Yertle

After a sleepless night and food that is easily worse than most any airline’s I was very happy to be picked up in Melbourne by Maris and quickly introduced to her boyfriend Alex and mate Kyran. Before I sat down, we loaded up two cars with a trailer and headed for Lorne, with over 3500 sausages in tow. We set up shop at the Falls Festival and then escaped to relax at Rough ‘n Tumble before the three days of sausage mania began. Because when more than 15,000 drinking, smoking and whatever-else-ing party goers congregate around two stages to watch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother, Grizzly Bear, Moby, Liam Finn, Seasick Steve and some thirty others for three days, they eventually get hungry. Enter the Gourmet Bangers stand, where we hussled to make the most extravagent ... read more

I arrived in Queenstown after a childhood fantasy of riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus from Dunedin, which turned out to be quite nauseating on the NZed twisty roadways. Will was ready to party the last day of No-shave November away and eager to hitchhike out of town the next day. After a bit of goofing off roadside, three different friendly kiwis gave us lifts in the direction of Te Anau. The last of friendly soul was Dave, who showed us the local watering hole, The Redcliff, which was eerily similar to a smoke free Neptune’s. He took us for a session of wake boarding in the water that was barely above freezing and some exploration out on Lake Te Anau, Australasia’s largest fresh(ice)water lake. To get out of the worthless routine ... read more

Being the only American Spicer in NZ, I 'raced' down to Wellington via a twelve hour bus trip and stayed in the nicest hostel I have found, the YHA. Halloween out with Galen, who I hadn't seen in fifteen years was a great time. He put me up for a few days while I explored Wellington, the numerous harbours, steep 'hills', the local art museums and Te Papa - the best national mueseum I have come across - which was actually free. The City Art Gallery was chalked full of Yusama's dot works, which to say the least were bizzarely interesting. On a budget I sought out an organic farm to live on for the next few weeks. After sending out emails to a few, including (by accident) an 'Au Natural' - nudist farm, I managed ... read more

Out of desperation and essentially survival Allen and I departed the cold-weather-plagued island named after the dutch province of Zeeland. We walked, almost sprinted from excitement out of the Nadi airport to start ten days of vacation from vacation. Small swells and high prices of the Tavarua and Cloudbreak resorts kept us from channeling our innner Kelly Slaters/Jeff Hubbards. We settled on settle on island hopping up the Yasawa Islands. Nadi was unimpressive - picture a Indian populated, tropical town that was the destroyed by WWIII, crap everywhere - but very friendly people. Within the first 5 minutes of our cab ride, our sketchy but bubbly cab driver offered both Indian working women of the night and various amounts of weed for a fair price. Fortunately, everything legitimized as we left the main island. No island ... read more

On down (via a $40 plane ticket - so cheap it was sketical) to Christchurch (which is actually the furthest thing from Christ or a Church) and then piled into the nissan that we came to know as "Bessie" or "All The Stuff I Own." Salvador Dahli was the inspiration for our van's graphic presentation, which drew plenty of attention and laughs. We headed west towards Arthurs Pass for snow, and after getting half way up the learning curve of driving her, on the left, up n down moutain roads, in the snow and rain and wind, we crashed......for the night, in a little park next to a lake(I'm not good with names?). Testing out the gas grill, we chowed on lamb steaks and washed it down with plenty of Speights (the PBR of New Zealand) ... read more