Upon a re-reading of the products of all my previous blog-sesh-s, I realized that in my March 7 post I had vowed to change the tone of the blog and not detail the intricacies of daily events - I failed in this endeavor. If anything, my posts as of late have been at least as long as the first few, and definitely not short of details. Having thought over this turn-of-events rather thoroughly, I have concluded that when writing the March 7 post, I was momentarily delusional. There, now that I have addressed that small issue, shall we begin? I think we shall.
Wednesday, March 23rd began innocuously. It was to be a day like any other... not quite. The night before had seen Kiwi J, Scruffy E and I sitting in the lounge of the St. David Lecture Theater compiling a GoogleDoc for our Maori Society class. A GoogleDoc, for those of you unaware of this small piece of brilliance to come out of Google's labs, a GoogleDoc(ument) is a document of any kind (Word, Powerpoint, spreadsheet, etc.) that you create online. The advantage of this online-ness is that multiple people can access and edit the document at the same time. We were fully exploiting the potential of GoogleDocs by compiling all of the Powerpoints we had been given into one large "study guide." We had been given an online, open-book, take-home test by our professor. With an hour to answer 30 multiple choice questions, this couldn't get much easier. With the help of Control + F (key-combo used to find words within a webpage/document) and our study guide, life couldn't get much easier. Having completed the test with all of us getting 95% (except Justin who somehow managed to mess up his test and only get a 90%... idiot), Scruffy headed off to class and Kiwi and I began to discuss what was to occupy the rest of our day - buying a vehicle.
A couple weeks back when I had gone to Auckland and Kiwi J, Scruffy E, Affable Dave, Big Tim, Laughing Dylan and Football Jacob had gone to Queenstown, they had gone to check out a car for sale that we had found on TradeMe.co.nz. At the time, the lovely young Dutch couple who were selling the car were unwilling to budge from their $3000 price. I had agreed/authorized the boys to offer the couple $2500, a price from which we were unwilling to budge. A conundrum to say the least. Dejected, we gave up hope of purchasing this uniquely charming vehicle (more on the charm later). A couple weeks later we sent the Dutch a text making them aware that our offer of $2500 was still standing. After some conversations, it was agreed that they would settle for our offer, but we would have to come a pick the car up in Queenstown.
With no other agreeable means of transport to Queenstown, Kiwi J and I had decided that we would try our luck at hitchhiking. While no longer a popular means of getting around in the US (let alone, legal), the fine art of hitchhiking is alive and well in New Zealand. Lucky for us, our hitchhiking guru Affable Dave had imparted many insights and tricks of the trade before he left. As directed, we found an old shoe box, cut it open, and wrote QUEENSTOWN in big letters on it. With a few essentials -- trail mix, water, camera, and jackets -- packed in Kiwi's backpack, we walked out to the road in front of his flat and started walking with our sign prominently displayed. After walking a couple blocks we caught the eye of a kid about our age driving a van. Giving us the nod, we ran around to his doors and jumped in. He told us he could drive us to the Southern end of the city, much nearer to where the motorway begins - a place where we would be much more likely to flag someone down. While Kiwi J sitting shotgun attempted conversation, it was made rather difficult by the fact that everything that our driver said came out as mumblemumblemumble. After a couple minutes he dropped us off and wished us goodluck. Once again, we began walking in the direction of traffic to find a good place to stand. Choosing the correct flagging spot is a difficult task; one must combine visibility with proximity to a place for someone to slow down and eventually stop. Once we found a primo location, we set up shop. With one person nearer to the road showing off his thumb, the other person stood holding the sign, both of us trying to look as cheery and nice as possible without coming off weird. The positive feeling we had earlier regarding our prospects began to fade as car after car passed us. While many people looked at us and smiled, some even waving and nodding, this is utterly unhelpful and really just damn frustrating to a hitchhiker; no numbers of nods and waves are getting me any closer to my destination, which, if you can't tell by the sign, is QUEENSTOWN. After standing in the misting rain for slightly over an hour, J-man suggested that we give up and try to borrow a car from one of our two friends with cars. I suggested that we wait for two final cars and then, baring any small miracle, we would start walking the couple miles back into town. Incredibly, the LAST car started to slow and stopped for us. A man in his mid-fifties pulled over and offered to give us a lift to a place where he thought our prospects would be even better. Assuming that any progress was good progress, we jumped in. This time I rode shotgun. After his last experience at attempting to start conversation, Kiwi J had elected to sit backseat. Unfortunately I had a similar experience with our second driver. I think he kept saying something about building churches, but I could have completely misunderstood him.
Our second ride took us about 15 miles to a town called East Taieri (we think this should rhyme with canary, but we have no idea). Now, well out in the middle of nowhere, we started to try our luck again. Significantly less enthusiastic than we had started, we made a pit-stop at a roadside fish and chips place to discuss our options. We calculated that at a rate of 20ish miles every three hours, we would get to Queenstown in about... never. We called Scruffy E, who by now was out of class, and told him that if he wanted this car he needed to come and pick us up in our friend (and Affable Dave's cousin) Spunky Casey (a name which embodies her enthusiasm and friendliness which must be a family trait). Reluctantly, Scruffy McScruffton answered our call, picked up the car, and drove out to meet us. Rolling into the streetside parking lot of the fish and chips place, E explained that he didn't believe in this car's ability to make it all the way to Queenstown - it had died twice while backing out of the driveway. Hoping that our luck would turn around and fully confident that any car-problems we encountered would only add to the craziness of our journey, I encouraged Ethan that all would be fine, and we took off. As I frequently do when riding in cars, I passed straight out.
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| The terminus of our hitchhiking: the bustling metropolis of East Taieri |
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| Kiwi Justin, enthused about reaching East Taieri |
While I had been sleeping for an hour or so, the weather had improved significantly. Not-at-all surprisingly, we had also made significantly more progress towards reaching Queenstown than in the first three hours of the day. As we neared Queenstown following the same route that our bus had taken us along several weeks earlier we were able to appreciate the absolute beauty of the landscape much more from the comforts of a car. Without the luxury of speakers (the previous owner of our borrowed vehicle had seen fit to remove them from the vehicle), we sat in comfortable quiet merely watching the sheep-cluttered rolling hills pass by.
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| sheep en masse |
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| The terminus of our hitchhiking: the bustling metropolis of East Taieri |
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| Kiwi Justin, enthused about reaching East Taieri |
At this point in the story it would probably be advisable to explain to the reader the reasons behind going all the way to Queenstown to pick up a silly car. "Aren't there cars for sale in Dunedin?" one might ask. Or, "Wouldn't it be easier to buy a local car?" These are ridiculous questions. They are ridiculous because, once you view the next picture, you will understand that no car on Earth can even begin to compare with...
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| ANGUS! (Also called: The 'Gus Bus, Angie, and most commonly Big Baby Bey after her license plate) |
Careful to park in a space which would require minimal reversing, an activity known to cause the car much trouble, we parked at a BP to wait for our new ride. When they arrived, the Dutch couple from whom we bought Big Baby Bey were exceedingly reluctantly to part with their "Dear Angus." The girl talking with Scruffy E and Kiwi J did the painting herself and they had formed a bond with their chariot. Having driven to meet us and now car-less, Scruffy E drove them back to their place in the borrowed vehicle. Upon return, he told us that the woman had started to tear up as he drove them back. We assured them that we would take good care of her for them.
Keys in hand, we drove both cars the rest of the way into Queenstown to go and find a bite to eat. We parked in a carpark just off the main drag and walked directly to our eatery from the previous trip: Ferg Burger. Known far and wide in NZed as the best burgers in Queenstown, we had ours appetites worked up for a hearty feast. We ordered our burgers and walked out to the waterfront. As we ate a dude with a rolling piano situated himself in front of his instrument and began to play. Somewhat reminiscent of Philip Glass (remember that song I had you listen to?), I was thoroughly impressed. When we finished dinner I bought the man's CD and we headed back to the vehicles.
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| Proud new ow |
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| FERG BURGER! |
Since I didn't drive at all on the way up I offered to drive the borrowed car while Kiwi J drove Baby Bey (a name I coined after following Angus for an hour or so staring at the license plate). Our trip back proved to be nearly as eventful as the trip there. Just as it started to get really dark I noticed that the lights that illuminate the instrument panel with my speedometer (very important) and tachometer (less important) did not in fact illuminate said instruments. I called my hombres in the 'Gus Bus and we pulled over to try and "sort it." Baffled, we kept going and decided that I would just have to follow behind Angus in order to judge my speed. (At this point Scruffy/Doubtful Ethan began to hearken back to when he was foretelling the demise of the borrowed car) Following was a great plan, right up until we reached the town of Alexandra. In Alexandra I had the misfortune to have a friendly neighborhood policeman pull out behind me. Within seconds he had his lights on and had pulled me over. Completely baffled as to why I had just been run down, I turned off the car and lit up the overhead light. Familiar only with American policemen I was stunned by this fellow's genuine congeniality. He explained that he had pulled me over because my taillights were out. I explained to him that the lights on my instrument panel were also out and we concluded that it must be a fuse or the like. As he handed me my ticket he explained that if I got the problem fixed within the next week and took both the citation and the car to a police station that I could get it rescinded. He also agreed to allowing me to continue driving the car at night if I drove in front of the Angus. In an attempt to figure out what was wrong we drove down to a petrol station where I was able to check all the fuses (the only potential culprit that I could think of that would be easily fixable). Unfortunately, all the fuses were in perfect working order. Since I would now be leading the two car caravan I needed to know how fast I was going. As we departed the petrol station we came up with a pretty ingenious system: I would guestimate how fast to go, if I was driving too slowly the driver of Baby Bey would flash his highbeams once, too fast meant multiple flashes. While this worked more or less, it required way too much concentration on what was behind me (not a good thing when the road is in front). With a new idea I signaled that we were pulling over. I ran back to Angus and procured Ethan's phone which has a pretty powerful LED on it. With the light on and the phone wedged between the steering column and the plastic instrument panel protector so that the speedometer was lit up, we drove on... eventually reaching our home in Dunedin, tired, and immensely proud of our new purchase.
With the story over, I will leave you with some pictures:
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| The Piano Man |
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| Beauty incarnate, and the mountains are pretty too. |
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