Getting back to ‘normal’ after New Zealand trip ; visit with Maypo and Orat and family

(posted from home)
(This post covers 3 - 18 April, 2013)

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Thursday, 18 April -

Today we had five large trees cut down in the front yard and one in the back yard. They were here when we moved in years ago and provided some privacy. But over the years they had gotten too big and, because the front-yard ones interfered with the power line, they had been cut back oddly at the top. One was in the process of dying (from insects, we now understand) and that pushed us into our decision.
While the tree guy was working Labashi trimmed the other landscape vegetation and I cleared the rain gutters. By day’s end the trees were gone and the stump-grinder had been used on one of the stumps. But then a light rain started and the tree-guy said it would be better to come back another day to finish grinding the others.
I ran into town in Labashi’s car intending to pick up some gutter-foam for the rain gutters I had just cleaned. I took my iPad along, though, and while stopping for my coffee I looked for reviews. I saw enough poor reviews to change my mind. I don’t need them if they have to be periodically removed and cleaned or if they interfere with water flow in higher-flow conditions or if they ice up and might possibly cause an ice-dam to form in winter.
I took my walk at Rudy Park so I’d be within easy walking distance of the car if the rain clouds let loose. I had a bit of very light rain but was able to get in my time.
That evening we watched a DVD about Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and later the pilot for the Sundance TV series ‘Rectify’.

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Wednesday, 17 April -


This morning I ran some errands and then drove to Rudy Park to walk. Today I concentrated on getting some time in on the steep hill at the top of the park to (hopefully) improve my tolerance for hills. I tire far too quickly on hills though I noticed an improvement during the New Zealand walks. If you can’t handle hills in New Zealand, there’s nowhere to go!
That evening I blundered into updating the Apple TV. I had been avoiding the update because of reading about people ‘bricking’ their units if they did the update via the Ethernet cable (rather than over wireless). That was several months ago now so the problem may have been resolved but I was purposely avoiding the update until I’d have a chance to look into it further. However, last night I pushed the control button several times before realizing I didn’t have the right input going and started the update inadvertently. It went through fine, though, so at this point I don’t know if it was ever a real concern or just another internet rumor.
After the update, we finished series one of ‘Downton Abbey’ and then learned the second series is only available on DVD, not via Netflix Instant.

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Tuesday, 16 April -

We spent the morning chatting and laughing and headed home from Maypo’s house by mid-afternoon. I mowed the lawn then for my exercise and to get my Fitbit step count for the day up above 10000.
The lawn seems to have responded well to the early-season treatment Labashi had done while we were away.
That evening we watched the last episode of ‘Top of the Lake’, the BBC TV series set in New Zealand’s Lake Wakatipu, Paradise, and Queenstown areas. We loved it for the stunning scenery but the storyline was confusing and sound quality was so poor we felt we were missing a lot of the dialogue. Glad we saw it; glad it’s over.

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Monday, 15 April -

Today we helped out Maypo by taking care of two projects he had underway when he broke his leg late last week. Orat and I installed a hand-rail in a basement stairway and installed vent and filler pipes on an oil tank he had replaced.
That evening I was still short on my step-count for the day so walked three miles to catch up.

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Sunday, 14 April -


Today we drove to Chambersburg to Maypo’s house, arriving shortly after lunch. When Orat arrived we started the presentation, took a break for supper, then ran on (yeah, those are probably the right words) for another hour or so. The presentation went fine though for some reason the images on the TV seemed to have less ‘pop’ than those on the iPad controlling the show.
We chatted until 2200-ish and then retired to Mocha Joe for a good night’s sleep.

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Saturday, 13 April -

Righty-oh, then. We’re finally getting there with the New Zealand presentation. I have 160-plus slides, about a dozen of them leading into small video clips. We are disappointed to see how little high-quality footage we have when it seemed to be going pretty well at the time. I’m thinking the difference is you can’t really tell how good the footage is on the little screen of the camera and we tend to think it’s better than it really is because of your memory of the scene rather than what’s really on the chip.
We do have some interesting material but video clips tend to be too shaky or noisy and my silly camera has an annoying zoom noise at times. Also, we tend to cut off the scene too quickly or pan too quickly. Gotta work on that!

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Friday, 12 April -

Another day browsing through photos and video clips with iPhoto. We have a long way to go.
In the afternoons I’ve been walking so I can get my 10k Fitbit step-count in. Today it was the five-miler at Rocky Ridge so that’s getting me into the 15K range when added to my regular day.
‘Downton’ that evening.

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Thursday, 11 April -

We spent the day working on our New Zealand presentation. I’m doing photos, Labashi video clips.
We watched a few ‘Top of the Lake’ eps but it’s getting tougher to maintain interest. Subtitles would make a big difference since sound production isn’t the best and the accents play into that.

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Wednesday, 10 April -


We made arrangements to visit Maypo this weekend and Orat is coming down for the visit too. We’re just getting started on going through the photos and video clips to put together a presentation.
That evening we watched the second disk of ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four. I’m happy to see the quality is still pretty good on this series. We’ve seen others (‘The Closer’ comes to mind. And ‘Lost’, ‘Alias’, ’24’, ‘The United States of Tara’, ‘Damages’, for example, which just seem to lose their way.

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Tuesday, 9 April -

Today I caught up the back-leveled software on the laptops and iPad before going for my walk at Rudy Park.
We watched two more eps of ‘Top of the Lake’ that evening. I don’t know about this one. The scenery is extraordinary but the people are nothing like the people we met in these same areas. I get the feeling this one isn’t going to be popular with the Kiwis.

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Monday, 8 April -

Today I started up the heat pump. I didn’t want to start it over the weekend in case I had some question for the installer and this was the first time I had started it after a long down-time. It turned out to be a non-event-- just a matter of ensuring the thermostat settings were outside the normal ranges until after I had the breakers turned on for the compressor and air handler.
I also had some maintenance work on Labashi’s PC to get done. She still has her old Windows XP machine and I needed to get the latest Norton Internet Security and install it. I bought a down-load version from Amazon and then simply told the old version on the PC that I wanted to update. During the preparation process it asks if you already have a key. Then it’s just a matter of copying the key from the Amazon library into the activation window and it takes off from there. No de-install/re-install necessary.
In the afternoon we had our tax appointment, basically a matter of signing the papers to extend and sending in a check for estimated taxes. There’s still some paperwork to come in before we can finalize.
I then rode over to Rocky Ridge for my walk after getting the F650GS out of winter storage in the barn.
We watched three ‘Downton Abbey’ Series One episodes that evening.

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Sunday, 7 April -

Weather is still on the colder side but Labashi and I went walking today at Rudy Park. The last few times we’ve been there we walked the rail-trail segment but today we walked the 5k cross-country course.
That evening we started ‘Nurse Jackie’ Season Four.

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Saturday, 6 April -

I was happy to get the Concours out today and ride down to Starbucks and then to my five-miler at Rocky Ridge. The difference between walking in the heavily-overgrown New Zealand forests and the brown-and-bare Rocky Ridge woods was quite striking to me.
That evening we found a new TV series... and it’s set in New Zealand! Sundance Channel’s ‘Top of the Lake‘ is set in the Glenorchy and Paradise area at the head of Lake Wakatipu and in Queenstown. It was available to us on Blue Ridge Cable’s Free On Demand system.

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Friday, 5 April -

During our visit to Labashi’s brother we borrowed the disk sets for ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Downton Abbey’. I tried one last night and was surprised to see I had missed the fact that they are Blu-Ray discs so we can’t watch them. So I spent a few hours looking for a Blu-Ray player. But after seeing complaints of problems during setup I thought better of it... there’s no need to rush into Blu-ray when the trend is switching away from discs to streaming.
That afternoon we visited Mom and Dad and went out to supper at Red Lobster after taking care of a few small items.
That evening we watched the ‘Mad Men’ finale for season 5.

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Thursday, 4 April -

Today we drove home from Labashi’s brother’s home in Northern Virginia. We take US15 for much of the way and I had to be extra careful to go around the roundabouts below Leesburg and near the Maryland line the correct way. I also turned on the wipers instead of the turn signal a couple of times.
Staying right was made much easier with the steering wheel on the left side. If I had happened to be in a car with the wheel on the right I’m sure I would have tended to drive left.
We had a pretty sunny day for our drive and it was uneventful. We were a bit surprised that we didn’t yet have more signs of Spring.
At home we held our breath when entering the door, hoping to find everything okay. We once returned to a basement flooded with sewage, once to a ruined refrigerator because of a long-term power outage and last time to an inch of water in the basement due to Tropical Storm Lee. Happily, there were no such problems this time.
Starting up the house systems was a very straightforward process this time. The well-pump tank hadn’t lost pressure so that was a matter of flipping the breakers for the pump and hot-water heater back on. We left the baseboard heat on and set at 50 degrees so that was a matter of turning up the thermostats. The water treatment equipment came right up and all I had to do was set the clocks to the correct time.
The internet connection came up immediately but I had to call the cable company to get the TV signal back. But as soon as they send a signal to the box the service came up.
Shutting down the light-timers was a matter of pulling them out but I did have to replace two light bulbs which had gone bad over the month-and-a-half we were gone.
All in all, the get-back-to-normal process only took an hour.
That evening we watched two ‘Mad Men’ episodes.

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Wednesday, 3 April -

We spent the day at Labashi’s brother’s home recovering from our trip. After being up for 36 hours our sleep pattern is disrupted but we’re otherwise fine.
That evening we watched ‘Lincoln’ on the big-screen TV and enjoyed the new home-theater seating. We loved it but want to see it again to take a closer look at the sets and backgrounds.

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Kauri giants at Waipau Forest ; Auckland museums and waterfront ; Titiranga, Piha, and Karekare ; Flight home

(posted from a friend’s home, Bristow, Virginia)
(This post covers 29 March - 2 April, 2013)

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Tuesday, 2 April -

Time to go home!
We spent the morning packing at Ambury Regional Park’s picnic area. We stayed in their campground last night but their picnic area is actually closer to the showers and had two picnic tables together under a nice, shady tree. And we needed the shade. Here we are in the southern hemisphere’s equivalent of October and it’s in the high Seventies and quite hot in the sunshine every day.
After packing, cleaning up the van (and ourselves), and having lunch we used the GPS to find a dump station and car wash. Unfortunately the car wash part of it didn’t work out. It seems most car washes are the automated ones and the high-top van can’t enter the lane. Our contract says there may be a $45 per hour cleaning fee applied if it’s excessively dirty. I’m pretty sure that refers to the interior but I was going to wash off the mud and dust on the outside just to be sure.
We then drove to the Auckland airport and made several rounds through both the international and domestic terminals to familiarize ourselves with them. We then went ahead and checked in at the International terminal to get our checked bags out of the way, our carry-on luggage weighed and tagged as having been okayed, and our boarding passes issued. We had to make some last-minute adjustments and ended up discarding a few older clothes to get down to the weight and size limits but we did avoid any extra-bag or oversize charges.
Then we went to a nearby McDonald’s to wait for a call from our outfitter when he arrives. He’s flying in from Christchurch to drive the van back home and we’re picking him up and the airport just two hours before our flight leaves.
At 1600 we drove to the domestic terminal to await his arrival and minutes later he joined us curbside and dropped us off at the other terminal.
We boarded at 1845 but just after taking our seats we were all told a security check had been missed and we all had to depart the plane and take our carry-on bags! That resulted in a 45 minute delayed departure and made us a bit nervous about our connection.
Our flight to San Francisco was 13+ hours and was a bit rougher than usual. The turbulence wasn’t awful, just enough to keep the fasten-seat-belts sign on most of the time and suspend serving of hot drinks.
We were served two good meals and free wine and soft drinks.
We had plenty of movies and TV shows to watch on the seat-back screens. I watched ‘On The Road’ and episodes of ‘The Mindy Project’ and ‘The Lowdown’. I also tried ‘Red Dwarf X’ but had to abandon that silly laugh-track-overdrive show within a few minutes.
In San Francisco our arrival process went smoothly and we made sure to fully declare everything we could think of--- which of course resulted in us being sent to the more-extensive-interview line. That turned out to be a good thing in that I had unwittingly brought in mud and small weeds stuck to it on the soles of my lugged shoes. They had to be cleaned and sanitized. If this had been found without our declaring we had been in close proximity to animals or walking in farmyards or pastures and that had been spotted, we’d have been hit with an immediate $200 fine.
We originally had more than two hours of layover time but with the immigration check-in, the retrieval of baggage and then having the bags x-rayed while our entrance declarations were reviewed, the shoe cleaning, the checked-bags transfer to the domestic side, the long walk to terminal 2, the full security scan of all our carry-on baggage, pocket contents, and our bodies, we only had twenty minutes to spare before boarding our next flight. We quickly ate a good-ole-US-made burger before our flight (‘Burger Joint’ at SFO is fantastic!).
The last flight was a bit under six hours on Virgin flight 90 to Dulles. We were a bit shocked to learn you had to rent a headset for $3, pay $8 for any movie, and pay $15 for a sandwich and chips and $14 for a glass of wine. Only soft drinks were included. We did none of the above and won’t be flying Virgin again anytime soon. There’s nothing special there. They even had ads playing over the speaker system after the safety announcements and they’d over-ride the entertainment system.
The flight was smooth and we arrived a bit early. As we exited the plane, Labashi’s brother called and we made arrangements for pickup. A half-hour later we were in their home relaxing and having a late-night snack of spaghetti and meatballs.
We stayed up perhaps another hour then crashed heavily after being awake 36 hours (all, thanks to the International Date Line, on the same day!).

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Monday, 1 April -

There was nary a sound at our suburban campsite at Pukekohe over night. We woke to another nice day, once again headed to the mid-Seventies and sunny. We only had one cold night the entire trip and that one was our first night in the van. We had stayed at a site with power so were able to use the electric heater supplied with the van. But our plan was to avoid the commercial campgrounds as much as possible so we thought we were in for some cold nights. We only had a few mornings when it was a bit uncomfortable to wash with (the unheated) water from the van’s water supply.
Today our plan was to go west from Auckland to the beach at Piha. It’s amazing how much wilderness there is just an hour west of the city.
Along the way this morning we stopped at the little village of Titirangi, supposedly a haven for the Bohemians and red-necks (the latter called “Westies” and supposedly all wearing mullets and black tee shirts, if we’re to believe Lonely Planet). We had an excellent bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato sandwich and only saw regular families having a nice brunch at our cafe. The one thing different from home is the Public Holiday Surcharge. On holidays the cafes, museums, etc, charge 15% extra to cover their costs for paying employees time and a half to work the holiday.
We then continued out the narrow road to Piha beach and snagged one of the last parking spots available on this holiday. The beach here is flanked by huge rocks and about three quarters of it is surfing beach. To the far right is a swimming beach marked by flags and very carefully watched as the undertows in this area can be quite dangerous.
We walked the black sand and happened to be there when an extra-large wave came in and flooded far up the beach, causing the sunbathers to scramble. We had been walking along the wet-sand/dry-sand borderline and suddenly had water nearly to our knees. It wasn’t dangerous, just funny to watch the crowd pick up on what was happening and grab their gear and make a run for it.
We then drove over to another beach south at Karekare. This beach is famous for nearby Farley Point, where, it’s said, in 1825 Father J. T. Farley became the first Irish-born surfer-priest in New Zealand.
At Karekare we walked the Taraire track which first visits waterfalls, then climbs up the steep hill for a view and returns to the Karekare Road, a walk of about an hour and a half.
After a break, we walked to Karekare Beach. It’s known for being the beach where the piano-awash scene in the movie ‘The Piano’ was filmed and it’s a wonderfully scenic stretch of beach. And when you see the scenery on the landward side, it too is incredible.
We then started back to our camp for the night at Ambury Regional Park, about ten minutes from Auckland airport.
We talked with our outfitter today by phone and he’s flying in tomorrow afternoon. We’ll pick him up at the domestic terminal and turn the van over to him and he’ll drop us off at the international terminal for our flight home in a few hours.
After supper we walked into the nearby sheep paddock to watch the sun set.

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Sunday, 31 March -

Our second night at Long Bay was also a nice, quiet one. Since it’s the Easter holiday we weren’t sure what to expect. With everyone off we thought we might have a difficult time finding a campsite. That’s why I specifically chose a parking-lot type of site rather than a traditional campground. As it turned out there was plenty of room yet our site was very much like a traditional campground. The parking lot had a paved road but all the parking was on nice, level grass and we were only 50 yards from the beach. Price was $6 per person. Commercial campsites in the area are $18 to $25 per person (but do include hot showers).
After pack-up this morning I set the GPS for the Auckland Art Museum. We arrived ten minutes before opening and had the good fortune to find a parking spot which was free all day Sunday. We were set!
We first had a coffee at the Gloria Jean’s coffee shop across the street from the museum. There I struck up a conversation with the barista and asked where Gloria Jean’s is headquartered since I’ve seen a few of them in the US. The HQ is in Australia but was originally in the US. The chain did so well in Australia that the Aussie branch bought out the US interests and now operates the company as an Australian one.
We spent the next two hours at the art museum, took a break for lunch nearby, then returned for another hour and a half. This museum is free and has a very interesting collection tracing New Zealand art through the years and does a good job with explanations.
We then walked west to the Sky Tower since it was nearby. As the guidebook says, its main draw is the next-door casino but we were just happy to be out walking around among all the interesting faces, many of them asian and polynesian and a few Maori men with moku (the distinctive face tatoos). We’ve only seen a few during our 45+ days in-country.
We then walked the few blocks back to the van and pulled out the laptops to return to Gloria Jean’s for a wi-fi session, i.e., get the mail, etc.
As 1700 approached we went back to the van and set the GPS for Pukekohe and the free campsite at the hockey fields and tennis courts where we had stayed a week ago. I would happily have returned to Long Bay but it was limited to two nights. Also, we will want to stay out of Auckland tomorrow. There’s a running event on Easter Monday which will close off many of the city streets and our GPS wouldn’t handle that well. It would keep trying to take us down the closed-off streets and that would quickly get frustrating since we don’t have the local knowledge to get around.
At our camp for the night Labashi made us a tasty supper and we finished off the wine we had opened last night.... the expensive stuff. I am happy to report that expensive wine is wasted on me.... I’m just fine with the on-sale ones.
We spent the evening making up lists for our turnover of the van and then a bit of time on the laptops and a look through the guide books.


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Saturday, 30 March -

We woke around 0700 to a foggy morning. We took our time getting ready and packing up and then drove into Auckland on this Easter weekend. The town seemed deserted.
The GPS took us right to the location it believed the museum to be---- in the middle of a residential neighborhood. We used the nearest street intersection from the map to find the real thing, arriving just as the museum was opening at 1000.
The Auckland Museum is a very good one. You’d think with as many museum’s we’ve seen, there’d be nothing left to see.
We spent an hour going through a small part of the Maori exhibit and then had an early lunch before returning for another three hours of looking at exhibits. And still we feel we went too fast.
The lower, or ground, floor was largely high-quality Maori artifacts in the permanent exhibit. The first floor had dinosaurs, volcanos, and natural history exhibits as well as a large exhibit of Pacific Island historical and cultural items.
The second floor had in-depth displays of New Zealand’s involvement in wars from it’s own ‘Musket Wars’ through the Boer Wars in South Africa, the disaster at Gallipolli, the two World Wars, Viet Nam, and UN peace-keeping missions. A real Japanese Zero airplane was on one side of the building and a real British Spitfire on the other.
After the museum, we drove down to the wharf area to walk around. This area has been redeveloped with upscale restaurants, an events center, and park areas. We enjoyed walking along the docks looking at the rich-guy boats. There were many young families about and it was fun watching the kids be kids, splashing around in a wading pool, riding merry-go-rounds and swings, etc.
We bought two small pizzas from a guy who had a masonry wood-fired pizza oven on the back of his truck. We took our pizzas back to the van and opened our bottle of Poppy’s wine we had bought in Martinsborough from Poppy herself.
As the sun was setting we drove out Tamaki Drive which is a long seaside drive through several popular restaurant areas and with nice views over the water.
We then set the GPS for the same campsite we had last night at Long Bay and were there by 2000.
We spent the rest of the evening on laptops and reading.

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Friday, 29 March -

This morning we woke early, at daylight, now 0700 as Fall wears on. We still managed to laze about for a half hour, mostly because nobody else was up and about and we didn’t want to wake the other kiwi-seekers.
On my return from the facilities, I spoke with a German or Swiss couple we had seen yesterday in a nearby campsite. I asked if they had been kiwi hunting and the guy said they had indeed and had seen two kiwis. I asked where and he provided a detailed description of the trail and I realized it was only about 100 meters from our campsite.
He said they had gone out at 0230 and had walked very slowly and as quietly as possible, pausing more than walking. They did not hear any calls at all but would hear a leaf-shuffling sound. They played a cat-and-mouse game until turning on their filtered light. The kiwi was only two meters away!
The second kiwi was at the far end of the loop trail. But as they listened, they heard another sound-- the kiwi was attacked by a predator. The guy thought it was a ferret and said the sound was awful. He said the predator, whatever it was, was making a growling sound and the tussle went on and on. In the end, though, they parted. The guy said he looked then and went back this morning to check and there’s no evidence of the fight in the area. He said the ranger had told him yesterday that kiwis are good fighters and have strong legs and use their talons against an enemy.

After finishing our morning routine we drove back the way we had come to see the kauri giants. We first drove up to Forest Overlook, which is a fire-tower with 360-degree views. Then we went to the Kauri Walk and walked in 20 minutes to see the world’s second largest living kauri, then drove north another 2k for a five-minute walk to see the worlds largest living kauri. Oddly, our camera cannot capture their size, I think because the lens is a wide-angle one.
We then drove to the Waipau Forest visitor’s center for a history lesson on kauri logging and then lunch in the picnic area.
We continued east to Dargaville and a kauri-wood and kauri-gum seller. He turns bowls and makes clocks and executive pens as well as selling the gum or amber. I also learned the kauri gum is called copal, solving a mystery for me as to what copal is I’ve seen listed in accounts of trade in history.
In addition to its uses as an ornament, it has been used historically in paints and varnishes. An entire industry of gum-diggers was in this area and continues today in the form of carved kauri-gum ‘gems’ for tourists and collectors. The smallest start at $75 and for the ones with an insect or partial leaf trapped in the amber, the price quickly jumps up to $500 or more.
The kauri dealer is outside Dargaville and as we entered town we noticed something odd. The streets were almost deserted and almost all the stores were closed. Only the gas stations and a couple of cafes were open. It’s Good Friday and everyone’s off for their weekend.
The kauri-guy’s wife told us the library has free wi-fi and though it’s closed, we could still use the wi-fi. We parked beside the library and spent a couple of hours retrieving mail, sending updates, and calling home via Skype.
We then set the GPS for Long Bay Park outside of Auckland as our goal for the night. Because of our dawdling on the web we were running late on our plan for the day. As we left Dargaville the GPS said we’d not get to our campsite until 1900 so we only made a quick McDonalds stop at supper time. It turned out we made it to the park after dark at 2000.
Our campsite tonight is a nice, grassy parking spot at a public beach in the Long Bay Regional Park. We can hear waves on the beach nearby.

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