Verbin' It in Wellingon

Wellington, New Zealand: The City of action, the city of verb. This place is so beautiful, McLean is so lucky to live here. A city purched around huge hills and gravitates around Mount Victoria, also aligning the city is a beautiful bay. The homegrown festival is taking place down on the waterfront right now, Salmonella Dub will be on stage any second so we will probably go down and check that out. We had good times in Auckland hangin' with Ross, but we eventually headed our seperate ways and we hopped on the NakedBus, which was a 12 hour bus ride from Auckland to Wellington. We got to see a ton of the country side and many prominent cities of the North Island. Also Lak Taupo was beautiful. The bus made stops roughly every hour or two so we got time to checkout a few different cities on the way. A group of rebel/punks on our bus got jumped by a crowd of skatboarders in North Porstman, eventually getting hit in the head with a skateboard. That was kind of intense. I sat next to a Victoria Uni student Tia on the way to Wellington, she was really nice and her folks were sheep farmers and teachers, I asked her folks if they needed any help but they seemed to be fine without us. The bus dropped us off in Wellington around 8 o'clock PM, we had no idea where Ben's house was or anything about the city. We were on our way to find internet at a hostel to contact Ben via E-mail so we could meet up. Out of nowhere a character comes sprinting towards us with a huge smile on his face. BEN! So happy to see him. He lead us to get food at the grocery then we headed up to his place in the hills. We arrived here Wednesday the 23rd and have been hanging around the beautiful city ever since. The plan is to take off for The greatest walk in the world," Which is the Milford Track, and also hit the Milford Sound as well. Tia Ora to all.

Nonexistant Earth Day,Wind Burn and Missing Fleece

On the flight from Dallas to Frisco, which actually was longer then the MPLS--->Dallas flight, getting us nowhere..haha, it was cheaper yet we used almost twice the fuel? haha, doesn't make much sense. But I was lucky enough to land a spot next to a really nice guy from Michigan who had lived in NC,Dallas Region and was visiting his daughter in SF, who also had a son who is an aspiring actor in LA and was just in an episode of 2 and 1/2 men, also shooting a small role in a new Jamie Foxx film, he was good company for the3-4 hour flight to San Fran. So there we are around 6:30 PM on Thursday April 18, at the airport trying to figure out a way to navigate ourselves as cheaply as possible to downtown region to book a hostel for the evening. We hop on a bus, only about 25 minutes later we are headed the absolute wrong direction, and heading past San Mateo and onto Palo Alto (Stanford U). After running into the friendliest bum I've encountered, we headed on our way to the CalTrain where he lead us, and I felt as if earned my 62 cents. CalTrain takes us down to SF Finally, and after a grocery trip for food we are ready to find a hostel around 10:00 PM. We begin meandering the streets with all our gear like lost souls with no direction. Eventually another homeless man approaches, he offers to guide us to a hostel and asks if we need any sort of drugs (he was quite scary looking). I wanted to get away from this guy right away, but since we are so lost we follow him and he leads us through alleyways and backstreets, mumbling about stories of his 10 years of living on the streets of SF. He constantly was bending over picking up cigarette buts hoping they were something he could smoke, this man claimed his favorite was crystal meth,which scared me even more. He takes us to a pretty sketchy motel and says he can hook us up a deal, not true at all, we got the same price but we decide to move onto an old hostel turned into a hotel for 35 dollars a night each...we give the dude 10 bucks to get out of our lives and call it a night. We awaken the next day, load up our gear and begin walking for a backpackers hostel to stay the next 2 nights in. After about an hour of walking around,failing completely we stop at Union Square to munch on some apples and take a look around the park...only to have a fellow lead us right to a backpackers down an alley a block away. The place didn't look like a 5 star, but i was exactly what I was looking for, about 20 backpackers staying in (smaller hostel)...with a 3rd floor community room with kitchen and computer access. This hostel had folks from Ireland, West Virginia, Australia, London,Uruguay,Tokyo and a few other places, everyone was amazingly nice and down to earth, we would hang with them on down time in the community room throughout our 2 night stay. After getting settled in there we headed down to Whole Foods which is gods gift to natural/organic food lovers. Found some amazing bottled organic milk. a couple fresh loaves of bread and had some lunch. Then we pregamed Friday evening for the YMSB show a few blocks away at the Warfield..legendary with Phish drummer john fishman. The show was filled with crazies, older deadheads who've moved onto the fresh jam scene of our generation, nothing but good vibes, bluegrass ,and smiles all around, amazing concert. After the show we just went back to the hostel around 1:45 am after a getting lost for about 20 minutes. The last day in SF we rented bikes with 3 others, one being Chase, who was also from Fargo and staying in our hostel, such a small world. Backalley hostel in SF and another Fargoan checks in. We bike toured from downtown to the GG Bridge to GG park and then finally Haight St....this town has so much zest and culture, I have a few pics and videos throughout our ventures here. After about 6-7 hours biking around SF we biked back to the hostel to pack up and head to the airport for our 12 hour flight to Auckland,NZ at 9pm.....The San Francisco Treat was more then I anticipated, greatest large city in the country as far as I'm concerned.

We completely skipped over Earth Day, and 4/20 up in the air. We left Frisco 4/19 at 9pm, and landed in Auckland 4/21 around 4 AM. The 12 hour flight over the Pacific was smooth, watched 2 movies, read alittle bit of Chuck Palaniuk's "Diary", and slept about 2 hours. We landed early, and by the time we gathered everything and our luggage I realized I forgot my jacket with deodorant and biking cateye in the pockets. While Feigum slept in the airport for 2 hours I was sent aimlessly from desk to desk in search of my missing north face, after 2 hours of desk meandering, I had no luck and now some Kiwi is sporting my fleece around Auckland. Oh well, just a jacket...right? Around 7 am we took the city bus to Auckland's City Centre and found a nice backpacker's hostel in the heart of the city in an 8 bedroom for 22 dead prez's a piece. We had the chance to meet many many nice people from all around. The countries/states representing our 8 bed was Germany,Israel,Michigan, and Turkey. After a nice shower (it had been 4 days) we met Ross from Fargo who has been tramping NZ and Auz for 6 months. We checked out the city and roamed with Ross all day and night, eventually opening our Jameson Whiskey and cracking a 6-pack on the 5 floor balcony of Ross's hostel about 2 miles down Queen St. The drinks lead to a craving for food, we bounced down to a local NZ pizza joint. Pizza is not NZ's specialty, they don't really use pizza sauce, but more so BBQ sauce on their pizza. I was hungry, I was sem-drunk...it was OK, he did have a good lager on tap which made up for the lack of pizza credibility. We headed to a pub a few blocks away for one last brew and headed home around 1:30...seeing that I had only 2 hours of sleep on the plane, and we had been slowly inebriating ourselves since 6 o'clock. We woke up today and walked around the harbor of Auckland looking for good fresh produce and fish. The skies were sunny for moments, then rainy the next, back and forth for hours. We finally decided on loading up on cheeses,fresh bread, hummus,pesto and organic milk to snack on. All while trying to figure out travel plans to get out of Auckland. They say Auckland is only here as the main transportation hub, but get out after a couple of days and see the country, which we are doing tomorrow. Taking 12 hour bus ride across the North Island to Wellington and Ben McLean, where Ross will head up north and work for someone a week longer.

Day 1-2, Towards, on Away from Friso

So Tubby, Feigum and I packed in my car and headed to mpls. to meet our flight towards San Fran, we made a stop at Megan G's house to dropoff Tubby's book, we ended up chatting a bit and printing off our plane tickets, only to realize we forgot to book a return flight home from frisco to mpls. Luckily, we found a return flight for only 135 bones, so we were set. We passed out at Welle and Erik's humble abode (thanks for the couch space), woke up around 9 am. and started walking towards the Metrodome, loaded with 2 months worth of living in our packs. Boarded our flight from Minneapolis to Dallas, which got us no closer to Frisco, but was the cheapest route I could find. We chilled around in the Dallas airport for awhile, I ate shitty overpriced Baja Turkey Sandwhich and we were on our way to The Golden City.....out of time.....to be continued.

Abruptly Sinking In

Here I sit tonight in the same house I've lived in for 21 years. About to embark on a 2 month journey across the world. As of now, mixed thoughts fill my head. Thoughts of the experience of new lands, environmental jobs, organic farming jobs and breathe-taking hikes are all right on the horizon. But, at the same time I am loving my life here at home in Fargo,ND...loving time with my friends and I can only hope when I return, things will be the same in town as they are now. But I've been waiting a good 4-5 years to visit New Zealand, and 2 months of backpacking,camping and hostel staying will be the experience I've been craving. I've tried preparing for 2 week trips before, but leaving for 2 months with just a backpack is something different, what to pack is leading to be a more difficult plan then anticipated. Indecisiveness looms, we had planned to cycle 500 miles and ship our bikes, but a few days ago we decided that would be too expensive, and possibly too much paint for our palette, seeing that we have never gone on a cycling tour before. Plans so far are to stay 2 nights in San Francisco and attend a Yonder Mountain String Band concert with Jon Fishman...and get a good taste of Frisco for a few days. Then taking off the 19th of April for Auckland, landing the 21st. So far we've got 4 very enticing jobs lined up, kind of, we talked to them and they said they will probably need our help. Work expands from working on a family's organic farm on Hawke's Bay up on the North island, to 2 lodge's working completely for the environment both located in the Marlborough Sound, accessible only by a long tramp or boat.

Job 1: Marlborough Sound: http://www.nydiatrack.org.nz/index.php

Job 2: Marlborough Sound: http://www.tira-ora-lodge.com/about_the_lodge.htm

Well, 21 years old, the time can't be better. Many people always say want to take a trip like this but never do. Anyone can, you just have to make it happen. Set aside what seems important for a few months...you can always get back to it. But once you have kids and careers these things diminish due to the crazy working lifestyle Americans live. Americans take less vacation time then anyone in the world. People, Enjoy Yourselves!

Kia Ora ,
Kc