Trains and Rockets and Bridges that bounce
September 8, 2005Onemana, New Zealand
7:27am
Hud is sitting across from me eating a bowl of Rice Bubbles. Crisps are chips here and chips are fries. Just like Australia. Can you tell I am on a diet….or food regime?…it’s all I think about. Actually, that is not totally true. I think about beer as well, and diet coke, and coffee, and wild ass circus sex. And Andrew’s wedding this weekend. And Chicken Jimmy’s upcoming baby. Sigh.
I had a nice note from one of friends. She told me when all the gang gets together there is a definite gap because Steph and I are not around. It was nice to hear. You begin to convince yourself that you never mattered much to your friends. Or I begin to wonder that. Only because of my automatic sulk mechanism. I do miss them. My family goes without saying.
I am back to writing the novel. 2-3 pages a day for the remainder of the trip here. That is my goal. It should be attainable with the 3 hours a day I have allotted to me for writing. Writing is work. You have to sit in front of the blank screen and type. Type until your hands cramp. Then read. Then type again. It’s discipline. An attribute I have trouble with. Even before the chronic pot smoking days. The garage days. I used to sneak out during the week and come back at 4 in the morning when we lived on Glengarry. Someone’s parents were always away. What a privileged teenage life I squandered. But full of memories. I think.
So Andrew is getting married this weekend. One of the last of my friends to take the plunge. I am at the age where some have even taken the plunge twice. Andrew is marrying his girlfriend of 11 years. They are wacky. Everyone has a wacky couple in their social circle. I have known him since I was 12 years old. He was at my parent’s wedding. Well one of the weddings. I have been to four. Four weddings of at least one of my parents. What a great statistic. I wish I were going to Andrew’s wedding. I hope they take a lot of pictures. It will be naughty and dirty and wonderful.
Yesterday was more than just me wallowing in the house. We went to Waihi, a small gold mining town about 30 km south of us on the Eastern side of the Peninsula. With a little investigation we found out an old train runs just for passengers along a 6.5km track retained from the old gold mining days. They still mine gold and silver here, they just transport it differently. Well, we were the only ones scheduled to go on the train so we just took the engine car.
Meaning Hud got to sit in the front and blow the whistle as this relic of an engine chugga chugga woo wooed down the track.
The scenery along the track was more the rolling hills of green then the gaping maw of chasm I thought it was going to be, but this truly was a trip for Hudson. He stood silently, a little shy of the conductor, a wonderful retired architect living his dream, but Hud loved it, and cried when we had to leave.
Dennis, the instructor, was inspirational.
He just loved his job. He was 63. He worked two days a week and had really great teeth, which he showed non-stop. He knew all about the train, the route, the history of the region. When he first applied to work on this tiny railway, he thought he was going to work in the gift shop, or help clean up. Nope, they told him he would be driving, and he must have jumped up and down like a drunken kangaroo. I am sure there is not a week that goes by where Dennis does not leap out of bed on the days he is working and kiss his wife a little more passionately, wink at all the cuties on the way to the railway, and smile to every single one of the passengers who are lucky enough to ride his small train. I have never met someone who loved his job more. Inspiration appears so randomly.
After the railway we went to playground with a rocket ship with a slide in the middle of it. Hud played around and raced another small boy who was smaller but probably two years older. Hud lost the races but he didn’t care, he was running.
We ate our yoghurts and were off, down the highway to the Karanghake Gorge, right in the heart of all the old gold mines. We walked on suspension bridges with allowances for only 10 people and they bounce!
We plan to come back here, as there is some good walks here, one through an old mining tunnel 180 meters long. You have to bring your own flashlight. Scary shit man!
On our way home we dropped by a beach here recommended to us by the large man who works or owns the small grocery store in Whangamata who always gives Hud a free lollypop. It is 10km of white sandy beach with a really nice break. There was one guy surfing and he kept on skipping the big waves. He’s chicken, said my wife, resident surf Betty.
So, during a great dinner of steak, green beans, sliced tomatoes and a small amount of roasted potatoes we summarized that Hud had been on a train, a rocket ship and a suspension bridge all in one day.
Life is good when you’re three. Life is good when you’re almost 36
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 1:18 PM
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