February 5:
Air Canada ticket agent of kind and gentle aspect: “Youse guys got your New Zealand visas?”
Alpha male of blank and stupefied aspect: “Eh?”
Ticket agent of non-teasing aspect: “I can’t board you without it.”
Zeta of male of I’m-such-an asspick: “Oh…”
A quick smartphone search, a quick downloaded app, snaps, scans, and lastly a note saying “Thank you for your visa application. Processing will take from 10 minutes to 72 hours.” It took 8 minutes. A long 8 minutes, grimly standing to the side of the ticket counter, feeling as confident as Trump’s Acting Secretary of Luggage and Bike Boxes.
February 6:
Lost by the Acting Secretary of International Dateline Handling. Not his fault.
February 7:
14 hours of middle-seat flight etiquette, requiring constant monitoring of both right AND left elbows, responding instantly to contact with sentient flesh not of your own making. And KNEES! KNEES too!! Exhausting.
Auckland warm, like the left shoulder of the rugby player on the plane… Shit!!!... SHOULDERS too!!!!
February 8:
Our Airbnb was called “The Secret Garden”. Why is “secret” okay, but “secreted” so frankly disgusting? Does anyone ever secrete something pleasant?
No more daily dates… spoils the romance…
[Just for context, June and I are in New Zealand exploring the country with bicycles on the back of a rental car. We brought our own bikes. We brought our own bike rack. One of the bicycles is mine. One of the bicycles is Dave’s. The bike rack is June’s. June is riding Dave’s bike. After a month, June goes home and Dave arrives and Dave and I cycle for a month, minus the rental car. That’s it. Writing straight, descriptive prose is more exhausting than keeping body parts to yourself on an airplane. Back to my usual style…]
I assembled our bikes at The Secret Garden, secreting perspiration, frustration, and profanity from every pore. I did an excellent job on my bike…
For the first few days of riding, June complained that every time she turned the front tire while pedalling, her feet hit the tire. I told her to stop complaining, that Dave obviously bought a bike of inferior design but was too proud to admit it, and that she should stop carping and martyr-up like Dave has on his many tours.
The noise of June’s shoe hitting the tire while maneuvering through twisty mountain bike trails became irksome. Where was the serenity? Also, June’s shoes and the sides of Dave’s tires were beginning to fray. June had been asking me for days to call Dave so, like a good husband, I called Dave. I explained, in a light-hearted way cuz I didn’t want him to feel bad about spending a lot of money on a stupid bike, that June was irritated by the silly little quirk where you couldn’t peddle AND turn at the same time, and did he have any coping mechanisms to handle it?
There was a long pause. I attributed it to talking to someone on the far side of the world.
“Barc…”, and his tone was maddeningly gentle, “Is it possible that when you put the bike together, the front fork was facing the wrong way?”
June’s riding improved dramatically.
