It’s been a long, long day, and promises to go on forever. I’m on flight 841 from Los Angeles to Auckland, about 14 hours since I left New York City. The beauty of this segment of the trip comes from my premier indulgence: a business class airline ticket. I’m typing away on my Apple Newton from the luxury of a wide, soft, quiet, roomy airline seat with the promise of some reasonable food in a half hour or so. I had the good fortune of spending five or so hours in two Red Carpet Room lounges sucking down free Cokes and eating cheese and crackers. My fellow travellers might say I’m cheating. 

This is, finally, the start of a trip that has taken about four months to plan, four thousand dollars to prepare for, many hours of personal and professional sacrifice, topped off with unhealthy doses of high blood pressure and angst. It’s surprising just how much one has to consider when, in their thirty-seventh year, they decide to close a business, rent out their apartment, escape from the big city, and run away to parts unknown. There is just a ton. 

The big trauma’s really had nothing to do with the trip, but with extricating myself from fr Progressors, Inc., the inline skate wheel company I managed and partially owned. But that’s another story – a bloody one at that – so we’ll begin with the easier planning and financing stories first. 

So, in July of 1997 my longtime threat of a trip to Thailand somehow grew into a plan to spend a year traveling around the world. I had a trio of fine role models, beginning with Brian Wu and his then-girlfriend Annmarie Fink. In 1989 they gave up their jobs in New York City, took their savings and departed for a year of travel. My friend and compatriot Trine Dyrlev had regaled me for some time about her eighteen month sojourn when she was just out of high-school where she ended up barefoot in Australia, and sleeping under a bush in Kosomui Thailand. Yet another New Yorker, Georgia Goodrow treked around Southeast Asia for a year and described her fantasy from one night, hailing a cab in Times Square, instead of the reality of her situation which was nearly drowning in a monsoon deep inside the rain forest in Thailand. 

Because of all this encouragement, and after reading a couple of compelling travelogues on the web I’m actually doing it myself. No problem, well maybe a few, well maybe a boatload. But here I am anyway. Off around the world. 

11/29/97 First hours in Auckland 

Auckland S 36 degrees 52′  E 174 degreees 46′ 

About 300 feet from the ground in Auckland I started to hyperventilate. What was I thinking? I have an entire year in front of me ready to crush me. I have no place to sleep, no friends to help me survive, and a really, really small daily budget. It finally hit me what an undertaking this is. And I am afraid that I’ll have nothing interesting to write, no enthusiasm to photograph with, which will mean that Agfa won’t pay me, and I’ll come home penniless.

Yes, you could say I freaked out just a little. So I’m taking advantage of the little bonuses I’ve bumped into so far. The flight was uneventfuland pleasant, and United saw fit to reward me with a free hotel room for the morning at the airport. I checked into the Lord Gregory for a shower, a movie, and an hour of reorganizing my pack, which, I am certain, is 15 pounds heavier than it should be. Even still, I only found a few trinkets to dispose of. My back is in real danger. 

Got my first taste of telephones and listening to New Zealander’s speak. My first two choices for hostels were full, of course I hadn’t made any reservations and this is the beginning of high season, but on my third try I talked to a pleasant young woman who took my reservation and instructed me to ride the “Ear” bus to the hostel. It only took me a few minutes of aimless wandering before I found the “Air” bus idling outside the terminal. Four and a half bucks and I’m on my way downtown on the wrong side of the street. 

11/29/97 Day two in Auckland
Auckland S 36?52′  E 174?46′  

Yesterday I arrived at my first hostel of the trip, Auckland City Backpackers. It’s a seven-story converted factory a few blocks from the harbor. My first impression was that I had somehow arrived in Haight Ashbury San Francisco. Murals cover most of the walls, and where they don’t, travel posters do the job. In about fifteen minutes I had my room, a small, windowed, eight bed room inhabited at the time by Mickey, a German woman in the process of repatrioting to Australia. She offered me some smoked fish. 

After an hour of conversation Mickey and I embarked on an excursion to find a city map, some fruit, and a cheap rental car for her trip to the Bay of Islands on Wednesday. A light rain had enveloped the city for the afternoon, making it a fair resemblance of Lowell Massachusetts back in the seventies. Auckland’s downtown is like those all over the world- stores selling cheap photo electronics, fast foods from americanized outlets, movie theatres and clothing shops. We found the map, had ice cream instead of fruit, and located rental cars, but most definitely not cheap. 

Mickey talked and I mostly listened as we strolled around downtown. I began noticing how easy it is to identify the backpacking crowd on the street. They are usually tanned, wearing shorts with beat hiking boots, carry a knapsack and wear some sort of earthy jewlery, like native trinkets around the neck, a tattoo, or some fabric bracelets. It’s not difficultto fit in, so I put on my ring, strung my sterling Anna Biggs dog bone around my neck and toted along my pesky bag filled with electronic equipment. I now pass for a seasoned traveler. 

Owing to a significantly skewed internal clock, I managed to crash off to sleep about 8:30pm, tossing about till I woke bolt upright at 4:15am this morning, but able to hear a rousing soccer match broadcast from some foriegn nation booming into the street like it was a concert. To my knowledge there was no one listening to the game but me, and it unfortunately kept me awake for an hour or more before I dropped back off. So goes hostel living. 

I only had three things I wanted to do while in Auckland: visit the Auckland Museum, tourist at Kelly Tarltons undersea experience, and play at an open-mike blues club on Monday evening. Besides that, I only needed to plan my month in NZ. Turns out one out of three is not so bad afterall. 

I walked through a light rain to the main park in Auckland called the Domain. Nice place, kind of exotic after spending time only in Central Park Manhattan for so long. I only ran into three people on my trip through the park to the museum, and I got a taste of what it will be like to be hot and sweaty while carrying a pack through humid territory. I suspect I’ll be getting used to that feeling right away, and I cannot reccomend it too well. 

I arrived dripping at the museum and spent the next few hours shivering in the cool hollowed out spaces. I have to say I was disappointed in the first exhibit about NZ’s experiences through the wars from its inception through today. There were great artifacts from everything, but I thought there was no real narrative voice telling the story. For instance, the Kiwis fought in the Boer War in South Africa alongside the British, but I never learned who the Boer’s were. Shame on me for not paying attention in history class, but shame on the curator for expecting I’d know. 

The highlight for me was an exhibit called Weird and Wonderful. For kids, this very cool exhibit had lots of hand’s on stuff to play with, dozens of live bugs, fish, and animals, racks and racks of nature specimens. My favorite was split between a mounted set of Cicada and a terrarium filled with live North American Cockroaches. I expect nightmares tonight. This area in the museum made it come alive, something the rest of the place lacked entirely. Even in the wonderful collection of Maori artifacts. 

Underwhelmed by history, I chose instead to visit the 50th anniversary Santa Claus Parade trundling down Queens street in the afternoon. This was an event that was innocent for a big city. The stream of marching bands, costumed participants, and festive floats reminded me of what I expected parades from the 1950’s to be like. Families beaming from the sidewalks, only a light police presence, a few street vendors. I was most impressed, though, at the power of marketing’s effect on children. As preshcool’s mega-dinosaur Barney slowly moved down the boulevard I heard an audible children’s wave of glee follow him, or should I say “it?” This wave also followed Ronald McDonald, the Cat in the Hat, and surprisingly most loudly for “The Flintstones.” Who knew Fred and Barney were such cross-cultural lexicons? 

At the end of the parade I followed close behind Santa himself, right down the center of the street. I enjoyed watching the faces of the families switch from passive viewing enjoyment, to the dark realization that they now had to fight traffic out of downtown. The expressions were unbeliveable. 

The end of the afternoon found me witnessing one of Auckland’s famed adventures: face-first abseiling down a 15 story hotel. Who came up with this one? Only in NZ would there be few enough lawyers to allow this to happen. I must say it seems rather interesting, not as crazy scary as bungy jumping, but you do have to hang off a rope looking straight down for a couple of minutes. All that joy for only fifty bucks. 

Tomorrow I bus up to Pahia at the Bay of Islands and start a 5 day open-water scuba class. The NZ adventure continues.