[travel] Visiting Greater Batmania
Closed out the con yesterday. Exhausting. I am off today with
Posted: 3:07 pm Mon September 06 2010 | Comments(0) |
[travel] In Oz
In Oz, at the Hilton South Wharf next to the convention center here in Melbourne. No time for the usual bloggery this morning. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. I’ll report in when I can.
Posted: 3:59 pm Wed September 01 2010 | Comments(0) |
[travel] One more day in New Zealand, off to Australia this afternoon
Yesterday the four of us went to an oriental rug store in Petone, then to the outlet stores in Otaki. Shopping ensued, though none of the magnificent carpets caught calendula_witch’s eye. This also involved driving about through even more beautiful countryside and townscape. Plus some pretty decent lunch. Then home for a long nap (me) followed by a fascinating party in a rooftop apartment in downtown Wellington.
Some last minute-shopping in train for today, then we’re packing and off to Melbourne.
Posted: 1:24 pm Tue August 31 2010 | Comments(0) |
[travel] Sheep, Seals, and Bulldozers, oh my
As calendula_witch hath promised, here is a post about sheep, seals and bulldozers. Oh, my.
Yesterday the four of us headed out in danjite and khaybee’s state limo (a surplus stretch Volvo S90 retired from diplomatic service) and drove from Wellington to Cape Palliser. The trip went via the very winding, tiny Highway 2 through the Rimutakas, then into the charming town of Featherston, then to Greytown, where rugs and chocolate were purchased. From Greytown we drove to Martinborough for lunch, then on out Cape Palliser Road to Ngawi and then to the cape itself. The route, for them what is interested.
We saw a lot of beautiful countryside. Early flowers are in bloom, including daffodils, kowhai trees, and down by the coast, enormous lupens. The weather was increasingly gloomy as we progressed, but we always had good visibility. The road was increasingly grim as we progressed, but the state limo kept up to the bitter end. And it was beautiful. The Wairarapa Valley reminded me rather a lot of the Willamette Valley back in Oregon, but they’re at roughly the corresponding latitude, with similar rainfall and weather patterns, so this is unsurprising. The coast looked a bit like the Mendocino coast in California, except with more dramatic irruptions of volcanic rocks.
There were sheep. Lots of sheep. (I think I took about a hundred pictures of sheep.)
The lambs had just come in. Some were still orange with their afterbirth. Others staggered around in a state of surprise and wonderment. Others were dead, still born or weather-struck, providing a feast for the hawks.
Later, as we got to Ngawi, we saw a rare coastal bulldozer colony. (I took about hundred pictures there, too.)
Ngawi is a fishing village without a harbor, just a beach. When the boats come it, they’re set on handbuilt trailers and hauled up the beach by bulldozers. This is lieu of a launch ramp, or a jetty and moorage. Several dozen bulldozers line the road, each hooked to a largish fishing boat. Some of them are seriously antique, others quite modern. It’s a very curious sight, and an interesting solution to the obvious problem of protecting the boats from the chronically rough seas there.
Finally, on the last stretch of the road — one lane of gravel and mud — we saw the permanent colony of fur seals that live around Cape Palliser. (I took about a hundred pictures of seals as well.)
These are big seals, rather larger than the harbor seals I’m familiar with. It was a rainy day so a lot of them were up on the grass by the road, above the rocky beach. They were also quite indifferent to our presence. When I got out of the car and walked around with the camera several times, I was sharing their immediate space. Mostly I got a yawn and a blink. Things might have been different if I were wearing a coat made of fish or something.
It was a beautiful drive. We got to see a lovely slice of New Zealand, and some unusual things. Plus a long, fun day in the car. Today we lay a bit lower. Tomorrow we are off to Melbourne, Australia.
Also, due to bandwidth limitations here, I can’t upload the bulk of my photos yet. Watch for photo essays on sheep, seals and bulldozers to come.
Photographs © 2010, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 1:40 pm Mon August 30 2010 | Comments(1) |
[travel] A few random thoughts on being in New Zealand
- It’s cold here. Not just the weather, but inside the buildings.
- These Kiwis all drive on the wrong side of the road. Which is admittedly better than only some of them driving on the wrong side of the road. I’m finally learning to look the correct direction on street crossing.
- I have yet to meet a New Zealander I haven’t liked.
- There are more Americans here than I expected.
- Wellington is incredibly clean and pretty.
- The food here is quite good, if a tad pricey. And some of it is very different from what I’d find at home. That never surprises me in non-Anglo countries, but it has surprised me here.
- In another life, I could have lived here.
Posted: 12:37 pm Sun August 29 2010 | Comments(1) |
[travel] In New Zealand
Having arrived, we went out to eat, then to Au Contraire. Have not seen a bed in days. Ded nao.
Posted: 2:07 am Fri August 27 2010 | Comments(1) |
[travel] Off today to the antipodes, forward all my mail to the South Seas
This afternoon calendula_witch and I are off to New Zealand. Portland to Los Angeles to Sydney to Wellington, a ridiculous amount of flight hours and transit time. Longest flight I’ve ever taken before is San Francisco to Hong Kong. The LA-Sydney hop on this flight will be even mightier. Thank Ghu for business class seats. danjite and khaybee will meet us at the other end, pour us into their state limo, and see us to their home. Next week we’ll all four pop over to Melbourne.
Expect unknown amounts of blogging at unknown times. I will probably take a metric frak-ton of photos, of course, on account of because that’s what I do in furrin parts. Of course, those crazy Kiwis don’t know that they’re the furriners.
I won’t be answering my phone much, but I will keep an eyeball on email. Write if you need me.
calendula_witch and I are back on Thursday, September 9th. Surgery festivities the following week, in which I expect to be in the hospital from September 16th to September 20th. (I didn’t really need my liver anyway, did I?) It is my plan to spend as little as possible of the next two weeks thinking about that.
And, oddly, one thing I’m really looking forward to is the night sky. It will be like going to a different planet.
Posted: 5:12 am Wed August 25 2010 | Comments(2) |
[conventions|travel] Au Contraire and AussieCon 4
So, who among you is going to be at Au Contraire (Wellington, NZ, next weekend) and/or AussieCon 4 (Melbourne, Australia, the following weekend)? I’d love to know who we’re going to bump into, new friends and old.
Posted: 5:02 am Mon August 23 2010 | Comments(3) |
[travel|help] Australia questions, for them as knows the answers
So
1) Is it possible to get cheap cell phones on short term plans when we get to Melbourne? We’d like to be able to call or text each other, and have numbers to make available to others. I did this when I went to China last year. Not sure about Australia’s telecomm environment.
2) I’ve heard Australian customs is pretty aggressive about confiscating laptops with questionable material on them. As I have no idea what Australia defines as “questionable material”, and given some of what I write a simple keyword search on my hard drive would turn up all sorts of stuff potentially requiring explanation to a suspicious mind, is it safe to bring my computer? I’m considering wiping it to default state as one option.
Thoughts and experiences welcome.
Posted: 2:28 pm Sat August 14 2010 | Comments(18) |
[cancer|travel] Some good news, for a change
My surgeon called today. The CT scan showed the lesion having not grown much, so he’s cleared me for the New Zealand/Australia trip with
Posted: 4:08 pm Fri August 13 2010 | Comments(13) |