The Rotorua trip exhausted us so thoroughly that all we could face for the next day was lounging about at the house. Leen put on one of the tapes of Olympic Equestrian Events that Brunnen-G had taped for her. (In the United States, they hardly ever air the equestrian stuff. There's no time for it, what with the 18 hours of daily swimming footage they need to air.)

We ate lunch at a place in a mall that advertised free ketchup (well, "tomato sauce") with their meals. (But the tartar sauce was 30 cents a packet.) Afterward we did some grocery shopping, purchasing, among other things, the ingredients for two dishes -- tater tot casserole (nod to Grishny) and homemade macaroni and cheese -- that we would make during our stay there. Slight problem. Everything is measured in metric there, so we had to stand around in the aisles, examining butter or cheese or whatever, and trying to figure out how much it was in pounds or cups or ounces. Dave bought "tasty" cheddar cheese, which is "sharp" cheddar cheese over here, except it was sort of medium-sharp, not extra-sharp, which was fine by me. We also picked up a bunch of unfamiliar brands of chocolate covered cookies (well, "biscuits"), and Dave, on an impulse buy, picked up a can of Oak brand spaghetti. It tasted about like Chef Boyardee, so he said.

But the most remarkable -- and, alas, disappointing -- thing about the grocery store was that the grocery cart (well, "trolley") did NOT have a bar near the bottom, underneath the handle, that I could stand on, thereby permitting me to get a running start, hop on, and careen around the store. This is WRONG. Shopping for groceries was just NO FUN AT ALL.

RinkChat

The four of us hopped on RinkChat for a few minutes and talked with those of you that were there at the time. But you knew that.

Grape Kool-Aid

They don't have grape flavored drinks in New Zealand, and they don't have Kool-Aid. But Brunnen-G liked the grape Kool-Aid we brought her, even though she couldn't have it as strong as Leen likes it, which is sweet enough to rot entire teeth on contact.

Putzmeister

On the road, we saw a commercial construction vehicle of some sort with the name "Putzmeister" on it. It was funny.

Stupid PAL vs. NTSC

Brunnen-G's VCR, which can allegedly play videos in either PAL or NTSC format, wouldn't play the tapes of bad movies and the Rocky & Bullwinkle show, unheard of there, that I brought with me. Apparently the VCR would only play NTSC tapes recorded in SP; it wouldn't play LP or SLP/EP recorded tapes. Blah.

So we went out and rented some bad movies from the local video store, including a familiar movie in an unfamiliar box that said, "The Barbarian Brothers In 'The Barbarians'." "The Barbarians" is a bad movie that Dave and I think is hilarious. We watched it that afternoon, while Leen sunbathed in the back yard, and it was a big success. Puck got home from work just as it was ending. I rewound the tape and played some of the worst, most embarrassingly bad scenes for him. "I never realized how wonderful my life has been up until this point," he said.

Coast Guard Duty

Brunnen-G and Puck, both in the Coast Guard, had to attend a training session at the marina at 6:30pm. Since she had missed the previous two sessions, Brunnen-G really couldn't afford to miss it, even though the topic was elementary navigation, which she knew inside and out. So, what the hey, we accompanied her down to the marina to check the place out. She brought us into the secret private chambers of the Coast Guard's Auckland facility, then took us down to the pier where the crew were assembled on one side of one of the Coast Guard boats for a group picture. Dave, Leen, and I stood to the side to observe the proceedings.

After the gang, maybe 30 or so, were lined up in rows on the side of the boat and on the pier in front of it, Brunnen-G and Puck among them, the first couple shots were taken. Then one of them, a big guy I later learned was Adam, the crew chief, came over to us and said something like, "Can you take this card, go up the stairs to the operations room, and get Karl?" He was originally speaking to Darleen, but, fortunately for her, she passed the task off to me, and I took the access card and ran.

I did not hear what he shouted after me.

Leen and Dave did, and they were glad it was me that was fetching Karl instead of one of them.

A Taste of Power

I found my way off the pier and around to the front door readily enough, then darted up the stairs, but I didn't immediately see anything labeled, "Operations Room." I found a meeting room with a couple people in it, asked for Karl and the operations room, and they pointed me in the right direction. The Operations Room was secured from public access, which was of course why I had Adam's access card, but I knocked anyway, and Karl, back to, buzzed me in.

"Karl?" I said. "They want you downstairs for a picture."

"Right, come in, and I'll show you how to work the phone."

Uh, what?

I staggered in uncertainly. There were computers and radios and maps and monitors and scary looking controls everywhere. Karl pointed at a phone. "If you get any calls, say, 'Marine Rescue' and write down any messages on this piece of paper." He slid a pen and a pad of paper over by the phone. "Tell them I'll be back in about two minutes. If it's an emergency, click this three times." What "this" was was a radio receiver of some kind, with the buttons on the side -- buttons I thought one pushed to talk and released to listen, not ones you push three times in succession to get anything to happen.

But Karl was out the door, and there I was in the operations room, alone with the computers and radios and maps and monitors and scary controls.

"Ok, please don't ring," I pleaded to the phone as I tried to remember all the instructions, most of which had been given to me before I had any idea what was happening.

The seconds ticked by, and eventually I wandered around the room, taking the opportunity to examine the computers and the radios and the maps and the monitors and the scary controls. I have no idea how long I was up there alone. I'm sure it seemed like longer than it actually was, but I'm pretty sure it was longer than two minutes and closer to five.

The phone rang.

"Marine rescue?" I forget what the guy started off saying, but the gist of the conversation was that he was Mike Austin, at Shakespeare Bay, and -- this is the important part -- not currently in the process of drowning. I told him Karl was out for about two minutes and he would call him back when he returned. I had to ask his name and location again, to make sure I heard it right, and I dutifully jotted down the message.

Phew.

Far too long afterward, Karl returned, and I delivered the message. "Thanks, mate," Karl said, and I left the operations room very quickly.

I ran into the rest of the gang at the bottom of the stairs, and it was then that I learned what Adam called after me as I was leaving the pier. "You'll be answering phones for about five minutes!"

Aargh. Adam's access card. I had left it upstairs. Blah. I ran back up, knocked on the door, got buzzed in, retrieved the card, and went back downstairs.

At any rate, that is the story of how I, an unknown foreigner who had been in the country for a mere five days, was *in charge* of the largest Coast Guard facility in all of New Zealand. For about three to four minutes, 100,000 Auckland boat owners were at my mercy. And they say America is the land of opportunity.

Training

The group photo shoot complete, we assembled in the training room for the customary training session. I returned Adam's access card when he came in, and I learned from Brunnen-G that Karl was the resident duty officer; he lived just upstairs.

We took seats in the next-to-last row. Darleen wanted to sit in the very back row, but Brunnen-G warned her against it. Adam didn't like people sitting in the back row, so if he saw anyone there, he'd make you move to the front. Sure enough, some unsuspecting souls were later redirected to the front.

The training session was cool. It lasted about an hour and a half and covered topics of navigation and plotting. I was surprised, though -- most of the navigation stuff was extremely elementary. He talked about the numbering scheme of the charts, symbols on a map, determining latitude and longitude, and plotting a course. Brunnen-G seemed to think anyone that didn't know that stuff shouldn't have been there in the first place, but it was good for us three non-Coast Guard types whose only real past experience included BEING EXCLUSIVELY IN CHARGE OF THE ENTIRE FACILITY.

Then there was a break. Then we came back. The lights went down, the TV flickered on, and a familiar opening credits sequence played. The overdramatic announcer voice rang out.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Thunderbirds are GO!"

And the triumphant action music blared out, the cast of puppet characters flashed across the street, and WILD GRATUITOUS EXPLOSIONS blew up little model buildings.

But then they shut off the TV. Darn it, I was thinking they were going to air a whole episode.

It turns out Thunderbirds is a big thing in the Coast Guard, and it's understandable: International Rescue is IT when it comes to rescue organizations. They have a secret private paradise luxury island with secret tunnels and docking bays, and rescue machines launch out of secret caves, from underneath swimming pools that slide out of the way when necessary, and between palm trees on hinges that bend out of the way when necessary, and there are chutes and swiveling panels and blinking eye paintings and.... Ok, well, let me put it this way. A while back, so Brunnen-G tells us, the members of the Coast Guard were surveyed about what they envisioned for the future direction of the facility. It was supposed to be a serious fact-gathering effort, but the responses they got were all about secret island paradises.

We ducked out of the training session early, after the subject went from training to coordination of future Coast Guard events, and all went up to the operations room where Karl gave us a little spiel about how everything works. I, of course, already knew about the phone part.

That Evening

We put on a video tape of "Thunderbird 6," a feature film episode of the show. And it turned out to be boring. So we stopped it a half hour in and put "Attack of the Alligators!" on again.

Birds

2 new, 2 total: Little Shag (*), Spotted Dove (*)(!!).

The spotted dove is marked as a rare bird in the NZ bird book Leen has. South Auckland is one of the spots listed where one can find it. We saw spotted doves two or three other times, which makes me wonder just how rare it is, but we suspect it was actually the same pair each time.