For the Diggers

Australia

 Pennies

Australian Friend: It’s called “two-up.”

US: Ok…so what’s the deal here?

Australian Friend: You flip two coins at once and bet on how many will come up heads.

*****
Now before you read further you need to understand that gambling is:

1)      Something that is everywhere in Australia.

2)      Something that we haven’t overly enjoyed

3)      Something we are forced to deal with every day working in pubs

With that in mind –

*****

US: That is a dumb gambling game.  Why would you even play that?

Australian Friend:  Well, we really only play it on this one day each year because, you know, they did

US: oh dammit, we’re sorry, we’re ugly Americans.

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Passing the Poo

Opua, New Zealand

Those extra 2 weeks we spent in Opua were put to good use.  Since we had a paying gig this time, we didn’t just take off and go exploring ashore.  Instead, we did boat work.  What kind of boat work?  The yucky kind.  Observe:

But this article wasn’t titled “passing grey water” was it?

No, no it was not and for good reason…

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Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch, NZ

We have, to a degree, made light of the titanic forces that shaped and continue to mold this tiny island nation within the South Pacific’s ring of fire.  We don’t do this out of lack of respect; simply out of acceptance of how very small we as humans are before the fury of Mother Nature.

As people who have lived in Northern California and Southern Florida we have learned to live with the fact that a natural disaster could just up and kill us at any given moment and there is, in the end, precious little we can do about it.  Coming from the San Francisco Bay people ask Greg what they should do if there is an earthquake.  His response,

“The truth of it is that if you actually have enough time to realize that an earthquake is what’s happening, you have more than likely already survived it.”

What he doesn’t say is that conversely, by the time you realize you’re in danger from an earthquake you’re probably already dead.

Christchurch Cathedral
Before the 2nd quake – taken by us
After the quake – thanks to wikipedia

That knowledge, mixed with our unapologetic and absolute love of this country, made the fate of Christchurch weigh heavily on our minds as we prepared to depart New Zealand.

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A Teaspoon of Concrete

Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ

[fgallery id=7 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”Mount Aspiring Descent”]

After a week of enjoying the excellent company and stunning views provided by living on a mountain surrounded by glaciers and waterfalls from, most importantly, behind the protective barrier of a New Zealand hut, the day finally came for us to depart.  Unfortunately no one decided to tell the rain.

Now seems an opportune moment to discuss a little saying, a philosophy if you will, that we’ve found is said down here when things get a little tough:

“Take a teaspoon of concrete and harden up!”

With that little nugget of Kiwi wisdom we depart our shelter and remember that “Kiwi Moderate cliff face we crawled up a few days ago?

Now it’s a waterfall…and our only way down:

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A Hut Warden’s Life

French Ridge hut
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ

Notices posted on the kitchen wall of French Ridge hut:

Seriously, we freaking love these people.

By now we’ve mentioned it enough that you’re probably asking “Hey guys?  What are these huts and wardens and whatnot you keep talking about?”

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Kiwi Moderate

Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ

Another aspect of friendship is the joint lexicon a group develops over time.  Shared experiences become stories, stories become jokes, jokes become catchphrases and so on until it gets to the point where simply mentioning the last name of a high school teacher will bring smirks, smiles or groans of anguish from the right circle of people while making absolutely no sense to anyone else.

The longer one stays with a given group, the more detailed this secret language becomes.  By extrapolation, one can easily concede that in 11+ years of exclusive relationship (8+ of actual marriage) quite an expansive vocabulary would develop.  We bring this up, dear friends, to issue you fair warning:

Hiking in Sheep PaddocksIf either of us ever describe an activity you are about to join us on as “Kiwi moderate” run away quickly.

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Tramping in New Zealand

Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ

We live among titans.

We have no other way to describe it.  “gods” seems too presumptuous for monotheists and “demi-gods” too second-rate.  “Champions” too sporty and “giants” too dependent on physical proportions.

Google software engineers, F-16 fighter pilots, world-class preachers, property barons, lawyers and teachers, real-life Coast Guardsmen rescue personnel that make Kevin Costner look like a pansy (and the guy who actually did the stunts for him in the movie), freewheeling gypsies, ivy league college grads & PhDs, internet millionaires, global circumnavigating sailors, national level speakers and coaches, songwriters, sales directors who spend their free time climbing the ice encrusted peaks of Colorado, proud parents of beautiful, intelligent children the list goes on…

These are not people who we hope to someday become, or observe in awe from a distance and pray might deem us good enough to network with.  These are the people with whom we drink beer and play Dungeons and Dragons. (Well, some of them.  The rest are more into video games.  We mix it up.)

Of course, they aren’t all those things to us.  Usually they have first names and are, in general, rather humble about it all.  Nonetheless when we stop to think about it the people around us are quite the collection.  If we are indeed the product of those that surround us then we are grateful for the excellence of those we call friends. (That would be you all, in case you were checking.)

So as you might guess when we get an invite from one of these exceptional people for an amazing adventure, we do our best to make good…

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Regarding the Locals

Enroute Mt. Aspiring, NZ

We would be remiss to recount our many adventures in New Zealand and never once mention the Maori.

The “native” people of New Zealand are themselves settlers from a foreign land.  Polynesian in origin, the Maori trace their roots back to the people of the South Pacific who used their…

“mind-bending supernatural powers of badass navigation so awesome it took the West hundreds of years and a satellite network to replicate what Polynesians could do in their heads around the time the rest of us were learning that fire was hot” 

…to locate, land on and settle these islands a few hundred years before Europe came on the scene.

Massive authentic Maori war canoe : 75 feet long & able to carry 100 warriors to battle.

Eventually the West did show up and to make a long story short we colonized New Zealand and eventually claimed her for England.  The nation retains its card-carrying status as a member of the “Empire on which the sun never sets” to this day as a member of the Commonwealth.

So where did this leave the natives?

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To simply be

Helensville, NZ

Despite rumors to the contrary, there’s a lot more out in the farms of New Zealand than Kiwispossums and sheep:

Sometimes things fall into place and life moves on when we’re least expecting it.  After about a month our battles with taxation came to an abrupt and, if annoying, at least vindicating conclusion, we got a job offer in Australia and received an invite for one last Kiwi adventure from an unexpected source.

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Proximity

Whangarei, NZ

The sailing life leads to odd relationships.  Not odd in the quality but more in the means employed in establishing and growing those interpersonal connections: the happenstance, randomness and good fortune involved in who we even have the opportunity to connect with.

People come in and out of our lives literally with the passing of each tide.

Some fellow sailors are friends for a meal or a few days in one port, remembered fondly but as fate and diverging cruising plans would have it, never to be rendezvoused with again.

Other people are friends for a longer time.  Perhaps an overlapping prolonged stay in a Mexican port or a shared long-term rally provide ample opportunity to get to know each other over a longer period of time.  The cruiser’s net, dinners aboard and joint shore excursions are the fabric with which we begin to weave our social tapestry.  Radio comms and emails (yeah, you can get those via satellite uplink or over a HAM radio now…) allow us to fill in the gaps when we are mutually underway while Facebook and blogs can keep us connected while we’re in different ports.

In our case, there are those people who ask us onboard their vessels for anywhere from a few days to a few months.  For that time we become roommates in a home that none of us can leave.  Typically we share meals, time, adventures and our lives for however long we’re onboard.  We, to a varying degree, become family.  These people are, for the time we’re connected to them, a huge part of our world.  Often we leave as good friends.

The downside to our situation is that, unlike most cruisers, we are unable to extend our time in places to form a relationship if our captain decides that they wish to depart.  Friendships are created and maintained by a mixture of fortunate run-ins and dedicated effort placed into correspondence.

What we’re saying here is that interpersonal proximity is a variable, sometimes an obstacle and always a consideration in the formation and maintenance of friendships at sea.

Then there’s the case of Rod & Elisabeth.

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