Lets get wrecked on rolling rock and stroll down to the sea

This first post is mostly just a way to practice using this blog and figure out all the lovely things that go with it. If the picture I posted above worked (my technological skills are amazing) it is of my tent and gear I'll be bringing.

So here's the plan: Leaving tomorrow evening with Mark, flying from Toronto to L.A. then L.A. to Auckland. Arriving Saturday morning local time in Auckland, spending the day and night there and then heading south. We want to do all the great walks and spend as much time camping, walking and hitchhiking through the country as we can. Throw in some sky diving, surfing, bungee jumping and kayaking and that is about as far as we have planned right now. Mark's coming back November 5 and I'll be coming back January 4. If anyone has any other great ideas for NZ, don't hesitate to email them!

My last full day in Canada was great. I got to spend it canoeing and also got word that I have what seems like a dream job lined up for not only next summer as I had hoped, but beginning next January as soon as I get back. I'm really excited to get back and start the job but I guess I'll have to spend a few months in New Zealand first... life is rough.

The posts will get more interesting the further away from Waterdown I get I'm sure. For now I'll end with a quote from one of my favourite books, Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. It's the opening paragraph and if you haven't read the book yet I highly suggest you do. 

""When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that great age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder,the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself." 

Send emails or messages, hearing from people will be great. Cheers!