Took a bus from Queenstown to Dunedin. A rainy, gloomy day and that made the scenery slightly less exhilarating, but I never thought I’d enjoy long bus rides as much as I have. After I arrived I needed to figure out what I was going to do between Monday and Friday. My first option was heading to the north to the Marlborough wine region and doing a winery tour. The problem with this plan, however, is that I am traveling by myself and I would need other people up there to be interested in winery tours, which apparently isn’t the case this time of year. Plan B: Franz Josef Glacier walk. The problem with this plan means that I’ll have to leave Dunedin tomorrow and not Monday as I had planned. Since I was determined to do one of my two plans, I opted to leave tomorrow from Dunedin to go back to Queenstown, so I can get up to Franz Josef Monday, do the walk Tuesday, travel to Greymouth Wednesday, and take a scenic train ride from Greymouth to Christchurch where I fly back to Sydney Friday. I got a bit frustrated figuring that all out. A lot of this backtracking and day after day of bus rides could have been avoided if I had done a little planning beforehand. But I’m lazy and put shit off all the time (hence, the Australia trip). Will I ever learn? Unlikely.
5/24
So apparently the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten are in Dunedin (duh-NEED-in), NZ at a place called Capers on George Street. It was one large blueberry pancake folded over and stuffed with a variety of fruit (including bananas, which I’m allergic to and hate, but was good in the context of the pancake) and cream, topped with a blueberry sauce and maple syrup. If you’re ever in Dunedin, go to Capers and order the gourmet pancakes.
I woke up feeling really good, having amazingly slept through the night uninterrupted in a hostel. I awoke to the guy in the bed next to mine presumably touching himself and assuming that no one else was awake in the room at 7:30. Well, I was. Of course, maybe he wasn’t doing anything, but I was not in the mood to investigate.
I felt pretty tired and lifeless last night—probably from a combination of stressful planning and later beer consumption. I also had a conversation with what I’d call a hillbilly Kiwi.
“Hey, brew, you from Scandinavia?”
“Nope just let me talk a little more and you’ll figure it out.”
“Canadian!”
“No, little south of there.”
“A goddamn Yank! You’re a goddamn Yank!”
“That I am.”
Around this time he pulled out a cigarette and started smoking in the bar—which is illegal here.
“Oon a gen?”
“What?”
“Uh gen. You oon uh gen?”
“Oh, no, never even touched a gun.”
“Thet all you goddamn Yanks ooned em.”
“They’re not for me.”
Around this time he pulled out a bowl and packed it right there in the bar and offered it to me.
“This like bars in the states?”
“Yes, you can easily find bars like this.” Meaning Yes, we have dive bars, too.
“Coo coo.” And he kept on smoking.
As I had somewhat predicted a couple days ago, the batteries in my camera died this morning. For once, though, I came prepared. I’m not surprised they went dead because of all the damn pictures I’ve been snapping. Ideally I’d like to reach out and grab the mountains and shove them in my pocket and sneak them over to Chicagoland. Might be a bit difficult getting past security, but the effort would be wholly worth it. But instead I take pictures like the tourist I am. It’s just a futile effort, but about the only other thing I can do is look up and gape like a fool—I suppose I do that a lot anyway.
I made a silly life decision about an hour ago. Should I ever have a child, I’m going to name it Brown Patrick Brown so that s/he can follow in the footsteps of Ford Madox Ford, William Carlos Williams, and Bond James Bond. I suppose that would put a lot of pressure on little Pat—we’d call it Pat regardless of gender. Me and the mother would raise it androgynously, treating it as a female on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and as a male Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Resting, of course, on Sunday. This way the child will have a more objective look at gender and society as a whole. This—combined with my literary talents and the mother’s distinction as the grand dutchess of Newark, NJ, Esq., politician, obituary writer, gardener, and amateur boxer. Perhaps I’ve pigeonholed my future wife a bit, but I can be flexible. She doesn’t need to write obituaries. That’s a bit morbid anyway.
I’ve been having a very good hair day today, but I’ve been covering it up with a warm hat—not because I’m cold, but because I’m trying to be stylish and slightly less metal. I think this is the longest my hair has ever been. I last got it cut on December 1 and that was more of a trim really. Perhaps this is a sign that I need to buy an Ibanez and Metal Zone distortion pedal and play in drop H. My love of flannel will need to be suppressed, though, as Kurt Cobain died fifteen years ago and he was never metal anyway.
5/25
Took an eight hour bus ride from Queenstown to Franz Josef today. It’s amazing how enjoyable an eight hour bus ride can be. I’ve never taken so many pictures from a bus. Many of them turned out surprisingly well considering they were taken from inside a bus. We traveled along the west central coast of the south island. It’s almost all rain forest if it’s not mountain and in many cases it's both. It became a bright, sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky.
Other than the bus ride I didn’t do much. I checked into the glacier walk office, so I’m all ready to go for tomorrow morning. Don’t really know what to expect other than awesomeness.
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