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The Cost of a New Hyundai

October 16, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

Happy days! I essentially finished the third draft of my second novel, Staking A Claim, last Thursday and celebrated in style by having two slices of lime in my afternoon rum and coke. I say essentially, because it’s not quite complete – I’ve left a few notes to myself sprinkled throughout the manuscript with reference to details that I still need to iron out.

Since the novel is mostly set in the small South Island town of Cromwell in 2003, some of these details relate to the cost of things back then and there. For instance, one thing I wanted to know was how much it cost to purchase a brand new Hyundai Santa Fe in New Zealand in 2003. I sent an email to Hyundai New Zealand, figuring that if anyone was going to know, surely it would be them. Rather than answer my question, however, they just subscribed me to their mailing list, so now I get daily emails prompting me to purchase a new Hyundai. I’d love to, especially an Ioniq 5, but the cost of a new Hyundai is not in our budget. I’d have to sell the house first, and I’m not sure there’s enough room in an Ioniq to sleep a family of five. However, I’m still none the wiser as to the historical cost of a Santa Fe.

The Cost of a New Hyundai — The 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe, known for its luscious, sweeping curves and a tendency to roll over on tight corners at high speed.

Interestingly, my other emails to private businesses also fell on deaf ears. I wanted to find out more about house, land, and rent prices in Cromwell in 2003, so I contacted a couple of house building companies with franchises in the area, as well as some local real estate agencies. I got nothing in reply from any of them, not even an email prompting me to buy or build a new house. On the other hand, I contacted the Ministry of Social Development with a question about historical welfare payments. Within a week or so I received a letter informing me that my request had been processed under the Official Information Act. The letter included several links to central and local government websites where I was not only able to find the answers to the particular questions I’d asked, but also, with a bit of digging, the answers to my queries about house, land, and rent prices in Cromwell in 2003. I’m not sure what this says about the pros and cons of the state versus private enterprise, but it did make me think that at least some of my tax dollars had been spent in a useful way.

The other notes I’ve left to myself are mostly to do with the physical manifestation of emotions in characters. Say for instance, a character is happy. They can demonstrate this by smiling. But you don’t want to overuse the word, ‘smile’, so perhaps they might ‘grin’, or maybe, if they’re exceptionally happy, they could ‘beam’. And that’s about it – there aren’t many synonyms for ‘smile’ in the English language. If none of those words will do, but I still want that character to express their happiness, then they’re going to need to do something else. So, I’ve got several instances in the novel where I wasn’t quite sure what that ‘something else’ should be, but rather than slowing myself down racking my brains trying to figure it out then and there, I’ve left a note to come back to it later with my secret weapon, The Emotion Thesaurus.

The Emotion Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

This is a fantastic book for writers – you just look up the emotion you’re wanting your character to express, and it lists a whole range of ways in which that emotion can be physically manifested.

Here’s just one example: One character, (let’s call her Macie), has just said something to a second character (let’s call him Abeeku, which is apparently the Ghanian word for one who is born on a Wednesday), about which he is somewhat dubious. Rather than rolling his eyes, which would be my go to response, or emotional crutch, as Ackerman and Puglisi would say, he could instead (and this is just a small sample of the available options):

Bite or chew on his lip;
Hem or haw;
Reference similar events from the past that did not pan out (here’s looking at you, Dad); or (and this is my personal favourite)
Wrinkle his nose like there’s a bad smell.

So, the next time someone screws up their nose at you, just be aware it might not have anything to do with the state of your armpits or underpants; they might just be a little skeptical.

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A gritty and engaging story of human faults, fears, and frailty, What Friends Are For is the prequel short story to my tragicomic novel, Taking the Plunge. Introduce yourself to the characters from the novel and find out where it all begins for Kate, Tracy, Evan and Lawrence.

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You Only Live Once

August 9, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

Like many, I’ve been watching bits and pieces of the Olympics over the last couple of weeks. This time round, I was particularly interested in the first time appearance of skateboarding as an official Olympic event. It was amazing how young many of the competitors were, but I was even more impressed by how old some of them were. Dallas Oberholzer, from South Africa, was one of two 46 year old men competing in the competition, and I was rather inspired by his story, which got me reading other stories about people who’ve picked up skateboarding in their forties after long absences.

Further to this, a couple of weeks ago I took my kids to the local skate park, which has just reopened after a big revamp and expansion. They were on their bikes, and it was nerve-wracking watching them drop in for the first time, but they soon got the hang of it and were cruising around like they owned the place. There were a bunch of kids there of varying ages and riding a range of wheeled devices and the atmosphere was really positive — everyone was giving each other encouragement — and when one of my twins, now seven, had a wee crash, I didn’t even get a chance to move before another boy, a few years older, helped him up, dusted him off and sent him on his way again.

All of this has got me thinking about buying a skateboard again, so I can share the action with my children next time we go. But the last time I rode a skateboard was around about 1998, and after twenty-three years, I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge. Given my age and lack of grace and co-ordination, I’d have to be fully armoured up in helmet and pads and wrist-guards, but that’s okay — one of the many advantages of approaching middle age is that the fear of looking ridiculous reduces with every passing year. No, the one fear that does give me cause to pause is that of pain. I hate pain, and given the aforementioned lack of grace and co-ordination, I just know that if I get anywhere near a skateboard again it’s going to be an inevitability.

So, the question is, will the enjoyment and satisfaction of giving it a go be worth the pain?

Only one way to find out, right? After all, as my students keep telling me, you only live once.

What sport have you found the most compelling at the Tokyo Olympics? Let me know in the comments.

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Kickin’ it Old School

May 15, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

I finally finished the second draft of my second novel (which currently has the working title of Staking a Claim) earlier in April, during the NZ school holidays. We were on a family vacation in the Hawke’s Bay at the time and so celebrated this milestone by going out to the Taradale RSA (Returned and Services’ Association) for roast beef and gravy. It may not have been the most prestigious of venues but it did have the advantage of serving cheap drinks and being located right next door to the motel we were staying in — it doesn’t pay to be sober or have far to walk home when going to dinner in an unfamiliar town with three hyper-stimulated and squabbling children in tow.

I’m not quite sure what sins my wife and I committed in a past life to deserve it, but I swear that every time we go out for a meal with our children one or the other of them will spill their drink all over the table. Sure enough, it happened again at the Taradale RSA. To be fair to the child responsible, we had (mostly) finished eating by then but, with liquid waterfalling over the sides of the table and into our laps, we took that as the cue to return to our motel unit, where the drinks were even cheaper.

Now that the celebration is over, it’s back to the hard slog of writing. I’m currently in the process of reading through my story chapter by chapter and making notes of things that need tweaking or clarifying for the next draft. I need to find the answers to such pressing questions as ‘how much did it cost to build a four bedroom, two bathroom house in Cromwell in the year 2000’ and, ‘does a 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe have keyless entry?’ Unfortunately, historical research is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of ‘activities that get me excited and make me wish I could spend every waking hour participating in them’. Since I’m writing humorous fiction, a certain amount of implausibility is necessary to serve the story, but there’s a balance to be found between the improbable and the impossible that’s easy to get wrong if you’re not careful. There’s always that one person so obsessed by plotholes and anachronisms in their literary fare that they’ll write a letter to point out that the cylinder on a Smith & Wesson revolver actually spins counter-clockwise, not clockwise.

Speaking of historical research, one of the most fun things I did with the children in the school holidays was take them to an open day at the Whangarei Museum, Kiwi House and Heritage Park. They loved the kiwis (who wouldn’t), but were even more taken with the old school building on site; it was set up so they could dress in old-fashioned clothes and sit at the old wooden desks drawing on chalk slates and practicing their cursive handwriting with a fountain pen and ink. Of course, the same child that spilt water all over our dinner while on vacation knocked his inkwell all over the floor of the schoolhouse, but the demonstrator didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. “It washes out,” she reckoned. “Maybe not the first time, but, you know, eventually.” Anyway, it was very cute and the kids loved kickin’ it old school and want to go back and do it all over again.

Kickin' it Old School — “Wasn’t us, Miss, honest — we’d never put no pins on your chair. We was jus’ sittin’ here practicin’ our letters the whole time.”

I just wish they could get that excited about going to school on a normal day.

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A Place to Store Our Growing Children?

March 10, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

One thing that children seem to be able to do without any assistance from their parents is grow up. It’s the kind of thing that sneaks up on you. Perhaps you’re vaguely aware of it happening on the background, but then the reality hits home when you check your statement after your credit card is unexpectedly declined at the gas station and discover that the reason you have no money is because you’ve given it all to a variety of children’s apparel merchants. Maybe your awareness is focused when you go to sneak a cookie from the jar on a heretofore unreachable shelf in the pantry, only to find it empty bar a few miserable crumbs when you could have sworn it was full to overflowing the previous day. Or perhaps their increase in size is brought to your attention one day when you decide to step outside for a walk in the garden but can’t see your shoes on the porch where you left them last, so you spend ten minutes searching the house for them in vain, only to return to the porch, frustrated and puzzled, to discover that the reason you can’t find them is because they’re bouncing around on the lawn, attached to your child’s feet. Yes, those same feet that only yesterday could be contained in the palm of your hand.

Whatever the evidence, the conclusion is undeniable – children grow.

Houses, on the other hand, don’t. The house we have lived in for the last eight years is diminutive (relatively speaking – I’m constantly aware that there’s plenty of people in the world living in caravans and cars and cardboard boxes under bridges – our house is certainly and thankfully larger than that) but what might have been a cosy space with three small children is rapidly becoming claustrophobic with three large ones. It’s only natural. You can’t bypass the laws of physics, so problems will always arise when there’s only one toilet to accommodate the desires of five bladders wishing to be emptied at the same time. As a consequence, my wife and I have been considering our options.

We’ve thought of moving somewhere with a bigger house, or perhaps buying a section and building, but house-prices in NZ have run rampant in recent years, moving beyond ridiculous into the realm of the nonsensical. We could buy a middling piece of dirt for an exorbitant amount of money but we’re wondering why we would when we already own a piece of dirt, and a very nice one at that, four times as large and with a house already on it.

So our current thinking for a solution to our child growth issues is to build an extension. To that end, we had a chat to the owner of a local building company that specialises in them. I’d drawn a rough plan of what I had in mind, so he took a picture of it on his phone and told me to go home and take some photos of the existing house and email them through to him. Which I duly did, and he replied with an email to say he’d got them.

A place to store our growing children? — This is not the plan I drew. Mine was more…

A week or so later, I received another message from him asking when I was going to send the pictures through. Confused, I told him that I already had and that he’d confirmed he’d received them. His next message was apologetic, reconfirming that yes, I’d sent him some pictures, and yes, he had indeed received them, but had then promptly forgotten all about it. I didn’t think too much about this at the time, being well aware of the symptoms of senility myself. Why, only last week, one of my teaching colleagues was discussing a certain student in the staffroom.

“Who’s that then?” I asked. “I haven’t come across her yet.”

“Sure you have,” she said, “you were her English teacher last year.”

“I was?” I asked, suddenly panicked, aware that the name was familiar but unable to put any kind of face to it. “Are you certain?”

“Of course. That was my daughter’s class.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You do remember teaching her?”

Fortunately, my colleague’s daughter is blessed with the kind of personality one doesn’t forget. But I was still drawing a mental blank on the friend. Until about thirty minutes later, when I saw her walking past me in a corridor and it all came rushing back. What makes it worse is that not only was I her English teacher last year, but I’m also related to her — distantly — but still. As far as mental blanks go, this was a worrisomely enormous one.

Anyway, I was prepared to forgive the builder’s absent-mindedness until I got another message, another week or so later, asking what we wanted out of the extension. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it as I thought I’d made this pretty clear in our initial conversation. So I sent him a message saying we wanted more room — a place to store our growing children. A couple of days later I got a reply saying, Oh right, so you need a new chest freezer then?

“*Hallo, what ‘ave we ‘ere, then?” said the freezer, as clouds of frozen mist rose ominously from its open maw.*

Now, I’m partial to a bit of dark and dubious humour myself, but when someone suggests that I might want to put my children in a deep freeze, well, it rankles. There are some lines it’s best not to cross. Alarm bells sounded, and they only got louder as the message went on, asking if we wanted more bedrooms or a bigger kitchen and dining area. It was then that I realised that since that was exactly what I’d indicated on the plan he took a picture of, then he’d forgotten about that as well.

While this was all going on we’d contacted another local building firm that also specialises in extensions. A few days after my initial enquiry, the owner came out to our house for a look and a chat, made some suggestions, asked a couple of questions that we need to find out the answers to, gave a rough, top-of-the-head estimate of costs, explained how he’d go about the job if we decided to go ahead and utterly failed to say anything insulting. We did discuss the purchase of a new refrigerator, but that was purely in the context of storing food, not children.

Now the first builder wants to come out to our house for a look and a chat. We’re not sure we want him to.

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Where I’m From

February 8, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

I’ve just finished my first week back at school for the year. It’s always a bit of a shock to the system to get back into teaching mode again but it went well — lots of fresh faces, enthusiasm and an atmosphere of positivity. One of my goals this year is to do more poetry in my English classes, and in pursuit of this goal I tried a poetry exercise that came from Micah Bournes, a Californian poet and musician who visited our school a few years ago. I was really pleased with how well it worked and thought I’d share the results.

The exercise is called ‘Where I’m From‘, and here’s the one my Year 12 class wrote together. I think it’s rather lovely.

Where I’m From

I am from eyelash extensions and Pantene.
I’m from the white house with concrete for lawns.
I’m from the oak tree and the sunflower,
From Sunday family breakfasts, mouths full of swear words, from Bayly and Kathleen.
I am from fighting and arguments in the middle of the street,
From “don’t do drugs” and “do the mahi, get the treats.”
From playing games and watching the stock cars,
From Opononi, from hangis and boil-up,
From nearly killing Nana when pulling wheelies on my motorcycle.
I’m from a treasured box of photos that makes me feel both happy and sad.

Here’s a picture of the instructions, or poetic recipe, if you like, that we used.

Here’s the one my Year 10 class wrote together. You can see the maturity level has dropped a little (maybe more than a little), but I still like it.

Where I’m From

I am from pencils and Supreme.
I’m from the pink house with the orange trim.
I’m from maple trees and cauliflower,
From dancing round the Christmas tree,
From the worst car on the street, from Uncle Bob and Uncle Jared.
I am from unflushed toilets and rescuing random animals.
From “Santa’s real” and “your dad will be back in five minutes.”
I’m from colander helmets and touching feet,
From New England, eggplant and broccoli rice.
I’m from an older brother who would sit on my chest, hold my hands down and tickle me until I cried.
I’m from a cabinet in the hallway, stuffed with old shit we found underground.

Want to try it yourself? Leave a comment; I’d love to know how it went.

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A Journey Begins with Ten-Thousand Steps

January 12, 2021 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions (mostly because I don’t see any reason to wait if you want to make changes in your life — now’s as good a time as any), but one thing that has been playing on my mind for a while is how to get some more exercise into my life. With three kids and a full-time job plus this writing gig on the side, there just never seems to be enough time in the day to do everything I’d like and exercise is one thing that seems to fall by the wayside when it really shouldn’t.

Of course it’s a mind over matter thing — there actually is enough time in the day — but separating that time out from the mush and swirl of everyday life requires a level of organisation and efficient productivity that I’m just not very good at (certainly not as good as I am at sitting on the couch watching TV and eating cheesecake). My wife uses a Fitbit to help with her exercise schedule and I’ve been thinking about getting one myself for a while now, but due to a certain level of psychological resistance on my part the thought has remained just that. I always figured the most useful function of such a device for me would be the pedometer, so it was a happy surprise to discover last week that one of the many things my iPhone can do is measure my steps. After seven years of owning a smartphone I’m not sure how I missed out on this knowledge (my wife suggested that I was probably the only person on the planet who didn’t already know it) but I’m pleased I’ve finally figured it out because it’s a really handy feature. Not only that, it means I have one less first world problem to worry about.

According to the data my phone has already collected without me being any the wiser, I averaged just over four-thousand steps a day last year. However, much of that time my phone would have been on my bedside table or in my bag or at the bottom of the enormous pile of washing in the laundry basket or in between the seat cushions on the couch or in the vege drawer of the refrigerator (it has an unnatural habit of hiding in the darndest places) and so many of my steps wouldn’t have been counted (certainly not the ones made searching for my phone). Since my pedometer revelation, I’ve kept it on me as much as I can (to the point of slipping it into the waistband of my undies in those early hours of the morning when wearing pants just seems like overkill) to get as accurate a reading as possible of just how many steps I take.

The result has been pleasing. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. However, in the world of exercise regimes, ten-thousand steps seems to be a generally accepted measure of a reasonable daily level of activity, so in this instance, I’m going to say a journey begins with ten-thousand steps. On Thursday I did eight-and-a-half-thousand steps and all I was doing was pottering round the house performing the usual summer school holiday routine — making untold rounds of Marmite sandwiches, folding the enormous pile of washing in the laundry basket and shouting at my children for shouting at each other. On Friday I did twenty-thousand steps with a little more intentional effort, including a lovely bush walk alongside a river and to a waterfall with the kids, but it was by no means excessive.

*“Dad, all this walking is making me hungry. Did you bring any Marmite sandwiches?”*

Ten-thousand steps seems entirely doable, so, aside from publishing novel No. 2 (which is progressing more slowly than I’d like but also surely — I’m about two-thirds of the way through the second draft), my New Year’s resolution for 2021 is to keep the iPhone on my hip and try to average ten-thousand steps a day. It will be interesting to see how easy that will be once I return to work. Being a teacher may not be the most sedentary occupation on the planet but it’s certainly more sedentary than being an aerobics instructor, for instance, or a ninja. Although they do say that children need to experience learning in a variety of contexts before it really cements itself in their brains — perhaps, leading by example, it’s time to increase the interpretive dance component of my teaching programme.

*“In groups, choreograph a short dance routine that depicts Lady Macbeth’s failing state of mind.”*

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions for 2021? Let me know in the comments.

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As Easy as Falling off a Log

October 13, 2020 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

On September 18, my life literally came to a crashing standstill when I fell off my mountain-bike while going for a ride after work. I wish I could say I was doing a high-speed, 720 degree twisting backflip at the time but unfortunately, the circumstances were rather more mundane. I was riding along a log, lost my balance and fell off. Quite literally, it was as easy as falling off a log. This might not have been such a problem if I hadn’t then selected the wrong option upon landing. Instead of landing in the soft sandy soil of the trail, I chose to land on another log lying directly alongside the trail. Physics was never my strong point at school, but on this occasion, irresistible force plus immovable objected equaled a broken wrist.

Such is the punishment for trying to get a bit of exercise. If I’d just stayed on the couch watching TV and eating cake, I could have avoided all the unpleasantness. I ended up staying two nights in hospital on two occasions, the first when I required surgery to repair the bones and ligaments I’d wrecked in my fall, and the second two weeks later when one of the three wires holding my wrist bones together became infected and I had to go under the knife again to have it removed. I’ve got a third stay to look forward to in about a month’s time when my cast comes off and I’ll have the remaining two wires removed as well.

Hospitals have never been my favourite places and I do my best to avoid them. It’s been twenty-six years since my last major injury (dislocated shoulder — again as a result of falling off a mountain-bike) and this was the first time I’ve ever had to stay overnight as a patient, the first time I’ve ever experienced the brain-addling weirdness of going under and waking up from a general anaesthetic. Despite the pain and the discomfort and the meds, I was still clear-headed enough to realise I had much to be thankful for.

Firstly, on both occasions, I shared a room with three other men and on both occasions, despite the severity of my injury, I was the healthiest person in the room. Joint infections, diabetic complications, an amputated finger — an assortment of woes from patients who were in their beds when I was admitted and were still there when I was discharged. When you’re in danger of drowning in your sorrows, it helps to remember there’s always someone else worse off than you.

Secondly, I was thankful for the standard of my care. People like to complain about the public health service in New Zealand and certainly, it has its issues, but I felt I was looked after pretty bloody well. Hospitals are busy places and not much seems to happen in a hurry, but I was treated with compassion and competence by every staff member I interacted with and I don’t know whether you can ask for much more than that. The nurses especially were fantastic, and I’d like to give a shout-out to any nurses out there — you do such an important job.

Anyway, apart from the hiccup with the wire infection, my recovery is progressing smoothly. Being one-armed is uncomfortable and frustrating and surprisingly exhausting — it’s not an experience I want to repeat ever again. Which could be a challenge, since it won’t stop me from getting back on my bike once I’ve recovered. Even now, writing this with the sun rising to the dawn chorus of birdsong, I’m thinking it’s going to be a lovely day, the kind of day that would be just perfect for a bike ride.

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Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet: A Reflection on the Frustrating Experience of Teaching Shakespeare to High School Students

September 8, 2020 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east and Juliet is the sun.

When I recently gave my Year 10 English class a selection of movies to choose from for their upcoming film study, I was surprised when the overwhelming majority of them (and not just girls) picked Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. So far in my teaching career I’ve steered clear of Shakespeare, mostly because I’ve found students struggle enough with the vagaries of contemporary English — without introducing the confusion of an archaic, four-hundred-year-old dialect.

My reluctance was borne out when after watching the film, the overwhelming majority of the class were of the opinion that they hated it.

“That was the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen,” said one student.

“Totally gay,” ventured another.

“I didn’t understand anything they said,” said several more. “Can we watch something else?”

High on Shakespearean love poetry, I was unsympathetic to their cause. “No! I gave you a choice. I warned you about the language and still, this is what you chose. It’s your own fault — we’re not going back now.”

So for the last couple of weeks we’ve taken a closer look at ‘the greatest love story ever told’. While I don’t think I’ve managed to turn any of the haters around yet, I’m fairly certain I’ve at least managed to increase the general level of understanding.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed it, and that’s important (trying to teach content that you’re not interested in yourself can become very tedious very quickly). As an introduction to Shakespeare for the beginner, I highly rate Luhrmann’s version, released in 1996. It gets stick from Shakespeare purists because there’s nothing remotely subtle about it — Luhrmann doesn’t really do subtle — and the whole production is completely over the top.

For instance, if there was any doubt that all the guns that are waved about onscreen are supposed to be modern representations of bladed weapons, Luhrmann gives us close up shots of the guns with their model names engraved into them — Sword, Dagger, Rapier etc. — just to make sure the representation is painfully clear.

And to ensure there’s no confusion between members of the two feuding families, the differences between them are made blatantly obvious. The Montague boys are loud and raucous; dressed in unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts and driving a bright yellow convertible, their arrival is accompanied by grinding rock music.

The dark and sinister Capulets, on the other hand, wear tailored suits with waistcoats and fancy shoes and drive a dark blue saloon, their presence announced by fluid strains of Latino style surf guitar.

But that’s exactly why it’s so great for newbies. There’s no need to understand anything the characters say because all the other visual and aural cues make it clear what’s going on in the story.

It also helps that the acting is tremendous — Leonardo DiCaprio totally inhabits the role of Romeo, and while Claire Danes might be a little less convincing as Juliet, it’s only because Leo is so good. The performances of the supporting cast are also uniformly excellent. If you’ve never seen it, there’s plenty worse ways to spend two hours of your life.

Teenagers are a tough crowd though. Not even the tragic ending where Romeo drinks poison and Juliet shoots herself was enough to sway them. “Should’ve been more blood,” they all reckoned.

“Isn’t that what all girls want?” I asked. “A boy who’s willing to die for them?”

“What use is a boyfriend if he’s dead?” came the reply.

It’s hard to argue with that.

This week we’re getting up close and personal with the infamous ‘balcony scene’. Can one of the greatest romantic encounters in the history of storytelling melt the stone-cold cynical hearts of the type of people who routinely begin and end relationships via Messenger and who think that getting married to someone the day after you meet them for the first time is stupid?

I’m not holding my breath.

Poor Shakespeare. Love ain’t what it used to be.

Are you a fan of Romeo and Juliet? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments.

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Winter Flooding in Northland

August 9, 2020 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

After the meteorological highlights of my July post, this post also features a precipitous weather event, although the precipitation in question is of the wet rather than frozen kind.

On July 17th 2020, Northland experienced a ‘one-in-five-hundred-year’ rainstorm. I have no idea how the meteorologists can determine the veracity of such claims, but there was no question an enormous amount of water fell out of the sky overnight. Winter flooding in Northland is not uncommon, and while there have been several floods in the eight years we’ve lived in our current location, this one was the most impressive and widespread by far. Roads became rivers; valleys became lakes, and for 36 hours afterwards we were stuck at home because the roads in every direction were impassable.

Winter Flooding in Northland July 2020 — Anyone for swimming?

The floor of our garage/shed-where-we-store-all-our-junk was flooded and the garden was a lot soggier than usual but other than that we came through it unscathed.

Others weren’t so lucky.

I suspect that with climate change progressing at current rates over the next couple of decades, ‘once-in-five-hundred-years’ is going to start looking like awfully wishful thinking.

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Fun Family Adventures

July 14, 2020 / J.B. Reynolds / 0 Comments

(or Small Towns and Giant Sculptures redux)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that the best thing about being a teacher is the school holidays. Last week, my wife and I took the kids on a 500 kilometre journey to the central North Island plateau for a fun family adventure, where we spent a few days in the small town of Ohakune (it’s important to note that the ‘fun’ part of the adventure didn’t include the eight hours stuck in a car with three children).

In many ways, Ohakune is a typical small New Zealand town. It has the requisite giant sculpture, a carrot in this instance (apparently Ohakune is the carrot growing capital of New Zealand, evidenced by the fact that there were enormous bags of carrots for sale outside almost every other shopfront. I’m not sure who the target market for such quantities of carrots is — perhaps commercial rabbit breeders or people whose entire extended families suffer from carrot addictions). It also has the requisite grand town slogan: ‘Where Adventures Begin’.

Fun Family Adventures with Giant Carrot, Ohakune, NZ — *Of course we’re excited; it’s a giant **carrot,** for goodness sake!*

Fun Family Adventures, Ohakune, NZ — *This one’s self-explanatory.*

While the very nature of small town slogans tends towards hyperbole, this seemed to me to be a potentially egregious example. After all, when I think of the word ‘adventure’, the picture that comes into my head is not that of a small town in the middle of nowhere. However, the particular middle of nowhere that Ohakune happens to be located in is the southern slopes of Mt Ruapehu, on the edge of the Tongariro National Park. In terms of adventures, there’s plenty on offer — biking, climbing, hiking, and in the winter, skiing — which was the main purpose of our trip. I’m still not sure what the relationship between ‘carrots’ and ‘adventure’ is, but perhaps I’m just not using my imagination.

On our second day in town we hit the slopes. Due to the uncertainty created by Covid-19, Turoa, the ski-field closest to Ohakune, was closed at the time of our visit, so we caught a bus to Whakapapa, the ski-field on the northern slopes of the mountain. It was the first time any of the kids had been to the mountains, the first time they’d ever worn thermal underwear, and for the entire bus ride they all complained about how hot and uncomfortable they were. This all changed when we got off the bus. Within seconds, all three kids were bawling and saying they wanted to go home because they were freezing. It was one of those moments that’s funny in retrospect but at the time, not so much. To be fair, the weather in the central North Island plateau is notoriously changeable and the conditions on the day were unpleasant, to say the least — snowing, icy cold and blowing a gale.

They weren’t the only tears of the day. As well as the vagaries of the weather, those of you who have hired ski-gear before will likely know that there are few things in life more uncomfortable than a rented ski-boot. However, in between the tears and tantrums (and not just from the children), everyone gave it their best shot. Since my wife and children were complete skiing novices and only the beginner slopes of Whakapapa were open, I had decided not to ski. Instead, I spent the day running back and forth between them, pushing them up and pointing them down the slope and offering (mostly ignored) advice. After a couple of hours the kids had had enough and proceeded to entertain themselves by making snow angels, snowmen and snowballs, which they subsequently threw at me as payment for my coaching efforts. My wife persevered for a little longer but then she too called it quits. I don’t blame her — it’s amazing how much pain a snowflake can cause when its propelled into your face by a gusting 80 km/h wind.

Fun Family Adventures with skis, Whakapapa, NZ. — *I am trying to smile; it’s just that my feet really hurt.*

Strangely enough, nobody wanted to repeat the experience the following day. So we spent it relaxing at our chalet — eating chocolate, reading books, watching TV, eating chocolate. It was late afternoon and I was lying on the couch with the curtains closed, reading a book and eating chocolate when my wife walks in the room and says “It’s snowing”. I thought she was kidding at first — Ohakune is only 600 metres above sea level and it’s not often that snow falls right down in town, but sure enough, when I opened the curtains the evidence was undeniable. It continued falling throughout the afternoon and into the night and when we woke up early on our final morning in town we were greeted with this.

Fun Family Adventures with Giant Carrot in the snow, Ohakune, NZ. — *They say that when the moon is aligned with a giant carrot, good fortune is nigh*.

It was magical stuff. A dusting of snow makes anything look like it’s come straight out of a fairy tale, let alone a giant carrot. The kids couldn’t wait to make snowballs and throw them at me and I finally discovered what all those carrots were for.

It was the perfect ending to our fun family adventure.

What’s your favourite location for fun family adventures? Let me know in the comments.

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J.B. Reynolds

Page 3 of 7

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You Only Live Once

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Kickin’ it Old School

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A Place to Store Our Growing Children?

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Where I’m From

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A Journey Begins with Ten-Thousand Steps

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As Easy as Falling off a Log

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Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet: A Reflection on the Frustrating Experience of Teaching Shakespeare to High School Students

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Winter Flooding in Northland

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Fun Family Adventures

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