On to the Next

It has been a few months in planning and  it is not officially a go until the sails are set. Which is entirely in the literal sense. I fly to Australia in late March with the tentative, but incredibly optimistic plan to board a sailboat and try my hand at seafaring. The sailboat is the Berrimilla2 of Sydney, Australia, owned and skippered by Alex Whitworth. I have known Alex for several years and spent a bit of time on the Berri with him while in Oz back in December and January. I don't remember exactly who came up with the idea, but the plans are now coming together and my lists are gradually being checked off. I will post more as the details unfurl. Alex's blog is on the Berrimilla website. While on board we will both be posting to the Berri Blog: http://berrimilla.com/wordpress/category/latestposts/

Back to the Last Frontier

I've been back in snowy Nome for about two weeks. I was definitely spoiled by the warm Australian climate. Sitting in the living room enjoying a warm breeze from the open door is a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon. Alas, my running regiment now begins with putting on three layers of clothing and ends with melting icicles off my eyelashes. Oh, well. It's home.

 The sea ice is finally setting. The land-locked ice is strong, but about a half mile off shore the currents keep the drifting pack from fastening to the solid section. Before we can start setting our pots for ice crabbing we prefer the ice to freeze just a bit farther out. It is possible to set pots now, albeit perhaps futile. The ocean in front of Nome is extremely shallow and setting the pots in shallow water does not guarantee a catch. Our crabbing is subsistence and certainly not an essential part of survival, but who wouldn't want fresh king crab.

I haven't been home long and there's already another potential trip in the works. It depends on the stars aligning.

Edge of the sea ice in front of Nome.

Two in One Day!

Australia! I met up with my old friend Alex Whitworth, who I met in Alaska in 2008. He stopped through Nome as he sailed his boat the Berrimilla II through the North West Passage. (www.berrimilla.com) Alex has been back to Alaska to visit twice and I have finally made it to his corner of the world. After any amount of time of the road it is a relief to finally see a familiar face. Alex and his partner Hilary have shown me around Sydney and pointed out quite a few points of interest that I would have missed without the expertise of locals. I have had the opportunity to see the “Berri” again, this time in her home field. Although several sailboats pass through the harbor in Nome, each year they never look quite at home tethered between a Crowley fuel barge and the homemade mining dredges.

Alex and I have taken Berri out a few times in the past couple of weeks. The first couple sails were day trips around the Sydney harbor. On Boxing day we headed out into the ocean to watch the start of the Sydney-Hobart sailboat race. It was incredible to watch 100 boats under sail emerging from behind the cliffs of South Head. It was even more incredible to be heading straight into the traffic of the 200 boats (of all kinds) who were following on all sides of the racers. We made it back to harbor in one piece and began making plans for a longer trip out to sea.

On New Years Eve Alex, Hilary, and I went out to Bradley's Head in the center of the Sydney harbor to watch the New Years fireworks. There was a small (relatively to the main event) display at 9pm for kids. The entire midnight show lasted ten minutes and cost $7 million. Six barges aligned down the harbor and sent off synchronized displays. The Harbor Bridge was lit up even more brightly than all the rockets coming from the barges. I can't imagine how long it took to set up the fireworks and connect the fuses. The bridge was closed for hours before and after the show. Everything was extremely visible from several miles away. Having sailed under the bridge I have a rough idea of its height and am immeasurable impress with the impossibly prolonged fire waterfall the fell from the bridge several hundred feet to the water below. It was an incredible thing to see.

The next day Alex and I headed out on the Berrimilla. Along the way I was able to make a blog entry on the official Berrimilla site. (Very exciting for me!)

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MEGAN ABOARD THE BERRIMILLA II

BY BERRIMILLA SAILMAIL ON JANUARY 2, 2015, AT 0540

Today has been my first ocean voyage on a sailboat. Alex has taken me sailing around the Sydney harbor a few times before and decided it was time to take a trip into the Pacific. Alex and I parked the Berrimilla II in Quarantine Bay last night to make for an easy launch up the coast. The trip north to Patonga beach in Broken Bay went fairly well. “Fairly” meaning I managed to keep myself in the boat and we avoided, only just, a collision with a sports fishing boat with an apparently not-all-present skipper. Somewhere between cursing at the boat and cutting down the fishing hooks that were swinging around the cockpit we both missed the name and registration of our near hit-and-runner. In the last 24 hours I have come across two major personal challenges. The first being the constant battle of sea sickness and the second being the self-education of how to properly piss on a moving boat. A bucket in the cockpit works well, but being tossed around in the ocean while sitting on a bucket feels like riding a mechanical bull while attempting to relieve one’s self. It goes against all instinct and I don’t imagine I will ever risk going to a rodeo bar again. The sea sickness is by far the worst part. While driving, Alex is always within a few seconds of the rudder to take
over when I need a minute or two to heave over the side. I am learning a lot and having fun, sea sickness and all. I had an hour on shore at Patonga beach to balance myself again and fetch a couple of ice creams. We are heading out tonight for my first night sail back to Sydney.

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In mid December I flew down to Melbourne and visited the Owens family. I spent Christmas with them in Germany in 2008. Now they are living back in Australia and are some of the very few people that I have seen on three different continents. I like to keep up with old friends.

Alex and I are heading out on a road trip tomorrow.

Happy New Year from Down Under!

My new friend.

Recapitulation of New Zealand

It has been almost a month since I left New Zealand. I was there for about five weeks in all. Before I left home I posted a rough list of things I wanted to see or do while at NZ. I think I did pretty well.

1) Find glow worms

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves south of Hamilton on the North Island.




2) Pet a sheep





Commander Cody of Glen Hope on the South Island. He thinks he's a dog.



3) Take a boat around the fjords in the south west corner of the South Island
     Sadly, I did not make it to the fjords. I suppose it is best to leave something for the next trip!

4) Find a kiwi and a kakapo bird

I found them both, although not quite in the form I was hoping. I found the kiwi in the Wellington zoo and the kakapo in the Australian Museum. The kakapo is not extinct yet, but their numbers are extremely low. (Read Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See for a good narrative on the kakapo.)


5) Visit Hobbiton
     When it came to it, I chose to pass by Hobbiton. I realized that most of New Zealand looks like the Shire.

Road side south of Pukakohe.






6) Climb Mount Doom (Mount Ngauruhoe on the North Island)
     Alas, I was defeated by weather. I will challenge the mountain another day.

7) Drink wine at local vineyards (plural)
     Cheers! Point conquered and then some.

8) Swim in Lake Tuapo
     I did not swim. The weather was too cold to allow for a comfortable swim. Instead I sat in a warm cafe and drank tea while looking at the water. Close enough.

9) Visit Maori rock carvings

I took a boat from Taupo out onto Lake Taupo. Tour groups go out regularly.









There are so many wonderful things to see and do in New Zealand. I made this list to try to see a few local high lights. They were interesting, but I find the unexpected parts of traveling to be the best.

“The Adventure of the Bivy Sack” and “My Day in Hell”

After the barbecue fire at the Murchison campground there was a night of extremely heavy rain. When I went to bed water was already condensing under my sleeping pad. Within an hour the edges of the sleeping bag were damp. My solution was to use my bivvy sack to keep myself from getting any more damp. It was a good thought except for its unknown and very large tear and for the fact that it actively worked to hold in my own body moisture.

By morning the rain had soaked through the tent's ground cloth, the tent floor, and flooded over the top of the sleeping pad. Moisture had condensed, seeped through, and was retained in the bivy sack. It drenched my sleeping bag and got the innermost layer of the sleeping bag liner and me completely wet. On top of it all I was woken by water dripping through the seems of the rain flap of the tent directly above my head. I dubbed my tent no longer waterproof and spent several hours the next morning hanging and drying everything. I found my camera in an inch-deep puddle and my clothes were foolishly left in range of the flooding as well. My computer and passport were about the only two things to escape unscathed. The camera miraculously still works and nothing seems to have suffered permanent damage. I have spent the last couple weeks dreading rain.

The next night was not much better. I pulled a muscle in my calf and it rained again. This is an excerpt from my journal.

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November 27, 2014

It's to the point that I don't remember what I have written. Today was hell. It rained at the campground and I got wet again. Sam and Kat (UK bikers) were first to pack up. Allie and Brent (Canadian bikers) followed. I was pretty reluctant, but knew I'd be swimming before too long. I had a choice: backpedal half a mile to a motel or continue onward and face the rain. I was on autopilot when I reached the highway and I ended up mechanically continuing on. It was pouring hard and I was riding alone. My calf still pained me. A few miles down the road I was already cold and drenched. I came across Maruia Springs, an oasis of cafe, motel, and thermal pools-and it was closed for maintenance. It was still early in the day and I figured there must be something in the next 85 km. There was nothing. I climbed slowly and painfully over the Lewis Pass. The rain came down in sheets and whenever a truck passed its wake knocked even bigger droplets off the trees and onto my head.

Climbing higher brought colder rain. If I stopped my leg would seize and I would shiver so I rode on. Descending the pass was not the relief it should have been. I was cold while pedaling so creating my own wind while sitting idle in the driving rain made my feet numb. I was glad there was no snow at the top of the pass. I was cursing the weather and my decision to continue on for hours. My shoes were soaked through and I could feel water sloshing between my toes. I'd lost sense of distance and eventually came across a road sign: Hanmer springs 52km. That was an eternity away. I still didn't stop. I know enough about hypothermia to not get chilled. Eventually, after I would guess 35 miles from the start of the day the rain began to let up. Finally the sun showed through the rain. It was still cold, but at least it had stopped raining. After a while I caught up with Sam and Kat. We passed each other a few times then they finally pulled ahead. Once I had descended far enough into the valley I warmed up and dried out. When I felt warm enough I eventually stopped to rest. I ate an entire can of fruit and stood on a cliffs edge overlooking the entire valley. It looked like home.

Finally at Hanmer hot springs I checked into Rosie's B&B, dried out all my equipment, ate, showered, and watched Shrek III.

At night I slept warm and realized I left my toothbrush bag sitting on a toilet paper dispenser in a bathroom at the RV park in Murchison. Fuck today.

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After my day in hell everything has been relatively easy. Come wind, rain, or dive-bombing birds, after a day of such misery nothing is quite as bad. I made it to the coast and spent a few days in Kaikoura. I saw seals and seabirds and spent quite a bit of time wandering the beaches looking at shells and dead jelly fish. From there it was just a few days to Christchurch. Once I got to Amberley, a town an easy day's ride from Christchurch, I decided to take the Scenic Highway south. About eight hours later I knocked on the front door of the first house I had seen in six hours and asked for directions. I found that I took one wrong turn off the Scenic Highway and ended up on a remote gravel road heading back north into the mountains. (Kari stop laughing.) Fortunately the road connected back to the highway system and I spent the night in a B&B 20 kilometers north of where I had started. The next day I rode through Amberley again and hoped that no one recognized me from the day before. I stuck to the main highway and made it all the way to Christchurch.

So here I am, ending another bicycle adventure. I have had a lot of time to think about where I want to bike next. I have a few ideas, but none of them concrete. I will pack up the “Hulk” and bring him home with me and there we will plot our next trip. From here I am headed to Australia for about a month. The weather will keep me from doing too much on the wheels, but there are plenty of other things to do in the land Down Under!

Blog Supplementary

I wrote my last blog from a communal kitchen area of an RV park in Murchison, NZ. Within minutes of posting there was a bit of excitement.

It was dinnertime and several people were wandering in and out of the kitchen, doing whatever it is that people do in such a facility. One fellow camper decided to use the propane grill sitting outside beside the door to cook his meal. He lit the stove and left to go back to his campsite. In a few minutes I noticed quite a bit of smoke drifting by the window. As I was standing up to check out where it was coming from I saw that a man who was holding a baby was single-handedly pulling on a handle on one side of the grill. Once he pulled it away from the building I could see the flames pouring out the back and I ran to help. I turned the gas off and took over dragging the grill out into the street while the man passed the baby off to his wife and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Once the grill was in the road the flames shot up in all directions, but the man now sans baby blasted it with the extinguisher he found in the kitchen.

Once the fire was out the man who had lit the grill returned and the owner of the campground came running over panicked and screaming. She was overly concerned with who lit it and who was going to pay for it and did not give much thought as to the safety of her tenants. There are two kinds of people.

The next day I met up with two more bikers and rode with them into Springs Junction. I pulled a muscle in my calf half way and they graciously chose to keep to my gimping pace and let me draft the rest of the way.

Draft: v. Riding behind another bicycler who is muscling through the headwind.

After another night of camping I rode alone and very slowly over the Lewis Pass. In the pouring rain. I have never before had numb feet while biking and it was strange to not be able to use my fingers to change gears. It was a very cold, very wet, and very long day. In the end it was worth it because I arrived in Hanmer Hot Springs and spent most of the next day sitting in sulfur-scented hot water. I stayed at Rosie's B&B and let my leg recover.

As of today I am in Waiau, which I have dubbed the creepiest town in New Zealand. Not creepy in a bad way, but strange because despite being a gorgeous day I have not seen a single person outside. The only four humans I have seen in the entire town have been the women at the convenience store and the pub and the proprietors of the campground where I am staying at tonight. The post office has 24 boxes so I conclude there are at least 24 people who live here. I have walked all over town-four blocks by four blocks- and there is no traffic, no kids playing outside, no one working in their gardens, and no laundry hanging on any of the lines. Stephen King would be inspired.

Eels, the Irish, and Maria Von Trapp

I have had the overture to the Sound of Music stuck in my head for about five days. Every time I see a well maintained knoll dotted with fluffy white sheep I have the image of Julie Andrews spinning around and singing about the hills. Seeing that that is the beginning of the movie, the rest of the dialogue and musical numbers usually follow suit and about two hours later I am still humming along to Edelweiss.

The ferry from Wellington to Picton went well. Once I reached land I immediately got bad directions and ended up going nearly two days out of my way to get to Havelock and Nelson. The extra pedaling was not for naught. The first campground I came across had an interesting attraction. “Eddie the Eel” and his friends lived in a small creek that flowed around the perimeter of the campground. There were really four eels, several ducks, drakes, and a trout who were well adapted to being fed by people. I have never before had a trout beg for food. Eddie and the other eels were not interested in my offering of bite-sized tortilla shreds, but the ducks and the trout were. One duck followed me all the way back to my tent and decided to help herself to the tortilla sandwich I had made for myself. My lesson of the day was that ducks do not like peanut butter. I thought I would have to do a ducky Heimlich, but she managed to cough up the bite she stole from me. Even after nearly suffocating, she still took a few more snaps at my sandwich. I had to close the door to my tent to keep her from hopping in and helping herself to the rest of my food cache. I imagine the sour gummy worms would have been even less popular than the peanut butter.

About two weeks into any sort of bicycle trip or physical training I get hungry. It is around that time that my body realizes that it has been exercising and needs to refuel. Fortunately, I was in the city of Nelson when hunger hit. Around 5pm I took myself to dinner and beer. By 9pm I had eaten two full dinners, had three drinks, and a very tasty slice of chocolate cake for dessert. Within half and hour I was hungry again. I raided the rest of the snacks in my panniers and drank over a liter of water. By 10pm I was full and finally able to sleep. I will never completely understand metabolism, but I do my best to listen to what mine wants. On the road I crave foods that I would almost never otherwise eat. Gummy worms and peanut butter-cheese tortilla sandwiches being on the ever-growing list. As is my snack stash contains, in addition to the above mentioned, salted peanuts, crumpets, and half a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

Once on the road again few miles outside of Nelson I met Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a fellow traveling who left her home in Ireland 20 months ago and began an adventure with no goal and no time frame. (See Granny, there are other women who bike solo!) She has since biked through parts of Europe, the Middle Ease, southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. All with an extremely patient boyfriend waiting back home in a stone cottage on the outskirts of Galway, Ireland. We talked quite a bit about the possibility of her cycling the Pacific Coast trail on the west coast of the United States. She is very keen to try and I am sure she will find her way to the States in the near future. We cycled together for two days and came across Andrew, another biker from the UK who has been on the road for two years. I have seen several bikers during my short time in New Zealand, but rarely have the chance to sit down and compare notes with them. Nearly all bikers are going different directions at different speeds and have various schedules to keep. It was relieving to be able to compare notes with a couple of fellow travelers and especially superb to travel with someone even if it was only for a short time.

I am heading for the famous Hanmer Hot Springs over the next few days. I preemptively sat out biking today assuming that it would rain and raining it is. I will hit the road again tomorrow with the prediction of sun and warmth.

Me, Andrew, Elizabeth