Birthday Week

We are in Phoenix having a wonderful time with my parents. It is officially Birthday Week. Dad's birthday was yesterday, Emrys' is today and mine is tomorrow. Last night was neighborhood happy hour at dad's request and tonight is Drawer 17 dinner at Emrys' request. All you Sonlight folks who were around summer of 2002 may recall the rules of this event. No silverware, just utensils from the miscellaneous drawer- Drawer 17 assigned by the cook- Mom. Dad’s worried that he’s going to get stuck eating mashed potatoes with a meat mallet.
~sjt

Still Cancer-Free!!

I had my follow up appointments today with my oncologist and all the tests came back normal and I continue to be cancer free.  Praise God!

 

Our visiting in Durango has - and continues to be- a wonderful homecoming.  Durango is a strange vortex to which we return again and again and it seems like we never left.  It's a great thing!  I got to play raquetball- even if I did play pathetically- it was still fun!  Tonight we're getting together with a bunch of friends around a serious ping pong challenge.  It should be fun.

 

More later!

~sjt

Back to the USA

We’re back in Phoenix after a brief stop in Los Angeles to change planes and have lunch with a dear friend (thanks, Sophie, for taking us out for Mexican). We’re here for four days, then it’s off to Durango so Sara can get in her appointments with the docs and we can get our fix of the First Pres family. The following Sunday we return to Phoenix for the first annual Birthday Week—celebrating Sara’s, David’s, and my birthdays in one long holiday. On April 3 we board a plane once more, this time bound for Prague, Czech Republic, beginning the second half of the Parish Pulpit Fellowship experience.

~emrys

Less Than Fumes

We’re white folk from the Northeast. If that weren’t enough, the last names Tyler and Wheat should give us away as descendants of Puritan immigrants from England. Our blood is well stocked with the virtues of hard work, efficiency, and frugality.

It’s that last one that can get you into trouble.

From the moment we climbed into our New Zealand Toyota Rav4 rental car we were scheming a brilliant way to save money. We pre-paid for a tank of petrol at the discounted rate Avis offers, knowing that we could return it with an empty tank and save some bucks. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We left Masterton, 84 kilometres away from Wellington airport, with the fuel light already on. But we’d done the math: even with the fuel light lit our fuel-efficient little SUV should be able to get us 100 km easy. We drove to Wellington, parked in a public garage, had a wonderful carbo-loading lunch at Zico’s Italian restaurant, then wandered for a couple hours in Te Papa, Wellington’s children- (and Emrys-) friendly museum of New Zealand people and culture. Then we hopped back into our little silver bullet and began to navigate the Friday afternoon St. Patrick’s Day traffic toward the airport at 3:00 pm. Right on time.

Halfway from centre city to the airport the Rav4 coughed for the first time. With 89 km on the trip odometer since the empty light came on, it was quite premature. Then the engine hummed back into contented internal combustion for another two kilometers.

Then, with four coughs, three hiccups, and two lurches the Rav4 sucked the last drops of petrol out of its 57-litre tank and died.

In a roundabout.

Now I want you to know that I’ve gotten quite deft at navigating New Zealand roundabouts when there’s ample gas in the car. I find them to be a refreshing alternative to the usual traffic lights and stop signs back home. I like them. But a roundabout is the last place I want to be stuck in a vehicle that’s run out of fuel, especially when it’s rush hour traffic in the city and we’ve got a plane to catch.

All those jokes about pushing the car into the Avis parking lot to get our money’s worth suddenly seemed a little less funny as I twice attempted to let the tank settle and restart the car. (If I could just get it over that next hill . . . .) But when there’s nothing to settle in the tank, the effort is futile. So I hopped out of the car, dodged speeding cars and trucks, and headed down the footpath.

Our calculations had stranded us on the only roundabout in Wellington with no buildings or businesses nearby. I had to run two blocks to find the nearest structures that might have helpful humans or a telephone. Praise God, at the next wharf I ran into a man who didn’t have a cell phone but was willing to drive me the next two blocks to the nearest petrol station.

The Shell station didn’t have a gas canister for me to use. (Well, I think I’ve bought my last gallon of Shell gas for a very long time.) The BP station next door did have a canister. (Geo, you can go ahead and work for them.) The attendant held my credit card as collateral as I borrowed the red plastic jug and filled it with five litres of petrol. Five litres? Yeah—you can only take so many chances in a day! My good Samaritan friend drove me back to our car; I offered him thanks and a blessing, then dumped the most precious five litres of petrol ever into our thirsty Rav4. The hum of a car starting never sounded so good. And those jokes about pushing the car became downright hilarious.

We picked up my credit card and made for the airport—again. Sara calculated that even with five extra—actually, four and a half extra—litres of petrol purchased we still made money on the pre-paid deal. And we’ve got another little adventure out of it all. To boot, we arrived at the airport in time to turn in the car with no extra charges—only twenty minutes late.

~emrys

Odds and Ends

Every town we've visited in New Zealand has a skate park. Even the little towns that last four blocks on the highway have them. They can be rather elaborate affairs, too--not just a single half-pipe but with rails and curbs and inclines of the straight and curved varieties. They're a site for cool grafitti. Skaters congregate in little clusters or, in the more rare hours of youth activities, appear solo or in pairs. On the flip-side, I haven't seen many skaters out on the public sidewalks and footpaths of New Zealand. Perhaps they've discovered the way to eliminate what many Americans consider a public nuisance of the urban and suburban settings.


Dunedin is said to "out-Scot the Scottish." I found that to be true while down south. During our last week in Dunedin there was a bagpiping competition that closed down the central square (which is actually an octogon, by the way) and filled it with high school students in kilts, flashes, and knee-high hose. They piped away before judges and under the scrutinizing eye of Sir Robbie Burns in bronze. The bus drivers on the South Island also wear knee-high knit hose, often bright white in contrast to their dark blue uniforms. One visitor from Edinburgh said that the residents of Invercargill, the southernmost city on the mainland, spoke with an accent he could not distinguish from home.


Sometimes the road rules are a little weird here. Folks drive on the left, which is wrong but not so weird once you've done it for a while. Just reverse everything (except the accelerator and brake pedals--those are the same). But if you're turning across traffic (to the right, as to the left in the States), then opposing traffic must yield to you if they are turning right onto the same road. So the car who has no opposing traffic coming into the turn must yield to the car that does have opposing traffic. Weird.

The first time someone waved me to turn right (when they were turning left onto the same street), I thought that perhaps my comrade had the over-courteous gene. So I waved, accepted the gift, and drove on. Then the same thing happened, but with a police car. Now, police are good folks and are there to serve and protect us. But in my experience they are people of business, never rude but not tripping over themselves to be courteous or gracious. After all, they have a job to do. So when a police driver halted in the midst of his left turn to yield to my (cross-traffic) right, I got a little freaked out. Had he seen me commit some infraction and wanted to get me ahead so he could pull me over? Not wanting to disobey, I turned ahead of him and drove on. Nothing happened. He turned after me and all was well.

I still wasn't sure about this whole thing, and I wasn't about to start doing something so clearly absurd as giving the right of way to people turning against traffic. But I had one close call when I turned left in front of two cars turning right. We arrived at the turn at the same time and I ended up with a front bumper riding up my tailpipe. I think I got a dirty look to boot (but no honking--that's not the Kiwi way).

When we arrived at the Hesses' yesterday, Sara asked about it. Sure enough, it's the law. Yield to drivers turning right against traffic, if you're turning right. Weird. Must have to do with the gravitational field down here.

--emrys

Big Time

"I'm on my way, I'm making it: Big Time!"
Peter Gabriel

We've made it. We have arrived. We are now worthy of worldwide recognition.

We've made it to Google.

That's right: type "sara emrys tyler" into your Google search field and guess what pops up? Our blog website.

Sure, we come after the Sonlight Camp website and the site for Flashpoint Theatre Company, but those are a couple of sites we don't mind coming after. That puts us in third place, and within view on the first page Google brings up. You don't even need to scroll down.

Try it.

Race in Retrospect

Four days ago I walked my first half marathon.  Had you asked me mid race, I would have probably said no way would I ever think of doing something like this again.   

 

The weather was beautiful, the scenery was spectacular and I had been working towards that day for about 4 ½ months.   I had walked in temperatures below zero in the beginning in Lake City and all over New Zealand.  But unfortunately, I hadn't walked my last scheduled long distance walk three weeks before the race, and for that I think I paid.   In training I'd been able to hit 8 and almost 9 miles in good stead.  On race day I hit mile six and was already feeling it.   So for the remaining 7.1 miles I felt it:  cramping in muscles that had never cramped before, blisters in spots that hadn't blistered before and a course that never ended!   The cramping I think was caused by the walking surface.  Although it was a beach with sand packed enough that you could drive on it, in walking on it, it was just different enough from pavement or trails that it meant different muscles were worked.   And the blisters are of my own doing.  I'd read a number of things that say "don't vary what you wear or do from training to race day".    Well, I varied my socks.  Duh!  Well, I ended up with blisters on the insides of my heels and under my middle toe on one food-but they weren't too bad.

 

The race course itself was on 90 Mile Beach which was wonderfully flat, very beautiful and looked the same for the whole way down until you reached the last kilometer before the finish.   While this is nice for a normal walk on the beach, for a distance event, it seemed like you weren't going anywhere.  The only indicator that I had made any progress was when I passed the distance markers every 3 kilometers.  

 

So when I was feeling the burn and watching folks pass me I had to remind the milliliter of competitiveness that was left in me that I was only racing the stopwatch, and not anyone else.   For all of my training I had maintained a pretty steady 15-minute mile.  But for the actual race, I wanted to do better.   I wanted to finish in under 3 hours.  This would mean stepping up the pace a bit.  Since all my training mindset was in miles, when all the markers were in kilometers, I had to re-think my strategy- enter my math degree.   I determined that if I could make each 3 km segment in 25 minutes I'd have 5 minutes to spare. (13.1 miles=21 km)  By kilometer 15, I was just hoping to finish.   By kilometer 18 I was almost on pace and headed to finish.  And by the time I crossed the finish, I was at 3:02:36 according to my stopwatch.   Official times have yet to post.

 

All my life I've said that I'm not athletic.  Then after chemo, I took up racquetball with friends in Durango and that claim was becoming a bit weak.  Now I don't think that claim will hold at all.  So now I've entered the insane realm or endurance athletes (although not quite as crazy as Geo- Emrys' brother) but   I'm glad to be here.  The race was great and I'm looking forward to doing another one in the fall. 

Gaseous Earth

New Zealand is a work in progress. The Pacific and Australian tectonic plates meet and grind against each other along the axis of the two islands that make up Aotearoa. Geologists have measured the movement of the rock in the South Island to be about two millimeters per year.

As at many seams between the plates that cover the earth like a patchwork, in New Zealand there is volcanic activity. Rotorua, a town in the centre of the North Island, is a site of such activity. As recently as 2001 the local volcano erupted and produced new holes through which bubble the steam and minerals from under the earth’s crust.

We visited a local reserve which boasts the awe-inspiring results of continued geothermal activity: Waiotapu. Wandering along the prescribed paths (moving off the paths means stepping onto “unstable ground”) we were surrounded by ever-present wisps of steam spurting from the ground. Here and there the heat and pressure of the steam had eaten away the surface rock and collapsed the ground, leaving gaping craters. Where the earth had a high clay content the steam condensed and turned the dirt into mud; the super-heated gas and water from below bubbled up and made the dark brown ponds into gurgling orchestras of popping and belching. (I wanted to take my Chacos off and put my feet in the mud, but there was no place they’d let us do it. Sigh.)

As the steam condenses into water and runs along the surface of the ground it leaves behind mineral deposits. The least extravagant of these are the silicate shelves, long expanses of web-like white rock. In other places the rock is a bright orange crust surrounding a wide pool of deep blue with little bubbles rising up out of its depths. There is even one pool that is an opaque, fluorescent lime green colour (Kara, we thought of you at this one) due to its arsenic content.

Walking between these pools of vibrant coulour as warm mists blow across your vision and enshroud you in blankets of fog makes the whole experience like some sort of wonderland. The only drawback to all this stunning scenery and activity is that the whole place reeks of sulfur. At times it’s like standing in a big vat of rotten eggs. A small price to pay (over and above admission price) for the spectacular show.

We got a good dose of the tourist side of geothermal activity. The industrial side is the energy production that can be wrought from the earth’s disgorgement of heat and steam. Geothermal power production makes up a significant chunk of New Zealand’s total national power production. We got a show of heat, bubbles, an colour, while New Zealanders get those and some energy to boot. Good deal.

God did a good job with the earth’s design; Rotorua is a good place to enjoy that design. We recommend it if you’re ever on New Zealand’s North Island.

~emrys

The Other Difference

Sara noticed the other difference between Kiwis and Aussies today. Aussies look at really high structures, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and think, “Let’s climb over that and get those silly tourists’ money to do the same!” Kiwis look at really high structures, like the needle in Auckland, and think, “Let’s jump off that and get those silly tourists’ money to do the same!”

You’ve got to hand it to them. Either way, they’ve got our money.

Zorb

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find a giant version of those plastic hamster balls and roll around in it? (C’mon—admit it!) Have you ever thought about finding a way to get inside a giant water balloon? I know that all of us have thought about climbing inside a washing machine and turning it on—a few of us have even tried it. Well there’s a way to get all three dreams come true at once in Rotorua, New Zealand. It’s called Zorb.

A Zorb is a ten-foot diameter plastic ball with a smaller, six-foot sphere inside it. The plastic is soft and rubbery and the space between the spheres is filled with air so that the whole thing is like a giant cushion. Or, if you’re into egg analogies, it’s like a giant soft egg where the white is air and the yolk is the cabin. That’s right—you climb into it.

Oh, but first they put about ten gallons of water into it, just to make things exciting. Then you run and jump through a tubular portal to the inner sanctum of the Zorb. They zip your portal closed and then open the gate. With one step in the right direction, your Zorb sets off down a grassy hill.

The brochures said that if you can remain standing up for the whole trip down you get a free t-shirt. I’m always game for a free t-shirt, so I thought, as I pushed my giant squishy hamster ball off the platform, I’d try to stand up through the whole zig-zag course.

Yeah, right. That idea lasted all of about five feet. In two steps the sphere had started down the incline. The plastic is translucent but not transparent, so you can’t see where the next bump or turn is. In two steps I was down on my bum, sloshing around in the water inside the Zorb-yolk. What a ride! It’s like being on a warm waterslide except that the waterslide is moving instead of you. I slipped, slapped, splashed, and spun all the way down this 100-yard hill. Awesome!

We haven’t been excited about many of the extreme adventures in this part of New Zealand. But I was definitely up for this one. It’s 45$ to do it, plus clothing and towel rental, but it’s definitely worth the money. You can also go down two at a time—then they send you rolling down a straightaway to go ass-over-tea-kettle with the partner of your choice. Sara wasn’t up for it, though. That’s alright: she got some cool pictures as I rolled my way down on a solo Zorb excursion.

I now have a new title: Zorbonaut!

~emrys