The boots the boot

Hiking boots are predominately designed for people without pinky toes. Unfortunately that is one body modification I have not undertaken yet: I even still have my appendix and the least pain in my abdomen is a terror to me since I am rarely adequately insured. For similar reasons it would be cheaper to give the boots the boot than that to the toes, and so I returned to the store, secure with box and receipt, and leaned my bike against the counter. (If you must ask, my bike was a bit upset that we would not be cycling to Whakapapa due to the exchange, and fears of Highway One. The bicycle was not afraid: it has never been. It has always just wanted to go, and there it had to wait wondering what parts would be removed to facilitate its alternate transport.)

"There's just one problem, mate," the cashier said, "these are worn, I can't sell these as new boots." I feared as much. I had nightmares about it, and the oracle when I visited had pronounced the fate: even my fortune cookies recently have been less than positive. "I'm sorry, mate," he said, and I looked into his eyes and he was very, very sorry. But there was nothing I could do, I had to drop the boots.

Oh it would have been so easy! Did I neglect to listen to my toes on that fateful day when I tried on every shoe in the shop? Was I too concerned with vague comparisons with every other boot, the fit in thumb toe in heel, the grip, the secure feeling of a shoe about the ankle? I told him it was my fault, not his, but he just frowned his eyes. He was so disappointed.

The cashier was disappointed, my bike was disappointed, even I was disappointed. When I walked out among the crowds that day there was just that vague sense of disapproval, not of me, but of my purchase; they expected so much more of me. A pigeon looked at me briefly then averted its gaze, shaking it head o slightly. The green man on the walk sign had a bit less spring in his step, and the clouds hung in the sky a meter lower than the day before.

I had not only failed myself, but generations and generations before me. My grandparents expected more of me; their grandparents more as well. My teachers, laboring every school day and night to educate me, for this one moment when I might have to purchase boots, and to purchase the correct pair; that had all been in vain. If only I could go back and buy the half-size larger, even though I had never needed a size 10 1/2 before and even now the thought of it makes me think I must have enormou, clown-like feet! If only my predecessors and teachers could go back and correct that little blind spot in the manner of boot-buying, perhaps all would be a bit better: more smiles on motorists faces and less honking, and the baby on the corner might have one less tear on its face.

President Obama and Queen Elizabeth II were both disappointed in me. Christ, hanging on the cross, bore that exact thorn or nail corresponding to my mis-purchase. My friends were disappointed; my co-workers were. The readers of my blog were disappointed. I was disappointed; my bike was; the cashier was. I've said that. The cow that provided the leather was disappointed. VISA was disappointed. Every boot suit to fit was disappointed, and every foot that would have fit the boot was disappointed as well. It is hard to get the scale of it: Stalin was disappointed, Napoleon was disappointed, Saddam Hussein was disappointed. I disappointed the King: Elvis. So much had gone wrong when I bought the boot, and then worn it, not on carpet in the hostel but on hot tracks through the woods.

I sold the boots into the rental fleet at a reduced price. I escaped to the other side of town and bought boots: big boots -- boots that fit. I hid and fled town on the Naked Bus, and talked to a woman who had not yet learned of my mistake.

Best shortcut ever?

30km to the next town. That's normally not something to complain about, but the bike has its own mind about which hills are easy and which are hard.

Oh, you know, let me throw some background on NZ roads at you.

The roads are signed all sorts of different ways, but from a user's perspective, the differences are minimal. All roads are two lanes, with or without a dashed white line down the center, with essentially no shoulders. More impressive sounding names, such as "Highway 1", indicate greater traffic and aspirations but no greater width or speed limits. Perhaps the lesser roads, which cyclists avoiding the holiday traffic on 1 are likely to use, are hillier. Perhaps much hillier.

My map made me an incredible bargain. There was a bike trail, in its planning stages, running the length of the river that I would otherwise have to bike a long hilly loop around. I suspected the trail to be flatter, since it was pictured as abutting the river, and thus quicker, or at least a welcome respite from traffic. And that it existed could not be denied, because it was right there, running alongside the road where the map called it, and I had seen numerous signs and brochures describing it.

You already know how the story ends: the trail decayed as I distanced further from the highway, losing first its fine gravel cover and then entering spotty sections of sand. The design was full of climbs and downhills that I'm sure a mountain biker would appreciate, but for the most part I felt I was pushing my road bike through the wrong side of a Mountain Dew commercial.

It ended on a logging road, which had a huge tree down across it. To be frank, this detour was beginning to get awesome. I had to break out a huge section of the tree to roll my bike through it, and the road kept getting increasingly remote. Then there was this part where I was desperate for water, and all I could find, because the river had completely vanished, was this tiny red stream -- but when I drew the water it was yellow. This tiny stream ran through an enormous logging valley utterly devoid of shade; there were only dead stumps and dirt all around, and I had to circle three quarters of it with no shade, and --

Wait, I think I forgot what blog this was. Shades of "a little floating adventure" are haunting the page. Let me exorcise them here. Basically, what I'm saying is there is a huge marketing opportunity for drink dealers in the middle of that dry valley. Call it the Draughts of Mordor, and sell it to lost cyclists. It fits, because a more desperate landscape I have not ever seen. I'm not saying that you'd make money every day, but you could get pretty good rates on what you have, and perhaps even charge for your air-conditioning services and sunscreen.

(But, secretly, the adventure continued. It was the kind of trip that feels awesome because you know that the misery is limited and the stories aren't; that even when the camp site you were completely relying on for water and toilet is on the wrong side of the river, the tiny scratch of earth you can make to lay your head on will be just as comfortable, and as you go to sleep you are surrounded by this blue glow -- just these tiny blue dots in the darkness, on the ground -- glowing out of attraction or death, because they seem to peep out from where you disturbed the earth, and they drown out the stars, if any, above you, and all other concerns, like where your next sip of water will come from. Just sleep.)

That little booth in Mordor can sell run-on sentences to make Henry James drool, because they seem to be in plenty supply in New Zealand. You know what? Let's get back on track here. What eats are worthy for an enterprising entrepreneur to take over in this country? Let's look at a couple alternatives:

Burger Fuel: This chain produces bizarre concoctions Dagwood never dreamed of. First struggle to fit the sandwich into your mouth, second grab a hundred napkins to wipe the beet juice off yourself. Verdict: worth further investigation.

Hell's Pizza: With a stark red and black decor and menu items named after the seven deadly sins, this is a restaurant chain sure to keep the children asking uncomfortable questions. Posing as a gourmet pizza joint, it falls short in this goal. In Minneapolis, Luce is never more than a scenic walk away and has superior taste and texture in every way. Verdict: pass.

How to ride a bus in Auckland

You just have to decide where you are going. Really, you just have to decide. Really, as a tourist you have no particular reason to go anywhere, so the first thing you have to do is to decide which place will be the most impressive today. Then, you go to google maps and let it decide what buses you need to take to get there. This will give you a more efficient route than they might give you at the Brittomart station, and google is faster anyway.

So much for the easy part.

Once you know where you are going, you must board the bus and tell the driver where you think he should let you off. You have to tell him because the buses use a graded price system, so the distance to the destination affects the price in an obscure way. But this just opens the first stage of negotiations. The bus driver will then tell you in turn that, first, this bus doesn't go there; second, that place does not exist; and third, wouldn't you be better off taking a cab, you sweet little thing, because this public transport thing just seems a bit beyond you?

You must hold your ground. The game is to find the first stop after your destination that the bus driver will admit to servicing. I've found that gesturing at a vague region on a map does wonders, but then the driver will charge for the furthest stop in that area. Eventually the bus driver will name some price that doesn't appear on the rate table, and you pay it. In return you receive a short string of dental floss which is supposed proof of payment, but I have never been able to study it under a powerful enough microscope to determine what the words, if any, say.

Now that you've earned the right to ride the bus, all you have to do is wait for your stop to approach. The more vehemently the driver denied such a stop existing, the larger the sign giving the name of the stop, which is exactly the name you tried running by the driver earlier.

All that's left to do then is press the stop button and hope the bus doesn't go too much further. For extra credit, you can read the timetable on the bus stop on the way back and verify that the bus does, indeed, stop there.

Tarini

290$NZ from Adventure Cycle, with guaranteed 50% buyback. I expect at least two major breakdowns.