The Story of the Star-Crossed Crossing.

Even after having spent the entire night in a sauna, I was more than ready to tackle the Tongariro Crossing upon waking up. I can't say the same for the others:

Erika's Brandt-this-is-too-damn-early-for-pictures face.

Meg's not tired. She just has a little something in her eyes. . .

I just love irritating people when they're too tired to fight back. This picture is an example.

Either they're attempting to communicate via telepathy, or this is one hell of a staring contest.

In fact, as sometimes happens, I was the perkiest one in the morning. Bah, coffee's for losers and people from Seattle. Not that there's always a distinct line between the two. Ooh, sorry, I hereby extend my humblest apologies to Seatllites everywhere. Interesting fact: Where I'm staying right now, Palmerston North, supposedly gets more rainy days on average than Seattle.

Ooookay, back to topic. So, since the crossing takes about 7-9 hours to complete in one direction, for lazy Americans it's almost necessary to hire out a bus to drive our lazy asses either from one end of the track to the other, or to and from a hostel. Knowing this, the night before we had booked a bus to come and pick us up at one end of the track in the morning and drive us to the other end. That way we could be lazy, hike the track one direction to our car and then drive home. Hooray for good old-fashioned American laziness!

So, in order for us to actually take this plan to fruition, we had to get up excessively early, feign perkiness, and get to the car park at one end by 7:30 AM. Anyways, after a small snafu (the person who had given us directions gave us somewhat misleading directions, oh, and the sign telling us where to go was also really, really small. Thank God for my eagle-eye vision. . . ) we finally arrived at the car park as was arranged by our hostel. We arrived to find. . . no bus. And, 30 minutes later it was still noticeably lacking. Piqued, we (Ben and Erika) called our hostel and the bus service to see what was up. Well, as Butko luck would have it, the weather forecast predicted some showers and excessive wind up on the mountains, effectively cancelling any hope we had of actually doing the hike this weekend. Sadness.

Disillusioned with the world and disheartened in the willful sprites of weather, we returned to the Turangi isite (and we went back to our hostel for a refund of the bus-tickets) reconnoitered with the natives, and learned of a couple of other walks that we could do. We ended up doing two 2.5 hour hikes, the first one to Rotopounamu lake.

It was a cute walk, we talked amongst each other, venting our respective angst against a precarious weather god, and had an all around good time.
In tribute to the Pirates movie of the night before, I made a sand skull and cross twig-bones. While a few of the others became tree huggers. The only thing that actually made this hike unique and slightly awesome was the fact that the water on the lake was prone to waterspouts. I think it's because of the situation of the lake in a valley and the high winds that we had that day, forcing the wind in a circle and thereby making waterspouts. If you look closely in the picture, you can see a waterspout in the leftmost portion of the picture. Ben's face at the exact moment where he realized that getting to the end of the jutting tree is only half of the trip.

Anyways, we finished that social little walk and drove on a little ways to begin our next excursion. Unlike the first tramp, this second tramp had a lot of things about it that was unique and completely awesome:

Firstly, the view of Mount Ngauruhoe was staggering. Oh, and for those of you who have yet to figure it out from the pictures, Mt. Ngauruhoe is MOUNT DOOM! Gleeberries!

Oh, and it was also a hike to a waterfall, which was pretty cool. Not only because all waterfalls are cool, but also because you could hike right to the edge of the rock where the waterfall falls from. For those of you who don't know, I have a fear of heights. This may seem contradictory due to my love of climbing rocks and trees, but for some reason, that's totally different in my mind to just walking up to the edge of a cliff and looking down. My phobia is so strong that I can't even watch my friends standing at the edge of the cliff without feeling like I have a pull them back from the edge. I don't understand it, that's just the way it is with me. So just understand how hard it was for me to take this pictures:

Looks normal on the surface, right? Well, other than Mt. Doom looming in the background.

Wrong, they were actually sitting in the middle of this picture when I took the other picture.

Other than the whole, "wow, this is really high up here, I'm gonna go and hide in a corner" part, the waterfall was pretty awesome. We hiked around it and took lots of random pictures.

I took this picture behind the water falls. It doesn't actually show anything cool, I really just liked the picture.

Another view of Mt. Ruapehu.

With that, the hiking day was effectively over. We were still bummed that we couldn't do the Crossing, but the subsequent walking helped to somewhat lessen the wound. Ben tossed me the car keys, and I got behind the wheel of a car again. Only now, that I've reached the ripe old age of 21, do I see the allure in road trips. 'Tis somewhat of a rush, exploring new places with nowhere to be and nobody to answer to. Needless to say then, I had a great time just driving home. Of course, there had to be a few pit-stops now and then, didn't there?

This one was for a small bite of a very large vege. (yeah, that's how they spell "Veggie" over here. It's messed me up to no end.) Our final stop before heading back to "balmy" Palmy was to sit in an airplane cafe and eat a very large cookie. Of course. Who wouldn't do that? Well, besides the yawning Ben. Ignore that.

So, while I'm sad that we didn't actually get the opportunity to do the Tongariro Crossing, the trip was awesome nonetheless. Ahhhh, good times. Next weekend should be fun; I'm going to Sydney!

Tongariro Crossingish! Or: my night in a Sauna.

This weekend's trip was to take us to the Tongariro Crossing. It's one of the World's foremost day hikes, and I had been looking forward to doing it for a very long time.

We had hatched the idea only a few days before, but everybody (Myself, Ben, Erika, Meg, and Tim) were all quite . . . ahem. . . keen on actually attempting the hike. There were only a few problems: We didn't know where to stay; we didn't know how to get there once we figured out where we were going to stay; and, well, that's about it. Luckily for us, Tim has a car, he's an experienced tramper, and he knew how to get there. Problems solved. Or so we thought.

Well, about two days before we were slated to part on our epic adventure, he experienced one of his infrequently occurring migraines that stay with him for a couple of weeks whenever he has a lapse. This effectively put us back to square one. So I did something that I'm quite good at doing; I delegated the responsibility of the trip to others. So Ben rented a car and Erika found us a place to stay. Damn, I'm good.

Then Saturday finally came and Ben and I went to go pick up our lime. I mean car. I get them confused sometime. And, thus, armed with a Hulk-in-miniature, we returned to Massey, picked up our two comrades in arms, and set out for bold new areas. But first we bought food. It is hard, after all, to set out for bold new adventures on an empty stomach. Yeah. Oh, while I was there, I saw this:

I'm kinda titchy about what the other "meat" is. Anyways, we bought our food for the trip, and scarcely three hours later we finally came in view of Mt. Ruapehu and Mt. Ngauruhoe, the two mountains that the Tongariro Crossing, well, crosses through. And, now that I'd finally seen what the mountains looked like face-to-face, I was finally getting really jazzed for the hike. But, unfortunately, it's a 7-9 hour hike, so we couldn't really start it when we finally got there on Saturday. Sadness.



So instead we elected to check into our hostel, EXTREME BACKPACKERS (I'm sorry, but you just can't say a name like that any other way), which was pretty cool; it had a climbing wall contiguous to our accommodation, but, unfortunately, I couldn't talk anybody else into climbing.

Ben, as usual, being entirely helpful and pointing at. . . something.

So we decided that (since my earlier attempts had all been foiled due to availability of tickets) we would drive to Taupo to see the new Pirates movie.

Our Timing was simply amazing, after feeling like we got lost, we lucked into finding the Cinema, and, just as we got in, they had started selling tickets to a showing of the movie that was going to be in about ten minutes time. Awesome. So we bought tickets, Ben and I waded through the sea of other viewers, and I placed my flag in the last four contiguous seats in the theater. Then, since the girls were hungry, we proceeded to guard our closely held seats from the other ravenous fans. This was no easy task, mind you, but somehow we held out until the girls finally returned with popcorn and soda.

You know, I rather liked the movie. Yes, there were times that it was obviously dumb or melodramatic, but on the whole it was a damn fine sendoff for the series, and I was happy for it. Oh, and can anybody possibly explain to me the purpose of even putting in Calypso into the movie? From what I saw, she was a totally useless character, and could easily have remained the Obeah charmer. Still though, YEARRRGH!

Flushed with success, we ate dinner at Hell . . . 's Pizza parlor,

Me, Ben, and Erika after having consumed a Meat Pizza and the ever-bizzare Cream Cheese and Salmon pizza. Yep, yummy. One guess as to which one I ordered.

Ben and Meg, posing after consuming inordinate amounts of pizza.

We then had an ice cream cone at McD's, and returned to our EXTREME hostel.

(In some clinical experiments, the hamster has merely stared, befuddled, when given the choice as to an entry point into the maze.)

Now, anybody that knows me knows that I don't get cold. If I'm cold, then either it's sub-zero temperatures or I'm excessively sick. On the other hand, I'm quite aware that this isn't the case for everybody, and I'm more than willing to accommodate the needs of others.

So when the girls said that they wanted to turn on the space heater because they were cold, I had no problem with that. Also, anybody that knows me knows that it takes a long time for me to actually get to sleep; once I'm there nothing short of nuclear holocaust can move me, but getting to that state takes a lot of time. So I began the night warming up to a comfortable temperature in my sleeping bag. It was nice, and before I was really going to drift off, I noticed that the room was becoming pretty hot. I layed on my back for a while, pondering this new development as I noticed that the room was actually getting pretty stifling inside my sleeping bag. So I sweated inside my sleeping bag for probably a half-hour before I finally decided that they could just wake up when I unzipped my sleeping bag and put it to the side of my bed. Now the room was at a comfortable temperature again. And, also again, just as I was about to fall asleep I noticed that the room seemed to be getting warmer again. But the girls liked the room when it was warmer, right? So, there was no need to make them uncomfortable by noisily getting down from the upper bunk and noisily turning off their source of hear, right? But I was getting really hot, sweating in my boxers, with no covers on whatsoever. But I didn't want to turn off the heater if they didn't want that. And so the argument went in my head from approximately 1:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the morningish when I finally drifted off to a fitful slumber in our little sauna.

Anyways, after showering at 6:3o when I woke up in preparation for the bus we were going to take, I said something to the effect of "My god you guys, you made this room a bloody sauna last night." And, to my chagrin, everybody agreed. It turns out that the argument that I was having with myself was shared by everybody in that room for most of the night. Nobody wanted to turn the heater off for fear of offending one of the other people in the room. So we all spent an entire night in a freaking sauna! Seriously, I woke up dehydrated because I had lost so much water that night. It was that bad. We are bloody geniuses.

And, on that tantalizing note, I leave you all for today. I'll set another update your way soon with our story of the crossed-crossing. Sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story, eh?

Kiwisms.

Today for your reading enjoyment and cultural enlightenment I would like to relate a few kiwisms that I have overheard during my short tenure in this country:

1. "_____ as."

When one is attempting to say that something is especially _____, you begin a comparative form, and simply stop at the end. Some examples:

"Sweet as." This literally means that object A is "sweet as" object B, one merely neglects to mention what object B is. So, one could use the phrase "That test was sweet as." This means that the test went very well, that it was "sweet as" something. I've taken to instantly adding "pie" to the end of a sentence every time I hear it. It makes me giggle. Some other forms that I've heard: "massive as" (for a bouldering problem and a cake) "tasty as" (for a dinner) and "cute as" (for a girl). It used to drive me nuts, but now that I've taken to completing the simile in my head, I've come to rather enjoy it.

2. "Eh."

This particular Kiwism is utilized in very much the same way that Minnesotans and Canadians use it. It's effectively a tag on question that one can use at the end of a question. For example, "That was sweet as, eh?" The only thing that actually differentiates this "eh" from its Midwestern counterpart is the Kiwi accent. It's really quite inimitable the way that this is pronounced; it's not a question, it's not really a statement either, it's a way to fill up that empty space between one person ending speaking and another beginning his/her portion of the conversation. It's cute.

3. "Bro."

This word is often used as a post question tag sentence completer. It is often heard in conjunction with the word "eh," but can be used as a standalone word in the proper context. Phrases such as "That was awesome, bro," or, "Hey bro, can I get some of that," are not at all unusual to come across in ones everyday life. The best part is, it can also be used in a sentence with #'s 1 and 2 in this post to hilarious, yet oft used, effect. My personal favorite: "That was sweet as, eh, bro?" In all of my travels here, I've found this to be the archetypal Kiwism. So if you're alone in your room, and find yourself wanting to learn beginner Kiwi, it's best to commence with that phrase.

Sweet as all,
Butko out.

Bah! Someday I'll learn.

Yeah, so Blogger posted things out of order again. Just in case you're as lazy as I am, and only read the uppermost post in anything, you should look downwards, and look at my final day in Wellington. Trust me, it's well worth the casual, cursory glance. . .

Back in Wellington again, part 1.

So, last time I told you that this trip was prompted by my English Companion, Joe, and his insistance that we go and see an English commedian this week at Wellington. Well, that's how it started, but it sort of evolved from that first seed of an idea. It just so happens that this last weekend is also the same weekend that the Butlerites (Ben, Erika & co.) (Butlerites = people in New Zealand on the Butler program-it's like USAC, but they actually do things together.) were also slated to be in Wellington for one of their little trips. "So," I thought, "cool, that'll mean that we can all go down together and have a spot of fun or three." Well, I was somewhat mistaken. But we'll get there in a minute.

Friday morning was rushed and painful. The night before I had it all planned out, I'd get up, shower, catch the 10:00 bus into town, wait around for a bit, then catch my bus to Wellington at 10:50. No problem, right? Well, I'm an idiot. I'd forgotten to print out/do the oral portion of my Maori language assignemnt; effectively 20% of my total grade in that class. So I ran from my bed, did the oral portion, attempted to burn the sound file onto a CD only to find that my computer had picked that moment to choose to not recognize CDs, rendering it not possible for me to burn it in my room. So I ran to the library and prayed that they had an open computer. Luckily for me, they did, So I hurridley logged into the system, printed out my assignment and burned my oral portion to the CD. I was running just barely on time. . . until I realized that I had yet to write down my confirmation numbers for the hostel and my upcoming bus ride. At that point I stopped, swore, and realized that I was not going to make the first bus. So now I decided that the jig was up, I'd already missed the bus, I had fifty minutes to get to town, I could find another ride in time. I leisurely walked up the stairs of doom, panted my way into the front office, turned in my assignment, and made my way back to my dorm. I figured I'd try my frinends first, they had cars, right? Wrong. They had all skipped ship, and I could only find Rodrigo, who had left his car in town the night before and stumbled home in a drunken state. Well, damn then, I had to call a taxi then. But first, I figured that I would whore myself out in the common room to see if anybody had a car. Lucky for me, they didn't actually want payment, and I found a random guy who gave me a ride to town. Problems averted. It's not that I was worried that I couldn't get to town, it was that things didn't go according to plan that bothered me. Oh, OCD, thou art a cruel mistress. . .

I then met up with Joe and we took the bus down to Wellington; my first time, his third. The next five hours were fairly unimportant: we got to town, checked into our hostel (I made out like a bandit-I payed only 20$, got a dorm room with four beds, supplied sheets and towels, a TV, a contiguous bathroom, and a complementary dinner [see: appetiser]; all of which are optional in some hostels. Ben payed 25$ for a room with 6 beds, and a bathroom down the hall. Ahhhhh, I win!) wandered about the city, saw Te Papa, and eventually Ben and Erika got to town and we met up with them. Then the night began in earnest, for it was time to see the commedian!

The show was at, I swear it has to be, a gay bar. Why do I say that? Well, just look at the friggin' name: the San Fransisco Bath House. The sign was even rainbow colored. Not that that matters, of course, I just thought it strange that Joe would book us into a gay bar for a show. Anyways, back to topic, the guy we saw present was Stephen K. Amos, a commedian of ambiguous sexuality from England who was actually quite hilarious. His show consisted of mostly of making fun of random audience members and making black jokes, which he could do because he was black. It really does just shock me though, how very much the American civil rights problems have permeated the world conciousness. For example, one of his jokes was about the KKK. I thought, "What? Why in the world would he make a joke like this? They don't have the KKK in England, do they? So why is everbody here still laughing at it?" It's honestly quite strange, and I don't have the answers. Otherwise though, his show was really funny and totally worth the trip to Wellington for.

So we got out of that show, giggling and happy. It was (at least I think so) Erika's first time to Wellington too, so she wanted to go out on the town. I've recently come to realize something though, I really don't enjoy super loud music shows where everybody stands up and "Dances." [see: seizure. Also see: hump.] I love going to concerts with loud music, I love going to bars with my friends to talk and listen as their words become progressively more slurred. I just don't like that combination. I think it's mostly my natural aversion to sluts. We ended up hitting two or three bars, but I can categorically state that the most fun I had that night was sitting at KFC with Ben and Erika talking. I really do have problems.

So, since I'm finding myself with less and less to say these days, I'm going to update again later with the next day's adventures!

Same Brandt time, same Brandt channel!

Back in Wellington. . . again.

Day 2: Aliens attack!

Or not.

Joe and I woke up, energized and happy because we knew what was about to happen. The day before we had signed up for a Lord of The Rings movie tour! Hooray!

Joe, elated, inside of our tour van for the day.

We left the hostel and completed our long and ardous journey across the street to where the tour was slated to pick us up. And, as promised, there was a bus right across the street. "Cool," I thought, "a bus, now that's a tour." So, you know how in movies you expect one thing, then it moves to the side and the real thing's there? It was kinda like that. About five minutes after we got there, a van with a Movie Tours insignia pulled up and picked us up. Not that it was a bad van or anything, I was just expecting a bus. We shook hands with our bus driver, Ted, a Frenchman, Vaylen, and we then proceeded to pick up and American and a Canadian, Lauren and Michelle? who both go to our school, and whom we had already met, and with whom we had definitely not set up this tour. Butko luck is a strange thing.

He used his laptop to show us scenes from the movie that we were about to see in person.

Not only was this the most high quality tour ever, the tour guide even debased himself enough to wear testicle speakers. Honesly, I can't think of another way to describe them. Wish I could. . .

Our first stop was at the "wet set" that was used during the filming of LOTR. When you hear the words "wet set," you envision a lake, or at least a pond, on which they filmed the "wet," or water, scenes, don't you? Yeah, me too. The last thing I really expected was a parking lot. Yes, you heard me right, our first stop was at a parking lot.

Anyways, it turns out that they actually built a lot of random sets here: the Gates of Moria, portions of the Dead Marshes, Osgiliath, and Flooded Isengard. The best part is that there're some train tracks running along just behing the set. So it was really, really loud during any of the scenes that they filmed here. Oh, one humorous anecdote, you know when they're on the Dead Marshes and Sam says "it's too quiet here."? Well, when he was saying that line, there were cars and trains passing around him, rendering the area anything but "quiet."

From there we went to a little park in one of the suburbs of the city. It looks something like Wingfield park, it's honestly not that impressive, though it is indeed pretty. Here they filmed a couple of scenes at the gardens in Isengard in Fellowship. Before I continue, however, you have to hear about the Green Project. When they wanted to start filming LOTR, there was considerable reticience from the locals here at New Zealand because they didn't want to see their country marred in any way. So the production team for LOTR got permission to film LOTR if they made sure not to actually mar the land in any way; in other words, they could film as long as they put everything back to the way it was before filming. I only tell you this because of this picture:

In the middle of this grassy expanse they made a little stone pathway for Saurumon and Gandalf to walk through for an Isengard scene. But, since they had to return everything to the way it was before filming, they had to take it out, and, in what I think is hilarious, the city decided to replace the area with a different kind of grass so that you could tell where the walkway went through. If you look closely in this picture, you can see where the grass is thinner-that's where Gandalf and Saurumon walk in Fellowship.

Oh, and I also did something that the guide had never seen done before. Considering that hundreds upon hundreds of LOTR geeks have taken this tour before me, I'm kinda honored. So, when Gandalf and Saurumon are talking in front of Orthanc in LOTR, you can see this tree next to where they're talking:

The guide asked if we wanted a picture underneath the tree where we could act like Gandalf and Saurumon. I said, "no, but I want to do something else. . ."

I climbed it.

Now I can say, when I see the movie, "I climbed that tree." Hooray for being different.

From there, we went to Rivendell. Yes, that's right, Rivendell. Of course, because of the Green Project, nothing actually remains at the wildlife park to suggest that it was Rivendell. Nothing, that is, except for awesome signs like this in Kapiti Forest:

This was one of the first times on the trip that I was glad I had a guide. If he wasn't there, it would have been next to impossible to picture Rivendell as it is in the movie. He brought along movie stills of the movies, which made the visualization actually possible.

This should help a bit. Anyways, it was pretty awesome walking around in Rivendell, but you can only do that for so long, and thus we made our way to Lunch, and from there . . . to Helm's Deep!

Maybe this photo looks familiar, it's a pretty famous one from the movies, and girls throughout America have it posted on their walls:

Well, I think it's about time that they switched posters, don't you?

Sooo, Helm's Deep? Yeah, Helm's Deep. Helm's Deep was filmed in a gravel quarry, and it's currently inaccessible to the general public. So the only thing that I got to do was take pictures of it from across a busy road. Nonetheless, I've been to Helm's Deep, nyaah nyaah. The only evidence that remains is the little lighter colored rock piece that they decided to leave up after the filming, you can see it at the top of this picture, just above the towery thing:

At this point the portion of the tour that I'd paid for was over. But, fortunately for me, he gave me the option to see where portions of the outer shire were filmed for only a small additional fee. . . I, of course, took it. So we then drove to the top of Mt. Victoria in Wellington and took a little walk to see a bunch of places where shots were filmed. Yay.

Our first stop was at the top of a cliff:

Two scenes were filmed here, the first one occurs when Frodo & co. are at weathertop and Frodo has just stomped out the illicit cooking fire. Their collective gazes react to a horrfying scream, they look down the hill to see Black Riders storming towards them. . .

Basically, they just CGed out the back of the picture, planted some tiny trees throughout the little field, added some smoke, and BAM. Black Riders.

They also filmed the scene when Aragorn and Theoden are at the upper camp, right before the Paths of the Dead scene, they are staring down at the lower camp, Theoden says something like "we have 6,000 spears, but half the number I was hoping for." They stand together and stare across a field filled with the tents of warriors.

Well, not really, they were actually staring at a blue-screen that was covering up a majestic view of downtown Wellington. Beautiful.

FROM THIS POINT ONWARD, I FEEL AS IF IT IS MY DUTY TO WARN YOU THAT THIS BLOG WILL CONTAIN SCENES OF EXTREME GEEKINESS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

If you're familiar with the extended cut of Fellowship, then you'll recognize this scene. It's right before Frodo and Sam see Elves for the first time, they smoke a couple of pipes and recline on this tree. It's really funny though, the bark where I'm sitting has been worn smooth by the collected bums of LOTR fans. It's kinda like how the steps in front of a really old church have been worn so that they're no longer straight lines. Yeah, something like that.

This scene should look really, really familiar. As should the guy with his face an inch from a mound of green poo. No further expositition necessary.

If you add a random tree stump from a farm that some movie producers saw while driving to Wellington, a few manufactured roots, and some creepy crawlies, then you'll recognize this scene. Oh, it also helps if you visualize the Canadian girl as scary.

This is where they took the famous "Hitchcock Effect" scene. It's when Frodo looks out towards a Black Rider and the screen does that weird zooming-in-and-out-at-the-same-time effect. Yeah, this is what Frodo was looking at. Now I've seen it too, and I can tell you, the plants just don't move like that.

Lastly, (but not leastly?) comes this picture. If you put a Black Rider on a Horse in the center of the picture, make it night, and have Frodo & co. fleeing from the Rider, then you've got this scene. Awesome, n'est-ce pas?

After we finished here, we walked back up to the top of the mountain, and I got shafted. Well, sorta, it turns out that my "additional fee" only covered up to this point of the tour, and that the rest of the tour was concerend with King Kong, which I was not. So they ditched me at the top of the mountain, told me to find my own way back home, and drove away. Yeah. Of course, they weren't the only ones who had done so. Remember last post when I said that I was going to Wellington to hang out with the Butlerites? Well, it turns out that their stuff is already paid for by their program, and that the stuff they were doing was also already sold out, effectively leaving me alone in the city. Maybe I should have been offended, maybe I should have planned to leave that day after the tour, but, I wasn't, and I didn't. I honestly just spent the next hour in a used book shop and the two hours after that watching the Reno 911 movie, and two hours after that sitting on the edge of a dock with my feet hanging over into the water. It was truly a good time, and I feel so much more the weirdo for feeling that way.

Butko, contentedly, out.

It's funny. . .

It's kinda funny, but I feel sorta popular. Seriously, it's a new feeling for me. Gimme a 'sec to get used to it. . . ahhhhhh. . . ouch. Yeah, that's enough of that.

So why do I feel popular? Well, it appears that I've found a little niche in the rock-climber's group. When I told them that I wasn't going to be able to climb with them this weekend, there were tears. They were kept on the inside, but I'm sure they were there nonetheless. No doubt. Still though, it was a unique experience, having to explain to a group of people why I wasn't going to be able to travel with them; I'm usually waaaaay more antisocial than this.

The reason that I'm not climbing this weekend? Well, it went about like this:

"Hey, Brandt, you wanna go to a comedy thing on the 18th of May?"
". . . Maybe. I'm not sure what I'm doing two weeks from now, life is never quite that predictable."
"Oh, okay."

Two days pass. . .

"Okay, I got you a ticket to see one of my favorite comedians!"

Apparently my "maybe"s mean yes. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm really more of a Tabasco Bottle half-full kinda guy anyways. So this weekend I'm going to see a comedy festival at Wellington. It should prove to be fun, but there's a chance that it's going to be like the last time that I saw a comedian here in New Zealand:

. . . grumble. . . mumble. . . inaudible accented comment. . . guys from Welly. . . heh hum . . . grumble. . . penis. . . Christchurch!

At which point the joint erupted into laughter, and I was left to stare at the audience, alone in my lack of comprehension. It was an . . . interesting experience.

Well, here's to hoping it's not quite like that. Maybe this time I'll be able to understand a string of more than two words! Gleeberries!

Bouldering, again!

So, as you can probably tell from the title up above, I went bouldering again. But before I start to talk about how very, very awesome the trip was, I'd like to preface it with an example of my stupidity and hard-headedness. Ooops, did that slip out? I meant, um, my genius and ever-present will to push myself. Yeah, that was it.

So, the post before last I told you that I climbed the vet tower and that it was really, really sharp. What I neglected to tell you, 'cuz I didn't want pity and/or lectures telling me how dumb I am, was that I shredded my body. Seriously, I left about six inches of Butko at the top of that building. What's even better, is that it was only two days away from my upcoming bouldering trip, which is not nearly enough time to grow back flesh. To an intelligent, malleable human being this simply means that they find something else to do that weekend. To me, it just meant that the climbs were going to hurt more.

And they did.

But before we get to that, a brief history of time, I mean, the area (I'm really lazy, so I'm going to just put a couple of pictures up describing it):

This comes from a photocopied guide that has been made up by Matt Natti so that climbers other than himself can go into the area and climb without him. If you think it's altruistic, it's really not, if you know climbers, you know that they just get sooo jazzed about rock that they're willing and ready to share any rock with anybody. I also had to pay 2$ for this, so altruism is dead. My favorite part, and I got this confirmed by Matt Natti, is the part that says they were hired to clear out the damage after the windstorm. It turns out that the damage "coincidentally coincided" with the exact trials that lead to climbable rock. It's strange how nature knows. . .

So I got up at the crack of dawn, 7:00, and hitched a ride with my awesome German friend Bastian (just like in the Neverending Story!) and we rode to Countdown where we met up with the other members of this little foray. We jaunted inside of Countdown, bought some groceries, closed the boots (trunks) of our 4 cars, and set off for the Blowhard Bush Reserve to scale some boulders. Bastian, Andy, and I talked for a ways, and about 2/3 of the way to the reserve, we all pulled over. Inquisitive, I walked up to the lead car and asked what was happening. It turns out that Claydon, one of the two guys who found this place, was lost. Luckily, Bastian is German, so he was prepared with a map and we continued onto the reserve.


Bastian, giving me his morning face.

Andy's morning face is significantly better.

So this is where we climbed the first day, the Troglodyte Wall and Cave area:

This area is rife with awesome, difficult climbs. They're mostly in the V-3 to V-6 range. If you're even partially a climber, then I don't have to say that I made it up about two climbs the first day. I'm blaming my shredded fingers. Yeah. It's all the fingers fault.

So we finished climbing after about 4 and a half hours and made our respective ways to the camping area for the night. In the twilight of the day Bastian and I set up the tent that his supervisor was kind enough to lend us for the night. I employed my usual skill with these kinds of things and it took about twice as long as it should have for us to put up the tent. From there I ate a couple of PB&J's, hung out around the barbecue pit that we turned into a bonfire, and talked with people from around the world till everybody else got too exhausted to talk anymore. So I went to bed too. Of course, by that I mean that I tossed and turned for most of the night, and finally ended up getting to sleep about an hour before it was time to wake up. Hooray for insomnia!

Anyways, I woke up the next day to find that the campground that we had been sleeping in was covered with a field of ice. Thankfully, I had a tent, so I woke up without a half-inch covering of hoar frost. This is a river that flowed right along our campsite. I though it was pretty, so here's a picture:I feel kinda sorry for the two people who decided to sleep out underneath the stars. But I feel really sorry for the cell phone that did it:

So from there we began our second day of climbing at the Devil's Seat area:

If you look really closely in this picture, you'll find Waldo, Matt Natti, sitting atop a boulder in the middle.

This is a picture of the surrounding countryside from atop one of the massive boulders that I scaled.

One of the boulders had a little cave underneath it that had a CARPET of cave Wetas. Needless to say, we put it to a vote, and we unanimously decided to not climb in that cave.

Luckily for me, this place was filled with climbs mostly at about the V-E to V-3 range. This effectively means that I could actually get a couple of climbs that day, which is a step up on the previous day's attempts. Again, the rock was really sharp, so I ended up putting holes in the holes on my hands. Whee and Hooray for not being able to hold a water bottle!

It was a better day of climbing for me, and I was content and happy when we finally gave up the climbing spirit to return to Dannevirk for some kebabs. There's two weird things in that sentence: Dannevirk and kebabs. Dannevirk prides itself on being a Viking Town. What? There's absolutely no way the vikings made it down this far, or this far inland. Do they think I'm an idiot? It's insulting. Oh, and kebabs are a delicious food that I want to bring back to the states. What's awesome though, is that in the Kiwi's quest to not incorporate any foreign words into their language (they call "baguettes" French Stick Bread), they pronounce it Kay-Babs, with the "babs" pronounced like "bags" with a b in place of the g. I giggle every time I hear it.

From there I returned to Massey University bruised, battered, and happy as could be. I washed these:

In rubbing alcohol, did the oh-mi-god-this-effing-stings dance, and slept for 14 hours. Ahhhhh, contentment.