Death By Teenager (Part One)

I often wonder just how it will happen.
Will it happen in a blink, before awareness sinks in? Or will I have a few seconds to realized what’s inevitable, to appreciate the hopelessness of the situation? Or maybe it will be drawn out, painful even – a dying rather than a death.
I think the second option would be worst. Like a plane crash. Knowing you’re about to die, but no chance to come to terms with it. Instantaneous death must also have its downsides, other than, you know, dying. The thought of flickering out before getting a chance to say “Ah. So this is how it happens,” seems unfair. The grim reaper tackling you from behind strikes me as wholly unsportsmanlike. And there’s not much to commend slow deaths, the sinking slowly beneath the weight of days marked only by the path of sunlight across a hospital wall.
I spend enough time thinking of death and all the ways I might die that I don’t watch horror films. I don’t need the extra arsenal provided by these movies. No matter how improbably or absurdly characters meet their demise I find myself thinking: “I wonder if I’m going to die from getting eaten by cannibalistic pigs” or “Fuck! I hadn’t even considered the possibility of getting my face ripped off and bleeding to death.” Then later, during one of these reveries about my mortality and when I’m running through all the possible ways one can shuffle off this mortal coil, I’ll realize my list has grown so long I could spend a while lifetime thinking about death.
Still, it never crossed my mind that I might depart the company of the breathing due to the foolhardy actions of an eighteen year old boy and that most dangerous of phrases: ”Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”
As the only male hut warden, he was easy to pick out when he hopped into Jimmy’s van the first time Jimmy dropped me off in the mountains.
“That must be Sam.” I thought.
He had light skin, blond hair, and green eyes. His body had a sort of awkwardness to it. As though it was still deciding how tall it might grow and how much baby fat it was going to lose. He had thick, flat lips that struck me as a waste on a teenage boy. When he crawled into the van I prepared to introduce myself, but he stiffly refrained from eye contact and Jimmy was already launching into a new Santana Spiel, so I didn’t have the opportunity to say hi.
By the time Sam and I exchanged our first few sentences I had already fallen comfortably into the pattern of my new job. Most mornings I woke around seven or seven thirty, uncocooning myself from my toasty sleeping bag and turning on the stove to make the morning’s first cup of tea. First radio report was at eight fifteen when we would relay the number of people who checked into our hut the previous night. On warmer mornings I would sit outside on the deck watching the morning light seep down Ngauruhoe or Ruepehu. Cooler mornings would find me crouching next to my room’s small gas heater, warming my fingers on the small glass mug. After a few hours spent reading, writing, and dashing to the outhouse due to excessive tea consumption, I’d go to work on my daily duties: quick wipe of the stoves and tables and quick sweep of the hut floors. Then came the necessary clean of the long drops. This I had down to an art. Open the door crack and spray disinfectant everywhere. Let it air out a bit, then charge in with bleachy bacteriacide. Wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe. Put head out door. Deep breath. Dive back in. Wonder momentarily about the prevalence of explosive diarrhea among the latest batch of hikers. Scrub out bowl. Mouth firmly closed to prevent splash back (learned that one quickly). Put head out door. Deep breath. Sweep floor. And we’re done.
Sometimes during this I would wonder what my dad would think having paid back account draining private college fees for his only daughter only to learn that she was scrubbing outhouses. But here’s the truth: I felt happier scrubbing toilets than I ever felt in law school. Which isn’t to say I felt like I had a long-term future in the janitorial arts (despite my wicked bog scouring skills) just that I loved where I was and what I was doing, and if toiled cleaning happened to be a part of it, then so be it.
After the morning clean was over, my day was my own until the next radio call that evening. Often the hut wardens would arrange to meet, picking a place between the huts for a picnic or heading across the park for a game of cards. (Often more than four hours of hiking for just a few games,) Other days I would head alone off the track, pulling out my topo map to see if I could figure out a path over a distant ridge or going in search of places alluded to or treasure mapped in the warden’s log book: hot springs, streams, hidden valleys, interesting rock formations, even a place known as porn rock (later euphemistically renamed library rock) so called for the mysterious cache of skin rags discovered there. I never would manage to find this last one, so I can’t confirm whether the “library” was still there. Still, I spent a pleasant afternoon exploring while contemplating just how a porn collection ended up in the middle of the bust in a national park.
All of the huts were just a short walk from a stream where an alpine dip provided the only means of bathing after these excursions. Truth be told, I didn’t really care about the steady accumulation of grime and smell, but I braved the gasp inducing water for the benefit of the hutties who would usually start arriving by mid-afternoon and would ofter come within smelling distance while having a quick chat or inquiring about the weather. I would always respond to these inquiries in exactly the same way. “Well, there’s a chance it will rain at some point tomorrow, but let’s hope not.” New Zealand weather requires some mega equivocation skills considering it is as temperamental as a toddler. Even the official weather reports demonstrated a penchant for vagueness. It was not uncommon to hear phrases in the radio report like “cloudy periods at times” or “occasional showers clearing throughout the day.” Occasionally a report would predict fine weather, clouds, and heavy showers all during the course of one day. (This falls into my why bother? category.) DOC officials excused this as the necessary result of having just one weather report for the whole of the park. And it was true the one side of the mountain could be soaked in sunlight while the other would be experiencing biblical rains. Still, I couldn’t prevent the sneaking suspicion that somewhere in Taupo some bug-eyed meteorologist was standing in front of a Wheel O’ Weather and gave it a good spin to determine the report we’d hear over the radio.
After the weather report was relayed to the wardens, Jimmy would come on the radio and check in with each of us individually, inquiring how many hikers we had at our hit, if we had any problems that needed immediate attention, and also often asking us what we had gotten up to that day. The banter was kept light with Jimmy often teasing us about some thing or another. I looked forward to these calls perhaps a bit too much. In the absence of meeting up with other wardens, this call would often be the first bit of social for the day. And though I wasn’t uncomfortable with solitude, it was a nice interruption during a rainy day’s twentieth game of solitaire.
The day’s last responsibility was to collect the hut tickets that proved the hikers had paid for their vinyl mattress and outhouse privileges. I also was required to give them a “hut talk” that consisted of introducing myself, reminding them to clean up after themselves, to pack out their rubbish, etc. I was also supposed to let hikers know what to do in the event of a fire. This meant pointing out the fire exits, which in the one room hut were the front door and the windows. Most wardens skipped this part in their talk, but I loved the flight attendanty-ness of it. I also got a kick imagining someone for whom this bit of information might make a crucial difference. A dude who would respond to this information by going “Oh yeah, jump out the window if there’s a fire. I totally would never have thought of that.” Other wardens would have been content to let that guy get Darwin Awarded out of the gene pool. But not me. Guess I’m just a good person.
And that was my day. Sometimes it would end with a long chat or game of cards with the hikers, sometimes I would retire to my hut with a good book. It was simple, easy work that sent me to be with a clear conscience.
So now that I’ve set the scene to dome degree, let’s get back to Sam. Remember Sam? He’s the kid who almost got me killed.

You Can Tell By The Hat

It was time to head back up to the North Island. Even though New Zealand has a land mass that is comparable to Colorado's, it takes a surprisingly long time to get anywhere. And the trip wasn't easy. A flight took me from Christchurch over Cook Strait to Wellington -- a ticket worth it's price just for the views on a clear day. Limited bus service from Wellington up to Taupo and the Tongariro National Park area meant I was forced to overnight in Wellington.

I checked into a hostel of converted office spaces. A generous person would call it utilitarian, but it struck me as distinctly Orwellian and imagined pallid inmates in the next room chanting "I love Big Brother." I was put in a room with five hulking English rugby players. This was not nearly as fun as it sounds. I was woken up at five in the morning by one of them putting his hands on me after a no doubt unsuccessful night on the prowl. (Hmm, I wonder why he came back alone. What girl wouldn't want to take home that skeevy mass of groping awkward awkwardness? Mystery of mysteries.) As soon as I realized what he was doing I had the overwhelming urge to put my heel through his jaw -- an impulse so strong my foot still itches when I think about it. But I could tell this was one fight I would lose, despite the fact that the dude and his buddies were as sauced as an enchilada. So instead I said in a fake oh-my-God-this-is-the-funniest-thing-ever voice: "Hey Dude. You look a little drunk over there. Why don't ya lie down. I bet you'll feel better. I gotta get some sleep buddy." He grinned like a dumb ogre, but soon stumbled away. A half hour later he left the room with his buddies in order to catch a flight.

I didn't find what happened traumatic. The sad reality is that most girls have experienced such episodes to the point they become if not common then at least unsurprising. And it wasn't worth my time to complain or try to track down these guys. But in retrospect, I really wish I had had some itching powder on me. I figured I could have dumped some in his backpack and all over his clothes while he stepped out to take a piss. It seems like a fair form of vigilante justice. You make me feel vigorously uncomfortable? I'm going to make you vigorously uncomfortable. Not to mention I love the idea of giving the guy a nasty nad itch for a few days.

But where was I? Oh yeah, me heading up to volcanoes and jobbiness.

The next morning I hopped a bus up to Turangi - a po dunk town just north of Tongariro National Park where DOC has its main headquarters for the region. This was where I'd be staying when not in the mountains -- a place to stash some things and take a weekly shower.

A short man with thinning brown hair arrived at the deserted bus stop where I was waiting. He looked nervous and walked over to me without making eye contact even though I was the only person to be seen.

"Are you waiting for the bus?" He asked.

"Um. No. I'm waiting for someone to pick me up from DOC."

"Oh." He paused, looking around. "That's me." He said finally.

I guessed from our correspondence that the man before me was Jimmy Johnson, Hut Warden Coordinator. I could help but use the full title, having seen several emails signed that way. He helped me with my backpack.

Despite his short stature and thinning hair, his shorts made me think of an early eighties Ken doll that once graced my bedroom shelf. One where the polyester shorts come so high on the legs that it's obscene even despite Ken's absent genitalia. I wondered if it was part of the DOC uniform that someone had failed to modify in the last two decades. I know people say New Zealand is twenty years behind the rest of the world and for the first time I was beginning to think that saying had some merit.

Jimmy helped me load my backpack into the car. Training was to begin early next day so he dropped me off at the wardens' house on a quiet residential street in the heart of Turangi. On the way over, Jimmy casually mentioned that the previous wardens' house had burned down after a fourteen year old kid had thrown a firework through the window. Turns out this kind of occurrence was not exactly unusual for Turangi, a town which may not be the arm pit of New Zealand, but might be the unwashed behind the ear of New Zealand.

The new wardens' hose was a bungalow with flaking white paint and work carpet. Flies buzzed incessantly. Jimmy introduced me to the two wardens who were spending their days off out of the hills: Krista, a pretty, gregarious Aussie whom I immediately liked and Lucy, an awkward Kiwi with a lazy eye and a tendency to sprinkle conversations with irrelevant interjections. I slumped my bags on the floor in one of the back bedrooms and took in the general shabbiness, noting a spider crawling out of a hole in the bedspread. Krista soon came in and urged me to take over a set of drawers and I realized, shabby or not, how nice it was to have some storage space to call my own. After four months of carrying my life on my back, possessions shuffled and squashed in a grubby backpack and hoofing from hostel and campsite to hostel, a plastic set of drawers seemed like the last word in luxury. Work would start the next day, but for now I was home.

Early the next morning I accompanied Jimmy Johnson, Hut Warden Coordinator as he dropped Krista and Lucy in the mountain. Within a few minutes Jimmy covered the three topics that would dominate our conversations for the next two months. What follows is a true and accurate account list of the passions of Jimmy Johnson, Hut Warden Coordinator:

1) Santana. Specifically, how many albums Jimmy Johnson possesses, how great the Santana concert is going to be, haw great the Santana concert was, how long Jimmy Johnson has been a fan of Santana, and how other fans are always surprised to learn how long Carlos Santana has been performing.

2) The poor driving habits of anyone not named Jimmy Johnson.

3) The irresponsibility of the New Zealand government in selling fast cars to anyone not named Jimmy Johnson because it's just like giving someone a toy but they saying they can't play with it *scoff of disbelief*, and the speed limit in New Zealand being only 100 kilometers per hour there is no reason for a car to be able to do 240, 260 kilometers per hour as you're just encouraging and tempting people to speed *scoff of disbelief*, and just look at that idiot going almost 60 ks in a 40 k zone; it's no wonder people get killed on this road *scoff, scoff*.

Jimmy never came across as truly angry when discussing these topics, just honestly bewildered at the preponderance of idiocy encountered on a daily basis. In any case, the only time Jimmy Johnson was not expounding on these topics was during the few hours that day where he explained to me my duties as a hut warden. Each week I would be assigned one of four huts on the Tongariro Northern Circuit. While at these huts I was responsible for checking hikers' hut passes, posting the daily weather report, recording daily rainfall, monitoring the gas and drinking water levels, trying to talk hikers into cleaning up after themselves and cleaning up after them when they inevitably failed. I also might have to help with any search and rescues that would occur, unload new gas tanks from helicopters, and wipe down long drops.

Jimmy explained that all of these duties would usually only take an hour or two and the rest of the day I was free to hike around the park or do pretty much whatever I wanted. Sweet, I thought, working for free has some perks.

We covered the working of radios and pagers, twice went over the importance of making sure the warden's tea and coffee supply didn't run out, and I was given a test of my remembrance of how Jimmy Johnson likes his coffee should he swing by one of the huts.

Jimmy also issued me a food card so I could get free groceries at the local New World Supermarket. The card provided a generous weekly budget that encouraged us to feast like kings and queens when up in the mountains (provided you could carry all that food up there). He also issued me with a regulation DOC ranger hat -- size extra large after I joked about having a big head. This green canvas hat -- chapeau? fedora? cowboy hat? I don't really know the correct hat nomenclature -- was the douchiest looking wardrobe accessory since the ruff. I loved it. It was emblazoned with the official green and yellow DOC logo and had (of course!) a cinchable chin strap. I was heartbroken when I realized I wasn't going to be able to keep it after my two months were up.

"You're not required to wear it." Jimmy said. "But most wardens find it provides good sun protection."

"Oh, I'll wear it." I enthused, thinking of how well it would match my forest green polyprops and already imagining myself hatted out telling off some littering hikers. (I've always noticed that people in positions of authority tend to be jackasses and I felt it would be improper not to follow suit.)

And that was pretty much it.

I signed an assertion that I had received one DOC hat. (Go New Zealand for keeping track of government property!) I also had to initial a list of things that Jimmy had shown me (radios, pagers, a video of how not to get decapitated by a helicopter--five minutes of slides to impart the simple injunction: duck!). The only thing that remained was a quick tour to each of the huts to learn their individual idiosyncrasies.

The first hut on the list was Mongatepopo. Only twenty minutes hike from the car park where most people start the Tongariro Crossing, it's the most easily accessible of all the huts. Jimmy and I popped up there one afternoon. As we hiked from the parking lot to the hut, Jimmy grumbled about day hikers stealing signs as souvenir and leaving litter on the trail. In between these rants, always in that same baffled tone, he pointed out the flowers along the trail -- blue stars and eye brights -- and told me the names of all the surrounding hills and mountains repeating the difficult Maori names until I could say them.

"Pukekaikiore."

"Poo kay koru what?"

"Pu. Kay. Kai. Kiore."

He also pointed out secret paths and trails for when i wanted to avoid the stampede of day hikers. There wasn't a plant he couldn't name nor a ridge he didn't seem to have some tactic for summitting. I thought of what an unusual skill it was in this day and age and realized I probably couldn't even identify half the trees on the three acres where I grew up. I was determined to pay more attention here.

"Here are the warden's quarters." Jimmy said when we arrived, opening a locked door to a small room attached to the main hut. Like the main hut, the quarters were spartan, but efforts had clearly been made to make the place a bit cosier. The bed was lofted close to the sloped wooden ceiling, and while the mattresses were thin, vinyl coated slabs like in the main hut, two had been pushed together to form a larger bed. There were also manky but serviceable pillows and blankets on a small set of shelves next to the bed's ladder. Beneath the bed was a small bookshelf with a selection of mainly yellowing novels and some leaflets on back country cooking. The floor space was mostly taken up by a rickety table on which rested the wardens' log book. There was a sink with a good amount of counter space, a gas powered stove (two burners), a small gas powered heater, and (Oh, luxury of luxuries) a solar powered light. I couldn't wait to curl up here with a cup of tea and a good book.

Jimmy picked up the log book and asked me to put the kettle on for some cups of coffee.

"Now let's see if Sam has written in the log book where he went to today and when he's getting back like you're supposed to."

Sam was the current warden at Mangatepopo and I could tell Jimmy was getting ready to use his I'm-so-bewildered-at-people's-idiocy voice. Fortunately Sam had followed protocol and had written where he was hiking and when he thought he'd get back. Jimmy seemed almost disappointed.

Among Sam's possessions I spied the book 101 Solitaire Games for One I mildly wondered at the prevalence of cabin fever up here. Flipping through the log book on the table I skimmed a few long entries that were treatises on the peculiar behaviour of day walker, detailed accounts of long drop cleanliness, and elaborate margin decorations to rival medieval manuscripts. I resolved to buy some good books.

I learned that normally new wardens would spend the next two days visiting the rest of the Northern Circuit huts with Jimmy, but as I had arrived early to fill in for a defected volunteer, Jimmy didn't have time to spare. Instead I would have the next two days to visit the huts on my own. Jimmy's knowledge of the park commanded nothing but respect; however, I had heard horror stories from the other wardens about Jimmy's proclivity for repeating bad jokes. It seems like having a few favorite topics of conversation, Jimmy had certain favorite jokes he liked to tell hikers: "You've lost your skis!" said to any and all hikers who walk with poles, or "The track is closed, you will have to turn around." Pause Pause Pause "Aw, just kidding." This last one was usually said to hikers near the end of the grueling crossing.

Apparently Jimmy would say delightedly "They're new hikers so you can tell the jokes over and over." The other wardens counted me lucky for having skipped out on the two day hike with Jimmy. I agreed feeling like I was supposed to have some sort of local premium of the telling of bad jokes and that Jimmy might cramp my style.

So I spent the next two days hiking to the three remaining huts on the Northern Circuit, visiting Lucy, Krista, and Ingrid, another long term hut warden. (Jimmy, it seemed, had a knack for surrounding himself with girls.) I learned how to switch the Ketetahi huts from rain water to drinking water so day hikers wouldn't waste the precious resource. At Oturere, Krista showed me how to assemble and operate the gas powered pump to move water from storage tanks into the main tanks and I found discovered a weird satisfaction with loud, noisy machinery. And at Waihohonu and with almost frightening glee, Lucy showed me how to set possum traps.

Hiking between the huts late that afternoon I was consumed by the peaceful solitude always heightened by cutting a lone figure in nature's vast grandeur. I've never felt such tranquility while "working". The setting sun made me squint, so I put on my dorky hat.

This was going to be fun.

Escape the Crap Job Blasé with ... Volcanoes!

Pretty much the first paying job I ever got was working for my high school's wood shop teacher. For the generous sum of $4.25 an hour I swept the sawdust off the floor in a room papered with posters of people with mutilated and missing fingers. I'm sure the photos were intended to shock teenage boys into responsibility when using band saws, but perversely the only effect I ever noticed was even more enthusiastic risk taking by my male classmates. "Don't lose a finger!" One would cry as the other showed off how close he could get his knuckle to the rotating blade. The boys notwithstanding, I can't to this day use even a stapler without those black and white images surfacing in my mind.

My other duty was in the line of data entry, a task for which I shared a 5 by 5 office with the morbidly obese Mr. Register (pronounced REE-jester). The office lacked air conditioning and a radio devoted only to Rush Limbaugh's spawning of acidic ignorance. After hearing the argument that Madeline Albright looks like a dyke ergo Clinton is a bad president for maybe the thirtieth time I wondered if this being my first job also by some cosmic law meant it would also be my worst.

(My high school was right next to some commercial strawberry fields where I'd see migrant workers stopped in the midday sun and realize how lucky I was, a feeling I still have to this day. But allow me a small gripe for humor's sake.)

So, the next job I had was another choice job lined up by my christian high school: selling health food cookbooks and cultish religious material door to door. Don't ask me who came up with that combination of goods, but it seemed to work. We'd offer a cookbook and then the spiel was something along the lines of "Now that you've taken care of your physical health, why don't you take care of the health of your IMMORTAL SOUL?" People would often ante up. Mostly I think they would just take pity on the poor beskirted teenager who, without any adults around, knocked on their doors in the dark evening. I had a feeling they thought I was some Jehovah's Witness child or victim of a polygamous marriage. I played this up, too -- choosing the most thoroughly dowdy skirts and giving scared please-don't-kick-me puppy dog eyes to anyone who opened the door. I didn't believe in what I was selling and sometimes just wished I could be straight up with the people who opened their doors: "Dude, I'm pushing some whacked out religious shit that you really don't need as it's going to make you shake your head and think the world is going crazy, and I'm just looking for some cash to spend on some clothes because I'm young enough to believe that maybe I won't be so awkward and unappetizing if I just have the right outfits, and rather than spend 24 dollars on a book you don't need, why don't you just give me 5 bucks to assuage your pity and we both can be on our ways." But I kept up the ruse and insisted on the necessity of a religious tract that I found, frankly, disturbing. And so at the tender age of fourteen I sold my principles.

I quit two months later. I'd like to say that my ethics caught up to me, but the real reason was the iron maiden I saw inside a house when the owner opened the door. That shit freaked. me. out.

Over the next few years I worked the typical litany of shit jobs encountered by the young and starving, finally ending up with a job in an education company in Los Angeles. The highlights of my days were watching the continuous pump of traffic on Wilshire Boulevard and bumping into the occasional celebrity on their way to the production offices housed in the same building. When the best part of your week is getting scowled at by Paris Hilton on your way to have a pee, you know you've hit a new low.

But I had a feeling this new job was going to be different. (Beyond the fact that I wasn't getting paid.) I drew this conclusion after coming across this fact in a Guinness Book of World Records left lying around a hostel: "The 1883 eruption of Krakatau was heard 2,908 miles away by people on Rodriguez Island making it the loudest noise ever heard in human history."

Yeah, that's right. The loudest noise ever recorded came from a volcano. If it had erupted in New York the good citizens of San Francisco would have heard it, looking up from their soy lattes and group sex to wonder at the bang. That is, after the sound waves had taken almost four hours to reach them.

Now get this: The Krakatau explosion was a 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. A six is also known as "colossal". (I love that there's also a verbal scale for this sort of thing.) The two eruptions that formed Lake Taupo, just a few kilometers from where I was going to be working, were a 7 ("super-colossal") and an 8 ("mega-colossal") on this scale. Oh, and the scale tops out at 8. Each number up on the scale represents an explosion 10 times the size of the number below it. The eruption in 180CE (the 7 on the scale) turned the sky red in China and Rome. The material spewed from this eruption left a grey band of pumice that can still be seen today anywhere the road is cut into the earth. The other Taupo eruption (the mega-colossal number 8) happened about 28,000 years ago and was the world's largest eruption in the past 70,000 years. One can only imagine how far away people would have heard it.

The only conclusion to be drawn from this is the following: Volcanoes are fucking cool.

And I was about to spend two months working on, around, and even in volcanoes in the Taupo Volcanic Zone where some of the world's largest volcanic explosions have occurred. Paris Hilton eat your heart out.

Polyprop Leggings or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Military-Industrial Complex

After Florian left I continued to Lounge around Sumner. The hostel was cheap and beach side. There were a handful of travelers who had come to Sumner for a few days and had ended up staying long term: a Finnish girl who had fallen in love with sailing and stayed on to take lessons while working every few days as a primary school teacher; a Welsh couple in their early thirties who had decided they were growing up too quickly so sold their house to travel around the world with their surf boards and were going to travel around the rest of New Zealand, you know, eventually; an older Canadian couple who at least had the excuse of being there for work and who invited me out to the independent cinema with them several times a week; an Australian woman who had wanted to change her life and conquer her fears so came to Sumner to get her solo paragliding license; and finally a grizzled and tattooed English bloke who was always there but never could explain why or what he was doing. We all formed a tight clique, having breakfast together, sharing bottles of wine in the evening, staring down all the temporary guests should they sit in out favorite chair or hog the stove.

I wanted to move there. To be a full time surf and kite boarding bum. I was prepared to do whatever it took to make this dream possible. I was prepared to get a job.

So one morning when the swell wasn't so great, I boldly took the twenty minute bus into the city. I located a cheap internet cafe, fell into a vinyl seat in front of a crusty old Dell and began to update my resume.

Name? Well that hasn't changed.

Phone Number?

Oh God, I'm so depressed.

I said this last part out loud and banged my forehead on the keys. A few people looked up warily from their emails.

There is only one thing more depressing than working on a resume and that is actually working. I despise both activities with a kind of special, limited edition loathing that I usually only reserve for republicans. I just can't bring myself to market myself and I certainly can't do it in the formal, serious, detached, antiseptic manner required in resumes. It's the kind of writing that makes me thinks of an old consumptive asylum: white, scrubbed bare, everything in its place to conceal the fact that someone is dying inside. And there's no place for humor or authenticity. I can't help wonder what would happen if people were honest and really put down what they considered to be their best skills and experience, what they were looking for in a job. Mine would look something like this:

Jessi McRockstar

Objective: To do as little work as possible while managing to support my coffee and expensive organic chocolate habit while in an environment close to the ocean and filled with good looking men who are contractually obliged to keep their shirts off at all times and pay me at least three compliments a day.

Education:
University of Drinking Games
BA in Disguised Hangovers (Honors)
Certificate in Procrastination
Relevant Course Work: Beer Pong: Strategies, Tips, and Techniques; Theories in Loafing; Modern Flirting; Practical Concert Going; Skinny Dipping 101

Experience:
Completed four months of not working and living in the pursuit of fun and adventure. Maintained a monthly 10% growth in coolness factor with a 6% decrease in the likelihood of having a mid-life crisis.

Skills and Achievements
Watched the entire Star Wars trilogy twice in one day. Just because.
Doesn't eat the animals.
Never voted for Bush.
Loves each and every family member even though they all have their own particular brand of driving me crazy.
Has great, really great taste in music.
Has more sense than money.
Perfect breasts.

Alright, so these skills don't really translate into getting hired. (Except, I've found, the last one.) So I tried to write a real one, but I couldn't help but wonder if this whole work thing spelled an end to my Magical New Zealand Adventure. Surely there had to be some other option.

Flipping through some photos of recent hikes in New Zealand it hit me. The Department of Conservation is responsible for much of the land in New Zealand and I had seen signs during my travels stating their need for volunteers. Volunteering had more of an allure than wage slaving, seemed more service than servitude. Besides, if you're working for free then it's not really work in the capitalism-owns-my-consumerist-soul sense of the word. In retrospect, it might have been questionable logic, but logic is only questionable if you take time to question it, and I was too busy perusing the Department of Conservation's website.

After a few clicks I found a listing for a volunteer hut warden position back up on the North Island in the volcanoey Tongariro National Park. I scanned the job description for any deal breaking terms like "professional appearance" or "good work ethic" but there was nothing to cause any blips on the shitty job radar. And the application didn't require a resume just a statement why we were interested in working for DoC and listing any relevant back country/conservation/tramping experience. Jackpot. Now here was something I could write about.

Within two days I had committed to eight weeks of work to start in less than a week. I had gotten extremely lucky with my timing. One person had just dropped out of the program while another had cancelled.

It was sad to leave Sumner, but I knew I could only afford to live and surf there if I started working. I had tried. I had spent at least, like, twelve minutes trying to update my resume. It just wasn't going to happen.

But there was one thing that had to be taken care of before I left. A gap in my five item wardrobe that had to be filled if I was going to blend in with all the Kiwi outdoorsy types who wear this item as if it were a back country uniform. I needed a pair of polypropylene leggings to wear under my hiking shorts. Before coming to New Zealand I had always called this item "long johns" and had secretly worn a dingy cream pair under jeans during cold Chicago winters. Here they were called "polyprops" and usually came in bright rainbow stripes with a different pattern on each leg. They had always reminded me of a jester's costume and the first time I saw someone hiking in a pair I had to resist the temptation to ask them to juggle.

Still, they seemed quite functional. I find hiking in pants annoying as they seems to always slip down when you take big steps and before long you're plumber cracking it up the trail. Shorts are great, but your legs tend to get cold in bad weather and sunburned on hot days. Leggings would solve both of these problems with the added bonus of offering a convenient disguise at the end of long treks when you haven't shaved in four or five days.

Because backpackers have an abundance of time but flea-sized coffers, there is no reason not to go bargain hunting. I hit up four or five outdoor gear stores to do some price comparison. The price for polyprops varied from $35 to $55. This struck me as a lot to pay for a pair of synthetic jester's undies no matter how much of a New Zealand style item. That's when I spied the New Zealand Army Surplus and Outdoor Supply shop.

The front windows were decked out with camouflage gear, which struck me as slightly counterproductive if the purpose of a storefront is to attract the notice of passersby. I realized I must have passed this shop four or five times over the last few weeks, but this was the first day I had paid it any attention.

Inside I found an orgy of forest green and brown through which milled five or six people all of the male variety and all either wastingly thin or equipped with imposing physiques. They examined the gear with ferocious intensity and in my robin's egg blue tee shirt and undoubtedly rosy cheeks I felt a tad self-conscious. Fortunately there were enough distractions in the store to keep me from stressing about my out of place femininity. (And seriously, that has to be the first time I've ever encountered that problem.) I just couldn't believe there could be so many different varieties of camouflage clothing in the world. Besides your run of the mill mottled green variety there were also camos in brown, in grey, in blue, two kinds of desert camo, "digital" camo which looked like a low-res pixilated version of regular camo and which I can only presume is made to help disguise hackers. There was also something called "urban" camo of mottled gray and black and which wouldn't disguise you in any urban setting I know. What they really should have sold under this heading was khakis and a black tee shirt complete with white headphones trailing into the trouser pocket. The you'd blend in perfectly with all the other nameless urbanites.

Beside the camo variety of clothing there was also a wide range of heavy duty military jackets and cool sweaters with tabs on the shoulders. I felt twinges of desire for this last item. I figure shoulder tabs are kind of like the appendix, it may be a completely useless thing but you still feel better having it..

There were M*A*S*H, CCCP, and Che Guevara tee shirts. Right beside them was a shirt that read NEW ZEALAND AIR FORCE. I couldn't tell if it was placed among these last items ironically or not as the New Zealand Air Force has all of about two jets. I wanted one for pure comedic value.

Beyond the clothing there was camo netting, camo paint, camo hats, canvas bags of all sizes, middle eastern looking scarves, gas masks, crank radios, leatherman tools, neck warmers, ear warmers, helmet liners, hundreds of different types of cables, ropes, matches, patches and canteens. There was also an enthusiastic selection of creepy looking torture pliers that evoked concrete rooms with mysterious brown stains on the walls. Eeegh.

I felt like if I got decked out in all this gear I'd be able to single-handedly invade a country. As long as it was a small one. Very small. Something like Andorra.

There was something undeniably appealing about all this gear. (With the exception of the torture pliers that made me tongue my molars, glad they were still attached.) There was something about the aura of the place that made this vegan pacifist get in touch with her inner Rambo -- hey, we all have one -- with a desire to paint my face and go running through the undergrowth. On reflection, this pretty much explains the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean, there were probably some generals hanging out in some military warehouse somewhere, looking at some F-16s, grenade launchers, starched uniforms galore, maybe a mountain of green berets -- basically what I was looking at but on steroids. And I bet one general turned to the other and said, "You know, if we used all this gear we'd be able to single-handedly invade a country. As long as it was a medium-sized one. Something like Iraq." To which the other general would reply, "Yeah. I'm really getting in touch with my inner Rambo here."

While pouring over this insight, I came across a dented tin bucket with the sign "New Zealand Army Issue Polyprop $20". Success. Fifteen dollars cheaper than any other pair I had seen and doused with this strange aura of military badassery. I picked a pair of extra small, forest green (of course) polyprops and bought them without trying them on. With a last gaze around the shop, I ducked back into the street.

I tried them on later that evening. They fit, but the waist length was generous enough to enable the pulling of the waist band up to the bra line. Any Rambo-esque quality they held in the shop evaporated. With my twiggy legs, I was a dead ringer for a medieval jester. But at least I'd look like all the other goofy Kiwis when working up in the mountains. I felt strangely comforted.

Of Water, Wind and Waves (Part Two)

Remember that story of Samson and Delilah? Yeah, I don't really remember it either other than that in typical Biblical fashion it features a women who is a one dimensional hussy who screws things up for the menfolk. I also remember the part where Samson gets his hair cut and loses all of his strength. I know this sounds ridiculous but I'm ninety-nine percent sure the same thing would happen if you cut Fabio's hair. Anyway, I was feeling a bit like Samson except instead of losing strength I had kinda just lost momentum and instead of cutting hair on my head, I had just shaved my armpits. But, you know, details.
See, after cleaning up and deforesting myself I completely lost any will I had to keep moving around the South Island. It's as if no longer looking like a vagabond I no longer wanted to act like a vagabond. I guess appearances can really make a difference. It's like how putting on tall black heals makes you fantasize about being a dominatrix just for, you know, one night so you can stalk around a group of naked, kneeling men with a whip in one hand and force them to kiss your pedicured toes. Or something.
Though my newfound stasis maybe had less to do with the way I looked and more to do with the coastal town I found myself in just days after the big clean up.
The town was called Sumner and being just one letter off my favorite season I took as a good omen. Although it is only, say, twenty minutes from downtown Christchurch, it feels sufficiently remote cloistered between hills and ocean. Sumner beach is a reasonable popular surf break as is the beach just south of Sumner, delightfully known as Taylor's Mistake. I deliberately decided to not find out who Taylor was or what mistake he or she made because I loved the name as was having too much fun making up stories to go with it. The sinister undertones made me imagine Taylor was a mobster who had ratted out his buddies and in retaliation had been drowned off the shore and the beach renamed as a warning to any other potential rats. But the idea of a Kiwi mob seemed pretty laughable. I mean, what would they do? Run a black market in sheep? I also guessed that Taylor was an early sea captain who like Captain Cook met his end at the had of pissed off natives after making the mistake of assuming that just because they didn't have written titles to land they wouldn't try to defend it.
The business district of this small town was a two block strip that consisted of no less than four cafes, two surf shops, two Indian restaurants, and an independent cinema. And that was pretty much it. The second I arrived I realized all of my most basic needs would be catered for: coffee, surf, and entertainment.
It's a tough life I lead.
I made friends with the owner of one of the surf shops and soon secured myself ridiculously cheap board rental fees. I've learned that people feel bad charging their friends for things. This is why you should do your best to get on good terms with your local barista and video store worker -- even if the latter's got monumental acne and a slightly unhealthy attachment to anime. (Having breasts also helps in this endeavor.)
Florian came to join me a few days later after having spent a week working at a yoga retreat under the supervision of an emotionally volatile (read borderline psychotic) sexagenarian. We spent a few days surfing and rock climbing in Sumner and enjoyed sunny afternoons during one of New Zealand's hottest summers on record.
We decided that since it was Flo's last week in New Zealand we would both take kite boarding lessons. Kite surfing was a long held dream of mine. While living in Chicago just a few blocks from Lake Michigan I had often dreamed of harnessing Chicago's famous winds and going kite surfing in the shadow of Chicago's gorgeous skyline. Since surfing the lake was pretty much out of the question I figured kite surfing would provide a similar adrenaline rush. But I never managed to get the money together. Lessons weren't cheap and I was worried if I took them I'd fall in love with the sport but not be able to afford the pricey equipment. I also had fallen in love with and then been unceremoniously dumped by the captain of Northwestern's sailing team and I felt kite surfing would help me get revenge by immediately making me cooler than him. I'd cruise by on a board while those lazy fucking sailors sat in boats on their lazy fucking asses.
The dream of kite surfing persisted even once the sting of rejection had faded. So I jumped at the chance in Sumner.
Florian and I arrived at the kite surfing school one blustery morning to find a thirty-something guy with tousled brown hair sitting on a sofa staring into space. Even though there was no one else in the room, he seemed not to notice our presence but kept staring into the space in front of him. I purposely shuffled my feet a bit, hoping he would turn and greet us. Nada. I coughed. No response. Finally I addressed him directly and he slowly turned his head to look at me. His eyes were bloodshot and I immediately knew he was stoned. Off his ass. I've been there. I know what it looks like.
Now before I go on, I've got to let you know that kite surfing is a dangerous sport. Watch anyone proficient on an even mildly gusty day and you'll see them effortlessly get several feet or even several meters off the water. I've seen videos of people getting stuck in the air or being carried above rocks -- the last place you want to be when the gusts pass by.
And here was Mr. Stoner-on-the-couch greeting us for our lesson. But before any words were spoke a toll blond gentleman walked into the kite surf center. He was the antithesis of stoner: athletic, poised, lucid. He introduced himself as the owner of the shop and gave me a hearty, substance-free hand shake.
"So, are you going to be our teacher today?" I didn't even try to keep the desperate hope out of my voice.
"No, I'm going to entrust you to my capable colleague, Tim." He replied, heartily and substance-freely.
Tim gave a weak smile and squinted at us through bloodshot eyes.
He doesn't look that capable. I thought. But I kept my mouth shut.
We were presented with a release of liability form. Three pages. Eight point font. About ten times more comprehensive than any other liability form I had seem so far in New Zealand. Initial your life away here, sign away all rights to bodily integrity here, and trust your working limbs to Stoner.
This was going to be interesting.
Flo and I hopped into Stoner, I mean, Tim's van and he took us out to the estuary. On a grassy field by the water, we slipped into wetsuits clammy with the moisture of the ocean and other people's bodies. Tim handed us both harnesses to which the kite would eventually be attached and told us to put them on.
The harness he handed me looked exactly like S and M granny panties, if such a thing were to exist. And it might, who knows. In any case, it was a thick pair of black undies that came just above my belly button and a couple of inches below the curve of my ass. There were no mirrors around, but I guarantee you each ass cheek appeared to be about three feet long. My hot kite surfer chick fantasies were swiftly being replaced with weird fetish granny images. From the front of the harness a metal hook protruded out and down like a chrome Gonzo nose. A white helmet like an overturned colander completed the ensemble.
Tim pulled out two kites and showed us how to set up the rig. Four long kite lines had to be carefully untangled, spread on the ground, and attached to the kite in precisely the right way. Tim explained all this to us with as few words possible and a continued failure to quite make eye contact. In between the distracted mumbling I leaned that failure to set the kite up perfectly could lead to kite damage or even decapitation. For some reason, Tim seemed more concerned with the former possibility. Then the kite had to be inflated. An arced tube along the front edge and lateral ribs at intervals provided the structure for the kite. Before it was even fully inflated it became a horse chomping at the bit. The strong wind was picking up and we had to weight the kite down with gear.
Tim quickly walked us through the emergency procedure: a loop embroidered in red with the word EJECT that we were to yank it disaster struck. This would theoretically depower the kite if, say, we were being lifted uncontrollably through the air and over some rocks. Of course, I thought, this also meant we would then drop uncontrollably onto those rocks, but again I kept my observations to myself. I was already freaked out enough without having to vocalize my fears. Meanwhile Tim was casually running through all of the things we shouldn't do: put the kite straight overhead while on land, dive it too quickly, pull hard on the control bar. The list went on, but I was still trying to memorize the first few to take note of the whole list.
"Got all that? Good. Let's head into the water."
What? Huh? Already? I thought, but I didn't want to lose face in front of Florian.
Tim lofted the kite effortlessly and held it at 45 degrees to the ground. Leaning against the pull, he walked down the bank and into the waist deep water. Out feet squelched in the mud.
Tim's poise was solid, and I had to admit I was impressed. Either this sport wasn't as hard as I had thought or Tim was practiced at kite surfing stoned. Perhaps it was one of those things where someone has become so habituated to a substance they need it to function. I'm thinking like Hemingway and liquor, Mick Jagger and heroine, and Rush Limbaugh and prescription painkillers. Wait, scratch that last one. Rush Limbaugh isn't ever astute enough to be called functional, though I'm sure the painkillers help numb the burning from the constant shriveling of his black, black soul.
Anyway, Tim seemed to be a high functioning grasser as long as functioning didn't involve making eye contact or enunciating. Once in the water, he demonstrated the kite skill we were to practice: gliding the kite overhead and then touching it to the surface of the water on either side.
"The most important thing is keeping control of your kite." He mumbled. "So who's first?"
Florian immediately found interest in the straps of his harness so it was left to me to volunteer.
Tim attached the kite to the Gonzo hook on the harness and then stepped back. The loft of the kite caused me to instantly lose about half of my weight and I'm sure if I had jumped it would have looked exactly like those moonwalk videos. Perhaps that's how NASA faked them: by using kites to simulate low gravity.
Hanging there I felt like a fucking marionette. My feet were barely touching the mud and I was hanging from my bellybutton. I was nervous and grabbed the control bar, pulling it close to me. Of course, I remembered later, this is how you power up the kite to get speed on the water. Within half a second I was being dragged face first through the water, taking swimming pools up the nose. I felt like one of those poor suckers in an old spaghetti western who gets dragged behind the galloping stage coach. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so much power. I honestly thought I was going to die.
I tried to stop myself and yanked the kite the other way. As the kite went vertical it lifted me almost completely out of the water and then as it plunged to my left it dragged me back the way I had come. All of this happened in about four seconds.
I lifted the kite slowly this time and managed to hold it vertical for a few seconds. Behind me I could hear Tim and Flo laughing loudly. I wanted to turn and give them a dirty look, but I too petrified to take my eyes off the kite. Eventually I managed to get the feel of the kite and move it in a somewhat controlled arc. Tim decided it was Florian's turn and disconnected the kite from my harness. I fell panting back into the water.
Florian was still laughing at me and if that wasn't enough added, "You looked zo funny. I was laughing zo hard at you."
"Yeah. Thanks. I think I got that." I grumbled. "It's harder than it looks you know." Then under my breath, "I hope you eat it."
He didn't. But still took some staggering steps under the pull of the kite and I had to take small comfort in that.
The next skill to learn was using the kite to drag us face first through the water. I lit up. I had already figured this whole dragging thing out. We spent the next half hour refining our technique, learning to move the kite in figure eights to create a steady momentum. At one point the wind picked up and the kite lifted me so only the tip of my big toe was touching the mud. Tim shouted at me to wade back towards them, but I couldn't create enough friction beneath my feet to move against the kite. I hung there, a puppet again, uselessly working my legs back and forth. Behind me Tim and Florian were laughing once more, leaving me struggling for their entertainment for several minutes before deigning to come and help me. I could have felt embarrassed, but I had kissed goodbye to dignity hours ago.
The sun was beginning to set and the changing tide was beginning to drain the estuary. Tim decided we were ready to try standing up on the board, so without any ceremony and no explanation other than a mumbled "keep your weight on your back foot" he slapped the board on my feet and told me to dive the kite.
I took a deep breath and went for it. I felt the sharp yanking in my stomach and then I was up, cruising with the rushing sound of the diving kite like the world's loudest zipper. I was grateful for the summers spent waterskiing and wakeboarding. The sensation was similar here only the lift of the kite made me feel lighter on the water -- almost like flying. It was the most profound sense of liberation -- liberation from gravity and the awkward plodding of human limbs.
And then I ate it.
I think a foot slipped out of the binding. I smacked my shin on the board and my face on the water. The kite landed with a thud.
Again I heard laughter across the water, but at this point I was so thrilled I joined in. I don't know if the face plant pulled some muscles, but there was a goofy grin on my face I couldn't get rid of for days. I also immediately warmed up to Tim. I realized in his nonchalant, stonerish way he had actually put me at ease.
Florian got up too and then also made a spectacular wipe out. I cracked up. "You looked so funny." I mimicked when he walked back over. "I was laughing so hard at you."
Florian scowled. We were even again.
The next day was Florian's last day in New Zealand. That morning we had another lesson. We both made progress and at the end I swore I was going to devote my life to kite surfing now that I had discovered the path to paradise.
That night I said a subdued farewell to my adventure buddy who was catching an airport bus before dawn the next day. We walked out to the ocean one last time. As I looked at the waves, I thought of all the friendships that had ebbed and flowed in my life. The winds that blow people together, the tides that pull us apart. I was momentarily exhausted by this change and just wanted to grab Florian and tell him not to go. That I was tired of making and losing friends. Then I realized this would be kinda creepy and definitely awkward, so I turned and walked back to the hostel.
I awoke the next morning and Florian was gone. I went out for a surf and paddled alone into the breaking waves. The ocean covers three-fourths of this planet. I felt relieved it would always be there.

Of Water, Wind, and Waves (Part One)

I got shipped off to boarding school when I was 14. I write this mostly to generate sympathy and because it's a convenient cliché. The truth is it might have been my idea. I can't really remember. It's one of the many things from my teenage years I've effectively blocked. Like many people, the first few years of pubescence aren't exactly a highlight of my biography. So the exact circumstances surrounding my enrollment at boarding school are as mysterious to me as my first kiss, my first school dance, and the few years where I wore braces held in with teal rubber bands on each tooth. Photos attest to the color (including orange and black for Halloween), but I have no recollection of ever choosing such an abhorrent hue.
However it came to pass, my first year of high school saw me enrolled at a small Monterey boarding school run by a fringe Christian sect that made Martin Luther look like a libertine. Between daily worships, enforced skirt wearing for women on church days, and a pervasive suspicion of pretty much anything "secular" the school had very little to recommend itself other than its location: a mile square plot of land right on the Pacific Ocean.
I didn't make many friends there. I minced no words in telling all the other students I thought they were brainwashed and I started to get self righteous about my lack of religious righteousness. In retrospect, this might have made me hard to be around.
In lieu of friends to chill with, I ended up spending a solid amount of time hanging out with the Pacific. It's true the ocean is not the most loquacious of acquaintances, but I found it reliably mesmerizing. Many evenings and most weekends in any weather, I would had down to the beach to watch the wild sea. The Northern California beaches are not the bleached tracts of yellow sand that most foreigners imagine. The sand is often a dingy gray coated with oceanic detritus - kelp, crab skeletons, and the occasional rotting seal. The water is usually black and snarling at the shore, and more often than not mists and fogs cling leechlike to the coast. In short, it's where Cathy and Heathcliff would probably build their summer home. For a melodramatic teenager, it was the perfect antidote to the saccharine Jesus-Loves-Me-ness of a Christian boarding school.
I was in love.
It was the place I had caught my first waves -- in the beginning on a boogie board and later on a surf board -- plunging into the frigid blackness wearing enough layers of neoprene to start my own fetish company. The Pacific Coast Highway was the first place I drove when I passed my driving test, moving up the highway with both hands on the wheel, trying to concentrate on the car in front of me despite the big blue distraction to my left. And when I moved to Los Angeles I let rent consign me to perpetual dinners of noodles and instant soups for the chance to be within smelling distance of the water.
So it's no lie to say a bit part of the allure of New Zealand is its many miles of coast. After a rainy slog up and over the mountains of the Kepler Track, I was ready for some lazy days by the sea.
The first stop was Milford Sound. Here the Tasman Sea has cut deep fjords into the landscape. A temperate rain forest, each slope and cliff is sopped with dozens of waterfalls that pour into the sea whenever there is one of the frequent rains. Trees grow on impossibly steep slopes so that underneath the pelting rain, every inch of landscape drips in verdant green. And everywhere the deep roar of gallons of moisture pitching into the protected waters. The Sounds was imbued with the deep power of all landscapes that seem to defy the possibility of human habitation.
After leaving Milford Sound, Florian and I continued our tour of the remote southern end of the South Island. Much of the landscape is empty of people and the few towns that freckle the map would often turn out to be just a cluster of several tin roofed houses on the side of the road. In fact, there are so few settlements on the South Island that even an abandoned trailer would probably be given a town name and marked gamely on the map.
After a day of driving on mostly empty roads, we came to the Caitlins, a crescent of land on the south east corner of the South Island. We spent two relaxing days in a hostel on a long sandy beach. From the window a rare breed of dolphin called Hectors dolphins could frequently be seen playing in the surf. At sunset, penguins waddled on to the rock, returning from a long day of fishing to tend to their nests. And all the time there's the sense that there's nothing between you and Antarctica. Except for, you know, a couple thousand miles of ocean.
From here there whirlwind tour continued up the east coast: the city of Dunedin where our only stops were the university bookshop and a quick check of the local surf break. I fell into the easy rhythm of the road and the unhurried, unharried lifestyle of New Zealand: camping on the beach, stopping for long lunches, discovering the simple pleasure of skipping rocks on glassy lake waters, and living in pursuit of a good place to surf.
Eventually we made out way up to Christchurch. The city itself was a bit of a shock after days of driving through remote countryside, but it was a welcome change. See, Florian and I had been driving around the South Island for almost a month and after so many nights spent camping and hiking in remote areas in the same three shirts and two pairs of pants, I was beginning to feel a bit like a schlub: my favorite Yiddish word out of that language's delicious lexicon. I had lost my hairbrush months ago and was instead relying on the combination of ample conditioner and a vigorous finger brushing in the shower to keep my locks tangle free. I had adopted a lackadaisical attitude toward shaving my legs and completely neglected to remove a whole host of errant dark hairs that seem to sprout in the most unlikely places (toes, belly, even - gasp - a few on my nipples). Hairs that are the bane of brunettes everywhere. And there had been no thought of makeup for weeks - not that I had any even if I had thought about it. I was a bush woman (in more ways than one).
This feeling of schlubbiness was augmented by Florian's determined refusal to even flirt with me. Not that it really mattered; Florian wasn't enough of a hedonist to be my type. (To cite just one example, he refuses to eat lunch until exactly five hours have passed since breakfast.) But still, a girl likes to have the power of refusal while retaining the right to get upset that men can't just be platonic towards girls. (Sorry guys, it's a catch-22. You're going to have to learn to live with it.)
Despite all this, there was no real problem with being the sultan of schlub while hanging out on remote beaches out of sight of any mirrors. But once I was back in a city each shop window showed a reflection of a creeping unibrow that made me look like some severe Dickensian school matron. I realized something had to be done. I ignored the siren call of the ocean - just a few miles away - and the temptation to hunker down on the beach with nothing but a surfboard. Florian left for a week to volunteer at a yoga retreat, and I began the painful process of washing, combing, shaving, waxing, and tweezing myself into general respectability. I also spent a few days taking advantage of this outpost of civilization and shopping for a few items to augment my five item wardrobe.
It was nice to be in a city again. I spent hours each day at the Chirstchurch library reading back issues of the New Yorker, Adbusters, and celebrity gossip mags. (They're good for taking the edge off pretentious New Yorker articles with their overzealous use of umlauts.) I also located the local chapters of cults serving cheap vegetarian food (the Hare Krishnas here were beat out by the Sri Chimoy disciples in terms of general tastiness with an added bonus of having an iron pumping guru plastered on the walls.) There was also no shortage of free street entertainment in the central square. Each day the "wizard", an old bearded man in black robes, gave lectures on such random topics as how geopolitics would change if everyone suddenly decided to adopt upside down maps. Whole crows would sit at his feet and quietly listen. I imagined it was a bit like how seeing Socrates in the agora must have been. If, you know, Socrates had had just a few screws loose. The World Buskers Festival was also in town at this time, so there were plenty of unicycles, jugglers, and dated spandex costumes in the open spaces of the city. I was having a great time. I was well fed of vegan curries and the sight of myself no longer made me cringe, but the call of the Pacific never diminished and after a week in the central city, I knew it was time to move back to the ocean.
And this is how I chanced upon paradise...

Battle of the SexesFinal RoundFIGHT!

Most of the United States is pretty homogenized. We've adopted the assembly line mentality with a gusto unseen almost anywhere else in the world, applying it not just to manufacturing but to culture as well. What this means is that anywhere you go in the States from Orange County to Omaha, you can find the exact same food, the exact same fashions, the exact same movies, the exact same music as anywhere else in the country. And though as an American I should be used to this, I can't help the pinch of anticlimax I feel when after flying for two thousand miles I find myself surrounded by the same smattering of corporate blasé. The result of all this is that cities in the United States are defined and distinguished lass by cultural differences and more by climatological.
So let's chat a bit about Chicago.
Although I've been accused of excessive use of superlatives, I'm pretty sure Chicago is the coldest place on the planet. I know that there are allegedly colder places. I've heard North Dakota has some mean winters, but come on, have you ever actually met someone from North Dakota who could confirm this? I didn't think so. I also suspect Canada has some cruel weather but my guess is that they're too busy eating poutine, speaking French, and taking advantage of their free health care to make accurate temperature readings. And of course Russians will claim Siberia is mostly oceanic frozen bleakness, but like any properly brainwashed child of the Cold War, I know not to trust the Russians.
I survived four winters in Chicago. Every year, sometime in late November, snowploughs would push the first snowfall down the street and then inexplicably leave it all in a mound outside my apartment window. Every blizzard and dusting that came through, the mound would grow, so that by midwinter it was about the size of an SUV and frozen into a block of dirty ice. This whole thing would usually stick around until mid May. Even during those first taunting days of spring that always come in April and encourage naive Chicagoans to wear short sleeves because the weather has poked above fifty, the ice outside my window never let me go along with the belief that winter was finally over.
And this whole, slightly irrelevant introduction is just to point out that I know ice. We're buddy buddy. It was the Romeo to my Juliet, lurking under my window for four obscenely long winters. So I wasn't completely thrilled about getting to see New Zealand's famous Fox Glacier. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to go, but only for the purpose of checking it off the New Zealand Must Dos list. This is a lot like how tourists in Paris spend hours waiting in line with other potbellied becamaeraed tourists to see the Mona Lisa even though they don't care about art and can't figure out what the big fuss is about her anyway. (I'm not a philistine, but I get this. I mean out of all the gorgeous, expansive nakedness on display in the Louvre, how a housewife with an awkward smirk captured the world's imagination I will never know.) I was thinking about this as Florian and I walked the short path to the base of the glacier.
Fox Glacier was (you guessed it) icy. Even though it was a sunny day, it made me cold looking at it. I remembered myself shivering in my poorly heated Chicago apartment and sleeping in no fewer than 18 items of clothing. I remembered jumping up and down on a snowy El platform trying to get just a little bit closer to the set of heat lamps that were always mounted a few too many feet away to be of any real use. Or that time when I got so cold that my nipples stayed erect for a full 48 hours and I finally had to put those chemical glove warming packets in my bra just to get them to thaw out.
I know some people look at ice and associate it with positive things like Wayne Gretzky or scotch on the rocks or Nederland Colorado's Frozen Dead Guy festival. I know there are even some who look at this five story deep river of ice and feel overwhelmed with awe and humility when faced with the immensity of nature while ruing man's appetite for energy and the unstoppable two step of global warming.
But that much ice just made me cranky.
I couldn't even temper this feeling with a good old fashioned jolt of adrenaline. An ice adventure might have improved my disposition in regards to water's solid incarnation. But you see, the constant movement of the glacier creates deep, often hidden fissures. You can slip through the cracks as easily as a poor person applying for health insurance. So you can't hike or climb on top of it without a hired (read expensive) guide. Screw that, I thought. And for the first time Florian agreed.
We walked back to the van and continued to drive south down the west coast. That afternoon, I felt I had reverted to my teenage years with my world weariness and sheer determination not to be impressed. I'm not usually a grumpy traveler. When I was a kid my parents would take use halfway across England each weekend just to look at antiques; I found myself learning to be excited by things in which no eight year old should be interested. ("Mom, Dad, look at this cool Edwardian marquetry!") I also learned that the destination was hardly ever the point. So I'm usually keen enough to road trip it, but that afternoon, I just couldn't get the happy machine to work. Beautiful vista? Seen it. The unexplained geological feature called Pancake Rocks? I'm hungry. It didn't help that everywhere we stopped -- for lunch, a view, a roadside pee -- those damn sand flies would kamikaze any exposed flesh. Except, unlike Kamikazes, they wouldn't die on impact. Instead that would start to suck your blood. They were like vampire kamikazes -- suicide pilots of the undead.
We drove inland to a lakeside town called Wanaka where we moved into a hostel overlooking the water and underlooking Mt. Aspiring. Florian decided he needed a few days to catch up on emails. I needed a few days to catch up on laziness.
But the apathy stuck. Even the unexpected find of a slim Delillo volume amidst all the usual hostel book exchange flotsam wasn't enough to improve my mood. Something had to be done. Something to make up for the glacier disappointment. Something quintessentially Kiwi. That's when I talked Florian into bungee jumping.
Well I didn't exactly have to talk him into it. It was more like, "Hey Florian, let's go bungee jumping."
"OK."
"You sure? 'Cus I"m going to call right now and book it."
"OK."
I was hoping for more of an "I don't know.... I'm a bit scared of heights. I don't want to plunge to my death." And so on. I was hoping for something I could work with in order to prove once and for all how bad ass I was in comparison. We had chatted a bit about bungee jumping on the Whanganui trip and Florian had expressed some reservations about it. Having undergone several serious knee surgeries, he was concerned about the effect of the deceleration force on his joints. But these fears seemed to have evaporated. Dammit.
We drove to Queenstown the day after next. Queenstown boasts the world's first commercial bungee. It also had the 134m Nevis bungee -- the highest in New Zealand. It was there we had planned to jump. Never one to accept defeat gracefully, I formulated a plan as we sped towards Queenstown. I was going to make sure I got to jump first and then I was going to do my very best to psych Florian out in the hope he would lose his nerve. I would say things like, "Wow, I really felt that in my knees. Ouch!" and "When I jumped there was an extra rope attaching me there -- they must have taken it down. But don't worry, I'm sure it's not vital." and "I heard the guy say that you were at the upper limits of the safe weight range." It was playing dirty, but I was playing to win.
After a brief weigh-in at the bungee center, Florian and I boarded the bus that would take us to the jump site -- a cable car suspended over a yawning valley. There were about twenty-five of us on the bus. The driver played U2 and hardly a word was spoken during the twenty minute drive. Grim expressions abounded, and as people stared intently into the distance you could almost see the private disaster scenarios going through their mind. I was too fixated on planning my psychological sabotage to worry about broken rope mishaps or death plunges. I glanced at Florian. He too looked calm. This wasn't going to be easy.
Upon arrival we were instructed to don a harness that went from groin to shoulders. Although during the jump we would be suspended by our ankles, a release mechanism would trigger the harness at the end of the jump so that we wouldn't be hauled back in upside down. We were told if we were smokers we would have to have our cigarettes away from the harnesses as the smoke could disintegrate the material. I found and still find this suspicious. Could something as insubstantial as smoke really dissolve such coarse material? If so, was it really something it was a good idea to trust our lives to? I shared this observation with Florian. Phase one of my Freak out Florian campaign.
He ignored me. I think he was on to my dastardly plan.
Phase two and three never came to fruition. Before I had even finished putting on my harness, Florian was whisked away on the cable car to the suspended jumping platform. As I was being briefed on the vital jumping procedure -- as if it could be complicated to throw yourself off a platform -- I saw a white figure rapidly descend between the valley walls. Florian had escaped my sinister machinations and had jumped before I could sufficiently frighten him. I discovered we were being made to jump in order from heaviest to lightest. I never stood a chance.
When my turn came to jump, I was tranquil enough to appreciate the wide angle view that can only be achieved while standing on a foot wide platform above a gorge. I've done enough sports that require altitude -- trampolining, high diving, tightrope walking (seriously) -- that I'm only really afraid of heights if there are spiders up there. The falling experience -- ostensibly eight seconds -- was such a sensory overload that it felt my brain was (nerdy joke alert) running Windows ME. The system crashed and from those eight seconds I only processed one frame of experience: the wind on my face and the feeling of my body in the middle of the canyon utterly removed from anything solid. It was only once I felt the tension on my ankles launching me back into midair that my brain began to catch up again, like an old film projector speeding up the frames until it creates the illusion of continuous movement. Despite this mental sputtering, the bungee center's DVD playback showed that I had executed a perfect, gold medal winning, instant replay deserving swan dive. Damn, I thought, I am an awesome faller.
The bus ride back had none of the gallows procession atmosphere of the ride to the jump. Strangers chatted freely with stranger united by the shared relief to still be alive. Even the oft silent Florian displayed unprecedented gregariousness.
The jump had made me woozy, and I fought against a slight dizziness that was probably the result of g forces on my brain during deceleration. I figured the jump had probably caused me to forget things, the best recipe for pancakes or a few memorized digits of Pi. I hoped that nothing essential had been shaken out of my gray matter and that I wouldn't end up forgetting my email password or the reasons I wasn't a republican. The feeling lasted only a few hours and that same afternoon Florian and I sped out of Queenstown.
I know that bungee jumping is not that dangerous or that extreme. It's not like I went base jumping or swam off the sharky coasts of South Africa with a bleeding wound. Still, there is something about jumping of a ledge that and surviving that makes you think Oh yes, oh yes, I'm alive. I'm not ready to check out just yet. I would never, ever do this without a rope pulling me back to the sky.
I realized I was happy Florian could have experienced this too. Even though part of me would have relished it if I had manged to frightened Florian out of jumping and would have loved to remind him of it at every opportunity, I was glad he too could be saturated with the life affirmingness of it all. As we drove to our next adventure -- another long hike -- I felt like the battle was over. We both had jumped. We both had won.
(But I was still the most graceful faller.)