When we were nomading around for 2 years, I pretty much blogged everyday…even when it was pretty mundane. It was just such a unique experience that there always seemed to be something to write about that I wanted to remember.
Now that we are pretty much settled and nested and have been for a while, the blog has been sporadic at best. This is probably ok as I have never wanted to post things to simply keep the volume up. Other than Vanuatu, we have been in one of those long flat periods of life. I would not say it is boring, but it has definitely been filled with more pedestrian aspects of life. Retaining walls, house repairs, trying to stay in shape, the occasional dinner party and some visits into the big city of Nelson to see a show.
The big event on the horizon for me is a 3-week trip to Vietnam/Laos where I will ride my bike from Hanoi to Luang Prabang. It is something I have wanted to do for a very long time and come the end of October I will get to do it…barring any catastrophic changes to things.
But until then, life will just keep cruising along.
Susanne and I have been partners for over 40 years now. I was surprised to find out that roughly 50% of all marriages make it this far. I thought it would be less. If you can make past the 10 year mark then it is more likely you will stay together. I thought about this a lot. When we are young and looking for love, we get excited by the romance. It’s what gets portrayed in the Rom Coms. What nobody really tells you is that the key to a long relationship is navigating the long, boring, mundane stretches of life….which is where we spend most of our time. Knowing how to share the closet space is a fundamental skill in marriage survival.
Cooking dinner, cleaning the house, dealing with plumbers who are fixing the broken pipe, paying the bills and organizing the garage is where marriages are truly tested. Sure, you’ve got have some romance and fun in there too, life isn’t all business, but that isn’t where the rubber meets the road. Making the mundane seem special. Taking joy in the little things. And most importantly don’t hang on to shit. Let it go.
So what else has been happening in this long straight stretch of life?
Biking
I’ve been trying to train a lot on the bike so that I will be ready for Vietnam. Evidently the hills in Northern Vietnam and Laos can be quite steep and hard and I don’t want to go and suffer.
I did suffer one set back when the derailleur on my gravel bike blew up. The guy at the bike shop said he had never seen a SRAM derailleur fail like that and thought SRAM should help out. It was 2 months out of warranty and SRAM said “sucks to be you.” One thing about New Zealand is that high-end bike parts can be hard to come by sometimes; in this case it was going to take 6 weeks to get a new one. Ugh.
I had been agonizing over whether to get a new bike for a while but just couldn’t decide. And with the old one in the shop for 2 months, I was a bit despondent. The good news is that with all my angsting and mumbling and complaining about the prospect of spending all that money, Susanne finally said “WTF dude, get a new bike; you love your bikes.” She’s the best.
That training takes me into some beautiful back roads and trails around the Nelson/Tasman area. It is really peaceful and quiet, with very few cars. One of the things I love about this area is that many people put out little “honesty boxes” and sell fruit, vegetables, and all manner of stuff.
One that I come across all the time is horse poo for sale. It is interesting to see how the price varies. Although, I have not yet published this in a scientific journal, it does seem that the average price of poo is $2 with a high of $4 and a low of $1. As you get closer to Nelson, the average price climbs; on the backroads of Riwaka the price is less. I would suspect because so many price it at $2, there is a bit of a secret horse poo cartel working to maintain that price. I really do think someone should do a Phd in economics on it; hard to imagine it wouldn’t win a Nobel prize.
Anyway, this is what happens in your mind when you spend hours on the bike riding around small country roads.
Cooking!
Susanne has choir practice every week and I make a habit out of experimenting with cooking new and different things on the night she is gone. Sometimes they work out great…other times…well, not so much. But I will say this Sri Lankan curry with tempura fried snapper was a winner.
There is something joyful in making a beautiful-looking and -tasting dish…although “beautiful” is way overused in the cooking shows.
Working on Ruby Ranch South
We had huge floods after we got back from Vanuatu and it highlighted a number of drainage issues on our property. We also had a slip on our driveway that needed to be repaired. I talked to my neighbor and friend Bev about hiring a digger as he had a bunch of work to do as well, and we hatched a plan.
New Zealand is a far more casual and “She’ll be right” kind of place than the US. In the US, it would probably require 450 pages of waivers, mandatory training, and some special license to operate the thing.
Here, you call up a dude, he drives a digger over, drops it off, and says good luck. OK, that’s a bit unfair, he did give us a 5-minute training on what all the various knobs and levers did. Thankfully, Bev had used a digger before.
Watching the pros use a digger makes it seem really easy. Let me just say, it is not as easy as it looks and takes a lot of visualization to figure out how to get the bucket to move correctly. Bev was pretty good at it….I was functional at best…but at least I didn’t hit the house. We had it for 4 days and Bev was a digger master by the end.
What I am better at is light construction. After clearing out the dirt from the slip, I built a retaining wall. That was fun…in an exhausting, “glad that is done” kind of way.
Chess
I used to play chess when I was younger but had not done it in a while. I started again online and have really enjoyed it. Susanne helped me find a chess club in Nelson that meets on Wednesday nights and I have been going to that. Most of the players are way mo betta than me, but I have been learning a lot. I actually played in a chess tournament and went 3-3 which I thought was pretty good…it was exhausting playing 6 games in a day though!
Choir
I have been learning a lot about choirs lately. This is not because I am singing in a choir, it is because Susanne joined the Nelson Bays Harmony Chorus. It is an all-women’s barbershop style choir where they sing 4-part harmonies. It is pretty cool actually. They sang in the New Zealand-wide competition in Christchurch and they did the best they have ever done.
They have been around for 30 years and they did a big 30th anniversary show at the Nelson Center for Musical Arts. Susanne had to learn heaps of songs in a hurry for the show. I got to attend and it was 2 hours of really entertaining and fantastic singing.
As a side note, there is a fantastic Kiwi movie called Tinā that is centered around a choir. I won’t give too much away, but if you find a way to watch it, you must…just have a box a Kleenex nearby.
That is my day-to-day life and I am deeply grateful for it. At times it is boring and mundane, but that is great. It gives me time to plan out my next big adventure and dream about places and things to do. I would hate to be a billionaire, to be honest. Being able to have and do anything you want anytime would ruin life. It is the hard work, the planning, the dreaming, that creates the happiest moments. I am sure my trip to Vietnam will be amazing, but just the time I have spent planning, training and dreaming about it has been pure joy.
I think our relationships with people are the same. Enjoy the slow parts and cherish the exciting parts. They work together.
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