So this morning after tea and toast (with marmite!!!) Bridget, Trish and I first popped round to check on Bridget's brother who just got out of hospital. We helped him run some errands before Bridget and I headed into Albany to grab a quick lunch and start shopping; Trish had left for the airport to catch her flight home. We first went to Torpedo 7 and Bridget had some more errands to run so she left me to become a thorn in the side of shop assistant Sam for, as it turned out, most of the afternoon.
I hate shopping. If I can get everything I want at one shop I will. On today's list were two main things: a pack and a tent. After extensive online research at Ron's I thought I'd found a tent I liked online...that unfortunately isn't stocked in NZ and which would take time and enormous expense to purchase and ship over. So I was keen to see what I could get locally. Torpedo 7 just happened to be the nearest store to Subway and so I started there.
A quick look at the packs and I settled on an Osprey 65L. There were three different styles to choose from and I tried the lightest one first (1.1kg). It felt good on when empty, but that means nothing and I wanted to try it with weight so went and found a shop assistant. Lucky/unlucky Sam was happy to oblige so we first adjusted the back length of the pack before loading it with 20kg of dumbells. Allowing for the concentrated and poorly arranged distribution of weight it all felt good, plus I liked a number of the other "features" so ok...sold.
Perhaps because I had already committed to spending a not insignificant amount of money (and was considering spending more) Sam felt it necessary to indulge me, or maybe he was just a genuinely good shop assistant. Lucky for me it was a quiet day with few customers and he could afford the time. Over the next hour we compared tents and put two of them up in the store. I was being a bit cheeky as really I had very little intention of buying one of the two, but it was very similar in style to the tent I had liked the look of online and I thought it would be good to see what I would be missing out on if I bought the other tent. The answer was very little...it was a claustrophic design with very little headspace due to the sloping walls. By comparison the smaller but completely different design of the MSR Hubba NX felt cosy and comfortable without the sensation of the walls closing in on you. Plus it's only 1.2kg! Ok, sold again. It must have been Sam's lucky day...but then again, I had made him work for it (plus one or two other staff who'd come over to watch the tent pitching and striking). And I'm sure lots of other people round here spend way more in this shop than I did. Am going to have to use the tent a lot from now on to help justify the expense though! Although Andy and Nathalie previously made the comments that if you do more kms per day with a lighter pack, overall you'd spend less nights in hostels and less money on food etc, so over the duration of the trail a new tent might pay for itself (and may just get me to Wellington by Christmas...?). Gotta love it when other people come up with perfectly good excuses for you!
(Incidentally, Caroline, if you're reading this, thank you so much for the offer of lending me your MSR, but I'm super paranoid about borrowing other people's gear, particularly if it's worth a lot and there's a chance of it getting damaged!)
So I have a new pack and a new tent, and so reduced the overall weight of my kit by a whopping 3.5kg. The bag the tent came in seemed excessively large so I bought a cheap stuff sack that's half the size to put it in, along with the accessory footprint (to protect the tent but also to enable me to pitch it fly-first and keep the innards dry if it rains). The last thing on the "to buy" list was a spork; I've broken two so far this trip and will now be trying a flexible plastic one to see how that fares.
Bridget picked me up just after 4pm, buying herself a flash insulated drink bottle in the process. In the meantime I fortuitously spotted a reasonably priced and sized travel microfibre travel towel, so bought that as well. Having already experienced the gross insufficiency of drying myself with a bandana and a shirt, I figured since I was saving all this weight I could spare a few grams added back for a tiny (but actually absorbent) towel! (I little knew how soon this would prove its worth).
From the shops we headed home and I quickly switched out pack and tent so I could post my old ones home before the post office shut; 5.8kg homeward bound. From there we went to the supermarket to pick up a few things before heading to the sports ground to watch Scarlett and Olivia's athletics training. It was new and strange for me to be there with all the mums and dads and masses of kids of all ages. For me it was the proverbial glimpse of how the other half lives: a completely different life to the one I know, alien and at the same time fascinating and beautiful. But don't worry Mum, the biological clock is still broken--whilst I cherish the experience as a glimpse at parenthood, don't be expecting anything more than the feline grandchild you already have!
It was getting cold and wet by the time athletics club was drawing to a close so we made a b-line for home, stopping at Pizza Hut on the way where I got takeaway pizza for everyone for dinner.
After tea I tried to catch up on my blog before heading to bed. I should have gone sooner as I got my second wind and found it very hard to get to sleep. I have a feeling it's going to be hard to get back on the trail tomorrow. After two days off in quick succession as well as such generous hospitality from two sets of friends, it's going to be hard to set off into the unknown and fend entirely for myself again. Still, on the plus side, from here on out my pack will be lighter, and I've got a new tent to field test tomorrow! (I only hope it proves as worthy of my admiration as my old one!).
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