A Painting of a Windmill, A Hot Boat, and High Seas, Inspired by the Music of Abba

I get motion sick easily.  I get sick on airplanes, sick in cars, even when I am the one driving, and worst of all, sick on boats.  When my parents and I went to White Island, both there and back were... Challenging.  So, it was with much apprehension when I agreed to travel by ferry to Milos.  My fears were assuaged by the argument that the Mediterranean is a sea, with mild weather, and not the "open ocean."  On the voyage to Milos, the assertions proved true, and the passage was smooth with only mild motion sickness typical of a car on a straight road.

After two calm days on Milos, the winds picked up, and each day we saw the ferry depart through the white caps on the sea.  I did not think critically about what this would mean for our trip off the island, only that the ferries seemed largely unaffected by the whitecaps.  We purchased our tickets to return to the mainland, and went to the docks with time to spare.  The crossing that night was cancelled due to wind (i.e. rough water).  We lugged our baggage back to the hotel, and stayed another night.

The next day, the wind was strong, and the chance of departure hung tenuously in the balance.  Not wanting to stay another day on Milos, I was hopeful that we would depart.  Yet, I could not help but be concerned that a voyage on such a day may not be one I wanted to sail on.  The vessel arrived, and we boarded with Mr. Bean playing on the on-board entertainment system.

Televisions are enormous distractions for me.  The constant motion attracts my attention, and I have to fight to look away.  As the ferry jostled out of the harbor, I pulled my eyes from the screens, and stared directly in front of me at a painting of a windmill.  In these situations, my best defense against both televisions and motion sickness is a precise point to focus on, and at the hub of the windmill, I found just such a point.

The first minutes of the passage dragged on, the ship climbing a wave, and slamming down the next side.  I started sweating, not a little, but pouring sweat.  The cabin was hot, and my seat received none of the air conditioned air blowing through vents along the windows.  The cabin grew muggy, and thick in the hot air was the smell of vomit from the previous sailing.  The man next to me complained that worse than the motion was the smell of the boat when the fragrance of cigarette smoke started to mix with the vomit.  Rowan Atkinson was replaced by the safety video, which was replaced by a melodramatic film, the audio of which was piped through the loud speaker.

Staring straight ahead at my windmill, sweat dripping from every pore, face pale, and a bit green, Sarah asked what the movie was, and I responded, "I think it is Mama Mia."  Moments later we left the Bay of Milos for the open sea, and the Abba started to play.

Outside of the protection of the island, the ship added rolling to its repertoire of nausea-inducing motion.  The climbs to the top of waves also became larger, as did the crash on the other side.  It seemed that with each crash a shudder went through the boat, and my world narrowed to the windmill, Abba, and Pierce Brosnan missing his ferry, lucky bastard.

Eventually, my motion sickness caused the blades of the windmill to appear to spin, and I had to find a new point on the painting to stare at.  A red pot laying on its side was the second best single point in the painting to focus on.  The stewards appeared with fistfuls of motion sickness bags and rolls of paper towels.  Almost instantly the first person vomited.  She was seated in the bulkhead row, with people not only to her left and right, but a rear facing row in front of her.  The smell drifted the short distance to our row, and Sarah started to lament our plight.

"Oh no," her battle with the spinning demons began.  Then a moan.  The audible portion of her battle continued, then stopped.  "I'm going to need a bag."

"How soon"?

"Pretty soon."

I raise my hand, make eye contact with a steward, and a bag is brought to each of us.  I hand Sarah hers, and return my gaze to the pot in the painting.  Always stare at the pot.  Always stare at the pot.  My brief effort to obtain silver-lined bags, puts me closer to my limit of motion sickness, and I fail to find the silver-lining anywhere outside of these little white bags.  I stare at the painting, focus on my breath, and listen to Sarah's pain to drown out the Abba.

Time passes in no measurable way.  Life in the boat is some sort of Purgatory, where the passage of time is impossible to gauge, save for Abba songs that never seem to end, and the woman in the first row vomiting again and again, challenging everything I thought I knew about how much the human stomach could contain and expel.

Sarah vomits.  The filled bag is passed to a steward, who seems unhappy to be collecting vomit filled bags from his passengers.  My eyes are off the painting, off the pot.  I feel my illness growing.

Sarah vomits again.  A different steward collects this bag, and issues her a new one and a wad of toilet paper.  In all the transactions my eyes are off the painting, and I lose focus on my breathing.  I look back to the pot, and the spinning demons have made the windmill spin even though I am not longer staring at it.  The motion attracts my attention.  My eyes dart from the pot to the windmill, the blades freeze.  Back to the pot, and the blades start spinning again.

Sarah vomits a third time.  Everything starts spinning, and I'm lost in some sort of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, where the only sounds are a shuddering ship, people vomiting, and Abba.

"Just let it go if you can, it feels better," Sarah says, panting in the cool air from the vent her seat is blessed with.

I say nothing, staring at the painting with the spinning windmill on the spinning boat, fighting the demons who are in my head, and my belly.  I wonder how far through the two and a half hour journey we are, and if it takes longer in bad weather.  I open my bag, hoping it is big enough.

I vomit.  I keep the bag at my mouth, convicted to only use one bag.  The bag gets heavier as the boat and I heave over the next waves.  My vomiting becomes painful and irregular, and I start to wish I had taken the dozen bags tactic of the woman in the bulkhead.  No matter now though, my stomach is nearly empty.

I look up, the man next to me has abandoned his seat.  He is either superhuman, or had vomited his dinner on his voyage from Thira.  I fold my bag closed and hand it to the steward.  He looks grumpy about this aspect of his job, failing to see the silver-lining that I would only produce one large bag of vomit for him to double-bag in plastic and take to the trash can.  I probably would not see it either if I were him, especially since some of his coworkers have started singing along with Mama Mia.  I look at my watch, we have only been sailing for an hour, but at least the windmill has stopped spinning.

The boat seems to be tossing less, and a steward passes through the cabin commanding people to put their motion sickness bags away, that the rough seas are behind us.  Sarah curls into a ball on her seat, head under the vent, and falls asleep.  My eyes get heavy with the reduced turbulence, and I follow her to the same reprieve.

I awake as the boat starts to arrive to port.  The Greeks prepare for the post sailing shoving match that is disembarking, and I have no desire to lose this match, as I want off the boat as much as any of them.  I shove to the luggage hold and collect our things, then the mob packs in around me, waiting for the hatch to open, and the gangway to extend to solid land.  While waiting for freedom some Australians are discussing how much worse Abba made their nausea, and pressed into a mob of hot and barfy Greeks, I can't really agree more.

Places to Live

In trying to decide where to live, it started to seem like I was focusing on negatives of great places to attempt to disqualify them.  Obviously, every place has enough negatives to disqualify it, which meant that mediocre places were being considered.  In an attempt at a different tactic, I decided to rank the 50 states and DC from least to most desirable.  This is a rough first pass that attempts to include social, political, and geographic considerations, but was an interesting exercise all the same.

Oklahoma
Kansas
Mississippi
Delaware
Missouri
Louisiana
Arkansas
Georgia
Nebraska
Alabama
Indiana
South Carolina
North Carolina
Iowa
North Dakota
South Dakota
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Illinois
Arizona
Ohio
Kentucky
Tennessee
Montana
Idaho
Wyoming
Michigan
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Alaska
Florida
Texas
Virginia
Maryland
Rode Island
Connecticut
Utah
Colorado
West Virginia
Hawaii
Nevada

--Top 10--
DC
New Hampshire
Maine
Vermont
New Mexico
Washington
Massachusetts
New York
Oregon
California

Some of these are obviously ties, and some of them are semi-random, thus, if you took any 10 states, their position would probably move within that range.  For example, is Vermont actually better than Maine and New Hampshire?  Does Austin or the Keys actually buoy Texas or Florida above Alaska?  Towards the bottom, one gets into the states that would never be considered, so does it really matter?  Is Oklahoma really worse than Missouri?  Kansas is unfairly low, as Lawrence seems pretty reasonable, but most states have a cool town, so how high should Lawrence lift Kansas?  Up to Nebraska?  Probably, but  does Lawrence make it better than Georgia?  At least Atlanta would be easy to fly out of, which would be better than the presumed isolation of Lawrence.  In the end though, anything below about 20 is probably not worth considering.  That said, maybe a great job (a total wild card in this ranking) could boost any state into the top spot.

The real surprise:  West Virginia at 13!

Tickets to Greece

Sarah and I bought tickets to go to Greece leaving 3 September for about three weeks.  Much of that time will be spent working in one of her PhD Field Areas, trying to get her a publication out of it.  Her field area is essentially a beach in the Cyclades, so it won't be the worst field area.  We will also attend a wedding of a friend of hers, and possibly see another friend, time and funds permitting.

I am interested in being her field assistant, as I have never done the detailed work that she was/is doing on these rocks.  If it turns out I am not capable of this type of work for long hours, I will probably wander off, and try to justify my time by doing some slightly less detailed work that I will pretend will be useful. It really all hinges on my ability/inability to spend all day, counting the number of crystals in a given area of rock, or some such nonsense that does actually tell one quite a lot about the magmatic processes and eruptions.

Also in the planning stages are a running trip on the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) in October, and a trip to the Southwest in November, with the hopes of some long runs before Sarah gets too lost in a Minnesota winter. We have talked about the SHT since we first discussed run-packing.  My Dad was concerned that the weather may not be good during our window to do it, and if his knowledge of weather patterns proves accurate, we may come up with an alternative destination.  We are shooting for post-bugs, with fall colors.  I think it may be after the peak of fall colors, but hopefully there will still be some.  This will be our first foray in run-packing, and the trail has enough infrastructure to make it a reasonable choice.

The trip to the Southwest is even more tentative at this point.  It is something we definitely want to do.  However, Sarah has been of no fixed address for years, and I have been off and on since about 2010.  Both of us are getting tired of this lifestyle, and are interested in the idea of living somewhere.  Thus, at some point we will be trying to find "the right place."  Sarah's sister asked me recently if I could live anywhere, where would I live?  That question that has been on my mind, and Sarah's, for years now.

There are two opposing forces in choosing a place to live.  The livability of the place, and the jobs that are available to one living there.  For example, Portland, OR ranks high in livability, but has little to offer in the jobs category.  Of course, we could live in Portland, and continue to work exploration contracts, but since Oregon has a state income tax, it actually becomes less attractive, as short-term contracts in many states and countries complicates state taxes.  Thus, Portland is most attractive to live in if one works in Oregon.  On the flip side, Vancouver, BC has a great job scene, but owing to visa issues ranks low for me on livability (without the visa issue, it ranks very high for livability, as a note).  It seems that one can make an argument to stay in purgatory until a job comes along, letting the place choose you, or one can choose a place and try to make it work.

If the place is to choose, then it is likely that the November trip will happen.  Employers are painfully slow at hiring, and there are not many jobs right now (that are "ideal" jobs).  In this scenario, the November trip will likely happen, as will a December trip, a January trip, and a February/March trip.  In which case, I need to spend some solid hours getting fit for some good desert running.

If we are to choose a place, than October and November will probably be spent trying to answer the unanswerable question, "where would you live if you could live anywhere"?  Then the "trip" would be moving to that place, and I can spend my days leisurely ignoring fitness.

Regardless, it seems that I will no longer have excuses for not posting more regularly to this blog.  While there may be some instances during travel that I do not have time for writing, it should provide something to write about when I return to a place I can sit with Penelope (my netbook), and write.


A note on photographs:  I still have some photos from New Zealand, and a handful from Ontario and Quebec to post.  However, I am using a smartphone hotspot for internet, and the cost of uploading photos would be prohibitive.  This means that there will probably be a flood of photos once I get into a position to upload them all.  As such, I will try to provide links in old posts to relevant Picasa albums so it is easy to find.  Conversely, by going to picasaweb.google.com/aillaud, one can see photographs dating back to 2007.

Larder Lake

I moved from New Zealand, but have not really moved to anywhere.  I am currently working in Larder Lake, Ontario.  In many ways, this is the most isolated place I have ever been, which I often find is true of the remote places on the road system.  Villages are physically more remote, but somehow when flying is a luxury because you can drive, it makes the place very lonely and remote.

Faux Social has suffered, with the move, and now with work, but be patient, it will be back.  It will probably be slow and sporadic at first, as I am currently spending 11-14 hours a day at a computer, and only sneaking away to check something that I have to report back to the computer about.  Once that madness ends, and I start spending my time in the field, or logging core, I will probably have motivation to sit at a computer, and write in the evenings.  After writing a workplace violence policy today, more hours at the computer is a low priority in my time off.  When I do start writing again, I may be tempted to reinvent the blog (again).  Faux Social turns one soon (or may already have), and I still have not figured out exactly what I want out of this experience.

I have been thinking a lot about how employers exploit workers.  I started thinking about it in New Zealand, because I was contractually obligated to take an unpaid lunch.  In the end, no matter how strong the union, or how long the unions have been fighting for the employee, the employer always seems to find a way to exploit them.  There is probably a post in there somewhere.

Tomorrow is supposed to be about 90 degrees and raining, so I am sure the bugs will come inside to my desk.  They always do, but they don't call it Onterrible for nothing.

Someplace That I Used to Know

Gotye has a song entitled "Somebody that I Used to Know."  The meaning of the song can be inferred from the title, though it is a pretty good song about a break-up.  If you are either a bit rusty on what heartbreak feels like, or are looking for a soundtrack to wallow in your post relationship pain, Pete Yorn and Scarlet Johansson's Break Up, Dashboard Confessional, Math and Physics Club, or my favorite, For Emma, Forever Ago, by Bon Iver are good additions to your playlist.

I recently stumbled upon my ex-wife's Facebook page.  I had the idea that there are elements of divorce that are probably like watching your child grow up, but without the joy.  I saw pictures of Caroline wearing clothes that I bought for her, doing activities that I shared with her, and living out fantasies that we had dreamed together.  Yet, I no longer knew her.  As Dan Savage said in a piece on This American Life, "There are somethings a mother is entitled to not know" (or something along those lines), children, seem to also grow into people that parents used to know.  I am sure my parents remember teaching me to do things, that I now do without them.  I imagine, it is heartbreaking to no longer be as important.  That said, for a parent, that was always the intention.  The parent wants their child to become their own person, and the tragedy is when they fail to do that, not when they do.  In divorce, the whole point at the beginning was to never grow apart.  Unfortunately, in relationships, we never dream of the beautiful life our lovers will have after us.  Thus, when I spot a picture of Caroline, cooking dinner on the tailgate of a truck in the brown Arc'Teryx vest I bought her, or in the field in the green jacket my salary covered for her to ski across the Juneau Icefield, I miss what could have been.

Other relationships are different.  I know two people who were in a relationship, that was secret throughout, and has now been stricken from the record.  Much more inline with the Gotye song than anything I feel like I have experienced.  Yet, an ended relationship, no matter what, becomes people who used to know each other, no matter how much evidence there was.  My marriage has $5000 worth of photo-documentation, and these two share a single photograph, but for everyone involved, we no longer know the person we loved.

I have other relationships that have ended.  Relationships with things, and places.  I have owned three cars.  One I sold to my parents.  One is with Caroline.  One was totaled when the transmission ceased when an ex was driving it (after our relationship ended).  These cars, I no longer know.  Yet, so much of who I am, and what I have done has been done in or with these cars, and in my parent's Aerostar.  These cars, like ex-lovers, are only things that I used to know.

Another relationship that ends in life is with where we live.  These relationships, are often much more inline with Gotye's song, than my relationships with people.  When I live in a place, it seems to follow a predictable pattern.  It begins with hope.  I hope, with every ability I have to hope, that this new place will be good.  That this relationship will blossom.  Well... I don't think I can honestly keep that on the record.  I am too skeptical to be that hopeful, and often times, I know, before I arrive, that where I am moving is going to be a terrible place to live.  Maybe I am skeptically hopeful that the place I am moving will not be as bad as I think it will be.

After hope, or whatever it is, comes dislike.  The place is either not as good as I hoped for, or is as bad as expected.  Either way, I dislike it, and start dreaming of escape.  I sink into despair over the state of my relationship with my surroundings.  I try to revive our relationship, and with every failed attempt to reignite the spark that was never there, I resent the place I am living more.  Eventually, I "dump" the town I am living in, and I admit that I am glad it is over.

Yet, I miss it.  What I miss though, is not there.  I have been back to Socorro since leaving, once.  There was the Arc'Teryx vest, but I didn't know the place anymore.  It was said by someone in Socorro, that it "grows on you like a fungus," yet I may have become immune.  The fungus did not flair up when I went back, because the Socorro I knew, existed only during that time.  The Caroline I was married to, existed only in that time.  The car may still exist, but the bond I had with it has expired.

Moving out is comparatively unique.  You must stop, in the moment when it is ending, and deconstruct the relationship.  Room by room, box by box, item by item, your relationship is removed.  Erased, meticulously, so that on threat of financial penalty (via the security deposit), no trace of the relationship can ever be found.  The existence of the relationship is bound exclusively in memory.  Memory too, eventually fades, and the building, town, and people become someplace that I used to know.

Team Driving

The first car I owned was a Ford Ranger.  There was nothing fancy about the vehicle, which one might say about many cars, but this truck literally had no options.  It had a radio and a heater.  The radio was seriously just a radio, no cassette, no CD, just an AM/FM radio.  The heater did have a dial with blue and red as if to suggest you could select the temperature of the air coming out of the vents, but the temperature of the air was controlled more by engine temperature than the position of the dial.  With a cold engine the air blew cold, with a hot engine the air blew hot or melt the sun hot.  In just the right atmospheric conditions, one could manipulate the dial in such a way to make the air temperature comfortable.  Though occupants were probably still not truly comfortable.

Inevitably, no matter what the outside or inside temperature, driver and passenger(s) alike would eventually become sticky, sweaty and gross wherever skin or clothes touched the slick, flat, vinyl bench seat.  This was not, in fact, the worst part of this seat.  While uncomfortable, the seat presented a far larger problem for the person in the passenger seat.  This truck was so basic in its trim, that Ford had declined to even include a grab handle anywhere for the passenger to latch onto for cornering.  When driving became spirited, a passenger could claw at the door, try to wedge against the dash, or, the most common approach, resign themselves to be flopped about the passenger seat, kept from tangling with the steering wheel only by the locking seat belt that would start ratcheting them tighter against the smooth, slick vinyl their sweat was accumulating against.  This flopping was really only a problem with two occupants. 

When three people went for a ride in the cab, there was no flopping.  The cab might have been five feet wide, but having slept in the cab on multiple occasions, I would guess that a better estimate of the dimensions of the cab would be an L, four feet wide, three feet tall and three feet long.  Three was, without a doubt, a crowd.  More could be accommodated, on a river trip I once had four in the cab, and eleven in the bed with  three boats and enough PFDs, paddles, and helmets for the crew.  Clown car antics were not well suited for long drives though, so three people could wedge in for drives to the local crag, or across New Mexico.

On one of these drives, it was discovered that everyone was far more comfortable if the person in the middle "seat," straddled the stick shift, one foot on the driver's side, on on the passenger's.  When Heidi or Corinne would ride in the middle this was no problem, as their leg made a nice armrest for me, and the intrusion upon their personal space was not the biggest issue.  They were both also small, put three people my size in the cab, and it was tighter.  Put three men abreast in the truck, and second and fourth could be uncomfortable shifts.  I could drive without these two gears, but with a full house and a four-cylinder engine, it made for rough shifting with lots of revs and slow acceleration.

At some point someone came up with a solution.  The person in the middle would do the shifting!  It seemed so obvious.  The driver would say shift up or down (usually obvious to the copilot), and they would shift when the clutch was depressed.  Eventually, this method evolved into the person in the middle also working the gas.  It was team driving, and it worked with anyone familiar with driving a clutch.  Driver and co-driver had to communicate when to clutch.  It also took a couple of practice shifts to get used to the rate each person applied the gas and let out the clutch, but you would be driving along smoothly soon enough.

One night, driving home from climbing at Spook Canyon, Travis, Egypt and I were engaged in this driving style.  We realized that the person on the far right had no job, which seemed not in the spirit of team driving. Far from any of the controls there was only one job that this person could perform, navigator.

At some point growing up, probably after watching Sneakers, my father told my brother and I that in college, they let their blind friend drive on the back roads of Pullman.  They would give their friend clock directions to turn the steering wheel, and he would drive the car.  The navigator in the Ranger would have a boring job, as we all knew the way, unless we took a lesson from my father's antics, and the driver were blind.

None of us were blind, so, the driver closed their eyes, and had control of the steering, clutch and brake.  The co-driver had the shifting and accelerator.  The navigator gave steering, and, most importantly, braking directions.  We took turns at the various roles.

We started, as I recall, with me driving, Egypt shifting, and Travis navigating.  To my memory, Travis was not suited to navigation, as the more impending the doom, the less instruction, and more giggling he did.  I recall opening my eyes to a fit of laughter, and Egypt's expletives, headed directly for a 30 inch drop into an arroyo.  This may have been the motivation for rotating roles.

I think I was shifting and Egypt was navigating when the next issue was encountered.  The steering on a Ford Ranger cannot be described as tight.  There was not any play in the steering, but tight corners required turning the wheel at least 180°.  The steering directions had to be amended, on the fly, to include clock directions like "three o'clock left," or rotating the wheel 270° counterclockwise.  This might make sense reading it here, but remember this was driving at night, on a windy gravel road, with no prior agreement, and lots of natural hazards provided by the arroyo that ran along side, or sometimes on the road.  Calling out, "three o'clock left" with a shrill sense of urgency does not make a great deal of sense.  I think I swore, the natural reaction of the shifter, who could only make the vehicle go faster, and watch danger coming.

When we made it back to the highway, the navigator position was dropped for reasons of public safety, but we kept team driving.  I think the experience made us better at team driving, like some sort of crazy trust and team building exercise for adults.  If any security clearance background checkers or wives are reading this, I think two things are important here, as soon as speeds were involved that could really injure someone, we stopped doing the really dangerous part of this nonsense.  Secondly, I trust these two people so much that I will let one of them close their eyes and drive the car, while the other gives directions so as not to injure any of us, or destroy my most valuable possession.

As a non sequitur, it is said that students from top tier institutions like Harvard and Stanford are being trained not for the positions of tomorrow, but to create the positions of tomorrow.  If that, whatever it means, is true, than the lower and middle class students at New Mexico School of Mines are not being trained to create the positions of tomorrow, but rather how to solve the problems of today.  Facebook is an amazing revolution in procrastination, but the minds that created team driving are engineering energy sources, and programming electronic security.  We may not have changed the world, but damn if we did not have a good time in the desert solving problems that didn't really exist.

Waipoua Forest Terror

The guide said there was camping at the southern end of the park.  With this knowledge, I decided to push hard to the Waipoua Forest, camp there, and see the giant kauri trees early, when the park would still be empty.  As the sun sank to the horizon, I could see hills rising from the coast, and knew the driving would slow down before I reached my destination.

The twists and turns started, but my progress did not slow considerably until I found myself behind a camper van.  I have fantasized a little about extended travels in a van.  The van I fantasize about is a Volkswagen Transporter, a Mercedes/Freightliner/Dodge Sprinter, a Ford Transit Connect (it would be tight, but I think it could be a pretty good little van), or, if I am in a "dying in a car crash wouldn't be so bad" sort of mood, a classic VW camper.  Many others have this fantasy, and New Zealand is one of the countries that hosts the crazies who want to live out this dream.  The problem is that the vans that most people get to realize their fantasy make the classic VW appear stylish, comfortable, safe, nimble, and powerful.  I started the winding climb into the hills, and came up behind one of these campers in the starry darkness of an autumn night.  It was slow going from here on out.

Behind the slow moving van, I passed a sign proclaiming the next 18 kilometers as the Waipoua Forest.  The guide said the camping was "near the south entrance."  In my lexicon, all 18 kilometers could be "near."  In fact, Dargaville, 50 kilometers south of the park is probably also described as near.  I kept my eyes peeled for camping, and saw nothing except the back of that van for 23 kilometers.

I actually did see something else in the park.  I saw another van illegally camping on the side of the road.  Presumably, they also could not find the campground.  I decided to turn around.  If all else failed, I could pull off next to them, and sleep in the car.  It seemed reasonable to assume that there would be some safety in numbers when illegally camping on the side of the road.  Before I was going to resign myself to sleeping inside a Corolla hatchback, I decided to check every side road for signs indicating a campground.  I was in luck, the non-reflective sign for the visitor's center had an imperceptibly small symbol of a tent.

I drove down the rough, narrow, gravel road, annoyed that the guidebook did not say, "at the visitor's center."  The road became rougher, I kept going.  The road narrowed, I kept going.  I passed a sign for a swimming hole, I kept going.  I passed a building that might have been the visitor's center, I kept going.  I passed a sign that said campground at a fork in the road, and continued on the fork the sign seemed to label.  The road became unreasonably rough, and too narrow to turn a small hatchback around on.  I shifted into reverse, and backed up the rough, narrow road back to the campground sign (complicated by the fact that Kiwi cars have only one reverse light), and tried the other fork.

Success!  I had arrived at what could easily have been a depression era work camp in the Appalachians.  I pulled into a camp spot, illuminated by a motion detecting light on the restroom buildings.  I situated the car to block most of the light, and left just enough space for my tent to be nestled between trees and the car.  This gave me what little seclusion could be had on a gravel pad.  I paid the $15 (per person!), set up my tent, ate some dinner, and climbed into bed.  The gravel prevented me from staking the tent, so the vestibules hung flaccidly against the mosquito netting.  I drifted to sleep, in the muggy night air.

The motion detector light flashed on—
SSSCCRrreeeeeeeerreereerehehehe.


Instantly, I awoke.  What was that terrible sound?  I told myself it was a bird, and tried to relax back to sleep.

RRRRRRreeereereeeheheheh


The noise was closer the second time.  It happened again, closer. And again, this time between my spot, and the beat-up Mazada camper in the spot across the road from me.  The source of the noise was within 20 feet.

RRRRRrreerererrreeeeheheheh

It should be said that I do not recall the first time I slept in a tent.  Further, while I am sure I have been frightened in a tent, I do not recall this ever happening.  I have slept in bear country.  I have slept with coyotes howling, and with spiders, scorpions, and snakes looking for warmth to curl up near.  I have never, as an adult, been afraid in a tent.

RRRRRrreeerereeerrerehehehe


Another call in the distance answered the cry of the first.  Another, an intermediate distance away, chimed in.  Whatever creature was making that terrible noise was travelling through the campground in a pack.  I thought about what wild animals live in the forests of New Zealand, nothing large.  There are no large mammals on the island, but there are wild boar.  I wondered to myself, "how big does a boar really need to be?  Javalenas are not really large, but they can be vicious.  Javalenas travel in packs.  This could be a pack of wild boar"!

"Not to worry," I thought to myself, "the creatures will just wander through camp."  "It doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan," Zoe from Firefly said in my mind.  I took inventory of what I had in my tent that could work as a weapon.  I decided my best defense, should a pack of wild boar attack the tent, was a pair of Converse.  The odds did not seem in my favor.

I changed tactics.  I focused on thinking about the non-scary alternatives, "it could be birds, or maybe a possum, but probably birds."  Birds are not scary.  I started trying to calm down, thinking, "They're birds, they're birds, birds, birds"—

SSSccreeeeRREEErereeerreeeheheheheh


I was way beyond calming myself down.  I was freaking out, scared, for the first time, in my tent.  I could not calm down.  The fact that I was scared made me more scared.  The fact that I was more scared made me more scared that the demonic "birds" would be able to detect fear oozing from my tent.  I decided to take action.  These creatures probably did not realize that I am larger than they are, and that I claimed this territory by paying my $15 fee.  I decided that if they saw me, they would understand their mistake, and leave.

I put on my headlamp, unzipped my tent, and, in an act of absolute bravery, stuck out my head.  I saw...trees.  On the other side of my tent, I saw my car.  I went back to the trees.  My well protected tent spot was also without any defensible space.  "See, birds," I lied to myself as I laid back down.  It was quiet outside, I relaxed, and realized that even if I was to calm down, I had to pee.  The only way that I could possibly sleep at all was to get up, walk to the loo, and empty my bladder.

I laid in the quiet darkness, psyching myself up for the most harrowing urination ever attempted by humans.  The source of the noise seemed to have left, or had it?  I could hear... footsteps in the brush.  Whatever these creatures were, at least one was close enough so that I could hear it walking.  I ran through how to thwart the attack with a pair of purple Converse in my mind.  The soft rubber sole would arc delicately back as I swung it through the air.  The brilliant white toe cap would slap into the pink, fanged, toothy snout of the boar, like a hipster Indiana Jones' whip.  The pig would squeal, and run in terror of my fashion forward pummeling.  One thought stayed with me through all of this, with increasing urgency there was one truth to the situation.  I had to pee.

The cacophony of the devil-creature choir briefly resumed, then stopped.  I decided that if I was to be the first person killed by a wild animal while camping in New Zealand, I would die without wetting myself before hand (or at least while attempting to make it so I wouldn't wet myself).

I got dressed, turned on my headlamp, and climbed out of my tent.  I thought of the dude in the internet video who sat calmly while a gorilla checked his hair for insects.  I channeled that calm.  I looked around, and saw nothing.  I stepped from my alcove into the road, and looked again.  I saw eyes, eyes that were staring at me.

I looked directly into the eyes of an indignant possum.  I stared it down, uncomfortable that I let something the size of a house cat frighten me.  It, apparently, annoyed that I should be so bold as to have disrupted its mission of terrorizing campers.  Eventually, it turned, and sauntered on.  I used the restroom, climbed back into my sleeping bag, and drifted back to sleep, comfortably armed with my new found knowledge of possum calls, and my Converse sneakers.