A week before I left home someone sent me a joke. It was about a grandpa and his grandson who were visiting the big city for the very first time. They had never seen big city things before.
And so, inside a tall skyscraper they saw something very strange —a door that opened and shut repeatedly. It was an elevator, but they had never seen one before. The door, they observed, led only to a very small and empty room, with no entrance or exit but the one in front.
As they studied this small room and its door, a frail, elderly woman in a wheelchair entered. The door immediately shut behind her.
The grandpa watched as a set of numbers above the door lit up, each one higher than the next. And then the numbers began coming down, finally reaching the same one where they had begun. A bell rang, and the door to the tiny room reopened!
But instead of an old woman, out stepped a vibrant, beautiful young woman! The grandpa couldn’t believe his eyes!
What magic had occurred?
He pondered. And he pondered. And then, as if a lightbulb had gone off in his head, with a gleam in his eye, he turned to his grandson.
"Go get your grandmother," he said.
AND SO I WAS THINKING about this story as I stepped onto the giant Boeing 747 in Los Angeles. Inside, settled into my bulkhead near the middle of plane, with darkness outside, the plane moved backwards for a few seconds and then forward.
A few minutes later, it rumbled very fast forward and then lifted skyward. Inside, I saw only the big wall before me with its movie screen. All around me, people were sitting quietly in their seats. From all visual indicators, it was as if I were in a small auditorium or even movie theater.
The windows to outside were closed the entire flight because there was nothing to see but darkness.
For the next twelve hours, the people in this big room watched movies, dined, and snoozed.
Then, there was a big bump, and shortly thereafter the plane stopped. All of us exited the same door we had entered twelve hours earlier.
The building we entered did not appear THAT much different from the one we had left.
Now, if I spent my life to this point in a jungle somewhere with no contact with the outside world, this experience and its consequences would not have been any less magic to me than the opening and closing of the elevator was to the grandpa.
Could it be that since I entered the room with the rows of seats and movie screen, I had been aboard a giant magic carpet that had somehow magically transported me halfway around the globe?
Even though I am fully aware of how a plane operates and what it does, the fact in one half of one day, I can be transported half way around the world, is still very much a miracle.
JOURNAL OF DAY 2
I am getting better at driving on the left side. I only drove on the wrong side once yesterday. Lucky for me, the road was more like a long driveway. I had stopped the motorhome right in my lane on the road to take a picture, thinking that nobody would come along for the minute or so I would be there.
But someone did come by though, and the driver found my camper van an obstruction. He stopped. "We drive on the left side here," he said to me, smiling. I have a feeling mine wasn’t the first rental motorhome he and his fellow Kiwis had encountered in the wrong lane.
I am camped now in a Department of Conservation campground at Uretiti Beach on Bream Bay, just north of the small town of Waipu. My campsite is about 50 yards from the ocean shore, and I can hear the waves. The campground has no designated sites. You just pick a plot of the grassy terrain land (trimmed neatly by an armada of small rabbits) and that’s your site. For this, I paid $2.40 (U.S. dollars).
There are a half dozen other campers, most in small camper vans. Two couples are in a tent across from me. The men were surf fishing yesterday when I arrived. "We only caught one," one fellow told me, naming the fish, which I had never heard of. "Too much seaweed."
The Department of Conservation Campgrounds charge by the person rather than the campsite. This is great for a single person. The rate at Uretiti Beach was $6 (New Zealand dollars) per adult, $5 for children 5-15 and free for those younger.
Waipu is a fascinating little town, founded in 1898 by Scotts who arrived here from Nova Scotia, Canada, the followers of charismatic preacher, the Reverend Norman McLeod. McLeod had left Scotland in 1817 with 400 followers, but after a series of very harsh winters in late 1850s, the congregation built their own sailing ships and left for Down Under, some to Australia, but most here to Maipu.
The town has a wonderful museum dedicated to the memory of these settlers. Pictures of all the
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Photos of town founders line one wall of the House of Memories.
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emigrants line the walls of the "House of Memories," and their personal artifacts are displayed in long glass cases. A half dozen thick loose-leaf binders display more photos, news accounts and other information. In my travels in the American West, I have visited hundreds of pioneer museums, but don’t recall more than a handful that documented their founders so well.
"When the museum was being built, the family trees of all the settlers were collected," a woman working as a volunteer told me. "So we not only know about the settlers, but about their descendents as well."
She heard my accent and asked where I was from. "Seattle," I said. "Oh, one of the descendents lives there," she said.
After visiting the museum, I strolled the main street. At the liquor store, I stopped to buy a prepaid phone card, this one allowing calls to the USA for only twenty cents a minute, or about eight cents in our dollars. Next door and part of the liquor store, is a cyber café. I signed up for a half-hour for $2 and checked my email and took care of business.
Outside, children were walking by on their way home from school, chatting and giggling, each in a neat red uniform.
I have pretty much stayed on Highway 1 since leaving Auckland, figuring I’d give myself a little more time to get accustomed to my vehicle and left side. I still tend to stay too far left in the lane, and have consequently rubbed up against a few curbs. I want to be a little more skilled before heading off onto narrow roads with narrow bridges.
The drive yesterday from Orewa was stunning. Some stretches were very tropical — with ferns of many kinds and palm trees. I could have been in Hawaii.
Everywhere, the landscape is deep green. Sheep graze on every hill, and where there are no sheep there are cows. The thought struck me that if all of New Zealand is this green and beautiful, that they could simply mow it all and turn it into the world’s largest golf course. The landscape is stunning.
The beach where I am now looks very much like ones I have camped along on the Oregon coast. Between my campsite and the ocean shore are sand dunes perhaps thirty feet high, with foot-high grass growing atop. The beach is wide and extends for miles. Several of the Hen and Chicken Islands are visible in the distance.
NEXT INSTALLMENT: Sheep and Meat Pies