Happy Independence Day!

A bar here in Auckland is having Independence Day festivities all weekend.  Red, white and blue balloons and prize trips to L.A. and the whole bit.  Excited, I asked if Americans got free drinks.  Five people, including the barmaid, laughed in my face.  Typical of the way Americans are treated worldwide.  Other countries have an endlessly fetishistic, parasitic fascination with our culture, but treat our actual people like pariahs.  The conventional wisdom on us is that we're incapable of understanding irony, yet we produce worldwide ironyfest smashes like "The Simpsons."

I have already had my hot dog.  Me and my friend Lee, whom I met my first time in Sydney, went down to the Ferry Building and bought some at a cart, which was luckily open because it's Sunday.  It was like hot dogs are outside of America: greyish, mushy, and suspect.  But I've had my wiener today.  That's as far as my patriotism goes.

When last we met, I had returned to Sydney for another sojourn. Stealing a few extra days before putting paradise in my rear-view mirror. It was just as much fun the second time around.  I realized how easily I could live there.  Coffee in Newtown, wandering in Bondi, traipsing through the boutiques down the far end of Oxford Street.  Love it!

Pop quiz: What's the capital of Australia?

The answer is, of course, Canberra.  I decided to pay a little visit.

Let me tell you, if I thought Adelaide was paralytic (and I do), then Canberra is brain dead.  It's a purely designed city.  As with most modern city designs, the overall plan is too large to be enjoyed on foot.  You need a map to even appreciate the complexity and layout of the space.  In Canberra's case, you should view it by spacecraft.  Getting around is a vastly annoying proposition, entailing hours of slogging through wet winds.  Nothing but stand-alone corporate '70s concrete boxes separated by broad desolate avenues and filled with government offices. Walking everywhere is technically possible, but it would kill you with boredom.  There's a flaccid central district--basically a food court with attached mall--and everything beyond it is suburbs.  Each suburban area has its own "shop block".  You'll be driving down the road (preferably) in Kingston or O'Connor and see signs pointing to "Kingston Shops."  The shops themselves are mostly doctors' offices, with maybe a take-away joint or tasteful neighborhood Thai restaurant.  The segregation of residence and commerce is downright creepy; there's no sense of community.  Is this modern planning?  Canberra's suburban aspirations are so enforced that they're suffocating.  I walked past kilometers of suburban tranquillity, and it stretched in both directions to the vanishing point.  I found that symbolic.  There were also some Neighborhood Watch signs, but Canberra is the sort of place where having a Neighborhood Watch is pure optimism.

There's one reason to visit Canberra, and it's also the reason it exists: the flabbergasting Parliament House.  It was one of the most amazing things I've seen in Australia.  Massive beyond recollection, packed with art, streamlined, idealized and built with consummate attention to impressiveness and symbolism in the way on '80s architecture can be.  It cost over a billion dollars to dig it into a hillside and then re-cover it with sod and grass (under the guise of environmentalism, but of course now the hill's in more symmetrical, pleasing shape). The idea was that you can walk on top of it (I did) and you are symbolically "over" your representatives as they sit in the House or the Senate.  Of course, the actual chambers aren't under sod, so again, as with so much '80s architecture, the symbolism is more academic than effective.  It's the same idea behind Berlin's Reichstad, too.

(Fact: If you don't vote as a citizen of Oz, you get fined.)

If there's a common feeling I have gotten across the world, it's that pedestrians don't matter.  Canberra is vast yet the bus system is byzantine and infrequent (the system's catchline is "Discover the pluses of buses."  Isn't that horrible?).  It's as if the governing forces want you do own a car as soon as possible.  Everywhere you go, whether you're trying to cross a busy street, find a crosswalk, or catch a bus, you hear the refrain: "You don't have a car? F**k you!"   I keep hearing that voice.  Thailand, Australia, South Africa, America.  Buy a car or you don't count.

I hustled back to Sydney on the first morning train, thankful to be back in an international city.  I had coffee atop the AMP Tower and had a mobile phone conversation with the Director of Musical Theater studies at WAAPA in Perth.  I was a real hifalutin professional.

I have decided that my life is like a TV show.  I'm like Michael Landon in "Highway to Heaven."  Every week I roll into a new town, make friends with a few locals, get into their lives and bring them closer to God or whatever, and when the wind changes I'm off again. Like Mary Poppins but with more baggage, I go to a new city to help another little boy and girl.  Every episode ends with me strolling down an unrealistically picturesque rain-washed city street by night, like Ally McBeal with piano soul in my head, as the latest chapter fades to black.  More adventures, but no accumulation--no recurring characters except me.

It's getting tired.  I met some great people in Sydney.  Two of them happen to be from Auckland, New Zealand (Kiwis are allowed to move to Australia with no legal hassle. In fact, New Zealand has been losing population for over a decade running.  An average of 30 people leave there a day, most of them for the greener financial pastures of Australia).

I have gotten to where I hate meeting new people; I can't keep them!  It hurts to meet people you like, try to pack meaningful time into a short period, and then leave without knowing when you'll ever see each other again.  The past few weeks, I haven't even bothered going out at night.  What if I made friends?  Then again, if I knew this trip would last another two months, I wouldn't be so tired.  Because it's ending, I'm easing up a bit.

Anyway, after I walked down a rain-washed Oxford Street and things faded to black, I woke up the next day in Melbourne, where I was flying out to New Zealand.  I saw my old travel mate Chris again, but this time I also met his wife and sister.  I don't do well when I have to entertain women.  I'm much better in conversation.  Needless to say, I used the red wine as a crutch and blathered on like a dork and the evening was consequently not a great success.  For example, when I told them I'd climbed Uluru, there was an uneasy silence.  Chris is a barrister and has done a lot of work defending Aboriginal.  He would never climb it himself, and here I am this brash New York tourist (or that's how I suddenly felt), tramping all over the Westminster Abbey of the native peoples.  I felt like I'd been caught mailing a box of poo to the Queen.

It's just as well I left Australia when I did.  I was getting confused.  I wanted to go back to Sydney a third time.

My Air New Zealand flight to Christchurch was cancelled.  So they flew me to Auckland instead, where they put me up for the night, and first thing the next morning (after a nice evening of hotel room CNN), they put me on a flight to Christchurch.  We took off, discovered a wing problem, and came back. Finally, on the third try (having already been to Auckland twice and still not having seen much at all), I got to the South Island.

Christchurch is best known to me as the place where those cheeky girls in "Heavenly Creatures" smashed in the mum's skull with the brick. In fact, I was there on the 45th anniversary of the event.  Happily, it was nothing like the movies.  There was a very dull downtown area.  Flat.  The youngsters came in two flavors: plaid Christian and green-haired Wiccans.  Neither one had a bad bone in their bodies. Fine upstanding punks in Christchurch.  ("May I have some heroin, please? Why, thank you!")

Being winter here, New Zealand doesn't offer much.  Tramping (hiking) is out because most of the good trails are closed.  River activities are out because it's too cold.  Skiing is in--if you're not at the end of your budget.  So I took advantage of Christchurch's sole weenie attraction, which is a gondola ride to the top of a hill.  It's actually a good time.  The "hill" turned out to be the rim of a double-headed volcano that has since flooded and become Christchurch's principal port, Lyttelton.  If you look on a map of NZ, there's a round protrusion out the east side of the South Island where Christchurch is.  That's the Banks Peninsula--a boring name given to a mighty bloom of volcanic land rising out of the Canterbury plains.

I took a train across the island, through the shockingly gorgeous scenery of the Southern Alps.  Gorges, green fields, snow-capped mountains, glassy mountain lakes.  It's disgusting how easily New Zealand is gorgeous.  Pound for pound, there's only a few other places on earth that rival its beauty.  Nepal is one.

From Greymouth on the west coast, I went to the glaciers.  There are two, right next door to each other, and they're both freaks of nature because a) they're so close to the sea and b) they descend right into rainforest.  You can grab an ice axe and tromp over them in your shorts, which is of course what I did. I rambled over it for nearly six hours, squeezing through icy wormholes and over fierce, slippery ridges.  It was a truly weird, wonderful experience.  Another world.

Now, you can't make it all around the world without being enticed by adventure sports.  I haven't bungy jumped, mostly because it's a little too much about the thrill, but I have done things like quadbiked and white water rafted.  The granddaddy of thrills, though, remained untapped.  Skydiving.

New Zealand is so vibrantly green, so rumpled and cozy, and its waters so implausibly aquamarine, that I knew I had to skydive here.  I mean, if ever I would skydive.  Mountains, pastures, and sea all in the same view?  It'd be great!  No sooner had this vague notion crossed my mind than had I placed a phone call for a reservation.  From a phone box in Hokitika, I did the deal.  It felt a little like a drug deal.  "'We'll pick you up in front of the McDonald's in Nelson at 8:30 a.m.,'" said the voice in the phone.  I said okay.  What did I care?  At that point, it was just a voice in the phone. Worry later.

So I slept well, aside from the dream that I was peeing chunks of my body parts, but that's surely another matter.  And at 8:25, a guy named "Steady" picked me up in a van.  We drove, amidst idle chit-chat (I delivered my standard biography for the six billionth time), to an airplane hangar outside of Nelson.  It all happened so quickly!  I was just concentrating on not getting scared, on going with the flow.  They put me in a jumpsuit, hat, goggles, gloves, strapped me up.  Briefed me on what to do with my body.

This was to be the system: Once in the plane, Dave, my jumping partner, would strap me to himself. Then, at 12,000 feet, the door would open and I was to go over to it and literally hang outside by my straps while Dave scooted into position on the edge behind me. There would be a few photos of us in this position. Then, I would be instructed to "Go banana."  Dave would gently pull my head back, I'd cross my arms like a dead pharaoh, and arch backwards--like a banana.  Then, Dave would push us out and we'd go.  A few seconds later, Dave would tap on my head, which would be my cue to spread my arms and enjoy the free fall.

"Enjoy the free fall."  His words.

At the end, upon landing, I was to extend my legs out in front of me and concentrate on not letting them crumple up under us.

Like I said, in actual practice, it happened so quickly--partly because I was going with the flow but mostly because I was crapping my jumpsuit.

It was a chilly morning with frosty lime grass and pastel light.  We went to the airplane, which was a tiny one-seater with enough room for Dave and I to sit in the back, me inside his legs.  Dave had to whistle for the pilot, who trotted over from another hangar.  We got in and they chatted about a southerly they wanted to keep an eye on.   We took off--those little planes can lift off with almost no run-up--and climbed.  And climbed.  Honestly, after a certain height, you can't see much difference.  Dave strapped on his wrist altimeter and held it into my view.  Nine thousand...ten thousand.  The 12, appropriately, was at the top of the dial, marked as Zero.  Dave buckled himself to me and tightened us together.  He put on his gloves, he pointed out a distant snowy mountain where he skis, and Rabbit Island, where the summer beaches are.

This land--patchwork farmlands running up to a sapphire sea and encircled by mountains both white and green.  The sounds of Marlborough to the right, sodden with a low fog in the valleys, the city of Nelson as faraway as a memory below the wings.  This land--it was like a hungry mouth, waiting below to swallow me up again.  A threat uttered with a dewy eye.

The more Dave did to us, the closer I knew our jump was.  "That hatch is going to open, and it's going to make a lot of wind, Jason," he said.  Always used my name. "It's normal."

The only time the seconds slowed down was when his altimeter hit Zero. He slid the goggles over my eyes and that told me it was time for business.  Go with the flow, go with the flow, I thought.  The hatch opened and the cabin burst with cold wind.  It was the same way I'd entered the plane, only this time there was no ground under my shoes!  I scooted gamely toward the door, as instructed, but relinquishing control wasn't easy.  I didn't realize I was holding on, but I guess I was because Dave unclasped my gloves from the handbar.  Suddenly, I was dangling outside a plane by a few straps behind my back.

It was in this alarming position--half out of the womb--that our photos were snapped by a camera on the wing.  I'm sure that I look like a baby hanging half out of his mother, beaming like a talk show host, not at all impressed with what the world has to offer.  But I put on a courageous smile (which will surely read like throaty constipation) in the face of raging winds.  Dangling.  I never looked down.  Good thing, because that might have returned REASON and PRUDENCE to the situation.  They probably installed a camera there for just that reason.  Oh, the power of vanity!

I felt Dave touch my head--or at least I think I did; time and space are meaningless when you're in such dire circumstances--and it was banana time.  It was banana time for three days.

And then the air hit us like a cold, wet towel, and we were tumbling.  I saw the turtle-white underbelly of the airplane spin and shrink in the sky behind us--BEHIND us!--and that's when it registered that we were falling.  The logic of the earth turned liquid.  Green fields melted into sky, sea and mountains changed places, the air rushed like a linebacker.  Then it all simmered down again.  I felt a tap on my head.  I opened my arms and embraced the beautiful earth.

You don't feel a tickly stomach.  There's nothing to give you the perspective that you're falling.  Some people scream.  I couldn't scream; the air had funny ways of entering me.  Some people flap their arms.  I tried, but it distracted me from how magnificent God is.

I didn't think of death.  Hurtling down at terminal velocity, I thought of how incredible Earth is. We hurtled through the morning of this chilly new day.

What was going on registered--sort of.  It registered in the way things do in a middle of a nightmare, when you realize it's a dream, but the rage and passion of the thing drag you back into it.  The same for skydiving.  "I just jumped out of a plane," you tell yourself.  "Why did I do that?"  Pretty soon, you realize, that earth is going to meet you again.

The round shape of the planet becomes a bowl, just for you.  It's below you, but it's slowly enveloping you.  Hills and hedges stretch to take you in; roads widen, cows loosen their herds as you come.  Everything shuffles so you can find your place in it again.

Terminal velocity (or free fall) lasts only between 45 seconds and a minute. It's over as quickly as an accident.  Every scrap of alarm and gratitude and awe and fear and sensation is swept into the same tiny vortex of your brain, and then the canopy flies up to heaven and unfolds like a blue rose against the blue sky.  You hear the chink of metal on the buckles as your feet flip groundward again and the straps grasp you by the thighs.  The feeling of helplessness returns; the same malaise at hanging out of a plane by man-made straps grips you again as you dangle from the guy with the parachute.  You may be thankful that the canopy's working--and you certainly are--but the ground is still away down there, so it's not over yet.  The fields are green, but they're as hard as shaved emeralds, and you notice this as you see your own feel hanging far, far above them.

But now that the skin-molding gush of air has been controlled, you can at least gasp some words of excitement.  Hearing your own voice, even thousands of feet up, is confirmation of your reality, your survival, and the passage of moments.  It's also very odd to have a chat with someone in the airy center of nothingness.

I snapped photos indiscriminately with a disposable camera stowed in my jumpsuit.  Dave did some E-ticket turns with the canopy, and things went liquid again as the sea curled toward the clouds. He heard me gasp and asked if I was okay.  "It's scary, but I like it!" came my reply, which surprised me.  I was drawn to look at the pine-green mountains inflating nearby; we went over the sea and back over land again.  The snowy mountains had ducked behind some nearer green ones, the mists of Marlborough had concealed themselves again.  As we descended, the earth was quickly reverting to normal, stowing its secrets.  Green fields grew dots of white sheep, like lice, then the green splintered into stretches of grass, and by the time you could nearly make out individual strands, the home of land was pushing up at me and Dave told me to stretch out my legs.

I did, and we landed on the ground sitting like a couple of sledders.

The green grass had a sensation, too--it was wet and cool .  And firm beneath my seat.

So that was skydiving.  A half hour later I was on a bus for Picton.  That morning, I didn't need a coffee.

Amazing.  A day like any other.  An average day, even.  But seen from that perspective, no day is average.

Quickly now (I'm running out of time!)--I took the Interislander ferry across from Picton on the South Island to Wellington, New Zealand's capital, on the toe of the North Island.  Wellington was cool.  Windy as get-out, but full of cafes and cinemas and cool places to hang out.  I took the famous cable car to the top of the mountain and admired how simple it all was, yet handsome. Wooden Victorian domesticity and people far too handsome for such a rotten, windy climate.

Then it was off to Napier, a town on the east coast (and one of the first to see the Year 2000; like many of NZ's cities, they've got their own Millennium festivities planned.  Nearby Gisborne will have hometown success story Kiri Te Kanewa).  Napier was flattened in 1931 by a one-two punch of earthquake and fire, and the frenzy of rebuilding yielded a city that's almost exclusively in the most tasteful Art Deco style.  It's as clean and colorful--and lightly faded--as a Hollywood set.  Very relaxing town on the Pacific Ocean.

Rotorua was next.  Wild place.  Only three places in the world are like it, in that the land sits so close to the molten core of the earth.  Everywhere you go, sinkholes, green arsenic pools, and thermal spas dot the landscape. Mouths of hell breaking through the green earth, spewing steam and stinking of hydrogen sulfide. Geysers everywhere, and volcanos threatening to erupt anew--all under a spectacularly green carpet of earth.  Even the city park is dotted with pools of smoldering steam and dapples of boiling mud.  There was a picturesque park, as with many city parks, and it was spanned by a trellis-covered footbridge--only in Rotorua, the water is boiling.  Sewer pipes belch steam; the streets are cobbled because concrete buckles. Even the hostel, Hot Rock, had smelly thermal pools under the stairs. Isn't that where you keep yours?

Which brings us to the farm show, also a pleasure of Rotorua.  You don't really think of agriculture as entertainment.  They blow a whistle and a sheepdog comes barrelling in, whereupon it herds sheep in front of your eyes!  He'd scamper over the backs of the sheep, barking, and they'd scurry nervously through the sheep sorter.  It was good fun!  Sheep shearing, cow milking, butter churning--all were represented.  At the show's climax, I was handed a bottle of milk and then they unleashed a pen of hungry lambs on us.  Good fun!  (There was no slaughter display.  Upsets the kiddies.)

New Zealand is like a sunnier Scotland.  But it's FULL of Brits.  They're 19 and 20 years old and all they talk about is drinking and football.  If you come to New Zealand, make sure you learn all about West Ham first.  That is, if you want to have any conversations at all.  Drives me batty!

Next: Waitomo.  Over 400 caves in one region.  Donning a wetsuit and a headlamp, I went into one for what is called Black Water Rafting.  That's where you cave and hike along (and through) an underground river, squeezing through the tight spits, and innertubing on the long stretches.  Have you ever swum in an underground river, past stalactites and under celestial ceilings of blue glowworms?  I must say that New Zealand is full of surprises.  Everything is an unusual experience. I've been doing things I literally never dreamed I'd do--mostly because I couldn't imagine they existed. We went into the cave in the afternoon and came out another hole about a kilometer away when it was dark.  You could only feel the location of the exit by the gentle cool air blowing.  Suddenly, you were among ferns, and then, you were outside not under the twinkle of glowworms but under the stars of the Milky Way.  The Southern Cross (the stars on the New Zealand flag) was bright above us as we slogged out of the caverns.

Now I'm back in Auckland.  Not much going on.  It's one of those cities with a futuristic tower, built mostly so its sorry skyline could have a profile.  Auckland is not first in anything, except here.  Nearly thirty percent of Kiwis live here; the entire population of the South Island isn't much more than the population of Auckland.

(Another fun set of facts: New Zealand's human population is 3.8 million.  Cattle: 8.8 million. Sheep: 50 million.)

Mostly I'm resting.  I've gone out a few times with my friend Lee, whom I met in Sydney and who lives here.  Fascinating guy.  When he was 16 he had a moped accident and now he can't walk.  Yet when I met him, he was backpacking--by wheelchair--in Australia.  A good guy and a good Christian, full of positive energy, charisma, potent observations, and a depth lent to his life by dumb blind chance. You know me--I love people with a dark edge.

Tomorrow, I go to Fiji for two days and then the Cook Island for four.  After another day of transit in Tahiti, I'll be in L.A.  Seven days.

Think my math is funky?  No. This year, I get to live July 6th twice--once in Fiji, and once after I cross the International Date Line in Rarotonga.  I get the rare chance to correct my mistakes by living a day again.

In a way, I plan to relive a lot of these days.  I want to return here, for example, and see things I missed.

But more than that.  It's my goal, when I come home, to always do new things, and to see average days as beyond average.  To make every day an encore of the next. Living life as a series of encores will make life an endless surprise.

Time's out for this Dispatch.  And for New Zealand. And soon, for my trip.

My personal journal is filling with thoughts on returning.  I won't bore you.  But I'm not happy about it. Except that I'll get to see the people I love again.

Till then, I'm packing up The Boys and getting ready for that last jaunt home.  I've been out for 15 months, but I'm still only a little more than halfway round the world.  The Pacific Ocean, my final frontier, remains to be crossed.
 
(Tip of the day: If you screw a sheep, use a sheepskin condom.  It really confuses 'em.)

--Jason

Right now I'm in: Auckland, New Zealand
Countries: 35  Days: 405