Dunedin

Before I start my Iceland blogs, I need to finish my New Zealand ones. As usual, I'm lazy as hell. I've been totally jetlagged since I got home from Iceland for some reason. Could have something to do with staying up for 40 hours straight, then sleeping during the day every other day until I came home. Who knew that would screw your internal clock up?

This blog will cover my insane trip between Queenstown and Dunedin, and my 2 day stay in Dunedin itself. I will combine Wellington and Rotorua into the next entry, which will finish things off so I can move onto colder climates. Anyway, last time you heard from me, I had just spent an enjoyable 2 days in Queenstown, most of which I remembered. But not all.

So I woke up bright and early, kind of disappointed that I had to leave QT. Other than my drunken escapades, the town really sucked me in, and I could have easily spent a lot more time there. It probably worked out for the best though, because it's not very big and I had seen everything there was to see. So, onto Dunedin. I had booked a combination bus/train tour that also got me to Dunedin. The premise is that the bus takes me from QT to the train, and the train winds through some funky valley until you're back on the coast in Dunedin. I'm not a big fan of buses normally, but what the hell, right? Well this turned out to be the best bus ride EVER.

I'm waiting outside, and a coach arrives. You know, those greyhound-looking mofos. Seat like 50 people or something. I get on and go to walk to the back and quickly realize...there's no one else on the bus. The driver says "Where ya goin? Sit up 'ere with me mate. You're the only customer today."

What?

Yes people, I had a full-sized coach...to myself. For a 4 hour ride. Besides being odd, this seems like extremely bad business. It's not like I paid a mint for this bus ride. I'm pretty sure my fare didn't even cover the gas money to get there. I wasn't about to question my good fortune though (ya know, since I don't like people), so I just sat up front. It took about 45 seconds to get even more odd.

"So where do ya wanna go mate?"

What?

I gave the answer that most people would give...wherever you were going, obviously. "Dunedin?"

"Well I know that mate. Ya think I'm daft?"

"Uh..."

"I mean what do ya wanna see on the way?"

"I didn't know I had an option?"

"Since you're the only guy on here, I'll take you to whatever you want to see, as long as we're at the train station by 12:30. You like Lord of the Rings? Dams? Sheep? Aaaah...you look like a man that likes sheep mate!"

What the hell do you say to that? The bastard was calling me a sheep fucker! I just started laughing uncomfortably and said "I thought this was a tour. You pick the destinations, I take the pictures. I didn't exactly study for this! And I don't like sheep like you're implying I like sheep! *pause* "There any giraffes around here though?"

He laughed and said "I think we're going to get along great, mate!" Okay, we'll start off by goin to Cromwell for breakfast and figure it out from there!"

Sure. What else am I supposed to say? "NO! FIJI! NOW!"

So we headed off along another side of the lake towards Cromwell. As we approach the town, the driver goes "Hey, you wanna go see a bunch of fruits?" No, driver...no I don't. And I'm starting to get a little worried about this here driver. What he was talking about was pretty fucking amusing though, if a bit weird:



Don't even ask why the town has a gigantic fruit statue out front. The driver had no idea, and neither did any of the people we talked to while we were eating breakfast. It's a pretty little town though, surrounded by those mountains in the pic, with a cool river running through it. Very visually impressive, but quite small. Driver (he told me his name once, but I didn't remember nor did I care to - I just called him driver) said Cromwell was "boring as shit" and full of "old nosy people". It wasn't hard to see that, despite my limited time there.

After breakfast, he again asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea, so I asked him to at least give me some suggestions. He suggested a massive sheep station, checking out the Clyde dam, some of the small towns along the way, or skip most of that and drive around LOTR land for a while. I liked LOTR, but I'm hardly a hobbit groupie, so I suggest as much of all that as possible. He was cool with that, so we were on our way.

First stop was the Clyde dam. It was...a dam. Fairly big, rushing water, etc. Nothing too special. Driver seemed disappointed I wasn't impressed, so he told me a story about how locals earn good luck points from the local gods for tossing tourists into the dam. I told him he'd have to get a backhoe in here, stat, if he wanted to get me over the fence and into the dam. He cracked up and let me live, luckily.

Next up was an aborted trip to a sheep station. As we were driving up, he asked me if I liked Canadian music at all. I replied in the positive, and he blew me away with his response - "Good, because this station is owned by Shania Twain. We see her in the grocery store in Cromwell all the time. Nice lady." HOT DAMN! We were goin to Shania's house! Then he crushed my dreams with a quick "She's only down here a couple months of the year mate. Certainly not in may, when the weather's shit!"

My dreams were dashed again when we drove up towards Lake Wanaka, and it started to snow. Driver quickly said that it would be a bitch to get all the way up there, and there would be no guarantee we'd get to see much anyway, since it's so big and the gate might not be open. How big? Try 42,000 acres. Wow. That's a lot of sheep. "Well, maybe we can find a giraffe station around here so you can get a shag in. How about llamas? Can you handle llamas?" Asshole.

So, back east we went. It was snowing a lot harder now, and it was pretty hard to see where we were going. You ever been the only one on a bus in a snowstorm? It's oddly comforting. We were laughing about the first line of the newspaper report if we ended up crashing - "A 52-seat coach has been found destroyed in a storm. The driver, one passenger, and a llama were all found dead aboard..."

During the drive, I asked driver a million questions about New Zealand and beyond. He hated being a bus driver, but had no choice. He worked in the mines in Australia for years, making killer money and only having to work a few months a year. But the economy died, the jobs dried up, and he had to move back home to NZ. Jobs were hard to come by, and this was the best he could do at the moment. He explained what life in small town NZ was like, and how people view foreigners like me.

His best story involved a buddy of his that had an odd dream - ever since they were 14, this guy always talked about traveling America coast to coast...via Greyhound. 12 years later, he saved up for his big trip, ponied up huge money for the airfare and bus tickets...and found out how sketchy Greyhound and it's stations are. He was expecting to travel in the lap of luxury! For 12 years, he never did any research about it at all! Awesome.

After passing many, many sheep and going through about 7 different changes in weather, we arrived in Rohan. For the uninformed, Rohan is a region of land in Lord of the Rings. It was pretty impressive when you're there, but it doesn't translate well to pics - check it:



See? Boring. The rocks in the ground were pretty crazy up close though. Definitely worth the detour, but more of a "ya had to be there" kinda thing. After we drove through Rohan for a bit, driver turned off the paved road onto some crazy gravel road. He saw the look on my face and said "Relax canuck, this is the way to the train station. You're not getting murdered. You think I would have wasted all this gas bringing you out here to murder you, mate?" Asshole.

Driver warned me that the train station was in the middle of nowhere. During the summer, the train goes all the way into Middlemarch, a town about 15km up the tracks. For some reason, in the winter it won't go that far, and you're forced to come out to this station. When he said the middle of nowhere, he meant it. It was called Pukerangi, but why label it as a place when no one lives there? There was NOTHING around, and the train station was pathetically tiny. See?



That's the town! What the fuck!

So, after an awesome 4 hour bus ride, it was time to part from Driver...or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong, because he was handing the bus off to someone arriving on the train, and coming to Dunedin with me. Sweet. We headed off on the train, and while I'm sure it's a killer ride in the summer, it was raining like stink and I couldn't see much out the window:



Basically I just bullshitted and did a couple of jager bombs with driver on the way down to Dunedin. He told me some more stories about his family, and about the train we were on. Once we arrived in Dunedin, he even grabbed a mini-shuttle and drove me to my hotel. I tried to tip him, but he wouldn't accept my money. "Spend it on beer mate. After you see the girls here, you'll see that I'm doing you a favor. You're going to need those drinks!" Awesome! He turned out to be correct.

So...Dunedin. It was pouring rain when I arrived, so I just decided to chill in my hotel room for a bit. That got old real quick, so it was off to explore, rain or not. I didn't make it far the first night, just up onto the main strip, walking up to the University and back. I contemplated a pub, but I was pretty soaked and pooped, so I just went to a 24 hour market and grabbed food and beer. I spent a quiet night alternating between drinking, watching rugby, and writing a couple of articles. Such an exciting life on the road.

The next day actually turned out to be a lot of the same. After walking around Dunedin a lot, I realized three things:

1. The town had some great architecture.
2. The town had some shitty weather.
3. The guidebook lied about a lot of stuff.

My main goal of the day was to find the "drinking barns" they talk about so much in Lonely Planet. "Cavernous, barn-like pubs filled with drunken students". Sounds like fun to me. What did I find? Semi-large pubs. That's it. Like the Foggy Dew (Fuck you Foggy!) or Clancy's. Just spacious. Not barns! No barns! Denied. They still had beer though, so all was not lost.

After a couple wobblers, I headed down to Otago University and into the Otago Museum, which was supposedly the 2nd best museum in the country. Surprisingly, it didn't disappoint. Right inside the door was a stuffed moa. A moa is a HUGE extinct fuzzy bird. Bigger than an ostrich. The museum worked on donations, and you stuff the donations into the moa. He was awesome. Moa!



Some of the carved statues were really cool:





There were lots of other cool things in there too. I putzed about in there for a couple of hours, then walked around the city some more. Saw some cool buildings n stuff:

Train station


Cool church


After all that touristy stuff, it was time for some more pub action! I walked up to a big pub, and this sign was posted at the front entrance:



Really? Fucking Rock Paper Scissors? These were some simple folk! After laughing at the sign for a little bit and getting strange looks from passers-by, I decided to go inside and take this bitch down. That thought lasted about 8 minutes - I got bounced in the first round, over a pint of Mac's Gold. Dammit. I continued to make fun of the whole idea of it though, since, let's face it, it's a pretty stupid contest to have. One guy finally had enough, and directed me to the corner. He didn't say anything, just dragged me to the corner and pointed at a poster:



If you can't make that out, it says you can "win a trip to Canada to compete in the World RPS Championships." At that moment, the dragger spoke.

"You think we're fucking simple, you wanker? You want to call Kiwi's names because we like this stuff? Your country hosts the fucking WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS MATE! What the fuck does that make Canadians?!?"

Touche, bastard.

He was good-natured about it though, so I sat around and drank with the players? for a while. Cool guys. They led me to another bar, where I met a few of their female friends. I happened to mention that Otago (university name) must mean "ugly girl" in Maori, which one of the guys thought was hilarious enough to repeat TO ALL THE WOMEN. Thanks champ. One of the chicks actually though it was funny though, for some reason. I talked to her over many beers, and...I woke up next to her in my hotel room the next morning. Yes folks, I'm pretty sure my traveling draught is over! I can't guarantee what happened with 100% accuracy, because I don't exactly remember 100% of it...and I'm 100% sure she looked a lot better the night before...but who cares, I'm not picky! I'm sure she was just as disappointed when she woke up and saw me! SCORE!

I gave her the boot quicker than you can say beer goggles, and packed up and headed to the airport a happy man. Dunedin might not have been the coolest place ever, but at least Otago girls are easy. Which means I'm obviously going back.

Queenstown

Air travel in New Zealand is so much different than here. Here, everyone is at the gate an hour before the flight, waiting impatiently. They board 30 minute early, and herd everyone like cattle onto the tube with wings. NZ? Not so much.

I was 55 minutes early for the flight, and thought I was at the wrong gate. There was no one there. Not a soul. I checked the screen 3 more times to make sure, then...waited. Alone. For a long time. A half hour before the flight, the crew came down and boarded. Still no other people, not even a gate agent. Finally, about 20 minutes before takeoff, people started sauntering in. We boarded with about 10 minutes to go, and took off right on time. No stress at all. I loved it. Of course, none of my stories end well, so something had to go wrong. Right?

We begin our descent into Queenstown, and I'm psyched. Can't wait to check this place out. We inch closer to the ground, until I can see the airport. Aaaand...the next thing I know, I'm glued to my seat. Like, fucking stuck to it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that we were going back up. Kids, you ever been on the Gravitron at a fair or amusement park? That's what this felt like. Basically, it fucking sucked. The captain did little to ease my panic/anger:

"Ho ho...sorry bout that mates! The weatha is a little unpredictable toduy (not a typo), and we had to abandon owwa (not a typo again) landing! Nuthin to worry about mates, we're just gonna circle around for a wee bit and see if we can land in a few!"

Yea, that "no stress" thing was beginning to grate on my nerves now.

Anyway, we eventually landed about 45 minutes later, and it was sunny. What a surprise. 2 seconds after leaving the airport, I already loved Queenstown. The airport was surrounded by grassy hills and it was like 7 degrees. Everyone was complaining but me. I loved it!

The ride into town was along a crazy river. Just beautiful scenery all around us. Most of the people in my shuttle were there for the opening of the ski season, and a couple told me about all the pubs in town. I knew it was a party town, but some girl told me there were around 50 pubs in the main part of town now.

50. 50 fucking pubs. Excuse the teenage texting talk here, but...OMG. LOL.

The best way to describe the town would be to say it looks like Banff, if Banff sat on one of the nicest lakes you've ever seen. Small, condensed alpine village with houses rising up the hills in every direction. Huge, snowy mountains surrounding that. And a massive, calm lake dead center. Here's some pics that don't do it justice because I'm a shitty picture taker:









QT was the first town I booked a hotel in, and was kicking myself for it for a long time. I spent way more than I should have, considering most of the other hotels a little bit out of town were way cheaper. As usual when traveling though, sometimes bad decisions turn out awesome. This was one of those. The hotel was right across the street from the lake, and built on an angle into a huge hill. I was on the 5th floor, and the back door on my floor led right out onto level ground. I don't think this really does it justice, but check it:





As I checked in, a bellguy grabbed my bag and attempted to help carry it up to my room. I didn't need help, cuz that bitch had wheels, but he insisted. In the space of 2 minutes, he had a) Told me where the best pubs were; b) Told me to avoid the hotel bar cuz it was too pricey; and c) Invited me out on a pub crawl with the hotel staff that night. Shiiiiiit...sounds good to me. I had an all-day tour booked for the next day, but I figured I'd just come back relatively early, get some sleep, and be good to go.

Why the hell do I think these things? Since when am I responsible?

It was only 2pm though, so I had some time before the pub crawl. I went for a walk along the lake, which was fucking insanely nice. I took so many pics, the batteries in my camera died. I went to buy more, and was instantly reminded that I was in a tourist trap village again - 35 NZ dollars for 4 batteries! What. The. Fuck. Granted, I did buy the best ones they had, but god damn smokey! Next up was the beer store, and it was similar. A 6 pack of the same beer was 6-8 bucks more than it was in Auckland. The winter paradise comes with a god damn high price.

Here's the tiny marina:



Main drag of town:



The backwardsness (totally not a word) of NZ reared it's head at my next stop though...a pub. Duh. A beer was only 6.50 NZD here, as opposed to the 9 NZD in Auckland. So everything else is more expensive, but bar prices area affordable? I figured those would be even higher too, but nope.

I did manage to embarrass myself in the pub pretty quickly, which shouldn't be surprising to any of you. There are 2 major beers in NZ - Steinlager and Monteith's. The bar's name was Monty's. They had Monteith's shit everywhere. The waitress was wearing a shirt with a big Monteith's beer on it. She was also pretty damn hot. Taking all of that into account, when she came to take my order, I...panicked and ordered a Steinlager. She looked at me like I was wee-todd-ed, which I totally deserved. Then looked all around the room, slowly, to make her point. Damn her. It's like ordering a Whopper at McDonald's. Genius, I is. Nice work Tim. One beer, and I was out to less embarrassing pastures. By that, I mean 3 other pubs for 3 other beers and lunch.

So, after walking around a bit more and lounging in my plush hotel room (that's internet cap was 10 times higher than any other hotel I stayed at, and had 11 channels!!), I went down to the lobby to meet up with the hotel people for the pub crawl. It was 6pm.

Uh oh.

All the pubs are within probably 6 square blocks of each other, and a lot have different happy hours. So everyone moves from place to place. Basically, the whole damn town is one huge pub crawl waiting to happen. There were 6 of us to start - 4 guys and 2 girls. And, get this - not one of them was from New Zealand. They were all just there working in town for ski season. 4 were Aussies. It was like Jasper all over again, where no one that worked in the fucking town was Canadian, they were all Aussies. Dingo fuckers strike again!

I wasn't nursing my drinks at the beginning, but I wasn't exactly mainlining them either. They followed the Aussie/UK/other immigrants tradition of taking turns buying rounds for everyone instead of figuring out the bill for each beer. I think I bought 3 by 10:30 or so, since people kept ignoring my attempts to buy them and grabbing the tab. Thanks. I was buzzing, having a good time, but being fairly quiet since I didn't know anyone that well. Then we got to pub # 4, and some dingo-fucking genius decided it was a jager bomb round, since they were on special at this pub. Awwww crap. There were only 4 of us at this point, but 4 jager bombs in an hour turned me from shy, buzzing Tim into loud, full-on-drunk Tim. It went pretty much downhill from there.

I remember everything up until pub # 7, I think. I didn't do anything too stupid up to that point, except for forgetting I had no belt on my jeans and watching them basically hit the floor as I was walking back to a table at one point. I actually did the exact same thing in the kitchen of a house party at Dana Milo's once. Drunken memories rule! Anyway, the "gym shorts backup plan" was brilliant though, and other than a lot of laughs, nothing bad happened. After that, I have brief memories of being lost in an alley, eating pizza, and yelling at ducks by the water, but nothing real concrete until the hotel again. 4:29am. Gotta be up in one hour and 31 minutes for the tour. Suuuure.

As you can probably guess, I missed the tour. It's too bad, cuz apparently Milford Sound is nice or something. Guess I have something to check out the next time I'm there! I woke up around 1pm, surprisingly not that hungover. I was starving though, so I headed out right after showering to grab lunch. On way through the lobby, I see one of the guys I was drinking with, Dave, leaning against the entrance with his eyes shut. Ouch. Guess he had to be at work at 9:30am. Double ouch. The next 2 minutes of convo were a double ouch right back at me though.

Me: "Wow dude, you're looking rough!"
Dave: "Heey! Missed the tour huh mate? Not surprising. So where's the girl?"
Me: "....what? What girl?"
Dave: *laughing, then grabbing his head* "Owww me head. The girl from the bar. You didn't bring her back here?"
Me: *absolutely shocked* "Bro...I have no idea what you were talking about".
Dave: *laughing so hard the other people in the lobby are looking at him* "You don't remember her? At all? Hell, how much do you remember?"
Me: "WHAT GIRL!?!?!"
Dave: "The one that met up with us at Barmuda, Dawn. The one you were making out with in the alley. You don't remember that? I thought for sure you brought her back here. We all left you down by the casino with her."
Me: *mumbling* "That explains the ducks and the alley."
Dave: "Wha-"
Me: "Dude, I'm pretty sure I didn't bring anyone back here. I certainly don't remember that. Holy shit. I remember her, but I don't remember anything about making out with her or anything. Wow."
Dave: *still laughing* "Mate! That's too funn-"
Me: "Holy fuck, what else did I do?"
Dave: "Do you remember your trousers falling down in Mahones?"
Me: "I remember the pants, not the name of the bar. Did it happen more than once?"
Dave: "Not that I seen. But that was probably the funniest thing that happened all night. All month!".

By now, about 6 people are watching us have this convo, and they're all pretty amused. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty fucking embarrassed, but I needed to get to the bottom of this.

Me: "So I didn't do anything else retarded that you saw?"
Dave: "No mate, you were hilarious. Other than yelling WHORES! at random women--"
Me: "Not the first time, believe me. Anything else?"
Dave: "You were trying to tell a story about someone throwing shot glasses, and you elbowed Ian in the head pretty hard doing the demonstration."
Me: "Again, not the first time. That's it?"
Dave: "That's all I remember mate. But I was talking with my girl a lot and probably missed some of it."
Me: "Greeeeaat."
Dave: "I have to drink with more Canadians mate. But only when I don't have to work the next day."
Me: "Man, I feel like an idiot."
Dave: "Who cares mate, you're leaving, what, tomorrow? None of these people are gonna to see you again. Go home and tell your friends you got lucky."
Me: "They'd all know I'd be full of shit, and that I would have fucked up the situation. I might as well just tell the truth."

4 people in the lobby, and Dave, laugh at this. Joyous.

Me: "Anyway Dave, thanks for the good times. It was awesome of all of you to invite me out."
Dave: "Anytime mate. Anytime."

After all that, I needed more than lunch. I needed a beer. Finding out all that stressed me out for a bit, but like Dave said, who the fuck cares, right? Running into that girl might have been awkward, but luckily that never happened. After grabbing food and beer, I decided to walk all over the city. There's a big garden area on one side of the lake, so I cruised through that for a bit. Pretty nice. It was my idea of perfect walking weather - about 5C and cloudy. Most people think I'm nuts for liking it like that, but as you know by now, I hate heat. It was super nice.

After a couple more hours going up and down hills and exploring the rest of the town, it got foggy. Like, crazily foggy. I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me walking all the way back to the hotel. I couldn't see the lake at all from the hotel, and it was only across the street. Awesome. I was impressed with how much I had covered, so I decided to chill in my room and take a well deserved nap. I woke up around 7pm, and actually considered a round 2, but my brain immediately said "Noooooo dipshit noooooo. Your bus leaves at 9am tomorrow. You can't miss this bus. Smarten up."

I decided to go out, but take it easy, which led to one amusing moment that night. Dave told me a bar had half-price pizza, so I headed over there. I put my hoody on because it was below zero by now, and it reeked like a campfire. "Fuck, was I at a campfire last night? I don't remember that at all!", I thought. Well, I went into the Buffalo Club and got my answer. The bar had a massive fireplace in the middle, with people sitting all around it. Hmm, okay. I walked up to the bar, and went to order a beer. Before I said anything, the bartender chicky said:

"Hey! The crazy Canadian!"

Awww crap.

Yup, that was one of the bars we had been at. I told her I didn't remember that, but it explained why I smelled like a campfire. She laughed. I asked her how bad I was, but she set my mind at ease by saying I didn't do anything wrong at all, I was just making fun of someone we were with and was pretty funny. And I bought 2 rounds of jager bombs and dropped all my money on the floor both times. More jagers? Yaaay.

I finished my food and beer there, and thought about checking out some other places...but I was paranoid I'd go into another bar I'd already been in. I was also worried about running into that girl and having to explain myself (or worse, ask for an explanation!). So I mildly chickened out and went to the beer store. Some jager bombs (cans of red bull come with a baby bottle of jager attached to them. Dope idea), and some beers.

Red Bull at 9pm? What the fuck was I thinking? I was up till 4am. Luckily I still got 4 hours sleep, and was wide awake and unhungover when my bus showed up to take me to Dunedin. This was definitely the most unique bus trip I've EVER taken, but I'll get to that next time. Word.

Here's some more pics:

Kiwi birdhouse (yes, that's the entrance to a building)



More scenery stuff:

Auckland

If you wanna skip this one, you're not missing much. Auckland really wasn't that exciting. Things didn't get good until my next stop.

Auckland has a nice airport. Customs was pretty easy. I just went to a flight-crew only aisle and acted like I had no idea what I was doing. They had me through in seconds, while everyone else from my flight waited. I pointed and laughed. They didn't like it.

I took a shuttle to my hotel instead of the cheaper bus, as a reward for not spending much in Rarotonga. True to form, I forgot everything's opposite there driving-wise, and spent a minute or so wondering why there was no door on the shuttle. Nice work dumbass, check the other side. Oops. The drive there was similar to the UK - full of roundabouts I could never navigate in a million years if I could actually drive. The hotel was dead-center downtown, 2 blocks from the harbor, facing the busiest street in the city (Queen St). Got a 10th floor room with a pretty dope view - check it...actually don't. I can't get the night pic to actually show the tower for some fucking reason. Check my facebook if you care. It's the same as the pic below...but at night. It's all lit up n stuff. Use your imagination.

For some reason, I've always been interested in TV in other countries. Not necessarily the shows, just what kind of channels they get and how much they copy/steal American stuff. Let's just say TV in New Zealand is lacking. In my room, I got the following - 4 NZ channels, Sky Sports, Sky News, 2 radio stations (?), and a 24 hour yoga channel. What the fuck? Then I went to plug in my netbook to get some internet action, and got another shock - it was 33.69 a day, and you can only use 100MB of bandwidth. I knew the price going in, but download caps? And that low? Brutal. I couldn't go to a few sites I normally frequent (not that kinda shit, eff off) because they use a lot of pics and videos and would eat up the allowable amount. AND, it was 10 cents a MB over the limit. Ridiculous.

I also remembered when I got there that I had lost an entire day. I took off from Raro at 5:45pm thursday, and landed at 8:15pm friday, since I crossed the international date line. I knew I was getting that day back when I came home, but I still felt cheated somehow. It was also completely disorienting, and I couldn't figure out what day it was for over a week after that. The people from home that I talked to didn't help, because they were a day behind me. You think it's easy to figure out? Try living it junior!

All this, and I haven't even been outside yet. It was walky time. It didn't take long to realize that a lot of downtowns are the same, but Auckland's is extremely similar to Vancouver's. It was almost eerie. Take out gastown and add some hills, and I felt like I didn't even leave home. The good thing was that there were no homeless people and it felt a lot safer, but...it was still boring. I hate downtown Vancouver, so it's not surprising that I wasn't a big fan of downtown Auckland initially. It didn't help that the one pub I went into had what seemed like crazy expensive beer at the time - 9 NZ Dollars. That's only about 6.50 Canadian, but still shocked me. I was consistently whining about the price of stuff, then immediately happy when I realized that it was 30% cheaper in Canadian. I love New Zealand.

I was a big fan of 2 things about Auckland though - the liquor store directly across the street, and room service! Shut it, I'm a baby. A 4.5 hour flight takes a lot out of a moo cow! Since downtown at night was kind of lame, I just chilled and watched some terrible TV. One room service beer was the same price as a 6 pack across the street, 7 bucks Canadian. One roasted lamb thinger and a moderate amount of non-room service beer (somewhere between 3 and 13) later, I went to sleep, kind of dissatisfied with Auckland so far.

Next day wasn't much more exciting. I started off by walking down to the harbour. Auckland is known as the "City of Sails", so I was expecting a kickass waterfront. Ah, no. Most of it is still a working port, thus it's pretty gritty. The area with all the fancy sailboats and expensive bars/restaurants is okay, but nothing compared to Stanley Park or Coal Harbour. I got my first taste of the difference between Canada and New Zealand when I sat down on the patio of one of the pubs. I waited...and waited...and waited. No service. I guess you have to go in and get your own in NZ. Oops. That was a nice waste of 15 minutes.

Since that didn't stimulate me much, I decided to walk all the way up Queen St (3km or so) to check out what the main drag was like during the day. It turned out to be 3 things - busy, multicultural, and expensive. The most amusing thing I saw was a squeegee kid. My guess is that they're not common in Auckland, because the people in every single car he approached were scared shitless. Two women actually screamed when they saw him, which made me laugh pretty hard. Neither the women or the derro (derelict, homeless person, etc) found my laughter very funny themselves, but I'm just a dirty tourist so I'm allowed to laugh at dumb shit. The reaction to him really was the most interesting thing Queen St had to offer. The rest was pretty generic. Malls, restaurants, asians, bad driving...it was like Richmond without an Ikea.

After the long walk, I figured it was pub time. 9 dollar beers again, but this pub had slot machines! These things should just bend you over and service you when you walk in though, because they're fucking rapists. When there's no one in a pub at 3pm, they're the only entertainment, so I got to playing. 2 cent slots can't pilfer that much money from you, right?

Wrong.

This Mike Tyson of a machine (only rapist I could think of offhand) ate my 20 bucks quicker than Juhl downs a cheeseburger. Quicker than Lisa mainlines a double vodka. Quicker than Jess claims the top bunk on a yurting trip. Okay, you get the idea. Anyway, I hadn't even finished 1/3 of my beer. So, like an idiot, I put in another 20, and decided to play fewer lines so my money would last longer. Good idea, right? Fuck that. I would have got as much entertainment dropping the 20 in a garbage disposal. Somehow, I was down 40 bucks in 5 minutes. Well, 49 including the beer. This is when being a loser doesn't feel so bad though, cuz 49 NZ bucks is only 34 Canadian. Not so bad at all. Yea, that made it all better. Stupid machine.

Dealing with all that excitement earned me a relaxing hotel stop, so I chilled for a while and drank beers that weren't 34 bucks a piece. I guess there were more "touristy" things I could head out and see, but I'm not really a typical tourist most of the time. I'm waaaay prettier. Anyway, Auckland has museums and underwater penguin adventures and cool islands n shit, but come on...how could any of that top the Mercure hotel and a Tui (the only good IPA beer in the world) on a saturday afternoon? Chalk another day up to me being a lazy bastard.

While I was lazing about, I noticed that there was a rugby game on. I quickly figured out that there are only 3 sports on TV in NZ - rugby, cricket, and netball. Netball is neutered basketball for white girls that doesn't allow dribbling or body contact. Basically, it's fucking stupid. Cricket's not so bad if you have 3 days to watch a match. Rugby though? Fucking AWESOME. I can't believe I have any respect for NFL players after watching high-level rugby. These guys beat the living bejesus out of each other, with no pads. I just happened to show up on the last day of the Super 14 season, and got to watch 3 games that decided who'd make the playoffs. They all ruled. Rugby's my new favourite sport (other than hockey and MMA).

I won all 3 rugby bets I made online, which earned me back the money I lost to the sexual assault machine in the pub. To celebrate, I went...back to a pub. Duh. Too bad it was a miserable failure. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of pubs, but they were either packed with rugby watchers, or waaay beyond my idea of a dress code. I couldn't find anything other than my hotel bar, which seemed pretty lame. But, a pub is a pub is a pub, and the lamest places can turn out to be pretty damn cool sometimes. I talked to just about everyone in there (all 7 of them), and they were all from other parts of NZ. Despite the multiculturalism outside the hotel doors, these people acted like I was a huge novelty by visiting their country. They bought me beer, enviously bitched about Australia, and explained cricket well enough that I actually understood the rules. Sort of. The best part was, unlike Australians, it seems that Kiwis use very little slang, so I could actually understand what they were saying. I learned more about NZ in those 4 hours than I had in 4 months of research.

Folks, nights like this are why I travel. Anyone can sit in front of a computer and memorize stuff, but LIVING this stuff is how you really learn about places and people. I'm lucky that I'm consistently able to meet people that are willing to take the time to help me get a feel for the places I go. I'm not the most outgoing person, but Kiwis are extremely personable people and made me feel at ease no matter where I was. It was awesome.

Where was I? Auckland, right. So after the informative night and a good sleep, I got up with the intention of taking this hop on/hop off bus that goes all over the city and covers the main sights. Notice the word intention. Apparently that good sleep wasn't quite long enough, because the next thing I know it was 1pm. Go Tim. I decided to hit up a pub for lunch and...they're all closed. Say what? Apparently Auckland still likes Jesus or some shit, because everything was closed on sunday. Another reason to dislike religion. It also happened to be raining, which actually didn't bother me since it was 20+ degrees every other day so far and I hate heat. I decided to go for a long ass walk, and cover everything in the downtown core I hadn't already seen.

An hour later, I was back. Come on, this is me we're talking about. Were you expecting a 12 hour trek or something? Suuuure. I'm a giraffe, not a camel. Turns out there's just not a ton to see. Some nice buildings. A supposedly nice square that's under construction. And so on. So, now what? What to do, what to do? There was another hotel bar on the top floor, so why not check that out?

All I can say about it is HAHAHA. I paid another 9 NZD for a beer, and sat down to look at...the exact same view that my hotel room has, but 3 floors up. What. A. Waste. And to top it off, they didn't have one TV in the place. There just so happened to be the most important (and last) Super 14 game of the regular season about to start, and they don't have a TV? What the fuck? One shotgunned beer and an elevator ride later, I was back in the lobby bar. TVs! Jager bombs! Rugby! I'm sure you can guess how this afternoon/night ended.

So, I woke up hungover. Quelle surprise! Apparently I came back to the lobby twice to tell them my room card wasn't working...turns out I was just trying to get into the wrong room. Oops. Don't remember that. I was told that little nugget of info during checkout, while a Contiki tour full of hot women was checking in. Damn me and my shitty timing! Normally I wouldn't give a shit about being a retard, cuz let's face it...that shit happens all the time. But I was actually staying in this hotel again the next week for my last night in NZ, so I'm sure they were SUPER HAPPY to have me as a returning guest. And I ended up finding out for sure when I got back. As usual - Go Tim.

After a nice tour of the city via the shuttle driver who had to pick people up all over the damn place, I was on my way to Queenstown. That little tour actually gave me some hope for the city, cuz the burbs are pretty nice. I'd say Auckland is a nice mix between Vancouver and San Francisco. Pretty nice surroundings, hilly, nice houses, and very clean. You could definitely live in worse places. I still hadn't felt like I had left home yet in terms of NZ though, so I was excited about moving on into "real" New Zealand. And I definitely got my money's worth. You'll find out about that next time.


Bonus pics. Don't worry, if you like pics, there are lots more of the other cities. Auckland just wasn't that interesting.


Hotel room view during the day



The "City of Sails". Yeehaw.

Rarotonga

Normally I don't write these things until long after I get back from trips because I'm incredibly lazy, but I'm sitting here in the San Francisco airport waiting to go home and I have nothing to do for an hour or so. Seems like as a good a place as any to start, right? This blog will cover the pretrip stuff and my first stop, Rarotonga. That's in the Cook Islands, which is basically between Hawaii and Australia/New Zealand, for you geography majors. Yes Lisa, I'm looking at you. I was not in South America the entire time.

It turns out that buying a netbook (with my 500 dollar online bingo winnings. Shut up) was one of the best travel purchases of my life. How did I travel without a computer before? I might be selling out a bit as a "backpacker", but let's face facts - I'm too old for that shit. Backpackers stay in hostels - I stayed in hotels this entire trip. Fuck, I didn't even bring my backpack! I can handle 7-10 days just out of my daypack, but this was 18 days and I didn't feel like doing laundry 3 times, so suitcase it was.

So, here's a little info about how this all went down. In January, once I finally picked a destination, I did what I always do when I need to book a flight. Ask my dad if I can put it on his credit card and pay him back. What? I'm 30 years old, you say? Why don't I have the money to book it on my own, you ask? To these questions, you get the standard Tim answer - Eff off! I plan trips. I go on trips. I can't SAVE for trips! Are you nuts? Look who you're talking to! In actuality, I paid back the flight money before I even left, and did manage to save the money for everything I needed. My dad even let me sit in the big boy chair for dinner a couple of times since. I'm all growed up now!

So, there she goes. Now I just had to pick cities to check out, and a stopover destination. Air New Zealand lets you pick from a few Island countries (Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Fiji, other islands full of huge, lazy people***) to check out for free on the trip to NZ or back. Fiji is the obvious choice for most, which basically ruled it out for me. I had picked Samoa, until I found out that packs of wild dogs attack people all the time, and Samoans all carry rocks and sticks to keep the dogs away. Seriously. While that sounds like a ton of fun, I decided to change it up and pick Rarotonga. Turns out there were dogs there too, but at least I didn't get attacked. Other animals took care of that. I'll get to that in a bit.

***Before you say it, no, the fact that the description of the island people and a description of me are eerily alike is not lost on me. Assholes.

Departure time. YVR has free wifi, but bans going to the website I write for (www.fourouncestofreedom.com, total cheap plug) because of it's "questionable content". What the hell? I write about MMA, not tentacle porn. Anyway, the ticket agent told me no exit row seats were available and I was lucky to get a seat at all, because the flight was full. An Indian guy came up and asked him a question, which neither of us understood. He spoke slower, and said "I just saw you, and you gave me wrong tag". The agent tells him it wasn't him that he came to, then turns to me and says "I guess we all look alike to him." That was awesome.

Turns out the agent was just fucking with me and I got an exit row seat. Sweet. Get to LAX, and spent my 6 hour layover bored out of my skull. I watched The Wire episodes, played on the net, watched some hockey in the bar with my beloved Miller Lite, etc. Finally...FINALLY I got on the plane. I got an exit row seat for this flight too, which was good because it's a 10 hour flight. Air NZ has a wicked in-flight entertainment system with like 100 movies, TV shows, and even cool games to play, so I wasn't bored at all. I even tried to sleep for the first time ever on a plane, by pulling the blanket completely over my head and attempting to curl up against the freezing-cold exit door. Did sleep come? Nyet. So I arrived in Rarotonga after being awake for 24 hours. Woo.


RAROTONGA

It was still dark when I arrived, so I couldn't see anything when we landed. Too bad, cuz apparently it's pretty nice. Get off the plane still wearing my hoody. Big mistake, since it's like 27 degrees and the humidity was like 4592%. I was soaked with sweat within milliseconds. Going through customs was kind of funny, since all the agents had medical masks on to protect themselves from the swine flu, and no one could understand a word they said. They had the cutest little drug puppy ever on the baggage claim thinger, walking over the top of everyone's bags to...sniff for drugs, presumably. Either that, or milk bones are banned in the Cooks. He couldn't have been more than 6 months old though, so it made the Cooks seem pretty budget right off the bat. "Quick, we need a drug dog for the flight! Go grab Fifita's beagle puppy and get him a vest!"

The shuttle was on time and quickly took me to my hotel, the Paradise Inn. It was about what I expected, but still amusing. There was no one at the front desk when I got there (at 6:30am), and there's a sign that says "If no one is at the front desk, walk to the back and beat the drum". Uh, okay. So, I did that. Out came a small, wiry Island dude named Nooroa, who said "Hello, Tim. Welcome to Rarotonga". Wait, what? Did I have a name tag on or something? How the fuck did he know my name? Well, I figured that one out pretty quickly.

He checked me in, showed me my room, and told me if I wanted a beer to just go grab one from the honesty bar. I already knew about the concept, but not the execution. You grab a beer from the fridge, and mark down on a card how many you've had. When you leave, they charge you appropriately. I'm not one to rip anyone off anyway, but there was a pretty obvious reason I couldn't get away with it anyway. Why, you ask?

I was the only person in the hotel.

16 rooms, and it was just me there. I went in off-season, and got there on a monday. That adds up to just Tim at the hotel. And that's how Nooroa knew my name - I was his only customer, so it was pretty easy to remember. It was extremely odd at first, but I got used to it quickly. They have a huge veranda outside of the bar that overlooks the ocean, so I grabbed a couple of beers and chilled out there for a bit. The sun was up by then, and the view was pretty damn good. Here, check it yourself (there are many more pics on my facebook page):





The water doesn't come all the way to the beach because there's a lagoon surrounding the island. I watched as various dogs and birds strolled down the beach looking for food, and was joined by the one of the hotel cats, Sheba. After that, I decided to walk into town, so I headed out to the main road. It took about 3 seconds to change my mind about that. It was Rarotonga's version of rush hour, and the one-lane-each-way road was tire-to-tire. I would say bumper-to-bumper, but everyone was on bikes. Mostly dirt-bikes and scooters. There was no sidewalk on the road, and everyone was going pretty quick. They were also on the wrong side of the road, which almost got me smoked after about 2 seconds of not paying attention. After about half a block of narrowly skirting death, I totally bailed and went back to the hotel to get some much-needed sleep.

"Some" sleep turned out to be about 7 hours. Oops. Around 3pm when I finally got motivated, I walked into town, which wasn't very far - maybe 5-10 minutes. There wasn't a lot going on. Lots of little grocery stores along the way, a few restaurants and such. Mostly bikes zooming by again, but a few vehicles...all Suzukis, for some reason. Guess that's all they sell there. It was hot as fuck, so I didn't walk as far as I would have liked to, but the scenery was pretty crazy. I couldn't see the beach from the road the rings the island at this point, but the interior of the island was amazing - pure jungle all the way to a pretty high peak in the middle. Check it:







As much as I wanted to explore the interior of the island right there and then, I had more pressing concerns: food and beer. I grabbed some kebabs from the...er, kebab store, and some beer from one of the mini grocery stores. They're all pretty funny - they sell everything from pig feed to spare tires to beer and pasta. Everything was fairly cheap, bout 10 NZD (7 bucks CDN) for a 6 pack. For those wondering, the Cooks use NZ currency and all hold NZ passports. I took those back to my room, then decided to take the bus around the island. It's pretty hard to get lost, since there are only two buses. Clockwise, and...you guessed it, counter-clockwise. I caught the counter-clockwise one, just to be different, and spent the next 45 minutes stunned by the scenery.

Apparently my hotel was cheap for a reason - it's not on one of the crazy beaches. "My" water wasn't all that different from home. Maybe a little more blueish than normal, but not much. The other side was unbelievable bluey/green water, and the lagoon made it look even crazier since the "tide" was about 200 feet away from the coast. The lagoon was bright blue, sitting on perfect beaches everywhere. Here ya go (taken a couple of days later):



I'm easy to please, so that seemed like enough touristy stuff for the day. I walked into town and went to the first bar I could find, appropriately named the Whatever Bar. Two people were there, and they just happened to be HUGE. Taller than me, and way wider than me. Both of them. I grabbed a beer and went to sit on the other side of the patio, but one of the guys told me to sit at the bar, so I did. They turned out to be pretty cool guys, told me some stuff about the island and that the bar doesn't pick up much until 8 or so. They also had some sick tattoos all over the place. Turns out almost everyone does, even the women. A few even had them on their faces, which was a little odd at first.

I didn't hang out long because I wanted to check out the sunset off the hotel veranda, so I went back and did exactly that. Grabbed a few bar beers, and chilled for a while. Having your own beach and veranda to watch a sunset is an amazing thing, something I had never even considered before. Like the morning, dogs and angry birds wandered by, and I just relaxed for a while. I was looking for some relaxation, and had certainly found it. It was awesome. Traveling and vacationing are very different things, and I wanted to do a little of both on this trip. So far, so good.

I was tired after all that non-excitement for some reason, so I went back to my room and watched a movie on my laptop (no TV in my room, which I'm sure you could guess, being on a tropical island and all that). The Cooks are on Hawaii time, 3 hours behind us, so it wasn't too hard to adjust to the time change. I passed out around my regular time, happy with my first day in paradise.

Day 2 started pretty similarly to day 1. Veranda for a while, aborted trip into town, and some vegging time. Took the bus around the island again. This time I got off the bus far on the other side of town, and walked into the interior of the island a bit. Other than lots of coconuts, little houses surrounded by vegetation, and lots of barefoot kids, there wasn't much up that way. I went looking for a bar to grab some lunch in, but none were open. So...I went and used the internet at a cafe. I'm a nerd, bite me. Back to the hotel for a beer or 3, then my traumatizing encounter with the wildlife. I love spending so much time leading up to a story with such a shitty payoff.

There were more roads leading to the interior of the island closer to my hotel, so after it cooled off a bit I went jungle hunting. A lot of the roads were dead ends full of kids playing, or the odd HUGE Island woman chillin on her stoop. Finally I found one heading uphill that looked promising, so I started trekking. I was doing pretty well, getting into some thick underbrush and stuff, until I turned a corner and saw a roadblock. A huge, pink, grunting roadblock. The biggest fucking pig I've ever seen in my life was just standing in the road in front of me, looking in the other direction - but not for long. As soon as he saw me, he grunted something that probably translated to somewhere along the lines of "SPAAAARTA!" and charged directly towards me.

Being the world traveler that I am, I know how to handle situations like these, obviously. You can all guess what I did too - I screamed like a girl and ran for my life. Running downhill on a gravel road isn't as easy as it might seem, especially with a rhino-like pig chasing you and making rhino-like noises. Wait, do rhinos even make noises? Surprisingly, a scared pig in a Cards jersey is faster than an angry Rarotongan pig, because I lost him after a little while. Understandably (to me at least), I aborted my jungle trekking and went directly to a bar to ease my nerves a bit with a frosty Tui or 4. It was called the Staircase bar, but you didn't have to go up a staircase to get into it. Oh, those wacky Islanders. I had dinner there, and decided to call it an early night since there wasn't a lot going on again. Veranda, beer, The Wire, and my comfy bed in the loft of my room. And still no one at the hotel.

By the time I set out on day 3, I had two goals - to actually get off the bus on the other side of the island, and to go back up into the jungle. I had convinced myself that I could juke the pig like a tubby running back and continue past him to the promise land. I have no idea how I convinced myself of that, considering I'd have to run UPHILL from him, and let's face it - I'm a huge baby. Wait, I do remember what convinced me of all that - Speight's Gold Medal Lager.

Anyway, first it was bus time. I forgot to mention before that the bus is some sort of asian castoff, and all the instructions on it are written in some text I obviously couldn't decipher. I know the basics of the big ones though, and it definitely wasn't any of those. I dunno where they got this thing, but it was ollllld. So I got off the bus around one of the resorts, and headed to the beach. There aren't any "public" beaches around there, but people could use the resort beaches if they so pleased. Obviously they were amazing, but I didn't spend much time there because there were a shitload of bugs and it was hot as hell. I got back on the bus and went a little further, to an area devoid of people. The water wasn't as nice, but the scenery was pretty cool. I'd show you a pic, but I still hadn't figured out how to use my camera by that point, and none of the pics turned out because the flash was on or something. Master of technology I is not.

Back to town, used the net, had a couple and some lunch, and got psyched for stage 2 - Pig vs. Pig, round 2. I walked up the same street, this time on the grass skirting it so I wouldn't give myself away. Anyone watching me surely would have thought I was retarded while I crept up to the bushes and slowly peeked around the corner...and didn't see anything. No animals at all. YES! I started up the hill and got about 100 feet or so, when I heard a very familiar noise. Grunting. FUCK. I froze in my tracks, ready to book it once again, but after a few seconds I realized it wasn't angry grunting, just...regular? grunting. So I kept going. Not long after that, I found out why he didn't charge me. He was in a fucking cage!

I approached the cage slowly, but grew more confident quickly when I realized that motherfucker was locked up like OJ. I felt so vindicated, I actually started talking shit. To a pig. Again, anyone watching me must have been wondering what the fuck I was doing. "Not so tough now in your cage, are you? You pig pink fuck! You can't sto--" Wrong move, Tim.

As soon as he heard "fuck", he started slamming against the side of the cage and went back to angry grunting. My confidence evaporated quicker than my chances at picking up women at the bar, and - you guessed it - I ran away again. And downhill to boot, directly against the whole fucking idea of my plan. I didn't go far though, and eventually came back...where I ran into the pig's owner, a suitably-large Island woman with tattoos all over her arms. "Sorry about the pig, he's not that friendly". Well no shit, Island Captain Obvious. Oh, and my reward for finally getting past the jungle guardian? A dead end around the next corner. No more jungle. It wouldn't be one of my stories if something went RIGHT, would it?

Here's the pig in his cage:



After checking out some more jungle roads that were thankfully swine-less, I headed back to the hotel. The rest of the day was the usual stuff after that - veranda sunset, pub for dinner, beers/Wire in the room, and some sleepy time. My 3 days so far had been a lot different from what I had expected, but I was content. Except for the bug bites. Lots, and lots of bug bites. Even paradise isn't perfect.

I had no idea what to do with my last day. My flight left at 5:30pm, and I had my hotel room till then, but I had done pretty much everything I wanted to already. Let's face it, Rarotonga's not very big. I did the veranda thing, I did the internet thing. Took the bus around the island one last time. Then just killed time watching The Wire. It felt retarded to "waste time" on a utopian island I might never see again, but it is what it is. I wasn't going to drink before a flight, and other than playing with Sheba (who meowed at my hotel room door every night until I let her in to hang out for a bit...awesome cat), chillin was my only option.

Eventually I headed out to the airport, after Nooroa's beaver-toothed Kiwi wife made me shuttle reservations. I had done a pretty good job not spending a lot of money so far, considering the island's fairly cheap and there's just not a lot of ways to blow cash. The island got the final laugh though, with a 55 NZD departure tax. Jesus fuck that's pricey. The airport was also open-air with no AC, so I was fucking cooking. And on top of that, my belt got caught in their ancient screening machine and ripped, so my jeans were riding somewhere around my knees for the next few hours. After enduring countless bastard children running and screaming through the seating room unattended, I was finally off to the promise land - New Zealand. At the time, the only thing I remember thinking was "Fuck, I hope they sell belts there."

Boston, part 2

Shame on me. Between getting a writing job and being a lazy mofo, I never got around to actually writing this. I'm sure Jess isn't happy about that, because the few days were pretty amusing, but...he's a bitch, so he doesn't matter! HA!

Anyway, to save you the time and trouble from having to look for part one, here's a link. Re-read, review, and...here we go.

I left off right where I got back to town after fetching Bitch's keys like a drunk, pot-bellied bloodhound. After we went to grab the car, we figured we had already had enough excitement for one day (Fuck you Rhode Island), so we decided to just stay home and get drunk. As usual, bitch was hammered off of 3 drinks, pissing and moaning about various stuff. Myself, on the other hand...I was having a helluva time trying to get pissed. You see, this Natty Light stuff is exactly that...light. Between my interstate (F U RH) trip and actually eating, apparently I just didn't have it in me to get drunk, no matter how fast I mainlined those little bastards.

For a while, at least.

I have no idea what time we actually started drinking, but by midnight I had convinced drunk bitch that online gambling was cool, so he used his fancy new american credit card to deposit some money and to play blackjack. He also made me promise not to tell Jamie. Oops.

By 1am, I had finally caught up and I was gassed. He was doing well with his money. Me? Not so much. He had graciously let me use his extra laptop (who has an extra laptop?), and between baseball betting and blackjack, I was down a fair amount of money. At least 5 cases of Natty. Throw in the 2 cases I consumed that night, and it was a rough night. I still love Natty Light though, not to worry.

At 2am, we were just sittin around bullshitting, and we both kept hearing a loud banging noise coming from outside. We went out on the patio, and we couldn't see anything...but we could hear it. It sounded distinctly like a skateboard rolling down a hill, then it bashing into something after a failed trick. And an occasional "damn" coming from the skateboard's owner. It was directly underneath the patio, so we couldn't see the little bastard though. At first we ignored it, but it started fucking grating on our drunk nerves after a few minutes. Being the big tough guy I am, I decided I was going out to see what the fuck was going on. Out the front door, down the stairs, out the door, and I peeked around the corner to see...

A kid on a skateboard. Duh.

Instead of actually saying anything, my drunk ass just went back upstairs to inform Jess that, yes, it was a kid on a skateboard. And 3 sets of stairs wore me out after 24 Nattys. Nice work, Tim.

***I'm just waiting for the jokes you motherfuckers will come up with about that stairs comment. I might as well pre-emptively throw out a "I hate all of you".***

So, we're at a loss about what to do. Apparently we're too chicken to yell at a 14 year old. We're drunk. It's really annoying. We look out again, and notice a cop sitting in the bus loop across the street, who's not doing a damn thing. He's right across the street from a kid skateboarding AT 2 FUCKING AM in front of a bunch of shops, right under a high-end condo unit. I guess his Dunkin Donut had all 143% of his attention at that particular time.

The following conversation ensued after noticing John Law and his lack of law enforcement:

Tim: "Maybe we should call the cops?"
Jess: "What, yell across the street?"
Tim: "No, dipshit. Like, PHONE the popo. Ask why Super Trooper over there isn't doing anything."
Jess: "Do we call 911? They'll laugh at us."
Tim: "No, there must be some local police phone number. Go look it up."

Jess goes to the Watertown PD website, and you can actually listen to their police scanner on their website. So...we listened. Magically, not much was going on. Super Trooper apparently wasn't going to do anything about the annoying little bastard, so I called the police on him. How juvenile.

Jess: "You call. I'll fuck it up. *laughing uncontrollably* What are you going to say?"
Tim: "I dunno. I'll come up with something."

Watertown PD: "Police."
Tim: "Uh, hi. There's an annoying kid outside."
PD: "So?"
Tim: "Uh, I mean, this kid is skateboarding outside the building, banging and crashing, and uh, we can't see him but I ran downstairs and yea it's him, but, uh, he's annoying."
Jess: *still laughing uncontrollably*
PD: "Sir, he's just...skateboarding?"
Tim: Well, yea, but he's really loud, and it's 2am, and this is a nice building. That I don't live in. *muffled* CRAP!"
PD: "You don't live there? What?"
Tim: "I mean, my friend lives here, but he's...here. But he made me call. Anyway, there's a cop across the street, but he's not doing anything about it."
PD: "Maybe because there's nothing to do?"
Tim: "Well, he looks like he's good at doing nothing, but...I mean...uh..."
Jess *still laughing*
PD: ........
Tim: "Look, we can't sleep. This kid's bothering us. Who else are we supposed to call? Can you just get the cop to come over and get rid of the kid?"
PD: "Okay sir, I'll look into it."
Jess and Tim: "HAAAHAHAHAHAHA! Go beer!"

So, it's official. Jess and I were acting like 85 year old men. Ratting to the popo on some kid that was probably just bored. But dammit, he was annoying! We sat there impatiently for close to 10 MINUTES before we heard the dispatcher radio to Super Trooper across the street to do something about it. We watched through the blinds like drunk voyeurs as the cop went under the building, then even crept out onto the patio like drunk Ninjas so we could hear what was going on (we couldn't), until the kid and cop left. YES! SUCCESS! We high-fived, went inside, chugged our beers, and acted like we just solved a triple homicide.

Once again, go beer.

Fast-forward to saturday morning. Or, afternoon. I can't remember if I mentioned it in the last blog or not, but Jess got invited by his boss to attend the Red Sox game that night, and sit in a luxury box. These people are fucking rich, so it was a big deal for him. I had no problem with chillin for a night while he was high-rolling, so we decided to drive up to New Hampshire and check out Nashua for a couple of hours, then come back around 4 so he could head out. We were obviously worried that another state might try to stick it in our proverbial poopers, but it was worth the risk so we could add a state to our lists. My list is still longer, bitch. You know it!


So, we headed up to Nashua. Jess threatened to turn around the entire time so I wouldn't be able to add the state to my list. Damn him. Nashua was...plain. Town of 60,000 people, but it didn't feel like it. It had a main drag with 3 or 4 blocks of restaurants, and a whole lot of suburbia. Not bad, not great. We ate lunch, which was good. We saw a weird black couple arguing on a payphone by the gas station. Both of them, on one phone. The highlight for me was Jess laughing at my response to his "What do we do now?" question:

Tim: "What do we do now? Get out of this shithole state before something goes seriously wrong, that's what!"

So, we headed back to Watertown. I grabbed an undisclosed amount of Natty Light (somewhere between 6 and 36), and Jess headed off to the game. I went and got some pizza, emptied some Natty cans of their contents, and watched the game myself (since I had bet on it). Turned out to be a pretty good game. After watching some comedy shows and doing my laundry, I...drank more beer. Around midnight, the fun began.

I heard the door. I can't say I heard the door open, because it wasn't being opened. I'm sure someone was attempting to open it, but that person was waaaay too drunk to get that shit right the first time. Finally bitch gets inside, and nearly falls down in his kitchen right away. He is trying to tell me about his entire night in 10 seconds, but it comes out as a bunch of gibberish. He then aims for the bathroom and staggers in there. This is already one of the funniest things I've seen in weeks, and it's just beginning.

He's just leaning over the bathroom sink, spitting. I opened a chelada (beer + clamato, they sell them in cans down there) and offered it to him. He responded with a guttural NOOOO and spit a whole lot more into the sink. If I believed in a god, I would have been praying for him to puke right there, but alas it didn't happen. Why?

He'd already done some puking, that's why!

He managed to explain to me over the course of the next hour exactly what had happened to him that night. He went to the game. The box had an open bar. He was being fed beer. Then shots of sambuca, shots of tequila, and shots of something else. Then, shots of ALL THREE of those liquors poured into one glass. The game was a blur to him, he had no idea who won or what happened. After the game, they went to some fancy seafood place, where they consumed a shitload of oysters and other sea critters, along with more assorted liquors. Some girl tried to talk to him about something, and he yelled something along the lines of "GET YOUR OWN FUCKING OYSTER!" to her. Classy.

After finally escaping all of that, he decided he had to get home. Obviously, a drunk guy that was just out at a high-roller party, a guy with a high salary job, a guy that's residing in a pimp condo on the company dime...that guy finds the easiest, most convenient way to get home, right?

Too bad this is Jess we're talking about. He took the fucking bus.

Magically, halfway through his bus trip, he felt the need to puke. He rang the dinger thing about 400 times, fell out the back of the bus, and puked all over the place. On the sidewalk. Once again, classy. Only THEN did he decide a cab would be a prudent idea. I'm sure the cabbie looooved his smelly passenger. To top it off, he was passed the fuck out in the cab until he felt the urge to puke again. It just so happened that he was in the square across from his place, so he stumbled out of the cab, paid the guy somehow, and ran down to the river and puked again. The river that runs though the center of a really nice town. Pure class.

After that, he staggered home and told me the story. The above story was littered with the phrases "I'M SOOO DRUNK" and "I DON'T FEEEEL GOOOOOD" approximately 40 times. Each. I almost puked myself, from laughter. It was quite the story. After taking deep breaths and spitting in the sink for a bit due to me trying to continually offer him booze, he finally passed out. I had a few more beers and passed out myself, still laughing at his retardedness.

We had planned to go to Connecticut the next day, but I wasn't sure if bitch would actually be up for it or not. He was most definitely hungover, but he kept to his word and we headed south. We had to go through Rhode Island on the way, so we spent 40 or so miles just yelling and screaming at the fucking waste of land and it's citizens. There was no way in hell we were going to stop, that's for damn sure. We carried on through that shithole, and entered...another shithole. Actually, Connecticut didn't turn out to be that bad, but it's...strange.

Our first stop was only because I kept harassing Jess to go there. It was a town called Mystic. I have no idea why I've always wanted to go there, I...just have. There's nothing special there, really. It's a nice little town. It had a nice little marina with some old houses and stuff, which we were going to check out...until we realized it was some sort of museum, and we had to pay 15 bucks to do it. Suuure. Don't they know there's Indians up the road with a fancy ol' casino?

Here's Mystic, by the way:




So, guess where we went? There are actually two fancy ol' casinos in CT - Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. They're very odd though. Other than a freeway sign, there are absolutely ZERO directions leading you to the casinos. No signs, no nothing. I'm not sure why. I think the state won't advertise for the Indians or something. Anyway, it took us forever to find one, and the only reason we could is because of the GPS on bitch's Iphone. Once we did though...wow.

We went to Foxwoods first. It was fucking MASSIVE. Bigger than any Vegas casino I've ever seen. They all look the same on the inside, but it's extremely odd walking from one part of the casino to another, and looking out the windows. In Vegas, you see neon, people, other casinos, traffic...in Connecticut, you see... Grass. And trees. FOR MILES. The casinos are like an oasis in the desert, except they're in a forest and they're an addiction source, not a water source. That was a terrible analogy.

So, we wandered around. Played some slots, did some exploring. We wanted to play blackjack, but every table in the entire casino had a 15 dollar minimum for some reason. I guess you gotta raise the stakes when you've got people trapped in the forest or something. Jess is still pretty hungover, which is quite amusing. We went into the sportsbook, since it seemed like the best place to get free drinks. Like everything else, it was absolutely huge. We sat down and bet on a few horse races, eventually earning a free corona. WOO HOO! I lost 22 bucks on horse races for a corona! Good deal!

After that, we decided to grab some food. They had a cool place called the "Burke In The Box" (seriously), but I wasn't down for a "cheeseburker". I couldn't make this shit up if I tried, folks. See?




We saw a cool BBQ place from far away and decided to go there, but we changed our mind once we arrived. The line was longer than the "non-citizen" lineup at a Canadian passport office. We would have been there for hours. There was a less-busy Hard Rock around the corner, which seemed like a good alternative. Couple beers, some loud music, and some guy asking Jess if he could use his Iphone. Surprisingly Jess let him, even though there was no way he was making a local call. Fuck, this place was so big I think a call from one side to the other would be long distance.

After that excitement, we decided to head over and check out the other casino, the Mohegan Sun. The worst part of the Foxwoods experience? We didn't see one fucking Indian. Not one. Fail.

By the time we got to Mohegan (using my awesome navigational skills), it was already dark. If I thought Foxwoods was big...wow. This place was even bigger. Our parking spot was something like Lot 5, Floor 4, Sector D, Sub-Sector QQ, Row 92, stall 1919. I wanted to leave a trail of peanut shells so we'd find out way back, but I didn't have any peanuts on me. Denied!

This casino was a lot cooler. It's divided up into 3 or 4 "themes", all having different features and layouts. It took us forever to cover the entire thing, but it was definitely worth it. I really liked it, since it just had a better vibe than Foxwoods. Same 15 dollar tables though. These invisible Indians weren't cheap either.

We were done with Connecticut, so we headed back to Boston. Bitch was STILL hungover, but I wasn't! We gambled some more on our respective laptops and I drank beer until he finally passed out. Apparently the Natty caught up to me quick that night, because I lost 50 bucks playing blackjack. Motherfucker!

Last full day was up, and it was Fenway time! We had some time to kill though, since it was a night game. Since I had been lazy as shit and hadn't actually gone to Harvard yet (even though it was 10 minutes away), bitch decided that he'd drag my ass there. I also had other motivations for going - I promised Lisa I'd buy her a Harvard hoody, and getting my lazy ass to Harvard was much easier than 2 years of listening to "I can't believe you didn't get me a hoody!" at the bar.

Just kidding Lisa!

So, we went to Harvard. As expected, it's really nice. It was the day before classes started, so kids everywhere were moving in. It was mildly hectic. A bunch of nerdy kids were hanging out in the square with a "FREE HUGS" sign. Even Jess took a pass on these deviants, and he's quite the hugger.

He's really not, but the thought of him hugging everyone made me laugh, so it stays.

Anyway, we had lunch there and wandered around for a while before we bought Lisa's hoody and left. Since we still had hours to kill, Jess said we should go downtown and check out the Marina and stuff. I had never actually done that my first time there, so it sounded like a good idea to me. As expected, it's a pretty nice area. The aquarium is right beside the marina, and they have a glass window facing out so you can see some of the animals. It was like a mirror!

I still had money left, and I make it a point of never going home from a trip with money, so we went to one of the many clothing stalls down there. I bought a black-and-green Boston hoody and a green Celtics hat. I was like a member of House of Pain. Or a fat leprechaun. The bitches were going crazy either way, yo. So, after all that (and beers of course), we made our way up to Fenway. We were sitting in dead center field, but it's Fenway...every seat is awesome. Well, awesome for viewing, anyway. The seats were fucking TINY, with zero leg room. It was like being on a Guatemalan bus. I was uncomfortable the entire game, beer or no beer. Stupid Fenway.

They introduced a bunch of US Olympic medal winners, which I didn't give a flying fuck about until...Alicia Sacramone was announced. Uh, she's kinda hot! And I've been closer to her (approximately 550 feet, give or take) than you have. So there!
The game turned out pretty good, lots of offense and Sox dominance. A couple of funny crowd incidents were the highlight for me though.

The first was a pushing match between 2 fans seated in the front row of our section. After babbling in their stupid accent and pushing a bit, security stepped between them. Well, the guy on the left didn't like that, so he reached around the security guard and threw his FULL DRINK right in the other guys face! The wet guy went fucking bananas, the tosser (and all of us) laughed hysterically, and security had it's hands full. Eventually they got shit sorted, but it was pretty awesome.

The second happened in the row behind us, about 5 seats over. A guy was absolutely gassed, basically falling asleep on his buddies by the 3rd inning. I guess he was sick or something, because he was also coughing uncontrollably (when he was awake). The girls sitting in front of him commented on it a couple of times, while he just mumbled an apology and kept coughing. In the 6th inning, shit went down, son!. I just happened to be looking over when he took a huge swig of beer, and I guess felt the need to cough immediately after...so he spit/coughed the entire mouthful all over the girls back. Needless to say, she wasn't amused, and completely flipped out (in her stupid accent). I tried my hardest not to laugh, but how do you not laugh at that? She berated the guy for a while, until his buddies decided enough was enough and escorted him out of the stadium...to a round of applause from quite a few people.

Our view in Fenway:




This, folks, is where the story winds down. After the game, a few more beers were consumed. My flight home left at 7am, so I had to be at the airport by 5:30 or so. Since I still hadn't adjusted to eastern time in the week or so I was in the zone, I was still going to bed at 4:30am every night. Yup, that means I got an hour of sleep, give or take. Bitch was nice enough to drive me to the airport (after I harassed him about it approximately 300 times), where my flight actually left on time. After a quick connect in Salt Lake City (I've been to Utah, bitch!), I got home around 10am pacific time. I had planned on going to work, but I was waaaay too bagged for that. I just took the bus home and slept for 17 hours or so. My usual ending to any trip.

Bitch, thanks for the hospitality. You're lucky that wasn't actually your couch, cuz I think I spilled at least 3 Nattys on it, and lost a chocolate bar in it. Oops. I'm never, ever going to Rhode Island again, and you shouldn't either. Yes, you went to Vermont after I left and I've never been. I got 2 words for ya:

Cook. Islands.

I win bitch! I WIN!

Toothpicks are dumb

After dinner last night, I was using the obligatory toothpick to rid my teeth of excess steak. Midway through, I dropped it. I looked down and couldn't see it, so I stepped to the side, and....the motherfucker, somehow, became embedded in my heel. I'm not kidding when I say almost half of it was now INSIDE my heel. Oww is not a strong enough word to describe the pain. Wait...is oww even a word?

Anyway, I had to pull the motherfucker out super slowly so I didn't get a sliver inside, which hurt like hell too. The puncture was only the size of a toothpick though. Not much blood. Not so bad, right?

WRONG. I can't put any weight on my heel today. I'm walking around like Terry Fox. This fucking sucks. All from a toothpick. A TOOTHPICK!

25 random things about me

1. I've been to 12 countries, 6 Canadian provinces, 23 US states, and 4 Mexican states.
2. I've also been to airports in Minnesota and Utah, but Jess says I can't count those.
3. One of my legs is a little longer than the other one. It makes standing on the bus a bitch.
4. After all the writing I've done (blog, other crap), finally getting a writing job is tremendously rewarding.
5. I drink enough Old Milwaukee to know that they've had their "71st anniversary can" out for over 3 years now, and are still using it.
6. If I could figure out a way to support myself on the road, I'd never leave it.
7. I know way too much about jiu jitsu.
8. I finish people's sentences all the time, and I'm pretty sure it annoys the shit out of them.
9. I delete facebook friends if their statuses repeatedly annoy me.
10. I kick ass at Jeopardy for money, and Jim refuses to play me.
11. If you're reading this, I can outdrink you. Yes, you.
12. I write down funny stuff on Keno tickets at the pub all the time, and rarely stay sober enough to remember to take them home. Thus, all the funny is lost.
13. I just watched parts 1 and 2 of Che, and they both fucking ruled. Go watch them.
14. After I go to New Zealand in May, my next big trip will be to either Argentina or Japan.
15. I can read the same books over and over again and still find them entertaining.
16. I drink beer at work at least once a week. Sometimes more. And it's okay.
17. I just realized I wrote 11 twice, and had to go back and change the subsequent numbers.
18. People talk to me too much when I'm trying to do stuff. This annoys me.
19. I rarely answer the phone. I probably know it's you calling, but I still don't answer. Don't take offense. I hate the phone, not you. Well, most of you.
20. I probably watch 225-250 NHL hockey games a season. Seriously. And I've been to NHL games in 11 different cities.
21. People that don't know me very well occasionally accuse me of being racist, when I'm usually just tryin to be funny. People that do know me well know better, for the most part. Especially the hindus.
22. My current profile picture makes me laugh every time I look at it.
23. I once got drawn out so bad playing online poker, i ripped my monitor off my desk, walked out onto my patio, and almost chucked it into the neighbours yard. Luckily, I came back to reality about a millisecond before said throw.
24. I hate malls with a passion. I would rather order something online and wait a week for it to come than go to a maill and pick it up right away.
25. I have way too much time on my hands if I have a full time job and a writing job and I fucking wrote all this up.