There Are Signs Everywhere

As I was cutting and pasting these photos into my blog, I realized that a lot of them are pictures of signs. Is this a sign of something? I dunno, but I do like signage, and there were some doozies in the past few days... I took this first one in the Catlins, for my brother, who's real name is Waimahaka - kidding, it's Gregory, but we call him Greg. If I had more time I would have whipped out my Leatherman and stollen the sign for him. What am I saying? I have all the time in the world - we're on bikes, and not to mention an extended holiday. I guess my excuse for not stealing the sign would be pure laziness. Sorry, Greg. Another night of free camping thanks to the elementary school yard in Tokanui. The excessive wind and rain were the main reasons for pitching our tent on the cement, under cover. A crap sleep on cement is better than a wet crap sleep on soft grass. That was our logic, anyway. Remember way back on the Rees-Dart Track when we lost one of Brian's running shoes? Yes, well, Mr. Zurek here has been toting that solo shoe since its blood relative went MIA. What for? A suitable goodbye ceremony was in our minds where we would pour gasoline in the shoe, light it on fire, send it afloat on some lake, take a ceremonial photo for evidence (and the blog), and then quickly fish the shoe out of the lake, put out the mini-fire and then dispose of the shoe in the appropriate manner (not littering). We never managed to fulfill the dream, and the shoe has been tied to the outside of Brian's trailer for what feels like weeks now. At the schoolyard in Tokanui, I asked Brian if he really, really wanted to keep that darned shoe, and he said, "Not really." So, I took it when he wasn't looking and hid it on top of the fence, took a photo, and said my sweet goodbye. Adios, freaking shoe. The worst part about this story is that the OPTIMAL place of rest for the solo shoe came to us a day later where we saw a fence about 100 m long that was covered - and I mean covered - in random shoes and boots. There must have been thousands of shoes tied to this fence lining the driveway to some weirdo's house. It was fantastic! I felt badly about having given up hope a bit too early for a proper resting place for Brian's shoe, but maybe some kids at the school will light the thing on fire and do it in as it was meant to... The only sign in this next photo is the sign of the wind from the angle of inclination of the grass in the foreground. Lucky for us, the wind was mostly that of the "tail" version, which meant for speedy riding where my top gear was nowhere near high enough. Love that. I also love signs indicating the best parts of hills: down hill, and steep. I'm not sure I really want to know why this next place has been named as it is. Needless to say, we didn't stop and ask. Finally getting to Balclutha, after a few hours of dangerous riding in what the papers later said were 100-kph wind gusts (not fun, except for the fact that my hocked loogies could clear thirty feet!!), I looked back and saw beauty in the mahem of the wind and storms: In Balclutha, Brian and I stopped at a local bike shop to replace the broken brake cable on my bike, and then popped into the information centre to get an update on the weather. The well-dressed ladies of the house were kind enough to let us have free tea and cookies in the mayor's meeting room after I complemented one of them on their stylish shoes. We were so happy to be in a windless, warm place that we forgot to take off our helmets in honour of the occasion. The weather didn't look like it was going to improve, but we decided to keep on truckin' to Milton, another 25 km north. Why did we keep going? Not entirely sure, and we coincidentally asked ourselves that same question after the first five or six kilometres, where numerous permanent signage on the side of the road had a picture of a wind sock with the words "Wind Gusts". So, basically, under normal circumstances this place has a bit of wind coming across the road, and as we happen to be riding along that day, the 100-kph wind gusts just added to the injustice. Staying in a straight line was next to impossible with such severe side winds. And with minimal shoulders on the road, I was particularly scared and a bit on the tense side... but I was still smiling and laughing at the total craziness of it all. It seemed a bit like nature was testing us. We passed. The rather large rolling hills were getting pretty tiring, especially with the winds, and it being the end of a very tough day. I turned my head back to Brian and yelled, "I wish this could be flat!" Brian responded by asking, "What? Like Saskatchewan?!" "No, like the Fraser Valley!" Well, watch out what you wish for because sure as heck, over the next hill, the land flattened out to fields and fields of flatness and picturesque hills hugging the sides, totally resembling the Fraser Valley. It also smelled like manure, which can be found almost all year round in the good ol' Chilliwack area. Mmm... there's nothing like the inability to escape the smell of freshly sprayed manure (remember there are no windows to roll up while on a bike). In the middle of the "Fraser Valley" is Milton, a prison town. The feeling of this place was.... different. Tony, the owner of the hostel we stayed in was.... different. Besides his being a vegetarian and forcing us to cook our steak stirfry in a separate "meat-cooking pot" over the stove with the fan on full blast (he doesn't like the smell of cooking flesh, as he said), he also wouldn't let anyone do the dishes but himself. Not such a bad thing, I say, especially when every hostel you enter has a poster in the kitchen saying, "We're not your parents, wash your dishes!" Tony's eccentricities also included teaching all hostel guests how to juggle (both Brian and I already know how to juggle, which impressed him beyond belief), asking us what Chinese sign we are (I'm a fire-snake, and Brian's a fire-dragon), and asking us to watch a documentary on the problems associated with the forceful entry of the Chinese into Tibet and the Tibetan government in exhile. The film was interesting, and I would like to travel to Tibet one day, but dude, I was just too tired to stay up. And I had rediculously smelly farts. Poor Brian had to endure my stinkiness, but I think he was too tired to realize where the smell was coming from... Yeah, right. In the morning, Tony did one more thing to add to his list of oddness; he had a bath. A bath in the outdoor bathtub, not heated, almost freezing actually. I guess the leaves and debris are now 'clean' too: On our way out of town, I spotted a sign I hadn't seen since Greymouth a few months ago, and I made the effort to stop and take photo. Love this sign. Haven't yet had the ice cream. The next twenty kilometres or so once again felt like I was riding in the Fraser Valley from Chilliwack to Abbotsford. It felt quite surreal, to be honest. And then, as luck would have it, I spotted a sign which made me almost fall off my bike seat: Brian and I arrived in HILLY Dunedin yesterday afternoon. Just after we got into our hostel, some weird, super-creepy guy followed us from the street into the hostel and into the shower next door to our room. He didn't have a bag or a towel, which was strange in and of itself, and I had one of those intuition feelings that something wasn't right. Fifteen minutes later, I heard the guy leave, and this stinky smell kept lingering.... I finally went out into the hallway and peered into the shower and discovered that the creepy guy had taken a shower and also a shit -- in the same place. The psycho, who looked like "The Spleen" character in the movie Mystery Men (mainly because of creepy, white, pussy things emerging from different parts of his face), had crapped and smeared it all over - everything including the walls, the floor and the now-biohazardous floor mat. Not an image easily removed from my mind, unfortunately. I have to say, this really freaked me out, and it's still hard to get it out of my mind, especially when we're in our hostel room next to that very shower (even though it's been cleaned up there is no way in hell you'd ever get me to use that shower even if it was the last one in Dunedin). Is this a sign of creepy things to come in Dunedin? Hopefully not. Much lighter and more pleasant smelling discoveries in Dunedin thus far: We found out that New Zealand grows its own mandarin oranges, and they are currently in season!! Dunedin has a Cadbury's Chocolate Factory (we're booked in for 10:30 AM tomorrow). The hostel we are at rents current DVD's for a buck, and there's a DVD player and television in our private room (we watched the second Pirates of the Carribean last night to catch up before the third one is released next week). We ate pretty good street meat from some church kids doing a fundraiser (we upgraded the white Wonder Bread to some cheese buns we bought earlier). I went to the dentist to help remove some wisdom tooth pain, and it was an easy and rather inexpensive success (and falls within the approval of my travel health insurance). And, during our walk this afternoon, we got to listen to a not-too-shabby rock band play songs in the centre of town (the tune was okay, but the lyrics were not too original: "Pray to god. Pray to god. Let Jesus be your guide." etc... Religious rock bands just never seem right somehow. Brian and I have tickets to the International Tour of the Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival tonight, so I'd better get back to the hostel to help make pizza before it's too late.