Adam Fletchers – The Zig

Just Do Weird Shit Pt.1

// January 26th, 2009 // Uncategorized

I’m no stranger to thrill sports. I regularly get in a car with Annett who drives like she’s playing a computer game in her head in which she’s eaten a special mushroom and has 999 lives. It’s a white knuckle ride no-one is tall enough to ride. Besides this occasional brush with certain death we’ve kept it fairly pg-13 while living in New Zealand. Recently we wrote a Kiwi Bucket List of 10 or so must do activities before we leave.

Rather than spread these activities equally across our final two months in summer-locked NZ we packaged up all the dangerous ones into one giant long weekend of adrenaline (no idea why we got Monday off, no doubt it will involve the Maoris and some legislation where we promised to be a bit less mean hundreds of years ago). This weekend we’ve:

- Gone caving

- Gone rafting (black water rafting in the dark)

- Flew on a zip line through a pitch black cave.

- Done a 30m vertical abseil (for both of us, our first ever abseils)

- Jumped out of a perfectly serviceable plane at 12,000 ft strapped to just a bald Bavarian,  skydiving it’s commonly known as.

- Rode the famous ‘death trap luge of Rotorua’

- Went to natural spa complex (okay so that wasn’t so deadly, but the danger of slipping on water splashed over the edge of the one of the 7 hot, spa pools was very real, very, very real because if I’ve learnt anything from movies nothing adds emphasis like repeating yourself, that’s right repeating yourself, yourself, repeating, yourself. So I was right to tread so lightly.

I should probably tackle one at a time and then offer some sort of anecdotal review of the activity, so lets give that a go.

The weekend began like all other weekends, only shitter. I went ahead to collect our hire car, drove it out of the forecourt and directly into a traffic jam from which it sat almost stationery for almost an hour. Hot, tired, fed up of driving (despite having gone nowhere, did I mention I have no love or patience for driving?) I gave up, no actually cancel that. I chose not to let the traffic jam win, I decided to be the bigger person. By quitting. Auditioning for a spot on iparklikeanidiot.com I parked like an idiot pulling the car over and refusing to move, .com. Sweaty, fed up and longing for water and a bicycle in equal measure I did what any adult would do – through a hissy fit, refused to drive anymore, accidentally bought a parking ticket valid for about 5 days and stomped off to find Annett give her the keys and let her deal with it. The joys of delegation.

Annett eventually got us out of the city, I got that water and we were on track. That track being a road and that road ending in a place called Waitomo which is Maori for big watery grave. No hang on, I’ve mistranslated that. It’s actually Water/Big Hole, but you can read the subtext. Its a natural complex of caves where stupid people go to prove how brave they are by swimming about in the dark under the light of maggot shit, or glow-worms to use they’re marketing name. The descent starts with a gentle 30m sheer vertical drop down a hole. Heard of stairs people? Stairs, it’s how the civilized ascend and descend. The guide said it was possibly the biggest straight descent available in New Zealand the guide said. I’d never abseiled before so I was keen to start with a 30m drop into a dark hole as a little appetizer, you know to the serious abseiling I’ve planned for after I’d grown some balls.

Everybody knows that everything worth knowing is learnt from TV. For example I know you can run off a cliff and you’ll just keep running on an invisible ledge until you look down when, and only then, the normal rules of gravity will once again apply. Wrestling has also taught me how to fight. First you wear lycra and live in a trailer. Second once the fight begins you should have to look mean, throw some punches, a kick or two land a few early blows but then, and this bit’s crucial so pay attention, what’s really important is you have to lose. Let the other guy pummel you into the ground, kick the living shit out of you until you’ve almost nothing left. Then with you on the ground, bleeding profusely from multiple wounds and feeling generally very sorry for yourself, reach out. Reach out with your hand, open your hand and extend your arm as far as possible. Then grab. You won’t find anything but worry not, you are doing important preparation. Now even though every fiber of your being has mobbed up to chant “give up, give up, it’s over you loser” grab again, a tiny bit further this time. Throw your shoulder into it. Ah ha, you’ve found something now haven’t ya? Clever aye? Where did that come from? That my friends if the strategically placed now-the-underdog-who-couldn’t-die-because-he’s-too-important-to-the-plot-anyway-creatively-uses-found-object-to-win. What it is depends on the movie/wrestler. In most movies it will be a shard of glass or a bit of table or a chicken leg or something. In Jackie Chan and martial arts movies it could be anything, a hot dog to be inserted directly into the assailants brain via the ear.  There really are no rules.

It’s quite a detour I’ve constructed here.  I hope it’s worth it.

So when approaching my first abseil I wasn’t filled with fear, TV has taught me all I need to know about abseiling. I’ve seen people climbing mountains or abseiling down buildings dozens of times. Just put the clip thing in the hooky thing, put your legs out and walk down in a way that would make Neo proud, and perhaps slightly jealous. Ropes also play a factor, but it’s minor, c minor at best.

So I stepped off the platform into thin air and began abseiling like TV had taught me. There was one slight problem though. TV lies. I know this because I did walk sidewards down the cave, dignified like a gravity defying Chameleon. I couldn’t get my legs to go anywhere which might have been on account of their being paralyzed by fear. Instead I just sort of dropped slowly, every time I released a little more rope I bounced a little more down the hole on my ass. I know this because when I got to the bottom the guide said:

“What happened, you sort of just bounced down on your ass”. Which was accurate. Feeling buoyant to still be alive I responded “Ah yeah, had some issues with my legs. The next one will be much better I’ve got the hang of it now”. He laughed because he thought that was a deliberate pun. It wasn’t. A man doesn’t joke when he’s paid $200 to skid down 30m of hole into the earths inner core, dressed in a red jump suit, a jump suit now missing a patch of material on its ass.

This has turned into a longer post that I’d planned so I’ll stop here and do the rest another day.

Read Pt.2

Possibly related, hopefully entertaining other posts:

• A Christmas with the English
• So whats it like living in Auckland?
• Goodbye Asia, Hello Australasia
• Lake Taupo
• Auckland Update