Who's wool is it anyways??‏

Hii,
Thanks to everyone who wrote back with a guess about what the dickens we were doing freezing our asses off.  The correct answer was a). actually.  Just a bloody cold as night, woke up in the morning and all our water was frozen, our bicycles and the tent were covered with thick frost.  Only night that was cold like that so far.  We were camped in a deep canyon where the sun never got in.  Wasn't the plan to spend the night there but we'd had such a headwind all day that was a far as we could make it.  Good experience though, freezing your ass off, for real, next time you see me you will notice i no longer have the huge ass i used to.  Ha
 
Ok...this is a long one, read it if you can, if not don't worry!!
 
 
Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, mind wondering, pedal, pedal some more, touch the breaks, have a glance at the mountains, still pedaling, swirve to miss another perfectly flat sun dried possum road kill, thinking, "i bet the chinese would pay a fortune for one of those, it looks just like the wierd driend stuff you see in asian markets."  Pedal, pedal, Pedal, pedal, shift gears up a couple notches, stand to let some blood back into my groin, everything including my ass keeps going numb as a rock, maybe not such a good thing, shift hand positions.  Silent until we're just next to a flock of sheep and shout, "ARRR SHEEPIES!!!"  as loud as i can.  Immedialy every one of em looks up just before it starts to run for its life, a sheep stampede, my favorite, gets em every time.  
Mind wondering some more..."hey Rachael, ever seen a sheep getting sheered?"  "Nope, have you?"  "No but i'd like to! lets stop at the next farm that looks like it is sheering and see if they'll let us watch."
Pedal, pedal, Pedal, pedal, Pedal, pedal...8 hours and 120km later we finally arrive at our destination, "Fox Glacier" a town who's solo existance is due to tourism generated by the...yes you guessed it, Glacier 4km up the valley. 
Cute little town, its got a couple cafe's, a take away shop, little supermarket, 1, 2 no three pubs..holly shit!!!!(have you ever wondered if it is possible to will something to happen??) Outside 'The Mountain Goat' pub is a sigh reading, and i kidd you not, 'Sheep Sheering Comp. Tonight, Live! Beer! Food! Fun!'  Jesus!!! isn't that kind of a coincidence?
O hell yes we went! got there early to get a good seat and a beer before the place packed out.   
 FIrst up was the open division, anyone who had any sheep sheering experience could enter, maybe you had some sheep of yor own, maybe your uncle had some and you'd given it a go, maybe 50 years ago you had a sheep farm and you were hannkering for that old feeling, hell if there wasn't an entry fee and i wasn't afraid i'd accidently cut the sheeps throat i'd a entered.  There were 15 year old girls, mum's, dad's, farmers, and even an 87 year old man, who the announcer, jokingly, or possible not, declared the oldest sheep sheerer in the world.  
Mind you, this event wasn't happening outside in teh parking lot or even on the pub veranda, it was happening INSIDE, yes INSIDE the pub, sheep were being dragged into the pub, up onto a podium and sheered infront of 3 or 4 hundred fired up drunk spectators, while the also drunk announcer shouted over the speaker, "22,23, 24 seconds, he's onto the longblows, now he's onto the neck, commmmmeeee onnnnn Foxxxx Glassssiiiieeerrrr giiiittt iinnnnnn be hinnnnnnddd himmmmm!!!  Brrrringggg himmmmm hommmmmeeeee!!!  This is a local boy!!!!!"  I'm pretty sure the screaming wasn't helping to calm the sheep any but it sure was entertaining!
The sheerer would grab the sheep, plop it on its ass, squeeze the sheep between their own legs, pull the cord that simeltaneously started the clock and the electric clippers and then go like hell to sheer the sheep as fast a they could, possibly a little fast as sheep were being cut up here there and everywhere, a lot of sheep blood was spilled that night, we were reassured by some locals that the sheep didn't even mind, (yah right!) and that the cuts would heal up quick, 2 or 3 days.  
After watching the open division it really didn't seem as there was any room for improvement, most competators stripped their sheep naked in under 2 minutes, i mean how could anyone possibly do it any faster?
A 20 minute break for everyone to down a few more beers and it was onto the 'pro' devision.  You heard me 'pro' division.  Like the Tiger Woods of golf, these guys sheer sheep, they don't own any of their own, they don't even have a farm, all they do is sheer.
So you have a flock of 6000 sheep and they all need sheering.  At 5 minutes a piece which it would probably take you with your old shitty equipment and rusty sheers that 30,000 minutes which is 5000 hours, and at 8 hours a day that over 60 days to sheer your flock, you'd better get started now!!  Better yet give a 'pro' team a call.
We were pretty exhausted from riding 8hrs that day, not to mention 8hrs a day for the past 14 days but we figured we had to stick around and see what all the fuss was about.
The pros stepped up, like men possesed they were getting times of 58, 49 then 46 seconds.  It didn't seem like there was any possible way to do it any faster.  Then 2 guys, apparently on the same team with mullets and matching outfits had their go, the first guy did it it 28 seconds and then the second guy topped him with a time of 23 seconds.  What the fuck?? it takes the barber 10 minutes to shave a human's head and these guys were sheering an entire sheep covered in 6 inches of wool in 23 seconds, it takes me longer then that to tie my shoes!
If you've got 6000 sheep now you know who to call, the dudes with the mullets!
In a country where there are 10 sheep for every person and given these guys had come from all over NZ i'm quite certain we'd just wittnessed the worlds best and fasted sheerers in the universe!  
 
 
 
......The next day.....
Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, "hey Rachael, have you ever found a pot of gold on the side of the road?"................
 
 
 
 
 
Love US

Multiple Choice‏

Yall are very good at forming pictures in your mind.  See if you can get this one?
Rachael and I are in the tent.  I'm wearing every single item of clothing I've got, including the crotchless dance tights of course and also a wool hat pulled down over my eyes, 5 layers on my upper half, 2 layers on my lower, wool socks and thick polar fleece gloves.  Inside my sleeping bag i'm curled up in a tight ball with nothing but my nose poking out.  Dispite all this I'm still freezing my ass off.

What in the hell is going on here?

a.)  It's night time, we're trying to sleep but it's just so cold i can't get warm.

b.)  The rain that has been comming down none stop for the past 2 days has just turned to sleet and is freezing on the roads, making it too dangerous to ride, cold and wet we've climbed into the tent to wait out the storm.  

c.)  I'm not cold at all, we're just doing this for our latest video project.



Want to know the answer?  See if you can guess?

Love US

Floating around in space, hunched over and NUDE‏

Hii,

Its not every day you find yourself (or loose yourself for that matter) just hanging out Down Under, surfing, surfing, then surfing some more and getting up the next day and doing it all over, and over and over until you completely loose track of time and reality too.  Ok, maybe we do usually  find ourselves in this situation, as we should, aspiring to be professional surf bums as we are.  Any who, our flight was due to bring us back to NH the beginning of April and we thought, hey, wait a cotton pickin minute here, the beg of April, Jesus, there could still be snow on the ground, blast, lets push our flight back, maybe drop the surfbum title for 3 weeks and hopscotch our way over to NZ, good idea.  

As we are travelling via the leg, and in my case a pencil thick leg it is, the goal was go minimul, real minimul, ie I didn’t bring the cable to attach photos so I’m gunna have to paint you a word picture, ok close your eyes, here we go.  Lets start with a blank screen, say black for simplicity, now put in Rachael and I, sitting, but crouched over with our arms stretched out infront of us, don’t bother to put any cloths on us yet, now as a back drop put in some big ass mountains, green half way up and then mostly scree above that,  (are you with me? Rachael and I, nude, hunched over, floating in space with monster mountains behind)  I’m staring to feel a bit selfconcous, lets put some cloths on me first, black ladies dancing tights, the kind with the heal stirrup, over the top a pair of thy length black sports spandex from the second hand shop, they cover up the big run in the crotch of the dancing tights, now put a bright red rugby jersey on my upper half, some cut off gloves on my hands, and old stinky helmet on my head and some clunky shoes on my feet.  Dress Rachael about the same only she’s just wearing the dancing tights and yes hers have a run in the crotch too, looks like dancing tights are possible made for people with very small crotches, I’m not sure.  Can you guess whats still missing??????

Big Abs and Clawless Crays‏

Hii Yeee,

I know I just sent a story yesterday, but I’ve got to get these few off before we leave for our next adventure…see if you can guess what it is?  I’ll tell you in a few days if you can’t.

After surfing at Trial Harbor it is becoming quickly apparent that west coast Tazzie locals are absurdly friendly and generous.  Not just in that everyone says G-day but in that out surfing, its just me and a local guy and he says, “surf like a pig man, take every wave you can, I’ve already surfed this morning, I’ll just pick off the ones you don’t go for.”  Now who on earth has ever heard a surfer say that, wouzers, like another planet. 

Our visit to Granville harbor proved no exception.  Upon acquainting ourselves with the town and surrounding area and being sufficiently sure there weren’t any good waves we were missing out on we decided to go for a bit of a snorkel, see if we could find any abalone in the bay.  (For anyone who’s never heard of abalone, it is a shellfish that the Japanese market pays 100 dollars a kilo for, tasty stuff.)  It’s the middle of the day and the heats got us pretty lethargic, so much so that all our snorkeling gear is strewn about and we’re just loungin in the van, out of the sun, trying to motivate to pull our wetsuits on.  Just happens we’re parked close to the local boat ramp and over walk a curious looking fellow, obviously he’s a fisherman or at least part fisherman as he’s just hopped out of his boat but he doesn’t look like the stereotypical Aussie fisherman, around 100kg he’s wearing rubber booties, real short shorts torn up to the waist on one side, a black skull covered biker t-shirt that reads, ‘let those who ride decide’ and a black felt cowboy had, and by the way he walks he looks more like he’s just stepped out of a rodeo than a boat, “surfed any waves around Granville yet?” is the first thing out of his mouth, mind you it is snorkeling gear all over the ground not surf gear.  Maybe he’s a mind reading, motorcycle, rodeo, fisher man with really short shorts, I think.

“Na,” we answered, “couldn’t really figure out where the breaks were.” 

“Ah we got heaps a waves round here, right there” pointing to the middle of the bay “ gets really good, holds up to 30 feet, nice spot to practice on big waves cuz you can sit wide and just pick off the ones you want, but a couse the swell is to small right now.” 

Looked like our renaissance man was a big wave surfer too.

“Going out diving?”  “Yah we’re gunna look for some abs”  “right over there in the middle of the bay you’ll find plenty a dinner plate sized uns,” he says forming his hands into a large circle.

Mind you we’ve hardly ever seen abs half that size.

“Lots of crayfish too, just got to know how to look for em, dig around in the seaweed you know.”

That was enough to get us fired up to pull our wetsuits on and plop into the water, free dinner. 

Then…something that stifeled our enthusiasm a bit, we asked him what he’d been fishing for off the boat?  “O mostly crayfish and we set nets for small fish too, but we got a great white shark tangled up in the net two days ago, 13 feet long, probably just a juvenal, it was already dead when we tried to pull it in, had to drag it to shore and have a backhoe lift it out of the water it was so heavy.  Its jaw was so big I fit my entire head and shoulders inside. 

13 feet long, that’s like stacking my twin on my head and getting him to raise his arms!!!! Holy *$&%*$(#*#&#*@)@)*&%&$   #&*#(%$)$%)$*#&#^@^@%#$&, maybe we didn’t want to go snorkeling after all.

“Ooo… so it was far off shore I hope,” gasped Rachael.

“O no, not at all, just right over there” he pointed.  “Any who I’m off.”

We sat there a while thinking about the shark and trying to decide how badly we really need a free dinner, we did have plenty of rice and baked beans.  Then he appeared again, “ahh you guys will probably never find any crayfish, its impossible unless you know what your doing, here you can have this one my uncle and I just pulled in.” he said, plunking a big live cray into our wetsuit box.  “If your sticking around this afternoon I can take you up the coast for a surf if you like.”  “Sure” we replied.

Staying in only knee-deep water and only a few seconds flipper from the shore we successfully retrieved some abs. 

Hoping into Andrews truck it was a wild track out to the surf break, 4 wheel low, churning sand, over dunes, through mud pits and over huge jagged rocks.  While in the truck we learned Andrew was 27, left school at age 11, worked on ab boats, fishing boats, driven tour boats, was a plastered and currently worked in a nickel mine, he owned 2 houses, his own truck, boat, Harley, was a competitive bull rider (which explained the hat, but still not the short shorts) and was getting married in two months.  Probably the most friendly person we’ve ever met traveling, who just gives strangers an 80 dollar crayfish and takes them surfing.

Arriving at the surf spot, while pulling our wetsuits on Andrew asked, “you guys got a mobile (ie. cell phone).”  “Na, we didn’t bring ours cuz its Optus which doesn’t work anywhere in Tazzie.” 

“Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have bars, you can use any phone to call the shark attack emergency line, you’ve heard of that?”

“Your joking right?” says Rachael.

“O no, not at all, its 112 or 122 I can never remember, call it from anywhere and they’ll send a helicopter, ahh doesn’t matter,” he said as he jogged off towards the beach.

What the hell??  We seriously contemplated not going out but what we’re we gunna do sit around twiddling our thumbs and watch him catch waves all alone.  I think not!! Against our better judgment we went out anyways.

Waves were pretty good and no one was nipped, successful on all accounts.

The Abs and cray were delicious!

Love from the UnderSide,

MUD

Howdy Dudy,

Did yall git the story about the fish(shark)? A few people have told me they didn’t, if not lit me know and I’ll send it on.

Here’s another story about Tazzie, hope you likes it…..minorly crass language wanrning, rated pg13...

Since our last fishing adventure the wiffie and I have been doing some more thorough exploration of Tazzie, what a crazy place.  Literally just today got up; 2 jackets, long underwear, wool shirt, hat, 2 hoods, then one hour later I was wearing shorts and no shirt. 

Never mind, that’s boring stuff, this isn’t a story about the weather it’s a story about mud!!!  Tazzie mud!!

Mainly, as there’s been absolutely zero surf and its been so damn cold we’ve been doing lots of bush walking (ie hiking). 

Now the first thing that comes to peoples minds when you talk about bush walking in Tazzie is mud, not just kids mud that makes your shoes dirty but real mud, the kind you can disappear into.  We kept hearing stories about multi day walks where you spent a good part of your day literally covered head to toe in mud and we’d seen brochures with big warnings about the treterous mud.  ‘A muddy puddle’ you might interject, ‘why not just walk around it?’  Because the reply would come, ‘that’s just not what you do!’  Just like you don’t cut off switch backs out west and you keep off the fragile moss in the white mountains, in Tazzie you straight through the puddle to cut back on trail impact and reduce erosion.  A lot easier said then done I might add.  Imagine this, your feet are nice and warm and your socks are dry, your walking along enjoying a beautifully sunny day when all of a sudden you come across a bogie patch in the trail.  What do you do?  You could be a good bush walker and tromp right on through, guaranteeing your feet will be saturated for the next 6 to 8 hours of walking your gunna do, or…you could just take one step to the side, stand on that nice dry green bush and your feet would still be dry. But; what if everyone did that?  Pretty soon that nice green bush would die and the mud pit would become twice as wide, do that a few more hundred times and the mud pit, and the trail for that matter would be as wide as a school bus.  That’s exactly what started to happen to a lot of Tazzie’s most famous walks, life filled wetlands were quickly turning into ugly lifeless mud pits, walkers were trekking 100’s of meters out of their way just to get around them and inturn making the mud pit even bigger, ok enough of that onto our mud experience.

So Rachael and I were on a four-day bush walk with Rachael’s sister Rebekah and her boyfriend Grant, both of whom are bushwalking guides in Tazzie.  As such Rachael and I were determined to be on our best behaviour, ie not walking around mud pits, even knowing all this its nearly impossible to deliberately let your feet get wet, it’s kind of like getting yourself to use a water sprayer to clean your bum instead of toilet paper, it just seems wrong.  If there’s a choice you’d just grab the TP and never try the bum sprayer, until one day you’re your travelling around Laos on motorcycles and you get food poisoning, then your bum is so sore from all the explosive die-o-ria that you just go ahead and try the damn bum sprayer…and to your amazement, its not half bad, in fact it is kind of nice, come to think of it, it’s down right amazing, you’d probably never use TP again if you had the choice, maybe install one in your own home. 

Kind of like walking all day with wet feet, sounds absolutely awful until you go ahead and try it, and once you have you realize its not half bad walking with wet feet, in fact it’s kind of pleasurable being able to just trounce straight through the mud bogs and river crossings.  But then you wouldn’t know unless you’d tried, and Rachael and I still hadn’t, we kept finding ourselves hop scotching around the mud when Grant and Beck weren’t looking…then came the moment of truth.  We were lagging a bit when we looked up and they were standing atop a little knoll waiting.  Weather deliberately as a test or just coincidently there happened to be a particularly wet section between them and us. What were we going to do?  Be mice or men?  Our feet were still dry and we hadn’t yet learned that having wet feet wasn’t the end of the world, ‘at the time it did kind of seem that way’, like being permanently defeated by letting our feet get wet. 

Dumb struck like deer in the headlights we just stood there……..  Then…Rachael went first…….. what was she going to do?……..  I didn’t even know…...  It was something in between full blown blatant bush killing and deliberately sinking calf deep.  She didn’t get a triumphant cheer of success from the peanut gallery but she didn’t get scoffed at either, it was good enough.  Then……… it was my turn….. I couldn’t decide……….. I had three choices, around, through or something in between and none of them sounded attractive………. I really bloody didn’t want we feet!………. And then like a moment of clarity it came to me, take your shoes of!!  Holly shit!! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.  “Watch this” I shouted, a raised shoe in each hand, as I stepped right into the center of the muddiest bit.  And watch they all did, watched as I virtually disappeared, instantly sinking waist deep, “holly f*&^ng shit” I yelled as the icy cold mud took my breath away.  Immediately realizing not only was I saturated but the camera was in my pocket a foot deep.  “F&#^$” I shouted again for the second time in less then one second, snatching it out of my pocket and pitching it at Rachael like a base ball, nearly taking her out.

Somehow the camera had survived, but me, I was still stuck in the pit and the three of them were all just standing there looking at me, as if trying to decide if they should be laughing or if they should run over to my rescue. 

I was the first one to laugh.

That was it, I’d learned my lesson, it wasn’t worth trying to keep your shoes dry, just go through the mud, having wet feet actually feels pretty nice. 

Now my problem was that I’d only brought that one pair of pants and no shorts; walked the rest of the day in my underpants. 

Hope everyone is Stupendous!!!!!!!

Love US!!!!!!