4.9.2010

When I Fell in Love With Those Sheep-Shaggin' Kiwis

Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been seven and a half weeks since my last confession. I simply haven't given a shit. My time has been consumed by more important things than allowing a group of misbegotten youths to live vicariously through my increasingly over-budget exploits and near-constant binge drinking. Those of you who've had a problem with my lack of productivity can go fuck yourselves.

Now that we've finished with the pleasantries, lemme tell y'all bout New Zealand. I arrived at the airport in Melbourne just around that time of day when you don't know whether to say good night or good morning, drank an orange juice, grabbed my connection in Sydney and hopped on a Pacific Blue flight with a group of two dozen Chinese tourists who didn't shut the hell up until we finally touched down in Queenstown. The airport was roughly the size of a large McDonald's you might find off the side of the highway. I flagged down a shared van that dropped me off at my accommodation for the next couple nights. Queenstown is basically New Zealand's answer to Whistler, but done with far more taste and for much less money. That first day I had one of the best burgers of my life, took an early evening nap and partied it up with two awesome Danish guys. Well, they started off awesome. As the night went on and the cheap Kiwi beer flowed on their banter became increasingly racist. There were a lot of countries and races that these two didn't care for.

I said goodbye to the Hitler Youth the next morning and made my way to Winnie's, the bar where I would watch Team Canada prison rape the Norwegians 8-1. I met a handful of Canadians there that afternoon who ditched work to watch the game, including the owner of the bar who himself is from Saskatoon. After dinner I went drinking and clubbing with a bunch of random-ass motherfuckers from Holland, England, Ireland, Germany and a couple Canucks as well. It was a great start to my Kiwi experience.

My organized bus tour of New Zealand did not start off well. The first two people I met were a 30-year-old Chinese man who didn't smile for the duration of the trip, and an incredibly socially inept Aussie with severe body odour, the latter of which was to be my roommate for the next nine nights. I spent part of the afternoon getting Captain Smelltastic's life story, imagining the next chunk of my life with him as my only friend. It was quite scary. Luckily that night when I met the rest of the bus things started getting better. They were an outgoing and happy bunch from all over: England, Australia, Canada, China, the States, South Korea and Brazil. That evening we got proper pissed on free booze our tour guides were able to procure for us from one of the friendlier bars in Queenstown.

Over the next days I climbed a glacier, sheered a sheep, ate pineapple ice cream, watched a low-grade American horror film and jumped out of a plane strapped to a fifty-year-old Kiwi skydiving instructor named Scruffy. All of which was quite enjoyable. When I get back to the real world I'll show a select group of you the DVD of my skydiving experience, it's very funny. In Kaikoura, a sleepy little beach town, I found a couple Canadians at a pub and watched Martin Brodeur take a shit against Team USA. From the front of the bar this old Kiwi woman, must have been 70 or so, kept taking the piss out of us whenever the Yanks scored a goal. I got called a ''Canuck cunt with no balls, mate''. She was lovely. After you spend time in NZ however, you learn to welcome public mockery. It's an essential part of their culture, right up there with praising Peter Jackson and hating the ''Westies'' (Australians). After we lost on my way out of the pub and back to the bus she said ''Don't worry sonny, you'll get your balls back one day''.

The North and South Islands are connected by a large ferry that travels from Picton up to Wellington, the most beautiful big city I've seen on my travels. I'll eventually get my pics up and you'll understand why. We got royally drunk that evening and began searching the streets for some vitamins, but alas all I found was overpriced and sketchy looking. We spent the following night at a traditional Maori Marae outside of Rotorua. The Maori are the Native inhabitants of the Islands, a beautiful people with amazing stories and big bellies. The city of Rotorua itself was unbearable because of the smells from the hot springs all over the place. That last of my bus trip was memorable, though I don't remember what happened. I just know that three people did a bottle of vodka, a bottle of wine and ate some delicious Raman noodles at some point...

The Pride of Coal Harbour, Nova Scotia

Auckland is a fucking shithole. One of the ugliest cities I've ever been to, and I've been to Edmonton; the rest of the country hates Aucklanders and calls them ''JAFAs'' (Just Another Fucking Aucklander). My one and only reason for staying there three nights was so that I could be guaranteed a reasonable place to watch the final Team Canada games. On that Saturday afternoon I met a yockle from Windsor with bad teeth and a bum leg, he was my friend. Together we discovered what would turn into the Canadian Embassy. We found a pub a couple blocks from where all the hostels were in downtown Auckland that already had about a dozen or so Canadians in it. After our victory over Slovakia, we got an idea. This pub was special. It had red and white walls for one, and the beer on special that day was Speight's GOLD MEDAL ALE. Coincidence? Hell no. I approached the angry Asian woman behind the bar and asked her what time she was planning on opening Monday morning, because we had a fairly significant sporting event commencing at nine o'clock. After promising a minimum of fifty drunk Canadians who would also be willing to buy food, she agreed to my request and put a sign outside that read:

Canada vs. USA

Gold Medal- Ice Hockey

Monday 9:00 AM

That memorable Monday morning Windsor and I met up around 8:00, pre-drank some warm beer and a few snorts from my flask, grabbed some bacon & eggs and headed over to the pub. I won't tell you what my bar tab totalled up to that morning, but it involved multiple shots of Canadian Club with beer backs. We were somewhere between fifty and seventy-five red-blooded Canucks at the front of this pub, all drinking and singing and yelling and taunting the few dozen Yanks seated in the back. Captain Serious scored a beauty, as did Corey Perry. Two good Canadian boys with glowing hearts and balls of steel. Nash was hungry, Pronger was dominant and Doughty looked like a kid possessed. Bobby Looooooooooooooo kept us in it until Zach Parise, that troglodyte cocksucker with no soul, scored with a cunt hair remaining in regulation. The wind was almost taken from us watching in the City of Sails.

During that unfortunate third intermission we needed to regroup, both at GM Place and the QF Tavern. I went for a piss, passing through the horrendous sea of Americans on the way. One of their little uneducated cheerleaders looked me in the eye and said in an amazing sorority fashion ''Smells like a comeback'', I responded that ''it smells like imperialism''. She didn't get it, responding with a tilted head saying ''what's imperialism?'', and it was then confirmed that the boys in Vancouver weren't dealing with an intelligent beast. They could be beaten.

We were all trying to predict who'd score the clincher in OT. Names like Heatley, Staal, Niedermayer were all mentioned, but your truly actually called it. That's right. When it was my turn I said, without hesitation: ''Crosby, from Iginla''. And it happened. Sidney fucking Crosby. The pride of Coal Harbour, Nova Scotia. He grabbed the bull by the balls off a tape to tape from Iggy Pop and undressed Ryan Miller.

We sang the loudest version of Oh! Canada ever heard in the Southern Hemisphere. Then went right into Heart of Gold, The Good old Hockey Game and lastly, Ahead by a Century. I was drenched in patriotism, pride and my buddy's pint. Beauty.

Stay tuned for my next installment...

''The Electric Goon-Aid Byron Test''