Goodbye Covid, Hello New Zealand!

I have a big adventure coming up and I’m going to try using this site to log my progress. The last few times I went off on my own for a major odyssey, email was the only way to keep in touch. No, wait a minute. *Asks the googlebox.* Okay, fine, so blogs had already existed for like ten years or something. But still, email was the only way I had to keep in touch, because it’s the only tech I understood. Unless you count postcards. (Yes, I still send those.)

Anyway, the new adventure. I’ve got a sabbatical coming this fall and I am sick and tired of this pandemic. I caught covid once and it sucked. I taught online for a year and it sucked. I went back to a classroom full of covid and it sucked. And I got off light. It didn’t kill anyone I know personally, it didn’t cost me my job, yadda yadda yadda. But I’m still sick of this bullshit, so I want out.

Lucky for me, I also have a sabbatical coming. The timing couldn’t be better. So I looked at all the places I want to go and all the countries that have handled covid well, and lo and behold, New Zealand was the number one spot on both lists. My grandparents went down there when I was in sixth grade, and looking through their pictures when they came back, all I could think was I want to go to there.

Milford Sound. Also, upside down Milford Sound.

 So I’m going. The University of Wellington is going to host me for a lecture, I’m in touch with a few other universities in NZ and Australia to line up the same, and everything I need to do my sabbatical research fits in my email inbox. This site isn’t the place for me to bore you with the research, but I do want to figure out how to use it to record the more adventuresome part. My goal is to go full Aragorn and stay off the grid as much as possible. All I’m bringing is my bike, my camping gear, and a general willingness to get lost and see what happens from there.

(And yes, Philosophy Department, I will still get my research done. I owe the university a book chapter during my sabbatical. But I’m still old school: I do my best writing in pencil, in a college-ruled notebook. I wrote my last few books that way and see no reason to change now. Plus, laptops are heavy. And the opposite of waterproof. And did I mention I’m bikepacking this whole thing?)

This kind of travel writing is more high-tech than I’m used to, and much higher tech than my grandfather’s medium, which was a Kodak Carousel projector shining on a white wall. The irony is he’d have been much better at blogging than I am. He also taught me everything I know about photography, and though he had many more tools in his camera bag than I have on my iPhone, I will try to do him proud and come back with some decent pics. Finally, he was a riveting storyteller, so if anything interesting happens to me, I’ll try to live up to him on that count too.

Because I’ll be working via phone instead of my compooter, these stories will probably be short and sweet. But right now my plan is to post photos and stories here when and as I can, and if you want to follow along, sign up below. You won’t receive any spam from me, because I don’t know how to spam. Not even vegetarian spam. You’ll just get a note whenever I post something here.