May 20, 2005 (1/16/03)

The sunset comes late here. The Irish bar doesn’t serve Harp. It’s a day later than I think it should be, though it seems like a week since I left. The first step was surviving the plane trip; or more accurately, the helter-skelter shuttle ride to the airport in San Francisco. In any case, here I am sipping a Guinness in Pog’s watching the clouds redden at 9:30, on a balmy summer night in the middle of winter wondering where my Wednesday went now that it’s Thursday.

The Old Man is by now sleeping soundly, having survived all that has been set before him, though we both know he is enjoying the procrastination of whatever cosmic forces are conspiring to take him from us at the tender age of sixty-four. He has come to realize his limits are increasing; he is becoming justifiably more selfish and less tolerant of bullshit as his days tick off. He dreads the approaching doom, not of death, but of the day when he is unable to live. We are determined to cheat as much on that test as we can.

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When you don’t know if you’ll make it to the next summer, when each spin of the Earth marks its passing by taking one more bite out of you, it’s comforting to fight back by bending astronomical realities to your favor. In this case, the Old Man decided not to be satisfied with the short days and rainy weekends in Oakland. So he says to me, how’s your January. New Zealand. Let’s go.

And the truth is, I’m not sure I’m ready to go. My life is complicated. My job is demanding. I can’t exactly ditch for half a month and entertain an international adventure. But, exactly, I do.

Forces conspire to hold us home... among them, a blood clot in the leg, which would scare most people into abandoning plans for a cross-country hike, the centerpiece of our trip. After all, if the clot breaks loose, it will drift to his brain, and he’ll have a stroke. In the interest of full disclosure, he says. I was standing with my mother thirteen years ago when she suffered a drawn-out stroke on the ski slopes. I was the teenaged translator explaining her medical history to the ski patrol... but that’s another story. The point is, I know what they look like. Hope it’s a big one, the Old Man says. I don’t want to be drooly, so root for a big one.

His oncologist, worried about the clot, seems to know better than to advise against the trip. It’s hard to intimidate a dying man. So wear these pressure socks, stay off your feet as much as possible, but walk around a little every hour to keep things moving. Oh, and give yourself an injection in the stomach twice a day along with the pills. And you should probably pass on the bungee jump. Root for a big one, the Old Man says. I don’t want to be messy. Tell you what, I tell him over the phone. Tell you what, Pop. If you get messy, I’ll just toss you off a cliff. I mean it. I’ll be there for you and ensure your dignity. I say this only half-jokingly. He contemplates. Hit me with a big rock first; the fall might be unpleasant. And be sure I’ve in fact had a stroke first; it won’t do if I’m just messy from exertion. We laugh. We understand one another.

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They talk funny here, of course. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but literally. I can’t help but smile when I listen to New Zealanders talk. They’re inherently friendly, and their free-form use of vowels and aphorisms—no, colloquialisms—well, maybe that’s wrong as well. Anyway, they make me smile. The shuttle driver to the lodge gave us no fewer than fifteen Righty-O’s. That’s what I’m talking about. Noi Wurries, then! Cheers!

I read my guidebook, a gift from my workmate, so I won’t be just another ignorant tourist. And even though I know now that Kiwis are sensitive about sheep jokes and being mistaken for Australians, the truth is I’m still an ignorant tourist, but it’s okay because the Kiwis are inherently friendly, happy to take my tourist dollars, and sometimes it’s okay to wallow in the tourist traps and see what they want you to see. There’s no law that says you have to explore the unknown corners of these places... that’s just something you do to relieve the guilt of being an ignorant tourist like those you condemn in your own city. Sometimes it’s okay to be ignorant. Sometimes it really can lead to bliss. For now, I’ll claw through my Guinness and wish I didn’t know how full of holes the Old Man is, sleeping back at the lodge.

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After they found the blood clot, only two days before we left, he noticed a lump in his arm which turned out to be blood poisoning or something; in any case, he needed immediate infusions of antibiotics which kept him in the hospital for hours. Then he had to learn to self-administer them and get a supply of drugs FedExed to him in time for the trip. A doctor’s letter gets the drugs and the syringes into the carry-on, but at every metal detector and customs station we go through, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop—and it finally does, literally. The Old Man’s seasoned hiking boots need to be cleaned by the Ministry of Agriculture before we’re let into the country. Quarantine, you know. Sensitive ecology. Conspiring Forces. Not frustrating at all. We’ve got plenty of fucking time.