Week 12: Beauty seen is never lost

I just realized that this is going to be my second to last entry on this blog. Time certainly has flown, and real life is fast approaching. I am going to miss this place a lot; sadly you can’t obtain two working holiday visas to New Zealand in one lifetime; I would have loved to come back and wwffed (wwff: will work for food, and its pronounced “woofed,” so please stop spitting at your computer) for half a year or so. Perhaps to Oz next…there’s an idea. If I were to wwff in Oz, or in any other place for that matter, it would be in the event of me not getting into graduate school a second time when I re-apply in November. That isn’t exactly a pleasant thought, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

To get from Queenstown to Franz Josef, you need to drive north on State Highway 6. On the way, you pass by Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, through the northern tip of Mount Aspriring National park through a mountain pass called The Gates of Haast, and then drive another 100 km up the west coast until you get to Franz Josef Township. I have made some beautiful drives in the past in Oregon and California, but this drive wins in the beauty category outright.

I firmly believe that if Frodo remembered to bring his digital camera with him, he would have taken pictures similar to the ones Ryan and I took. And with that in mind, I think it’s best if I simply show you the pictures I took as I drove, as opposed to trying to describe them to you.

This drive is a dangerous drive for a non-Kiwi to make; not just because of the steep cliffs or trees, but those of us unaccustomed to such incredible natural beauty come down with an illness I have named “New Zealand Tourette’s Syndrome.” This illness has one noted symptom: while driving through New Zealand, you will without warning quickly turn your head so you are looking out a window, and then yell a phrase like “Wow!” “Whoa!” “Daaaamn!” or “Check it out!” The symptoms are contagious as well, as when one person in the car spasms, the rest of the occupants do as well, including the driver. We had a couple scares, but Ryan and I managed to get through to Franz Josef in one piece.

When we arrived at our hostel, I got a bit of a surprise: Eric and Jess were in Franz Josef as well, and were staying in a hostel just down the street. I met them for drinks at the local pub. I found out they were just down the street when I discovered they had followed me all the way there, debating if it was me. Apparently, the conversation went something like this:

Jess: “I think that’s Dan but I’m not sure, his hair is a bit crazy.”

Eric: “It’s definitely Dan. He’s got his earphones in and there is a spring in his step. That’s him.”

Jess: “I’m still not sure…(tries to sneak closer)…”

Contrary to belief, I don’t play my music that loud, so when I heard them talking behind me I turned around and gave them one of my famous bear hugs; it was good to see them. And with all due respect to Ryan, it was good to see some other friendly faces. I tried to convince them to come and take the glacier walk with us tomorrow over drinks: Jess was up for it, but Eric was running low on funds and declined.

The next morning, Ryan and I woke up bright and early and walked to the glacier guide station in town. Sadly, Jess ended up not coming either: she flaked out last minute when she thought it was going to be raining. Ryan and I weren’t about to let a bit of rain deter us from an outdoor activity; we are Oregonians after all. After checking us in and issuing us the necessary gear, waterproof pants, long Gortex jackets, gloves, boots, and crampons, we pilled on the bus and drove towards the mountains.

Franz Josef Glacier is set at the back of a narrow valley which goes almost all the way to the ocean, and is bordered on two sides by lush rainforest. It is a bit unique in that it is one of only three glaciers on earth which are surrounded by rain forest: warm, humid air from Australia blows in off the Tasman Sea and cools once it hits the mainland, it then cools even more when it crosses the Southern Alps, resulting in record rainfall and snowfall in fairly close proximity to each other. The other two rainforest-surrounded glaciers are Fox Glacier, which is fifteen minutes drive south of Franz Josef, and a glacier in Argentina. It would have been nice if there the sun was shining when we did the hike, but I’m not going to complain since it didn’t end up raining, and the clouds were high enough to still get some really spectacular views and photos.

Hiking on the glacier was unlike anything I have ever done before. When I climbed Mt. Adams in Washington state in the middle of the summer there were patches of snow on it that never melted, but that doesn’t even come close to Franz Josef. A glacier is one big block of beautiful blue ice, so big in fact that it is constantly moving (albeit slowly) under its own weight. The ice is also layered, each layer corresponding to a layer of snow that has melted and refroze. The whole experience was spectacular; one of the coolest (no pun intended) things I have ever done.

In addition to being a breathtaking experience (both literally and figuratively, it was a pretty decent hike), it was also a very educational one. I got a crash course in geology and plate tectonics (a very large active fault line runs right through town, and is clearly visible from the cracks in the mountains themselves) to go along with my photographs. As funny as it sounds, a glacier behaves a lot like a Milky Way bar if you put it on the edge of a table and smashed it with your hand. I’m not going to go into particulars as to why in this blog, but if anyone wants to do that and send me a picture of the candy bar and your hand afterwards it would make my day.

We left for Nelson the next morning. Thankfully, the worst of our Tourette’s had passed, and the drive went smoothly. It is mostly flat farmland once you get north of the Southern Alps, and since it was dreary and raining for the entire trip there wasn’t much to see that you couldn’t see in Oregon on a winter day. However, we did make a pit stop in Greymouth and hunted for jade on the beach for an hour to stretch our legs a bit. We even found some, along with some other cool rocks; polishing them up will be a fun project when I get back to the states.

We pit stopped in Nelson for the night, and left for Able Tasman National Park the next morning. We had booked a three day kayak tour on a tip from Tina. She and her husband Jeff had done the same tour and gave it rave reviews: according to her, if you do it in the fall you are very likely to run into baby seals, and apparently they get so curious that they swim right up to your kayak and say hello. I was sold immediately by this statement, though part of me thought it was too good to be true. I was willing to give it a shot though, if only just to see Able Tasman National Park from the water; the park has a reputation of being a very well kept secret amongst the south islanders.

This turned out to be a fantastic decision. We are well into the fall season, but from the weather we had you’d never guess: the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the ocean was calm for all three days of our trip. On day one, Ryan and I picked up our kayak and paddled from Marahau to Anchorage, where we spent a night in the hut. On day two, we paddled from Anchorage to Onetahuti beach, ditched our kayaks, and walked to Awaroa and spent the night in the hut there. On day three, we hiked from Awaroa to Totranui, and then caught the water taxi back to Marahau. Since New Zealand is not in the tropics, it’s not technically a tropical paradise, but Able Tasman sure looks like one: lush green forest, golden sand beaches, and beautiful blue-turquoise water so clear you could see the fish. I know I have said in previous entries that sometimes you just need to be there, pictures just don’t cut it; this statement was never truer than when Ryan and I were paddling up the coast of Able Tasman National Park. I can remember on the morning of day two looking out over the pristine bay at Anchorage at about nine in the morning, sun on my face, bare feet in the golden sand, enjoying a large green apple, humming the violin intro to the theme of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and grinning at how lucky I was to be there in that moment. Take it from me, and take a moment to savor the moment if you are lucky enough to have one of those moments, because they don’t happen often, if at all.

And toward the end of the second day, I learned that some things that sound too good to be true are from time to time, true. We had explored every bay, inlet, and island in between Anchorage and Onetahuti, and were getting close to Onetahuti beach. We had seen a few seals, a lot of cormorants, and even some dolphins playing off in the distance, sadly too far out to paddle out and say hello. There was one last island to explore, and this one was supposed to have a registered seal colony on it. We had explored islands like this before, but there hadn’t been too many there, so I didn’t have my hopes up. We paddled north around the island, and found the colony: a small, shallow, rocky bay close to open water; an ideal place to live and to rear pups. And unlike the other colonies we found, this one was packed with seals, both full grown and pups. What was more, all of the pups (I would guess at least 20) were in the water playing. It was a great big seal pup party on a beautiful day, and Ryan and I were the only kayak for miles. Technically, we were supposed to stay twenty meters offshore at all times since this was a registered colony, and we did…initially. The current was taking us slowly into the bay, and we just didn’t do anything to stop it. At first, the pups were a bit nervous; a great big orange thing had drifted into the middle of their playground. However, once they realized that we weren’t going to eat them, they became curious and swam right up to the boat, sniffing the boat and the paddles. It was amazing, and cuter than a room full of kittens. Ryan and I were snapping pictures like mad.

And then things transitioned from amazing to completely surreal: I was snapping photos, when all of a sudden I hear a “WHOMP WHOMP” behind me and feel the boat shake. Then I hear Ryan:

“Dude, THERE IS A BABY SEAL ON THE KAYAK!!”

I turn around, and stared flabbergasted into the large brown eyes of a baby fur seal. I started snapping photos like crazy, though it’s difficult to turn around completely in a kayak. The seal looked around, sniffed Ryan, then sniffed me, looked around some more, then casually hopped back into the water. The entire encounter lasted all of twenty seconds if that, but it was by far the highlight of our trip. We hung around for a few more minutes, but it was getting late and we needed to get our kayak to shore so the water taxi could pick it up and take it back to Marahau.

The rest of our trip, while still fantastic, paled in comparison to the seal encounter; a few moments stick out though. The night we got to Awaroa we enjoyed a bottle of wine, some Colby cheese, and chocolate with a couple of other backpackers staying in our hut, drinking the wine out of bowls and a Poweraid bottle we had cut in half to make two cups. Then on the morning of day three Ryan and I had to make a tidal crossing and neglected to take our shoes off, so we had soaked hiking boots for the rest of the day. And later that day Ryan and I enjoyed a beer at a resort that had closed for the winter. I think there was only one bad part to the entire trip: the sandflies were murder; Ryan and I are still itching our bites. We got back to Nelson the night of day three.

And so concluded the south island leg of our adventure. It would have been cool to party with the students in Dunedin, hike around Mt. Cook and Lake Wanaka a bit, as well as going south to Invercargill and across to Stewart Island for some camping, but I guess now I have a reason to come back, as if I needed one.

After one day of R and R in Nelson, we are off to the north island. I’m eager to see how much misadventure I can pack into my last week in New Zealand. To be continued…

-DK

Week 11: Objects in motion

When Ryan and I began our travels, we decided to designate one day per week as “internet day,” a day were all we would do is write emails, blog, upload pictures, do laundry, etc. Clearly this hasn’t worked, as I am once again back to posting my blogs late. I don’t feel too bad about this, it means I have that many more stories to share with you all! So let’s get to it.

Also: because my days are for the most part jam-packed with memorable misadventure, the blogs from here on out are probably going to be longer than the earlier ones. So go grab a cup of tea and some biscuits, you could be here a while.

At the end of the last entry, Ryan, Leo, and I were on our way to Christchurch (the locals call it Chch for short). As we were pulling into Chch (it was about 7:00 in the evening), I quickly realized three things: first, that Ryan and I had no idea where we were going to stay that night; second, that most of the motels and hostels had “No Vacancy” signs out in front of them because the big earthquake in February had shut down the entire downtown area of the city, forcing the residents of the apartments and hostels in the “Red Zone” into other accommodation; and third, that my shaving cream had exploded in my day pack, covering the contents therein, including my laptop. And so our misadventure in Chch began.

The first order of business was to find a place to sleep that wasn’t the nearest park bench, so the shaving cream would have to wait. I pulled my shaving cream covered guidebook out of my pack, and after getting our bearings, we started to walk. The bus had dropped us on Bealey Ave, which had quite a few hostels on it. Sadly, all of them were full. However, one of the booked hostels gave us a lead for a place to stay that was only a 20 minute walk away: Chester Street Backpackers, at the corner of East Chester Street and Barbados Ave. They called ahead and booked us two beds. Score.

I will never forget walking through Chch that night, and how eerie it was. The Red Zone encompassed all of the tall buildings in the downtown area; in short, everything that makes a city a city was shut down and quarantined off. Chch doesn’t have that many really tall buildings, but the ones that we could see from a distance were completely dark. Looking down the street into the Red Zone was like looking onto the set of 28 Days Later: abandoned cars, rubble, debris littering the streets, and almost completely bereft of human activity. All surrounded by a fence, and with only a handful of guarded checkpoints in or out; one of the big concerns that everyone who occupies property in the Red Zone has is with looters running the blockade and stealing from their shops or their hotel rooms.

We arrived at the hostel at about 7:30. After walking close to three kilometers with our packs, we were both quite tired. All we wanted to do was to check into our rooms, drop our packs, eat some dinner, and pass out. Sadly, we had to wait, the manager, Kate, was busy checking in another person.

Apparently this other person was objecting to the bed she was given: she wanted to stay long term in the hostel, but the only bed available in the long term room was a top bunk, and she couldn’t climb this ladder. She was complaining all the time about how she had dislocated both of her knees, had a bad back, a chest infection, and every ailment under the sun short of poor gas mileage, as (in spite of her bad knees) she rode her bicycle here. She complained and argued with Kate for what seemed like ages while Ryan and I waited patiently in the living room. It was clear from the bits of conversation that we heard that this lady clearly was not a backpacker. At long last, they came to some sort of arrangement, and Kate checked us in. My only thought at this point, besides “What I would do for some milk and homemade biscotti right now…” was “With the luck I’m having tonight, this piece of work is going to end up in my room.”

Yep.

And so, at about 8:30 in the evening, I met Helmet. Her actual name is Jennefer, but I gave her that nickname because despite the fact that she had been off her bicycle and inside for a good thirty minutes, she was still wearing her bicycle helmet. Reflecting on her laundry list of ailments and bad joints, my first thought was, “No wonder you need a helmet.”

I know, it’s not a very flattering nickname, but it stuck for the reason that she was (and still is) the single most unpleasant person I have met in New Zealand thus far. I think what rubbed me the wrong way initially about her was the fact that she seemed to have thought she had checked into her own room at a motel, rather than sharing a room with two other people in a backpacker’s hostel, a place where pristine facilities are an uncommon luxury (mind you, Chester Street Backpackers is immaculate by even motel standards), and there is little expectation or room for much personal space or privacy. If she were a backpacker, she would have known what she was getting into when she checked in. Instead, while we were there, we felt as if we were intruding in her house, and she was treating us with a sort of passive aggressive neglect. She also was on the phone constantly with various people, as apparently her landlord was trying to screw her over, and thus far had done a pretty good job (everyone in the hostel was privy to the details of her woes, she talks very loudly). While I don’t condone the landlord’s actions at all, I can understand completely how Helmet could be the tenant from hell, and why he’d be tempted to try to forcibly evict her.

“To cut a long story short: she’s loud, obtrusive, and rude, and because she kept pissing off the managers and the other backpackers, as well as stealing $60 from the till, she is getting kicked out today… She also snores like you wouldn’t believe, and she does it WHILE SHE IS AWAKE (5-13-11).”

We only spent two nights in Chch. Honestly, at this point two days is all you need to see the city: most of the historical buildings and tourist attractions are all in the Red Zone, and are sadly in some state of disrepair. I heard that part of the steeple actually fell off of the Christchurch cathedral, which is sad. Ryan and I spent our one full day in Chch walking around the Red Zone surveying the damage. We were also looking for a place to buy small screw drivers, as I still needed to open up my laptop and clean the shaving cream out of it. I couldn’t get it all out, but thank god shaving cream doesn’t conduct electricity; the laptop still works great, but I did lose the functionality of my favorite “Ctrl” key.

My fondest memories of Chch were times when Ryan and I were just hanging out in the hostel, shooting the breeze with the managers and the other backpackers. Of course, all of our interactions were significantly colored by Helmet’s comings and goings, but for the most part we ignored her. The last night at the hostel Ryan and I (mostly Ryan) cooked for dinner a meal that I recommend all backpackers learn to make a version off. We affectionately named it “Free-Shelf Casserole,” and it is made, as the name implies, from foodstuffs put up for grabs by backpackers who didn’t want to take the food with them. The final product was definitely edible, though the taste was significantly improved with the addition of hot sauce; no, I’m not going to tell you what was in it. After dinner, we all sat around, drank tea, told stories, and had a good ol’ fashioned media swap, one of my favorite college traditions: I traded all of the Cowboy Bebop episodes and Fight Club for the complete Invader Zim series, Inglorious Bastards, and Kate’s zucchini bread recipe. Kate also claimed she had an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe that could beat mine. As much as I would love to show her why my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies have no equal, I will not be returning to Chch; I changed my ticket so I now fly out of Auckland, because it would allow me to see more of the north island.

The next morning Ryan and I hopped the bus to Queenstown, the adrenaline-junkie capital of New Zealand, and perhaps the world. Getting out of Chch was a bit interesting: Ryan and I had a late start from the hostel due to the fact that thanks to Helmet, nobody slept that well (she barged into the room at 3:30AM, flipped on the lights, and started cursing like a sailor; I wish I were kidding). We had to sprint to the bus carrying all of our gear, and arrived at the bus stop just as the driver was about to leave us behind. The drive to Queenstown was uneventful, but the scenery was beautiful (as per usual). Ryan had the clairvoyance to put all of the Lord of the Rings movie soundtracks on his ipod before leaving the states, so I’m pretty sure orcs, wizards, and hobbits were dancing across the hills for him as we were driving along.

We arrived in Queenstown later that evening. My first impression of Queenstown was that it was nothing special, though there seemed to be an abundance of people my age, bars, shops, and cool places to hang out; in short Queenstown felt a lot like a college town. After a few hours walking around, a few conversations, and a Fergburger, I had a new opinion: this was a resort town with a little something for everyone, but more to offer the young, healthy, slightly reckless, and affluent. After a relatively inexpensive night on the town, a good night sleep afterwards, and one look at the surrounding scenery in the daylight, I came to my final conclusion: Queenstown is paradise for anyone under age 35 looking for adventure and has a bankroll to burn.

We spent five nights there. Every day we did something new and awesome: day one was skydiving, day two was “river surfing,” which essentially is going through class three rapids on a boogie board wearing a wetsuit, on day three we gave our nerves a break and went wine tasting, and on day four we took a breathtaking cruise around Milford Sound, and by pure happenstance got up close and personal to a couple bottlenose dolphins. Our nights were eventful as well: for every day but the first we had roommates, and each night was spent hanging out, laughing, drinking heavily, then hitting the bars and drinking some more, and then finally walking home around 3:00AM after grabbing a late night Fergburger. Of course this couldn’t be sustained indefinitely, and true to form, it was me that decided one night that I was going to come home early around midnight and get some extra sleep. This was a terrible idea: Ryan and our roommates all came back around 2:00AM drunk and loud, two of them having brought ladies with them. I remember this night quite clearly: after everyone had settled down and the lights went off, I was having a lot of trouble trying to get to sleep, owing to the fact that Ryan and two other roommies were snoring loudly, and the two that had brought ladies home were busy entertaining them. That was the only time in recent memory which I uttered the phrase “Fuck my life,” and was sort of serious. We all had a good laugh about it in the morning. Overall, I had a great time in Queenstown, and will definitely be back. But not for a while, my wallet and my liver are going to need some time to recover after the grievous abuse I put them through.

That Wednesday, we rented a car and started driving north. With the number of stops we wanted to make it was more cost effective than buying bus tickets. After one last Fergburger for breakfast, Ryan, Leo, and I bid Queenstown a fond farewell.

Our next stop: Franz Josef Glacier. To be continued….

-DK

Week 10: And so the sun rises

And so I come to it at last: the end of my assignment at Mud House and the true beginning of my New Zealand adventure. To set the scene, I am currently writing this blog in an Internet Café in Kaikoura, and will probably finish and post this while I am in Christchurch or Dunedin. Ryan and I have about two hours to kill before we catch a bus south, so we figured we’d save some money and catch up on our emailing, taxes, and blogging.

Before I get into the trouble that Ryan and I got into in Kaikoura, I need to tell you about the last few days of work. It was a fairly somber affair: the vast majority of the temporary Mud House workers finished on April 29 and moved out, turning both the winery and Duncannon into strange, quiet, ghost towns. I think work was especially eerie: all of us were so used to seeing people walking around with spanners, water blasting, or hanging out in the break room, and all of a sudden the noise stopped, the presses, floors, and recieval bins were clean, and the people just disappeared.

They went out with a bang though. The night of April 30, there was a party to end all parties at Duncannon sending everyone off: people barbecued, bought lots of every kind of alcohol to share with everyone, and played drinking games. Later we went into town and continued until the wee hours of the morning; thank god I had the next day off. Other people at Mud House drove out to Duncannon to join the festivities, as well as a few from Oyster Bay. We made so much noise that the managers claimed they could hear us all the way from their house, and the next morning the janitors refused to clean up the mess in the kitchen that we left them, something which they never made much of a fuss about before. This party was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was just a mess that, in my mind, would rival the aftermath of a college frat party.

“I have never bore witness to the aftermath of a frat party; it probably would look something like this, minus the leftover barbecue. I found a note on the door to the mess hall saying that this time the Duncannon staff wouldn’t clean up after us. I had to laugh, most people aren’t going to care that we have to clean up, because they are checking out today.

I gotta pause writing, Chang is awake and he’s started cleaning, I gotta help out (5-1-11).”

Chang and I cleaned off all of the tables and swept. I didn’t do any more past that, first because it was someone else’s turn to help clean; and second (the big reason), because I got invited to go to Nelson with some Oyster Bay friends. It turned into a very relaxing, but rather long excursion: we poked around some shops, had a good lunch at the Mac’s Brew pub, and had a little fun on the beach. Afterwards, the kiwi who grew up in the area asked us if we wanted to visit the Nelson Lakes, telling us it was just a short drive. That was the day I learned that kiwi’s can’t judge distances to save their own lives: this short drive turned out to be a 60km detour.

I would have preferred to see the Nelson Lake at some other time, a time when I wasn’t tired, and when the sun was still out, but it was still a memorable trip. The drive to Nelson Lakes National Park was quite beautiful: green fields and green mountains as far as the eye could see, all of them covered in sheep. I cant remember which of the Nelson Lakes we visited, this one was just cut out of the mountains, and might have been made solely by rain accumulation; the water was crystal clear.

What I remember the most about the lakes however were the eels: enormous, black, freshwater eels that apparently live to be a hundred years old and get to be nine feet long and as thick as small trees. I didn’t see any of those monsters, but I did see quite a few smaller eels swimming off the dock, and by “smaller,” I mean that these eels were only 2-3 feet long. You actually are allowed to feed the eels bread from the dock, but the local ducks have gotten smart and snatch up the bread before the eels get a chance. Sadly, the eels don’t have a taste for mallard, they prefer bread and algae.

The trip to Nelson was the last bit of fun I had before the craziness that I told you about in the week 9 entry ensued. I know I am telling you the story a bit out of order, but I am trying to keep the entry’s a uniform length, to satisfy my OCD tendencies. I am now going to get back on track with my writing periods and tell you about my near perfect last day at Mud House: May 6, 2011.

I woke up early that day to take a shower, and as I waked out the door to my room, I stopped, turned on my heel, and walked back in. Why? A beautiful neon orange sunrise greeted me outside my door, and I felt the need to take a picture.

I got to work on time, and proceeded to calibrate all of my instruments. I don’t particularly enjoy this task, you can usually judge how smoothly your day is going to go by how smoothly calibration goes, and the last couple days had been a bit rocky. However, today everything clicked: the sulfur benchmarks looked ok, as did the FTIR benchmarks, and when I calibrated the pH probe—by far my least favorite task, since it takes so long—I got a 99.82% calibration curve, which was my highest percentage all vintage. Things were looking up.

After lunch, I ran into Drea, my friend at one of the other wineries, and we had a nice chat. She had given me a lot of cool ideas about where to go and what to do while I was in New Zealand over the weeks, and that day she gave me the name of the fantastic hostel that Ryan and I ended up staying at in Kaikoura, as well giving me a few ideas as to where to bungee jump when we are in Queenstown. Afterwards I got a friendly hug goodbye, and we both went back to work. Pretty damn good day so far.

At the shift change, we took a group photo with all of those that were left at Mud House. There weren’t too many vintage workers left, and four of us were leaving that day as well. I don’t have the photo right now, but if it shows up on facebook I will post it here in an edit. It was a bittersweet goodbye: I was glad I was leaving, but I had made a couple good friends that I may not see again, and that was a bit sad. However, I learned that a couple of my new friends were actually going to be working a vintage in southern Washington, and that brightened my mood considerably.

That night we did our best to duplicate the madness of the previous Duncannon party. We did a decent job too: it was a lot of fun, but it was a different kind of fun. There were many fewer people at this one, so there wasn’t near as much food as before, near as much noise, or as much mess afterwards. And to our slight disappointment, we did not piss off the management with our noise level. Instead of a crazy party night, I had a good night with some good food, good company, and a few drinks. It was a pretty-damn-near perfect day.

The day afterwards (Saturday May 7) was a bit of a blur; nothing interesting really happened, everyone was just packing up. I remember Sunday morning pretty clearly as well, but for another reason. It was the day the entire Oyster Bay crew and I were checking out of Duncannon for good. The day started pretty normally as well: I woke up at about 8:30 like I normally do, and logged on to the computer to check my email. I had sent a message to the people at UC Davis inquiring as to the status of my graduate school application a few days earlier, so I figured I would be hearing back from them any time. I was right: my application for admission was incomplete because they never received the transcript I ordered for them in January (either they lost it or I screwed up when I ordered it from Oregon State, I still don’t know), and because that fault remained uncorrected for so long, my application was rejected.

The following is an email I sent to my family and a few friends, the morning I got the news:

Subject: disappointment….well, sort of

Dear friends and family,

I am here to report that I have recieved disappointing news from UC Davis: my application was canceled because it was incomplete. For those who don't know, the other four places I had applied to, Penn, Cornell, UW, and UCSD, have all rejected my application, so this means that I will not be going to graduate school next fall.

Back in January, I received an email saying that I needed to send them an official transcript in order to be considered for admission. I clearly remember ordering said transcript the moment I got that email: I was at Dads, and I remember talking about it with him afterwards, and how I thought this news boded well for me. I checked back into Davis earlier this week, since I hadn't heard anything. This morning I discovered two things: first, that I had put that particular message in the trash, and thats why I wasn't receiving replies; and second, that I did in fact get a reply, telling me the information that I am giving to you now.

My first thought was "What the fuck happened to my transcript? Did I send it to the wrong department? Did I click something wrong and not send it at all?"

Second thought was: "Is it too late to salvage this?" I sent my contact an email about this, but as luck would have it he's out on jury duty till Tuesday.

Third thought was: "You know, I'm strangely OK with this." Before I had the Gallo internship, my intent was to not go to graduate school at all, I figured that all I needed was a BS and I'd be fine. Throughout this waiting process there was part of me that really didn't like the idea of going back to school; that it was something that I needed, not something that I wanted. I guess now I get to see if I had the right idea the first time.

Fourth thought: "Now life gets interesting."

New plan: work an Oregon vintage through a contact I made out here, all the while brushing up my spanish. Afterwards work a vintage in Chile, through another contact. After that vintage, backpack north until I get to Portland or until I get tired. Then find a real job.

Thank you all very much for helping me with my applications and lending me your support through the process. I wish I had better news to report to you all, and if there is the slightest chance to salvage my application I definitely will. But until I find that out, I am operating on the assumption that graduate school is going to be put on hold for the time being.

Time to give this "real life" thing a try (cracks knuckles).

Best Wishes Always,

Dan

After I sent that off, I packed up what was left of my room, checked out of Duncannon, bid all of my friends at Oyster Bay and Mud House a fond farewell, and walked to Ryan’s house in Redwoodtown. Before giving “real life” a try, I was going to make every moment of my New Zealand vacation count. I had been waiting for that moment for close to 7 months, and I wasn’t going to let a little thing like getting denied from graduate school rain on my parade.

After some ordeal checking out of Ryan’s house (I hope he posts the story of the majestic Blenheim cockroach on his blog, in retrospect its actually quite funny), Ryan and I hopped the bus south to Kaikoura. Originally, Kaikoura got its start as a whaling village, but now I believe its chief industry is tourism: Kaikoura is ideally placed between Christchurch and Picton, is breathtakingly beautiful, and is one of the few places where you can swim with dolphins in the open ocean. Ryan and I checked into our hostel and decided to walk around town to get our lay of the land. It was a pretty short walk: Kaikoura’s commercial district is spread along the waterfront, most shops, hostels, and attractions spitting distance from the beach, and only occupies about a mile of coastline. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel, broke into a bottle of champagne that Ryan had gotten for his birthday earlier, and spent the evening talking to the other backpackers in the hostel. There is also a hot tub in the back yard, so of course we spent a bit of time in there as well. All I will say about that is: if you ever find yourself in a hot tub, staring up at the stars, listening to the ocean, sipping good champagne, all while getting an upper back massage from an attractive German lady, somewhere in your life you made a good decision.

We only spent one full day (two nights) in Kaikoura. Sadly, we never got to swim with dolphins, due to rough seas, but we did get to a pretty cool pioneer museum and went on a tour of the Maori Leap Caves, a sea-carved limestone cave system a 30 minute walk from downtown Kaikoura. That night, I participated in my first pub quiz night with a group of backpackers from our hostel. We got third out of eight, and I am proud to say I played a good part in how well we did. The next morning, we packed up our things, and hopped the bus to Christchurch.

That’s all for now. I’m very excited that I can actually start sharing my adventures in the country of New Zealand with you all, as opposed to my adventures in the Mud House lab. It’s going to be a wild ride. Talk to you all soon!

-DK

Edit: We actually skipped Dunedin altogether, and I am actually posting this entry from Queenstown. It would have been cool to go to Dunedin, but if I did I wouldn't get to go to the north island.

Week 9: Earning that last paycheck

I totally jinxed myself with that last entry. The moment I mention that I’m bored at work, things pick up overnight. The big reason why I didn’t have much to do last week was because the juice was still fermenting. My lab only gets ferment samples once they hit zero brix, and until they do they are the yeast team’s responsibility. After the tank hits zero, we get the sample, and run it through the FTIR. Well, this last week, the quite a few of the tanks decided to hit zero brix and give the yeast team a break. As a result, my sample load close to tripled in the expanse of about three days. I stopped helping out on ferment round in the mornings, and instead collected my own samples to test for Residual Sugar (RS).

The RS round wasn’t the only thing to occupy my time, we were also getting tank samples again. Once the tests for RS get to an acceptable low level of sugar, the tank is cooled to close to freezing temperatures, in order to stop the fermentation completely. The yeast settle to the bottom of the tank, and the unfinished wine is racked off into another tank and sulfur is added again; an additional measure taken to stop fermentation (I think). The lab gets a sample every racking, so after the racking is done I get to run a sulfur and run it through the FTIR.

In this last week, the winemakers also started giving us random samples that they wanted us to pull and so they could taste them, as well as run through the FTIR. I never got an adequate explanation as to why these samples were interesting; I’m sure they had their reasons, I just wish I knew what they were. The only thing all of the samples had in common was that the tanks they came from had been on cooling for a couple days, but they hadn’t been racked off of the yeast lees yet. My guess is they were just getting some more information on the tanks, so they can make more educated decisions about secondary fermentations and blending. If any of my readers (It occurred to me that a few of my more knowledgeable collogues may be reading this) can end my speculation, please do so and leave a comment.

In spite of everything, I was able to do one thing on my Blenheim bucket list this week: I got to go out to the Oyster Bay winery and have a tour. Jenna, a girl in the Mud House red cellar, has a boyfriend, Doug, who works for Oyster Bay, and he offered to give us a tour. All of the Oyster Bay workers get picked up and dropped off at Duncannon by bus, so after Jenna and I got of work, we quickly changed clothes, scarfed down some dinner, and then hopped the bus to Oyster Bay with the night crew.

The Oyster Bay winery is about forty minutes west of Blenheim on Nelson Road, which takes you into the valley which contains most of the vineyards in the Marlborough wine region. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera, so I will do my best to describe it. Oyster Bay is a unique winery, in that it is very new (only 5 years old), all of the tanks are indoors, and that it is enormous; easily triple the capacity of Mud House. If this building were surrounded by anything other than vineyards and a picturesque valley, it could be anything: a high tech airplane hanger, some sort of crazy research and development lab out of a science fiction movie, a small professional sport arena, etc.; the last thing you would think is “this is a winery.” Once inside though, the scenery looked familiar: glycol-jacketed tanks, two and three inch hoses, pumps, spanners, fixed lines, cross-flow and RDV filters, presses, de-stemmers, and recieval bins. The biggest difference was that there was more of everything, everything was much bigger, and everything was newer. Doug’s story sounded a lot like the stories of the guys I work with at Mud House: this was the biggest winery he had worked in by far, and while it’s intimidating and confusing at first, you get used to it, and after a few weeks you can walk through it blindfolded.

Of course, the highlight of the tour for me was getting to visit the Oyster Bay lab. I confess I was very surprised when I saw it: the Oyster Bay lab had a lot of cool toys at their disposal, but they did not have an FTIR! A winery that size could easily use one, maybe even two with the volume of grapes they bring in. An FTIR, when properly calibrated, can give you decently accurate numbers for several common analyses, pH, titratable acidity, volatile acidity, malic acid, percent alcohol, yeast available nitrogen, residual sugar, and others, including free and total sulfur if you buy an extra attachment, in less than a minute. All of the analyses if done by hand can take hours if you don’t have the staff. Oyster Bay had a fully staffed lab, so they could power through samples at a decent rate, but they could siginificantly cut their staffing costs and instrument maintenance costs if they switched to FTIR analysis.

That said, I am a little jealous of the Oyster Bay techs: if it was their first vintage they learned many more analytical tricks than I did. I stayed just as busy as they did, but when it comes down to it I didn’t come to New Zealand to make money, I came to New Zealand to learn methods in analytical wine chemistry. I already knew how to use an FTIR from Oregon State, and also from my Gallo internship; the only thing I can confidently say that I learned inside and out was how to determine free and total sulfur by aspiration.

Im not going to complain too much though; overall, I had a phenomenal time at Mud House. It wasn’t the location, it wasn’t the work itself, and it definitely wasn’t the pay; it was the people who made my experience enjoyable. We had a really solid, tight-knit group of temporary employees. We went to work, we got the job done, and then we played ping pong, ate, drank, and laughed together until we had to wake up and do it all over again. I am going to miss everyone dearly with this is over. My boss Tina was a joy to work for as well; it was always great talking with her in between samples, and while I didn’t learn analytical methods, I did learn a lot about wine and winemaking from her. She is studying to be a winemaker at a university in Oz…sorry, Australia, and during vintage she was making a fortified wine for a school project. I am very sad that I will not get to taste the finished product, the last time I tasted it it had a lot of potential, according to her.

That’s all for now. The next entry will mark the end of my time at Mud House and the beginning of my travels in New Zealand. Though between you and me, I am well aware of the fact that I am posting this entry four days late, and I am actually writing this from a table in the kitchen of a hostel in Kaikoura. I hope to get back on track and have a new entry posted Saturday, New Zealand time. Talk to you later!

-DK

Week 8: Boats, kittens, and the battle against boredom

And just like that, there were no more grapes.

In the beginning, there were a couple weeks where we were only getting one or two trucks a day. I remember Eric talking smack about it too; he didn’t think it would ever get as busy as the full timers said it would. Slowly but surely though, we started getting more and more trucks, and before long we were in the thick of it. After 4 weeks of frayed nerves, spilt wine, and never enough sleep, the last truck dumped the last of the grapes into the receival bin. I remember it well: It was a dreary April day, and I was down in the vintage lab taking the brix on all of the ferment round samples. One of the receival bins is right outside the window of the vintage lab, so when a truck pulled up to dump its load of sauv blanc I barely noticed. However, a few minutes later, I heard a voice coming from the winemaker’s office across the hall. It was Greg, the winery manager.

“That’s the last truck. We’re done.”

Wait, what?

I could barely believe it. Things had slowed down quite a bit at the winery in the days prior, but I never thought that we would actually be done with harvest. No more press samples? No more must or juice samples? Huh?!?! Suddenly, my days became significantly less frantic. I hardly knew what to do with myself, first the grape samples stopped coming, depriving me of quality time with my garlic press, and then the grapes themselves had stopped. What on earth was I to do with my time?

The answer to that question came a lot more quickly than I would have liked: start cleaning. Clean the used test tubes, clean the pipettes, clean the sulfur apparatus, clean the centrifuge, clean the countertops, push buttons to make the FTIR clean itself, mop the floor, etc. I spent the first couple hours of my days helping on ferment round, then spent the second couple hours collecting my RS samples and running them through the FTIR, and then whatever was left of my day cleaning the lab. Some days the yeast team would rescue me and give me a couple additions to do, but then I would just go back to cleaning. Tina also has a knack of finding obscure things that “need” to be cleaned as well, so I quickly had to learn the ancient art of diddle-daddle do, or how to look busy when there is nothing to do; a difficult feet, especially when your boss never more than 15 feet away from you for the majority of the day. And so life continued.

There were two notable events of the last week (actually, there were three, but the first two are sort of being run together, for reasons that will soon be made clear). The first was the long awaited post-harvest party. At first we didn’t think that there was going to be one, the head winemaker was under pressure to cut costs, and vintage memorabilia (shirts or jackets that have something like “Mud House vintage 2011” written on them) and the harvest party were on the chopping block. At the behest of the rest of the full time staff, we got our harvest party; we were not so lucky with the t-shirts. That said, the winemakers working for Astrolabe, one of Mud House’s client labels, surprised us with a vintage t-shirt, so everyone was still happy. And truthfully, I’m really flattered to be associated with Astrolabe as opposed to Mud House: after having sampled a majority of both label’s table wines, Astrolabe makes consistently better tasting and better smelling wines. I’m getting sidetracked, back to the harvest party!

The full time staff did their best to keep the details of the party a secret from the vintage employees, but word still got out: we would be renting a boat out of Picton and taking a cruise around Queen Charlotte Sound. Food and gratuitous amounts of wine and beer would be provided. It would have been nice if they had picked another day to have the party, it was pretty cold and a little wet out on the water. I actually didn’t mind that I couldn’t appreciate the beautiful scenery during the party, as I had taken a trip to Picton with the Oyster Bay crew and had actually taken a cruise around the sound already, and it had been a beautiful day. But I digest…errr…digress. A fantastic time was had by most everyone on the cruise: one person got a bit sick, and for a moment a few of us thought a fight was going to break out between a couple of other vintage workers, but nothing terribly bad happened. Overall, the lot of us ate, drank, and were merry for the duration of the cruise, and into the night afterwards. I snapped a lot of really good photos as well, but the majority of them you are going to have to view through facebook. As was the case with all harvest parties, there were a few occurrences that could be classified as “juicy gossip,” but you aren’t going to get any of that here. Regardless, we all had a great time, and after the festivities nobody passed out under a bush or in front of McDonald’s, we all made it home to bed.

Then next event occurred quite by chance. Despite the significant drop in the number of productive things to do in the lab, there was still occasion for the yeast team to come to my rescue and put me to work. It was on one such occasion that my day took a turn for the incredibly cute. I was setting up an inoculation on one of our 270,000 liter tanks, when I noticed that Maighan and Allison, two of the tank farm workers, were standing in the middle of the walkway, both looking intently and smiling at something Maighan was holding. I got closer and realized that the object of their interest was a small, blue-eyed, very vocal kitten. She had noticed it walking along the side of one of the neighboring buildings, and had apparently saved it from being run over by a tanker. The kitten, which we later named Muddy, was quite distraught, and was definitely undernourished. But Muddy was very friendly, so Maighan decided to take it back to the break room, give it some food and water, and then try and call the local animal shelter. Smiling inwardly at the events that had transpired, and fully confident that this story would have a happy ending, I finished setting up the inoculation.

However, Muddy’s story wasn’t over yet. The animal shelter couldn’t come out and pick him up until tomorrow, so that means that they needed to keep him somewhere until then. Jenna, one of the girls in the red cellar, offered to take him back to Duncannon with her after the shift was over, but that was still a couple hours away. In the meantime, the needed to put Muddy somewhere out of the way, where he wouldn’t get into trouble, and wouldn’t get run over by a forklift. So, they put him in the lab.

I came back to the lab after the inoculation, and found Muddy sitting on the lab floor, staring up at Tina, expressing his discontent with his current lodgings. At this point any hope of getting anything productive done that evening were long gone; everyone wanted to come up to the lab and pet the kitten. Tina still had a bit of work to do, so it fell to me to occupy the kitten while Tina worked. That’s right folks, for the last two hours of the shift, it was my job to play with a kitten. On that day, for that short period of time, I had the best job in the world. It doesn’t matter if you are a dog person, it doesn’t even matter if you are allergic to cats: if you are having a terrible day, playing with a kitten will turn it around. And if you are having a great day, the kitten will make it that much greater.

After the shift ended, I helped Jenna smuggle Muddy into Duncannon and into Jenna’s room. The Duncannon management never found out about the kitten, and Jenna later found Muddy a home with one of the permanent staff at Oyster Bay. Everyone is happy that Muddy found a new home, even if it wasn’t with any of us.

That’s all for now. I declared my last day of work as Friday, May 6, so I only have a few days left at Mud House. It’s been an interesting experience, there has been some good and some bad, and I need the next week to think about it before I pass judgement on it. Until then, see ya!

-DK