tangiers, morocco - November 19, 2010

Yesterday we rode our bicycles in Morocco. We took a ferry from Algeciras in Spain across the Strait of Gibralter, and got dropped off at a huge port in the middle of nowhere, about 40 miles east of Tangiers. It was bad weather and I probably should have stayed on the boat, but we brought our bikes all the way over to the Mediterranean and I thought, well, might as well go ride.

The terrain was about like the Spanish coast. It was hilly and dry and brown. There were nice views of the sea from the coast road we were on. The road was in good shape and sparsely populated. The winds began to howl and rain pelted us intermittently. The wind was so strong that gusts would almost knock us down. It was tiring but not horrible. Maybe a 6.5 out of 10 on the "suck" scale. The big concern was the waning daylight. We got a really late start with customs and ferry difficulty and general confusion. I wasn't terribly interested in riding through Tangiers at night with no lights.

We passed a few nice houses with new cars parked in front of them. Also there were areas which were pretty trashy. Occasionally you'd pass a man walking down the road in a long robe. One guy was screaming to himself and making violent retching noises. There were some goats wandering about. We passed through some villages where there were groups of men standing around not doing much. Staring at us seemed to be the entertainment. Which wasn't too surprising since we looked like we came from outer space, with our $8000 bicycles and neon-yellow Lycra.

The woman in the couple I was with really wanted to stop at a roadside shanty where there were several men and teenage boys standing around. She wanted ice cream. Her husband was ambivalent, but I said no. It was getting dark and we were still miles away. Besides that, there seemed to be a lack of women walking around Morocco in tight spandex. I felt a little awkward about that, although she didn't seem to notice any problem.

Later, at another customs checkpoint, the same woman gave her passport to a scruffy-looking guy wearing a Lakers t-shirt who was randomly hanging around the checkpoint acting like an official. He pored over it and finally she got it back from him. Maybe he really was an official.

I did enjoy speaking some French to people we saw in Morocco. It's the official language there along with Arabic. My Spanish is piecemeal at best and I'm a lot more comfortable in French. I asked an old toothless man in a robe if he'd seen bicycles like this before. He looked at me like I'd stepped out of a flying saucer wearing a tutu, and said no.

We pedaled through town which was mostly deserted. There were some big abandoned hotels and wide plazas. It looked like someone thought there was going to be a big seaside tourist vacation boom, but it never happened. We rode our bikes over a canal which flowed a dark maroon color and smelled bad. I figured it was agricultural effluent but it turned out to be blood. Yes, blood.

It was the Feast of Abraham, which is a big holiday there. From what I heard, every family in the country kills a ram in honor of Abraham sacrificing a ram instead of his son Isaac. So the canal was filled with the blood of countless rams. The deal is, you kill the ram, then cut off its head which you toast in a fire before presenting it to your mother. I'm obviously no religious scholar but I think that was how it worked. The head is the only thing you're allowed to eat that day.

We got back in time for a late tour of the Casbah, the famous winding downtown area of Tangiers. There were no streetlights, only the lights from a few cafes. Also, there were several groups of men and boys burning ram heads over oil barrels. There were piles of horns and skins laying about. The cobbled street was vaguely sticky.

Our tour guide, "Magic", pointed out some buildings and sights and then led us to a rug shop, where we were trapped for an eternity while the proprietors showed us all the rugs with great flourish. I didn't feel at all like buying a rug, and wanted desperately to rest and wash the grime off my face. But it was difficult to leave because outside the rug shop was a true maze of tiny winding alleys and steps and dark corners. I didn't feel like wandering around lost in the dark. So we waited around until Magic could lead us out. Along the way back we passed a cafe where people smoked tobacco and hashish. I would have liked to have smoked some tobacco out of a hookah with some dudes in robes, but it was too late. Next time I will try to accomplish that.

coast road

customs by bicycle

sheep heads o'er an open fire

I should have mentioned -- another thing that makes our appearance more interesting is that the majority of folks are on tandem bicycles. Those are pretty eye-catching when you see one go by.

I, however, am on my recumbent bicycle, which nobody has ever seen before. I may as well be from another planet. Kids cheer when I go by, and traffic stops in the middle of the road. One lady tripped over a curb this morning when she was staring slack-jawed at me riding by.

the crazy race - Saturday, October 2, 2010

I've been really looking forward to the annual "Peak to Pub" race. As the name implies, it starts at the top of the mountain and ends in my town of Methven, which down on the plains. You have to run 100m in ski boots to get to your skis, ski down a race course to the bottom of the ski area, mountain bike 12K down the rest of the mountain, then run 10K along the road back to town. You have to swim across an irrigation canal before you get to town.

What amazed me is how dangerous this race was, and how there's no way it could be held in the USA. I didn't sign any release form or anything.

The ski:

The men were up first. We had a short speech, the gist of which was "To finish first, first you have to finish." Basically the race organizer told us to be safe and that luckily there were only a few broken bones last year, which was apparently better than the year before.

On cue a helicopter flew overhead with a film crew, a guy fired a shotgun into the air, and we were off.

I started a few rows back, since the race attracts professionals from all over the region (of which there are plenty). I figured those people were a lot more serious about it, and since I was only there to finish, I would let them go ahead.

It was a mistake. Once we got on the steep, icy racecourse, it was carnage. There were about 50 of us going down through the gates at once. I'm sure most of the competitors were amazing runners, but they were god-awful skiers. People were doing the snowplow, snowboarders were falling on their face, and fast skiers weaving through at mach speed. It was completely unpredictable and there were bodies flying everywhere with everybody trying to go as fast as they could. I negotiated my way through the chaos without getting taken out and arrived at the bottom for the transition.

The bike:

I stripped off my ski boots and my jacket, slipped on my running shoes, swallowed some water, and took off on my bike. It was a rented junky mountain bike that was too small for me. Before I left, I double-checked the front wheel spindle to make sure it was attached securely. I had heard a story earlier in the day about a guy whose front wheel came off at warp speed down the road. He suffered a brain injury and isn't quite right any more.

The road, as I've mentioned in past emails, is ridiculous. Steep, winding, potholed, rutted, and covered with an entire winter's worth of cinders. One one side there is a near-vertical drop to certain doom a thousand feet down. On the other side there is a drainage ditch filled with the large pointy rocks that fall incessantly from the mountain above. You wouldn't want to go either way, but I guess I'd choose the ditch.

I banged my way down the road trying to stay in control. I couldn't really steer very well because of the deep cinders. Over bumps and rocks and potholes the bike shuddered and my hands would bounce around on the grips. On straightaways everyone was in a tuck with clouds of dust and gravel spewing behind them.

A guy passed me on the inside of a corner just as I was taking the same line. It scared me and after that I was looking around a bit just to get some awareness of who was nearby. I heard a sound behind me and looked back. Because I was wearing a full-face helmet and ski goggles, my peripheral vision was impaired. Therefore, I had to turn my head almost all the way around in order to look behind me. I looked back, then I turned my head back around forward. In that moment the next corner had come up and I was still going way too fast to make the turn. I tried to lean and turn but it wasn't happening because I was in gravel. I slammed on the brakes but was barely on-balance because the bike was too small. I scrubbed off quite a bit of speed, but in the end there was a big rock that I couldn't avoid. I went over the handlebars and flew into the ditch, rolling over some (pointy) rocks on my way down.

I was OK and the bike was OK, so I got up, pedaled to the bottom, and transitioned into the running part.

The run:

I dropped my bike, shed another jacket, put on my sunglasses, and started running. It was much more relaxing. Everybody was spread out and I was running by myself, past cows and calves and sheep and lambs. It was a gorgeous day and everything is turning very green.

About two-thirds of the way through, you had to cross the canal. I ran up and dove in. It was only about 25 feet across but it was ice-cold and had a very strong current. I resurfaced and saw that one of my co-workers was floating on a kayak to rescue people if they got into trouble. He later told me that he saved three people, one of which desperately tried to climb into his kayak. He whacked her on the leg with his paddle to get her back into the water.

When I surfaced and saw him, I said hello and exchanged pleasantries. Before I knew it, I was being swept down the canal. I had to swim hard against the current to reach some cargo netting draped over the wall, where I climbed up and over.

My skin felt like a rubbery shell draping my soft innards. The sunlight was bright because I forgot to take my sunglasses off and they were now at the bottom of the canal. I started running again and my legs didn't want to move. The course then went into the woods. It was a winding rugged trail criss-crossed with tree roots. We had to cross two barbed-wire fences. They had thoughtfully smashed the fence down so you could hop over the wires, but you still needed to pay attention.

We ran into town and people lined the streets cheering. We ran around the block before the finish line and saw the final challenge. The organizers had stacked a mountain of straw bales about 20 feet high. You had to clamber over the bales and down the other side. From about six feet up, you jumped into a pool of icy, muddy water. Then after climbing out of the pool, it was a short distance to the finish. A woman clicked her stopwatch, and simultaneously with crossing the finish, a guy slapped a bottle of beer in your hand saying "Good on ya!"

Me running into the bike transition:

As my Kiwi co-worker says, I "took off a little bark".

Video clip of the race:

http://www.ashburtontv.co.nz/cms/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=1&video_id=214

goings on in nz- September 19, 2010

I just got home from work, and sat down to my usual dish of vegetables and rice with some Cholula and soy sauce. Trying to lay off the meat pies and do some jogging. I'm planning to suffer through this ski-bike-run race coming up. It's taking place in two weeks along with a big weekend of events, among which is ski-joring (!). I can't wait to see how that is going to work. Maybe there will be fast sheep pulling skiers. I will be entering the contest for sure, anyhow.

Work can be interesting at times. The other day we had a TV crew come up to film the mountain staff doing their activities. They got some video of our snowcats. After they were finished filming us they filmed the ski patrollers, who naturally had to blow some stuff up with avalanche bombs because... well, just because. There wasn't any avalanche danger that day but you couldn't just film the macho ski patrollers doing paperwork. They managed to put on quite a show.

The film crew was stationed down in the parking lot and weren't really able to travel up the mountain where most of the avalanche blasting normally takes place. So the patrollers decided to blow up a mound of snow in the parking lot for the cameras. Instead of the regular 4-5lb charge, they used something huge, maybe a 20lb charge. It was a massive kaboom that shook my clothes 1/2 mile away. After the dust settled they realized that the blast had blown out all the windows in a small hut nearby, and several large expensive windows in the base lodge. The management wasn't terribly happy about the situation.

Tonight at work was a standard windy night. By windy, I mean windy. The cab of my machine was shaking violently. In order to get out of the machine, I had to shove my shoulder hard against the door, propping my feet against the floor and pushing with my legs. Then I have to shield my eyes from the blowing ice and walk pretty close to the ground in case I get blown down. When a gust comes, I just have to crouch and not move.

This is really pretty standard many evenings:

Top of this graph is 120kph. Red is average, blue is the gusts. Notice that in the last hour, it started to get ridiculous. I think the company went through a few different wind gauge models and configurations before they got one that doesn't simply disintegrate.

I had my car up there because I went skiing today. On the way down, I tried to take a couple of pictures. For this one, I actually got on my belly and crawled out to the edge of the road. I set my camera on the edge and held it down with the heel of my hand with quite a bit of force. Dust was blowing into my eyes and I had it in my teeth. Probably took some life off of the lens. I was hoping it would be a better shot but I'll have to come back and try again when it's not windy. That's not a cloud, by the way. It's wind-driven snow blowing up that valley and over the back of the mountain.

Tomorrow I have the day off, and I'm going to investigate this birds' nest that seems to be in the tin gutter directly above my bed. At first it was just some flapping and thumping and I thought it was kind of cute. It's gotten considerably louder though. I think they are having chicks because there is an additional squawking voice about every day. It's a cacophony now, and the thumping is continuous. I don't want to be heartless, but it's pretty hard to sleep with avian flight training going on above my head. I will check out the situation and see if I can think of any non-invasive solutions.

A glider swooped around over the ski area today. I guess they get some real record flight times around here (and some thrills, I imagine). Wonder how much it would cost to go for a ride.

weekend - September 7, 2010

One thing I learned from the most recent earthquake is that there can be a whole lot of aftershocks. We've had maybe 100 sizeable ones (3.2+) since the initial shock. There was a 5.1 this morning at 8am. I took my mom's advice and set a glass bowl filled with water on the mantle so I could watch the action.

There is some talk about "The Big One", which would be an earthquake resulting from a rupture in the Alpine Fault. It's an enormous fault that runs unbroken through the entire South Island. Apparently it's slipped regularly with great force... and it is quite overdue for another one. If that happens, I suppose I'll probably have to buy a new glass bowl and a new mantle to put it on.

Another weird thing about this earthquake event:

I went to pour myself a bowl of cereal today and the cereal in every box had been compressed to the bottom of the bag. All the little tremors have taken the air and space out of the cereal. I guess if you give a cereal box lots and lots of little shakes over a few days, it will form a brick at the bottom.

Strange, huh?

I had a couple days off so I went to Dunedin and vicinity. It's a city of about 120,000 and has a couple of big universities. I saw "Piranha 3-D" on the big screen, which was worth the money. Near town there are beaches with seals and sea lions and penguins. There was also some wealthy colonial politician's mansion atop a hill where the public can walk around. It had some really nice gardens, and I took some pictures of some various plants. Some of them are even native to NZ, I think. That's kind of a sore subject around here since we have so many invasive species, both plants and animals. The early colonizers brought lots of plants and animals to the island to make the place more like home. This didn't work out very well when they started multiplying and wiping out the native species. This explains why most people I know actively swerve to try to hit an Australian possum on the road. I have a nice sweater made from one, so I'm doing my part.

Sandfly Beach -- not because of the awful flies, but because it's windy and the sand flies

weekend, continued... only if you like plants

Here are some pics from of this guy's garden in Dunedin. I'm not sure what's what, but I heard that anything with flowering blooms is not native to New Zealand, since there weren't any bees here to begin with either. Also, some of the weird spiny things apparently evolved that way to protect themselves from moas, flightless birds up to 12 feet tall that used to wander around here.

these were probably four feet tall:

long night/earthquake - September 7, 2010

This is going to be short, since I've been awake for many hours. We had another pretty hellish night on the hill. At midnight we started the shift by getting the work truck stuck in a snowdrift on the way up. Took four guys 40 minutes to dig it out. When we got there the swing shift hadn't been able to do anything on account of the howling winds, so we had 2x the work. A half hour into our shift, one of our machines broke down, so we were down a machine. The roads across the hillside were erased and I had to navigate by the seat of my pants, blind, in super sketchy spots.

Then at 4:30am, we had this big earthquake. I thought my machine had malfunctioned, lost a track, or the winch cable broke, or something. It was bouncing around and rolling.

Power went out on the ski hill. They have a backup generator but it hadn't been tested in quite some time (about par for this place). Luckily the power company got it restored pretty quickly. We continued working our asses off and they opened the hill. I noticed they didn't check out the lifts, particularly. "She'll be alright, mate."

It triggered some avalanches around the mountain, but no one was nearby. The big river that runs across the plains is muddy and brown from landslides. The pictures on TV show big cracks in farmers' fields, and that the ground has shifted three meters.

The great part of it was that the weather turned absolutely stellar in the morning and I got to go ski after work. Easily the best day of the year. Icing on the cake: the two bridges across the river that separates us from Christchurch were closed for inspection. So there were only about 200 people on the hill.

I got home and my chimney has collapsed, which is a drag because I just bought a cord of wood. Also it decided to collapse on my car, but it's still driveable.

Anyhow, we were lucky compared to Christchurch, which is apparently pretty messed up at the moment. An unfortunate thing is that a nasty nor'wester is supposed to blow through tonight, with massive winds and rain that won't help the already crippled buildings. They have some small fires at the moment with no water pressure. 21 aftershocks so far, sewage running into the rivers.

No one has died though, which is pretty miraculous.

I have some pics, but they'll have to wait since I'm about to keel over from fatigue, and I have to get up in five hours to go back to work.

OK, OK, another five minutes to crop some pics:

Holy crap! Another aftershock just this moment. Gets your heart racing. Rumbling sound, lights swaying, couch bumping. Like if you're standing on a bridge and a big dump truck goes by. How am I supposed to sleep?

Stunningly gorgeous breezy morning. Christchurch in the distance, maybe 65 miles

My rig and I

Landslide into the river:

Chimney needs work.

car got abused a bit:

another week - September 4, 2010

My mom and dad have been asking me, "what's the deal, why haven't we heard from you?" Mostly it's because I haven't gotten into any crazy adventures lately and my camera broke. I got a new camera and took some pictures on a bike ride yesterday. It was a fine day, which is somewhat rare. It's not really very cold here but it's often damp, and often windy. I've never lived in a place where wind has such an effect on your daily activities. Today it was howling on the mountain and in town. Riding your bike is impossible in such a wind, and even walking around outside isn't exactly desirable.

Six more weeks to go, and I'm not going to lie -- I'm a little homesick. I miss not having to prove myself at work all of the time. I also miss my cat, my speedy car, and the Colorado sunshine. Hopefully there will be a little bit of fall left when I return.

I bought a cord of wood and have been burning it steadily to heat the front room. I've been jogging around the rugby grounds and also riding my bike. I'm going to enter this skiing/cycling/running race in a month and I want to do it without too much pain. It's a little hard to get into a routine with my schedule. I work at 3pm some days, then 12 midnight some days. Tonight I'm supposed to be there at 3am on account of the wind. It's a drag. There's supposed to be more wind and snow on the way so I am bringing a book and a change of clothes. We may be stuck up there for awhile. It's a pretty serious journey back and forth to the mountain in bad weather, and sometimes we get marooned.

Yesterday I rode my bike to the nearby gorge, which is a scenic spot not too far away. I stopped and bought a Coke and a packet of chips at a tavern there. The proprietor was obviously North American from his accent. I asked where he was from and he said he was an Australian citizen. Then he admitted that he grew up in California. He then described, somewhat proudly, that he hadn't been back to the USA more than 10 days in 30 years. It was like he had something against the place and he was proving that he was sticking to his convictions by renouncing his citizenship. Whatever floats your boat, I thought.

It's funny being an American abroad. I think people are shocked when they meet a real American and he doesn't talk like a Texan or look like someone on MTV. In my travels in the world I have encountered some challenges from people who want to know why America does this or that, or why we invade this country or that. I think sometimes people are dismayed by the onslaught of American culture that is impossible to avoid, from TV to music to clothing to language.

But on the other hand, I still sense wonder about America, that it's such a diverse, freewheeling place where there is such a variety of peoples and beliefs, and someone can be anyone they want to be. Maybe I'm naively patriotic but I think America, or at least the idea of America, is something that a lot of people are really awed by, warts and all. Funny, though, that everybody is looking in but we don't really look out very much.

Some pics from my bike ride:

Taking it easy

Mt Hutt

Rakaia River gorge. It's a bit of a climb to get out of here on a bike.

a little crazy lately - August 10, 2010

The ski mountain has been a war zone lately. We had a huge dump of snow and they couldn't get the road open for a couple days. Part of the crew had to stay up on the hill over the whole weekend with nowhere to sleep and no fresh clothes, etc. I was in town but kept getting calls every two hours through the night with road updates, waiting to go up. Finally they decided to send the whole staff up in helicopter trips, which was pretty rad. We got the place open for a few hours in the afternoon. Then I was back in my cat, 19 hour work day.

The following morning was eventful. Two cars off the road, one upside down full of ski instructors. Then about 11am, an avalanche swept down through one of the bowls. So they stopped everything, took everyone out into the parking lot, and counted heads. Meanwhile they had all the patrollers, two dogs (who also wear avalanche beacons), and two helicopters searching around. It became apparent that it was too dangerous for patrol to operate in there so they retreated and just rode in the helicopter looking for signs. Nobody came forward to say that anyone in their party was missing, so they just hoped for the best and opened the ski area back up.

I skied after they re-opened and stopped at an overlook of the slide. It was pretty massive.

intentional release by explosives after the storm

unintentional slide triggered by skiers

car off the road

one of our search dogs, all tuckered out after digging in the snow

yours truly

video of helicopter commute:

windy day - August 2, 2010

This weekend, the ski resort was closed due to wind. It was a Nor'wester, hot damp wind blowing down from the Tasman Sea. It had been forecast for awhile so everyone was ready for it. Tables and chairs were lashed down, some of the chairs were taken off the ski lifts, and vehicles were parked as close to the building as possible.

I was really excited to see what all the fuss was all about, so I stayed up at the ski lodge with a couple of other people. After the wind came, we were pretty much barricaded up there. Boulders were tumbling down the hill onto the road, and the wind gusts would possibly blow one's car completely off. The winds gusted at about 120kph in the base area, and 200kph up top.

I was up for a couple of days, reading, listening to the wind shake the building, and watching some TV. It was fabulous.

I made a video, which I will post separately. If you have the time, check it out. It's 2 min long and 5mb in size.

scouring all the snow off the hill

sunrise after the storm

chairlift problem due to wind - something isn't right here

digging a road - July 24, 2010

Things have been fairly mundane around here. I've just been going to work every day, eating bland store-bought sandwiches, and running my propane heater. However, tonight at work I had an interesting experience.

We've had some snow the last few days so there is some digging to be done around the buildings and ski lifts to get everything exposed. I have been working in the base area the last two nights trying to make things look good. It's a lot of work because it's neglected by everyone else until I have to come in and do a huge makeover on it. Anyhow, I had opened up a pretty big project for myself when I got a radio call from ski patrol asking for some assistance.

I was a bit annoyed because I had too much work on my plate to be doing favors for everyone. I reluctantly abandoned what I was working on and went to help.

Ski patrol had been doing some avalanche blasting above the ski area access road. They brought down a pretty huge slide with their explosives, much bigger than they anticipated. It completely erased the road. A guy was there with a front-end loader but wasn't having much luck. So I drove down there with my cat and got involved.

The road is sketchy enough, but I was a full 25 feet above the road in my machine, trying to dig snow out of the side of the mountain. I tried to push it off the side, but tipping over the edge meant certain doom... it's probably a 1500 foot chasm to the forest below. I've dug out roads before, but certainly nothing like this. Luckily it was dark, and therefore less scary because you can't see the scope of things.

Finally the loader operator and I got a narrow lane dug through the snow. Driving down through it in our truck after work, the vertical walls are probably 20 feet high in spots. I took some pictures while he was finishing up, but nothing really came out. I recycled and doctored an old photo to illustrate.

west coast - July 5, 2010

I have a few days off from work so I decided to get out of town and see the sights. Yesterday I drove through the spine of the island over Arthur's Pass. It takes about four hours to get from one side of the island to the other. People drive like maniacs. The stereo in my car is archaic and has a cassette tape permanently jammed in it. It only picks up a couple of stations. Apparently, the only thing broadcast on Sunday afternoons is horse racing. A rugby game came on later, so I listened to that.

I leafed through the Lonely Planet and decided to stop in this one-horse town (maybe that's a bit generous) called Punakaiki. It has a few places to stay and a tavern.

After a night's sleep in a hostel on the beach, I set out for a hike in the surrounding national park. It's really rugged, with a few trails hacked out of an otherwise impenetrable wilderness. I first stopped at the tourist information office for some intel. The woman gave me a worthless map and suggested a trail. She told me to make sure to leave my plans with someone in case something went wrong. I didn't know who to leave plans with. The only person I know is the seemingly stoned hostel proprietor.

I started walking and the trail went into a rainforest/jungle. It's a blue-sky day but it was very dark inside the forest. Droplets of water dripped from the canopy above in a steady rain. It was pretty cold, maybe 50 degrees. There were signs posted that said make sure to stay on the trail, or you might fall into a hole/chasm. Sure enough, as I walked along I saw deep abysses in the forest floor, hidden by dense ferns. I guess the ground is mostly karst/limestone and the water erodes passages underneath. It is pretty otherworldly and I thought perhaps I might see into a dragon.

I walked for miles, not seeing anyone, and finally emerged on a disused road. I walked down the road for a few miles back to town. I startled a deer which ran off. It was about the size of a Great Dane. I also saw a weird bird, I think it's called a weka. It's about the size of a grouse. It was walking around the ground and yanking tufts of grass and rocks out with its beak, maybe looking for worms/grubs. It didn't appear to be able/interested in flying. It seemed rather worthless.

The main attraction here is these "pancake rocks" which have been eroded by the ocean. In summer tour buses stop and everybody gets out for a few minutes and snaps a picture. I haven't seen them yet so I'm going to walk over there shortly. The ocean seems a bit ferocious today. It is very loud and rolls into the beach with some force. There is a pretty strong breeze which blows the mist off the whitecaps.

I believe I can safely scratch this place off the list. Tomorrow I think I'm going to go back up to Arthur's Pass and do some hiking around the mountains there.

1st days off - June 28, 2010

I had a couple of days off, finally. I spent them doing errands that I needed to do. I bought a bicycle. I first started at the junkyard, then the Salvation Army. There weren't any choices at either of those, so I went to a bike shop. The man didn't have any consignment bikes, but he did have a new one for about $200. So I bought it, with the hope that I can sell it again come springtime. I notice that everyone here has a helmet. I understand that it is required by law, and the police won't hesitate to ticket you for riding without one.

I think it is sturdy enough to ride in the Peak-to-Pub race at the end of the season. It starts at the top of the ski mountain and ends in town. So you have to race on skis from the top to bottom, then ride your bike down the scary access road, then run 10K back to town. I hope I am in good enough shape to do it by then.

Tonight I went over to the local community radio station to ask if I could have a shot at DJing. The guy who runs it happily turned over the keys. The station is located in a former public urinal, has no heat, and has one light bulb. It was burnt out so I had to go buy another one before I started. After I got that sorted out, I played some tunes and now am hired to do a weekly show. Being an American cultural ambassador, I played some Elvis. The sound board is from the sixties or seventies and was made in Michigan. It had a sticker on it from a music shop in Perth, Australia. Then it made it to Methven somehow.

Tomorrow night I will go back to work, which I really enjoy. I have learned my way around the mountain decently well, and have impressed my co-workers with my attention to detail. Vail is pretty particular about the grooming, although they generally have better snow to work with. Last night it rained and then froze, and I heard it was pretty miserable.

So far I haven't destroyed anything, which has also made my bosses happy. It's pretty easy to bash into things in a snowcat, especially when there's a blizzard. I am impressed by how sketchy everything is at this mountain. Many of the catwalks are narrow and have sheer drops on one side to certain doom. Even in the ski area parking lot, there is an unmarked drop over a cliff on one side. If you back too far out of your parking space, you will plummet over rocks until you land in a creek. A guy drove one wheel off the road a few days ago and had to be towed out backwards with a tractor. I'm sure he had to change his underwear when he got home. We of course heard about the whole affair over the 2-way radios, to everyone's amusement. We also had two avalanches the other day. One was intentionally triggered by a patrol explosive, and it ran over the beginner part of the ski area. The other was a natural slide, and it ran across the scary road.

I will be happy to have some Mexican food when I get home. It's not that NZ food is bad, it's just pretty bland. They like potatoes and eggs and cheese, just sort of staple stuff prepared with a hint of Englishness. It's all very fresh. The apples are extremely tasty, as are mandarin oranges. I usually take PB&J to work. I bought a jar of cheap peanut butter and noticed when I got home that it was made in China. Maybe it's snobby, but I am uneasy about Chinese mass-produced peanut butter, so I bought some from Australia the next time I went to the store.

Sorry no pants-on-fire stories this time. I will try to get into some trouble soon.

Ski area avalanche dog

Large neighborhood cat in our tree

My boss, Fish, with his son (who naturally loves snowcats). Everyone here has nicknames, such as Batman and Wobbly. Maybe I can earn one too.

1st night

I am sitting here in front of the offending heater that melted my pants. This morning I was pretty sad when it ran out of propane and I could still see my breath. So I got it refilled and am nice and toasty unless I have to walk away and go to the bathroom or something.

Tonight was my first night of work. I was pretty nervous, and I think my boss was also... everybody stood watching while I backed their bazillion-dollar pride-and-joy out of the shop.

About an hour into the shift, a pea-soup fog settled over the place. Objects like air/water hydrants, signs, lift towers, and sheer cliff edges would suddenly appear in front of me. Then it started to rain. Then it turned into a pretty heavy snow, which then turned into a howling blizzard. We groomed some stuff but it probably didn't matter a whole lot in the end. So we went down and had some coffee and waited for the late shift to show up.

The road is so bad getting here that it is always a possibility that the graveyard shift can't make it up the mountain. So we have to wait and see if they show up before we can leave. If they don't show up, we take a break for a few hours in the well-lived-in (possibly bedbug-infested -- that's "beedbug" in Kiwi) break room/crash pad, then return to work. Luckily they showed up, and we got to go home. Unfortunately, we had to drive down in the snow.

This road is like no other road I have ever seen. Really, no hyperbole, it is absoutely frightening. It's a graded dirt road that has been hacked into this steep mountainside. And it's long, too, maybe six miles of butt-clenching. The maritime environment means it is snow at the top, sleet and slush in the middle, and rain at the bottom. When it's clear it's even scarier because you can see the chasm below. There is, no joke, currently a pile of automotive wreckage about 400 feet below the road in a gully. A guy slid off two weeks ago and they were able to recover the body but not the car. Gawkers have been taking pictures of it.

We chained up the crew-cab pickup and headed down. Snow was blowing over the hood and the wind was shaking the truck. Everybody was laughing and having a great time. Anyhow we made it down and I got back home.

The ski area is the bowl on the top of the mountain on the right.