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Date: March 28, 2004
I went 929 days without having to pitch my tent in the rain untilgail-force
headwinds (over 100 KPH), stinging rain, gravel roads like grinding
paste, spread the numbness and arthritis in my knees through my
whole body. I make faces like a Maori warrior: tongue wagging, eyesscrunched
and roaring. I see a sheltered spot in a tree farm, hop the fence
and pitch camp. As I feared, my tent is soaked and full of puddles
of muddy water. I strip off my bicycle clothes and pull on allmy
soggy winter woolies and warm myself with a couple cups of coffee
that I make from rainwater running off my tent. Feeling returns
to my feet and hands but I barely manage to stay warm in the wet
tent.
This is the worst weather New Zealand has recorded. I talked to a scientist
in the Invercargill museum -- I have never met a man with a true love of lizards
(“They are more like dinosaurs,” he said caressing its crocodile-like
tail) -- he told me that the fossil record suggests that New Zealand has been
much warmer in the past.
For four days I have averaged a walking speed as I battled my way to the southern
end of New Zealand -- the Subantarctic, a word that sounds much
colder than antarctic -- snow is preferable to cold rain. This region
lies in the southern latitude between the roaring forties and the
furious fifties. The nicknames refer to the wind which blows perpetually
from the west. In the olden days ships sailed from Europe down the
coast of west coast of Africa and around Antarctica, using these
trade winds, on their way to Australia and New Zealand. The wind
prunes the branches of trees leaving only half a tree on the lee
side shaped like a wind sock; and rocks, called ventifacts, are
sandblasted into dorsal-fin and sail shapes. Two weeks ago, the
wind caught a tent like a parasail and blew a woman 27 meters through
the air and smashed her skull into a pile of rocks.
The next morning, I shooed the penguins away from my tuna tin (Okay, no penguins
here, but there are three species inhabiting the southern shores.)
and make coffee from a bowlful of slushy hail. By the time I finish
packing my feet and hands are like blocks of wood. I wonder when
hypothermia begins.
I come to an intersection where I can take the short road to Invercargill
but turn into fiercer winds, a black cloud, and probably lose my
sun for the rest of the day, and with no indication of a bed, shower,
food or water, or I can turn left, the long way towards a café.
It seems foolish to continue so I pedal to the cafe. It takes me
two hours to stop shivering next to the coal fire. I ask a local
if there is a bus to Invercargill. He tells me not to hold my breath
and just as I say, “I don’t know how I am going to make
it,” and thinking that my guardian angles must be stuck in
a card game, a solo, female bicyclist from Milwaukee arrives and
says she has called a special bus and it is arriving in a few hours.
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