Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition
In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
I’m in Hamilton for a work conference this week, and again this year they have their giant tree all lit up. This year the light show seemed especially good.
Below is a cropped version, and i think highlighting the kid makes it a better picture.
That’s me and about 120 other metal detectorists at yesterday’s Metal Detecting New Zealand Aotearoa seeded hunt in Rotorua.
I left well before dawn to make the 3 1/2 hour drive. As it turned out I didn’t actually need quite that much time, but better safe than sorry. I woke up early anyway.
That’s the field of battle… a city park and beach on the big volcanic crater lake at the center of sulfurous Rotorua. Apparently this was a main swimming beach back in the day, but nowadays development has moved the town’s center of gravity, so this is kind of out in the ‘burbs.
After the speeches, thanking of the sponsors, and so on, we were away.
I called this a seeded hunt, because they had planted a bunch of stuff for us to find. Similar events in England routinely turn up Roman and medieval relics. But here we haven’t had metal for so long, so you’ve got to sweeten the pot. They gave away three new metal detectors, and some gold and silver coins, and various other cool treasures.
I won a hat, AND a t-shirt. But I also found a small silver coin, a 1940 sixpence to be precise, so that was cool.
Until this event I’d only ever met these people on Facebook, so it was cool to see them in real life (although my currently neurodivergent smile doesn’t probably make the best first impression). And it was really neat to see firsthand a couple of the people who always seem to find the good shit. Here we were, same field, same equipment, etc. And sure enough, I watched in amazement as some of the guys did what they do… find all the good prizes and a whole lot of original stuff too, while I was largely getting pull tabs. (In fairness to me, I was happy to dig the pull tabs… it didn’t seem appropriate to be too aggressively cherry picking only the obvious stuff. And the earring I found, although not real silver, still counts as a win on my internal scoreboard, and definitely sounded like a piece of “can slaw”, so patience can be rewarded. )
That’s my loot… the silver coin, the bullet, the rings (not real silver), and the little games token were seeded, and the rest was just in the ground. It puts into perspective something I’ve sort of suspected… there’s a lot of targets in the ground. Between us, I imagine we pulled 1,000 coins and several dozen pieces of jewelry out of an area maybe the size of two regular city blocks.
And we cleared a lot of trash. And we could have pulled at least three times more if that had been the point.
After about four hours of staring at the ground, including a break for sausages on the barbecue, it was time to go home. I was plenty tired at the end, but it was a really fun day.
That’s Kapiti Island, just off the coast from where I stayed during the national pétanque tournament a couple weeks ago.
It looks like a neat place to visit… all the birds get to live there without any introduced predators.
Next time…
That’s me and my partner Wayne at last weekend’s national doubles pétanque tournament.
I was content with my performance in the singles, as I’ve already mentioned. For the doubles, we started off very strong: after the first three games, we were seeded 8th out of 50. But that was it… we crashed and burned. We only won one more game out of the remaining six and finished near the bottom.
I was pretty bummed afterwards… it’s really frustrating to watch yourself fail like that. You know what to do, and you know you can do it, but then you mess up.
Luckily for the partnership, we were both in the same boat… he messed up more or less the same amount as me. So at least neither of us had to contend with too much guilt for letting the other guy down.
Another thing you have to learn in sport is resilience. So after a long hot shower and a night’s sleep, I managed to find a new frame of mind for Monday’s national team tryouts. I knew, and particularly after the crappy weekend, that I wouldn’t be on the team. So that took the pressure off. The tryouts therefore were more of a clinic for me… playing with and against the best players, chatting about tactics and techniques, etc. I actually played quite well, and so the trip was saved.
There’s always next year…
Today I played in the NZ National Singles pétanque tournament in Paraparaumu, about an hour out of Wellington.
Seven games, and I’m knackered! I ended up in the top half of the field, tied for 19th out of 54. And I beat a couple of really good players.
Tomorrow and Sunday is the Doubles tournament, and then Monday is tryouts for the annual AU-NZ grudge match.
Fun, but I’ll be very very tired by the time it’s all over.
Since joining the Bay2Bay swimming group I’ve heard about how great the Huka River swim is. Now I’ve done it and yes it is! We got a nice Airbnb room and made a weekend of it, along with about a dozen other Bay2Bay’ers.
The Huka flows out of Lake Taupō, starting just about 1km behind me in the picture above. It has a steady current which is regulated with a set of gates… sometimes they let out more water, sometimes less. The swim is with the current, so you can clock your fastest 3k ever.
The current was gentle – think lazy float with an inner tube – but a couple of km below where we got out, the river narrows to create the Huka Falls. The water is spectacularly blue and clear, and it’s close to the road, making for one of NZ’s most visited natural attractions. A few intrepid people have done the falls on a kayak… but mostly that’s just dumb.
That’s our gang on race day, including a couple of former members who’ve since moved away.
There were about 300 people altogether, supposedly divided into waves based on expected finish times. But I’m thoroughly average, and even more people think they’re average than actually are, so it felt like my wave was pretty big. The whole race was a jumble of other people’s elbows and feet for me. Meh.
After the race we did what we do even better than swimming…
In the afternoon many of us took a short hike and swim out to the Māori Rock Carvings, which are cool enough but would be even more impressive if they had been made in pre-colonial times.
We had a BBQ together at ‘the big house’ where many of the guys stayed (we were just fine having our own space, having registered for the event somewhat late).
The next day, I got up early and took the metal detector to the swim staging area. I figured 300 people squirming in and out of their wetsuits and clothing would yield some dropped treasure, but I didn’t find diddly.
Later, about half of us swam the course again, just leisurely this time. That was way better. We played around in the current, jumped off rocks, and even stopped for a soak in some hot springs that flow right into the river.
In the afternoon, Lee and I took the tourist boat trip back out to the carvings, where I confirmed previous experiments showing I can’t take good selfies.
Taupō is a tourist town pure and simple. There’s plenty of public art as you walk among the restaurants and souvenir shops, and if you turn your head, there’s the magnificent lake. I can certainly see the appeal of taking your family vacations there, but I think I would find it relatively confining after a relatively short time. I remember driving through Tahoe once and immediately thinking about living there… similar in a lot of ways.
Sunday afternoon when the others had left, we stopped at a glass-blowing studio and paid to walk around their glass sculpture garden. It was very nice among roadside attractions, but we’ve seen other glass sculptures and so this one didn’t thrill us as much as we’d hoped. Then we went to the geothermal spa pools at Wairakei, which was nice and relaxing.
It was our first weekend out of Auckland in quite a while, and we had a good time, a nice combo of hard swimming, chilling with friends, walking around and gawking at stuff, and doing nothing.
Next confirmed swim-cation is Aitutaki in September…
First, read this.
Four years (and a pandemic) later, the same conference happened in the same place. And so presented me with a prime chance to see how things are the same, and how they are different.
Last time, I was pretty snobby about Hamilton. I felt differently this time. The downtown seemed clean and spacious somehow. And although there are plenty of empty storefronts, there was also a lot of public art to catch my eye. A lot of the murals are recent… maybe an infusion of COVID relief arts funding?
The little plaza (actually a glorified vacant lot) where Riff-Raff stood is under construction, part of what looks like a pretty big project. But fear not, Transylvania fans, for Richard O’Brien now holds stiletto-heeled sway over the entrance to the Waikato Museum. It’s a spot where I would expect either a WWI memorial or an overly earnest pile of cubes and half-spirals.
I walked briskly along the river again, and the rowers are still there.
But I didn’t run around the lake, because even an hour of walking now leads to fluid leaking out of my knee joint. Time for my first ever surgery, methinks.
Last time, the big Christmas tree was just going up, but this time I got to see its full LED glory.
Last time, I gave a short talk and then manned the company booth. This year I led a 2-day workshop, manned the HL7 booth in my role as Chair, and then gave another talk yesterday. Movin’ on up…
Sadly, we didn’t get to go back to Hobbiton for the dinner. But supposedly next year…
All in all, a good trip. But I’m glad to be home in the hot tub.
The stereotypical New Zealand hamburger has way too much stuff on it… imagine an American burger with the usual trimmings and add a fried egg, a beet slice, and an odd chutney or two.
But it’s also a land of very very simple sandwiches… as in this example from the take-away cabinet at a cafe we stopped in on the way down to Palmerston North last weekend.
Tl;dr version : We won!!
My second year as a member of the Chanticleer Cup team came to a successful conclusion last weekend as the Auckland squad trounced our evil Wellington rivals over two days of fierce pétanque to bring the trophy home.
I felt quite pleased to make the team this year, and I got a lot of good coaching out of it, particularly from a couple of the more experienced players.
Maybe more importantly, I got to know some of my teammates … who will be rivals at the next tournament we all enter… better through all the time we spent training and traveling down to Palmerston North. Having a closer connection to these pétanque friends makes the whole thing more fun.
One could write a much longer story about all the experiences we had, but, well, not that interesting unless you were there. For instance, it was cold down there on the prairie, so some of us warmed the boules in hot water for an hour or so before going out to play. There was some debate over whether that was clever or a sign of softness. Whatever… it felt nice and we won. There must be a dozen more tidbits like that. And of course recounting the action could take as long as doing it in real life… the drama, the close calls! Ken Burns himself couldn’t hope to capture it all in one of his puny 40-hour films.
But regardless of how much I spare you the details, trust me that it was altogether a fun weekend and something I’d probably do again next year… unless I’ve shifted my focus to an even bigger tournament…
For a long time, Lee has had this question: what is it about truffles? We’ve had truffle-infused and truffle-sprinkled things from time to time, but it’s not like you can just sit down and eat a truffle to really understand the flavor of the thing. And to the extent you do taste the truffle in your food, does it actually just taste like dirt?
And besides, when you get truffles in a restaurant or a packaged product, what are you actually getting?
For answers to these questions, we booked into the truffle hunt and truffle lunch experience by Te Puke Truffles and Kitchen Takeover.
At the truffle farm, about a half hour from Tauranga in the smack dab center of kiwifruit orchard country, we met Maureen and Colin, above, along with Jed the alpha truffle dog, below.
We’ve been on guided foraging walks before, and that’s kind of what we were expecting here… but it wasn’t like that. Instead, the dozen of us guests sat on their back patio for about an hour and a half presentation about the farm, about truffles, dogs, and so on. We got coffee, and a little sample of truffle scrambled eggs, truffle ice cream, truffle butter (smoked and not), truffle honey and truffle salt. It was informative and quietly entertaining… they’ve done this talk a few hundred times and it flowed well.
After that, we got a demo of the younger dog, Sam, practicing his training. Under some of the flower pots is an old film canister with truffle in it, and they lead him around sniffing each one. If he smells truffles, he sits and gets a treat. Going in, I was really expecting something closer to slathering dogs setting out after wild boars, Game of Thrones style, but instead it was this sweet poodle mix clumping about on his leash and sitting down from time to time.
And then on to the main event. We walked through a couple of paddocks, past the sheep, ducks, and beehives. The truffière is about an acre, with 200 oak and hazelnut trees planted in a grid. We had to stay behind the fence lest we contaminate the holy ground.
The trees were inoculated with the magic truffle spore before planting (17 years ago) and the soil heavily amended with lime etc to replicate the conditions most favorable to truffle production. DNA analysis is undertaken regularly. Books have been read, and many farmers and ag experts consulted. But still there’s as much art as science in this… there’s a lot unknown about how to make the magic fruit appear. It took 7-8 years for the first truffles to appear, and each season is quite different.
Jed the dog meandered along for a few minutes and sat down. Could it be, after all the expectation-lowering warnings we’d had due to the ridiculously rainy spring and summer???
Yes! As you know from the picture at the top, they found a smallish truffle and then another. At between $1 and $3 per gram wholesale, even that little harvest represents a good day. But Maureen and Colin made it clear throughout the morning that this is a hobby that helps pay for itself more than a way to make a living.
We dutifully bought three little jars of honey, salt, and butter on the way out. All in all, it was a lovely morning, if a bit less athletic and grubby than I expected. We thought back to our own country living adventures in Fulton, MO, 30 years ago (!!), where we imagined a lamb and raspberry ranch. If we’d stuck with it, maybe we’d have something on the same scale and as pleasant as Te Puke Truffles. But man oh man, what a lot of work they’ve put in. I admire Maureen and Colin’s efforts but am satisfied that farm life wasn’t the path for me.
Next stop, back to Tauranga for the truffle lunch.
The lunch was at Sugo, which was just a block or two away from our hotel in a little dining precinct. We’ve seen the same thing everywhere in NZ… there’s a pedestrianized block or two full of restaurants. It always feels a bit too planned by a civic improvement committee, but I bet the formula works. Every visitor can go there and find dinner.
Anyway… the food was great, very truffley.
Considering it was the end of a holiday weekend, we felt pretty good about only spending about 20-30 minutes in heavy traffic on the way home.
Overall it was a great weekend!!
Weekend before last we drove the three or so hours south to Tauranga for an overnight getaway. Above is the boutique hotel we stayed in… the old Post Office building. It was quite nice. We appreciated the mocktails in the beautiful lobby bar as our Dry July experiment continues.
Google recommended this fish n chips place. We were warned of the wait, which made it slightly easier… but still it took a looong time. The food was good, but actually, we’ve never had fish n chips that was any better or worse than any other. One’s perception of fried fish in NZ might be all about the day one is having, I think.
We walked around downtown, sleepy on a Saturday afternoon in winter, even if it was a holiday weekend. Some pics…
And then we had a good Vietnamese dinner that nostalgically reminded us of the surprisingly good Vietnamese restaurant near Bradley Airport that we used to go to sometimes.
But Sunday was the main event… a truffle hunt! Next post.
Traveling for work can be tough on one’s workout routine, especially if that routine requires a lot of gear. This has meant that my frequent Wellington trips have kept me in the pool, because cold and/or stormy water make me want a wetsuit and a group of swimmers I know and trust. And traveling with a wet wetsuit in your carry-on bag is tricky.
But now that the weather is warming up I’ve been able to take a few open water swims at Wellington’s Oriental Bay. By 7 AM there are a couple dozen ‘serious’ swimmers in the water, and a surprisingly large number of people who just go in and splash around for a few minutes. I’ve been able to buddy up with other swimmers and —apart from one day where I turned back early after coming onto a veritable cloud of jellyfish creatures that might or might not have been the stinging kind— had some lovely morning moments.
I’m always a sucker for an op shop (aka thrift store). In Tirau, which proudly calls itself the Corrugated Capital of the World, the SPCA op shop lives inside this giant ram. Couldn’t resist. Bought a nice yellow long-sleeve t-shirt.
Alternate title: Conventioneer mugs for camera.
That’s me at the Te Puia geyser, which was part of the big social evening at last week’s Digital Health Week celebration in Rotorua.
The geyser is probably more interesting than we learned from 10 minutes of staring at it before being herded back onto the little golf cart train.
On the way back from hot water beach, we stopped off for lunch at the pub in Maramarua, which is really just a wide spot in the road.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these men’s room vending machines, but I thought this one seemed particularly thoughtful… cologne, a toothpaste and toothbrush combo, and of course a condom. Six bucks invested and you’re ready to make an impressive entrance at the Met Gala or wherever life takes you… hello ladies!
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 