The Aftermath

I know that my posts became progressively shorter and less interesting in general. If you’ve ever seen something new or amazing that sticks with you, you know that you experience it with your senses, and then you later turn it over and digest it. It’s like a kid moving into a new home: at first they run from room to room glancing at everything, but then they quickly settle down and come to grips with the fact that this is their new home. Part of the reason I write this is that you only experience a place with new eyes once, and I like to record everything during that time. The synthesis and deeper musings come afterward, and this blog is not intended to record those. Sorry, no emo David.

I know people are going to ask me what the favorite/least favorite things were. It’s a bad question and I don’t have answers, so don’t bother. There are a few things that I didn’t do that I would have liked to do. I would have liked to go to a rugby game and a cricket game. (We almost went to a rugby game but instead went to a local’s house for dinner, which I consider a fair trade.) I would have liked to do the Tongariro Crossing, a hike across some of the mountains in a North Island national park. Time and weather didn’t permit that one. I would have also liked to make it to Dunedin and Invercargill if possible, which would have completed our loop around the South Island. I want more time in Australia, of course, but I would have needed much more time than we had. Next time I would also like to do some traveling by camper van just to see what it’s like.

Coming back was a non-event relative to some previous experiences. In my previous trips the reverse culture-shock (coming back to the U.S.) tended to be worse than the shock of arriving at the destination. The east-bound flight also always left me with more jetlag. Neither was particularly true in this case. The cultural similarities made that transition easier, and I managed my sleep cycle (or non-sleep cycle, more accurately) so I hit the ground running. I think the fact that I wasn’t trying to rehash and explain places, events, and cultures to my family made the transition easier. I think the final help was the fact that I was busy almost as soon as I returned. The end result is that when people now ask “How was the trip?” I have to shift gears and dredge up memories – the reverse of the past, when usually I just had to put up with having Asia on my mind while the world went by me in its normal routine.

I went driving the same day I arrived back in Houston. I still subconsciously flap my right hand around looking for the turn signal, and yesterday I hit the turn signal while trying to put my car in park, but otherwise the readjustment hasn’t been bad. I do notice that I drift right in my lane because I’m used to hugging the right hand lane stripe.

Here’s a recap of our trip by the numbers:

0: Broken bones and hospital visits.
1: Hamburgers I had on the trip, times I ate McDonald’s, places I stayed that I truly didn’t like, times I had American pizza (Dominos, on our first night in Sydney). Number of hotels we stayed in.
2: Countries I visited. Hemisphere changes (North to South, West to East).
4: Days someone had waited for rain to clear from the Franz Joseph glacier so they could go climbing.
5: Rainy days I can remember on our trip, and it never rained all day. (We were definitely blessed.)
8: Hours I estimate I spent on playground equipment during the trip.
25: Amount of the exit fee.
32: Dollars per second of my primary bungee jump freefall.
40: Days on in the trip, estimate of the number of PB&J sandwiches I had for lunches on the trip.
2,689: Pictures I took (prior to culling).
5,289: Kilometers driven in New Zealand
16,023: Total population of all South Island towns we stayed in excluding Nelson and Christchurch (Census and guidebook data).
343,500: Population of Nelson and Christchurch.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.