water was too much, so we wiggled back out again.

Fail.

A quick clothing change later and we went to Castle Hill where they filmed parts of Narnia and wandered through the surprisingly big stones. People climb them apparently. Know why? Because they’re crazy.

(J trying to climb the rocks)

The next night I went to another swing dance in Christchurch. It wasn’t thrilling. It was Halloween and apparently a memo had gone out that costumes were encouraged, and they could choose from 1. devil, or 2. angel. There were also two lions and two witches. Someone should’ve gone as a wardrobe. HAR!

I took off Thursday for Akaroa again and didn’t end up doing any of the tours I was thinking about doing (or hit the walks as much as I’d intended), but got a lot of sun. My poor nose is peeling away, and if this keeps up I’ll end up with one similar to the nouveau Michael Jackson.

I’m tan, though, which is very exciting. I mentioned this to P, a chap I met in Akaroa. He noted I was still pretty pale. “Pale!” I squealed, ever graceful under pressure, "I have tan lines," I yelled, pulling up my sleeve and wielding a bare shoulder at him. “Look at me! I’m the tannest I’ve been in years! I’m like toast I’m so brown!“

He didn’t buy it.

Now I’m back in Christchurch for the third time, a place that I hadn’t even intended to spend three days. And today I’m leaving, thank you.

2007-11-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

Fraureisehaus, Christchurch, NZ

In lieu of my usual thrilling stories here are some things I’ve noticed about New Zealand.

1. If you’re just wandering around a shop you’re not browsing, you’re “having a browse.”

2. Apparently I am very obviously a tourist, though twice I’ve been mistaken for being British.

3. Construction workers often wear shorts. Sometimes rather short shorts. It’s unnerving, like stumbling into a photo shoot for a special edition of Playgirl Magazine: The real men next door!

4. It is damn hard to find healthy food here. There’s plenty of fish, which all the newspapers and gossip magazines tell me is good, but 3/4 of the time it’s fried in some way. Which isn’t a bad thing, to be sure, but doesn’t add much to the health benefits (never mind the ambitious serving of fries or “chips” that are added to the side). Aside from that there’s a lot of fried, a lot of eggs and bacon, pies, cakes, breads, and not a whole lot in the manner of “vegetables.” I’ve spotted a few salad cafés, but only in Auckland and Wellington. AND gyms seem to be exceptionally rare, even in the cities.

As a result this isn’t a “thin” country. I’d call it rather curvy, actually. And yet in clothing stores (not of the department variety, but of the fashion variety) the largest size is still just a 16. But on the local television shows they employ a lot of “regular-looking” people rather than the standard strong-jaw, slim-legged, glasses-free actors that are so popular in other first-world countries.

There’s also at least ten stories per newspaper/magazine/news hour about how New Zealanders are overweight and are eating poorly. There’s a big fuss now about how processed meats are being linked to colon cancer. I don’t think it’ll change much for BBQ season.

5. It's really not "pedestrian friendly" here. They will mow you down. When they have to wait for you to cross the street they'll creep up slowly as you walk past, and zip by as soon as they can clear your heels. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of reward system for hitting someone not in a car. But I could be wrong about that.

---

In the meantime I’ve been staying in hostels and it’s been decent. A good technique is to be the last one to go to bed. Cuts down on the number of people who will come in and bash around while you’re trying to sleep. Having a few beers beforehand doesn’t hurt either.

I went to Akaroa last week and stayed at Chez La Mer. The first night I lucked out and got a dorm room to myself. As nice as it was to spend $25 on a room to myself, having four empty beds in the room felt lonely. Bitch, bitch, bitch, that’s all I do. It filled up fast enough, and every now and again there’d be good conversation.

I didn’t get the best reception from one of the owners, though. Our first meeting was when she yelled at me for having my towel on the heater. Then she rushed off and the only time I saw her direct any happy feelings towards me was when she was waving me goodbye. Nice!

I’ve also spent more than a few nights at the Fraureisehaus Hostel in Christchurch. When I’ve told people that it’s women only they get all flustered and say they wouldn’t want to stay somewhere like that. I didn’t think I would either, but the fact is that the kinds of people who would stay at a women-only hostel are not usually the kind of people who stumble in drunk at 3 in the morning and do unspeakable things to the floor/bed/whatever. They’re more the kind of people who tuck up in the evening and watch a movie. And who are considerate and respectful. I can see why some people wouldn’t be into that.

This hostel is really cushy. Big screen tv, a plethora of videos to choose from, a garden to lounge in, resident pets, free coffee/cocoa/bikes/laundry/use of nice hairdryers, and no more than 4 beds per room. It’s wonderful.

Except that one morning when I woke up absolutely covered in bug bites (they changed my sheets and didn’t see anything, and suspect a spider had gotten in and thought I was delicious and/or threatening). And this morning when I had a very confusing series of interactions with one of the women who works here. When I dropped off the DVD of Frida that I’d borrowed for a bunch of us to watch she was very friendly. I was sitting in the garden some hours later and she came out of the building lugging my big bag which I’d left tucked in a corner of the hallway (under a sign that said “Leave your luggage here if you’re checking out before 8am” which makes no sense to me. If you’re leaving then you’d have your bags with you, and you surely wouldn’t leave your luggage there the night before). She asked if it was mine, and said it was to go into the shed until I left. She was downright frosty. There was nothing to indicate that that was protocol, and I hadn’t thought to ask. Silly me.

Other than that it’s been great.

2007-10-25T18:24:00.000-04:00

Frausenhumphumphumph¹ Backpackers, Christchurch, NZ

Oh, Wellington. I couldn’t find anyone (aside from the kid house) that wanted to rent to me for so short a period of time. I wasn’t doing anything during the day because I didn’t want to spend too much money, and suddenly a week had gone by.

It was a bit of a trap; I could stay in a cheapish ($40/night) single, not do anything and try to find a place, or I could leave where I’d have to pay more money per night for a single ($60+/night), or I could stay in a hostel and never have a moment to myself.

But by staying I wasn’t doing anything.

So I left. I bought a ferry ticket and took off. No plans, just a vague direction.

The first thing I noticed about the ferry was that the underbelly (where the cars and such were) and up in some of the hallways it stank. USS Urineville. Bleah.

Anyway, it was cold and rainy at first,

so I spent much of my time inside, knitting and watching Ocean’s 13 which was showing on a big tv.

When we were around 45 minutes away I stepped outside, and oh. Y’all.

Gorgeous.

And then my camera batteries died. It’s happened before – no problem! I have spares! I went into my bag and got my rechargables that I’d charged in California.

They were dead. Har, har, har.

I hopped off the shuttle bus in front of Villa backpackers. My room had 2 bunks (fairly civilized) and a carpet that had seen more than its share of spilled beverages (I hope beverages). There was a nice-looking courtyard with plenty of places to sit. My roommate, Charlotte, invited me to walk along the dock, so we took off.

Around the bay, over a bridge, and into the woods for a short tramp. Which kept going and going, and I was trying desperately not to puff and pant at the sudden expenditure of energy. We ended up at Bob’s Bay – a secluded length of beach overlooking the harbor.

Indian food for dinner and an early bedtime. In the morning I saw Charlotte had tucked her card into my knitting.

There was a ton of time to kill before my bus whisked me away, so I walked up the street in town, and stopped for some breakfast at Picton Village Bakkerij², a Dutch bakery, which was hella good. I sat in the sun and had some visitors.

My next stop was Kaikoura. The town itself isn’t much to look at (again, just one street), but the location is awesome. Imagine the Rocky Mountains, and tack on Caribbean-blue water with steep stone beaches. That’s what Kaikoura is like.

I stayed at Lyell Creek Lodge, which is worn but super friendly and cheap (I called the proprietor more than once to get a lift to or from the hotel). I had my own room and a tv. It was good.

There’s plenty to do in Kaikoura, most of which involves going out on the sea, which meant that when it poured rain the first day I was there my plans got screwed. But! Here’s a rundown of my activities:

Swimming with Dolphins: Everything depends on where the pods of dolphins are and how interested they are in you. They warned us before we left that there was a pod in the morning, but we wouldn’t be able to catch up to it. I think that when this is good it’s really, really good. My trip was just mediocre. For $130 you cram yourself into a 7 mil (read: thick) wetsuit (there’s also a cheaper viewing only option), hop on a bus, hop on a boat, and take off.

Eventually we caught up to about six dolphins (a pod has about 200), and we prepped by pulling on our flippers and hoods and goggles and sitting on the back of the boat. They gave the signal and we hopped in, shoving each other out of the way. We did that three times, and didn’t spend more than five minutes in the water each time. I saw three swim by, but that was all.

And they gave us a partial discount, so there’s something to be said for that.

Whale Watch: Fortunately didn’t involve a wetsuit (or unfortunately – swimming with a whale would be awesome), but they required us to sit inside the boat until they’d found a whale and stopped. It took a while. Then we all shoved each other aside to get out and see…

The back of a sperm whale.

Who just laid there, occasionally spraying up some water.

And then, after a few minutes, went under again. Not with a splash, but with a blip.

And then we found another whale, and the same thing happened.

I was kind of expecting more. It was hard to get an idea of scale from the distance. Then an informational video on the boat, and that was it.

Seal Swim: Similar to the dolphin swim, but on a less grand scale. Wetsuits, yes, and a corroding jeep instead of a bus, and a tiny boat instead of a larger one that caught every wave and sent it up into our faces before crashing our butts down onto the seats.

The seals weren’t as interactive as I’d been expecting. We were visiting a colony that housed sexually immature seals – that would be fur (or “eared”) seals, by the way – until they were ready to go get frisky with the other adults. Mostly they stayed on the rocks and gave us funny looks, but occasionally one would swim by and give us a thrill.

And that water is really cold. I mean really cold. The wetsuits helped except for right around the mouth that caught the water directly, and the hands. My gloves didn’t keep me warm for nothin’. (That’s probably not true – I’m sure it would’ve been worse without them). It was neat to see them so close to their territory, and the reef we were over was full of plants and fish that I vaguely recognized but can’t for the life of me name. (Lisa, Chris, Greg: are you surprised?).

Surfing: The instructor was on the west coast. As the woman in the shop told me, “For surfers, the world stops when there are good waves or a competition.” So I couldn’t get a lesson. Nice.

Scuba diving: Visibility was so bad they weren’t going out. But I got a brochure for another place that’s supposed to have good diving. Strike two.

I walked up to the seal colony (as is accessible by land), which is a really long walk from town, and don’t let guidebooks tell you otherwise. There were some hanging out surprisingly close to the car park:

And this one got real mad when a woman tried to walk by because they – I swear – blend into the grass.

To think – I nearly witnessed a Darwin Award in action!

I like Kaikoura. I like it a lot. I was disappointed to leave, and in retrospect, should’ve stayed longer. I was in the mood for a small town.

Christchurch is not a small town. It’s not a big city, either. It has its charms, but I must admit I’m not finding, um, anything to do here. I stayed in a hostel because a Scottish chap I’d met at Lyell Creek Lodge told me I just might like it.

HAH. First off, it was $28. Second, 8 people sharing one room is way too many. First thing I did when I opened the door (at 1pm, mind) was turn on the lights. Six pairs of eyes glared at me from six beds. Great way to make a first impression, self!

Browsing the internets that evening I did a search for Christchurch swing dancing, and found out that there was a workshop happening that evening. In fact, in ten minutes. I got directions and my shoes and booked it over to the hall and begged my way in. $40 and two classes later I’d met some new folks. They hipped me to the dance the next night and I promised to show.

In the evening my Irish roommates chattered and bashed about, their stuff strewn everywhere. They made a vague attempt at being quiet by whispering, but in a small room it’s just as loud as talking. And there was a porch and a lounge that they could’ve been using. Honestly. The big problem with hostelling alone is that you never know who your roommates will be.

They crashed around in the morning, too. I packed up my bags and took off to a farther away, slightly costlier backpackers – Fraureisehaus. All women (which, after my previous night’s roommates, proved nothing), but obviously calm. I got a single ($38, though Lonely Planet said 35). There’s free laundry, a resident bunny, resident guinea pigs, mineral water in the outside taps, free movies and music to borrow, and it’s quiet. Worn as they all seem to be, but cozy.

The dance was good, and I got to meet the resident kitty that wanders around the hostel. Still couldn’t find much to do in Christchurch.

Tried to get a bus out the next morning, and missed it by 5 minutes. Fantastic. I sheepishly walked back to Fraureisehaus and got another room, and decided there STILL wasn’t much to do in Christchurch. I did go to their aquarium in the information center (because where else would you have an aquarium?) and they have two kiwi (kiwis?), one of which I got to see rummage around in the dark. Because if you’re going to see kiwi, the first place to go is the aquarium.

¹ Fraureisehaus
² That’s actually spelled correctly

2007-10-12T19:39:00.000-04:00

Cambridge Hotel, Wellington, NZ

ATTENTION PEOPLE IN CENTRAL WELLINGTON: SOMEONE RENT ME A DANGED ROOM. IDEALLY ONE WITH A BED AND WIRELESS INTERNET. FOR UNDER NZD$160 PER WEEK. AND DO IT TODAY. THANK YOU.

Rained again today (which makes what, five out of six days?), but it cleared up this afternoon and now I dare say there’s some blue sky out there. Will it last? Only time will tell. But I’m betting no.

I found one room-for-rent ad that looked promising. I called them up and was invited over to see the place. I took a cab since I didn’t know where it was (and couldn’t even find the road on my map, which, in retrospect, wasn’t the best sign.

Fifteen minutes and $17 later I climbed a rather steep cement pathway and then some stairs, and arrived at a very funky house. K, who turned out to be one of the tenants, showed me around. The décor was non-committal chic, a futon covered with a sheet, mismatched furniture, a sheet making a doorway to the upstairs loft. Popular with college students. Not so much with me. The room was nice, if a little covered with kids toys. K was living there with her boyfriend/husband and their(?) 3 year old kid, and then the owner and her 3 year old.

While they do have internet and a mattress I could use AND I could move in right away, it was NZD$180 per week (they do rent per week there – SO weird) which is more than I’m interested in paying. And then I realized as I decided to walk home (because I’m an idiot) it was farther from central Wellington than I wanted. Also it wasn’t exactly the genre of roommate I was anticipating.

So I left and decided to walk back to my hotel. Because I’m a moron who never, ever learns. NEVER MIND that I hadn’t paid attention to what way the cab driver was going, NEVER MIND that I didn’t know which direction central Wellington was, I was still going to walk. Did I ask for any hints? Certainly not!

Once, when I was describing to Paige about my directional sense she likened it to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Dumb? I’m not sure. Either way, point being that no matter what direction I chose, it would turn out to be wrong. It’s not that my first instinct is wrong, it’s that whatever way I commit to will be wrong.

The other problem is that I tend to fancy myself smarter than any signs I might see. And that I didn’t have a map with me.

Here’s my starting and ending points:

And here’s the approximate route I took:

It wasn’t too bad except when the wind picked up, and when my jacket, which is water-resistant and not waterproof, started soaking through. But I was smiling (and possibly singing along) when Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” came on after I got through the Victoria Tunnel, and 2.5 hours after I started I arrived, soaked, back to my room.

2007-10-08T21:20:00.000-04:00

10/8/07 9:20pm

Cambridge Hotel, Wellington, NZ

Somebody, and I can’t look up who as there’s no internet here, said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, the cure for spending a week in suburbia was to try a hostel when I got to Rotorua. After all, if I got a single it would be a bed in a room with little else – which is what I had at Aspen House (a hotel) in Auckland. That was okay, so maybe it could be good.

LIES.

OH MY GOD LIES.

The bus, 4 hours from Auckland, arrived conveniently at the tourist information center in Rotorua. I got in line, and when it was my turn asked for a recommendation of a hostel to stay in. I’d given Lonely Planet a browse on the way down, but nothing had particularly stood out.

Apparently it is against some kind of law for the info people to actually, specifically recommend one single place. I’d ask, and she’d say, well, there’s this this and this which was enormously helpful. In the end I settled for a place called Cactus Jack’s.

That should’ve been my first clue. And my first warning. But noooo, I was going to try something and be braaaave.

At first the room seemed okay. For a “theme” hostel, though, the room didn’t try very hard. The most “cowboy” it got was the untrimmed, un-sanded wood nailed around the mirror. Around the rest of the hostel were cutesy murals of vaguely Mexican things.

Lonely Planet says “although [the rooms are] older, they’re well kept.” For the first few hours I would’ve added “…ish.” The wall was scuffed and needed repainting. The sheets didn’t match, but that doesn’t really matter. The shelf/drawers were small and one of the drawer pulls was broken.

I tried to plug in my computer to the one outlet in the room, and the outlet immediately started crackling. And not in a good way. I tried once more, just for fun, and it was crackling again. Since my computer battery was almost completely drained, this left me without a computer.

Fine. So I turned on the one light in the room (though admittedly it was small enough that just an overhead light was enough, though a desk lamp would’ve been appreciated) and spent the evening reading (A Spot of Bother) and knitting. I started to notice that they didn’t stress too hard about cleaning the carpet. I also found that it was getting cold. And no wonder —there were no heaters in the room.

I know there were no heaters (and that it wasn’t in-floor heating) because there were heaters in the hallway. Heaters. In the hallway. Not in the room. Why, why did they ever think that was a good idea?

I went to bed early and slept in all my clothes because I was so cold. It was fairly noisy, but not too bad after about midnight or so.

I told the guy at the front desk that my electrical outlet wasn’t working, and he promised to call an electrician. When I checked up on it later he said the electrician wouldn’t come out on a Saturday, so I was out of luck. Splendid.

The bathroom that I was lucky enough to pick in the morning had a tub/shower combination, painted bright-but-fading colors. Despite the very warm hot water pipe running along the wall, the shower never got past lukewarm.

And then there was the fact that none of the bathrooms had sinks, and none of the sinks (the few there were) had soap, which made me more than a little concerned about the hygiene of everyone around me. And very concerned with where I put my toothbrush.

That evening, when I was sitting in bed, NOT reading since I’d lost my book (and I was only about 40 pages from the end!), but listening to music and knitting, it became clear that they hadn’t washed the duvet in a while, and that someone before me had had what I can only hope was a mild cold.

Went to bed early again, since I had to be up at 7 to catch the bus to Wellington (also because I am apparently an old lady). At 1:30am I woke to someone banging and pounding on the hostel door. See, after around 8pm the front door gets locked, and the keys have a code on the back to let you in. And this putz couldn’t figure out how to make it work, and figured that wailing on the door was the best way to go.

Some kind soul (my kindness ends at 10pm) let him in about fifteen minutes later.

I eventually went back to sleep until 3:30am when some hideous assholes decided to watch rugby. This being NZ and right before the rugby championships some of the games end up being at odd times. I can only guess this was one of those occasions.

But the tv was on loud. And they were yelling. And it was early. And I didn’t do anything, because the idea of getting up and yelling at them made me nervous. After about a half hour someone opened their door and told them to “shut the fuck up.” He’s my hero.

The next morning the shower was blessedly hot. Small victories.

2007-10-05T02:46:00.000-04:00

Cactus Jack's Hostel, Rotorua, NZ

Zoo pictures are up.

2007-10-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

Whangaparaoa, NZ

There’s been a volcanic eruption and an earthquake here in the past week; you’d think I’d have some exciting stories.

I don’t. I do have some filler, though!

Plan was to spend last weekend with E and A, friends of my grandparents, then on Sunday or Monday I’d go back to Auckland and, from there, head to Wellington.

So last Friday I packed up all my things, left them in the luggage room of the hotel with the plan that I would head to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World. Lonely Planet and the Aquarium pamphlet both agreed that there was a free shuttle that ran on the hour from Discover New Zealand which was, conveniently enough, just around the corner from my hotel. Little did I know it was not to be.

I missed the 10am shuttle because I was finishing getting my things together and checking out of the hotel. I missed the 11am shuttle because I was in this keen store looking at things like this:

(This was on a package for a lunchbox napkin. I don't know).

(They're little single-serve mayo holders for your lunch. The banana thingy is connected to the SPOON SPREADER THINGY. I almost bought them because -- because -- it just... I just... what?!).

It’s possible I bought some “Fine Cosme For Your Beauty” and a business card tin with a dog on it that says “Dog gets dots.”

Finally at noon I made it to Discover New Zealand, where they informed me that the shuttle was now leaving from Sky City (where the Sky Tower is). So I missed that shuttle too. I could take the bus, they said, for $3. Hah.

At Sky City the 1pm shuttle was full. The driver promised she’d be back in an hour, and I smiled and nodded. The problem, of course, was that I had to be back by 4 to get my things and meet the ferry. That meant that if I went at 2pm I’d have less than two hours before I had to be back on the bus, AND I’d get to pay $30 for the privilege. Instead I went into a Sky City restaurant for a nice leisurely lunch.

And it was, until everyone was ushered outside because that loud clanging noise we were hearing? Was actually the fire alarm going off.

The shuttle came and went again, though it never seemed to empty. It just stayed packed to the gills.

Later, I passed by this:

Everyone was standing around taking pictures. I don’t know what was happening, but I’d bet it wasn’t what they were intending.

Then the ferry to Gulf Harbour, where E and A picked me up.

While I had been tooling around Auckland killing time before the shuttle or the ferry I learned that the train from Auckland to Wellington only ran Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and only at 7:25am. Which really screwed my plans.

So E and A invited me to stay the week, and Friday I would head back to Auckland and catch a bus to Rotorua. It’s touristy, but also conveniently placed about halfway between Auckland and Wellington.

They took me out to see big trees:

And a place called SheepWorld. For real.

We didn’t go in (it cost $17 or so to pet the sheeps and see sheep shearings and such things), but just hit the shop so I could get some yarn, of which I later regretted not buying more.

E and A live, by the way, on the Whangaparaoa (Fang-a-par-o-wa) Peninsula, which is really just suburbs. This, combined with the torrential rain we’ve had all week, have left me very little to do.

I took some walks:

But mostly I’ve been sitting and watching the rain.

The other night, however, I was taking a bath and was all warm with my book when I looked up and saw, crouched on the ceiling, was a huge, evil, man-eating (warning: those who are scared of spiders should go do something else for a while) spider.

It was big – size of my palm big. With fangs. And clearly mean. And far away and high up, but STILL. I could see its dripping mandibles. Or maybe it was just damp from the steam, I’M NOT SURE. I kept an eye on it, but he or she kind of ruined my bath. I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m pretty sure it looked like this:

When I was sufficiently warm, calm as can be I got dressed and went out to the living room and said to E, “Remember the other day how you were saying you’re not afraid of spiders? I’m really glad as there is a giant spider in your bathroom.”

A, being the dealer-with of such things, went to take deal with it, and I went to get ready for bed. Which is when I saw a giant – size of my palm giant – cricket-looking thing on my floor. I went back to the living room, and asked A if he was also the one who dealt with giant cricket-things.

He gathered his weapons – a brush and dust pan – and came to identify the weta that had taken up residence next to my bag. He didn’t kill it – they’re protected, you see – but pinned it and took it outside. Then went the spider.

I don’t know what the deal is, but I’m suspecting they were having some kind of conference. Insect Liberation Party, maybe. I’m pretty sure I could hear them plotting and calling me nasty names.

And that’s how exciting it’s been here. The end.

2007-09-27T16:46:00.000-04:00

Aspen House, Auckland, NZ

So. Auckland. Right.

It’s big. Big enough that it’s really not so good for the walking dedicated (okay, fine, bus-phobic) like me. I’ve managed to wander around the same stuff for the past four days, and I’ve come to some conclusion about this section of central Auckland.

It’s not a particularly attractive city. It doesn’t have charming European architecture, instead leaning more towards industrial. What with the close proximity there’s a big Asian community here, so there’s all the Chinese/Japanese/Thai/I Can’t Read That Language So I Have No Idea What It Is food you could possibly want. My favorite so far is this:

Which I can only assume is some kind of combination meat market/greengrocer.

Friends of my grandparents picked me up and took me to what I’m pretty sure is Mt. Eden, the tallest extinct volcano “in the area,” as Lonely Planet so helpfully puts it.

(All that grass is on the inside of the volcano. Apparently you’re not allowed to walk into the cone, but there IS a path in case you do).

I went up the Sky Tower (which, I learned is the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere! Weighs as much as 6000 elephants!) and, for the low, low price of $15 got to see 360º views of a rainy Auckland.

They have this thing called the “Sky Jump” which tethers you between two cables that run from the top of the tower down to the bottom, and allows you to fall (“controlled fall,” I’m sure) all the way down. How completely delightful. There’s also a sign in the observation deck that lets you know how long until the next person jumps, which is a little uncomfortable (“Jumper in 30 seconds!”)

There are glass – well, probably not glass, but some clear-but-dirty something or other – so you can look STRAIGHT down to the street.

They promise that the glass section is just as strong as the concrete, but I’m pretty sure that’s a Big Fat Lie.

I was pretty queasy the whole time I was up there.

Then, yesterday, after being distracted all morning by neat shops, I went to the zoo. You’ll be relieved to know that visitors to the Auckland Zoo are just as charming and delightful as visitors in the states (“See if you can pet the otter, honey!” “Here, why don’t you sit on the wall with your legs dangling in the animal pen! What a clever idea!” “Here, hippo, have some popcorn!” ).

They have a kiwi, which, being nocturnal, is kept in a completely dark room – so dark that my eyes didn’t adjust the whole time I was in there – and its pen is lit by a red light so you can really just see an outline. It was still cute. Kiwis are cute. They’re round and fuzzy and they toddle along, wobbling back and forth. Cute.

Click on this picture to browse through all my zoo pictures (as soon as I get them all uploaded, which may be a while. Check back often!

Or, if you prefer, in slideshow form.

Oh! And I was asked about the food! I haven’t had much of an appetite, and all my breakfasts have been at the hotel (corn flakes, toast), but I had Thai food (massamun curry) which was fine, and I ate at a pub (chicken and mushroom penne – though it wasn’t penne as I know it – in a pesto-and-cream sauce) and it was fine. I’ve also had more than one bag of “Grain Waves” chips, which are just like Sun Chips. But crunchier. And I had a toasted ham, cheese, and pineapple sandwich.

So, in conclusion, the food thus far as been unmemorable.

2007-09-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

Esquires Coffee Shop, Auckland, New Zealand

I'm having trouble writing about my trip without boring the hell out of myself, so here! Have some pictures!

2007-09-23T14:46:00.000-04:00

Aspen House, Auckland, New Zealand

It’s my first day in a new country, the farthest from home I’ve ever been, and I’ve spent the majority in bed, watching West Wing. I’m fine with this. The exorbitantly expensive cab that I took from the airport (note to self: it’s best to check for cheaper transportation options BEFORE one has left in a taxi) dropped me at the hotel just before 6am local time (2pm yesterday EST), and check-in wasn’t until 2pm. That left me 8 (OMG 8) hours before I could get into my room.

Since my phone works here (cingular connects with vodaphone – I just love technology) I rang my folks from the scruffy lounge area where they have a perpetually burning low, wide gas fireplace (hi people, it’s not that cold, kthx). With 7.5 hours to go I bought an hour’s worth of internet (at $7NZD -- $5.39USD) and checked email.

And still 7 more hours.

Breakfast was served at 7am, so I had some cold cereal and toast. 6.75 hours left. I took a walk. It being hideously early on a Sunday there wasn’t much open. Wandered with a really awful map down to Queen street (one of the big streets on the map), back up a hill, and back into the lounge with the stupid fireplace. 6 hours, fifteen minutes.

I asked the woman at the desk (who, while courteous, didn’t exude much enthusiasm) if there was any – any – way I could get into my room early. She said she’d let the cleaning person know – she’s usually fast – to clean my room first. With much singing of praises I went back into the stupid lounge with its stupid chairs.

An hour later (spent skimming my guidebook and debating whether it was a good idea to sleep on the awful, awful chair given the likelihood of drooling all over myself) I returned to the desk to check on my room status. I didn’t mean to be pushy; I was just so tired. Oh!, she said, they just started cleaning. But they know to get my room first. Okay.

Half an hour later I got to my teeny room, which, while worn, was clean, and – oh who CARES it had a BED thank you JESUS. I stripped down, I untucked the top sheet, I shuffled two of the flattest pillows I’ve ever seen –

And couldn’t sleep. Touché, New Zealand.

Thus it was that I decided that all I’m doing today is getting dinner and going to bed early. Everything else can be figured out later.

Notes on the shower: The water took so long to heat up that while waiting with my hand in the stream I wasn’t sure if it was getting warmer or if my hand was going numb. Why do you suppose the shower floor is a foot off the ground? Also, with the “hot/warm/cold/off” handle being centered around the shower nozzle, wouldn’t that really screw over short people? Final note: the handle moves way more quickly from “hot” to “cold” than it does from “cold” to “off,” so move out of the way before trying to shut off the damn water.

2007-09-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

San José, California, USA

"The flight today will be three hours and four fun-filled minutes."

I fell asleep at 12:30am (or thereabouts) and woke up at 4:26am (four minutes before my alarm was set to go off, also known as "before god early"). I was dreaming about arriving in New Zealand. In it dad was dropping me off -- we'd flown down together, and now he was driving me me to my hotel. He kissed me goodbye and I went in. It didn't look as good as the website, of course, and it turned out the price for 3 nights was $400 -- well above what was agreed. The clerk offered to get me acquainted, by which she meant handing me a menu of things happening at the hotel, including acting classes and an amateur production of "Clue" which may or may not have been starring Tim Curry (which wouldn't really make it amateur).

"If Houston wasn't in your travel plans, it is now."

I was seated behind a really... interesting family on the first flight. We have Young Grandma (YG), Young Mom (YM), Granddaughter (G), and Granddad (GD). YG and G showed up first, and G was plied with blankets, toys, and various other kid-er-phernalia. Then YM (I say young because she looked somewhere between 18-22) showed up, and they all sat down. Things were okay until just before the doors closed when YG half stood and started waving a piece of paper at the flight attendants. YM checked on something, then they sat down again. When the doors closed there was a panic -- something about GD, and is he on the plane? And he's in the gate! Can't they just open the door? YM started bawling and YG started praying fiercely. When he did get in, YG cheered.

G thought I was the most hilarious thing ever and spent most of the flight standing on her seat and looking/laughing/sitting down and occasionally handing me things (including drawings, a sticker from a banana, a dirty napkin, and a compass -- the kind you draw circles with)(it wasn't pointy like the compasses of my day). It was really charming for a while, and got really irritating around hour 2.

"We'll be through one more time to pick up any unneeded items: cash, unused credit cards, jewelry..."

Remember when I flew to Scotland on Continental and the food was okay? After taking a chance on what turned out to be the worst chicken nuggets, fries, and diet coke the world has ever experienced (Dear fast food industries: chicken nuggets shouldn't be soft), I was confident about throwing 97% of it away, since, as experience proved, the food on this flight would be halfway decent.

Y'all, how the hungry have fallen! Let's look, shall we?

Iceburg lettuce on the left. Natch. Peppercorn dressing (ick). And on the right? Can you read that?

"Crispy Pizza Crust Topped with Beef Steak, Green Peppers, Ranch Dressing, Mozzarella, Provolone, and Romano Cheese."

First of all, it wasn't crispy, and second, there is no one, anyone, ever, who could make that taste good. I'm pretty sure it was a dare, because I can't imagine anyone, boardroom or no, thought that was a good idea.

All the flights went well, though, and I managed to get my bag AND find the shuttle for the hotel. It was all going well until I opened the door to my hotel room -- okay, actually, I didn't much like the hotel, but whatever whatever -- I opened the door, and the bed was rumpled, there was a coffee mug on the sink, there were towels on the floor, and I wasn't totally convinced that the pile of blankets didn't contain a person, so I closed the door all fast, and booked it back to the counter. They were aghast and all got fixed.

Holy hell, y'all, I've been up since 1:30am here-time and it's 9:14pm now and I don't know how many hours or minutes or whatever it's been, but I am some kind of TIRED. I went to dinner with my aunt and cousin. We had Thai. It was good. Here, have a picture. I'm going to bed.

"Please keep your seatbelt fastened as we're taxiing. We've never had a passenger reach the gate before the plane and we'd like to keep it that way."¹

¹ All quotes courtesy of one of the flight attendants this morning.

2007-09-14T17:51:00.000-04:00

Philadelphia, PA, USA

Usually at this point I’m feeling mildly frantic, wishing the trip would just happen so I could stop thinking about it. I don’t feel that way this time. I don’t feel much of anything, in fact. Instead of racing around with a delightfully crazed look in my eye I’m playing solitaire, knitting, reading (not about NZ), and occasionally glancing at the pile of electronics, yarn, and books strewn over my bed. Also, I’ve done laundry.

This trip doesn’t feel real (I checked my plane tickets – it is). Maybe all the short trips I’ve taken lately have disguised the reality that I’ll be gone 3 months. Or maybe it’s because I’m going to California first, so it doesn’t seem like I'm actually going yet.

Either way it’s an interesting departure from the major dose of adrenaline I’m usually feeling now.

(Is it wrong that after feeling the cool fall air I’m a little disappointed to be heading into spring weather?)

2007-08-20T17:17:00.000-04:00

I have 11 minutes before my computer dies since neither I nor the hotel have a converter that works. Will either update tomorrow or when I get home, whichever involves power AND internet AND time first.

Lots of pictures, though.

2007-08-19T20:02:00.000-04:00

Hótel Hellissandur, Hellissandur, Iceland

At breakfast this morning they were playing the same damn song, still on repeat. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the people who work here.

Some cereal and gjetost¹ later we got into the car for the drive to Hvamm. Hellissandur is at the western end of the Snuffelupisberg² peninsula, and Hvamm is all the way around Hvammsfjord³. Directly it might be an easy trip. Going all the way around the fjord takes some time. Particularly when you’re stopping every few kilometers for a photo op.

Dad’s pretty taken with the countryside, but I find the colors dull and generally uninspiring. The mountains, while large, are so eroded that they look to be piles of dirt. Big piles, mind you, but piles none the less.

Which is not to say that someone who had a better night’s sleep might not feel differently. I’m pretty sure someone was moving furniture around the hotel until well after midnight last night.

The peninsula is deceptively long, and it took us nearly 2 hours to reach Bodahumfumfumfur⁴, one of the larger towns we would be passing. We were wondering, when we were maybe 45km away, whether or not we should try to make it all the way there. The drive had become tedious. Really tedious. After a delightful lunch of overcooked hotdog with suspect toppings and 2 pieces of decent apple pie from the local gas station (the pizza joint wasn’t open) we felt much better and continued on.

You have to put a lot of blind faith into these roads. First that just because it’s not paved doesn’t mean it’s not a main road, and second, that it really is wide enough for you and that car barreling in your direction.

First stop was Krosshólar⁵...

where Aud supposedly erected a bunch of crosses (she’d converted from Paganism to Christianity).

Now there’s a recently-erected stone cross that says something about her in Icelandic. Plans for translation are pending.

Then on to Hvamm – her settlement in Iceland – where there’s now a private farm and a sign with historical factoids (the last of which is completely baffling)⁶.

We took pictures,

scoured the ground for any very unlikely artifacts,

and took off back again.

(The uncountable islands)

Then to Kambsness (we think -- there wasn't a sign, though the map said it was right) where she'd lost her comb. It's now an airport so we couldn't get too close (though I'm pretty sure the security wasn't exactly rock-solid).

Finally we stopped to wander a black sand beach.

I tramped over some rocks and out onto a small cliff.

(Click for note)

(The view from the cliff)

We encountered some more arctic terns feeding their young. The adolescents would wait on the beach, and the parents would take off, find food, drop it in front of their babies, and head out for more. I’m sure human parents of teenagers can relate.

After some rest and relaxation we went back out to Olafswhatever ⁷ for dinner, noshed on some lamb and talked Aud (question: DID she take advantage of her stable boys after her husband died? Discuss). No “My Way,” but lots of 80’s American pop. Now it’s 8:30 and looks like 5pm outside.

Tomorrow, whale watching. Mmm!

¹ A caramel-flavored cheese that I never buy because it’s su-u-u-per expensive.
² Snæfellsnes
³ Hvammsfjör∂ur
⁴ Bú∂ardalur
⁵ ?
⁶ "Around the year 890 Unnur the Deep minded from Dögur∂ará settled the land between the outer edge of Hvammssveit and Skraumuhlaupsá in Hör∂adalur. She built her farm at Hvammur and for a long time after her kin lived there. Unnur was Christain.

The father of the Sturlunga-family, Sturla Þór∂arsson (1115-1183), lived at Hvammur. He was of the ninth generation counting from Unnur the Deep minded. His sons Þór∂ur, Sighvatur and Snorri were born there.

Ámi Magússon (1663-1730), professor and collector of manuscripts, grew up at Hvammur.

Priest would remain at Hvammur. Since the Reformation until 1944 only 15 priests held the position."
⁷Ólafsvík

2007-08-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

Hótel Hellissandur, Hellissandur, Iceland

Slept just fine, though woke up at 11:45 to a repeating rolling and banging crash. I first discerned if I was awake (yes), and figured out what the sound was (fireworks) and by the time my foot hit the floor to check the view it had finished. Bastard fireworks.

I woke up in the morning with two phone calls – the first from my dad at some early hour asking if I was ready for breakfast (I declined and went back to bed), then later saying that the Hertz car guy was there to pick us up (I directed him to my parents and went back to bed).

After eventual brekkie and re-packing we packed into the car and went back into center city. I picked up a slew of yarn for full-on cheap and we hit the settlement museum. It’s way high tech with table-top touch screen computers with ghostly figures wandering through old longhouses and clobbering seabirds (really).

(A mini longhouse)

It was culture day (which explained the fireworks) and there was a marathon going on. Cars got stuck at the crossroads where the runners were crossing and had to either wait or do u-turns.

(I just don't get running)

We bought some burgers from a grill set up on the sidewalk and started the drive up to Hellissandur. Some wrong turns, weaving roads and roller-coaster hills led to landscapes that I can only call “Colorado plus ocean.” Stark, yes; desolate, yes; charming, oh, you betcha.

The roads can be tricky – animals aren’t shy about, well, sitting smack dab in the middle. We nearly smacked into three sheep who decided that it would be very good, thank you, to pass right in front of our car.

(Sheep in the road)

Then there’s a stretch of road – with a warning sign, mind you – on which arctic terns like to chill. Their nests must be nearby and they must really enjoy the feel of concrete beneath their little toes, because they gravitate towards that road like it’s their job. And they’re not so good at getting out of the way of cars, unfortunately.

(not shown)

Finally we arrived at one of the tinier towns you’ve ever seen. Hellissandur, and its neighboring town Rif, containing a whopping 580 people. Total. There’s one hotel in Hellissandur which contains the one restaurant. We were checked in at the desk by a woman with a buzz cut save a tuft of hair fountaining out the back.

(Our very charming hotel)

We walked along the beach, though some fields for a while before returning back to our sparse rooms.

(The edge of Hellissandur)

Drinks and dinner in The Restaurant, where the gentleman serving us was charming, and they played the same song over and over again. One song. “My Way.” Played poorly on the piano. Over and over and over. It was impossible to tune out and made us laugh (with some hysteria) every time it re-started.

(I'll give you three guesses as to why that cliff is white-splotched. Click on the picture for the answer).

Now I’m in my room, watching the sun setting slowly over the sea (at 9:30pm) and watching “The Matchmaker” on TV (there are a whopping four channels and no paid movies).

For the record, in this tiny little Podunk town in Iceland I get full cell phone reception. No wireless internet here, though. Pah.

(The town of Hellissandur. The whole town of Hellissandur.)

2007-08-17T21:13:00.000-04:00

IcelandAir Hotel, Reykjavík, Iceland

Up late this morning (comparatively – 10 am is rather late for my parents), then off to center city Reykjavik.

(Mom and Dad)

I’m in my room and exhausted, and watching some bizarre British show in which women complain about things. Shopping with their teenage daughters, coffee shops, “Saturday girls”¹… I don’t get it but I love it. Now they’re talking about muffins and the fact that they’re huge. Damn you, muffins! Kids these days! You get off my lawn!

(Me)

Brekkie at a pub where they played jazz and Bob Marley. We wandered up the main shopping street (you know it’s the main shopping street because it has a sign that says “main shopping street”), all of us jet-lagged and tired, and just staring dazedly at all the clothing stores. It’s almost all clothing stores.

(Dad on the main shopping street)

I managed to find a few yarn shops, which pleased me more than a little bit, but didn’t find much else.

(Now I'll always know how to tie a tie.)

Oh! These women like gardening! This show is completely delightful.

We hit the National Museum of Iceland and scoured around for information about Aud the Deep Minded (which, by the way, is why we’re here). Didn’t learn much new, outside of that I pronounce her name so wrong that the museum worker didn’t know who I was talking about. She said it slowly, and there was a “th” sound and a rolling r in there that I just couldn’t quite make happen. There was spit involved. On my part. Accidentally. I am totally classy.

(Also, I am totally a viking.)

Now. The guidebooks had implied that the electrical outlets here were the same as those in the UK. For the record, this is a big fat lie. They’ve got two round pins. So, when dad’s camera battery died we trolled the shops for an electricity converter. Not finding one we went back to the hotel where I checked the converters I’d brought. The good news was that I had one with the two pins! The bad news is that their outlets are circular and recessed, and my adapter was rectangular and, um, not good for recession. The good news is that they had a converter at the front desk that we could use. The bad news is that we can’t take it with us. Which is also good as it weighs about 20 pounds. Which isn’t much of an exaggeration.

Plowing through a buffet dinner (YES GOOD BLUE CHEESE), I went to the pool and sauna², and now I’m spacing out. Tomorrow we head out to… Snufflesburg³.

Nothing too exciting.

¹ A young girl who works in a clothing shop only on Saturdays who traditionally knows nothing about the store in which they work. And doesn't care to know. And hates you.
² While I was lounging in the hot tub (ish? Thing? It was a shallow rectangular pool with jets on the long sides) watching wrestling on tv (it's what was on) the pool... guy? watcher-over-er? came by and warned me to watch the steps as some drunk young men had broken the tile. How you would break a tile in a hot tub is beyond me, but we both agreed that boys and alcohol don't mix. And then he turned on Charmed for me.
³ Snæfellsness.

2007-08-17T13:36:00.000-04:00

2:53am, IcelandAir Hotel, Reykjavík, Iceland

The worst damn airline food I've ever had. The brownie was good, though. Click for notes!

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much trouble getting from airport to hotel. We’d made the plans through Icelandair (via a travel agent) and our itinerary said we’d have a “meet and greet” at the airport. Maybe this is just American presumption, but I thought that “meet and greet” meant there’d be someone holding up a sign with our names on it. Not so much. It meant, rather, that we had to go to the information desk to find out that we had to go to the Iceland Excursions desk to get our vouchers for the bus to Reykjavík.

(Canada?)

Side note: you have to go through security again upon entering Iceland. Curious.

We were feeling a little snippy at this point, but we’d bought two bottles of wine at the post-flight-security Duty Free, so there was at least something to look forward to. Sandwiched between an Icelander chatting with some Canadians and a boorish American boy who would sometimes talk? As if everything was a question? By raising his tone? At the end of his sentences? And coughing liberally and phlegmiously, covering his mouth about 60% of the time. It was about an hour trip, offering plenty of opportunity to plan his untimely demise.

Finally, after a perplexing stop at the bus station, we arrived at the IcelandAir Hotel. Purportedly four star, though… not so much. It’s decent, but not four star by any stretch.

I walked into the room and, leaving the door open a crack, flipped the light switch. Nothing. I flipped it a few more times. Nothing. I walked in farther and flipped the switch on the bedside light. Nothing. There was a hum coming from the tv so I knew there was electricity SOMEwhere, but how? Switch under the tv, no; other lamp, no; hallway light again – yes! But why? And why is pressing the bottom part “off”? (Alternately, why is flipping an American light switch up “on”? Discuss). Either way, more than a little bizarre.

A minute later I realized… there’s no clock in the room. No clock. At all. This pains me. There’s a mini fridge and no clock. There are two q-tips in a tiny baggie, but no clock. A TV with 24-hour porn, and no clock. Remind me again how that was possibly a good idea?

Additionally, while the woman at the AT&T store assured us that our phones should work here the truth is that they don’t. This pains me severely, and not just because I use my phone to tell the time. I checked on the internet status and they do have wireless ($100KR/15mins, $300KR/hour) it’s only on the first floor. I’m on the second. No contact with the outside world. I’m feeling twitchy.

We had some wine and granola bars that my mom had stashed, and chatted away about crappy places we’d stayed before. Dad speculates that this will be a “character building” trip. I’m starting to think he’s right. We’re staying in 3 and 4 star hotels. If this hotel, with its lumpy pillows and bathless bathrooms (AND NO CLOCKS OMGWTF) is the 4-star standard I’m a little concerned about what 3 stars will bring.

Adventure indeed.

P.S. Must find out use for ashtray in "non-smoking" room.
P.P.S. Turns out that TV, while on, displays the time. Also, while on, emits low-level hum designed for absolute misery.
P.P.P.S. In the morning, the phone worked. Why?

2007-08-17T13:35:00.000-04:00

11:38am, JFK Airport, New York, USA.

We left the house this morning at a little after 8, and as tradition goes, since we allowed a ton of time there was no traffic and we breezed through security. I think this trumps all other early arrivals, though: this go-round we were four (OMFG FOUR) hours early.

The only glitch so far is that they only allow wooden knitting needles through security, and, naturally, all mine are metal. The only benefits are that 1. I figured this out BEFORE getting through security, and 2. since it meant I had to check my duffel (now with harmless needles!), I no longer have to lug it around. So it could be worse. I guess. In retrospect I should’ve thought of that eventuality.

I do wonder when airline security will realize that knitters are much less dangerous with their knitting than without it.

I’ve wandered the terminal, and entertainment consists of 1. coffee stand, 2. book/magazine shop, 3. another book/magazine shop, 4. some restaurants (only one of which is sit-down), and 5. a duty free shop.

On my right there’s a metal bar with electricity outlets and an Ethernet port for “complimentary high speed internet access.” Keen, I naively thought! I bet they have wireless!

And they do! For a mere $8. And do I have an Ethernet cord so I could take advantage of the purportedly free plug-in internets? No. Fantastic!

In the meantime, we board at 1:30. Two hours to go. Maybe I could go wander the duty-free shop again. Or maybe the magazine stand. Mm.

2007-08-15T11:02:00.001-04:00

Philadelphia, PA USA

Tomorrow my folks and I leave for Iceland. My parents picked up three (3!) guidebooks and every few hours we pick one up and browse through it. The ~~only~~ problem is that we can only pronounce about one place/person name in ten, which makes for very tricky communication.

"Well, we're going to be in... hhhhhhh... Snuffelupagus¹, right? So that's where... Bredafjorder?² is. And there's Helgafell near -- oh for the love of god³."

It's been very entertaining.

Meanwhile it's going to be a high of 50-some degrees Fahrenheit during the day (down to the forties at night) (plus mostly cloudy and maybe rainy!), so I'm stocked up on woolens.

We're spending 2 nights in Hellissandur, which, with its neighbor Rif have a whopping population of 580 people. According to Lonely Planet: Iceland it has a petrol station, a post office, AND an ATM. And a maritime museum.

Sweet! Love those maritimes.

Itinerary for tomorrow:

Ass early: Wake up, shower.
7am: Dogs to boarding kennel.
8am: We get picked up.
Forever: Drive to the New York airport.
2pm: Fly to Iceland.
Forever: Continue flying.
Some horrible hour: Customs etc.
After that: meet up with Iceland Air person who should hopefully be there to meet us and get our rental car.
A freaking hour later: Arrive at hotel in Rakey-a-vik⁴.

(Though to be sure there's no easy way to get to Iceland from here).

¹ Snæfellnes
² Brei∂afjör∂ur
³ Stykkishólmur
⁴ Reykjavík.

2007-07-25T16:51:00.001-04:00

Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Two very classy people have observed to me how nice it must be to have a daddy who funds big trips.

Yes it would be, I would respond if I were a quicker thinker, except that I'm paying for this myself. (also, I might add, why couldn't it be a mommy who funds a big trip? Huh? Huh?).

And then, since we're in dreamland, I blow a big ol' raspberry in their face, kick them in the shins, and settle comfortably into smug superiority. Suckers.

A lot of people have told me that I'm so brave for undertaking this big trip alone, and what I try to explain, and what they don't care to listen to, is that for me, trotting off on some big trip is MUCH less scary than the thought of staying somewhere for longer than, say, a year at a time.

Paying a mortgage? Getting a pet that lives longer than six months? Having some variety of career? No, no, no. No thank you. I will take my rented apartment, my temp job, and keep my browser on travelocity. Yes I will.

So I might have some issues with long-term commitment. The concept of owning a house is both terrifying and more depressing than I'd care to contemplate. I'm hoping I'll eventually break out of this.

I still don't know what I'm going to do when I get back. It's looking likely that I'll come back to NC (if for no other reason than my friends just might kill me if I don't). My great plan, you see, is that while in NZ I will have an epiphany (did you know you can plan them? I have decided that you can) as to the best career direction ever. Then, when I come back to the states, I can get working on it.

That is my plan. It's foolproof.

Also, today I purchased my plane tickets for California. Oddly enough it was cheaper to buy three one-way tickets than it was to book a multi-destination trip. Go figure.

2007-07-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

Winston-Salem, NC

Yesterday I turned in my three weeks' notice. Last week I bought some of my plane tickets.

I should maybe start at the beginning.

The plan, post-Scotland, was always to get away again. Everything I did was temporary -- 6 month rental agreement, temp job, lackadaisical housecleaning habits (I might move at any minute!). Then somehow I'd been working at my job -- my mindless, sunless, corporate, well-paying job -- for a year, my driver's license said I was a NC resident, and I didn't have a damn clue about where to go next.

Because nowhere sounded interesting. Well, that's not entirely true. I was excited about the prospect of going to France, briefly. And then Italy, briefly. Enthusiasm waned -- I wanted somewhere warm, and at the end of it all nowhere sounded exciting.

Really. Nowhere.

I'd stayed in one place too long, my job drove me crazy, and I was depressed. Am depressed. I've been swing dancing once in the past six months (outside of my trip to Scotland) (this may have more to do with the quality of Greensboro dancing than my mood). I still contra dance every Tuesday, but I sit out plenty of dances (it helps that we haven't gotten many exciting bands lately). Lately I've even stopped answering the phone for most people.

While Greensboro felt dull and confined, I couldn't find anywhere else to tempt me. Finally I just settled on New Zealand. My grand reasoning was that I knew it was beautiful landscape and with the immediate searches coming up with 24 hours worth of plane rides to get there, there was absolutely no way I'd be going for a week's visit.

I emailed Lizza, who was spending a year abroad there. I emailed a Kiwi knitblogger. I browsed Lonely Planet. I'm still not excited.

In the end I knew I just had to pick somewhere and go. And so I am. New Zealand, fine. Tickets, fine. I don't know where I'm staying -- or even in what city. And that's fine.

(Though I am feeling nervous).

Yesterday I turned in my three weeks' notice and announced to the litigation support staff that I was leaving. The reaction was mostly shock, sadness, and envy. Since everyone else has families, pets, and houses they can't really pack up and leave for four months.

To be in NZ longer than 3 months you need a visa. I'll be there 87 days.

I am afraid of:
-Not having enough money
-Being out of touch with people (it's a 12-13 hour time difference)
-A 12-fucking-hour plane ride
-Making friends that I won't be able to easily visit
-Heights.

I don't know:
-What to do about my driver's license
-What the fuck I'm doing when I get back.

I'm excited about:
-Sleeping in
-it being springtime when I get there
-Sunshine.

Current plan:

August 11/12: Leave NC for Philadelphia.
August 16-23: Iceland with my folks
September 16-21: California
September 21: Leave for NZ.

Spend some time in Auckland. Visit Wellignton and Christchurch, pick a place to live.

December 19: Return to CA
December 20: Back to Philly.

January: Back to NC?

Quality.

2006-08-07T14:21:00.000-04:00

Chapter 2, in which I actually leave!

I went home, had a screwdriver, and slept. My phone rang. I looked at the number, which started with +46.

Herrang!

I picked up the phone and leaped out of bed. Phone calls are better standing up. Shut up, they totally are. Especially at 4am. Yes, oh yes, it was 4am. I should be at the Stockholm airport. Oh god, they're probably at the airport waiting for me. They didn't get my message!

The woman on the phone was very kind and asked if I was still coming. Yes, yes, I said. "I emailed! I emailed. And the rain! Oh, the rain and the waiting! I missed my flight." She was confused: someone else had come through on the Newark-Stockholm flight (oh, thank god she didn't drive all the way out to the airport just for me). Yes! I exclaimed! I never made it out of Greensboro. Ahh, she said. I gave her my new information, finally confident that I would indeed be picked up when I got there, and went back to bed.

In the morning DJ picked me up and drove me to the airport in his Massive Van. At first he gave me a bit of flack for my giant bag, and then praise when he found out it was full of camping stuff.

I went, as I do, to the self check-in, a little gun shy now. And it didn't find my reservation. My heart seized even as I read that it might be because my tickets had been changed so much. All I had to show for my tickets was a bit of paper from a dot matrix printer with a slew of characters that made no sense to me but theoretically meant I was getting to Sweden. Right? RIGHT?

I handed the bit of paper (complete with holes on the sides! Remember that? Aw, memories...) and he got on the phone and talked very quietly to someone. So quietly I couldn't hear him. Breathing, breathing. "It's going to work out, right?" I asked him. "It should," he replied.

It should?!

In the end I got my tickets and went through security (a different terminal this time! What fun!), and managed to get on the plane and off to Philadelphia. Step one was finally completed, and it only took me two days.

Finally in the air!

I realized that I hadn't told Andrea that she shouldn't pick me up on Friday, so I called her and related my Tragic Tale of Woe, and asked if she could switch the pickup date to Saturday, knowing that since she had family in town, the answer was likely no. She couldn't, and that was fine. So I called Kate and we talked for ages, and if you were in the Philadelphia airport last Sunday and saw a woman doubled over with laughter in the magazine store, hi, that was me.

And I decided that since it was after noon, and since I had been so harangued (har!) by the elements, I deserved this:

I chatted with a nice punk couple and another gentleman at the bar. We were all on the same flight. Punk couple was going on a whim for his birthday present (she was a modern dancer -- didn't see that one coming), other gentleman was catching up with his fiancee who performs on cruises. He'd catch the cruise and tool around the ocean with her. Neat.

It's possible I also had a beer in addition to the martini.

They squeezed us on the plane, and I found myself in an aisle seat. Ick. I tried to get comfortable enough to sleep, but HAH!, I laugh! Yes. I laugh.

There were movies, though! "Firewall" and "The Shaggy Dog." Dear god. I watched more of them than I'd care to admit. Why would they show those? I mean for serious. On British Air we got our own screen and a selection of movies. Not so much on US Air. Bah.

And dinner! There was dinner. I chose the beef instead of the pasta, because I am incredibly stupid. The "meal" consisted of this:

(Pardon the blur: the woman next to me was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her). Let's explore this meal, shall we? Up at the top left you'll see, sitting at an angle, a sponge, or what US Air likes to call "bread." It came with butter, which had melted in the bottom of the tray. Underneath that you'll see two crackers which came with a slice of cheese, packaged in indestructible plastic.

The top right corner contains a "salad" (unseen), which, as I can recall, consisted of iceburg lettuce and carrot bits. For your eating pleasure, there was some kind of dressing provided, pictured middle. I don't remember what variety it was, but I do remember it was "lite."

And now, the -- ah ha, ah hahaha -- meat of the matter. Let's take a closer look:

To your left, modeled by the beautiful spork, we have canned green beans and corn, which wouldn't be crisp if you froze them. To the right we have shredded beef in brown goo. And the middle! Well, that's my favorite. That, my friends, is a mashed potato log. It was cylindrical. Yes it was. I imagine that it also came out of a can.

Apparently US Air is catered by Schoolroom Lunches, Inc.

I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep, since I had nothing to lean on, and the space in front of me was too small to put the tray table down and rest on that. Can you imagine? Too small to lean forward!

So I alternated between resting my head on the seat in front of me, twisting left, twisting right, giving up on sleeping, watching the movies, feeling pain from said movies, and repeating. It wasn't until an hour before we landed that I got comfortable enough to sleep. Isn't that funny? I also was laughing.

Upon landing I breezed through customs (the Swedes are so civilized -- the one line I had to wait in was only two people deep), found my bag and my ride, got exceptionally confused at the ATM (7 kr to the dollar -- you have ten seconds to try and figure out how much you'll need for a week. Go!), and set off for camp!

There wasn't much to say about the ride except that 1. a half of a bee flew in through my window almost immediately upon leaving the airport (fiddle de dum, a-fiddle dee dee, Eric the half a bee), and 2. it mostly looked like this:

But I'd made it. It took me three days, but I made it to Sweden. The end. For now.

2006-08-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Herrang was a very surreal experience. I slept three times a day, saw some intermingling of Edinburgh, Greensboro, and Raleigh friends, enjoyed 19 hours of sunlight, always caught sunup AND sundown, camped alone for the first time (as alone as you can be with 50 other tents packed around yours) -- it was a strange and generally wonderful time.

Since it was such a dream-like trip (you don't try to explain it, you just stand back and watch) and since I seem to have lost my Magic Free Internet at home I'm going to update with little vignettes, as much as I can write at work. And then update somewhere else, as I would prefer to not get fired for blogging at work.

I have never had so much trouble getting somewhere. The intention, back in the good old days, was to leave on Saturday (Greensboro - Newark - Stockholm) and then return Friday (Stockholm - Newark - Greensboro) in the horribly early morning. Kate and her mom dropped me off, and I tripped prettily into the airport with no idea of the Stupid that lay ahead.

As predicted I got my tickets easily and breezed through security, leaving a solid hour-and-some before boarding. But what's this? Flight delayed? Eep. There didn't seem to be anyone from Continental in the terminal, so I waited. And waited. Finally a woman showed up and I asked how long the delay was. She didn't know. Storms in Newark. BIG storms. Would I would still make my connecting flight? Maybe not, she said. You should go check at the ticket counter.

I booked it back to the ticket counter, where there was a line (excellent). I waited more in the long, slow, jumbled line to talk to one of the two people at the counter. When I finally got to the front, near tears that I might miss my flight and miss my trip to Sweden because the camp is only open for another week and I only have a week off work and it's already a short trip as it is and do you know what a miracle it was that I could take this trip at all and COME ON, PEOPLE, I NEED SOME ASSISTANCE HERE AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP BEING SO PERKY WHEN I AM SO CLEARLY UPSET.

A friendly gentleman assured me that I had plenty of time to catch my flight, and that I may indeed stop freaking out now.

So BACK through security, back to my gate. And at, oh, 4pm (a mere two hours after we were supposed to leave, and enough time where if-we-left-right-then-I-could-still-make-my-flight!) we got to board the plane and we taxied out -- and we waited. And waited. For an hour and a quarter. I missed my chance to make the Sweden flight in Newark. I called to see if it was still running on time, what with the storms and all, and it did. It left on time. Without me.

When we returned to the terminal I returned one more time to the ticket counter to see what they could do, and hello, freaking out some more! I needed to contact Herrang and let them know I wouldn't be on the flight, but I didn't know how because I didn't have a way to call internationally and I didn't have email access! I needed to GET TO SWEDEN, DAMMIT!

So near tears! So very near tears. I started wrapping a bit of elastic around my fingers so that I wouldn't start bawling in front of the Continental counter. When I was finally linked up with someone who worked there I started chatting with a couple who were on a later flight to Newark which had been cancelled. They sympathized with me as I waited for the Continental woman to search for ways to get me overseas. A friend of theirs was dying and so they were going to go visit him. Now they couldn't get there (and didn't want to drive). "This is going to kill him," she'd said.

Ha HA ha ha, I said, in the most awkward way possible.

She decided to keep me on the flight to Newark (which hadn't been cancelled), then they'd put me up in a hotel in NJ (super awesome of them, since they're not required to do anything for me as it's a weather problem), and I'd take the same flight out the next day, and she even changed my return date to Saturday so I didn't lose any Sweden time. This was pretty groovy. I asked if she had internet, and she let me go behind the Official Counter and use theirs. I emailed the camp saying hi! Not going to make it tomorrow, but look for me on Monday, please! Please dear god I hope you get this email!

And so it was that I went through security for the third time, and returned to the gate. Every once in a while they would announce one of two things over the loudspeaker:
1. We'll have an update in an hour, or
2. We'll have an update in a half-hour.

They wouldn't cancel, but eternally promised updates. Little by little people drifted away to take different flights. I stuck around, because so long as I got to Newark by 5:35pm the next day I was sorted. But I wondered if there was there any other option.

I checked to see if they could get me to Newark on another flight/airline/ANYTHING PLS -- or even to Sweden in a different way, but there was just nothing. Apparently there was a storm over every international airport on the east coast, and since it was Saturday there weren't many flights anyway. They could send me Greensboro - Detroit - Amsterdam - Stockholm, which would still have me leaving on Sunday, and would still get me into Stockholm on Monday, at 9am instead of 8:45am. I declined for now, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the flight would go out.

But the stress was so bad that I went into the bathroom and I cried. I cried hard. Tears dripped down my nose and landed between my feet -- it was all very melodramatic. But it'd been hours of waiting on tenterhooks -- are we going to go, would I make the flight, how would I get there, how do I let them know, would I make it at all, and GOD I just realized how much this trip means to me -- and it was just completely miserable.

When I finally emerged I found the cleaning woman standing outside the door to the bathroom, waiting patiently for me to be finished. Oops. Hi!

At least the sky was pretty.

The problem with this flight was that we had to be "wheels in the belly" (i.e. in the air) by 8:58pm or we weren't going. If we left after that then the pilot, who had come out to chat with us, would have "gone pumpkining."

Travel factoid!
Pilots have a set number of hours they can fly. If they don't take off in that time (and they mean off the ground), then they're flying illegally, which is going pumpkining. Because after midnight you turn into a pumpkin. Like the story. Get it? Right.

The pilot was based in Newark, so he was keen to go, which is likely why they wouldn't cancel. And then, at around 7:30pm, it started to rain. And rain.

See the sheets of rain? Well, I could.

Blurry rain!

And this little girl was very cute and well-behaved:

I think she was watching "Finding Nemo."

I talked to my parents for a long time as they bolstered my confidence about the damn flight. Sobbing helped calm me down a bit, and I got back in line to see if there were any other options for flights. She found me a Greensboro - Philadelphia - Stockholm US Air flight leaving Sunday around 11am, getting in around 8am Monday. Also a relief, though I'd wait to see what happened.

Cut to 8:30pm. There were a dozen of us left, optimistic to the end. It was pouring rain, with thunder and lightning, but it looked like we might be able to make it! We gathered around the desk and joked around, full of anticipation, as the Continental women (one of whom had been there since 4:30am -- give that woman a medal) and the pilot called a thousand Airline people, begging them to let us go.

One guy who was in a set of teens who gave me zero hope for the future said it'd been the worst day of his life. I looked at him, aghast. "This is the worst day of your life? This?" I asked. "Boy are you lucky." "Yeah," he said.

I don't think he got what I was trying to say.

I started to give up the ghost, and the Continental woman started setting up my flight through Philadelphia, when the metaphorical winds started to change!

It was 8:45 and they looked like they might be able to sneak us out! But we had five minutes to board! "We can board that quickly!" we cried. "In fact, we're already on the plane!" Continental woman promised to fix my tickets -- I should just go and she'd take care of it all. And we raced out, threw ourselves in seats, and got the safety lecture. The Continental women waved and gave thumbs-up as the boarding ramp pulled away, and I pulled out Sky Mall magazine and buzzed with excitement and a little worry that HELLO, GIANT LIGHTNING STORM, but whatever!

You have to wonder when to take so many disasters as a hint. Perhaps the universe is trying to say something.

But us! On the plane! All of us! Seatbelts and everything!

And then the ramp pulled back. Oh dear. Yup. Cancelled. That was it. We were so close. So very, very close.

Continental woman fixed my tickets for GSO-PHL-STO for Sunday, and I trudged back past security one last time. In the end it's for the best. I could sleep in my own bed, I still got the same amount of time in Sweden, and I wouldn't have to fly through lightning storms. So okay.

I called Pete, got my bag, and went home. DJ would give me a ride in the morning, and thus it was that the number of people driving me to/from the airport was up to 5.

In our next episode, I actually get farther than spitting distance from my apartment! Stay tuned.

2006-07-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

Airport arrival: 1pm

Airport departure: 10pm

Number of plane boardings: 2

Number of phone calls to parents, updating status: 30

Number of times through security: 3

Number of flight changes: 435

Number of storms: 2

Number of convenient flights: 3

Number with empty seats: 0

Number of sobbing sessions in airport bathroom: 1

Number desired: 49

Miles traveled: 0

Hours until next flight: 12

2006-07-21T19:01:00.000-04:00

The pile of clothes (look how small! So exciting!):

The space left in my bag after putting in my camping stuff:

2006-07-21T18:51:00.000-04:00

New note the first: as I was on my way to the bathroom (giving myself a break from all this internet perusal) I recognized a feeling that I've Had Before! It was the good god, this trip needs to HAPPEN already so I can stop thinking about it!

New note the second, in which I embarrass myself slightly: I called Cingular becuase their website was entirely unhelpful, and was directed to Michael in some effort to talk me through the confusion that is international calling with my cellular ~~hand growth~~ phone. He was entirely delightful, funny, AND helpful. Oh, how we laughed! I miss him already.

Anyway. I got most of my information, and then as we were saying goodbye (good times do end... alas...) he said to have a good trip, and I said, "You too."

I hate it when I do that.

Work is over in 30 minutes, even though the last person who I go to for stuff to do left an hour and a half ago. I wish to also leave pls.

That is all.

2006-07-21T18:40:00.000-04:00

Emily in Europe, part 2: The Swedening!

I've had that title in my head for days. It still causes internal amusement. Hee.

Doctor: Mrs. Vanderboodle, you seem to be suffering from acute internal amusement. I'm afraid you have 20 minutes to live.

Chapter one, in which I am a little punchy.

Or whatever. I'm at work. I'm running on adrenaline and 2 cups of coffee. Be quiet. Also, someone broke the internet and I am Miffed. But that's why I'm finally writing this and not reading the complete archives of another knitting blog in that way that I do, um, constantly. Hee.

So. A little over a month ago I was bored at work (like today!) and perusing the internet (like I WAS doing, stupid computer) and had a whim to check what it would cost me not if I went to Sweden for Herrang.

For those of you who are not In The Know, in the month of July the tiny town of Herrang, Sweden becomes a mecca for swing dancers worldwide. There's a camp there that is flocked upon by crazed dancer types. Classes are held, famous people (well, in the swing world) are flown in – it's chaos. I, personally, knew about 5000 people who were going. But, alas, I didn't sign up because, when everyone else was making their plans in May, I didn't have a job. This meant:

1. If I got a job by then there's no WAY they'd let me just take a week off immediately upon starting work, and
2. If I didn't have a job by then I wouldn't be able to afford it.

Finally I did find a job, and I became chief file monkey of the second floor of Giant Law Firm. I listened to my friends make their plans for Sweden and felt Envy, but was pleased to have a job. I heard that some of my Edinburgh-based friends were going. I lamented (lament! There was repetitive head-to-wall contact) not being able to see them, particularly since many of them are looking to move soon. That = not getting to see them all in one place again which also = bad. There would be North Carolina dancers there, too, but that, well, was less of a concern.

Which is when we return to a month ago! Looking up what it would cost me to go to Sweden and see lovely people!

Turned out that for all my travel and living costs (here to there, plus their "limousine" fare from the airport to camp and back again, including camping or getting a bunk there which, technically = free) would be about $1100 (slightly less than what my friends were paying months ago). I had $6500 in the bank. This was totally plausible. Holy sheep.

I wouldn't take classes because it'd be an extra $500 and I wouldn't be there the whole week, with flights working out the way they do (arrive before-god-early in the morning on Sunday, leave just-kill-me-now early on Friday morning). BUT for 200 kroner a night (about $30) I could social dance from about 9pm until 8am (after 2am it's free). This is fine by me, because Annie sent me an email today reminding me of that fact, and that the dance floor's too crowded to move until 4am anyway.

I will just remain on east coast time! No jet-lag for me!

The trick, of course, is getting that time off work. This was infinitely harder considering I'd just asked for the second week of August off for the yearly family vacation to Colorado. What kind of company would let me take another week off work?

This company, apparently. Their attitude is that because I'm temp and Low on the Totem Pole of Law, I can take off any time (within reason), so long as there don't appear to be any major crises on the horizon.

And so it was that I got the first week of July off.

Dear Job!
I love you, and your vacation-enabling!
Love!
Emily!

BUT WAIT, you type in the Capitalization of Excitement! It is now well past the first week of July, and you are just writing about the beginning of… the trip… is – is that right? What's going on. Damn you.

Calm down, internet.

Here's how it went:

I needed someone to convince me to buy the tickets, because it's skeery to 1. spend assloads of money, and 2. go to Europe. So I called my folks.

Dad first, and the conversation went approximately as such:

Me: I can go to Sweden for a week for 1/6 of what I have in my bank account. It would enable seeing awesome people and dancing awesomeness and also, hi, Sweden. Should I go?

Dad: Um, YES. Omg, hawsome. Go now.

And with mom:

Me: I can go to Sweden for a week for 1/6 of what I have in my bank account. It would enable seeing awesome people and dancing awesomeness and also, hi, Sweden. Should I go?

Mom: I don't understand. Why is that a question? Are you listening to yourself?

I love my parents.

Travelocity was sought and tickets were purchased! I sent out an email to Scotland-related folks and said "OMG I'm going! Who else is going to be there the first week??" This is, of course, when the universe laughed and me, and I got responses from all of them saying, "That's great! But um, I'll be there the fourth week."

Shit. The main reasons I'll be there and I'll be missing them by three weeks. No doubt it'd cost me $100 to change the tickets, and [expletives deleted because it'd just take up too much space]. Travelocity was called and I was connected with a very nice woman in India, where it was 5am. Ouch.

I said I wanted to change my tickets, and she said it'd cost up to $250 plus the additional cost of the new tickets.

Heep! I love my friends, but is seeing them worth the additional $250? Is… is it? Oh dear…

Painful shudder!

She pulled up my records, and lo, the universe smiled upon me, and she said that since it was less than 24 hours since I'd bought the tickets she could just void them and I could purchase new ones. It'd just cost $10 for the nonrefundable Traveocity fee from the original purchase.

I made her repeat that 5 times and then got it in writing because it sounded too good to be true. Buying $1000 plane tickets twice in two days and being wrong is a terrifying thing. I checked my bank account many times over the next few days, though, and it seemed to work out. Phew.

Excitement abounded! New camera was purchased! Emails were sent! Bragging commenced, which led to gentle haranguing (get it? It sounds like Herrang! Ah-ha!) from co-workers, with my excessive vacationing in exotic locales!

Here it is, then, a month later (it's today, even). I leave tomorrow.

HOLY CRAP I LEAVE TOMORROW.

Okay, breathe, Emily, breathe. HEEE HUGHHHH, HEE HUGHHHHH.

My parents were good enough to send all our camping equipment, dutifully purchased a decade ago and used exactly never. (Side note: why the hell is camping stuff so huge and bulky? What is WRONG with you people?). They also sent little gifties like a super-absorbent towel and a keychain LED flashlight which is little but mighty like a rambunctious kitten. Turns out the flashlight, while appreciated and delightful (har! DeLIGHTful! It is TOO funny, shut up) will not, um, be much use. It being Sweden, and it being summer, it's dark from 11pm to 3am. Which is when dancing happens. Ha! I laughed. And bought an eye mask for sleeping.

(I just realized I'm having mac and cheese and apple juice for lunch. Hi, I am four!)

After many discussions with C4 at work about camping and what to bring (she lent me stuff! She gets a t-shirt!) I have made stacks of post-it note-style lists, brought the wrath of my debit card down upon Target/CVS/Great Outdoor Provision Co, scrounged the internet for some (ANY) relevant information, and made piles of "to-bring" stuff in my apartment. When I was not hiding from it all by burying myself in the couch and knitting.

See, I'm not totally sure what to pack because while there are approximately infinity number of pictures on the web of Herrang, none of them involve 1. the campsite, and 2. any of the buildings! I-do-not-know-what-is-available-to-me. So do I pack everything? Or nothing, and then buy what I need for many many ~~dollars~~ kroner? (Kroners?)

Conclusion: I DON'T KNOW. I will pack what fits, and leave whatever doesn't. I will pack my knitting first.

Tonight's agenda: run around my apartment as adrenaline replaces the water in my body. Pack things until totally insane (estimated: seven minutes), then give up and go traveling super-back-to-nature-style with my passport and debit card. All will work itself out later. What? Debit cards = nature. Shut up.

Actually, that's sounding really good.

2006-01-27T11:42:00.000-05:00

I’d traveled before this trip: over the States and into Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, the UK, France, Scandinavia, college – you get the idea – and I’d never had culture shock. Granted, I’d never stayed in a one-room hut with 30 other people in the middle of the jungle, but these places were, um, different in their own ways. Anyway, I wrapped myself in a cozy blanket of being too flexible, too adaptable, too smug to get culture shock.

Ho ho ho. The cars here are so huge. Irrationally huge. Well, they’re not now that I’ve been driving my monstrous beast around, but for the first few days I felt incredibly short. Shorter than usual.

That was fine and good, and then we went to the grocery store.

General stores and food stores over there are pathetic. While in the US I can go to a decent Harris Teeter or Whole Foods (oh Whole Foods, how you ruin me, with your impulse purchases) and get everything I need with one stop – including potting soil. It’s impossible to find potting soil in Edinburgh. You’d think that a country so into gardening would have easily accessible potting soil.

But to get my usual groceries I’d go to Sainsbury’s, which was a close, decent grocery store. But they don’t have large packs of asparagus or gorgonzola cheese (despite their advertisements for it), so I’d have to go to Marks & Spencer to get it. And I wouldn’t want to carry a 2-litre bottle of coke all that way, so I’d have to go to the corner store on the way home. And the drugstore for vitamins. I’d have to visit five stores and still wouldn’t get everything I need.

Now I can go to one store and get much more than I need.

So we’re in the grocery store, after many hours of sitting in a plane and then more time in the car. There’s a five hour time difference and I’m a little half-brained. And wide-eyed and agog at all the variety and choice and look! Potting soil! And the soups! If there’s anything the Scottish can’t do it’s canned soup. Progresso is a godsend. Heinz soup is hideous.

All the fresh fruit and veg! The obscurely-flavored potato chips! (We have flavors like “ranch” – they have flavors like “roasted chicken with thyme.” For chips! Really!). Flowers and plants and gallons of milk and giant jugs of OJ.

Their cheese selection was lame and their gorgonzola had half the flavor that British blue cheese does, but that’s for another entry.

It’s kind of nice being back in a place where I know how to find things, though there is the problem of excess. Ah, well.

2006-01-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

In the last week or so of my trip I panicked and became determined to go travel somewhere. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get that urge earlier, but you do what you have to do. My last two days came down to 1. going to Glasgow to get my father’s Christmas present(s), and 2. going to the grassmarket in Edinburgh. Cute shops.

My plans were altered, though, when I got a call from Ben (of BenAndHelen) asking if I wanted to go dry skiing. I’m quite a fan of skiing – the downhill, through-the-snow variety, and was intrigued.

What the hell is dry skiing? Excellent question. I’d never heard of it, and neither had Ben, but it sounded interesting, relatively cheap (£11 per 2 hours, including rentals), and so phenomenally absurd that we had to try it.

A bus ride, boots, skis, and poles (without the bottom guards, for some reason) later, we were standing on gray carpet, waiting for the lift. It was an old school lift, one I only recognize from Archie comics from the 50’s. You grab a short pole with a disc on the bottom and jam it between your legs. When the cord attaching it to the upper cable catches then you get jerked up the hill. And it was a hill. Not a mountain. Those kinds of lifts take some thigh effort to hang on. And they’re totally phallic. There was a chair lift, too, but that’s not interesting.

Anyway. From afar it looks like the slope is covered in a mat of dirty snow. When you get closer – well. Imagine, if you will, a kitchen brush. One with a handle and plastic bristles. Imagine those bristles as a carpet, in mesh form. That’s about what it’s like. It’s the snow version of Astroturf. It’s called Dendix. The benefit of this bizarre invention being that you can ski year-round, even when it’s really warm out. The problem being that, as one ski teacher told us, it’s about the worst surface you can possibly ski on.

You know, he was right.

Because it’s a mesh rather than a full carpet, skis tend to bump along instead of gliding smoothly. This killed my knees. It grips more than snow, so you have to overcompensate – at least when you’re getting used to it – and this often makes you fall down. And oh, heavens. Falling is so miserable. There’s the initial problem of falling on plastic bristles. They go right through your clothing and poke you, and if you’re going at any speed they can leave a wicked burn. Equipment Rental Man had a noteworthy 8-inch scab on his forearm. I saw one young boy do a face plant on the ground. It scared my heart into stopping briefly.

The other problem with falling is that there’s no padding. Falling on snow? Not so bad! You get some snow up your pants and down the back of your shirt and it’s okay. Falling on ice isn’t thrilling, but at least there’s usually some snow underneath that to help cushion a bit. Dry skiing? No padding. None. Other than what you have on your body, and I had everyday trousers and a thin jacket. Not only are you falling on frozen ground, but you’re also falling at some speed. Usually. Which means slamming onto frozen ground covered in plastic prickles. Thus, giant bruises. And tiny, pinprick-looking bruises! They were cute! After they stopped hurting, I mean.

And the hill? Very steep at the top. The lift is interesting in that you have options of where you want to get off – a third of the way up, most of the way up, or at the top. Usually we stuck to a third-to-most of the way up, but once we decided to go to the top. Bad move. Such a bad move. So steep, this hill was! And the thought of falling at any sort of speed was terrifying. I can sort of handle steep slopes on snow, but if you take a bad turn on this you could break your neck with no trouble at all. I think someone did recently. I spent most of my time at the top shuffling down slowly, keeping parallel to the hill.

Merely skiing on plastic with smooth-bottomed skis isn’t enough, apparently, and so they need some way to lubricate the pot-scrubber surface. How would you do that? Well, I learned this the hard way. I was skiing down the hill, minding my own business and glaring at the kids swishing down the slopes with incredible ease, when I got sprayed in the face with water. Oh yes. They have misters underneath the Dendix that occasionally send up some water to make skiing easier. Or so they claim.

Getting water in the face is arresting enough, but it’s made worse by the fact that it was cold that day, and ice crystals formed on the bottoms of my trousers and made falling painful and wet.

There were good things, though! The view! It was incredible! You could see all of Edinburgh, ending with the Salisbury Crags in the distance and the Firth of Forth beyond. As it got darker more and more lights came on, creating a sparkling carpet of land. The moon was heavy and round – full – and draped in clouds. I would’ve happily stood there for hours, just watching the yellow moon rising over the city.

And I had my camera! What a stroke of brilliance and luck! Except that I didn’t have my memory card with me! So no pictures for me! Or you! Photos aren’t allowed anyway, though they don’t explain why, not that it would’ve stopped me.

Eventually I got used to it and could zip down (most of) the hill with little problem. Once the novelty had worn off, though, it wasn’t much fun. Ben and I lasted about an hour and a half before hiking the kilometer back down to the bus stop. On the bus we made friends with some rambunctious girls who were thrilled with Ben’s accent. Not so much with mine.

I was sore for days. It was fantastic. But I wouldn’t really recommend it.

2006-01-15T22:33:00.000-05:00

I’m back in North Carolina for the first time in over five months. It’s not that long a time, but it certainly feels like an age. Things look the same, and I still generally know my way around. I had dinner with Beth and Brendan, and things immediately reverted to our old college ways. I’m back at Andrea’s (for a few days) and Mel is still hogging my lap.

I feel so uncomfortable. Things are familiar, but slightly off. I keep expecting things to be new, but they’re not. I don’t know if I want to be here. I don’t know where else I could go.

In Born Yesterday Melanie Griffith laments that after a brief foray into education she doesn’t want the things she used to want (furs, jewelry, television); they don’t make her happy anymore.

I left and returned and I feel displaced in what was and will soon be home.

When I was driving into the state I was surprised by how commercial it is here. Billboards and giant signs every fifty feet. I hate it. I still miss the beauty and charm of Edinburgh, but I still don’t want to go back.

And I don’t know if I want to try somewhere new.

When I first got to Europe I would get terribly homesick until I attributed it to fatigue. After sleep I was more confident. I don’t doubt this will be the same. But I need to wait for Andrea to come home so I can say hi.

I was thinking I’d set my lease for a year, but now I’m thinking six months. Wondering if I’ll regain my comfort with the city, wondering if I want to.

2006-01-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

Something that's decidely unnerving about being back in the states is the view around. Walking around Scotland -- everywhere except Glasgow, really -- there are rolling fields, old farmhouses, building dating back to before there was a Pennsylvania, and even in the middle of Edinburgh you could look down the hills of some streets and see the Firth of Forth and mountains looming behind it. I miss that a lot. Even when I was in the mountains here it wasn't the same. They seemed dull; dry and yellow.

I went to the Edinburgh Swing Dance Society website the other day and felt really nostalgic.

I have a strong urge to go back. I can picture my little corner of the city so well, and there are things there that I didn't get to do. I miss my friends. But it's too far. I'm not like so many of my friends who can pack up and leave their families for years at a time. I like being home for thanksgiving and Christmas. I like my weekend trips back, if only to remind myself that I don't want to actually live there anymore. Driving around here and looking at the scenery is just depressing.

Maybe when I get back to North Carolina things will feel normal again. North Carolina, where I haven't heard from most of those people in months. I feel so uprooted. I don't have a place to go back to in NC -- I have to find a place to live, and it's looking like I'm going to be living alone. But where should I live? Near friends in a place I don't particularly like, or farther from friends in an apartment complex with more perks?

And jobs -- that's a problem. I've gotten my first rejection already. My other options leave me stuck in an office all day doing work that I'm overqualified to do, or jobs for which I'm underqualified.

So for now I'm staying with my folks until I get my act together enough to move, job or no. I have enough money to support myself for a while, but I'd rather be saving that money for something fun than sitting around somewhere new with no job. I'm comforted that I have enough to be able to move without a job, though.

Oof.

2005-12-22T16:21:00.000-05:00

Things I should be doing now or in the next few days:

1. Finishing up Christmas presents;
2. Cleaning out my room, getting rid of things I don’t need/want;
3. Finish/continue writing about my trip;
4. Go dancing, FINALLY;
5. Decorating for Christmas;
6. Making Christmas cookies;
7. See people;
8. Watch old episodes of Inspector Gadget;
9. You get the idea.

I’ve been trying to decide what warrants starting and maybe even finishing first, and I decided on writing at least one entry, because that is how much I care about you people. And also because I can do it sitting down.

Until dancing comes around, ‘cause ain’t nobody standing in the way of my dancing. Almost nobody.

So. Where to start. How about with the Hukilau? Excellent idea.

On the 8th, which was a Thursday, I went to Edinburgh Swing Dance Society’s dance lesson, where Diane was teaching the Dean Collins Shim Sham. Afterwards, Bjarte, Diane, Michelle, Alan, and I went to a pub down the road for drinks. I was wearing my flip flops because the centre where they hold the lesson is barely two blocks from my place, and I didn’t feel like putting on my sneakers. And OH they teased me for it, what with it being the middle of winter.

Wacky Americans.

It was after the first beer that we were discussing the cabaret (talent show, if you will) that was happening at Tuesday’s dance. Alan, Françoise, and I were planning to do our three-person balboa. Diane then brought up this dance she knew – the Hukilau. Presumably a hula dance, done to a song by an Italian swing band. Being at a beer-and-a-half, we (save Bjarte, who was going to be gone by Tuesday) decided this would be a great thing to perform at the cabaret.

When we sobered up our eyes widened collectively when we realized what we’d agreed to do. But the decision had been made, so the Hukilau was a go.

Diane, Michelle, and I met on Sunday where we went over the dance (it’s pretty simple). Have you ever heard the hukilau song? It gets into your head worse than “It’s a small world.” It will be on repeat in your brain until the end of time. Bleah. Anyway, we practiced until we got bored, and then gussied ourselves up and went to the Christmas dance that two dancers were throwing.

It wasn’t until Monday that we got to practice again, but we grabbed an empty, unused hallway in the pub where the Monday lessons are held, and learned to hula. We thought it was hilarious and laughed through the whole thing.

Fast forward to the Cabaret. We were wearing crepe paper grass skirts, plastic leis, flowers in our hair, and flip flops. And Alan… well, the plan was that he was going to get a coconut bra and, at the climax of the song, tear his shirt open. I can’t remember if we were drunk when we decided that one. For some inexplicable reason he didn’t buy the coconut bra, but instead bought large rubber breasts with a demi-bra. It’s almost the same thing.

I think we thought the whole thing was funnier than the audience did. They were appreciative, though, and loved Alan flashing them.

Oh. And the whole thing’s on film. Good thing I wasn't planning to run for office.

2005-12-19T08:55:00.000-05:00

I leave Edinburgh today. I fully reserve the right to run around screaming and possibly also crying.

Fear not, gentle readers. I still have plenty of stories to impart upon you, including:

1. My North Carolina replacement.
2. What the Hukilau is and how I got roped into performing it. On stage. In front of people. While sober.
3. What dry skiing is and how I got that palm-sized bruise on my thigh.

And more! So stay tuned! For a while!

Until then, I plan to be racing around, finishing packing, moping, and wondering why the hell I have so much crap and why it all has to come back with me. And also why I can't get rid of any of it.

Ta!

2005-12-12T02:15:00.000-05:00

One of the train rides

Dancer folks

Orkney:
Kirkwall.

Mull Head.

The Gloup.

The ferry ride back. That tall bit of rock is the Old Man of Hoy.

Haggis Tour:
Doune Castle. Site of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Callander. I think. I'm pretty sure that's the town we were in.

Rob Roy's Graveyard. Not pictured: Rob Roy's Grave.

Loch Lomond & The Trossochs tour
Loch Lomond.

Stirling Castle
Stirling Castle.

2005-12-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

A (very) few photos of dancer folk:

Some dancers rockin' the shim sham.

A super-stylin' Bjarte.

The lovely Angela and me.

10 days left. Holy hell.

2005-12-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

I realize a while ago that it took me about three months to get really tired of traveling. For the past few weeks I’ve had no motivation to go anywhere. Even when I decided on a destination it took me a week to get moving. I’ve been sedate and tired and thinking fondly of going back to the states.

The irony of this is that it took me three months to start to be really comfortable with people here. I have friends here! Groovy friends, who I can call up and say hey, let’s do things!

Who make me not want to leave.

Consequently I’m a little itchy, thinking about how I have less than two weeks before I leave (!!). There are still places I’d like to go, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to happen. Angela has left to go home to Korea for Christmas, and I won’t get to see her until either I come back to Edinburgh, or she comes to visit me in the US. That’s really disappointing, because by the last week we were hanging out she felt the most like my friends back home – lots of joking, lots of physical affection. I’ve really missed it and was glad to have it again.

On Saturday Bjarte goes back to Norway. He’s one of the best dancers here, and will be finishing his PhD in Norway, so he won’t be going back to Edinburgh. Again, I won’t be able to see him until one of us visits the other.

Oof. Well.

I went to Glasgow (pronounced “Glaz-gow” and not, not, not “Glass-gaw” it doesn’t rhyme with “cow”) last Saturday. It took a couple of stern conversations with myself before I finally left the house, bag of essentials (underwear, book, knitting, and computer) on my back. The plan was to stay until Monday.

It’s a short trip to Glasgow, only 45 minutes by train. I got there a little after 1 and found myself in the centre of their major shopping district. It’s apparently one of the top rated shopping places in the world these days. Imagine, if you will, being in a large city with top-ranked shopping. On a Saturday. Three weeks before Christmas. When it’s cold. And moving on to being dark.

That’s my idea of fun! Except not so much. The stores were all just larger versions of the chains they have here. There wasn’t much that was new. I saw evidence of an Urban Outfitters and stopped in the Borders, but we have those in the states. I slogged through the ooze of narcissistic, pushy shoppers and wandered the streets. It wasn’t until well after I left my house that I realized that I’d left my guidebook at home, so I didn’t know where I was going.

I kept to the better-lit sections of street that I found, but once the sun sets (around 4pm) the whole city looks shadowy. The streets are lit from lamps attached halfway up the buildings which gives the impression that there aren’t many lights at all. And once you leave the shops it looks even darker. Encouraging!

I finally decided to find a hotel, and kept my eyes out for one. I finally found a Radisson – a chain, but it was decently situated and, beyond that, the only place I’d seen so far. I went in and asked for a room, but they were all booked up.

Of course. It’s a near-Christmas weekend – everyone’s here to shop. I made a decision that I would do what I found first: stay in a hotel, or take the train back home. Fighting through stores and people made me tired and bruised, and made my own bed have a brand new intrigue. After wandering around the same streets over and over again I found the Tourist Information Centre and decided that okay, hotel it was. If they could find me one.

When I said I was looking for a hotel room for the night the woman at the desk winced. Oh dear. She asked what my budget was, and said that she might be able to find me something on the other side of town – an easy ride on a bus or underground. I politely declined and asked where the train station was.

In the five or so hours that I was there I didn’t see a whole lot, and wasn’t impressed by much. The nice thing, though, about being in this country at this time of the year is that they really go all out for Christmas. Decorations everywhere, and many of them tasteful. Maybe not the bow tie on one of the statues, but at least it was funny. They also have amusement park rides and an ice skating rink. Not exciting enough to keep me there, however.

I have an idea of going back at some point. I feel like there might be things other than shops there.

2005-12-01T14:20:00.000-05:00

How on earth is it December already? Good gravy.

I have a free piece of advice for you. If you’re planning to go to Europe and cook while you’re there you should either 1. leave all of your recipes behind and forget you ever had them, or 2. bring a good metric conversion chart, plus cup measures.

I will explain.

Angela was organizing a dinner party for oh, seven or eight swing dancers, and we were all slated to bring food. No problem! It could be fun to cook. I haven’t done it since I’ve gotten here, as the kitchen is totally depressing. And by totally depressing I mean it’s a hallway and a closet and even a power-washing wouldn’t make a huge difference on the dirt. And peeling floors. And grimy dishes/pots/pans. And stained walls. You get it.

But! I would make Joy Of Cooking brand garlic bread! Easy! And also a fudge-like substance that is often smiled upon when made. Also easy! I’ll give you the recipe:

1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese
2 c. sifted confectioner’s sugar
2 1-oz squares unsweetened (baker’s) chocolate
1/4 tsp vanilla
Dash salt
Fruit

Throw cream cheese in a mixing bowl, cream until soft and smooth. Slowly mix in sugar. Mix in chocolate. Mix in vanilla and salt. Then, if it’s firm, form into balls, throw some fruit on the top (strawberries and raspberries are the way to go here), place on wax paper, and chill until you get bored or hungry. Or pour into a greased cake pan – a 9” one works well – top with fruit, and chill, then slice into squares.

So easy! Right? Hah! Not so much. So I went to the grocery store for supplies. The only thing I had on that list is salt.

Cream cheese! In packages! Except that it’s measured in grams, not ounces. I blinked at the packages for a while, wondering if I had relevant converting information at my disposal. I just bought a package, figuring they looked about the right size, and moved on.

The sugar aisle! Great! Confectioner’s sugar! Nope! Nothing. It was all granulated. I needed powdered, or it likely wouldn’t work. I hadn’t even heard of half the sugars they had. Castor sugar? I made a guess as to which was the most in the manner of being powdered, and moved on. It was by fluke that I ended up staring, dejectedly, at the cake-decorating section (puzzling out pre-rolled icing) where I found icing sugar. Which was distinctly not in the sugar section. But it was right! It was powdered! Hallelujah!

Chocolate! I found a large bar of baker’s chocolate, nice stuff, too, but it was £4.50, which obscene. I had no plans to use the whole thing (or get even close). So back to the baking section. They had a few bars, but they all seemed sweetened, which is Bad and Wrong. But preferable to paying £4.50, so I got one.

Vanilla! That one was actually really easy and cheap. Bonus.

Back to the fruit aisle! Strawberries, I was thinking, if they weren’t too dear, maybe raspberries, maybe some other inspiring things. They had raspberries, okay. And nothing else that would be appropriate. Apples? No. Pears? No. Mangos? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Bananas? Naw. And zero strawberries. Well then! Raspberries it is.

I had, at this point, gone through the whole store about three times at this point. It was annoying. Because I still needed a serrated knife (the apartment version left a note saying it was fed up with the kitchen and was leaving) and maybe a dry measuring glass, as I wasn’t sure we had one.

Two more turns around the store and I finally found a suitable knife, and measuring cups. Except that the measurements were metric, and mine, as you may notice, aren’t. Not helpful! So I didn’t buy it.

Finally home, where I learned that we sure didn’t have any measuring devices. Not such a problem, though, since the recipe involves things like “cups” and “tsps.” I was left without any way to measure anything, and didn’t realize I had a conversion chart (in the back of my marbled composition notebook) until it was too late. I just guessed, as that was really all I could do in the time that I had.

And it didn’t work. I mixed everything, threw it in the fridge, and it didn’t firm up. It was goo. An hour later I pulled it out, tested the viscosity, and added more sugar. What else was there to do? Back in the fridge. An hour later, the same again. More sugar.

In the end I didn’t take it. I blame the cream cheese. But the goo tastes fantastic with raspberries.

2005-11-29T20:54:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s nearly 9pm on a Tuesday night. By all rights I should be at the local swing dance, but I’m instead in my room with wine and knitting. Why? Well, yesterday was BenAndHelen’s dance lesson. I went, as I do, to the intermediate lesson. Their first move involved the follow (that would be me) crouching to the floor, ducking under the lead’s arm, and jumping up again. It’s a sexy move, but when your legs aren’t prepared for such heights of physical exertion, as mine weren’t, you might not feel so good when it’s over. Especially when you’re the only woman there (aside, of course, from Helen), as this means you get to do the move again and again and again. The other men paired up with each other when I was occupied with someone, but I was in high demand. Instead of saying “Follows rotate” as they usually do in class they just said “Emily rotate.” Grand!

My right thigh, however, started hurting during the lesson, into the next moves and into the beginner lesson as well, which was in need of a few more women (this, for the curious, is highly unusual – there are almost always more women than men), and into the social dancing as well.

And oh ho ho, trying to walk around today? Hilarious. Steps hurt, hills hurt (anything going down, really), and every fifty feet or so my leg gives out, causing me to wobble in a desperate attempt to keep balance. I went to the bookstore and attempted to sit on the floor in the knitting section so I could see if they had any new books (they didn’t) and oh it hurt! What fun!

I would’ve gone to the dance, actually, if Jacqui was going. That way I could hang out with people and not be stuck at home (right, I can stay home all day and be happy as a pig in mud, but the one time I should to stay home I’m “stuck”). Unfortunately, she’s not going tonight. And it’s too far to walk just to hang out. So here I am. Damn.

Now where’s that wine?

Okay then.

I went on another tour on, oh, Nov 12th or so. Not with the Haggis group, thank you, but another, smaller group catering to people with sense. Up to the Trossachs, Loch Lomond, then finishing up at Stirling Castle.

The Trossachs are a national park, Loch Lomond is a relatively famous lake, and Stirling Castle… is a castle.

We drove through the Trossachs and heard the usual Rob Roy/ William Wallace/ Robert the Bruce stories.

The birches were forming purple buds on the tips, so if you looked over an expanse of trees it had a lovely violet haze to it. I learned that traditional kilts – the kind that involve the section thrown over the shoulder – are also one’s bedding. You just wrap right up in it and nestle down in the heather and you were relatively warm for the night.

Our guide informed us of the man who had once been proclaimed the worst poet ever. He goes by the name of McGonagall (or similar). Here’s the poem that claimed him the title, including linguistic footnotes For Your Convenience:

Upon the hill there was a coo¹,
He must’ve moved, he’s not there noo².

¹ Cow. In this case, Scottish highlands cow. The hairy, horned variety.
² Now.

I thoroughly enjoy it, personally.

Next we drove up to Loch Lomond, where we piled into a boat to tool around the lake. You’ve likely heard of Loch Lomond, though you may not realize it. You know the song, “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road”? The lyrics go like this:

You take the high road and I’ll take the low road,
and I’ll get to Scotland before you.
For something something never see my true love and me,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Here’s the word on the song. Back in the 17th century the Jacobites (supporters of James II) were under the impression that when you die your spirit goes underground to join your family, wherever they may be. So two brothers or possibly friends, went off to do something like fight somewhere outside of Scotland as they did in those days. One of those two, imbued with an admirable calmness, was fated to die along the journey, and wrote the song. Taking the low road meant his spirit traveling underground (as the groundhog burrows, if you will), immediately returning to Scotland and thus beating his friend/brother back. And, being dead, would not, of course, see his true love again. But the important thing is that he got there first.

There was a good amount of wildlife – particularly birds – that I enjoyed watching. Other than that… I wasn’t entirely impressed. Maybe it’s more dramatic in the spring/summer, but it didn’t seem all that different from any other loch that I’d seen. Lots of big houses on the shores. I did my best to stay warm, while occasionally darting out to the deck to survey the view.

(Ow, my leg.)

Then into a little town for lunch, where I ate macaroni and cheese at a little pub, then went over to a wool centre where I expected they would have the exact same variety of sweaters that every other place has, as well as a disappointing lack of yarn.

But oh! They had yarn! Delicious, delicious yarn! I bought three skeins of this incredible cream-colored wool, and a large skein of beautiful variegated red yarn. I was a happy, happy camper.

Finally we hit Stirling castle, which is huge and full of twists and turns and a large number of rooms. My jaw dropped at the demonstration of tapestry weaving, which seems to be some kind of rocket science with string. It’s that complicated. They showed photos of a section of tapestry panels about people hunting down a unicorn and explained how it was an allegory for Christianity (Jesus is the unicorn).

Before you ask, I’ve already written Dan Brown about making it the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. He said he’s already working on something, but that he’d keep it in mind for the future.

There are all sorts of nooks and crannies in which to get lost, and it was a nice time, wandering around. And then back to the bus and home again.

Later that week I did some touristy things around E-burgh. I went back up to Calton hill, and went to the local art museum, where they’re having what they call “Choice,” which means they have a little bit of just about everything – classical paintings all the way to modern art, which I generally do not understand. Most notable was the Three Graces, which is a stunning piece of marble-work. I expected the women in the statue to roll their shoulders and ask if it was time for their break yet.

I tried out two new restaurants as well. The first is a Thai restaurant called Thai Me Up, which is noteworthy at least because of the name. But the food is exquisite and is beautifully presented. I went with a friend and we shared chicken satay (I could happily drink peanut sauce), a lamb and pineapple curry and sweet and sour chicken. It was all fantastic.

I also went to a restaurant called Mama Roma, which I was keen to try because I’d noted one afternoon that at least two people who worked there were authentically Italian. They had a killer bruchetta (which is, in fact, pronounced bru-SKETTA and not bru-SHETTA) and the best linguini carbonara I’ve ever had. This was a serious, serious cream sauce. The staff was incredibly attentive, going so far as to help me put my jacket on.

If I was more comfortable going to nice restaurants alone I wouldn’t eat anywhere but those two places. Alas, not so much. As my time here draws to a close, though, I might start to consider it.

And it is getting close. Yeek.

2005-11-24T14:56:00.000-05:00

I went on another tour, this one departing from Edinburgh. I decided to try out Haggis tours, which caters to the 20-something set. While this isn’t usually my scene (I’m not totally keen on the way most people my age act), I decided to give it a shot. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad!

Lies.

It wasn’t so much that the group of tourists was annoying – they were fine – but that the guide was obnoxious. He said the word “sexy” in every other sentence. He even made a joke about it, that saying sexy so often was in his contract, ha ha ha. Except that he didn’t stop. And he wouldn’t shut up about drinking. The tour was taking us to a whiskey distillery, and in the tour guide’s eyes that was the only reason to be on that tour, and clearly that was why we were there.

The tour went up to Doune Castle, to Rob Roy’s grave, through the highlands and then finally to the Famous Grouse Distillery, where we’d get to go on a tour. I decided to go because I’d been to Doune Castle when I was in Scotland with my parents, and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized it was where Monty Python had filmed Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So I wanted to go back and knowingly ogle the sets. Oh yes. I would be geeking out.

And this would’ve been fine, except that it was closed. So we could walk around the castle, but not go inside. The grounds are nice, but damn it, I wanted to go inside!

As a consolation prize the guide took us to see Hamish, who is a Highland cow, or a hairy coo, as they call them up here. This wasn’t terribly exciting to me, since I used to work at the Philadelphia Zoo where they had two highland cows. I know what they look like. But they’re a tourist attraction here, so I was fine admiring the cow and then going into the gift shop (I don’t know if the shop was there because of the cow or if the cow was there because of the shop, but neither would surprise me).

On to Rob Roy’s grave, where we got out and listened to the story of Rob Roy. Frankly, I don’t understand why he was famous. Here’s his story in a nutshell: He used to steal cows from farmers and then sell them back. The farmers, not knowing he was the thief, paid him to be security for their cattle. As a result, no more thievery. Then he got into trouble for defending Highland culture (okay, I concede his fame here) and was on the run for 40 years, until Rob Roy was written by Sir Walter Scott, and he was pardoned.

Behind the church where he’s buried is a lovely waterfall, though. That was nice.

And back on the bus and through the highlands, where we got the story of Braveheart and why Mel Gibson is so very, very wrong in the movie of the same name, and we listened to some Scottish music and some non-Scottish music. It’s interesting to hear the story of William Wallace over and over again (as every guide I’ve encountered talks about him), and see where stories differ. On this account I noticed that the guide got something wrong (and since four out of five have it one way and his is different, I feel secure in saying his facts are off).

Robert the Bruce had prayed to become king, saying that if he did, he’d go on a crusade, but, following his kinghood, he never got around to it. So on his deathbed he had his friend take his heart out, mummify it, and then take it on the crusade, thus “fulfilling” his promise. In a very loose way. On their path of religious destruction the party came across some Spanish folks who weren’t totally keen on them, and knowing they were well outnumbered and not going to make it to the holy land, R the B’s friend (whose name I’ve lost) took the heart, which was in a casket on a chain around his neck, and hurled it into what was to become the battlefield, and called, “Lead on, brave heart!”

Thus, Braveheart was not actually William Wallace but rather was Robert the Bruce. Or his heart at least.

Now, where this tour guide got it wrong was that he said that the heart was still hanging out in some field. What everyone else has said is that, in a move of exceptional gallantry, the Spanish brought the heart back to the Scottish, and it was buried in Melrose Abbey at R the B’s pre-death request. And then in 1996 they dug it back up and it’s now in their museum, which is just the way he would’ve wanted it.

We drove through the countryside and finally arrived at the Famous Grouse distillery, and we got to pay an extra £3 to go on the tour. I didn’t know anything about making whiskey before I got there (another draw to the tour), and I still don’t know anything about it. I can’t tell you a damn thing except that it involves grains and sitting around in large barrels. And they have a cat instead of mouse traps, which is neat. The cat who lived there before that is actually featured in the Guinness book of world records.

We got to taste whiskey and got a speech on how you’re supposed to appreciate it (it’s a lot like wine in that regard), then they sat us through ~~a series of advertisements~~ an informational film about the company. Then we went to a high-tech video room for ~~more advertisements~~ another film. There are screens on all four walls, and then another screen is projected on the floor. That one is, theoretically, interactive.

When they tell you that you can enjoy your whiskey with water, it looks like there’s water on the floor, and if you walk across it, there are ripples coming out from where you step. When they mention ice, it looks like ice and cracks when you walk across the floor. There’s also a puzzle, where you have to step on the bouncing pieces to put them together. And this would all be grand and neat except that 1. we were all too shy to jump around the room making splashes or breaking ice (if they’d given us more whiskey it might’ve changed that), and 2. it didn’t always work. You could stomp like crazy on the floor and the ice wouldn’t break, or the puzzle piece wouldn’t respond. So I just stopped bothering with it and let the distillery guide do the work.

Finally the video “flew” over the earth, and that was neat. Similar to an Imax movie, except that you’re looking down.

And out to the gift shop where you could buy any number of varyingly expensive whiskies, which our dear guide encouraged us to start drinking on the bus. I passed on both accounts.

I think if I was with a large group of close friends the experience could’ve been more fun, but as it was, not so much.

2005-11-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

There was a time before I left for Orkney and increasing during the week after where I would hear loud cracking sounds outside. It sounded like a gunshot or car backfiring, but with some frequency. I didn’t see anyone running, so I figured it wasn’t the former, and happened to often for me to think it was the latter. I eventually learned while walking home one night that they were fireworks. The tourist information centre filled me in that Guy Fawkes day was coming up; thus the increasing torrent of pyrotechnics.

I called BenAndHelen and invited them out for fireworks. There was a show in a local stadium, so we thought we’d head to that and then set off fireworks of our own while having some wine and/or beer. This is all legal to do in public, by the way, which I think is excellent planning.

It was sold out when we got there, but we joined the throng of folks (some selling plastic toys flashing fast enough to give a blind person a seizure) standing outside of the stadium. It was, inexplicably, Guy Fawkes day fireworks as presented by Disney. That’s the only explanation I can think of for the fact that they played songs from Disney movies through the whole thing, which have nothing to do with blowing up parliament. Songs from Aladdin, The Lion King, and Tarzan.

After the show (it was lovely) we headed to a playground near my place to set off fireworks. Their legal fireworks are pretty impressive, I have to say. Loud, too. All was well until a gang of barely-teenaged children saw us and swarmed. We had things involving noise and danger, you see, and they – well, they’re kids. Who might have been drinking at some point, or were perhaps merely drunk on being outside and unchaperoned after dark.

The fireworks kit came with a lighting stick – basically a bit of incense with no scent. It kept an ember for a while so you didn’t have to keep lighting matches or use a lighter. Crafty. One of the young girls saw the lighting stick and, thinking it was a cigarette, snatched it from Ben and ran off. He went after her, and she ran off again, and he eventually got it back. But what kind of person in their right mind (and that may be the operative wording here) steals a cigarette (even though it was clearly much too long to be one) from a stranger? Honestly.

She came up to us again later, asking for a cigarette. We don’t have any, we told her. Oh please, she begged. We stared at her. We- don’t- have- any, rebuffing her slowly this time, in case she had been drinking and needed things spelled out for her. Come on! She was demanding now. Listen. We don’t smoke, ergo, we don’t have any cigarettes. And still she whined, as if any moment we’ll sigh and say okay, fine, you can have one of the cigarettes that we carry around even though we don’t smoke.

We moved away from the swarm to the other side of the playground, first to get away from the kids, and second so we could set up the standing fireworks on pavement, thus preventing them from falling over. A pack of boys and one girl followed us over, the boys flicking lighters and the girl asking for beer. They surrounded Ben, pleading to let them light some fireworks, or buy some from him. The girl was clearly trying to appear older, talking to Helen and me about the fireworks on the next street, supplying us with more information than we could’ve ever wanted, and assuring us that she’d keep the more obnoxious kids away.

In the end we duct taped most of the remaining fireworks to a wrought iron fence and set them all off at once so we could finally escape the kids that Ben very aptly described as feral. Where on earth were their parents? I mean really.

And I’m still astounded that they allow public drinking and fireworks.

BenAndHelen and I went out to grab some food, then cruised back to my place for excessive movie watching. Best Guy Fawkes day celebration I’ve ever had.

2005-11-23T06:01:00.000-05:00

I was actually sad to leave Orkney the next day. I’d really enjoyed the place: the friendly people, the spectacular landscape, the bathtub. I ran into Douglas in the morning over breakfast, and he told me that there was some fuss about the train I was taking from Thurso, and he called the rail station to make sure everything was up and running. It was, thankfully. Being stuck in Thurso would not be my idea of a good time.

I checked out, hoping that the 11am ferry would get me into Scrabster with enough time to reach my 1:20 train in Thurso. I had to walk last time, and if I had to again I’d never make it. I stood on the deck for the journey, the wind in my hair, and the spray leaving a fine dusting of salt residue on my jacket and bag. I saw, from afar, the Old Man of Hoy, which is a tall stack of stone set apart from the cliff edge of the island of Hoy. I wasn’t tremendously impressed, but joined the other tourists in taking a few pictures anyway.

I saw a seal in the waters, swimming away from the ship’s resulting tides, looking over its shoulder with a clear expression of, “What the hell was that?”

I landed in Scrabster and immediately adopted a look of wide-eyed terror that I might not be able to catch my train. I was quickly assured that the ferry folks, being sensible creatures, had a £3 bus that would bring me into town without a problem, and so it was that I began the near-incessant journey back home.

The thing, you see, about jumping (almost literally) from bus to train to train to train with no time for break in the middle is that you don’t get to eat. There’s no time to stop and grab food. On the train, if you’re lucky, you can choose from the overpriced bags of chips or cookies or beverages. I had some chips and chocolate, but had no time for much else. It was a long ride. A really long ride.

After about 97 hours I came home, bought battered sausage and chips from a shop on the way, and crashed into bed, thus concluding my expedition to the almost-totally-northerly point of Scotland.

2005-11-16T12:41:00.000-05:00

I’m in the bar (a new bar! A friendlier and slightly less conveniently situated bar!) all ready to post at least one update, and the router isn’t working. But no fear, the manager’s on his way to check it out. So I’ll see if I can’t remember what happened my final full day in Orkney without the aid of my guidebook to prompt me along.

I decided to rent a car again because without any tours running (the tour guide was in Canada) there’s really nothing one can do but wander around Stromness, and I’d done that already. So I went back to the car rental place and learned that they only had standard transmission cars left. And this would be well and good if I could drive a standard transmission, and I sure sure can’t.

So I left to look for another car rental place and couldn’t find one, so I went back to the hotel to ask. There were two people at the front desk – a man and a woman. She gave me the names and numbers of two rental places – one in Stromness and one in Kirkwall, which was on the other side of the island. I visited the first and learned that surprise! Not actually a car rental place!

I called the second and eventually deciphered that the gentleman was saying that I could rent a car, but it’d cost me £30 to get the car to Stromness. And this was on top of the regular rental fee. Ha! Ha I say; ha. That’s more than I paid for the rental yesterday.

So back to the hotel where I learned that the gentleman at the desk was the owner, Douglas. Douglas told me that if I was willing to wait a bit they’d see if there was a car free and he’d be happy to drive me to Kirkwall since he was going that way anyway. Front Desk Lady called and told me that it was a £40/day rental, and when I winced she got them down to £35.

An hour later I was on my way to Kirkwall with Douglas, who gave me a nice tour of the island and told me about the place. The most notable thing I remember is that people on the island tend to have a number of jobs. They might have a B&B, keep some sheep and/or cows, run a shop, and work in the post office on weekends. I guess in a place that depends on tourism so much you have to really work to make ends meet. Also they pump oil there, and manage to keep it really concealed. The oil is taken from some pump in the ocean and then taken to one of the islands. Clever!

Douglas made sure I was all set up with the car rental agency and I was on my way. I found a spot on the beach (with sand dunes – who knew they had sand dunes here? I sure didn’t). Looked around, took some photos, and got back in the car. I drove around in this manner for a while, occasionally stopping at some posted spot.

(This is frustrating: it’d be fine if they just reset the router and they’re not doing that for some reason. It’d fix it, I promise! I told them that but I don’t know that they totally get what I’m talking about).

I drove over to Deerness, which is on the far eastern tip of the island. The draw here was something called The Gloup, “a dramatic collapsed sea cave.” I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but the idea of going to something called a Gloup was too good to pass up.

It was exceptionally lovely. It’s on the edge of Skaill bay, where there’s a long walk along the nature reserve. The Gloup is a short stumble from the carpark, and is another deep gash from the sea back through the field. At the front is a trickle of water that falls drastically down 80 or so feet to the ocean which tumbles in and crashes along the surprisingly smooth walls, eventually creating tunnels and deeper caves in the rock.

Down the trail there are the usual cliffs plummeting down to the sea, which thrashed happily against the walls. I walked about a kilometer and found that the trail branches down the cliff via irregular stone steps and wooden bridges. At the bottom you can go left and explore a rough bit of rocky beach, or right and explore more rocky beach and masses of dirty sea foam that would often fly into the air and cling to the walls. There was a tall chunk of rock in the middle of this enclave, and on one of the jutting bits of stone stood a large web-footed bird, casually hanging out in the ocean mist, that I later learned was a shag.

Continuing along the path led me up more stone steps (causing a fearsome grip on the rope rail and nervous giggling) of a section of cliff that’s been mostly separated from the mainland, save the path along which I was walking. At the top is a plateau of long, plush grass out of which a bird would occasionally spring, startling the hell out of me. There was, at one point, a settlement on that section of cliff, and there still remains half walls of a church, and I think more sections of stone walls, but those have long been covered with grass and secreted birds.

It should be noted that my batteries had, again, died, and there wasn’t a store for miles. I need to start carrying a disposable camera with me. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a non-disposable camera?

I walked the perimeter and headed back down the slick, muddy steps and up again into the fields. I wanted to go further, but was tired and had plenty to see yet, so headed back to the car.

I went to the Ring of Brodgar, which is a wide circle of standing stones dating back to ages ago. Now it has a giant patch of heather growing in the middle. Unfortunately, when you really have to go to the bathroom, as I did, it’s not much more than a bunch of tall rocks in a circle. I walked the circumference anyway and took a few pictures and climbed back into the car.

(Ha! They’re turning their router off and back on again! Let’s see if I’m right).

Not far from there is another set of standing stones – just four or five – called the Stones of Stenness. I didn’t even bother to get out of the car for that one, but just moved on after stopping and giving them an admiring glance.

(Oh I was so totally right! What’s up, knowing routers!)

By fluke alone I found Maes Howe (or Maeshowe, depending on where you read it), and paid for a ticket. It’s some kind of burial chamber in the middle of a field dating back to 2750 B.C., according to my guidebook. There were three of us on the tour. The guide led us through a tunnel that requires you to walk maybe twenty feet bent over halfway, which is exciting when there’s no light. Then there’s a square room, and branching off of that three smaller chambers. The openings to the chambers are about two feet off the ground, and are maybe two feet square. I know people were shorter back in the day, but good heavens. Inside is a stone platform upon which, presumably, the dead were laid to rest.

They don’t know much of anything about the building as it was used when it was built, just that it took an estimated 40 years to build, was constructed around the same time as the standing stones, and on the solstice the setting sun shines right through the doorway (this was also true of the cairn that I saw in Inverness). The reason their information is spotty is that in the 12th century Vikings crashed through the top of Maes Howe and, after clearing out any useful artifacts, used it as a party building. Really. Lots of cavorting and carving of graffiti on the walls. Ridiculous graffiti, too. Things akin to, “I am the best writer in the world” and, written about ten feet up, “So-and-so is really tall.” And it’s presumed that the smaller chambers were essentially make-out rooms.

Glad to know we’ve evolved since then.

At the end of my day I dropped the car back in Kirkwall and wandered around the town before catching the bus back to Stromness. I bought ultra-local yarn and admired the shops, then headed home. The houses are so remote here that the bus will occasionally drop people off at their driveway, presumably if your house is on the way. On my return I tried a new restaurant, a pub by the harbor. Despite my wimpy taste buds I ordered spicy fajitas, and spent Halloween eve wondering how their food could be so bland that those fajitas were considered spicy. I had a local red beer and thought it decent.

I also bought some local beer called Skull Splitter before returning to my room, named after a local Viking. It was hands down the most disgusting beer I have ever tasted and couldn’t abide more than two sips before pouring the rest down the sink. I mentioned it to Will, a Guilfordian, and he’d recently tried it and said it was akin to sucking on a sockful of pennies.

I couldn’t agree more. For what they claim in scenery they lose a good portion on food. Except the steak. That was superb.

2005-11-15T23:02:00.000-05:00

I’m sorry for the delay! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! But I got these books, books I’d been wanting for a while, and they were all, “Read us now or we’ll kick this puppy,” and I was all, “What puppy? You don’t have a puppy,” and they were all, “We’ll find a puppy and kick it. So read us now.”

So I had to sneak off to update.

Well now. Day two in Orkney.

There’d been some mention the night before about a time change, but I didn’t hear anything else about it, (I imagine it’s not a huge topic of conversation, even in such a small town) and when I asked my waitress about it at breakfast she said she didn’t know. Didn’t know? As a result I spent most of my trip there not knowing what time it was.

But! I went over to the local car rental place, which, despite the permanent stickers spelling out “Open” on the door, was empty. And dark. I stomped around in frustration for a minute before seeing another sign that if no one was there, to call this number – they’re just a few minutes away. I did, and woke up a gentleman who could rent me a car.

And this, I think, caused me to step foot firmly in adulthood. It was kind of squishy and meant I had to put my name on a form that said things like “Hey, if you hurt our car then you have to buy us three new ones. And a house. And if you don’t like it, Guido’s gonna come up there and break your legs, comprende?”

But he also confirmed the time change. Anyway, they don’t keep the cars filled with gas anymore because it’s so expensive these days, so my first order of business was to find a gas – excuse me – petrol station. Which I did. And it was closed. So I found another. Which was closed. It wasn’t quite 10am on a Sunday in a tiny little town, so it’s not totally surprising, just totally inconvenient. The tank was very near being very empty, so I decided to drive for a little and see if anything was open.

I went first to Scara Brae, which is a Neolithic village in remarkable condition. It’d been covered over with sand dunes ages ago and was uncovered in 1850 during a storm. It’s an impressive bit of engineering – subterranean houses with beds and dressers and the like. Directly next to the village is a lovely white sands beach that would be right at home in Hawai’i.

I walked along the beach (which rapidly turns to less romantic large stones), and up a cliff. I love me some cliffs. And it was gorgeous and THEN guys, and THEN…

No. You have to understand. No. See, no. No. It was like being in a National Geographic magazine. There was this deep gash in the cliff, and if you got on your belly and shimmied up to the back edge because you’re afraid of heights, particularly natural ones and wouldn’t dare ever ever ever do something so stupid as to walk up to the edge because AAUGH that would be so scary and look down you can see water crashing in the gap, and a short ledge connecting the two sides together and the water is a glorious blue and white and it makes you actively squeal with excitement.

(Note: I didn’t actually squeal. I am much too cool for such things).
(Note the second: Okay, I totally did squeal. It was phenomenal).

And I pulled out my camera, which I’d been lying on, which is not particularly comfortable, and held my camera over the edge and took a picture, and then my batteries died. The bitter, vengeful bastards.

I had three sets of batteries with me, all of which were drained. In desperation I tried any combination of them that I could, in the hopes that it would get me just one more shot. And when it did I would keep trying, for one more shot. I got about four all together. Not as good as I would like, but the best way to get a photo of it would be to either be on a boat or a helicopter, and wouldn’t you know it, I left mine back at the hotel.

When I shimmied back away from the ledge and went over to the side of the gap, wiggling my way to the edge again, I realized that the back edge of the cliff was actually more like a little bridge. Water had worn away the underside until about two meters – the part on which I’d been laying – remained. A cave, I would guess, though I couldn’t see far enough in to confirm. The sheep grazing the grass behind me were considerably less impressed. I guess when you live right next to something it loses some excitement.

Anyway, in an effort to drain some height-related adrenaline vocally I made un-ladylike noises of excitement for a while more before walking back. Two surfers had made their way out into the sea, and I kept an eye on them as I navigated the path. All they did was sit on their boards. Maybe the waves were going to pick up soon. Or maybe they just like to hang out in wetsuits. I don’t know.

The friendly folks at the desk sent me to a petrol station where I got £12 of petrol and a snack and set to wandering. The thought of trying to pick one place to go and then trying to find it on a map and then by car was too exhausting, so I just went.

I drove on their distressingly narrow roads (I had a heart attack any time another car or, heaven forbid, truck passed, certain we could never both fit) (or when I got too close to the outer edge and some as-yet unconfirmed part of the car would make a loud sound like the ~~tire~~ tyre exploding) (and yikes they go way too fast in some of those areas), admiring the vast (vast) farmlands and coasts. And certainly wondering what it was like to live with so few neighbors, so far from other civilization.

It didn’t take me too long to find myself in Kirkwall, allowing me another opportunity to test my cardiac fortitude by driving in an unfamiliar town on the left side of the road. I’d heard rumor that there was a shop selling locally spun yarn from local sheep. Fed on seaweed, for some reason. But also located in this sneeze of a town was St Magnus’ Cathedral. I have no major interest in places of worship generally, but the draw to this one was that their website, my dad learned, claimed to have a webcam focused on the façade.

So I did the logical thing, which was to call my parents (at around 8am their time) and have them look it up so I could jump up and down and wave or something. After much fuss with the internet and the webcam we learned that they’re big fat liars (the webmasters, not my parents) and the feed is so totally not live. So if you ever go onto the St Magnus’ Cathedral webcam and see a woman in black pacing back and forth, that’s me!

And it started to rain. No problem, thought I, I’ll just go to that bookstore that I can see from here, shake off the rain, and immerse myself in books. On the way there I saw the shop that sold yarn and drooled at the windows because it was, of course, closed.

Back to the bookshop, then, where I learned that it was a “bookshop” in the sense that Target is a bookshop. Four shelves of books, and then cards and various other disappointingly non-book-style things.

It being Sunday there was nothing open, so I walked up the hill back to the car. What do you do when you have a car but everything’s closed and/or would require standing out in the rain and you have a quarter tank of gas to spend before dropping the car back off again? You drive around for the hell of it, that’s what you do.

I saw a few things after that, but nothing particularly noteworthy. The skies cleared up after a bit and my admiration got a break from fields/sheep/farmhouses and turned instead to rainbows. As drives go it was lovely, even when it was raining.

As I promised I dropped the car off at 7 or 8 and went back to the hotel for dinner. I’d planned to find somewhere new to eat since I’d eaten in the hotel for the past two nights, but my parents were buying and there was a steak that demanded my attention. And OH it was so worth it. Completely delicious.

And then I retired upstairs for television and a bath in the tub that’s as long as I am tall, then bed. I’ll go to day three tomorrow, and hopefully it won’t take me two weeks to write like this entry did. Sheesh.

2005-11-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Some Orkney photos:

Scrabster

Stromness

Orkney

Driving around the island

Scara Brae

Ring of Brodgar (which sounds like something our of Lord of the Rings).

2005-10-29T21:00:00.000-04:00

This morning I actually felt halfway decently so after a hefty breakfast of half a plate of omelet (good gracious) I wandered around the aforementioned one lit street, which, it turns out, is the only street with shops in all of Stromness. There are some charming little shops, though I have no idea where these people go to get most of their groceries, since they only have one tiny grocery and a butcher shop. That I saw, anyway.

I found a bookshop and got a little bird identification book, and admired the little things taped up to the shelves (“Get some fresh air if you start to smell”). Because it’d worked so well for me I asked the bookseller where a good place to walk would be. He sent me up the west coast. I would be able to see a cemetery, seals, birds, and a castle. And all the sheep I could shake a stick at. Should take me about two hours to get up castle ways – longer, if I lingered, and then I could walk back or hitchhike back to town.

Hitchhike? See, I’ve always been under the impression that one never, ever, ever hitchhikes. Unless it’s the 60’s and then it’s fine. Being told that hitchhiking here is safe is akin, to me, to being told that doing crack here is healthy.

But this being a tiny, friendly town I’m thinking it’s okay. And so I’m determined to try it. If the opportunity comes about. What was I talking about? Oh yes, the walk. After I left the bookshop the owner ran after me and handed me a beat up map of the island and said to just put it through the mail slot of the store when I was done with it. I was astonished. How often does that happen?

I started walking! Saw some seals (they do sit with their tails in the air) and some birds, though none that were new, that I could tell. It was lovely, though a bit windy. And two hours later I saw what looked like a ruin ahead, and checking the map realized that I was nowhere near the castle, and had only gone about a third of the way.

How on earth did he make that walk in two hours? He must’ve run the trail, cause damn. I had to walk on the beach – made up of lots of large rocks – which was heaven for broken ankles and made for really slow going. And I realized that there was no way I was going to make it to the castle. I couldn’t even see a good way to get to the ruined bit of house that I was looking at – my options were either to go through a cow field or through seaweed. So I turned around, slightly miffed.

In total I walked about 3 1/2 hours. Which is a long time.

I came back and rested a bit, then wandered around again. Everyone here’s so friendly. They – and their dogs – always say hello when we pass. I called the local tour company – which doesn’t have tours on Monday so I’d need to get a tour for tomorrow. No response. I called about fifty million other times, and still no answer, so no tour for me.

And since there’s no real way to get anywhere on this island without a car, I think I’m going to rent one on Monday. I was hoping to go scuba diving since it’s apparently really good here, but the season ended this weekend, so the best I got was that if something comes up they’ll call me. But I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ll do tomorrow. There’s not much more in town to see, and I don’t particularly feel like doing that walk again.

Of course, it could also be hurricane-style weather (see: current weather), which will mean that I’ll run to a pub, and spend the day there.

2005-10-26T18:26:00.000-04:00

They must really not want people to visit Orkney from Edinburgh, because holy hell that was the longest trip ever. I left my house at 6am and checked into my hotel at 8:45. PM. Nearly fifteen hours of traveling. Three trains, a walk, and a ferry. Here’s how it went:

Train from Edinburgh to Perth. I went to Perth, you may remember. It was the town where, when I asked what there was to do there, people frowned and said, “In Perth…?” This is also, I’d failed to mention, the land of no trash cans. I mean it. None. Not even in the bathrooms. Even the women’s bathrooms! I asked about this, and the reason, apparently, is security. So people don’t throw bombs disguised as trash into one of the trashcans.

My question is how that stops people from just leaving, say, a paper bag with explosives in it on a bench. But what do I know?

Then I took a train from Perth to Inverness. It was on this train ride that I’d woken up enough to do something other than just stare. So I started reading the book I brought with me, because I learned a while ago that one should never, ever, travel without a book. And the train was late getting in, so I booked it to the next train, which was:

The train from Inverness to Thurso. Thurso is way (way) up north. I had quite a layover there – three hours until the bus to Scrabster that the Train Information Man told me about, that I couldn’t find. I asked him twice, and he sent me the wrong way the first time around. Said to go right when I needed to go straight. Jerk. The only bus times I could find were for 6:18pm, and an alleged 5:55pm (one bus station said that’s when it would show up at the train station, but the train station didn’t agree).

Or I could walk – Train Information Man said it was about an hour walk. There was very little to do in Thurso – a few shops. I stopped in a bakery and asked what kind of soup they had. “Broth.” Oh! Yes. Broth of some variety. And so I had that, and ascertained that it was, indeed, broth of some variety. With carrot and onion bits.

I got bored after about an hour and a half of walking up and down the same street, wondering about bus times and trying to figure out how the hell I was going to spend another two hours there. So I decided to try and walk. And it was a fine walk, the only problem being that while Thurso has almost nothing in the town, Scrabster has less than nothing.

See, the thing about Thurso and Scrabster is that they’re both towns that you go to in order to leave them. Unless you live there the only reason to go there is to catch anything you can to get out.

Scrabster has the port, a seafood place, two closed restaurants (rumor had it that they were opening later in the evening), and a hotel (for whoever misses the last train, I’m guessing). And a really terrible name. Lovely sunset, though.

With this dearth of, well, anything in the towns I have to say that the ferry is ridiculously swish (isn’t that the greatest term? I thought so!). It’s like walking into a hotel. There’s a restaurant, a bar, a game room (gambling and video games), a shop, lounges, couches, and tvs. I watched the Simpsons for most of the 90-minute trip. Okay, drinking beer on a boat? Crazy weird. The boat, being on water, rocks back and forth and you start to wonder if it’s the boat or the beer that’s causing the weave in your step.

It was dark so I didn’t get to see any of the sights that one is rumored to pass while on the journey, but I wasn’t totally keen on doing more than sit and watch tv so that wasn’t a huge deal.

I didn’t feel like a B&B – I wanted a hotel with my own bathtub (if possible) and food and – okay, I just really wanted to crash. Not much else mattered. It being dark I wandered around the one lit street that I could see, where I did indeed find a hotel and was thrilled to check in.

“What kind of room would you like?” the clerk asked. I blinked at her.
“One with a bed in it, I think.” Unless they have a dining room free. That’d be cozy.
“One with a bed in it,” she repeated loudly, clearly not interested in my attempt at dry local humor.

The distinction she was making, and I know you had this figured out ages ago, was whether I wanted a bath or a shower in my room. Ohhhh, right. Silly me.

Food, bath, tv, sleep, and life is much better, thank you. But all I could think after, oh, noon was “This had better be a fucking impressive place.”

Tip learned too late: If you want to go to Orkney from E-burgh or similar, go to Inverness for a day or two and then go to Orkney, then go and spend some more time in Inverness. Because, and note how I come full circle here, holy hell.

2005-10-24T06:07:00.000-04:00

An exciting day, y’all! Not for you, for me!

I slept in lots, which was kind of ridiculous because I went to bed early, but apparently my body was really into having 12 hours of sleep, and so I did! There were weird dreams.

Anyway! I decided to go out and try a new wireless internet place which was located in a shopping centre, in a bagel shop. Nearer to my house than the pub, which would be really thrilling. Free wireless internet! Plus bagels!

Except only four of those words were true. The free bit? Not so much. I could get onto AIM and AOL just fine, but it wouldn’t let me browse the web without paying £5 for the privilege. Per session, and it didn’t specify what a “session” was. When I saw this I said HAH to the shop in general, finished my bagel and left. Making me pay. Ridiculous.

And I went off shopping for things that I’ve been needing and haven’t gotten around to purchasing, and y’all, here’s where it gets awesome:

I found trousers. Oh yes I did. I found them! And bought them and they are now mine to wear.

This might be not interesting to you, but I’ll explain.

I have spent literally days going through shops trying to find either 1. the same trousers that now have three giant holes in them, only two of which are patched, or 2. some kind of nice new European-style trousers with the embroidery on the leg which are the rage here and do, indeed, look very nice. Or, if I get really lucky, a pair of wide-wale cords which do not exist in this part of the world, even for men.

But after many trips the ~~pants~~ trousers that I’ve found have been 1. much too tight to wear, 2. loose to the point of falling off, 3. just plain not in my size ever, or 4. hideous beyond belief.

I am unable to just walk into a store and find trousers that fit. I complain about it often. You may have noticed. But if you can do this thing, appreciate it. (I feel like one of those 80-year-old people who tells angsty teenagers to appreciate their youth. Bleah).

And so I found trousers that fit into category 1 and snatched them off the shelf, along with some others. And they fit and they were cheap and I knew that if anyone tried to separate them from me I wouldn’t be totally adverse to killing them. The only problem was that they were for “tall” people, which I am certainly not. So I have to chop about 5” off the bottoms, but I certainly don’t care.

Trousers! Yay!

Right. And I looked up places to go next and think I’m just going to have to ask someone who knows things about travel, because the relevant travel search websites suck. I’m thinking Orkney islands which are north of the northern bit of Scotland, which will make it seem much warmer here when I get back, or Wester Ross, which is northwest, where it is rumored to be totally photogenic, or somewhere else.

I bought other fun things like cleaning stuff and thumbtacks, so my windowsill is clean(er) and my map is finally up on my wall, bringing my wall-decoration count to 2 (the map and my dress, which, since I don’t have anything silly like a hanger, is hanging on a nail above my bed).

Oh! And did I tell you? I came out of the bathroom the other day and looked down to see a dog looking up at me. There’s a dog in the flat! Former Contra Dancer Tam’s wife has moved over here and brought her dog with her – apparently the quarantine rules, while expensive, no longer require your pet to die before attempting entrance to the new country. So there’s a dog! Who is sweet and lovely and spends all her time in their room, so I don’t get to see her much, but still! Dog!

And my number of books read since departing America has been upped to nine. And I’m out of books again. Oy. I’m not looking forward to bringing them back home with me.

2005-10-23T12:20:00.000-04:00

I have a few days and not much news to catch up on. Let’s see.

Last Tuesday, which would be the 18th, you may recall that I tried and failed miserably in an attempt to find Jamie. I managed to succeed on Wednesday, when he was opening for folk singer/guitarist Mark Silver at the pub at which I’d twice found myself on the previous evening.

Before entering the two gentlemen assured me that Jamie was indeed playing that night. I threw my hands up in relief and the older of the two men imitated me with a laugh and said “Thank Allah!”

You won’t find a comment like that in America. I fully appreciated it.

I babbled a minute about my grand search the night before and the younger man winked at me.

I went in and bought a Magner’s (cider) and sat down. The younger gentleman, whose name I now know to be David, came and sat next to me. We had a nice chat for a while. Jamie came out and gave me his usual look of surprise at my attendance.

David got up as the show started (he’s the secretary for the club, which apparently involves holding the door for latecomers), and when Jamie was finished he came and sat next to me. We watched Mark, who reminds me either of Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel, play, chatting during the breaks between songs. During the intermission he jumped up to do some business or other, and the woman sitting next to me started chatting about music and musical ability.

I started to wonder if this club was so lacking in walk-in audience members that the arrival of someone new caused a stir. I think I’m right.

Jamie invited me out the next day (Thursday) for breakfast and a little shopping. Something we were planning to do in Greensboro, which fell through. After the show Jamie went to pack up and chat to some people, and the bartender – apparently the other young member of the club, came over to talk to me. Remember what I said about the group being really excited about new people? I think the younger members were even more thrilled that I was under the age of fifty.

We trooped out to some little bar where they were having a music session. I, being the clever, clever young woman that I am, had brought my knitting with me, and sat and knit and listened. Because let’s face it: if you don’t play an instrument or sing, a session can be god-awful boring. I have tested this theory a number of times and I am so totally right. Yay music and all of that, but damn.

Quarter of one rolled around and I found myself a nice headache to latch onto, and so told Jamie I was going to head out. I had to walk home, after all, and wasn’t sure how long it was going to take me. He said if I waited another ten minutes he’d give me a ride.

Awesome, right?

I keep forgetting that I need to take Jamie’s concepts of time with a grain of salt. Maybe even a cup or two. We didn’t head out until after one – which was actually fine, since now that I wasn’t walking time was less of a factor. But we were also dropping off one of the other musicians. Who lived far enough outside of the city that his street didn’t show up on my city map.

But car! Driving! No worries! Much. I got home around two, and Jamie and I decided that meeting at 10 was silly, and 10:30 was far more reasonable. In retrospect I probably should’ve walked.

Waiting on the sidewalk for him the next morning (he was right on time, I was early) a Hari Krishna-style nun came by to ask me if I was happy and you know religion makes you happy and do you have any money? As I was telling her I wasn’t interested Jamie came up and put his arm around me, and we gave each other giant grins. I looked at the nun, confident that I’d answered her question about my level of happiness. Neener, neener, neener.

Y’all, Jamie and I have been trying since we met a year and a half ago to hang out without interruption and this was the first time we’ve actually accomplished it. It was fantastic.

We went to a café and sat for over an hour, talking about life and such things. I think he’s trying to get revenge on me for telling him that he would love living in North Carolina, because he spent some time telling me that he could see me in Seattle, or Boston, or at least not somewhere I’ve lived before. Now is not the time to settle, but rather to try something new and different.

His ambition for me to try things was contagious, and that bastard has me thinking about going back to school, a thing which I have been staunchly against since graduating.

I paid for breakfast while he was in the bathroom, and when he found out he tried very hard to repay me at least part of it. I refused, despite his repetitive urging, and he gave me a long hug.

We visited every shop along the Royal Mile that sold sweaters, as he was searching for one for his new sweetie, if you will. (Girlfriend isn’t the right word, and this is definitely more than a friendship, so I’m borrowing a term from a friend of mine). She has similarly colored hair to me, so anytime he found something he liked he would hold it up to me.

In the middle of our hunt we stopped for a beer and discussed sweater-and-gift options, his Scotland tour next September, and more of life.

He ended up buying her a ring, too, and as per our new custom, asked which I liked. I pointed out one, and he asked if I would like it. I turned a violent shade of pink and said no. He asked why I was blushing, and I told him it made me shy when people bought me things. But he did, because he can be ridiculously charming.

He departed suddenly after staying an hour and a half later than I thought he would. Since we’d spent so much time wandering he had to take a cab back to wherever he was staying, and our goodbye was brief. His cab drove past me and he turned to wave and blow kisses.

It was heart-achingly sweet, and an unreasonably fun day.

And now Jacqui is ten minutes late picking me up for today’s swing dance (as she predicted), so I’m going to finish getting ready and hopefully have a more entertaining entry later.

2005-10-19T13:15:00.000-04:00

Kirkcaldy

2005-10-19T11:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday! Yes. The plan:

1. Dinner
2. Go to Jamie’s concert since he’s in town, according to his schedule
3. Either go swing dancing or hang out with Jamie.

Easy, yes? Ha ha! I laugh.

I went and had dinner; that was fine. I finally went to the Royal Theatre pub, but they’ve had almost complete employee turnover there, so Graham was the only one I knew. I left there at ten of seven to walk to the Pleasance, or possibly the Edinburgh Folk Club, where Jamie’s schedule had said he would be. Fine!

Made it to the relevant street faster than expected and walked past the address and had to turn around to find it. It’s in a cobblestone courtyard off the street, and there were no major signs. I went into the first door (they weren’t marked, of course, with street numbers or anything silly like that), and they seemed to be showing some movie. I didn’t see any of Jamie’s posters, so I went to the place next door and asked at the bar. They gave me a seriously confused look.

The folk club, they asked? That’s tomorrow night. And Sunday.

Good! What?

I still didn’t see any of his posters and left, confused. His schedule definitely said today. I checked my phone to double-check that it was, indeed, the 18th (it was). So I guess I wasn’t going to catch him. Since he doesn’t have a cell phone and his computer is broken I didn’t have a way of contacting him – finding him at the gig was it. Blast.

It was over an hour until the swing dance, so I walked back to High st, where the dance was, found a pub, and nursed a beer and read my book until it was time to go.

I walked down the street, thinking it was a shame I couldn’t catch Jamie, but swing dancing is always good, and I’ll go back to the club tomorrow to see if he’s there and then suddenly I was at the end of the street, and I hadn’t seen the club.

What?

I walked back up. Surely it’s on this street, right? Of course it is. It looks right. Isn’t it? I checked my map – neither Calton st. nor Holyrood st. looked right, and they were my other options.

So, having wandered too damn much today, I called Jacqi and asked her. It was Holyrood st. Bah. Made it to the club and went into the bathroom where I ran into Jacqi. I told her about trying to find Jamie, how he was supposed to play at the Pleasance/Edinburgh Folk Club and I didn’t see him. Oh yeah, she said, that’s just right up the road.

What? No it’s not. I walked way too much for it to be right up the road.

Another woman in the bathroom with us said that she’d just passed it – there had been people gathered outside.

Now. This means that I was in the wrong place and the concert’s over and if I don’t catch him then I really won’t see him.

So I ran. I ran up the road (with periodic bursts of walking quickly – I’m not totally insane) and up the hill and some stairs –

and found myself where I’d been not two hours earlier. I’d gotten the address right, and it’d been right around the corner from the dance place the whole time. Only this time I was sweating and panting. Lovely!

Just for fun I walked into the first place again, but it was no more promising. So I went into the bar – not the one I’d been in earlier, a different one – to see if they had any different ideas. I waited for the bartenders to stop talking to other people, thinking that Jamie could be anywhere, and if I don’t catch him before he leaves – you get the idea.

And I waited. And looked to my left, and recognized the person standing next to me as a drummer I met in Inverness when I was hanging out with Jamie and Hans.

What the hell.

If this was a novel I’d have less respect for the author’s ultra-convenient deus es machina.

I said hello and asked if he knew where Jamie was – oh yeah, he’s in town this week. But he’s been really hard to reach on his phone.

He has a phone here now?

Oh yeah, he just got a British SIM card for it.

Great.

So it turned out that the Folk Club was in the bar that I’d been in on my first trip here, and he didn’t know if/when Jamie was playing, but he was definitely around this week.

And then my head exploded. By which I mean I gave him my email address and asked him to let me know about music sessions and went back to the swing dance.

The dance was fun. And I got a ride home from Jacqi and went to bed. And since there’s a swing dance Sunday I think I’ll stay in town this week, though I’d been hoping to go out west.

And today? All the thrills and chills of going to the grocery store! Ooh, aah.

2005-10-16T22:39:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I decided I was done with Inverness and was going to go to Kirkcaldy. It seemed, from the train ride, that I’d get some fantastic views of cliffs meeting the ocean. I wasn’t positive that I was going to do it, but checked out of my B&B this morning anyway. As I was walking to an ATM to get some cash I had this exchange. See if you can make some sense of it.

Scene: Walking along the footbridge crossing Lake Ness. At the end of the bridge two people are setting up what seems to be a video camera. The theory is that they’re doing some news thing.

Guy: Looks like we’re going to be on TV.
Me: Yep. (chuckle).
Guy: [Babbling about tv].
Me: Mm.
Guy: Where are you from?
(Golly, never heard that line before!)
Me: The states.
Guy: I was going to go to the states once, but I had to get a 60-day visa. I can’t even remember my own name and I have to fill out a visa form!
Me: …?

Then he asked if he could buy me a drink some night and I said no. One thing is that’s just a little weird, but second, can’t remember his own name…? That’s confidence-inspiring!

What do these people expect? That I’m going to turn to them, flip my hair, and say “Oh yeah, baby, take me now.”

I went to the train station and got into a very nice conversation with an old woman in line. She’d lived in Inverness for 50 years and said that it tended to be a city unto itself. Even she, after so long, felt a little bit like an outsider on occasion.

On the train there were kids sitting across from me. Three kids, and two mothers. The kids couldn’t have been older than seven. The kids yelled, cried, kicked my chair (and they werern’t even sitting behind me, they moved into the seat behind me and then kicked my seat), whistled and left a mess. Thus I have decided that kids should have their own car. A special kids-and-their-parents railcar. And I have also decided that that car should not be attached to any train that I happen to be riding.

And this is when the kids are being quiet. When they’re being noisy I say they can stay in the same train, but they should be dangled outside of the train by their ankles. Or duct taped to the roof. I’m flexible on the matter.

It was a lovely day in Inverness – bright, clear, cool. And ten minutes into the train ride it was gray and cloudy and foggy. I wasn’t sure until the last minute whether or not I really was going to go to Kirkcaldy. Would it be worth it with the gross weather? I didn’t want to go back to Edinburgh just yet, and knew now was as good a time as ever (since I plan to go west next), so I jumped out at the station.

This town… It’s pretty sad. It has a severe need of a good cleaning. The architecture seems to be suffering from bad contractors and insufficient funding. Whatever is in the classic European style is filthy and in bad disrepair, and whatever isn’t is classic 1930’s – 1960’s ugly.

You know in Inverness they have a horrible 1960’s building that they knocked down a house of Mary, Queen of Scots’ to build? Sheesh.

Anyway. I have yet to find anything manmade that’s really interesting here. I’m staying in a fantastic B&B, though. The room is huge, the owners are incredibly friendly (they let me use their computer to check my email), and for what I’m getting (en suite, satellite tv, two twin beds – I really like to stretch out – breakfast and lots of space) £30 is really rather good. But aside from that? Not so much. I’ve only been here a day, so I won’t damn the place based on just what I’ve seen in town, but man… I’m not optimistic.

And then I did what I came here to do: I went walking along the shore. They have an esplanade along the beach – an ugly cement and brick walkway that was built in the 1930’s and 1940’s so that some people could have employment. A good thing, I think. And I think it might also be a good idea to provide some more employment and give it a facelift. The sea was choppier than usual and waves slammed against the cement wall with sprays that sometimes reached 30’ (I’m guessing – I didn’t have a tape measure or anything). Since the wall was curved if you looked to the left you could watch the spray move up the length of the wall as the wave progressively crashed into the barrier. Highly cool.

The esplanade ends and then you can walk on the sands (when the tide is out, of course). Eventually the beaches become rocky, and if you keep going there’s a ruin of some old fort or lighthouse or similar. It has a fence around it, but the path just makes its way carefully around it. And it’s there where great slabs of rock jut out of the sea and OH it’s spectacular.

And – this is where it gets interesting – I saw a seal! Yeah I did! On the rocks! I wasn’t sure at first, but watched carefully for a while and then I saw the head move. And even though I’d been ready to head back (this had been going on for some time, but I kept thinking I’d see “just what’s around the next corner”) I clambered over beautiful red striped sandstone filled with pockets of water just to get a closer look.

It was cool. S/he had a sweet little face and watched me as I walked in closer. Being on a rock surrounded by water I could only get so close, but man. So neat. The odd thing was that s/he was lying with her/his tail sticking up in the air. I’ve never seen such a thing. A surprise, given all my experience with seals. Which consists of seeing them at the zoo a couple of times. I’m almost an expert.

I took pictures and headed back. A lot of people were out walking – many with dogs who would trot up to me and say hi and ask for a skritch before heading off again. Everyone I passed said hi, which is highly encouraging.

Then I got Chinese takeout and beer and sat in my room. No, really. And it was great.

This morning (it’s now the 18th, by the way – I’m a little slow with this update) I had several hours after breakfast until it was time to catch my train. I walked up and down the main shopping drag because there just wasn’t much else to see. Here’s what’s listed in one of the town brochures:
1. Old Parish Church
2. Beveridge Park
3. Fife Ice Arena (not in town)
4. Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery (the brochure wasn’t terribly inspiring)
5. Library
6. Theatre
7. Sailors Walk (an old house not open to the public)
8. Town House (headquarters of the Kirkcaldy District Council).
9. Pan Ha’ Dysart (apparently a street with old houses, not featured on the map)
10. Ravenscraig Park (not in town)
11. Ravenscraig Castle (near the park, and so not in the town, damn it, because I would’ve liked to go there)
12. Swimming pool
13. Shopping streets/malls

There you go. Those are the highlights of this town. Oh, and 14. the esplanade.

With exciting prospects such as those I spent an hour at the library. I joined their ranks so I could use their slowest connection ever, then hopped my train and went home.

And oh lordy what an evening. But I’m going to bed.

2005-10-16T14:48:00.000-04:00

I’m back in Inverness. It’s again weird to go to a place that should be totally unfamiliar and yet have an idea as to where I’m going, and recognize things around me. Weird!

It’s really gorgeous around here, sunny and clear. I got in and found a place to stay for a bit. Dropped my stuff and walked around for a while, which was a big part of why I came back here. The clouds were pink and lovely and you know what I did? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “left my camera in the room.”

Had dinner, and then enriched myself culturally and definitely did not sit around for three hours watching Zoolander and various Scottish tv programmes that I didn’t fully understand but laughed at anyway. Ahem. And I signed up for a tour. Oh, I’m a tourist now!

I didn’t quite realize it’d be so focused on Nessie, but whatever. Went to Loch Ness (a different beach! Wowsers!) then went on a boat ride on the lake, and up to a cairn (circular rock grave-style thing). The guide was funny and I got some information about Scotland that will inevitably leak out of my brain at the first sight of television.

As the guide was talking about the Nessie legend and one theory is that it’s a fish. A big fish, certainly, but a fish none the less. He said that there’s one person on the tour who might know what kind if is. He looked around. And then looked at me.

Fish? Some kind of potentially American fish? Not a shark, not a whale… I turned red and said I wasn’t all that familiar with fish. Koi? He said I might be kicking myself when I found out what it was. Do you know? Cause I sure as hell didn’t.

He showed a photo of a close up of something that was, as far as I could tell, gray and slimy.

Give up? I did.

A sturgeon. Of course! Why in heavens name didn’t I think of that? So entirely possible it’s a giant old sturgeon. And not a plesiosaur, as the classic finned Nessie is represented.

Also, every picture you’ve ever seen of Nessie is a fake. Just so you know.

Now I need to decide what I’m doing this afternoon and also what I’m doing tomorrow. Going to Kirkcauldy? Going back to E-burgh? Staying here? I’ve got nothing. But it’s nice to get out again.

2005-10-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

Train ride (good pictures this time!)

The tour:
A different view of Loch Ness

On the road

Some cairn

2005-10-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

Another day spent inside! Whee!

I actually did get out today. I had three things planned: 1. top up my cell phone (this means to put more money on my pay-as-I-go plan, which takes 2/3 of my daily budget – rock!), 2. see if I can’t return my recently purchased copy of Deception Point because I thought it was Digital Fortress (as I’ve already read Deception Point and thus have read every single book in my room – oh yes. All six of them), despite not having a receipt, and 3. buy me a rail ticket to get back to Inverness because the leaves are almost done changing here, and I need to move fast if I want to see them up yonder. Plus there are walks where you might see seals up there! Seals, guys!

I was about a quarter of the way up the hill to Prince’s street, where all these things were located in a highly convenient fashion, and I was already sweating and hot and gross and cleverly thinking to myself that hey, I don’t think I’m fully well yet. I am nothing if not observant. I made it though the irrationally slow line at the Carphone Warehouse and was about convinced to just go home when I passed the bookstore and decided it would be in my best interest to go in. This would surely be a quick exchange, if they let me exchange it at all!

I spent over an hour in there. Erk. They let me exchange the book right off and then I spent ages wandering the shelves, and ended up purchasing a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Bill Bryson’s Notes from A Big Country. I didn’t mean to get both, but I must’ve not been at full brain capacity yet because I thought I was 5p short of buying P&P because I forgot that I had pennies (or whatever they call the copper 1 and 2p coins here) in my pocket and a £10 note in my wallet. And I couldn’t very well put £1.50 on a credit card (yeah it was that cheap – I win), so I grabbed another book.

Isn’t that interesting? Not really, no, I apologize.

And I didn’t buy rail tickets because the line was stupid long and I decided instead to just check it out tomorrow, which is way more sensible. If, you know, I’m well tomorrow. But I need to go out of town again.

Today’s notes being that 1. it is ridiculously impossible to find chicken noodle soup here. I went to two corner stores and a fancy-pants mini-Italian-style grocery store and all I could find was cream of chicken soup. Heinz brand. Did you know Heinz made soup? I didn’t. 2. Heinz brand vegetable soup is gross. 3. I’m teaching Introduction to Blues on the 27th. Oo. Aah. They want me to advertise for it. I have about one idea as to how to do that, and it doesn’t go beyond opening my window and saying hey, I’m teaching a blues dancing class. I’d yell, but I don’t want to make my throat hurt anymore. 4. I haven’t been to the Royal Theatre Pub in ages. I keep intending to do that, and get sick or make other plans. It’s no good. 5. I’m just babbling now. I’m so bored.

2005-10-13T13:00:00.000-04:00

Sick. Can't get computer to internet. Am using flatmate's internet. Will post later. Back to bed.

2005-10-07T20:09:00.000-04:00

In which I talk about being sick! Yay!

Not so many entries lately. First not a whole lot has happened, and second, I have caught death. Bad death. Serious, mean, cruel, body-aching death. I am not altogether pleased about this.

Well. Okay. So. This weekend Andrew Sutton, an American swing dance teacher, came to teach workshops. Good. Came all the way over here to learn swing dancing from an American. Fantastic.

I missed Saturday’s workshops because I felt that sleeping in was the better option. I had not yet acquired death, but was thinking about it, what with having some Tireds and Vague Sore Throat.

That evening, however, I took a cab to the rendezvous place. Taking a cab? So expensive! £6 to get across town. Crikey. But I couldn’t walk there fast enough and I still don’t get the bus systems here, so that was my option. Unless I wanted to run across town, and really, not so much. I piled into a car with some dancers – only one of them local – and headed off to Galashiels, where a big band was playing. For dancing! Yay dancing! I dance.

All the dancers felt off in their leading or following that night – except Andrew, being so professional that he never has an off night. Which is not cool.

And guys, they played a waltz and I had no one to dance with. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to waltz? So long! So I cried. Not really. But I looked enviously out at the people dancing and got myself into a huff.

Huff huff huff.

Excuse me. I’m sick. I’m working at about 20% brain power.

I started feeling decently about my dancing at about the time that we were getting ready to go. And I got dropped off and went to bed. Oo, exciting.

Sunday I hauled myself up for dance workshops and was exhausted by a quarter of the way through. I got good information, so it was worth it, but man I was tired. When it was over I went home. Sensing another trend here? I am! Thanks, 20/20 hindsight!

And Monday I had level 3 death. Lots of tired. Managed to get out of the house for a bit to try and find trousers and –

Okay, y’all? I am fated to never, ever, ever find well-fitting trousers. Ever. I have spent two days searching – even searching at places where I find trousers at home – and my options are 1. too tight (I have plenty of options here), or 2. humorously loose. I hate women’s sizes. Sometimes 14 is fine, sometimes 16 is fine, and sometimes 18 is too tight. Explain that one too me.

I’ll explain it – it’s a conspiracy. Bitches.

Anyway. I went out to see Pride and Prejudice with a friend of mine and realized that I was feeling of level 3 death, which seemed, at the time, to be level 2 death. So I went home after the movie and went to bed. And all was well.

Tuesday! Was fine! Felt fine. So went dancing, naturally. Oh. I felt good about my dancing and I was having fun chatting with people and working on my balboa and I was sure that all was right with the world. I even got a ride home from Jacqi who very conveniently lives around the corner from me.

And then I got home. Cue stomachache. And achies. I went to bed and woke up early-early with miserable stomachache, splitting headache, stuffed nose, and body aches. And I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I tossed and turned, occasionally dozing. Noon rolled around and I couldn’t be bothered to drag myself out of bed. Eventually I worked up the energy to put on a movie (thank god for my computer and movies) and stayed mostly comatose all day.

I got out at one point to get meds, because I didn’t really have anything with me. Had worked through all my advil and boy howdy did (do) I hurt. I spent £11 on meds and crawled back home. And I’ve been in bed since. I’ve had crackers and grapes today. And the Scottish equivalent of Gatorade, which is called Lucozade. Hee. I’m completely dehydrated, which is likely a key source of my problem.

The cold/flu meds I got don’t let you take other painkillers with them. That is so not cool. I want to drug myself until I sleep through the sickness and wake with sunshine and bluebirds and little deer strolling around my room.

And now I hurt and am tired and have been complaining to various people all day. And now I’m complaining to you folks! Hi guys! I feel like crap!

I’m running out of movies and things to watch. This is a problem. I feel like reading would make for more headache (writing isn’t doing me so much good but god I’m bored), and I’ve seen all my movies a million times.

So tomorrow, more cabin fever and no dancing for me. Man. Someone come over. Bring movies.

2005-10-07T10:58:00.000-04:00

How can so much happen when I don’t really do anything?

I am, to start, not altogether convinced that I am completely healthy. Remember how I felt like lead? Apparently that feeling also went on holiday in Inverness, and now it’s back. Hi!

Having the same mindset as I did last time I felt so tired I walked halfway across town. I’m ignoring Wednesday. I didn’t do anything. Seriously. The day’s highlight was finding a new grocery store.

My place is located in the northeast section of the city, and I walked all the way down to the southwest part of the city. Why? To try and find a knitting and/or embroidery store. I need an embroidery hoop. Stop looking at me like that.

I walked up Prince’s street (the main locals’ shopping drag), listening to my music, and then a woman with blond hair and a nose stud stopped me. I knew her. My brain went into overdrive, trying to figure out HOW THE HELL I KNOW THIS PERSON! DEAR GOD, QUICK, BEFORE SHE NOTICES!

I haven’t the faintest idea what her name is, but I met her in Inverness of all places. She was playing at the Ceòl Beò¹ sessions and was at the big dinner following. We had a lovely talk about Edinburgh and I highly enjoy her. She was in Edinburgh for the night, and now shopping for a half hour before heading to the airport to go to Sweden, where she’s from.

Y’all, it is so weird to run into people I know. The other day I saw Aussie Swing Dance Ben but didn’t say hi because I’d forgotten his name. Yesterday I saw what’s her name from the Royal Theatre Pub.

You know what this is like? It’s like the end of my freshman year at Guilford where I barely felt like I knew anyone, and as my parents and I were driving to lunch every single person we passed knew me and waved. And I was all, where the hell have you people been?

That is what this is like.

So I continued on my way and walked down into a churchyard and admired the old, old graveyards that were split into small sections and are now being used for storage of things like plywood and road barriers.

And then I ran into a man who talked my ear off about something that I couldn’t quite figure out but he was staring at my shoes and telling me about his life and parents and how he has been walking and is now away from home and woe and now he is starting to have a bit of a panic attack and so I stopped him and asked how I could help. He was asking for food or money. Nice. I gave him some change to make him stop talking and let him continue on to the church.

Oof.

I finally found the store I was looking for, and boy was it crap. The good part of the wandering was that I found a theatre where, on Oct 30, they’re playing the original Nosferatu with live organ music! How cool is that? So cool!

And I walked back and slept for some undetermined amount of time, then went out for dinner and internet. And on the way back I ran into Rita in front of a little convenience store.

What the hell.

She was there with a friend of hers. They were coming back from the swing dance class where they’d gotten kicked out. Turned out to be a complete beginner you had to start those classes four weeks ago. Oops. We stood and talked a while about swing dancing and other such things. A man came out of the store carrying a pizza. He came over to us and said something I didn’t quite catch.

“What?”
“How much?” he asked again.

It took me a second to figure out what the hell he was talking about, but when I did I punched him in the face and then kicked him in the nads.

I didn’t really, but that’s way more interesting that what I did, which was to say “No,” in a variety of stern and disgusted ways. As he walked away he turned back and said he was kidding, ha ha!

So I bought a car and ran him down.

If the three of us had looked even remotely like we might’ve been in the sex business (if we had, for instance, been wearing gobs of makeup – or any, even – and/or had been at all scantily clad, or perhaps been wearing some sort of “Prostitute” badge) then I might’ve understood why he thought that, but we were all wearing trousers and long sleeved shirts and sneakers and generally thick jackets.

Maybe that’s what they wear around here when they’re strolling down the streets, looking for customers. I wouldn’t blame them. It’s cold here.

Anyway. I went to the swing dancing class (the third of three on Thursday nights)(I can go because I have the basic down). I got to talk to Ben and Helen (the couple from Australia and Sweden, respectively)(I think she’s from Sweden).

Dance, dance, dance.

When it was over I saw Jacqi – the woman who showed interest in me teaching a blues class. She asked if I’d said anything about it to anyone, and I said I hadn’t. She took my hand and tucked my arm under hers and brought me over to Michael and oh… um… damn. L--? …Liam? Some British name like that. She said I wanted to teach a class, and they said great! How about next week?

Panic!

I mean, yes! Of course next week would be just great! I am not at all terrified!

Ben and Helen invited me out to get food with them. I agreed, even though I was a little tired because I would like v. much to get to know them better. Turned out there were 10 of us going. So much for a personal invitation, but whatever. We piled into cars and drove to – get this – the southwest of the city. Yes, right where I’d walked earlier that day. Har har har.

I ended up sitting next to the aforementioned Michael and the Norwegian, whose name we spent the car ride trying to figure out. All the younger swing dancers that I was hoping to get connected with were sitting at the other end of the table. Blast.

Kathy gave me a ride home. Ben and Helen rode in the back seat with someone, and they laughed and chatted. I talked with Kathy in the vein of “Those Kids Today,” referring mostly to the drunk people wandering about the city. And yet I wanted to be one of the kids in the back seat. But it was good to talk to her.

Aaaand… yes. Swing dancing this weekend. That's all for now.

¹ I would like to note that Gaelic is a weird, weird language. Ceòl Beò sounds like Kill Bill. Ceilidh = Kay-lee. Eilidh = Ay-lee. How is that at all ever logical? It’s not, that’s how.

2005-10-05T13:39:00.000-04:00

Loch Ness.

2005-10-05T13:31:00.000-04:00

Train to Inverness. (Warning: bad pictures ahead).

Ceol Beol music session. This was where I ran into J&H. More less-than-good pictures. I blame the lighting. And also my camera.

Inverness.

Inverness Islands.

2005-10-04T21:47:00.000-04:00

Before I left the States, as we Americans-Abroad call them, people told me extended stories about how, during this trip I would Grow and Change and isn’t life the most amazing thing, with the Growing and Changing on this trip that will allow Growth and Change?

I scoffed at them. I freely admit this. I scoffed. Sometimes audibly, when their backs were turned and I could blame it on the dog.

And damn it y’all, they were kind of right. You know me, yes? You all have some idea as to who I am, and if you don’t, I will let you in on a highly classified secret about me:

I dance all the time. I don’t mean in the grocery store or anything (necessarily), but I am known for driving an upwards of three hours to go dancing. When in the correct geographical area (that I cannot, for the life of me, ever, ever locate on a map) I will often dance three, four, or five times a week, depending on how many dances happen to be scheduled.

This is really all you need to know about me for this to make any kind of sense.

There is a dance of the swing variety happening at this very minute and I am sitting on my bed typing to you people (though, to be honest, mostly to myself).

Let me repeat: there is a dance right now and I am not in attendance.

I don’t know what happened. A major reason that I left Inverness today was so that I could go dancing. And then I came back here and had dinner and a beer and oh my does sleep sound good. And if not sleep, then just lying in bed under the covers will do just fine, thank you.

Maybe it’s waking up at 8:30, or the four-hour train ride, or less-than-good sleep the past two days. Or maybe I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t feel like walking to the dance and back again. Whatever. Either way, I’m pretty glad to be sitting on my duff.

2005-10-03T18:12:00.000-04:00

It’s been a trip of last-minute plans. This morning, for instance, my plans ended after “breakfast.” I find that I’m much happier having plans about a day in advance. Here? Not so much. Tonight? Jamie and Hans are playing a concert, and then…? There might be beer happening. I feel like there should be food ever. But I don’t know where I’m sleeping. Which is awesome.

This is actually a good place to be in that situation. There seem to be about 10 bed and breakfasts per square foot, most of which have vacancies. If I’m not crashing with J&H again then I shouldn’t have a problem finding somewhere else.

When Jamie asked B&B Lady if I could stay with them he said I was just saying for one night. I’m not sure if I should take that as a hint or, as Hans proposed, that Jamie didn’t know what would be happening tonight – if I’d be staying.

I guess I’ll find out!

(Much, much later)

Yes! So. Um.

Jamie and Hans had workshops at a school – Inverness Royal Academy, which Invernessians call the IRA. Being as I would have a whole lot of not much to do there I opted to wander around the town, which I was keen to do anyway. Would be a little silly to go all the way up there (it’s way up north, if you were wondering)(waaaaay up north) and not explore. Hans gave me directions back to the B&B from the pub where we had been checking email, and I set off!

I don’t know where I was heading when I started wandering, but it was in the wrong direction. Imagine! No set destination and I still went the wrong way. But I managed to find myself at the loveliest used bookstore I’ve ever seen. There were shelves upon shelves in one great room with a second-floor walkway around the walls. It had the organized disorganization of a good used bookstore and a café up the spiral staircase.

I walked in and out of their little (and sometimes these were tiny) nooks, mouth agape in wonder, because I am a giant nerd.

I ended up settling on a small book, having very little space in my bag for the stacks that I would’ve preferred to take with me, and purchased it, like any good citizen would. I was on my way back outside when I turned around and asked Front Desk Lady, “I have about an hour before I need to meet some friends. Where’s a good place to walk to from here?”

Because as fun as it is to wander around the train station (as I’d done just an hour before)(inadvertently, thank you) I’d like to find something, you know, else.

She didn’t hesitate before drawing me a rudimentary little map to the Inverness Islands. About an hour walk if I didn’t dawdle, and apparently lovely. And it’d put me right where I need to be to head back to the B&B! Jinkies!

I looked at the pencil-drawn map. “So I go out of here and turn left?” “No, you go out to the right.”

Right. Check.

And I did. And holy god, y’all, it was intensely gorgeous. Inverness has a giant river running right through the middle of it (giant is a subjective term here – you should keep in mind that this city has about 60,000 people in it and has only recently been upgraded from “town”), and the Islands are, in fact, little islands that are reachable by footbridges. Bridges that bounce when you walk on them! Oh, it’s fun.

Five minutes in and you can barely see the road. To the left is a perfectly clear stream, and to the right is the river. The trees and foliage is lush and the air is clear. The paths are easy, and there are rough paths where dogs run nearer the water. The second island was overwhelmed with the smell of pine.

It was just amazing. My photos, which will follow within the next three weeks if I continue in the same time frame that I’ve been working in, don’t do it justice. It was incredible.

I finished the loop with plenty of time to meet back up with Jamie and Hans, and set out for the B&B.

Now. The thing you should know about my directional sense is that I don’t have one. I really don’t. It’s kind of embarrassing. I went to the bathroom twice in the pub bathroom (this is on two different days, mind you) and both times – not one time, both times -- I managed to turn the wrong way exiting the bathroom. I can barely find my way around Philadelphia and I lived there for 17 years, and then off-and-on for another six years.

I can’t find my way out of a paper bag without a flashlight, a map, and a pair of scissors.

Well. The directions that Hans gave me? Down Greig st., curve right and take the first left? They were wrong. Really wrong. And he suspected that might be the case and had told me that I would be in about the right place if I followed those directions.

Ho ho.

As I may have stated previously, I am not always the cleverest of people. If I was I might’ve taken with me 1. the name of the B&B, and/or 2. the street name on which it was resting.

Not so clever, me. In my defense I didn’t know I’d be coming back to the hotel at all.

Anyway. I walked for an hour (this is, of course, after having walked for the previous three and a half hours in bad shoes) (I really need to get new shoes) (different shoes – the ones I have are new, but just don’t seem to like me very much). The only thing I knew was that it had a large front yard, the driveway was gravel, there were violet autumn crocuses growing on the left side of the driveway, and it had a black metal gate. That was it. I was screwed (see: 10 B&Bs/sq ft, paragraph 2 – imagine finding one in all of them).

Persistence paid off, as it does occasionally, and I found it and rang the doorbell. Jamie answered. “Where’s Hans?” I asked, “I need to go kill him.” I went upstairs and gave him good-natured hell for his crappy directions, and once that was taken care of we settled in to chat while Jamie practiced in the living room.

We all went off to the church where their concert was taking place, and I snuck off for some dinner, as I was too busy trying to find the B&B to do anything like stop for food. I went to Mr. Chips (which is right next to Mr. Rice) (no, I’m not kidding) and had a healthy order of salt with a side of grease. I think they sprinkled some chicken on top, but I really couldn’t be sure.

They had southern fried chicken there. The south’s culinary contribution to the world! Well done, south!

Their concert was, as always, magnificent. Man, they’re fun to watch. They have a sweet, playful chemistry between them on stage. Hans’ guitar playing has this charged restraint to it, and then it explodes out and through the whole thing you can tell that it’s his favorite thing in the world. And Jamie – he could set a fire with a fiddle. The power in his music is a language unto itself.

And they’re funny! Just watching them play off each other makes me laugh.

I get to hang out with them, they feed and house me and give me beer. And they wonder that I show up to their gigs so often?

They mingled with the audience after the show. I didn’t really have anything to say or anyone in particular to talk to, so I walked through the church and outside. I had a lot on my mind and so enjoyed the quiet.

We went to Promoter Keith’s after the show for some rather late dinner. I didn’t eat much of my salt-and-grease, so I was still pretty peckish. His wife (whose name I’ve forgotten. Sorry, Mrs. Keith!) made us dinner and we – the three of us, plus Keith, Mrs. Keith, their daughter, and another fiddle player – sat around the table and talked. There were off-color jokes. Hurray, awkward half-laughter and alarmed glances!

My things still being at the B&B I went back at the end of the evening. I still wasn’t sure if I was welcome. Hans said I was, of course, but I was wondering if Jamie wasn’t a little keener (did you know keener was a word? I sure didn’t) on some slightly-more-personal time. It being 12:30am I asked Jamie if I could presume to ask if I could spend another night. He smiled and said, “I should think so.”

Oh, good. The thought of waking up B&B Lady and asking for another room (or even wandering the streets for another B&B) was not, as you might guess, tremendously appealing.

There had been talks about what was happening the next day. J&H wanted to see Loch Ness (because, of course, how can you be in this country and not go there?), and given that it’s 8 miles away that seemed as good a time as ever. Keith promised to be guide.

I wanted to join them (see above paragraph on situation appropriateness). However, when the plans were discussed my name was kind of… not mentioned. It was like being with Stephanie and Sarah again. I didn’t know if I should just assume that the invitation was extended to me (Jamie had said I was welcome to hang out with them as long as I was around), or if I should casually make other plans.

I decided to take the passive-aggressive route and just wait and see what happened. And so I ended up joining them. Which I continue to assume was fine all around.

The roads in the city are ridiculous. Going three blocks takes ten minutes by car. Going the eight miles to Loch Ness took 20 minutes.

I had this theory that the popularity of the place would mean scores of hideously out-of-place shops and cafés touting horrendous Nessie paraphernalia, whiskey, and blasting bagpipe music into the world.

And y’all, I was totally right.

Okay, not really. I was completely wrong. The beach where we – Mr. and Mrs. Keith, J&H and I – stopped had a charming stone hotel. The only indication of the pervasive Nessie-culture was an overgrown van parked at the edge of the beach that purported to be a station for the search.

The lake is calm, surrounded by misty blue mountains. The beach was all round white stones and driftwood. It was blustery and chilly, the sky overcast. Clouds were low and streaked the sky with understated blue and white. Twenty-three miles down you could see through the mountains where the river wandered on. All you could hear were the gentle waves and the wind.

We threw stones and driftwood in the water, our group splitting and rejoining as we made our way up and back. Took some pictures and headed to the cars.

Back in town we said goodbye to the Keith duo, picked up our things from the B&B, and there my plans ended again. I’d been talking about my continuing sober thoughts with Hans, and he told me to get into the car when they were heading off. I climbed in and we went back to the internet pub.

When that was done I said goodbye to them and dashed over to the train and took the four-hour ride back to E-burgh.

It was strange coming back. I’m in Edinburgh, climbing out of the train station and I know where I am? How is that possible? Surely I don’t live here or anything, do I? Why does this look familiar? I was on holiday and I left. Why am I back?

I stopped into the Theatre Royal pub for dinner and talked a bit with Graham and, um, what’s her name. They were a little busy so I called greetings to Manager Zoë and immersed myself in a newspaper. Swing Dance Alan called and I have a date for Friday (whoa). And now I’m back in my room. Where I live. In Edinburgh.

How the hell did that happen?

2005-10-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

Salisbury Crags (more!)

My place as it was when I moved in, plus my street. Note the couch cushions on the bed.

Palace of Holyroodhouse

Around Edinburgh

2005-10-01T08:57:00.000-04:00

The Hippie Hostel

My place, as it was when I moved in (ew)

Edinburgh Castle

The distances I'll go to avoid finding a career

Durham, NC, USA

Albert Park Backpackers, Auckland, NZ

Albert Park Backpackers, Auckland, NZ

Mousetrap Backpackers, Paihia, NZ

Loft 109 Backpackers, Tauranga, NZ

Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat, Napier, NZ

Rainbow Lodge Backpackers Retreat, Napier, NZ

The Villa Backpackers, Picton, NZ

Greymouth Public Library, Greymouth

Greymouth Public Library, Greymouth, NZ

Ivory Towers Lodge, Fox Glacier Village, NZ

Ivory Towers Lodge, Fox Glacier Village, NZ

Fraureisehaus, Christchurch, NZ

Fraureisehaus, Christchurch, NZ

Frausenhumphumphumph1 Backpackers, Christchurch, NZ

Cambridge Hotel, Wellington, NZ

Cambridge Hotel, Wellington, NZ

Cactus Jack's Hostel, Rotorua, NZ

Whangaparaoa, NZ

Aspen House, Auckland, NZ

Esquires Coffee Shop, Auckland, New Zealand

Aspen House, Auckland, New Zealand

San José, California, USA

Philadelphia, PA, USA

Hótel Hellissandur, Hellissandur, Iceland

IcelandAir Hotel, Reykjavík, Iceland

2:53am, IcelandAir Hotel, Reykjavík, Iceland

11:38am, JFK Airport, New York, USA.

Philadelphia, PA USA

Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Winston-Salem, NC

Frausenhumphumphumph¹ Backpackers, Christchurch, NZ