#TBT: People Who Were Nice To Me, South Island Edition

Hard to believe I’ve been home for two weeks now. Harder to believe I was in New Zealand just two weeks ago. It feels like I’ve been home forever, but I guess winter will do that to you.

Let’s have more summery thoughts! Time for another edition of People Who Were Nice To Me, and this one is long overdue. I finished the TA a month ago and I wish I could go back and thank all of these people again in person. I thanked them all at the time, of course, but if I could do it again now I’d be going back to summertime. But I digress…

Gordon and Sharon: Gordon got props once before in the North Island edition, for giving me invaluable information about the TA—most importantly, the tip to ignore the road closure signs between Picton and Pelorus Bridge. Gordon rode out to meet me at the foot of the Maungatapu Track, then escorted me to his home outside of Nelson, where his wife Sharon had a wholesome dinner waiting for us. They put me up in their spare room and we stayed up late talking about the TA and all things bicycle. They’re both serious riders and they had lots to teach me as well as lots to feed me.

Reefton’s rando twins: Their last name probably isn’t Rando. They’re just two random guys I met on the sidewalk in Reefton, who gave me just the advice I needed to fix Booster’s shifter. Turns out all I needed was a can of WD-40 and some tips on what to do with it.

Shontal the hotelier: She runs the Old Nurses Home in Reefton, but more importantly, she owns a laptop she was kind enough to let me borrow for the day I was stranded there. Laptop access was surprisingly difficult to get while traveling. Thanks to Shontal, instead of spending my day nursing my knee, I spent it nursing my knee and working my way through the one argument in my sabbatical research that had proved the stickiest sticking point.

Fraser the bus driver: On Thanksgiving, GPS problems sent me rolling back into Tapawera with my tail between my legs. I saw Fraser’s bus at the Four Square there and asked which way he was heading. He was the exact opposite of the douchebag bus driver who repeatedly refused to take me and Booster from Auckland toward Cape Reinga. Fraser let Booster aboard with no qualms at all, and dropped us off halfway to Lake Rotoroa. So I completed my full mileage goal for the day and ended up exactly where I wanted to go, even though those miles didn’t connect Tapawera with Rotoroa.

Eva and Henning: Ze Germans I rode with for several days on the Wilderness Trail and thereabouts. We passed each other a few times before chance put us at the same dairy (that’s kiwi for convenience store). They’re riding around the world, 18,000 km ridden so far with another 18,000 to go. Talk about living so well that death will tremble to take them! Well done, you two. They say they’re only faster than me on the road, but I suspect they slowed down for me once we hit gravel. We camped together and broke bread together, and shared plenty of my very favorite thing: excellent conversation.

Heather the helicopter lady: In Harihari I went to book a helicopter tour of the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. Heather, the woman who books the flights, said “We need a minimum three passengers, so we need to find you two more.” Then she went about actually trying to find me two other people to make the flight happen. She asked me if I could wait twenty minutes, so I went to the nearest dairy to hold up my end of the “we” in “we need to find you two more.” I shamelessly asked other customers if they’d like to take a helicopter ride. Get this: Heather walked all the way to the dairy, phone in hand, to tell me she couldn’t find two fares in Harihari but she could book me on the first flight out of Franz Josef the next morning. Who does that?

Nichole and Payson: Bikers extraordinaire, podcasters extraordinaire, and generous enough to spend an evening interviewing a nobody like me.

Crystal from Atlanta: We randomly met at that weird wall of bras near the Cardrona Hotel. She’s the one who told me about the Cardrona’s frickles—that’s fried pickles, and they are just what you need if you’ve spent half your day pedaling up a mountain and you’re going to spend the second half pedaling up the same damn mountain.

Marcel the Iron Dutchman: Another rider I crossed paths with once or twice before we decided to ride together. He’s got a badass bike with a belt drive (no oil! you lubricate it with water) and internal gearing, and the man himself is made out of steel. We rode to Wanaka together and spent a couple of days there, which included a misguided kayak adventure and one of the best meals of the entire TA for me. Until then I’d only used blue cheese as a cold, crumbly topping. But stir it in the pot with your veggies and they turn into cheesy blue-tasting goodness. And once again, plenty of excellent conversation.

Ronnie the Dog: We met on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, and Ronnie would still be fetching sticks if I were still there throwing them. Not the best conversationalist but she is a very good girl.

The boat dude: I feel rotten that I didn’t catch his name. I took a jetboat tour on the Dart River, because jetboats are what Batman has and because this one jets past several Lord of the Rings sites. The pilot was a young Māori man who told us all about the cultural significance of the river, which among other things is a source of pounamu, or greenstone. Pounamu is a big deal. If you’re not Māori you’re not allowed to take it, and if you are Māori, you treat it with respect. Giving pounamu as a gift is a big deal too, The boat dude found a chunk of it in the river and gave it to me. No idea what I did to deserve that, but it will certainly have pride of place on one of my philosophy shelves.

Jan and Calvin: They own the Wee Cosy Hut I stayed at in Winton. They didn’t invite me to dinner, they just set a place at the table as if there were nowhere else it made sense for me to eat. I shared a day-after-Christmas dinner with three generations of their family (their daughter-in-law and Jan’s mom were also in attendance) and got to try kiwi Christmas cake, which is a nummy spicy fruity cake under a thick robe of frosting. I still can’t get over the hospitality I received over and over again in New Zealand. Jan and Calvin are the epitome of it.

Phone hosts: Me being the phone parasite. The only real stress I experienced on the whole trip was tech-related, and the tech problems were never-ending. On more occasions than I care to count, strangers allowed me to use their phones as hotspots so I could get my phone to do, well, anything whatsofuckingever.

Descend: That’s the dive company in Milford Sound. Everyone there was nice to me: Avi the dive master; Simone the admin queen who exchanged 21 emails with me in making the dive happen; and a special shout-out to Lance the skipper, owner/operator, dive master, and dude who can hold up his end in a long philosophical conversation about the nature of compassion. I love people who ask good questions.

Ras the Diver: Every paying customer aboard a dive boat is a diver. Ras is a Diver. Quit some kind of high-powered job in finance to go scuba diving for a year. 300 dives in six months (by comparison, I’ve logged 150ish in thirty years). Ras taught me all kinds of stuff about breathing technique and air conservation. Now I just have to do a lot more diving to put her advice into practice.