New Zealand to Madison

We flew out of Sydney with mixed emotions about Australia. I had a really good time there. I arrived penniless and was leaving with a pretty good bankroll. The plan was to go to New Zealand visit Sue's family and see some of the country and then fly on to Hawaii to visit some of our friends that lived there before we would fly on to Wisconsin for a quick stop.

New Zealand is a beautiful country. It has almost every single geographical feature that can be found anyplace else in the world. Like Norway has fjords. New Zealand has Fjords. Switzerland has mountains and glaciers. New Zealand has them too. Africa has the Saharan Desert and New Zealand has one too. Africa has jungles, New Zealand has them too. Canyons, rivers, grasslands whatever you can think of, you can find it somewhere in New Zealand. Oh and there are a lot of sheep too. One good thing is it has no snakes. I found the country to be just one surprise after another. From the volcanoes to the sheep it was one thing after another all of them beautiful or weird or something special. I wish I has spent more time traveling around the country but we only did a quick visit.

When we were there New Zealand was a pretty sleepy place at night. Most of the place shut down and the people went to bed at 7:30 at night. I was a night owl and it drove me nuts that there was nobody around at 10 at night. They did get up early. 4:30AM or there abouts seemed to be the normal time to get up. I liked that because I am up before dawn every day myself. I would get up and watch the sheepdogs working the herds. I loved the way the dogs looked like they absolutely loved their jobs. I wanted to go out fishing but I never got the chance. There is some top world class trout and billfish fishing there but I missed out on both. We visited family and drove around the country for a while but then it was time to leave for the States. We said our goodbyes and headed to the airport to go to Honolulu.

The flight was a seventeen hour endurance trial. At least that was the schedule. Our plane developed a problem right about where Amilia Earhart disappeared. Maybe there is a Bermuda triangle there. We made it to Fiji and had to deplane while they fixed the aircraft. We got to see some of the island before we took off again the next morning for Honolulu. The rest of the flight was uneventful except we joined the mile high club to pass the time.

When we arrived in Hawaii our friends met us at the airport. We were going to stay at their house but there was a problem. One of our friends was deathly sick. His lover was taking care of him but it was not a good time for us to stay at their house so we checked into a hotel downtown instead. It was a bit of a downer to have your friend that sick when we came here to have a good time. He ended up needing to go to the hospital. He did not make it. He died from a massive outbreak of herpes and Kaposi Sarcoma tumors along with pneumonia and numerous other infections. This was 1976 and he was gay. I am pretty sure he died of AIDS but AIDS wasn't identified until almost eight years later. It was tough to have a close friend die suddenly like that. He was always a happy carefree kind of person and it hurt to see him die such an ugly death.

We took our pain out by hitting the town. We went to shows and ate dinner at the best restaurants, took taxis all over town to see and do whatever we wanted or we hung out at the beach. We basically just distracted ourselves by having fun. Then we jumped on our plane and headed to Madison Wisconsin.

We landed at Madison wearing our tropical Hawaian shirts, short pants and sandals. Sue just had on a light tropical dress. We did not get the warm reception we were hoping for. When we landed it was minus fifty one degrees outside and blowing about twenty plus miles an hour. The wind chill factor was way colder than fifty one below zero. We knew it was going to be winter when we arrived and we had arranged to have my brother bring us some warm clothing until we could buy some of our own. There was one big problem. The plane stopped out on the runway and we were told to walk about a hundred yards to the terminal. It was not possible to survive a walk like that in those windy cold conditions. Human flesh would freeze in about five seconds. We asked the airline to let my brother bring us the warm clothes and they said no. We asked to borrow some blankets to get to the terminal. They said no. I got angry then and told them I was going to take the blankets anyway and if they wanted to try to arrest me then so be it. The publicity would kill them and they knew it so they did not stop us when we wrapped up in multiple blankets and walked as quickly as we could to the terminal. I did not think I would make it halfway there. Sue almost died in the first three steps. In the end we survived and put our warm clothes on in the terminal. Welcome to Wisconsin.