Don Rowing Club of Mississauga

G'day all, it's been 10 years since the last edition of my New Zealand travel journal, too long, so here goes.

I arrived the day after Christmas to a very friendly welcome and managed to get all the way to my apartment in Karapiro village that night. The people I am renting from collected me at the bus dropoff point, fed me an excellent New Zealand steak, and did everything they could to help me settle in easily. I was very fortunate to find a furnished apartment two kilometres from my club here, Waikato Rowing Club, thanks to a tip from Nadia who used to coach at Don Rowing Club. She said to look on trademe.co.nz, and I found a place to live before I got here. The last time I was here, back in the olden days of the late 20th century, internet and email were only really getting going, and I had to rely on another way of finding some generous Kiwi hospitality, through personal contact. I met a rower from Waikato who was visiting Canada and he gave me the number of a coach here. I called him, he said you can stay at my place until you find an apartment, so I was on my way, and he became my first coach here.

The morning after I arrived, I went straight to training camp at Lake Maraetai at Mangakino with all of the rowers from Waikato Rowing Club, including the ones on the Regional Performance Centre team, and those on the New Zealand summer squad. I was at training camp for a week, it was excellent. The conditions were varied and challenging, the location was beautiful, and I learned a lot.
There sure are a lot of excellent scullers here. At the Cambridge Town Cup regatta last week, the reigning world champions in the lightweight men's double went faster than any lightweights ever have, but they were slighly overweight and hadn't weighed in. Here is a link to Fisa's report on the event, http://www.worldrowing.com/display/modules/news/dspNews.php?newid=324792. There was a strong tailwind, but those two, Storm Uru and Peter Taylor, and Duncan Grant, the lightweight men's single World Champion, give Mahe Drysdale, the heavyweight men's single World Champion, a good race. In my race, I had a terrible start and bad first 500, and then I rowed very well from the 500 on. I didn't advance, but it was a very good experience. I have been in a single the whole time here, it's good for me. I do also want to row sweep when I return home. The New Zealand Championships start on February 14th, and I will row the single. The Germans are sending some crews to Nationals because the World Championships are here at Lake Karapiro in the fall. It is all very interesting.
When I first arrived, I had no car or bike, so I did a lot of hitchhiking to get into town. At first I would get a ride every time within a few minutes, it was uncanny, I was thinking why get my own personal transportation? When it finally took 15 minutes to get a ride, I got a bike. A friend then lent me a car, and now it's getting fixed, so I am back to my bike. There's nothing like a long training session on the bike in the countryside thinking you were going into a slight headwind on the way out, and turn around to find that it was only wind resistance, and lo and behold, there's that seemingly never ending, refreshing, reliable, cooling New Zealand breeze kicking into a real headwind and you've just given it lots, and now you really have a long way home.

The one thing I learned about hitchhiking is, don't overdress, I seem to get lifts much quicker when I dress down.

Here in Cambridge when there's a fire, an air raid siren goes off to call in the volunteers. It's somewhat eery at first, until you know what it's about.

The living can be very natural here. I'm drinking rainwater, eating some of the best beef I've ever had, and hanging my laundry on a clothesline. Outside my apartment are three sheep in the yard who are finally used to me. The stars at night here are fantastic, you can see huge swaths of galaxies all across the sky.

New Zealanders are very helpful. They take a genuine interest in visitors, and I reckon being from an island in the South Pacific far from any large countries, the location helps make you very independent yet community oriented. All sorts of people I've met here have shown an interest in what I am doing, and when you are new to a place or returning after a long absence, those moments sure go a long way to making life easier, and more enjoyable. I got sick after training camp, and it took quite a while to get better, and every little bit to make things better helped. The layoff did give me some time to sort out some other things. I am rowing out of a shed that one of the Regional Performance Centres row out of, that helps keep me going. I have rowed with some masters here a couple of times in a double and a quad as a break from constantly being in the single, and I am sure looking forward to some more crew rowing. All told, it has been a very challenging yet worthwhile experience. As always, it will be good to return home.

John

P.S. The roads here go in all directions, so I orient myself to the sun to determine which way is north, I'm one of those people who always like to know my compass bearings. Here in the southern hemisphere below the Tropic of Capricorn the sun is in the northern sky, and a waxing moon is seen at nightfall to the right of the sun as you look north, rather than to the left of the sun as you look south. It is disorienting at first, for me anyways. So I had to figure out that looking down on the earth from the north pole, the earth rotates counterclockwise, but looking up at the earth from the south pole, it rotates clockwise. Or is that looking up from the north pole? It's amazing what you can learn while travelling.