travel

Sunrise back at the cabin

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We made it home but not unscathed. I was scathed. Our black cat, Loki put up a big fight because he just didn’t want to leave Seguin. While we began taking our stuff outside, I saw a black lump under one of the beds and thought, “no problem, we’ll load up and then I’ll collect him from his hiding place”. Well actually the first thought I had was, “we better box Loki before we do anything because he always gives us a hard time”. This tops them all.

He fooled me. He bunched up a t-shirt and left it under the bed to look like he was sleeping there and then hid in a crawl space behind the basement. The basement is bad enough but this place has a 2 foot high hole in the wall to get into it and then is a crawl space full of 150 years of debris. I tried luring him out with tuna, while a film crew unloaded their gear for a film they were shooting on the island. When it was time to go and we still didn’t have Loki, I had to go in. I donned foul weather gear to protect my arms and head from all the fiberglass and dove in. I had Ethan’s friend Christian, as back-up and he saw Loki dive out when I dove in and ran across to the other side of the basement and dove into the identical, gross crawl space there. In I went again, I got him out but he got away and then got trapped in a window, behind a dresser and under a couch before he was finally captured due to the heroic efforts of all.

So there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. This morning brought a beautiful sunrise and fog is now settling in the valley. Why do we keep leaving?

Sunrise over Otis

Home team colors

Imprisoned by the Metro

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Union Station On a recent trip to Washington, DC I almost became a prisoner of the Metro Station.  I enjoyed using the Metro and it took me all over the “District”, Arlington, VA, and Oxon Hill, MD but  I never understood the toll system.

The stations were clean and quiet and I got a seat on several trains. The platforms were too dark to read the paper but perhaps that doesn’t matter anymore since  most people were reading backlit I-phones and Blackberries.  Or maybe it’s just MY eyes.

The curious part to me, however, is the payment. Unlike the NYC subways, you have to swipe your card again to leave the station.  I guess it’s more like the thruway where you pay for distance traveled.  This was never clearly posted.

On one trip when the swipe machine stole my card, I thought, “No big deal” because it let me enter the station. When it came time to leave, there was no way to open the turnstile.  I was chastised by the clerk who let me out.  My next trip, I held tightly onto my card, only to find there wasn’t enough money on it to spring me out.  I posted bail and finally was released.

Journey home

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Our two or three day journey begins today. We spent our last night in the camper van at the Christchurch airport. We fly to Auckland today, LA then NY tomorrow and will get to spend Sunday night in Brooklyn. We’ll run errands on Long Island then drive home on Tuesday.  What a long, great trip it’s been.Christchurch campsite
My sense of humor remains the same.  I took a picture of this town name on my last day in NZ last year.  Not a good food association.Te Puke, NZ

Our last night in Tasmania

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We’ve said a lot of goodbyes lately. Goodbye to the islands of the Bass Strait-Deal, Dover, Erith and Flinders; goodbye to the people we met; and now goodbye to Tasmania after four wonderful months. We loved how people here know how to embrace life with clean air, wonderful food, beautiful water and islands.

We spent a few days outside Hobart and I got to visit a fiber guild and then a day of dyeing. I needed a fiber fix with ladies. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with guys this summer doing manly things.

The wildlife is different from Deal Island, but interesting nonetheless. I never got any good photos of the Black Swans in Hobart.

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These ladies laid some glorious eggs for breakfast.

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We spent a morning in the brand new MONA in Hobart, the Museum of Old and New Art, which displays an interesting private collection. Tim’s favorite was the poo machine, which mimic’s the human digestive tract. It’s fed twice daily and produces once a day like clockwork, with the aroma to prove it.

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Mine was the goldfish juxtaposed with a huge knife. P3170130.JPG  

How I procrastinate digging ditches while Tim works

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We heard an Air-Sea rescue the other night on the VHF radio. Someone fell overboard, we don’t know where or from what sort of boat because we never heard the distress call. But a Coast Guard boat and a helicopter went to the scene to search. We could hear them talking to each other. The people on the boat could initially hear the person but not see them. The chopper flew away for a bit to let the boat listen and they managed to pull the person out of the water. Nice.

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We are on our one day on, one day off schedule for clearing the ditch along the lighthouse trail. The other day, I walked up to the lighthouse to open it up, mop up water and let it air before I started raking. This gave me an hour reprieve. I have to confess I was listening to Michael Jackson on my iPod, who really knew how to write dance music. So i danced on the lighthouse hill in the wind. Nice. It is a good thing the helicopter wasn’t hovering nearby because they may have thought I was in distress.

My work site

We think we only have three days left of work on the road. In the meantime, I found an old map, which says there are five more cairns on the island besides the three we have already seen. I know what we are doing on our off days. I was a whirlwind the other day. After I worked on the track I came back and cleaned the whole house.e think we only have three days left of work on the road.

This included taking out the vacuum (for the first time since I sucked up the huntsmen spider from the shower). I began very gingerly and made sure the suction was on right away. When I was done, I changed the bag so we can incinerate the old one, which was full. To my horror, there is no flap, the paper towel I stuffed into the hose may have been the only thing between it and me.

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I have opted to exclude any more spider photos for fear of losing my son as a reader. Then of course when I went to open the lighthouse today, an insect not a spider, was waiting for me and jumped on me when I opened the door. I let out a nice scream. I’ll show a photo of a lizard instead. I have a photo of the insect and while it’s not a spider, it is pretty scary looking.

Our food is holding out if you are not reading the food blog, but we didn’t bring enough chocolate or snacks. The next batch of beer, which was fortified with extra sugar and took forever to stop fermenting, will be ready this Friday. The garden is lush. We’ve finally had our first tomatoes. Yesterday, I transplanted a bunch of seedlings and then we had 30 knot winds for two days. Nice timing. Today I went back and propped up the ones that fell over.

This is what I do while Tim keeps working. I look for nice shots of the lighthouse and have been trying to find the site of a house, the halfway house, which used to be between the compound and the lighthouse. I found a clearing today, but it may just be an old tip. There were relics of bricks there though.While Tim works

Archaeological site

Bush bashing

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We went on an explore today and saw lots of new sites. What we didn’t see was the elusive pulpit rock.

This is not Pulpit Rock

But it is a beautiful outcropping of the island. We’ve been trying to find a rock off the tip of the island but can’t quite get to the right place. There’s a big hill in the way. We’ll get there yet. Today we walked a track and then made our way down a hill to get to Pegleg Beach, where we haven’t been before. I don’t think we found the best track but we got there. Pulpit rock will have to wait for another day.

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We saw Northeast Rock with one of the lights that replaced Deal Island’s light when they extinguished it in the 1990’s.

I found lots of animals and people in the rocks spilled along the coast. It helps pass the time while I slowly make my way across the rocks, any one of which could be an ankle or hip breaker or a widower maker.

Masked man Tim through the rock

Masked Man Tim through the rock

Old man in the sea

Old man in the sea

Daffy

Daffy Rock

Caught between

Caught between a rock and hard place

Oh noooooo!

This seaweed reminded me of Gumby and Mr. Bill

I spent the afternoon in the garden and then we walked up to the lighthouse to close it up for the day. We got there around sunset and there was a mist floating under us. Very cool. While there we found remnants of the old whim near the grave marker. Quite a day.

Above the mist Lighthouse and grave

Needles and spindles

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After two weeks of dry sunny weather, it’s been raining for three days. Not as much as up in Queensland where rivers have flooded and an area larger than Germany is covered in water. Five towns there were wiped out in the past couple of days with loss of lives and major property. We’re just having a little rain and lots of wind. So, I’ve been indoors knitting and spinning and baking.

This morning, i finished a pair of socks. I knit them from yarn I spun from a sheep named Blackie who lives in South Australia. I had just enough yarn to finish them with about a yard of yarn left over. They will be extremely warm and are a nice way to bring the fleece back to the States. At the same time, I’ve been spinning a mixture of Tasmanian Mohair and merino and haven’t decided what to knit with it. One can never have too many socks.

Here’s an update of what I have knit or spun since we arrived.

Easy lace pattern PC140026.JPG Calorimetry 2 Fits my knee and head PC160025.JPG PC210037.JPG PC250079.JPG P1020083.JPG P1080120.JPG P1080125.JPGP1120118.JPG P1120126.JPG

Our work party managed to leave this morning. They tried yesterday but turned around due to crazy seas. There was a window this morning and they jumped through it. Last night we enjoyed self saucing pudding and a terrible movie. This morning I can hear my beer gurgling in the pantry and it’s a fairly soothing sound. Maybe even better than the beer itself.

We’ve had boaters in for tea and we’ve been invited aboard for tea. I used the words, “keen” and “bloody hell” without thinking twice the other day. No accent, just an expanded vocabulary. To clarify a further post, our friend Malcolm told us porkie comes from the cockney phrase, pork pie, which rhymes with lie. At least we haven’t been called seppies: septic tank, which rhymes with Yank who are full of –it. But maybe it’s just because most people think we are Canadian.

My lettuce is listing to the left

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We are having a run of windy weather for a change, right when my seedlings are beginning to raise their little heads above the dirt. I spent the afternoon putting protection around them because gale winds are expected until Friday. I had to prop up the corn once again because the plants were leaning to leeward. Somehow the peas’ tendrils held on. I encountered my first whip snake since we have been here in the garden. No lives were lost in videotaping it but it wasn’t as timid as I had expected. Nonetheless, it left and I escaped unharmed.

P1100122.JPG The lighthouse obscured by clouds.

Here are links to my latest film adventures:

The Garden Gale and white lipped snake encounter

The gurgle of beer brewing; and

Birds taking a bath

Ok, so perhaps I need a new hobby.

I’m still spinning and knitting. I’m almost done with my second sock and am spinning tasmanian mohair with organic merino wool. Very nice.

Above the lighthouse

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The Deal island Lighthouse doesn’t actually sit on the highest point on the island but it’s close. The lighthouse is officially at 305 meters and is 12.5 meters high. We climbed to the peak just next to it, which is higher but wasn’t a good site for the lighthouse because it’s only dirt and rocks. There’s more granite at the lighthouse site and it’s not as close to the edge of the cliffs.

Looking down at the lighthouse Survey marker at the island's high point, Deal Island
Survey marker at the high point
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It was hot and calm and we enjoyed a picnic lunch at the lighthouse. The wind came back with a vengeance today but we still had visitors. A lovely family of four on a trimaran, Mustang Sally.

Tim keeps trying to lure me to the edge of very high cliffs. Should I worry?

Should I worry?

View from 1000 feet to the rocks and surf below. There’s not enough perspective to really see how high we were.Should I worry? copy
But the views of Barn Hill, Dover and Erith islands were spectacular.
Barn Hill, Dover and Erith Islands, Kent Group