Farm Babies and Feeble Excuses

Well, it’s that time of year again. No, not time for another blog epistle…OK, that too…, but farm-baby time. Our neighborhood is crawling with little cows and sheep. Something about little animals seems to bring out some kind of unexplained tendency to ooh and ahh that is if one doesn’t ponder their likely fate as veal cutlets and legs of lamb. But like so many other realities in our lives, it’s nicer just to revert to our Happy Place.

And speaking of animals, there was a story in the news this week about a young hoodlum somewhere on the North Island, on the lam(b) from the police, who took to hiding in a tree-line at the edge of a cow pasture. Seemed like a pretty good idea except for the fact that when the cops arrived, the entire herd of cows were staring directly at him.

 Training trotters.  Our house behind trees at far end of beach.

As seems to have become a pattern, it’s been a few months since my last entry here; partly due to the fact that I, myself, have actually been working; partly due to my inherent nature to procrastinate on any tasks that require the least real effort or thought; and partly because our lives have come to feel pretty normal. Our first several months here, everything was new and different…the sights, sounds, our house, the people, and the side of the car that has the steering wheel. Now, I don’t even give a conscious thought to which side of the road to drive on or have to wonder what kind of bird is making that cool sound. Not that this is a bad thing but, I suppose, just a natural progression of adjustment. Rather than try to outline our lives and activities of the last few months, I’ll try to keep this entry to a manageable length and do another one sooner than later.

 Tom on guitar during our joint choir/orchestra concert. Chris @ center.

I’ve also become a little more lackadaisical about snapping photos of everything as I did the first many months, but I will throw in a few photos, here, even though they may be totally unrelated to these ramblings….If you’re like me, you’ll only look at the pictures anyway. (For me, the worst part of moving on from elementary school to Jr. High and beyond was there weren’t pictures in the books anymore).

 Shags.  Yes, shags, aka cormorants.

In my last blog entry a few months back, I mentioned that we were appealing to the Minister of Immigration for an exemption to their age policy (maximum immigration age, 55) in our quest of Permanent Residency in New Zealand. After 3 months of watching the mailbox and repeated thoughts that we didn’t have a prayer, the Minister…actually, the Ministeress… granted our request. Immediately, we sent in our 40-page application and 500 bucks, and after another 6 weeks, got a letter that our application had been scored and that it had been forwarded to the selection mill. We’ve been awarded 180 points, which is pretty good. Most applications over 140 points make the cut after which we’ll move onto the next step, which is the character and medical screening. This could be where my sleazy, pastry-thieving history could prove to be our undoing.

 Chris & Dia at Odd Rock Beach

The parallel reality to this immigration process is that we’re not at all settled on whether or not we even want to stay in New Zealand. Just give me a guitar, an internet connection and some decent weather and I could be pretty happy most any place. Easy to say for a guy with a list of friends shorter than a list of viable Republican presidential contenders, but Chris is developing a serious hankerin’ to be closer to friends and family, which is also easy to see when you consider the stresses and frustrations brought on by the fact that most her clients spend serious amounts of time thinking of ways to off either themselves or someone else. Not too easy to make close connections, there. And then there’s the fact of some very serious illnesses being suffered by some very close friends back in the US of A. Hard to lend much comfort or support from 8000 miles away.

Chris at friend Paul's gallery.  His partner, Robin, at right. 

It’s not like we don’t know people here. In fact, we have quite a few friends, just not the kind of connections you have with those with whom you share a long history. And, of course, there’s that family thing…hard to find substitutes for siblings, parents and children even though we might be tempted to try occasionally.

So it’s a bit like limbo…or is it purgatory? I tend to confuse my Catholic concepts. However you define it, it’s still a pretty unsettling, and bound to become more-so as October, 2010 gets closer…that’s when Chris’ job commitment ends. I don’t think people my age are supposed to be unsettled are they? But since we still have a year to come up with a plan, why worry about it, now? And since our house in Homer is still unsold, we don’t have to even think about what we’d do with the proceeds if we had them. There’s a lot to be said about having a limited number of options for someone who struggles with decisions as I do. It seems like every possible option has as many drawbacks as every other one. New Zealand: Good environment, climate and health care but far from everywhere & everything. Alaska: Good friends, free fish but seriously crappy weather. Oregon: Family; family & fairly crappy weather. Snowbirding between NZ and somewhere else: Good weather; never permanent and need 2 of everything; crappy commute. Other options will be entertained. Any suggestions?

 Here's how you tell a boy orange from a girl orange

We are going to have a steady stream of visitors this summer…your winter…from late November through March: Chris’ brother Dan with his son Joseph and nephews Michael and Jordan; Paul/Jenny/Ren & Elan, good buddies from Homer; Abby & Paddy, Paddy’s bro Matt and their parents; Gail & Lawrence Radcliffe, more friends from Homer and Chris’ sister Nancy. I may be looking for alternate accommodations a few days into it.

 Lots of daffodils this time of year

Of course, thinking of living back in the US brings up a lot of unpleasantness related to the politics of hate and polarization that seems to enter into everything these days. And remind me again, what exactly is wrong with The Government providing health care for everyone? The US spends more on health than any developed country, but ranks somewhere around 56th in quality and effectiveness of care. I can’t make any sense of how trying to improve the dismal situation in any way makes Obama a Fascist? People here just roll their eyes at the US health care system.  For comparison sake, here’s a summary of our 2009 health care expenses in both the US and New Zealand (converted to US $).

New Zealand: Cost this year: $72. What we’ve gotten: Eight or nine doctor visits, two blood tests, two flu shots, one colonoscopy, one arterial ultrasound and ninety days of meds for two separate prescriptions.
US: Cost: $10,510 (for a $10,000 deductible health insurance policy and 2 U.S. Dr. visits applied toward deductible.) What we’ve gotten: Poorer and more pissed off.

Tom has a go at 2-person juggling with hippy chick

Stay tuned. Oh, and is anybody reading this?

JUST CATCHIN' UP

Chris, Susie & Martty contemplating cliff diving on the West Coast

Well crap, the inevitable has happened. I drug my feet on writing new entries on this blog and before I knew it, more than a few months had passed. I’d been trying to keep it updated about once a month, but now it would take a major, novel-length entry to get caught up so what follows is my totally random, Cliff Notes take on our New Zealand experience the past few months. I'm also going to throw in some random photos for those who don't want to tax your brain cells.

Bought a couple couches to make our tiny house a bit more livable

I had hoped I wouldn’t get complacent about keeping this thing current, because if nothing else, when my mind is completely gone it will serve as a reminder of our experiences here. Of course, whether or not we or anyone else will ever go back and look at it is another matter. It may turn out to be the cyber-equivalent of a tree falling in the forest. When no one hears it, does it make a noise?

When our kids left after the Holidays, I drove them to Christchurch, about seven hours away, to catch their respective planes. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is still the furthest either Chris or I had been from Takaka since we got here over a year ago. Therein lays one of the fantasies of living/ working in a foreign country. When we were making plans to move here, I for one thought that within a year or so I’d have checked out every little wide spot in the road and have become a virtual walking guidebook, but in fact, we saw about 10 times more of NZ in the 3 weeks we were here with Abby 4 years ago than we’ve seen in the 15 months we’ve been living here. We are getting pretty familiar with the Golden Bay area though. Go ahead, ask me anything.

New Zealand horses are also small. This one appeared to be looking for the toilet. We couldn't find it either.

And halle-friggen-lujah, we finally got sorta-high speed internet. We have a very small “data cap,” (3 lousy gigabytes per month) …a combination of the amount we upload and download…but at least we don’t have to take a beach walk while waiting for the next webpage to load. New Zealand will never win any prizes for their advanced technology. It would be a stretch to call New Zealand broadband “high speed,” and there’s no such thing as the unlimited usage common in most parts of the civilized world. I’d never encountered the term, “data cap,” but as with all the ISP’s here, you buy in at a certain level of usage. The biggest package available from our provider is 30 GB’s. I’ve heard some Americans are howling about Comcast and others proposing a minimum data cap of 50 GB’s…don’t come whining to me for sympathy.

Zing, our world music choir performs at the local Mardi Gras show. The crowd went nuts.

It’s funny how the internet has much the same addictive appeal as heroin….maybe that’s just for American’s, though. Kiwi’s just don’t seem to get too worked up about it; the internet (or much of anything else for that matter). Right now I’m online, streaming KBBI radio trying to get the latest on the fire out East End Road, very close to our Homer house. Fortunately, the wind seems to be blowing it away from our place.

Tom talks fishing with one of his few New Zealand friends

We’ve had a procession of visitors since early December. After our kids left in January, Martty and Susie were here from Washington for a couple weeks and a bit later Rusty and Dia, from California, spent a month here. With both groups, we spent a fair amount of time exploring the local scene and taking lots of walks. Weather was very good for those weeks. Chris’ brother Jim came for Easter weekend…a little tag-on to a business trip to Singapore. Rusty and I managed to get in some guitar playing time most days as I struggled to learn something other than the “cowboy chords” I typically stick with.

Martty & Susie bill to bill

Jim (Chris' little brother), Chris, me, Rusty, Dia

Formal shot at a cool rock formation about an hour from here

In case you don’t already know, the Holman’s, along with Paul Dungan and Jenny Carroll bought a small, camp-worthy van that they’ve left with us and are renting it out to any of our or their friends who come this way. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll hook you up. In the meanwhile, I get to not only drive it, but clean it, change the oil and replace broken fan and other belts. But whining aside, it has been nice to have a fossil-fuel powered vehicle to get around when Chris is off to work with our car.

Us with Martty & Susie. Because of the slope of the beach, Martty looks taller than he really is.

Probably our most significant pursuit other than Chris’ work, of course, has been our application to Immigration New Zealand to seek status as Permanent Residency. Right now, we’re in NZ on 3 year work visas, which would mean that if one of us weren’t working, we’d be booted out, post haste. Permanent Residency isn’t citizenship, but pretty close. With that status, we wouldn’t be tied to working and would be able to do pretty much anything as far as coming and going from the country and being eligible for all the bennies that a good socialist country offers; health care, retirement, voting rights and so on.

Found this baby fur seal on the beach. Made reallygood sandwiches.

If we were the spring chickens we once were…specifically, under age 56…immigration would be no problem. They rate all applicants for immigration on a point system with points given for each of the items on their 40 page form, among other things, having a job in NZ, having a college degree or other specific training, good English skills, good personal hygiene and so forth. So if it weren’t for this age thing, we’d be shoo-in’s. As it is, we have to request an exemption to the age-limit policy to the Minister of Immigration before we can even submit an application. I just hope the $20 I slipped in the envelope swings things our way.

Since these kinds of exemptions to policy are so rare, the folks at the immigration office don’t really know what to tell us, so instead, they just make up whatever pops in their mind, which would be much less irritating if we were just asking their opinion on whether the Brumbies are a better rugby team than the Crusaders. So after several false leads from the people who should know better, we’ve submitted our best case “package” to the Minister and are anxiously watching the mail for a decision. If nothing else, we can fake being Kiwi’s since we both have NZ driver’s licenses now.

I suppose even if they turn us down cold it would make our planning for the future a bit easier…one less option to muddy the water. As if there weren’t enough factors out there to consider already. Do we (or at least Chris) keep working? Retire? Work part time? US or NZ? Sell the Homer house or keep it? Buy a house somewhere else? Move back to Homer? Anchorage? Oregon or somewhere else? Where will our kids end up? Will we ever have grandchildren? Will we ever score on the Lotto?

Stay tuned.

CARE FOR SOME MOA?

Summoning the moa spirits

If you’ve read any of these blog entries, you may remember that our kids were here over Christmas along with Abby’s partner, Paddy and his younger brother Matt. All of them tend toward the unconventional, so this particular day they were off on a hike at the top of the infamous “Takaka Hill,” a high ridge that divides GoldenBay from the rest of New Zealand. So in their not-so-conventional way, they took off cross-country on a basic adventure-exploration.

Most of the north end of the South Island is made up of limestone, and as such is pretty much honeycombed with caves, pits and labyrinths caused by water seeping, dissolving and re-forming in various ways. One common formation is called a sinkhole, which is just a vertical hole that can be anywhere from a few feet to over a 1000 feet deep. Often, caves open from, or lead to sinkholes.

Best way in and out of a sinkhole. Note special climbing footwear.

In their little hike, the group had been traipsing over a landscape that’s hard to describe. It’s basic limestone but has been eroded to create an incredibly rough, yet generally horizontal, surface where the highs and lows can vary a few feet over a very short distance. Definitely not ADA compliant. The highs are knife-edged shoe shredders and the lows are ankle breaking, foot wedgers so it was slow going, but they did happen on a few sinkholes. And, as with any troop of monkeys, they had to get down into them if possible. Since they hadn’t brought their climbing equipment, it was done without a net so to speak.

Apparently animals are curious (or clumsy or maybe stupid) because the main thing the similarly curious troop discovered was that all the bottoms of the sinkholes were littered with bones. It seems as though the local livestock and a few wild (introduced) mammals have been falling into these holes for years with little hope for escape seeing as how they are short on opposing thumbs. So after collecting a skull or two, and about the time the troop was about to head back to the road, they found another sinkhole that was narrow enough to get down without ropes so, of course, in they went.

Actual sinkhole where this particular moa had been lurking for a few hundred years

They tell me that once you’re in a sinkhole, you look for caves opening off the sides, so that was just what Ian was doing when he spotted a long bone, unlike what they’d found in the other holes. So without tools except fingernails, they commenced to dig through the mud at the bottom and came up with a good sack-full of bones. With Abby and Paddy having recently suffered through intensive anatomy courses, they realized that there was something unusual with the bones. There were three knobs (not a medical term) on the end of what were obviously leg bones as opposed to the two present on pretty much all mammals. And certain bones had a distinct yellowish color. So the crew packed up what they could find with the tools they had or in their case, didn’t have, and headed home.

A moa skeleton in a Christchurch museum; standard size in from, giant in rear

As with anyone of his generation, Ian headed straight for the computer. They had a hunch it could be a moa, but needed to know a little more, and who knows more than the internet? Indeed, this was a moa, or at least a boxful of moa bones, but not the whole bird.

Another view of a regular sized moa...about 6 1/2 feet tall

If you don’t know, a moa is an extinct, flightless bird related to the ostrich, emu, cassowary and even the kiwi. There was a giant version that stood about 12 feet with neck extended up, but the “standard” version is more like six and a half feet tall. Moas have been considered extinct for 400 to 800 hundred years, depending on who you believe, and were endemic to New Zealand. What our group found was a standard version…its legs were over 3 feet long.

Bones found on the 1st trip. A few more have been added, since.

So, not knowing if the find should be reported or if so, to whom, Ian made some calls and wrote some emails to various ministries…not preachers, but NZ governmental departments. He ended up with a letter from The Ministry of Culture and Heritage that would have allowed him to take the bones back to Alaska if he so chose, which he didn’t. Instead, he dumped them on his old man, hoping he’d go back up the hill and find the rest of the skeleton.

A month or so later, I, the old man in question, with a couple trusty helpers and the aid of a hand drawn treasure map, a climbing rope and miscellaneous gear, found the right hole and some more bones. The most exciting thing was finding most the claws, but much of the spine, some toes, most the ribs and the skull are still out there somewhere. Someday, I’ll have another go.

Sue Sets Sail for Somewhere

For a couple days around Solstice, while all the holiday visitors were here, we had rented a house in a remote part of the far northwest coast of the South Island called Mangarakau, which is pretty much a wide spot in a gravel road. It’s a limestone landscape with rugged coastline and a couple nearby rivers that empty into the Tasman Sea. There are a few rather large sheep “stations” in the area, but not much else. The surf is pretty wild compared to the little lumps we call waves in Golden Bay…a lot like the Oregon coastline…with nothing between it and Australia.

Launch site at top-center @ whitest part of surf

So, with the group assembled, we had a little Solstice celebration dedicated to our most excellent friend, Susan Arndt, who died almost 2 years ago. She was always a traveler and before she got sick was planning her next adventure, which didn’t happen during her lifetime. For many months, we’ve been packing some of Sue’s ashes around and Chris dreamed up a way…using a less-than-appropriate figure of speech, to get Sue back on the road. Here’s how we made it possible (by “we,” I mean I drove the car).

One late afternoon, with an ample supply of saussies (a more civil term than the American “weenie”) and wine, we drove out to the end of the road past Mangarakau to the mouth of the Anatori River. Given the sparse population of the area, there’s an abundant supply of driftwood, shells and other detritus with which to fabricate about anything one might want…in our case, a raft on which to set Sue to sea. So while the saussies sizzled, and the sun set, we sat sipping in the sand and sank our souls into Sue’s simple ship.

Weaving the sail. Sue in upper shell with candles.

Paddy grilled, Matt lashed, Abby and Tom wove, Ian assembled, Chris designed and decorated and soon we had a seaworthy craft fitted with 3 candles to light the way, with Sue occupying a paua (abalone) half-shell.

Paddy testing out for fire-building merit badge

Somewhere along the way, we had adopted, or I should say, were adopted by, a stray 14 year-old girl, who for reasons only a 14 year-old would know, found our group much more interesting than her own family with whom she was camping. It turned out she was a competent flax weaver, which for us was anyone who could tell flax from cream cheese, and was more than willing to share her skills in showing us how to weave a sail.

Crew, including stray (in pink)

Completed vessel

Lighting the candles

Along about dark, after a few glasses of wine, and on an outgoing tide…remember we’re a couple hundred yards from the mouth of the river…Matt and Ian, with candles lit, set the Sue Maru adrift in the swift current.

Bon Voyage, Sue

With a set of mild rapids about half way between us and the surf, we figured Sue was likely to flip there and then wash back up on the beach, nearby. With the group following the raft downstream, offering verbal encouragement, she actually made it through the rapids, with candles lit. This boosted the confidence of our group immensely and the encouragement stepped up a notch to cheers, whistles, woo-hoo’s and “go-Sue’s”. The 14 YO flax consultant was at least as exuberant as any of us. I like to think of her as an Aasta stand-in.

Another 100 yards ahead was the surf, with many sets consecutive, breaking waves, maybe 3 feet high. The chances seemed pretty slim that she’d make it over any of them. But thanks to the candles, we can confirm that she made it over 6 or 7 breakers before the candles went out, but those with younger, better eyes swear that she kept going for several more before fading into the darkness. We’re pretty sure she made it through the danger zone and is still probably enjoying her trip to The Gold Coast of Australia.

First Visitors

"Where you going?" more, louder funny noises...”hey, do come back now, hear?”).

Tom practices ventriloquist act for JW visit

While all the people were here, we managed a few hikes (tramps), the most scenic of which was at the northern end of Abel-Tasman National Park, the eastern edge of which is just a few minutes from here.

Mutton Cove in Abel Tasman National Park

Besides experiencing the beautiful beaches and “native bush” we found a dead penguin that we tried to prop up into a cute pose…but failed…

Shhh, don't want to wake him

and I was attacked by a ferocious black oystercatcher (a bird) for getting too close to its nest. I expect Abby was pretty impressed with her dad’s fancy footwork, which involved cleverly appearing to trip over my own feet and landing on my face in the sand and avoid imminent contact with this 12 ounces of flying fury.

Sure, it looks harmless enough

Now, everyone is gone and we’re back to our routine…see previous posts to see what that is. If you’re interested, check the post after this one to get a couple more details on the last couple month’s activities including setting Sue adrift, regressing to the 60’s, and the Great Moa Discovery.