Car surfing..emigrant diaries..

In her tackling of New Zealand sports, Joan has not mentioned "car surfing." Yesterday a headline in the newspaper puzzled us: "Woman Injured in Car Surfing." The item did not make clear what "car surfing" actually is, so we went into the newspaper's web-site and searched for "car surfing." We found incident after incident--almost as regular as drownings, climbers falling off cliffs, and motor-cycle accidents. So here is one, cut and pasted from The Dominion Post:
"A Christchurch man was crushed after the van on which he and four others were "car surfing" rolled on Okains Bay beach yesterday.
The man was riding on the van's roof on the Banks Peninsula beach after an all-night rave party in a cave.
The van rolled in soft sand, landing on its roof and pinning the man by his torso.
He was revived at the scene by a passer-by before being airlifted to hospital.
Okains Bay Camping Ground caretaker Alan Watt said he was going to the cave about 7.40am yesterday to ask the partygoers to turn down their music when he saw the van "having a rip up the beach".
It disappeared out of sight and when he reached the van it was on its roof with its former passengers spread around it.
"There was a gentleman partially pinned under it. He had stopped breathing. I managed to co-ordinate enough of the idiots to push the van off him. We did CPR and got him to come round again"

What restraint--waiting until 7.00 am before asking them to turn the music down.

I tell you, these New Zealanders are a crazy lot. I have, however, been disappointed by the bungy jumping set-up down on one of Wellington's main streets. There are two tall towers, and a form of double seat is drawn up between them: when released, it drops like a stone down to the ground, only to be arrested at the last second by the thick rubber bungy attachments, which then have the passengers bouncing up and down until eventually reaching a standstill. My disappointment is that I have never ever seen anyone actually doing it. It does cost about 30 US dollars to get your adrenaline rush, and perhaps this is just too expensive. Rumour also has it that the bungy cords once broke during a test.
BTWay--let me quote from the Oxford History of New Zealand: "Latitude, longitude, wind direction, rain, wind, and sun: it is the exceptional emigrant diary that does not make frequent and explicit reference to weather conditions..no single factor was as dominant an influence on a pioneer existence as the climate."
So our constant references to the weather are only a new and digital version of the pioneers' diaries. I mention this because on this --our last Saturday in Wellington--we woke to pouring rain and a southerly gale. No running for Joan. No walk to get the newspaper. But as the early pioneers, huddled in their makeshift houses, besieged by wind and rain, turned to write their diaries, so we have turned to our blog to help pass the time.
Posted by David on Saturday January 18.