Apologies to all those faithful readers who have been wondering were Glen and I have dissapeared to for the past couple of weeks. I shall pick up this missive where the last post left off, for our woes with the ferry are well worth mentioning.
After our one pleasant night at the Barnacles YHA hostel, we hoofed it for the Wellington ferry terminal to catch our 1:00 ferry to Picton on the South Island. Being but a few dozen kilometers from Wellington, we thought that our 10:15 departure would leave us plenty of time to fill Sparkleypoo's gas tank and grab a few snacks for the road. It would have been enough time, too, had it not been for the wrong turn Glen made into a Wellington suburb.
Wheeling our way through the suburb made us appreciate how very, very confusing the British-style traffic planning system is. With the clock creeping ever closer to our final reserved check-in time for the ferry - noon - we started panicking that we would lose our spot on the boat (if you have a reserved ticket and arrived late, your spot could potentially be given to a customer purchasing a last-minute ticke). I called the ferry company and asked them if they could make a note not to surrender our spot on the ferry as we were indeed on our way but would just be a few minutes late. They said it would be no problem, as the ferry itself was late and had not yet even docked. Relieved somewhat by this news, we found our way back to the motorway and continued on to Wellington.
The ferry dock was within sight when we hit the traffic jam. And what a jam it was! Traffic was moving at a snail's pace along the motorway for several kilometers, and we sat in frustrated futility, watching the clock tick past 12:15...12:30...12:45... Glen noticed that the ferry was still in the process of getting into the harbour as we were tied up in traffic, which was definitely some comfort. Apparently the very rough harbour waters was holding everyone up, not just us. Eventually we got past the bottleneck and rolled into the correct terminal at about ten minutes to one. At this point I was still convinced that we had quite literally missed the boat, and therefore forfeited our fare and tickets (no refunds for late-comers).
Normally we would have been far too late to board the ferry, however due to the weather conditions, the boat hadn't even yet unloaded it's previous load of cars and passengers. We got into the boarding line-up, handed over our ticket, and waited. Somewhere around 1:30, the ship was unloaded, we drove into the car bay, and abandoned the vehicle to find a place to hole up for the voyage.
Happily, we discovered a little reading-room type area that had electric jacks for laptops, so we settled in there and I pulled out my book* while Glen cracked open the laptop and our games. The reading room couches filled with other passengers shortly thereafter, and while the boat pulled away from the dock the shipwide announcements cheerfully proclaimed that it was going to be a "rough ride".
A pair of passengers who had taken this journey many, many times, looked around with surprised expressions and tremulously said "they've never said that before."
Being as I was the one who got seasick while asleep on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne, it would be safe to think that I would also be the one to get seasick on this significantly choppier journey. The boat heaved and rolled and the passengers heaved and rolled, and despite being somewhat alarmed at the first few rises and falls of the prow, I happily read my book and chatted with whoever was feeling up to chatting. One hour into the voyage, people were falling silent and were attempting to find some comfortable way of lying down and quelling their rising gorges. I was still feeling as right as rain.
Glen, however, was not. He stood up from his laptop nook, delicatly removed his headphones, and calmly made his way to the bathroom. I assumed that the Man with the Iron Gut was simply going to the bathroom for normal reasons. Ten minutes later, Glen not having reappeared, I decided to leave my book for the time being and play some computer games. As soon as I saw which game Glen had been playing, I knew what was up.
He had been playing Unreal Tournament.
For those who are familiar with this game, you will immediately understand the implications of playing it while on a boat that is pitching so badly that even the crew are having problems. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me say that it is a first-person shooter with extremely fast-paced visual effects, lots of blinking lights and explosions, lots of movement, sound effects, and everything else that is bad to stare at when susceptable to motion sickness. I immediately understood the situation, turned that game off, settled in for a nice long round of the much slower-paced Baulder's Gate, Shadows of Amn, and left Glen to his misery in the men's loo.
He came back much later, looking awfully green and sickly. Once the cruise had ended and as we were disembarking, he reassured me that while he may have left half his guts in the toilet, the guy dry-heaving in the stall next to him was far worse off.
*Note: In case you are curious as to whether or not the slowest-reading librarian in the world had been using this opportunity to actually get some reading done, I am proud to state that I have. What's more, I've been exclusively reading fiction, which takes me much longer to get through than non-fiction. Some books have been long and some have been short, but so far I've completed Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome, two Terry Prachett books: Guards! Guards and The Last Continent, and am currently working on Jane Austin's Emma.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment