Tumbleweed

After nearly four months in New Zealand, we flew back to the US on March 30th. It was the day that lasted FOREVER! Unlike when you fly to New Zealand and lose an entire day, the return trip is like time travel as you typically arrive back in the US before taking off in New Zealand. ‘Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a Time Machine out of a DeLorean?’ It was nice to get back to the US and our global entry cards enabled us to breeze through immigration in less than a minute! Loved this sign on the bathroom of a cafe in Atwater Village, Los Angeles Upon arriving in LA, we stayed at my aunt Nina’s and her fiance Mark’s house who were actually getting married the next day! It was a second marriage for both of them so they decided to keep it fairly low key and have a courthouse wedding up in Santa Barbara. Even though it was small, it was still a beautiful wedding and both the bride and the groom were dressed to the nines! After the ceremony, we had an incredible dinner at a r...

Greetings from our old home of Auckland, NZ. It's been nice to be back in our old stomping grounds as we wrap up our extended visit to NZ (we're flying back to LA on March 30th). We've been catching up with old friends and colleagues and enjoying some good weather for a change as summer has finally arrived in NZ! We're also taking care of some things like selling our car and looking into shipping our belongings over here in a few months.  The amazing Clareville Bakery a quick 20 minutes up the road from our future home. Before leaving the Wairarapa a couple weeks ago, we decided to have one more go of tramping the Holdsworth Jumbo Circuit in the Tararuas which we had tried in January only to get stuck at Powell Hut for two days while miserable weather blew through (horizontal rain and no visibility). This time we decided to do the trip in the other direction so we headed up the river valley before climbing up to Jumbo Hut which is just above treeline. We had run into a ...

Ginny and I have been keeping a running mental list of things that are noticeably different in NZ as compared to the US. From what we can remember: Extreme scarcity of shower curtains - most showers have doors  No garbage disposals - I don’t think we’ve seen a garbage disposal the whole time we’ve been here Clean public toilets - you can actually use the public toilets here and they’re all over the place Very few clothes dryers - almost everyone hangs their laundry out to dry or dries it inside if it’s raining out Everyone has chickens, vege gardens and fruit trees - we’re looking forward to doing the same Lots of poached eggs and halloumi on menus - and who can blame them? I’m a convert! Flavored canned/pouched tuna is a thing Towbars on all types of vehicles - never know when you’ll need to hook up to a trailer to haul shit After staying at an AirBnb and then with a friend in the New Plymouth area, we decided to sneak in another tramp to one of our favorite destinations - Egmont ...