Timber Trail Pt. II: Sparring Match vs. Street Fight

In the previous post I made the bold claim that in mountain biking downhill is harder than uphill. There’s nothing bold about saying it’s harder on the body, because it’s only riding downhill that you have any weight in your hands and shoulders. Sooner or later the rattling is going to wear on you. But which one is harder on the mind is debatable. It depends to some extent on personal taste. Or rather, personal dread.

Here’s the thing about biking uphill: you’re not going to get hurt. When you round a corner and see the climb is longer and steeper than you expected, it’s definitely a blow to morale. But you’re not going to break anything. You can stop whenever you want.

That’s not true riding downhill. On sealed roads, of course, downhill is a breeze. But mountain bike trails require all kinds of technical skills, and one of the many factors that make me the Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand is I haven’t learned those skills. Dodging tree limbs is easy enough. Cornering in wet gravel down a steep switchback is something else entirely. Stopping before you reach the turn isn’t even up to you sometimes. Sometimes it’s up to physics

There must be a specific skill for taking those hairpin turns. I can tell because they’re all built the same. There’s clearly a right way to approach them. And then there’s my way to approach them, which is to slow waaaaay down and maybe use my tippy toes if the mood strikes.

I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing out there, which means I spend about half the time with the mantra don’t go over the handlebars don’t go over the handlebars running through my head. And for good reason. The Timber Trail sent me over the handlebars twice. In both cases it’s because I got cocky and built up too much speed, and in both cases I got off light. No serious injuries, but luck didn’t have to break that way.

Again, Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand here. This is not an especially difficult trail. Grade 3, intermediate, but with a few days of rain and a heavy load, my brakes are not everything I could hope for. The next time I get to a decent bike shop, Booster’s getting bigger rotors. I thought hers were pretty good, but on the Timber Trail I got a look at what some of these e-bikes have. They’re practically frisbees.

I got to ride an e-bike for the first time, by the way. In camp I got to talking with another rider and he let me test drive his. Holy shit are those things fun! (This one was $10,000, so it better be.) You can climb anything, and in turbo mode you can do it fast. I can see getting one if there’s ever a 90% off sale.

But circling around to the original point, to me biking uphill is like a friendly sparring match. Sure, sometimes you get your ass kicked, but nobody’s getting hurt. Biking downhill on sealed roads is like resting between rounds. Easy peasy. But descending MTB trails is like a street fight. It will probably go okay if you have the right skills, but things can still go south. And if they do, your life can get real bad real quick.

So uphill is worse than down if you have the right skill set. Or if you’re young enough to still believe you’re immortal. Me, I’ve got too many battle scars and not enough technical tricks.

Speaking of circling around, the tail end of the Timber Trail has a feature I’ve never seen before. It loops under itself. With a couple of bridges and a tunnel through the mountain, it spirals down and exits beneath the entrance. Obviously this means dwarves like mountain biking. No one else would mine a bike trail through stone.

Timber Trail Pt. I: Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal

The Timber Trail is one of New Zealand’s most famous mountain bike trails. 82 kilometers, 1,550 meters of elevation gain, a two-day ride for most who attempt it. (That’s 51 miles long and a mile of elevation gain for you non-metrics. Two days is still two days.) If you’re riding the Tour Aotearoa, add another 50 km and 600 meters of elevation to get to the Trail from the sleepy little village of Mangakino.

This is the third most difficult thing I attempted last weekend.

Nearly all the elevation gain is from Mangakino to the trailhead. Still, it only ranks third. Check it out in my guidebook:

(By the way, those penciled-in numbers are my cumulative distance ridden so far. To put them in the appropriate context for this blog, Frodo and Sam walked 732 km from Hobbiton to Rivendell. My total ride from Cape Reinga to Bluff is almost exactly the distance from the Shire to Mount Doom.)

The most difficult thing I attempted this weekend, which I still have not achieved, is getting on the interwebs. I bought a dumbphone just to be a hotspot for my smartphone, so I could do things like know where the hell I’m going. For four weeks this worked great. Then it stopped. Inexplicably. Not even Young People have been able to fix it.

Not a major problem. It would be nice to text with family and get caught up with the blog (still a week behind), but otherwise the only inconvenience is I don’t have GPS. My GPS compooter is supposed to have that well in hand, right?

Sadly not. It’s much better than the last one: it worked for almost two weeks before its sudden but inevitable betrayal. Nevertheless, it’s a functional compass and odometer, which is all I need to confirm where I am in my guidebooks.

But for the Timber Trail, not even a guidebook is necessary. It is almost oppressively well marked, with milestones (kilometerstones?) the whole way and signposts at almost every turn. It’s also hard to get lost when you know your only job is to bike all the way up, then all the way down.

The climb is breathtaking in every sense. The first bridge to cross is chainlink fence bent into a long, skinny taco about four inches narrower than Booster’s handlebars. We had to go single file, me backwards and her forwards, with all her bags left behind for a second and third trip. I can carry them all in one go but the bridge is too tippy not to have a hand free.

The bridges along the Trail itself are much sturdier, as they see so much more traffic. But they’re still thrilling to cross. They’re like a spiderweb in the first phase of construction, one main line with a few offshoots to anchor it. Strong as steel, thank goodness, but it still feels like walking a tightrope. And the tightrope is a good 100 feet over the rushing river below.

What goes up must come down, of course, and the descent takes the silver medal for most difficult things I tried this weekend. Even after my near-disastrous experience on the Tasmanian Trail, it still surprises me that downhill is so much harder than up. But this post is already overly long, so I’ll save that tale for next time.

Paeroa Pt. II: Parks and Rec

Peeking out from under the rain fly, I was happy to see I had not only Booster’s rear tire but also the rest of her, still attached. I also saw a gigantic red lawnmower coming straight for me.

After bike thieves, this is the second most common predator targeting urban bikepackers: the Department of Parks and Recreation. They came for me in Dargaville too, where I camped out behind a community center. And once in Tasmania, come to think of it, on a rugby pitch in Judbury. Their M.O. is a friendly drive-by, loud enough and close enough to be your alarm clock. Then they go about their business while you frantically shove stuff in dry bags to sort out later.

My default assumption—and this is fear culture talking again—is that they’d be pissed at me for making their job harder. A general principle I try to live by is don’t make people’s jobs harder. So in all three cases I apologized, and all three times the answer was perfectly friendly. It turns out they mow their lawns the same way I do mine: I don’t care which corner I start in or where I finish, so long as it’s all the same length when I get done.

Maybe it speaks to a lack of faith in humanity that I assume the response will be annoyance, not indifference. Truth to tell, if I woke up one day to find you camped out in my front yard, I wouldn’t care. Just don’t make a mess. But these riding mower drive-bys have me wondering about how we think about the homeless.

On a technicality I’m homeless. Homeless but not addressless, let’s say. I’ve rented my house out, so I have no home to return to. And maybe if people who work for the city found me camped out behind the grocery store ten nights in a row, they would lump me in with “the homelessness problem“ and not “weird tourists.” But I’m also the beneficiary of other things that would really benefit homeless people.

People just offer me food. It usually starts when they see me on the bike, maybe in a parking lot or at a campground. They ask questions, we get to talking, they give me food. But in one case, there were no introductions; a van just pulled up on the road and the passenger offered me cookies. It happens so often that I’ve started buying fewer groceries. Less weight to schlep uphill.

I haven’t asked for any of this, by the way. My best guess is people see I’m doing something difficult and they want to help.

But living on the street is difficult too. A hell of a lot harder than what I’m doing. It might be a less comfortable conversation for you, but you could ask those folks the same questions people ask me: where did you come from, how does your family keep track of you, are you by yourself, what does your family think of this, etc. Or you could just drive up and give people cookies. Or—and this happens to me too sometimes—you could cook lunch on the spot and invite them to join you.

I know, I know, handouts aren’t a panacea. The problem is more complex than that. And really what I’m thinking about isn’t “the homelessness problem.“ It’s compassion.

The major writing I’m doing on this sabbatical is about compassion. I won’t bore you with the academic minutiae, except to say I have unanswered questions about how we extend compassion to others. What is it about a heavily laden bicycle that makes that easy? Is it just the appeal of novelty? The fact that you don’t see this often? Do people think it’s kind of a cool story and they want to be a part of it?

I mean, obviously it helps that I’m just so goddamn handsome. And charming. And humble. But that can’t be all of it.

Does it matter that my homelessness is entirely voluntary? That it has a foreseeable end date? That’s not true of everybody who sleeps outdoors in quaint Paeroa. But shouldn’t that make it less likely for people to just randomly give me food? Or have I totally misjudged their motives? Maybe I look more haggard than I think. Maybe they think I’m about to keel over if they don’t feed me.

I don’t know. I do know I should recalibrate my faith in humanity. My last interaction in Paeroa was with a muscular, macho, heavily tattooed guy whose wallet probably says Bad Motherfucker. I had stopped to fill Booster’s water bottles and he walked straight at me with purpose. There are places in the world where what happens next is a bike theft. But not here. This guy says, “You don’t want to drink that, mate. Those campervans, they wash out their toilets here.” He hurried to get to me because he didn’t want me to get sick.

Paeroa Pt. I: How To Get Your Bike Stolen

Here’s one of those things you are never, ever supposed to do: urban bike camping. One of the perennial questions on bikepacking forums is what to do about bike security. In one sense the question is oxymoronic: there’s really no such thing as a securely locked bike. I know of a case where instead of disabling the lock, the thieves put the entire bike rack in the bed of a pickup truck, bicycle still attached, and just drove away. The fact is, the only way to prevent a determined thief from stealing your bike is to make sure the thief never has prolonged access to it.

So in the most important sense, the question is not oxymoronic. The security question is how much of a pain in the ass you can make it to steal your bike so the thief just moves on to somebody else’s. And anyway, I don’t care about determined bike thieves. They’re a given. I’m more worried about dumbass fourteen-year-olds indulging an impulse or showing off to their friends. I don’t care what country you’re in or what the crime rate is there; fourteen-year-olds are impulsive dumbasses the world over.

One of the most touted maxims on the bikepacking forums is never let your bicycle out of your sight. It’s a nice idea, but I have questions for these people about where they poop.   The more practical advice on the forums is about little things you can do to prevent the quick grab-n-go kind of theft. And some of these are simple, creative, and cheap. Leave it parked in its highest gear, so it’s hard to ride away. Better still, take the chain off the chain ring. Dialing it up a notch, remove the pedals. Quick release saddles and wheels are no longer in fashion; they’re just another easily stolen thing to worry about.

Obviously you can lock your bike too, but that runs afoul of another perennial bikepacking concern: how to keep weight down. Locks that actually work are heavy. Lightweight locks are basically toys. But I have one anyway, basically a steel zip-tie with a combination lock on one end. It’s one step above wishful thinking but it helps me keep that fear culture instinct in check.

Far more effective, I think—and I actually heard it go off the other day—is my hypersensitive motion detector alarm. If you so much is nudge that bike, it erupts with a loud electronic burp, and if you do it again it wails like a banshee. I’m sure a thief with a well-trained eye knows the product and how to silence it, but impulsive dumbass teenagers might not.

By far the most important security measure one can take is to never, ever park your bike in a public place overnight. Darkness + plenty of time = bike thief heaven. And that’s the rule I broke. I camped in town.

Namely Paeroa, home of NZ’s favorite soft drink. L&P is, according to its own label, “World Famous in New Zealand.” Paeroa is a lovely little town that time seems to have passed by. Old-timey burger joints and hand-painted signs are the order of the day. Not exactly what you’d call a den of thieves, but several people warned me to keep a sharp eye out. Opportunists are everywhere, even quaint Paeroa.

But I had biked a long way that day and the next campsite was another fifteen or twenty kilometers away. When someone told me there was camping behind the grocery store, that was all I needed to hear.

So I laid Booster down next to my tent, ran a guyline through her back tire (essentially staking my tent to her), and tried to quiet all those fear culture instincts whispering in my head. As a last minute security measure I set my pot and pan in her spokes, because I am a genius and that will totally help.

Setting them down triggered the motion detector, which is no way to try to fall asleep. Also, if any bike thieves didn’t know where Booster was, they sure knew now.

I awoke to find I still had her rear tire in my possession.

#TBT: Mad Max Feary Ride

The first in what I hope becomes a series of Throwback Thursday posts where I can comment on events of this odyssey that I didn't have the time or the tech to post anything when they actually happened. This whole blog is a week behind on average, but some of these TBT stories go back much further than that. Today's is two months old.

So without further ado...

#

At first it sounds like the wind. A strong yet distant wind, welling up far behind you. But thrumming underneath it there's this deep, rumbling basso growl. If you've never heard it before you'll never identify it, and if you have heard it before, you'll never forget it. It's closer now and gaining fast, growling louder and louder. You look over your shoulder, certain it's close enough to see. You need to know how close it is because you need to know when to get the hell off the road. It's when you don't see it that you realize it's much farther than you thought, much louder than you thought, much, much bigger.

Then you see the dust. The monster pushes a wall of wind as it roars along, and when you finally see its headlights, it's as if a dust storm glares at you with unblinking yellow eyes. You still can't see the monster itself, but every Tasmanian you've spoken to has warned you about it. It's a logging truck, and they were right to worry about you. 

A single tire of this truck is four feet tall. It has fifty of them. Each tree trunk it carries weighs more than an SUV. It hauls not one trailer but two, and because it has two, there's no point in swerving to avoid you and your bicycle. Jackknifing the truck will kill you as surely as a head-on collision. 

These trucks are wider than a highway lane. Logging roads are spaghetti-thin by comparison, just wide enough for the trucks to be able to turn. The drivers know better than to jam on the brakes when they see you; these trucks are straight out of Mad Max, and they don't exactly stop on a dime. So they won't brake, they won't dodge, they just barrel on. The rest of us can only get out of the way.

If you've been biking all day you've got a nice surface coat of sweat going, which means the stormfront leading the truck will spray-paint you with dust. After the truck passes, it still takes about half a minute for the dust storm to die down--plenty of time for a nice, even coat over your entire body. Did you close the cap on your water bottle? If not, that'll have a new flavor and texture for you.

I can't tell you how much I wish I had video of one of these things passing me on a dusty road. It really does look like Mad Max. But I didn't dare stand close enough to film it. I had half a mind to cover Booster in sharp, rusty spikes, just to flatten one of those tires if it ever flattened me. 

BooOOOOOcycle Camping

Since it’s Halloween I figured I’d post something about what it’s like to sleep in a grave. It has a ghost in it, kinda.

I am camping in a grave tonight, kinda. My tent measures 32 by 85 inches, almost exactly the standard size of a grave. At its highest point it’s 42 inches tall, just shy of regulation grave depth. (Turns out we go four feet under, not six.) So I don’t sleep in a grave, but I do sleep in a roughly grave-sized asymmetrical dome, and it has taught me some things.

First, this is one hilly country. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve found a 32-by-85-inch patch of ground that’s actually level. Most nights I have to choose which incline I want to sleep on.

Second, it’s spooky how easy it is to lose things in so small a space. Everything in the tent is within arm’s reach, yet somehow losing things is inevitable. You take out your toothbrush, you set it down, you grab your toothpaste, and the toothbrush is gone.

Now, no braggies but I’m better at losing things than anybody I know. I once dropped my car keys, heard them hit right next to my foot, and in the half-second it took me to look down they had vanished. (A freakish ricochet: I eventually found them under a backpack several feet away.) If only there were a way to use this super power to fight crime.

But even by my standards, losing something inches away from you, something that cannot possibly have escaped your zipped-up little world, something you should be able to keep track of because dammit you only have like ten things in here… it’s maddening.

Compounding that frustration is the fact that you need this lost thing. All the non-essentials have already been pared away.  Except, okay, I’ll grant you the ukulele doesn’t qualify as essential. But the uke isn’t what disappears. What disappears is your medicine, your battery charger, that banana you were going to have as your midnight snack. You got it out specifically because you needed it and now it’s gone.

Here’s why: a tent is full of slippery surfaces—think sleeping bag, bedroll, puffy coat—and your headlamp casts shadows at weird angles. Sitting cross-legged, anything you set next to you is in a blind spot because of the way the shadows fall. And anything you set in your lap slides all too easily into a blind spot.

The guy who helped me solve this problem was Confucius. He placed great importance on rituals, and I have taken to handling my possessions with Confucian ritualism. When you set anything down, it’s at arm’s length. (Different colored surface too, if you can.) Glasses and headlamp always go in the little gear pouch next to the door, and nothing else goes in there. Never set down an uncapped pen or an unfolded knife. (Pointy things kill bedrolls, tent walls, etc.) Make tea first, then soup, then dinner. (Progressively stronger flavors. Otherwise your tea tastes like dinner.) And so on.

Ritualistic care extends beyond the tent too. Tent stakes go in the ground or in their bag, that’s it. (Little known fact: like the common house cat, tent stakes are only one generation removed from their feral state. Given the opportunity, they will run and hide.) Pack dry bags with hard stuff on the top or the bottom. (A soft waist makes it easier to strap down.) Never cook in an enclosed area (carbon monoxide) but since you are absolutely going to cook in an enclosed area (every climber I know does it) be right next your stove, ready to kill the flame the instant you feel groggy.

This isn’t advice, it’s a ritual. (If it were advice, it would be dangerous. You should definitely open your rainfly if you’re going to cook in your tent, no matter what the weather is doing.) Confucius suggests developing your own rituals, depending on what problems you’re trying to avoid—or, better, what kind of success you’re trying to set yourself up for. You know that scene in gangster movies where the FBI comes in and tosses the whole house looking for evidence? I got sick of doing that in my own tent. Much easier to get to sleep now that I have my ritual.

So there you have it: a Confucian camper is a happy camper. The spirit of Confucius coming to me in my grave-sized tent isn’t the scariest ghost story out there, but it’s all I’ve got. No scary stories like I had in Tassie, because the biking here is going unbelievably well. I rode 83 km today, shattering my previous record. Today also took me past the 500 km mark, a major accomplishment for Yours Truly. I’m bummed about not having a Halloween party to go to but happy to have another night in a hot spring, this time in Pukorokoro. Three nights in a row! I could get used to this.

Rest Day Part II: It’s Something, Mate

Parakai, and all is well. I am chilling in the hottest hot tub I could find, spending the day writing because my Advanced Alien Technology, aka iPhone, is waterproof.

My en suite mineral hot spring bath last night was… well, not what you’re picturing. The hotel does sit on a spring, because hot, mineral-scented water did come out of the tap. But the tub it filled was a big black plastic industrial number, the kind Walter White would dissolve a body in. The room itself was about 18” wider than the twin mattress it contained, and honestly the proprietor was a little embarrassed to show it to me. It’s called the trucker room. It has no shower, no mirror, and you walk through someone else’s hallway to get to it. In yesterday’s case, the someone elses were in their much nicer mineral spa, which I couldn’t help noticing because they’d left their door open. I also couldn’t help noticing they were fucking.

But hey, when you roll into a busy spa resort town on a Friday afternoon without a reservation—or indeed planning of any kind—then the trucker room is what you get.

I didn’t care. Gimme a hot tub and life is good. Plus, within easy limping distance is one of the weirdest restaurants I’ve ever been to: a pizzeria that serves Indian food, one Thai dish, and all three mixed together.

So here I am with my tikka paneer pizza, feeling no pain. Still thinking about yesterday’s fear culture versus care culture stuff, though. It’s not as if the US is only the former and NZ is only the latter. The difference is emphasis and undercurrent. But even when it’s subtle, the difference explains a lot.

For example, this morning I was chilling in a pool with three women, a kiwi couple and a single woman from San Francisco. We’re talking home repairs, and the American mentions casually that when she has a handyman at her condo, she always makes sure to stand between him and the door. The kiwis are baffled. They ask why. She says, “Because I live alone.”

I’m going to guess any American who reads this doesn’t need to ask the kiwis’ question. I was surprised the question was even asked, and doubly surprised when the kiwis had follow-up questions. I felt we already had a full explanation. But it’s not. The “because” of “because I live alone“ does no work in that sentence. It’s only an indicator of our fear culture.

Here’s a full explanation with the unstated assumptions spelled out: “Women are attacked so frequently where I live that my default response whenever I’m alone with a stranger is suspicion and self-preservation. I need to be able to run for the door, because otherwise I worry I’d be lying there for days before anyone found my body.”

This is some seriously depressing shit, and this travelogue is supposed to be lighthearted, so that’s all I’ll say on the matter. It’s not a problem I have any solution to, anyway. The best I can do is encourage fear culture people to spend some serious time abroad, soaking in a new kind of background radiation. Truly relaxing, letting your guard down for once, feels better than any hot tub.

Though while we’re on the subject, may I propose one more modification to the general background radiation? If we can still hold a society together despite our deep divisions over Hawaiian pizza, then we are ready for tikka paneer pizza coast to coast. Seriously. This is damn good, y’all.

Rest Day Part I: It’s Nothing, Mate

Well, I got my rest day. One and a half, really. Plus I got to hitchhike! When’s the last time you got to do that?

I flew too close to the sun. Too many days in a row setting new personal records for distance. Two days ago, 69 kilometers. Yesterday, 72. Today, I awoke to grumbles of complaint from my left hip. (Uh oh. That’s the good one.) But I figure maybe it’s just because I slept funny. All my camping buddies will rejoice at this: my bedroll has developed a leak. They all this thing. It sounds like I’m sleeping in a giant pile of empty Doritos bags. Anyway, my patch kit has been unequal to the task of fixing the pinhole puncture in it, so once or twice a night I wake up sleeping on the ground and have to re-inflate it. Maybe that’s what set off my hip, right? Maybe a little biking will warm it up and calm it down.

Fifteen kilometers in, the hip seems mollified but my right knee says no more hills. No problem. As slow as I am biking uphill, hike-a-bike isn’t much less efficient. Just more time to spend with the cows, who, no matter how I’m making my way up all these hills, give me the same doubtful looks about which one of us is the intelligent species.

Twenty kilometers in, the right knee says yeah, no walking either. Both hips chime in shouting “hear hear.” The next two days were supposed to be restful, forty K’s or so, but it’s clear I’m going no further.

Enter the care culture of the kiwis. A quick google search shows me a nearby Airbnb. They even have a hot tub, which is what I need most in this world. I call, she wonders how I got this number because they close the business years ago. But then she says, “My husband uses that room as an office now. I’ll ask him if he can move. May I call you back in five minutes?”

Of course she’ll ask, because New Zealand. And of course he’ll say yes, because New Zealand. But just in case—and to not inconvenience them—I keep sticking my thumb out.

Not two minutes later, a big dude in a giant pickup truck towing an even gianter trailer sees me and Booster sitting on the side of the road. “What happened, mate?” I give him the short version. “Where you headed?” Anywhere I can find a hot bath, I tell him. “Oh, you want Parakai, mate. Nowhere better.”

He’s right. Parakai is hot spring heaven. Two resorts, and one hotel boasts a mineral bath in every room. The town even sits right on the TA. It’s another thirty kilometers, and this dude just came from there. But as it turns out, he’s just unloaded a bunch of topsoil, so his big-ass trailer is conveniently empty, and after a busy morning landscaping he’s knocking off work early. “Throw your bike in the back, mate.” I said let me buy you lunch. “Nah, mate. It’s nothing.” Your gas, then. “Nah, mate. It’s a company truck.” A beer, then. Something cold to drink. “Nah, mate. It’s nothing.” So is buying you lunch. “Nah, mate. No worries.”

He says this is just what kiwis do because they want visitors to know they’ll always be welcome here. Exactly the opposite, I fear, of modern American culture. But so many things are polar opposites here. In another post I’ll have to say something more about this, but one of the great unseen tragedies of covid is that a years’ worth of American study abroad students were suddenly called home without ever getting to really absorb what it’s like to live without fear all the time, and the following year all those opportunities were closed to our students again.

I don’t think most Americans think of themselves as living in fear every day, but that’s because it’s background radiation to us. We don’t think of the increasingly obsequious and apologetic scripts for customer service representatives as symptoms of fear culture, but they are. Ditto the “drink responsibly” in small print on the beer can, the “remove child before folding” label on the collapsible stroller, the word FREEDOM on T-shirts and ball caps and bumper stickers. Kiwis and Australians have more freedoms than Americans have, but none of the T-shirts. Why? They’re not afraid. The conspiracy theories so many of us buy into haven’t taken hold here.

I wish more Americans could spend a few months in a place like this, where the only injuries a foreign bicyclist has to worry about are the self-inflicted variety. 95% of drivers give me a wide berth. Those who come close, other kiwis find obnoxious. No one texts and drives here. No one. Believe me, I’m on the lookout for it. But of course that’s my fear culture talking. Meanwhile, their care culture says hey, we’re not going to expose each other to that kind of avoidable harm.

And look, I know not everyone gets the kind of treatment I’ve enjoyed. I’m no expert on kiwi culture, but I’ve learned enough to know if I were a big Māori dude, there are plenty of pakeha drivers who would keep on driving. The more tattoos, the more drivers speed up. If I were a single woman, add a whole different set of problems. I get that. But those problems exist in a fear culture too, and fear makes them worse.

The end of the story is the Airbnb host texts me back and asks if I can get there on my own or I’d like her to pick me up. I tell here I managed to catch a ride south, she says no worries, I hope your knee comes right soon. Then the landscaper drops me and Booster in hot spring heaven and just will not accept a few bucks for lunch or even a cold drink. He told me if I really want to pay him back, tell my friends this story. So here’s me, paying him back.

The Road Goes Ever On And On

I keep biking down the road, leaving past photos further and further behind. So to catch up at least a little bit, instead of telling you about Hobbiton I’ll just show you. Super nerdy, super touristy, loved every minute of it.

The painstaking, loving attention to detail is just above and beyond. They left Bilbo’s pipe and book on the garden bench in Bag End. And at Sam Gamgee’s house, his kids haven’t put away their toys.

Peter Jackson is so obsessive over the details that it wasn’t enough for him to have the hobbits hang their clothes out to dry. For days before filming, he’d have crew members walk back and forth from the hobbit holes to the clotheslines so there would be a barely visible worn track in the grass.

More obsession with detail: the Green Dragon is old and weathered to the point that you can barely make out the green of its dragon, while the lamppost out front is something you’d only ever notice by accident. (I got bonus points from the tour guide for spotting it.)

I have only one complaint about the entire experience, and that is the photo opportunity with Gandalf. It was a life-size statue, the same as I found in the Wellington visitor information office. Wrong wrong wrong. Obviously it needs to be eight or nine feet tall, whatever height is necessary so I look like a hobbit standing next to him.

Weta Workshop, you don’t even need to pay me royalties for the idea. Just build the right Gandalf and then fly me back so I can get my picture with him.

The Time Of My Life

Two posts ago I said I didn’t think I would finish the TA. I wasn’t lying when I told you to bet against me, but over the next few posts I’m going to tell you how I hope to beat the odds.

Technique #2: Buy Buddhism. I’m not a religious person, but when you’re drowning you can’t be too choosy  about life preservers. So please forgive a brief philosophical foray into Buddhist metaphysics. I will include pretty pictures so you don’t get bored.

The TL;DR version is this: the past and the future aren’t real. The only thing that’s real is the now.

To say past and future aren’t real sounds controversial, but I bet you already believe it. They definitely aren’t real in the way the present is real. The future is what might happen, maybe even what will happen, but that means it ain’t real, it’s imaginary. (Which isn’t to say it’s unimportant. Santa is imaginary and he drives the entire US economy.)

The past isn’t real either, even though we see its effects in the present. The photos I post here were taken in a remembered past, but they’re seen in the present. Even remembering the past when I took them doesn’t make the past real. It used to be real. Now it’s memory, which only ever happens in the present.

I’m only skimming the surface here, and we could go a lot deeper with all of this stuff, but for now the only thing I need to beat the 9:1 odds I laid against myself two posts ago is to get rid of my self. Past Me wrote a TA itinerary for Future Me to ride, and neither of those guys exist. Not in the way Present Me exists. Present Me has memory and imagination, and that’s all Past Me and Future Me really are.

The upshot is when I said I can’t finish that original, fantastical itinerary, I’m not lying. The me who typed that didn’t have the strength or endurance to finish that ride. Neither does the Present Me typing this right now. This me is getting his ass kicked by 60 km rides, and that itinerary includes days of 80-plus. But he’s a bit stronger. He has reason to imagine a Future Me who’s capable of a lot more than Present Me can do.

The best that Present Me can manage is to get his ass kicked every day and keep getting back on the saddle. Prior to coming down here, I had never biked more than 50 km in my life. On Saturday I biked 60. On Sunday, 63. Monday, 55, of which 30 of it was uphill and into a relentless headwind. Tuesday was originally scheduled (by Past Me) as a rest day, lounging around in this gorgeous kauri forest. Present Me’s idea of a rest day is very different. He expects a restful Tuesday because the ride is “only” 52 km, almost all of it downhill.

As I’ve said before, these are laughably short distances by bikepacking standards. But the Buddha would have me judge myself only by the standards of Present Me. According to those standards, success is Future Me getting into camp early enough on Tuesday to do laundry. Because this long-sleeve shirt, which Past Me has been wearing every day to avoid sunburn, is now crusty with sweat-salt. Present Me doesn’t care about mileage goals. He just wants Future Me to find a damn washing machine.

But the kauri forest is certainly worth taking a rest day for, and Future Me may decide to stay and just give his nasty-ass shirt a good rinse in the river. (Present Me got us a sweet campsite right on the water.) The most famous tree here is Tane Mahuta, New Zealand’s largest living kauri. At 2,000 years old, it’s almost a contemporary of the Buddha’s famous Bodhi Tree. Tane Mahuta is the symbol of Tane, lord of the forests and protector of all life. Cameras can’t do it justice. This tree is 167 feet tall and 45 feet around. I’d call it breathtaking, but it’s breath-giving, isn’t it? Given its sheer volume, I must have inhaled some of the oxygen it exhaled, and that’s a cool thought.

Someday I hope to do the same in India, at the Bodhi Tree. Until then I’ll just take the Buddha’s advice and keep having the time of my life. Which is only this one time, the present time, where there are no itineraries. Future Me can deal with those. I’ll just try to be present.

And He’s Off!

In my last post I said I didn’t think I would finish. I wasn’t lying when I told you to bet against me, but over the next few posts I’m going to tell you how I hope to finish this thing anyway.

Technique #1: Cheat. Yesterday I took the bus up north, and it reached the Cape Reinga lighthouse much earlier than I expected. So I decided to cheat my original, fantastical itinerary. I started one day early, since I met my mileage goals for yesterday and today, I am still ahead of the game.

Cape Reinga offers a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, which makes it an appropriate place for a farewell. It is as close as you can get to the afterlife. So says Māori tradition, anyhow: when they die, no matter where they are in the world, they come up Ninety Mile Beach to the northernmost point of the North Island, and thence to the great beyond.

From the Reinga lighthouse I hit 58 kph down the winding hills of Highway 1. Then my speed plunged to about 8 kph riding straight down Te Paki Stream. The stream was high enough to wash out any trace of a bike path, so for three miles or so Booster got to play kayak.

From there I began the ninety-kilometer beach that is Ninety Mile Beach. Don’t ask. If you time it right between high tides, the sand is almost as firm as concrete. If you can find the hardpack. Under normal circumstances it’s not hard to find, because the instant you leave it your tires bog down and your life suddenly sucks. But on the hardpack, your only worries are wind and sunburn.

That’s normal circumstances. This morning wasn’t normal. I camped at the Bluff, a gorgeous dune-bound site with wild horses, roaring surf, and excellent stargazing. Last night the stargazing got cut short by rain, and the rain never stopped. So this morning—uh oh—the whole beach was soft and wet. Without the hardpack, that ride is murder.

But there’s a solution: drop your tire pressure to 10 psi or even less. You’re going to be slow but at least you have enough surface area to float over the sand. So that’s what I did, for a solid 20 km.

Today the mileage goal was 60 km, which is the farthest I’ve ever biked in my life (racking up Worst Bikepacker points for doing virtually no training this summer). My big worry was that I’d have to bike 120. As the sun cooked off the rain, the hardpack came back as a sine wave following the surf. So if this beach is 60 km as the crow flies, the wave following the straight line would be at least double that.

But the guys who wrote my guidebook are damn good. They took the sine wave into account! Their directions were spot on. So thank you, Kennett brothers, for paying attention. About four hours in, the hardpack was fully restored and the merciless crosswind that had been battering me from my ten o’clock shifted to nine and then to eight. Hardpack plus tailwind equals Happy Steve. The last hour was easier than the first hour—exactly the opposite of yesterday.

So I’m a cheater. I’m going to cheat further by canceling every rest day in the original itinerary. Rest days will appear on their own, be it an injury, broken equipment, cave trolls, or whatever else New Zealand throws at me. For now I’m a day ahead of schedule. We’ll see how long I can keep it that way.

One more thing: riding on the beach, I got up close and personal with the most dangerous animal in New Zealand. Predictably, it’s not really from here; it drifts to benevolent NZ from maleficent Australia.

The blue bottle jellyfish is as long as my finger and has enough venom to kill a roomful of people. I’m not making that up. Good thing for me I had to bike in a stream, not the ocean. But these little fellas pepper the beach, along with their bigger, purplier, not-so-deadly-but-still-damn-painful cousins, the Portuguese man-o’-war. I didn’t dare run them over, because I don’t know how long jellyfish venom stays on tires.

B x 3

I’m on the bus to Paihia, the first leg of a two-day ride to Cape Reinga. At the crack of dawn on Sunday I begin the Tour Aotearoa. That’s the plan, anyway. As you might guess, it’s been on my mind a lot, and my thoughts keep looping back to three people: Bayes, Buress, and Bein.

Don Bein was my grandfather. I could write volumes about him, but for present purposes I’ll just describe him as an irrepressible optimist who often said—and firmly believed—“if you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.“

Hannibal Buress is one of my favorite comedians. He says he doesn’t use a napkin at restaurants, and when people ask him why he doesn’t use a napkin, he says “because I believe in myself.”

(Here’s a clip of Buress including the napkin bit. Tragically, the YouTubes have nothing from Don Bein. Believe me, the world is poorer for it.)

Thomas Bayes gives us Bayesian reasoning, which says you should form your beliefs based on evidence, and when new evidence presents itself you should reevaluate your beliefs. For example, if you’ve never met me before and I tell you I’m going to attempt to bike the Tour Aotearoa, you might estimate my chance of success at 50/50. You have no more evidence to go on than you’ve got on a coin flip. Then, with each passing blog entry from my Tasmanian Trail follies, you’d lower your confidence in the belief accordingly.

I’m thinking about these three B’s as I read the wildly optimistic itinerary I sketched out for myself almost a year ago, when the TA started shifting from flight of fancy to hey, maybe I should give this a shot. I never promised anyone I was going to finish this thing. I only said I would attempt it. But the daily mileage goals in that early itinerary exceed every day of the Tasmanian Trail. By a lot. My shortest day on the TA is 20% longer than my longest day on the TT.

And yes, I had some pretty serious growing pains on the TT. And yes, I’ve learned from them. (Though the TA is certain to deliver more.) I made mistakes there that could have been disastrous and weren’t, and I won’t make those again. But I will make new mistakes, at least that bad and maybe worse, because that’s just how life is (or at least how mine is).

Don Bein says if I don’t believe in myself, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Buress says believe in yourself when what’s at stake is elementary and the consequences of failure are trivial. (At least that’s the moral I see in a thirty-second bit he never intended a philosopher to scrutinize.) Bayes says believe in yourself until the evidence says you shouldn’t.

I am a Bein but also a Bayesian. The evidence says I cannot complete this ride by the end of the year, and I find that evidence convincing. But I also believe that conviction is too heavy to add to an already overloaded bike. She has no room for it. Neither should I.

Enter Buress. The consequences of napkinless dining are trivial. In bikepacking I’ve already flirted with not-so-trivial consequences, and I have to keep reminding myself New Zealand poses greater risks than Tasmania. It’s much bigger, with shockingly few people to get to you if you need help. But objectively speaking, biking to work is far more hazardous than cruising around the countryside where no drivers can hit you.

The fact is, Bein, Bayes, and Buress all have it right. I don’t believe I can do this, but that belief can’t sink me because it’s a probability, not a heartfelt conviction, and in any case the consequences of failure aren’t much higher than napkinless eating. The whole point of coming down here was to attempt something beyond my ability.

So the conclusion I reach is this: I’m going to attempt the ride anyway, but if you had a hundred bucks to bet on whether I finish, bet $90 against me. Maybe there will be tailwinds instead of headwinds. Maybe the navigation problems are behind me. Bayes will caution you against claiming 100% certainty, but 90% isn’t out of reach. That’s where I’m at.

But I’m going into the arena anyway, to dare greatly. Worst Bikepacker in New Zealand award, meet your next contender.

You Shall Not Pass This Up

I have some time to catch up on the blog because my new Advanced Alien Technology is waterproof and I have to lounge in this hot tub until my legs relax. Today I biked up Mount Ruapehu, aka Orodruin, aka Mount Doom. I couldn’t hike as far as Sam and Frodo did because I didn’t bring an ice axe and crampons, but riding as far as I did was good training for next week. 3,300 feet of elevation gain in ten miles, more than half of that in the last three.

Ruapehu is not in Wellington, but tons of other Tolkien stuff is. Tons of hills and MTB tracks too, so more good training. I wasn’t there for the elves and trolls, though. I was there for research purposes, and to give a talk at Victoria University of Wellington. My hosts were beyond generous, and perfectly polite as they grilled me after the talk. Not like Gandalf. He’s such a grumpy gus.

But I won’t bore you with the philosophy. At least not yet. Let’s focus on Tolkien instead. The Weta Workshop tour is touristy as hell and is absolutely worth two hours of your time.

Look, if they’re going to take the time to give the trolls snotty boogers, you should take the time to see what else they’re willing to do.

I saw their swordsmith at work on his grinding wheel, and also got to chat with the dude who oversaw all kinds of cool practical effects in Isengard. Major nerd. My kind of people.

Right up the hill from my gorgeous B&B—with a name like Booklovers, how can you not stay there?—is where they shot the hobbits on the road hiding from the Nazgûl. It’s right on a MTB trail, so two birds, one stone.

Rivendell isn’t far, and it’s right on the way to the Dimholt Road.

Speaking of Rivendell, I never did tell you about my jacket. Not the best rain jacket I own (rain gets through it) but by far the best when it comes to being seen by drivers at night. I am Steve the Gray by day and Steve the White in headlights.

Clearly made by the elves.

I had to do a bit of secondhand shopping in Wellington, to wear something nice to the university. Bikepacking gear doesn’t cut it. So I stopped in what folks down here call an op shop (“opportunity shop”; all the secondhand stores are for charity) to get a makeover. By pure halfling luck I found four gorgeous paperbacks there by my favorite author. I couldn’t say no. They were published in 1973, the same as me. Obviously Booster has no room for them, so I’m mailing ‘em home.

Vandalf the Gray

It’s now two Fridays ago that I rolled into Darwin in my rented MG, whose engine is almost as powerful as me running in bare feet. I have never driven a more timid vehicle. I’m not making this up: you have to start it twice. When you engage the cruise control, it disengages the gas pedal completely. I never measured the zero to sixty time, but the sixty to seventy time is fifteen seconds.

Back in civilization, I finally got a good look in the mirror after a week of camping in 100° weather. First thought: well, you certainly look like a vagabond. Second thought, half a second behind the first: no, you are a vagabond.

Basically I’m a rich hobo. Everything in my life right now fits on a bicycle. I rented out my house, so there’s no home for me to go to. I have no dog care, no lawn care, and frankly not a five star review when it comes to personal care, to judge by the vagabond looking back at me in the mirror. No body wash, no shampoo, no shaving cream: all of that is the same bar of soap. I’m a month overdue for a haircut. The beard goes from nonexistent to scraggly, depending entirely on whether I have access to running water. I hate to imagine what the nose hair and ear hair situation must be, what with the big five-oh right around the corner.

I’m vigilant with dental care and bike care, and after that it’s a short list. Which is not to say I’m smelly. Long-distance cycling requires you to pay particular attention to chafing. Sweat makes salt, salt crystals have sharp edges, and sharp edges chafe skin. So my clothes look like I sleep on the ground, but I don’t smell like I look.

At least not by the time I go to sleep. Halfway through the day and halfway up a mountain, that’s my business. But sitting next to you on a plane, I’ll never be stinky. Though I gotta say, I do wish this was something I could control. If you’re in an airport and I can hear you from across the room, I think everyone who sits next to you should be stinky. I promise, your cell phone is not a Korean War-era field radio. Whoever you’re shouting at, they can hear you just fine.

Anyway, that was two Fridays ago, in Darwin. Today I’m in Wellington, driving a Toyota Ractis I’ve named Vandalf the Gray. We’re heading for the Dimholt Road, aka The Way of the Dead, aka Putanigura Pinnacles. Vandalf can fit a mountain bike with perhaps a millimeter to spare, and only if you tetris it at just the right angle. But its cruise control works, its brakes work, it can accelerate uphill, and it starts every time on the first try. So compared to that MG, Ractis makes perfect.

Litchfield National Park and Not the Other One

Litchfield National Park is just up the road from Nitmiluk, and here again the highlight was the animal encounters. Litchfield is most famous for its waterfalls and beautiful swimming holes, but the guidebooks leave out what for me was the real showstopper. I did next to no research for this whole adventure, so I hadn’t even imagined I would run into these guys. Flying foxes!

You don’t see them at first. You hear lots of fussing high in the trees, but you can’t spot any birds. Then, here and there you spot these odd black pyramid-shaped things hanging down from the higher branches. They look like giant seed pods, maybe, or some weird Australasian fruit you’ve never heard of. Then one of them unfolds its wings and starts grooming.

Sadly I didn’t take either of these photos. I didn’t get single shot good enough to share with you. I’m just not carrying the right equipment for it. Those little guys are backlit, high up, with plenty of foliage in the way. I managed to capture some video, and once I get home I’ll have to find a way to share it. But I do have some pics for you of the Litchfield that the guidebooks all tell you about. (Which ain’t too shabby, foxes or no.)

I stopped through a fourth park in the NT, Charles Darwin National Park. It’s right in Darwin, and it’s supposed to house a wonderful range of exotic flora and fauna. However, it might as well have had a sign on the front door reading STEVE BEIN, DO NOT COME HERE. Three times before parking the car, I passed signs warning me against biting insects.

Keep in mind, at this point I've just spent a week in swamps and wetlands, enveloped in flies, with no signage posted about flying, biting things. Also, this is a little known fact among human beings, but I am the most popular restaurant on Mosquito Yelp. One drop of Bein B-negative and they call all their friends. So thanks but no thanks; you can keep your Darwin National Park.

Nitmiluk National Park: GRRRRAAAAHHH!

I am now fully two weeks behind on this blog, and the Big Ride is only a week away. So I will try to keep you posted, but maybe through more photo galleries than stories. Pictures being worth a thousand words and all that.

I do want to tell you about Nitmiluk National Park, though. It’s next door to Kakadu, most famous for its stunning, steep-walled Katherine Gorge. In the dry season (which is now) the gorge is mostly empty, a staggering thought given the amount of water still in there. What I was kayaking on is 20 to 30 feet lower than the water level in the wet season. Overnight swells of 18 feet are average. It’s hard to even imagine. Obviously I have to come back and see it for myself some day.

Like the swimming in Kakadu, kayaking in Nitmiluk means moving through water that’s crocodile-infested for half the year. The rangers don’t open it up to paddlers until the water levels fall low enough that the river becomes several distinct bodies of water. As in Kakadu, they preserve certain areas for the crocodiles to hang out and trap and relocate all the crocs they can find in the other ones. Well, kinda.

They gave us conflicting information going in. One was it’s safe to swim here because we have removed all the crocodiles. The other was don’t go on the sandy beaches because that’s where crocs like to lay their eggs, and stepping on a crocodile egg gets you a $5,000 fine, and they lay 15 to 20 eggs in a clutch, so seriously, don’t go on the sandy beaches.

I asked the rangers where’s the best place to go look for crocodiles (which I do understand is the exact opposite of where sane people want to paddle). They told me I’m not going to see any. OK, I say, then who’s laying all these $5,000 crocodile eggs? Who left the footprints, tailprint, and big lizardy belly print on that beach next to the sign that says crocs nest there? But oh no, I’m not going to see any.

By the way, in Katherine Gorge these should all be freshies, not salties. Freshwater crocs are yet another fearsome critter that Australians have no fear of at all. “Aw, they’re not the aggressive ones, mate. Just don’t poke ‘em.”

Well, you know me. I came pretty close to poking one. Not on purpose, of course. That’s just how my travel luck goes: bad on tech, awesome on nature.

Because the rangers wouldn’t tell me where to go looking for crocs, I just poked my little kayak into every nook and cranny I passed. One of them in particular was irresistible. I can only describe it as exactly the place Yoda would go kayaking. A curtain of muddy roots with a cave-like hollow behind it: perfect. What’s in there? Only what I bring with me. What I brought with me was the great hope of a close crocodile encounter.

And then, GGGGRRRRAAAAAHHHH!!!

With the canyon wall so close, the roar echoed in my bones. The rangers were right: I never saw a crocodile. But I sure as hell heard one. I pissed it off by getting too close. Less than a paddle’s length, because I pushed off the back wall with my paddle to get my ass out of there.

It’s incredible how big they can be and still take up so little space. Teenage Mutant Ninja Crocodiles would be twice as stealthy as those other guys. I never did see it, but there’s only one thing in that gorge that roars.

On the Steve’s Peak Experiences list, that one-second encounter ranks up there with skydiving and publishing my first novel. Highlight of my time in Nitmiluk, hands down.

Kakadu Pt. II: They Will They Will Rock You

As thrilling as it was to see crocs from the safari boat, and to splash around in their deserted swimming pools, it was Ubirr that revealed Kakadu’s true beauty to me. It’s in the northeast quarter of the park, a totally different landscape than the uniformity surrounding the billabong. There you have the same trees, the same flat land. In Ubirr you get real geography: shapely mesas, bald bluffs, islands of trees in seas of grass.

Aboriginal people lived at Ubirr for 20,000 years. They are the world’s oldest continuous civilization; scholars’ best guess places them at 65,000 years old. Now this may sound like a non sequitur, but bear with me. I always ask Young Earth Creationists how they explain China and India. Those cultures go back waaaaay further than October 22, 4004 BC, which is when Bishop Ussher dated “Let there be light.” (It bothers me that creationists don’t celebrate Earth’s birthday, since they know the exact date.) Now I’ll ask them about Aboriginal people instead, to add about 60,000 years to the discrepancy.

Ubirr is home to some of their best preserved, most replete rock art. That makes it one of the premier sites for rock art anywhere on the planet. I’ve seen some beautiful rock paintings in South Africa and the American southwest, but I must confess they pale in comparison to Ubirr.

These paintings serve many functions. One of them, which I’ve never heard tell of in discussions of any other rock art, is to tell visitors what’s on the menu. Notice how anatomically precise some of these paintings are. They show which internal organs are good eating.

Oh, and here’s a thing I’ve never heard tell of when discussing any other hunting culture: the technique here in Ubirr (and in lots of other places in Australia) was not to kill your prey but to paralyze it. They had different techniques for different animals, wringing this one’s neck, shooting that one in the small of the back, and in the case of the file snake, sticking its head in their mouth and yanking straight down. Ozzy Osbourne, eat your heart out.

I know, I know. I’m vegetarian. I should find this revolting. But it’s pretty damn clever, keeping your prey’s vital functions going until it’s time to cook it. You don’t need a refrigerator. Living meat doesn’t spoil.

Bonus points to Ubirr for being the only place you can still spot a thylacine:

Everything I’ve learned about Australia’s Aboriginal cultures has been utterly fascinating, and I haven’t learned nearly enough to say anything intelligent about it. Someday I will have to revisit all of this and do my homework properly, but for now I’ll just say when you go to Kakadu someday, don’t skip Ubirr, don’t skip the Warradjan Cultural Center, don’t just come for the crocs and the birds.

Kakadu Pt. I: The Safest Way to Swim in Crocodile-Infested Waters

I spent my last week in Australia way up in the Northern Territory, where I hoped to have very close encounters with the saltwater crocodiles. The salties are actually my primary reason for visiting Australia. Back in 2010 I was traveling through Botswana, and on a river safari I saw my first croc. They’re basically dinosaurs, you know. Their genetic blueprint is 200 million years old. So I’m standing there looking at the biggest damn lizard I’ve ever seen in my life, and I overhear the Australians next to me say, “Awww, look how small and cute it is!” Immediately I turned around and said, “Where are you from? Because I need to go there.”

So at long last, there I went. “There” is three national parks, all next door to each other in the northernmost reaches of the NT. The first was Kakadu National Park, where I did back to back billabong bonanzas: a dusk cruise and a dawn cruise. I saw over 100 saltwater crocs, which are said to be the biggest and most aggressive in the world. Ten percent of their diet in adulthood is other salties. The biggest I saw was probably about sixteen feet long (they get up to twenty), the smallest a cutesy widdle baby only five feet long.

The little tykes have the most beautiful coloration, but you never see such fancypantsitude in adults. Why? One explanation is coffee stains: the trees along the river release tannins that stain the salties, so the longer they're in there, the darker they get. (Or oranger, with different tannins.) I’m sure a little club soda will get that out.

Another possibility is wisdom: crocs have some chameleon powers, and maybe the young'uns haven't figured out how to use them yet. I don't know enough about crocodile science to take a side, but I'll tell you this: when I was a kid, T. rex was a kickass super-predator. When that big green badass got downgraded to an overgrown vulture, my life was never the same. But now that I know about chameleon camo-crocs, that hole in my soul has healed.

Also in Kakadu, I took a 4WD tour down to Jim Jim Falls, which is not named for some European explorer named Jim. Jim Jim is the original name in Language (which—I had no idea—is the language group spoken by Aboriginal people). I went down there because it’s reputed to be a highlight of the park and because the dude running it is named Wildman Chizo. Whenever you have the opportunity to spend time with someone named Wildman Chizo, spend time with Wildman Chizo.

(Why didn’t I just bike it? Because it’s 95°+ every day, a 70 km one-way ride, and crocodiles have a much easier time eating you if you’re on a bike than in a 4x4.)

Chizo (pronounced Chizzo, not Cheezo) walks rugged trails barefoot. He lives in a bus. He once wrestled a crocodile, not because it was his job but because there was a croc that needed to be moved elsewhere and he just seems like the kind of guy you ask to wrestle large predators into submission. He has many good stories about smoking dope, and one about what happens when you bring nudist clients to swimming holes where they have those little fish that like to nibble dead flesh off your feet.

Theoretically these swimming holes could also have salties. In the wet season, Jim Jim is a raging waterfall whose mist you can see boiling up from miles away. Crocs can swim wherever they like. In the dry season(which is now), Jim Jim is the most tranquil, verdant, picturesque gorge, mostly dried up but there are still three places you can swim. Don’t swim in the first one. There are crocodiles. Not many, but they’re there.

The upper two pools get cleared by the park rangers before they let any tourists go back there. They go up there with spotlights, trap the stealthy critters, and bring them further down the gorge. But the only thing preventing crocs from walking back up there is lizard lethargy. On the other hand, it’s rough terrain, which is a real hassle on stumpy croc legs. Chizo says they haven’t captured any crocs in the third swimming hole in three years.

Is three years a good number or a bad number? My beloved Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series in six years. The drought before that was 108 years. What’s the croc capture rate? Is a three-year lull normal? Are they due?

The rangers are pretty good at catching these beasties, but crocs are supreme stealth hunters. They can hold their breath for over an hour. They can redistribute their internal organs to flatten themselves,  submerging completely in water far shallower than you’d think possible. So here’s the only assurance Chizo was willing to give me: “When it comes to salties, no promises, mate.”

It doesn’t matter. That water is too inviting. And deep! I like to think I’m a decent free diver. I reached the first thermocline with no bottom in sight. Dove deeper, still no bottom. Dove as deep as I dared, still nothing. The water was the exact color of the aquamarine crayon in the Crayola 64-pack, a lovely darkness for crocodiles to hide in.

But no nibbles, no bites, no swimming for dear life. And for being a wild man, Chizo provides a delicious, perfectly civilized lunch complete with tablecloth and tea service. All in all a banner day.

Alternate History: Wallaby Roadkilled

If I were a journalist—or even a decent blogger—I’d have reported this a while ago, like when it happened. But we philosophers aren’t known for getting our writing done quickly, so I’m finally getting around to posting now. Consider this an announcement from the Better Late Than Never Department.

About two weeks ago—so still in Tasmania—I was biking down the mountain from Arthurs Lake to Liffey. There’s a thrilling winding road, and through one of the 55 kph curves I actually hit 55 kph. It felt more like riding a motorcycle than a bike; just lean and lean and lean.

It occurred to me on the way down that the natural habitat of the wallaby is smack in the middle of the road. If one of them had come sprinting out at me, there’s no way my brakes were up to the task of stopping me—not in less than 50 yards, I bet. So in an alternate history, I go over the handlebars and get bashed to pieces when a wallaby clips me, then he shouts “YES! We finally got one!” He and his friends all exchange high-fives and go to the nearest wallabar, where everyone there buys him a drink in celebration of his derring-do. Finally the roadkiller becomes the roadkilled.

But that’s not what happened. I made it down safely, and rolled through the tiny town of Poatina. There I saw a couple of guys on dirt bikes. One was doing wheelies while another dude was filming him. I told him “I could do that, I just don’t wanna.”

He laughed, I rode over, and his buddy and I talked about motorcycles while Wheelie Boy went tear-assing around the hills for the cameraman. Turns out there was an enduro race that weekend, both of these guys were in it, and Wheelie Boy was favored to win. The cameraman was with the local news, there with a reporter who overheard me talking to the other racer. That guy and I exchanged vehicles for a bit. His is waaaaay easier.

So the reporter comes over and says he wants to do a story on me for the nightly news. I said yes, of course, and didn’t think about how stupid I look wearing all my safety gear until too late.

Either Tassie is really small or Tasmanians are avid fans of the evening news, because twice that week I ran into someone who recognized me. Both were polite enough not to mention the news compared me to a mentally disabled person. Skip ahead to eleven minutes in if you want to see the clip about me, or watch the whole thing if you want to catch up on current events in Tasmania as of two weeks ago.

ETA: In case the embed doesn’t work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flsnhv50U4k

Signs and Poor Tents

If my poor tent were a person, it would be asking me what the hell I was thinking when I planned this trip. A couple weeks ago it could barely handle the snow, and now it has to handle the tropics. Spring in the Northern Territory isn’t the least bit like spring in Tassie. 98° every day, ants that look purpose-built to chew tent fabric, sawtooth pandanus leaves poking holes in anything they can reach, and you know that one persistent fly? The one that flies around your head and follows you no matter where you go? Wherever that fly went to school to learn how to perfect the art of annoyance, that’s where every fly here graduated from.

My tent prides itself on keeping flies out and dammit, it’s doing its best. It’s proud of its record against thorns, poky sticks, and sharp stones: 100% flawless defense until this week. Now? Two holes in the ground sheet. Two! The rainfly is still gray but the rest is red with shame.

Last night we had an almighty display of Nature in all her power: a dazzling nonstop lightning storm just east of my campsite. It was near enough for me to put the rainfly on just in case. Which means my tent was fucking hot.

After a sweaty and mostly sleepless night, I woke as a human salt lick. I thought the flies were bad yesterday, but the instant I left the tent this morning they swarmed me like flies on shit. I didn’t even get dressed; I drove to the nearest camp shower wearing only a towel.

Freshly desalinated, I packed up to drive where I am now: the city of Katherine, just outside Nitmiluk National Park. Don’t worry, I’m wearing more than just a towel now. I have flip-flops.

I have time to write because there’s exactly one grocery store in town and they’re not admitting customers because their power is out. Actually, Katherine’s power is out. Nitmiluk’s power is out too, 30 km from here. I need food and there’s nowhere else to get it, so I’m writing in a place I have never seen before in the NT: a parking space in the shade.

I just love the road signs you only see abroad, and since I have a minute, I thought I would share a few of them with you. First up is strangely common. I’ve never driven anywhere where people need to be reminded of this every twenty minutes.

Seriously. On the Great Ocean Road you see this every 15-20 km.

Next up, my favorite category: animal crossings.

Here’s one more, same general category though not technically a road sign:

I’m sharing this one specifically because of where I found it:

Yes, that is a children’s sandbox. Specifically, it’s the “dinosaur discovery play area” at the Cape Otway Lighthouse, a family-friendly tourist attraction situated in a national park. I’ll have to do some writing about this later, but one of the things I admire most about this country and its people is a general willingness to accept that the world has sharp edges. (I appreciated this about Texas too, actually. It’s the only thing I liked about living down there: you have to watch out for snakes when you walk the dog.) Back home I see all these efforts to bubble-wrap the world so no one gets a boo-boo. When we can’t bubble-wrap it, we surround it with caution tape and liability waivers and incantations of corporate legalese to cast wards of protection.

Here they seem to understand what we seem to be hell-bent on denying: you gotta prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. But more than this, they prefer a world where there are still plenty of sawtooth pandanus to cut into your poor tent. That’s the world I want to live in too, and it’s the one I wish more of my students were trying to get into instead of trying to escape.

And not just my students, come to think of it. Lots of people. In fact, as of right now, even my tent is going to change its attitude. It’s about damn time I brought it somewhere it can really test its mettle. All these years and not a single serious battle scar? For shame. From now on its name is Old Nylonsides, and it laughs at thorns and sawteeth.