The Lizard Kings...

I spent the evening (1st October) playing cards with Shane (an Aussie), Alix and Kelly (American sisters from Maine). We drank silly amounts of tea and I lost at pretty much every game we played but all was good :-)

In the morning (2nd October) I decided I'd hitch to Mt Manganui which was a good 2 and a half hour drive East from Raglan. I realised this was going to take several hitches and my first stop would likely be Hamilton. I put my thumb up and the second car picked me up, good start I thought! It was a nice lady from Raglan who was heading to work in Hamilton. She had some bizarre sort of stripped down funk.rap music playing which was pretty cool and I had a long chat with her about surfing. Luckily she was going to the other end of Hamilton and so I could easily walk to the road I needed to be on (Hamilton is pretty big with bypasses and stuff so finding the road you need to hitch from can be a bit of a nightmare). I put the thumb up and this time it took a bit longer but after 10 minutes a lovely Maori lady picked me up. She was a fascinating character who had a heart of absolute gold. Following her 2 sons moving out she adopted 2 more sons who's parents had died and were known to be big trouble makers. She had such great love for these kids despite all the terrible things she mentioned that they did and how hard they made her life. She prided herself on giving these troubled kids a good upbringing and she talked about how tough it was but it was all worth it when she saw their behavior gradually improve. She was fascinating and was apparently going to visit a 97 year old who she also helped look after, his name was Manli and she claimed he was her source of wisdom. She had such a love for people and it seemed she'd spent her whole life just helping others, she was a shining example to how great some of of the unsung heroes are in this world. She dropped me off on the road to Tauranga and within 5 minutes I'd caught my next lift off a girl who was heading to a show-jumping contest. She dropped me off right in Mt Manganui and so I'd made it with absolute ease and met some great people on my journey!

On my arrival I tried to contact Alex and Dan but couldn't get hold of them so I booked myself into a hostel for the night and took a walk. Mt Manganui was really nice. A fairly small town right on the beach and beside a 25m high Mountain. It was bigger than Raglan and definitely far busier. Eventually Alex called me and I met them only to find that they were heading back to Raglan tomorrow, they told me they'd sorted out accomodation with an elderly lady in Raglan and I'd be welcome to join them. Of course I said yes. But that was tomorrow, we still had to decide what to do today. The waves were not right for surfing so we decided we'd have a barbecue by the beach. It was awesome and once we finished I attached the strap to my guitar and I just walked around the beautiful, beautiful beach playing guitar! It was a great experience. I find that I connect with nature that much more when I'm making music! We sat, talked and jammed with the sand between our toes until the sun started to set. It was a beautiful evening and I became great friends with Dan and Alex.

Once it got dark we decided to get some beers in and drink them on the pier while we had a very intellectual chat about the state of the world and things. It was clear that I'd met two great friends.

After this we decided to go to the local Irish pub where there was live acoustic music. Dan was pretty drunk by this point and decided it'd be a great idea to start the 100 pints of Guinness challenge. This challenge involved drinking 100 pints of Guinness (obviously) in order to get your name on a plaque in the pub. The record was apparently 9 days! Alex insisted I should ask the musician playing whether I could have a cheeky little set and low and behold 5 minutes later Damon (the musician playing, he was in the middle of a break) came over to me and said 'I hear you're keen to play a couple of songs, go ahead and play some before I come back on'. So he introduced me and before I knew it I was playing to a packed Irish pub. I played my songs 'Blue' and 'A Girl in a Movie'. Lots of drunk people were dancing around like crazy and it was a great little set! I really enjoyed it! After I finished some people came up to me and congratulated me, praising my songs, they particularly liked 'a girl in a movie' which was good to know as I'd only just written that.

At about 1am we decided to head back. I managed to sneak Alex back into my hostel for free as there was an empty bunk above mine which he could sleep in. We assumed Dan had fallen asleep in his car by this point!

The next morning (3rd October) we met Dan again who had indeed fallen asleep in his car and we headed off back to Raglan. We blasted out Johnny Cash at high volume and made it to Raglan having made a stop off in Hamilton to buy some music books. In Raglan we met Peggy who's house Alex had booked to stay in and it turned out she didn't mind Dan and me sticking around for a couple of nights either provided we shared the bed in the other room. Peggy is fantastic, she's a great painter who's sold many of her works and she's just unbelievably relaxed and a good host. We had a very relaxed evening in reading, jamming and talking.

The next day (4th October) we'd wanted to go for a surf but the waves were far too extreme apparently so we went fishing instead. We failed miserably to catch anything and got completely soaked in the terrible weather. To be honest the weather hasn't been great here in NZ at all but it's not really mattered! After our failed fishing trip Alex, Dan and Me discussed the idea of creating a website called 'Lizard King' about our philosophy and trying to spread it to the world. The philosophy is basically the rejection of this crazy 9-5 career idea that we seemed to be molded to believe is the way forward when in fact there is another much better way of living. As the weather was shocking we spent all day jamming in Peggy's garage and came up with some pretty good stuff. Dan (who is a poet) is an incredibly good lyricist and Alex is getting very good at ukelele (he taught me a fair bit). It's been a great couple of days with these 2 guys. We get on brilliantly and none of us take anything particularly seriously. We spend pretty much the entire time talking in stupid accents and having a ball!

Today (5th October) I wanted to hitch to Wellington (a good 7-8 hour journey) but the weather is once again shocking making it impossible to hitch so Peggy kindly offered that I could stay another night and hitch off tomorrow. We're hoping that we can surf today, or at least I'm hoping as it's been too long!! Here's hoping...

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