By Lucy

I’ve been finding lots of bones around lately. It doesn’t help that Gary has been shooting birds on the property, so I’ll be typing away when the sound of a rifle going off not ten feet from my door startles me! But I think either the birds of prey or the possums drop scraps into the chicken coops, where the chickens pick them clean and leave them for me to find. I found an entire sheep – lamb? – skull. Simonetta is perfectly ok with me throwing the bones in the dishwasher to be cleaned, which is a bonus. I am slightly disappointed, though, because I’m willing to bet customs won’t let me bring a sheep skull with me. I’ve also got a bunch of feathers from a black bird on my desk, with half a thought to do a craft with them.

Saturday the 26th was supposed to be THE day; the photographer would come to take pictures of the property, and then we could chillax on the cleaning and painting until showings were booked.

Sadly, it was not to be. Another tropical storm rolled in, raining for a full 24 hours. It was so severe the water was standing on the lawn, sloshing over the top of my shoes as I went about my day, and the cellar flooded. The temperature dipped to the point that some of the nearby foothills had snow! Not us, small consolation.

(Later on, it turned out we got 4 inches of rain and we were told to conserve water while the silt from the mountains washed out of the rivers.)

Since you can’t take pictures in the rain, it had to be rescheduled. Simonetta gave me a light day, then ordered me to take Sunday and Monday off – so I’d be fresh to tidy up before the photographer came. Which was fine by me, because I have no real plans for the next couple of weeks.

I recently discovered there’s a place within a half hour’s drive, called Lake Coleridge, which boasts 6 walking trails of varying lengths and intensities. Since it’s a long weekend in New Zealand, I posted on one of the biker pages I’m on that I was heading out there on Monday.

I had some interest from the local ladies, although it seemed everyone was going to the spring fair. Which, ironically, we were supposed to be working at – Simonetta sells her preserves – but she’s burnt out from trying to manage everything and called in sick. The most consistent person was a woman named Lynda, although due to a mix of my service being awful and me not having an NZ phone plan, it was hard to coordinate. I also have a hard time explaining to bikers that they probably don’t want to come to my place because of the gravel road.

I slept in late, packed a sandwich and my hiking shoes, and drove down to the fair not expecting much. It wasn’t a bad day to ride – sunny, low wind, although what wind there was was cutting, because the temps hadn’t bounced back from the weekend drenching.

Standard fair fare; booths selling soap, homemade wine and cheese, little crafts, a book sale, an auction for furniture. A bouncy castles and little train for kids.

When I was mostly through the fair, she got back to me – she’d had a late night, but she could meet me at a gas station halfway between our respective locations.

While I was waiting, I grabbed an order of these little takoyaki style pancakes. I asked the proprietor if it was real maple syrup, and he checked the bottle (gasp!) and informed me it was just maple-flavoured. Probably no real maple syrup on this island, then.

Lynda is a ball of energy! She is patient and kind, ready to meet me at my level, whatever my level is. I’m still unwilling to hit 100 clicks on the bike, but I’ll do gravel and wet roads, which Lynda didn’t want to do. I expected us to chat for a bit and establish what we were comfortable with, but she told me to take the lead and set whatever speed I was comfortable with.

The drive out to Coleridge is beautiful and makes me wish I had a camera for my handlebars. Or that I had “borrowed” the Vagabond’s, because he won’t be using it; 1, it’s winter and the bike is away, and 2, I have the SD card for it, so he can’t use it anyway.

The road winds away into the mountains, following the Rakaia river into the heart of the Southern Alps. But it doesn’t have an elevation gain, so it’s still nice and warm and flat while you are surrounded on all sides by freshly snow-capped peaks.

We chatted a bit while we were stopped in town. This is her first ride of the season. She works as some kind of vet tech, which enables her to travel for work. She just bought one of those house vans that you can live in full-time and moved down to the South Island a few weeks ago, so she doesn’t have any friends in the area either.

I’m sort of in awe of her. Living full time in a van is the next “logical” step in my vagabond lifestyle, although I probably won’t bother.

She wasn’t up for walking and there isn’t much to see in the village of Lake Coleridge – they don’t even have a restaurant – so we hopped back on the bikes and went for another ride.

I appreciate her teaching me how to ride in a group, because that’s one area where I know absolutely nothing. The Vagabond’s always been a bit of a lone wolf, although he does occasionally go for rides with other people, cuz he’s sent me pics of them. That’s one of the tertiary reasons for not rushing to get a bike in Canada; he wouldn’t want to ride with me unless I was a passenger on his bike anyway.

At one point we had a cop following us, no doubt hoping to catch us doing something illegal. Jokes on them, because we were riding completely by the book. It is one of the discouraging things about being a motorcycle driver, though, you get singled out as “up to no good” a lot.

We stopped at a pie shop in Sheffield and had a late lunch. I got a cottage pie, and we had a discussion about the differences between pies in North America and pies here/ in Britain. I imagine the average Canuck would be confused by the normalcy of having a savory pie for lunch. Curiously, there was a sign at the cash saying they had a 15% surcharge because it was a long weekend. Wait, what? In Canada it would be the opposite, they’d slash prices to bring in everyone looking for something to do!

She mentioned that she lived on the North Island for 4 years and knows a lot of people there. When I told her I was planning to sell the bike before going to the North Island, she told me if I took the bike with me, she could give me contacts who would let me stay at their place for free. Which isn’t a bad idea… tour the South Island, then tour the North Island, then come back to Christchurch and stay either here or at Anthea’s, and sell the bike. It’s another option, at least.

I have decided I’ll try to attend the Soroptimist conference, so coming back down here is in the cards at some point. I’ve also decided I definitely want to fly out of Auckland, because from Auckland I can get a direct flight to Vancouver, which is what I want. Time will be at a premium!

Lynda isn’t much for sitting around chatting, which seems to be a biker thing. And fair enough, but I do need to find a friend who likes to sit and have a cup of tea for a couple of hours. I miss Jen. So away she went, and I puttered on home.

I ended up spending something in the realm of 3 hours on the bike, and I felt it the next day!

Gary noted at dinner that his daughter had seen me at the fair, which made me laugh. I’m not the only motorcycle rider in Hororata, but I am one of few. He made dinner for once, whitebait fritters. We were instructed to prepare them by grabbing a slice of white bread, buttering it, and then folding it around the fritter, which seems like carb overload. All of us tried it once and then just ate them like normal pancakes. They were good, mind you! Just an odd way of eating them.

Tuesday I got left to look after the place all by myself, which always makes me nervous.

Wednesday morning started with a splash for the Czech boys. They’ve got the cottage way at the back of the property, next to the property line with a field of sheep. One of the lambs has kicked a hole in the fence and occasionally wanders across to our side, which is one of the projects I have to work on once these darn photos are done and we can stop painting and washing every surface! There’s also this cute little pond. The poor lamb thought it would be nice to go for a dip and couldn’t get out of the pond, so they jumped in to rescue it and had to be rescued in turn by Gary (everyone is fine!)

Disaster struck Thursday.

Simonetta gave me the day off, so I planned to go back to Lake Coleridge for my hike. I packed a sandwich, my waterbottle, and was just heading outside to get the bike ready when it struck.

It felt like someone had stabbed a fork into my guts and was twisting them like spaghetti. I ran to the bathroom in case I threw up. After a few moments, my head started spinning, and I started dripping sweat – I was burning up. I tore off my sweater and placed it under my head, laying in the fetal position on the floor.

What was happening? It’s not unusual to have cramps, especially if I’m off my Metamucil, which I am now… my Amazon delivery is very late. But this was a new sensation altogether.

I got to my feet and, blinking black dots from my eyes, stumbled to my desk and fumbled it open. I grabbed my bottle of Tylenol and took one, then curled up in bed. Within half an hour, the pain should go away and I could move on with my day.

Instead, I passed out for two hours.

I checked my Fitbit once I was coherent. It said my heartrate plummeted to 51 beats a minute during my walk across the cabin, hence the dizziness.

Hmm. That seems not good.

Scrolled quickly down a list of causes. No recent heart surgery, my thyroid was good cuz they’ve checked it a dozen times, no medication side effects…

Imbalance of chemicals in the blood, such as potassium.

Possible, but I couldn’t check that by myself. Plus, I’m pretty sure everything has been balanced, and that that would come on gradually.

Inflammation secondary to infection.

Again, pretty sure I would have felt like crap for a while. Although not entirely impossible, considering I definitely ingest chicken crap and live in a rickety cabin with mouse droppings.

Heart disease or damage secondary to a heart attack.

Well, gee, I hope not. I constantly have to remind myself that despite all my health problems, I could always have more; there was no video game “you have too many conditions” limitation.

I laid in bed watching TV for a couple of hours. When I did get up to go to the bathroom, I felt dizzy. My heart rate was still hovering around 60, no matter what I did. I ate half my dinner and warned Simo that I might be too sick to work the next day; she told me not to worry about it.

I felt fine-ish the next day and got up to do the chickens at the usual time. Funnily enough, Simo sent the boys to do the chickens anyway, but I was already mostly done so I told them I was fine.

Around noon, oh happy day! My Metamucil finally arrived, in a very battered box. I took it right away and it’s not like it’s fast acting, but I did feel better as the day went on. (Also in case anyone was wondering, the spitting out gobs of blood went away as well)

My first task for the day, for some silly reason, was painting the roof of my cabin. Sure, let’s put the woozy person on the roof. Actually, my concern wasn’t even me falling, it was me losing my balance and losing the contents of the entire paint can all over the wall and my bike. Still, I got done, if not quickly or efficiently.

I took a long lunch because it was video game night on the server. I’ve been bonding with a member of the server over philosophy, which is odd for me. Maybe that seems out of character, because I philosophize so much on this blog, but I don’t really talk about theories and philosophers much. It’s one of those “smart people things” that don’t interest me, like chess. He was interested in my Amor Fati tattoo, though, so we’ve been talking about philosophy. More specifically, him soul-searching for a reason why he’s “different” from other people, with respect to not being interested in the “college-job-family” routine that most other people espouse. I like it, outside of just having someone I enjoy talking to, because I really want to pay it forward in term of showing people that my life is an option for them, the way the Vagabond did for me.

I also had the hilarious task of fixing the fence so more lambs didn’t try to drown themselves in the pond. It was hilarious because when I went to hammer the board back into place, the other boards on the fence were so rotted they popped off from the concussive waves. It was like trying to kill the hydra by cutting off its heads! Eventually I managed to MacGuyver it.

After I was done, I grabbed a bucket to gather some flowers. I was still a little bummed about not being able to bring the sheep skull home with me. The garden is awash with so many varieties of Azaleas and Carnelias and I realized that pressed flowers could be easily slotted into the pages of a book to bring home. Yes, you can grow Azaleas and the like in Canada, but these were from here! So I grabbed some pristine blooms that had recently blown off the bushes and brought them into my cabin, with some newspaper and parchment paper.

Gary stopped me at the door when he noticed the bucket of flowers. “What are you up to?” He said jokingly.

The rest of my afternoon was spent painstakingly cutting up newspaper, laying out or trimming the flowers, and carefully placing them into a book. In three weeks I should have some beautiful pressed flowers.

Dinner was chowder with focaccia, which was delicious, especially since we don’t have seafood often! Simonetta made a medley of different fish, including shrimp, mussels and, baby octopi, which was surprising.

After dinner, it was time.

I asked for and received a beer from Ethan. A giant, 750mls beer, which was much more than I needed, frankly. I opened it and decided to go out to the “where the fairies meet” tree for my libation for Luke. I noticed there’s a bit of a fairy circle of some flowers that only grow around the tree, which is interesting. I sat in silence for a bit, talked a bit, and poured out some of the beer. Then I walked back to my cabin in tears and drank the rest.

On Saturday I was sent to park my bike across the road first thing in the morning, which I wasn’t happy about. Yes I know, we want all the vehicles out before the photographer gets here, but they won’t be here ’til 11 and a bike isn’t something you just hop on and drive across the road!

Then, disaster. The photographer said it was too windy for the aerial drone shots. But I am absolutely burned out from trying to help Simo keep up, so I wasn’t keen on working. Which is just as well, cuz most of my work on Saturday was spent listening to her ramble with anxiety about all the ways the move could go wrong. She even wryly noted “I bet you didn’t think you’d be playing therapist!”

Well, yes and no. I didn’t expect it, but I can’t say it surprises me. It’s a role I tend to fall in to if someone needs it, because I am good at it, and it is work in its own way.

I was glad that I retired by 3 and started the fire in my cabin, because at 6PM it started raining so hard it was hailing! I watched the clouds blow in from over Christchurch, which is a red flag. Clouds come over us towards Christchurch all the time, but they rarely come back towards us.

Ay! I left my bike uncovered across the road! Poor thing.

Sunday the photographers finally showed up and Simo’s nerves boiled over. I want to stress, she is always working, not just ordering me and Kelly around. She wandered the house constantly dusting everything and having mini breakdowns, so me and Kelly were tag-teaming minding her. At one point she sprayed air freshener into a bathroom and accidentally left droplets on the glass, and she actually screamed! Eventually she started limping and we had to corral her into the kitchen and make her a cup of tea so she’d sit down.

It’s understandable; selling a place of this size is an enormous undertaking, but not one that will get easier by putting it off or doing it half-way.

Finally it was done. The photos were taken, the video shot, the drone had done its thing.

Kelly asked me for help with her house. Well actually, she asked Ethan, who declined, but Simo pointed out to her that I’m handy and wouldn’t mind some spending money. It’s just building a fence, and then a deck she wants to make out of some pallets she’s got, which sounds like a fun creative project!

For dinner we had steak with a “standard” Kiwi salad, which is lettuce, cucumber, shredded cheese (they use Edam as the “default” cheese here, which is the same as Babybel), hardboiled eggs and a homemade salad dressing. The salad dressing is made of condensed milk, salt, malt vinegar, and dry mustard.

It’s funny what translates and what doesn’t. Me and Ethan noted that in any North American household, there would be at least three different bottles of salad dressing, usually including ranch. Here, they just have some mysterious white substance that is alternative called “salad creme” and “mayonnaise” (Simo buys in bulk and reuses bottles, so there is no label). Me and Simo discussed making some proper Italian vinaigrette, but it hasn’t materialized yet.

It’s funny to remember that when I got here I was instructed not to cross the invisible line into the kitchen, because at least 2-3 times a week I get asked to help with cooking. I’m never doing much in terms of helping, mostly doing something rote like shredding cheese while she talks. I think it’s partially a comfort thing for her; Gary would be happy with potatoes, boiled greens/ salad and some cut of red meat 7 days a week, and Ethan is not particularly chatty. As any food lover knows, it’s as much talking about food as it is preparing and eating it.

Also unique to my life experience is being asked to suggest ideas for dinner. That was one of my tasks as a child; my mother would ask me what we should have for dinner, and I’d suggest ideas until either one caught her or she thought of something on her own. Here, there is a constant fuss over trying to switch things up without making it so different Gary will object.

That day, Simo summoned me into the kitchen to help with dessert. She had some brandy snaps she wanted to fill with freshly whipped cream. Unfortunately, she’s missing the tip for her piping bag and the snaps have holes in them, so we made a right mess of the counter and got whipped cream all over our hands. It was great fun cracking jokes and giggling about it!

Ethan mentioned over dinner that he drove down to Mount Sunday, which made me jealous and confused in equal measure. Confused, because Ethan is very incurious. When he’s done work, he goes to his room and plays Xbox and drinks beer until dinner. On Sunday, he drives to town for an ice cream sundae. Why would he make a 2 hour drive?

Mount Sunday is one of the location on the list to visit before I leave here. It’s where they filmed Edoras for Lord of the Rings, plus it has a gorgeous hiking trail!

He noted that he doesn’t think my bike can handle it; it’s 20 kms of gravel road, prone to washouts. I shrugged. I have options; I can drive on the soft shoulder, or if I really need to, abandon the bike by the side of the road and hitchhike. It’s tourist season, someone will come by.

Surprisingly, by the end of dinner, he offered to let me borrow his truck to drive out there.

I’m still not sure I’d take him up on it. Gas for his truck is expensive. But it was a reminder that he’s deeper than he seems. He’s only 22, after all (yes, it was a shock for him when he found out I’m almost a decade older!).

After dinner, I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher while she prepped the guests breakfast for the next day. Then we ate all the broken brandy snaps, dipped in the leftover cream.

This is fun!

So, one of the few reasons I would have stayed in Canada/ skipped the Soroptimist conference to head home early is because of a video game. Yes, really! Dragon Age Inquisition came out literally 10 years ago and has been so long in the making it was practically vaporware on par with Half-Life 3. It partially inspired my book! It would be like if the newest Song of Ice and Fire book came out tomorrow – people would call off work to read it.

My first world problems are, I chose not to bring a game console with me. Which I stand by, 1 because I paid a lot of money to be here and I’m not going to waste it playing games (intensely. I still play Tetris to unwind). And 2, another expensive thing to lose and/or break. And that’s been justified cuz I do not think for one second that I could get the wifi here working long enough to download the game, which is 100 gigs, so that’s just as well. But! I am also a streamer, which means I cannot play it unless I am streaming it. Which ALSO means I can’t play it even when I get back to Canada, cuz I’ll be working 12 hours a day! ALSO also I had to drop out of one of my long-term friend groups because they will be discussing the game and I can’t join in!

Cry for me now?