Love Me, Love My Work
Because Leanna shouldn’t get to have all the fun:
Text In Let’s Go New Zealand 2005:
Past the Lower Hollyford Rd. en route to Milford, the eerie Homer Tunnel is next; “completed” in 1953 after decades of work (but nonetheless resembling a dwarven mine from a Tolkien novel),
My marginalia:
Homer Tunnel (9:36am 2/13) - Somewhat frustrated by my fail¬ure to get satisfactorily “in the know” knowledge about hitchhiking thus far, I picked up some dudes hitching to Milford Sound just outside of Te Anau. There were three of them, tall, long haired dudes who didn’t talk much, but were pretty knowledgeable about the region, even if not as helpful in terms of hitchiling knowledge as I might have hoped; they lived in the Sound area, they told me, and didn’t travel much. While perfectly friendly, in their way, I quickly realized that any hopes of tapping into what I’d come to expect in New Zealand - amiable chatter and lots and lots of local knowledge, whether asked for or not - from these guys wasn’t going to happen. They were sort of aloof, if you catch my drift.
Anyway, we settle into a pleasant enough silence after about 30 minutes. I get out a bunch of times to take pictures, apologizing each time for being such a tourist super-jerk. They as¬sure me they are in no hurry, smiling a little at my won¬der at what must have been, for them, pretty conventional scenery. One of them, whose foreign sound name I didn’t quite pick-up when he muttered it to me before getting into the back seat, took a picture of me in from of Mitre Peak, which was nice of him.
By and by, we get to Homer Tunnel, which is ap¬propriately cool. Very Tolkienesque. I try to get some more info about avalanches and con¬struction, history, that sort of thing, from my hitchees, but they seem to be tensing up about the tunnel, even as we wait in queue to enter. I ask if the area is dangerous around winter. The one sitting next to me, Haldir, as he identified himself - weird! - says: the tunnel is always dangerous. Also weird. Okay. It makes sense that locals would be ap¬prehensive about the tunnel, basically half of New Zealand seems to have died in road con¬struction accidents, and this tunnel avalanches all the time, so it makes sense that locals will be sensitive. Alternative theory: these guys are all claustrophobic. That’s cool, I can respect that.
As we currently mention, there’s a fifteen minute wait at times on either side of the tun¬nel, so you don’t have people passing through at once. I’m a little claustrophobic myself, so while we’re waiting I ask if the tunnel is really narrow - it’s not well lit, so if it’s narrow, that’s going to be a drag, I figure. They tell me that it is not, in fact, especially narrow, that it is wider than much of the two lane rd we’d driven on so far - this proved to be the case. I wondered aloud why they went through all the trouble of the ob¬noxious traffic light system. Haldir told me that “too many souls in the tunnel invited disaster upon us all” - those were his exact words - and I gathered I shouldn’t ask any more questions, and instead put on some Jeff Buckley. These seemed like the kind of people who good dig on some falsetto-vocaled pathos, you know? I remember thinking then that all three of these hitchhikers looked alike - I hadn’t asked if they were brothers, and they certainly didn’t interact like brothers , but it made sense that they were. I wondered, briefly, in the speculative way you wonder about things that don’t seem quite right but which you aren’t alarmed about yet - whether or not they had all lost a father to the tunnel, or a mother, or a close friend. They were that tense; claustrophobia didn’t cover their behavior..
I was behind a “City of Dunedin” bus at this point. It was a slow bus. I had been stuck be¬hind it for a while, and was looking forward to passing it as soon as we got through the tun¬nel. Even though I had grown tired of staring at it’s backside, I had no desire for what happene about midway though the tunnel, which is to say I had no desire for a Balrog, completely hidden up to this point, to unfold his smoky wings from the wall and lean forward, seizing the bus with its teeth and devouring/ boiling alive its passengers.
I had given the bus a five or six car length lead on me as soon as we entered the tunnel, which allowed me to slam on my brakes and avoid a collision with the doomed vehicle. The car be¬hind me slammed into me, however, and while I was recovering from the whiplash my three companions had sprung from Ozzy’s doors with a lithe, pantherlike quickness, shrugged off their cloaks, and begun fitting arrows into their until-then hidden bows. It was now that I real¬ized they were not, in fact, orphaned sons of construction workers, but elves, immortal princ¬es of Rivendell.
Of course, no three elves could successfully de¬feat a Balrog, even a juvenile Balrog, which I later learned was what we were facing. But this didn’t temper the bravery of Haldir, Argalar, and Cizzarl, not one whit. With an efficiency and a heroism few of us ever see and survive, the kind of mettle that is usually only tested with fatal results for all involved, the tree-walkers made enough of an impression on their demonic foe that he dropped the coach and stumbled back a bit, unsure of how to proceed. Evidently, even in New Zealand, elves have become a rarity. In the brief, unsteady stalemate that followed, Cizzarl, youngest of the forest-friendlies at 12,000 yrs, yelled back at me - “drive away, human! Turn around, save yourself! Flee like a sparrow into the light.” I noticed that the four or five cars that had been behind me had followed this advice in advance, the red of their taillights were becoming dimmer and dimmer as they made their escape. I want¬ed nothing more than to join them, and then perhaps to take a nap. Something, some resid¬ual heroism cast off like sweat from my hitchees, stopped me, at least for a second, made me more purposeful than my heartbeat for a shining moment in time.
“I’m not leaving you alone!” I shouted back. Ozzy honked, I think on its own volition, to signify its solidarity with elf-kind. I have only three or four times in the past six weeks been more proud of my rental car than I was at that moment.
“Alone?” Cizzarl replied, looking back over his shoulder at me with what might have been a smile, “those who fight the evil of the world are never alone!” And he was right, for just then I noticed small shapes charging past me from behind, running full force towards the tempo¬rarily halted battle, their full beards asway and their ribald war chants just beginning to become audible over the agonized screams and overloud fleshmelts of the doomed citizenry of Dunedin. Dwarves!
You get the idea. I cut the Mines of Moria reference, so as to give the perhaps false impression that one of the uber-geeks who researched this section of the book recently has actually touched a boob. Cool? Cool.
Text In Let’s Go New Zealand 2005:
Past the Lower Hollyford Rd. en route to Milford, the eerie Homer Tunnel is next; “completed” in 1953 after decades of work (but nonetheless resembling a dwarven mine from a Tolkien novel),
My marginalia:
Homer Tunnel (9:36am 2/13) - Somewhat frustrated by my fail¬ure to get satisfactorily “in the know” knowledge about hitchhiking thus far, I picked up some dudes hitching to Milford Sound just outside of Te Anau. There were three of them, tall, long haired dudes who didn’t talk much, but were pretty knowledgeable about the region, even if not as helpful in terms of hitchiling knowledge as I might have hoped; they lived in the Sound area, they told me, and didn’t travel much. While perfectly friendly, in their way, I quickly realized that any hopes of tapping into what I’d come to expect in New Zealand - amiable chatter and lots and lots of local knowledge, whether asked for or not - from these guys wasn’t going to happen. They were sort of aloof, if you catch my drift.
Anyway, we settle into a pleasant enough silence after about 30 minutes. I get out a bunch of times to take pictures, apologizing each time for being such a tourist super-jerk. They as¬sure me they are in no hurry, smiling a little at my won¬der at what must have been, for them, pretty conventional scenery. One of them, whose foreign sound name I didn’t quite pick-up when he muttered it to me before getting into the back seat, took a picture of me in from of Mitre Peak, which was nice of him.
By and by, we get to Homer Tunnel, which is ap¬propriately cool. Very Tolkienesque. I try to get some more info about avalanches and con¬struction, history, that sort of thing, from my hitchees, but they seem to be tensing up about the tunnel, even as we wait in queue to enter. I ask if the area is dangerous around winter. The one sitting next to me, Haldir, as he identified himself - weird! - says: the tunnel is always dangerous. Also weird. Okay. It makes sense that locals would be ap¬prehensive about the tunnel, basically half of New Zealand seems to have died in road con¬struction accidents, and this tunnel avalanches all the time, so it makes sense that locals will be sensitive. Alternative theory: these guys are all claustrophobic. That’s cool, I can respect that.
As we currently mention, there’s a fifteen minute wait at times on either side of the tun¬nel, so you don’t have people passing through at once. I’m a little claustrophobic myself, so while we’re waiting I ask if the tunnel is really narrow - it’s not well lit, so if it’s narrow, that’s going to be a drag, I figure. They tell me that it is not, in fact, especially narrow, that it is wider than much of the two lane rd we’d driven on so far - this proved to be the case. I wondered aloud why they went through all the trouble of the ob¬noxious traffic light system. Haldir told me that “too many souls in the tunnel invited disaster upon us all” - those were his exact words - and I gathered I shouldn’t ask any more questions, and instead put on some Jeff Buckley. These seemed like the kind of people who good dig on some falsetto-vocaled pathos, you know? I remember thinking then that all three of these hitchhikers looked alike - I hadn’t asked if they were brothers, and they certainly didn’t interact like brothers , but it made sense that they were. I wondered, briefly, in the speculative way you wonder about things that don’t seem quite right but which you aren’t alarmed about yet - whether or not they had all lost a father to the tunnel, or a mother, or a close friend. They were that tense; claustrophobia didn’t cover their behavior..
I was behind a “City of Dunedin” bus at this point. It was a slow bus. I had been stuck be¬hind it for a while, and was looking forward to passing it as soon as we got through the tun¬nel. Even though I had grown tired of staring at it’s backside, I had no desire for what happene about midway though the tunnel, which is to say I had no desire for a Balrog, completely hidden up to this point, to unfold his smoky wings from the wall and lean forward, seizing the bus with its teeth and devouring/ boiling alive its passengers.
I had given the bus a five or six car length lead on me as soon as we entered the tunnel, which allowed me to slam on my brakes and avoid a collision with the doomed vehicle. The car be¬hind me slammed into me, however, and while I was recovering from the whiplash my three companions had sprung from Ozzy’s doors with a lithe, pantherlike quickness, shrugged off their cloaks, and begun fitting arrows into their until-then hidden bows. It was now that I real¬ized they were not, in fact, orphaned sons of construction workers, but elves, immortal princ¬es of Rivendell.
Of course, no three elves could successfully de¬feat a Balrog, even a juvenile Balrog, which I later learned was what we were facing. But this didn’t temper the bravery of Haldir, Argalar, and Cizzarl, not one whit. With an efficiency and a heroism few of us ever see and survive, the kind of mettle that is usually only tested with fatal results for all involved, the tree-walkers made enough of an impression on their demonic foe that he dropped the coach and stumbled back a bit, unsure of how to proceed. Evidently, even in New Zealand, elves have become a rarity. In the brief, unsteady stalemate that followed, Cizzarl, youngest of the forest-friendlies at 12,000 yrs, yelled back at me - “drive away, human! Turn around, save yourself! Flee like a sparrow into the light.” I noticed that the four or five cars that had been behind me had followed this advice in advance, the red of their taillights were becoming dimmer and dimmer as they made their escape. I want¬ed nothing more than to join them, and then perhaps to take a nap. Something, some resid¬ual heroism cast off like sweat from my hitchees, stopped me, at least for a second, made me more purposeful than my heartbeat for a shining moment in time.
“I’m not leaving you alone!” I shouted back. Ozzy honked, I think on its own volition, to signify its solidarity with elf-kind. I have only three or four times in the past six weeks been more proud of my rental car than I was at that moment.
“Alone?” Cizzarl replied, looking back over his shoulder at me with what might have been a smile, “those who fight the evil of the world are never alone!” And he was right, for just then I noticed small shapes charging past me from behind, running full force towards the tempo¬rarily halted battle, their full beards asway and their ribald war chants just beginning to become audible over the agonized screams and overloud fleshmelts of the doomed citizenry of Dunedin. Dwarves!
You get the idea. I cut the Mines of Moria reference, so as to give the perhaps false impression that one of the uber-geeks who researched this section of the book recently has actually touched a boob. Cool? Cool.
posted by Jeremy at 11:14 AM
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