YABP (Yet Another Blog Platform)

This year once again I am headed South and decided to move the blog back to johnj.com. I like Google’s blogger but it is a bit cumbersome to add content, especially when the satellite is not up and one is at the South Pole. Since I’ve put a bunch of work into redesigning my personal site this year, I took the step of expanding it to handle sequential posts.

Since I hate editing HTML (a close cousin of XML which I find somewhat irritating to work with), I designed the code so that I can simply create flat text files with a sort of minimal mark-up syntax and generate all the HTML I need from there.

The nice thing about the new scheme is that it freely flows from the sequential blog-world to the heirarchical navigation I already have set up. These can both exist on the same site; in face, every page in the site can be turned into a blog trivially. There is no database to set up, and incorporating pictures is trivial. So, we’ll see how I, and you, like it. Let me know!

A Bath

“Sing ho! for a bath at the close of day.”

Legs now completely turned to rubber after my two-day, hilly, scenic marathon. I pushed the pace this morning because it looked like time might be tight to catch the water taxi at the end of the track, but I wound up arriving two hours early and the boat was an hour late. In the mean time I rested from my walk, went wading on the beach, and talked to a nice young British couple I met on the path. Turned out they both had degrees in physics and so were very curious about the details of IceCube.

The end of the Queen Charlotte Track, closest to Anakiwa, is busier than its beginning at Ship Cove; there are more mountain bikers on the path and motorboats on the sound. But it is still quite beautiful in spots, and I’m glad I went as far as I did (and no further, for the sake of my aching leg muscles).

Things seen up close today:

Goats with horns as long as my forearms.

Mussel shells the color and size of eggplants.

Thousands of translucent jellyfish surfacing as we passed through the wake of the ferry from Wellington.

Best of all, and unexpected, the cottage I have at the Gables has a bath, my first in more than a month.

Tomorrow I go to Wellington to see Neil and Amelia, eat sushi, hopefully see some art, and relax for a few days before diving back into winter in Chicago.

Green Marathon

2/16/08 Debrett’s backpackers, Portage Bay, NZ

I am halfway done with my walk on the Queen Charlotte Track and too
tired to do anything physical other than sit and write. Today and
tomorrow are basically each half-marathons in mountainous terrain
(mountainous by Chicago standards, anyways).

Despite a tight schedule, things have been smooth since I left South
Pole on Wednesday, just two and a half days ago. The process of
getting reintroduced to the planet has unfolded in stages, the
highlights of which I will now share with you:

1. The Trans Antarctic mountains as seen from our C-130. Glaciers,
crevasses, nunataks, mountain peaks, ice falls. I never tire of the
views from the plane.

2. At Pegasus field outside McMurdo, twice the oxygen I’ve been
breathing, and the sights of Mt. Discovery, Ross Island, Black and
White island. The pleasure of actually seeing something on the
horizon. Unlike the last two years, our C-17 actually arrived just
after we landed, though we had to wait a few hours after that for
cargo offloading/loading and for passengers to arrive by bus from
McMurdo.

3. Night in Christchurch: darkness for the first time in a month.

4. Wandering around town, shopping, eating non-Pole food; saying goodbye to friends/colleagues.

5. The train to Picton. Rocking sleepily through rain-blurred green
landscapes. Watching sheep fleeing from the tracks as we
passed. Meeting and comparing notes with other Ice people.

6. Getting on the mail boat in Picton and seeing Marlborough Sounds
from a completely new perspective (in the past I have just taken the
ferry straight to Wellington). During the four hour or so trip, the
mail boat visits a dozen small homes or clusters of homes reachable
only by water. The first time we approached a house/pier, I was sure
we were actually going to ram the shore! But our skipper stopped on a
dime just short of the pier and brought the boat close enough to
exchange mail bags and a few words with the gentleman who came out to
meet us. Then we were speeding off to the next harbour. The jocular
skipper asked where I was from.

“Chicago,” I replied.

“Chicago!!! Do you have a rat-a-tat gun?”

“Uh, sorry….”

“No?! I thought everyone in Chicago had a rat-a-tat gun, like in the movies.”

There are dozens or hundreds of isolated homes on the Sounds, most probably reachable only by boat. Any of these would make a perfect getaway, or movie set.

7. Arriving at Mahana lodge, whose dilapidated dock looks like
something from a Tarkovsky film (I fell in love with it
instantly). Ann and John’s home-cooked meal was by far the best food
I’ve had in five weeks, accompanied by rain, thunder, and (!)
hail. Sleeping in a room with three other people and being so tired I
just fell asleep instantly.

8. Walking here. The Queen Charlotte track takes about three days, two
days of which I’m doing. The mail boat takes your bags from lodge to
lodge while you walk. The track winds over low mountains through
terrain varying from dry scrub to rainforest, with vistas of the
sounds opening up now and again on either side. I saw, in no
particular order, birds called “wekas” which look exactly like a cross
between a chicken and a kiwi bird; a dead worm the size of a small
snake; gazillions of tiny pink mushrooms and a few large bright orange
ones; strange plants with a straight stalk and long rigid leaves like
green knives serrated on both sides (I had seen these in the
Christchurch botanical garden but was convinced they were from another
planet); and maybe a dozen people.

Most of the time it was just about the walking, with plenty of time to
think or just look at all the growing things.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, though perhaps a little easier
going. Which is fine with me and my sore legs. Then I have a night in
Picton all to myself in a small cottage attached to a B&B, and finally
to Wellington for three nights until I fly home.

Sprung

2/15/08 En Route to Picton

The view to the right of the train is the sun-speckled green Pacific,
a welcome change from the ocean of white I have been living on for the
past month, over whose skies alien prototypes of clouds lay flat,
singular and as wide as the horizon.

Here the rain clouds pile in a hundred layers of dark steel grey and
tufts of brilliant cotton white.

Despite rumors of drought here on the South Island, green growth is as
abundant as oxygen here. Night and rain fall again. I am back in the
world.

Outta here

Weather permitting (knock on any wood if you can find it), we are flying out of here in about four hours. Something has not been right with my stomach the last 48 hours, and yesterday was a bit uncomfortable. At least one other guy here has a bad cold, so we’re getting out of here in the nick of time.

On my way from Christchurch to Wellington, I will walk the Queen Charlotte Track near Picton, staying at two different lodges on the way (a boat service carries your luggage for you while you walk, so it’s at the day’s end destination when you get there – how nice!). On Debrett’s lodge’s Web site they have a list of things to bring, including “a good book.”

Well, I was bringing my copy of “V” down to the library to leave here, so I figured I was going to have to do without the book. But as I was depositing my book I noticed that they had TWO copies of Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon.” Figuring the odds of two winter-overs beating their heads against it at the same time were slim to none, I left Victoria’s (“V”!!‘s) personalized, enormous hardcover copy of M&D undisturbed on the shelf and took the paperback, which still must weigh in at several pounds. Passing Jerry Marty in the hall, he looked at the book in my hand and said, “uh oh, that looks serious.” Mmm hmm, just the way I like ‘em.

Sandy has a room for me for two nights at the Devon. Pray to Zeus for me that the weather holds.