the conference went well - good talks, well organized, good food. always nice to catch up with others in the field and make some new acquaintances. in this case, some of whom could be imminently useful career connections, but we won't dwell on that.
just to do things out of order, i'm posting weekend photos first, even though there will be a whole separate entry about friday's activities. but i've had a request for banks peninsula pics, so here they are. we were not lucky enough to have snow (probably a good thing, given our stunner of a rental car, whom we soon dubbed 'craphonso'), but i can't really complain about the weather.
luckily the little guy was all right - when we first checked him out, he wouldn't move one of his feet, but we gave him a rest in a safe, warm spot and he gripped strongly with both before we released him into a local grapevine.
not that a week's absence seems require explanation, given my poor track record this year, but i'm off to a conference in christchurch. rumor has it that there was snow down to sea level there over the weekend and i am ridiculously excited at the possibility of normal, wintery, non-mountain snow. SNOW! eeeeeeeeeeeeee
... ahem, anyway, should be some good stories and incriminating photos when i return. :)
today we have a guest appearance from my dad, who is a far more established and prolific photographic talent than i. he spotted and shot this wonderfully bristly robber fly (family Asilidae) in northern minnesota a few weeks ago.
as before, we rode sedately down through the farm valleys, amongst cows (including a crazed calf that charged my horse) and wild turkeys.
the beach was clear of footprints, scoured by a chilly wind coming off the substantial surf.
we returned at a leisurely pace along the beach to the shelter and had morning tea before starting the climb back up to the farm. the horses were enjoying the fine weather as much as we were, although i think bert was hamming the uphills a little with his emphasized puffing and sighing. the only other moment of note came when we crossed a creek where the normal sloping bank on the other side had caved in, leaving a cutaway at about the height of the horses' chests. bert thought he wanted to jump the bank at a spot that was more like the level of his chin, so we had a brief battle of wills and wits, but he ended up seeing reason and we took the more sane route, still getting a good jump out of it. no more rogue cattle challenged us and the horses were unperturbed by the flock of noisy paradise ducks that accompanied us through several fields, and we returned to the yard on schedule about three hours after departing. bert and the other horses got thank-you carrots before we headed back to town, and i feel good about going back in the future.
this is what four copies of a 265-page thesis on squid looks like, immediately prior to submission.
that is all.
* the sound effect intended is the collective gasp made by westley and buttercup as they emerge from the lightning sand, but that was way too long a title. thank you.
so, here we all are, nearly a month after the horse-trampling debacle. i could say that the leg turned out to be much worse than anyone suspected, became gangrenous, and ultimately had to be amputated, thus providing a handy excuse for my absence. but that would be a lie. i did develop some spectacular bruises, my knee is still a little stiff and i actually still have a hoof-shaped and -sized patch on my shin that is completely numb, but other than that i can't really complain. as i said, i count myself very lucky. i do intend to go riding at the same place again in a few weeks when our pet canadian returns to nz for a visit, so i'll let you know if anything else of excitement transpires.
mostly what's happened to me in the last month is: theeeeeeeeeessssssiiiiiiiissssssss. i managed to get the whole thing assembled into a first draft, submit it to my poor supervisor, receive the first round of comments, respond and update accordingly (a process that ultimately drove me to a college-worthy near-all-nighter just to get the damn thing finished again), and now it's in his hands for round two. should go to review in the next couple of weeks.
there have also been various visits from out-of-towners, toings and froings within auckland and surrounding counties, dress parties, concerts, the purchase of a suprising number of potential wedding garments, sick kuhli loaches and a small but persistent obsession with season 3 of boston legal. now we've moved on to flight of the conchords. there have been sweepings of autumn leaves from the driveway as our japanese maple does its annual shakedown of all leaves (whomping willow-style). there have been the usual cat-cuddlings and spider-feedings. and i have applied for a couple of jobs, but more will not be revealed until more is known. (enjoying the cryptic statements? plenty to go around!)
in any case, in the relatively chaos-free interlude that marks the final throes of my phd, i will try to maintain more of a presence here, so i don't have to condense weeks into paragraphs again. and if that all falls apart, well, there will be photographs of the next trip in a little over 6 weeks. :D
when i was little, i used to eat sand, and many other yummy, crunchy, outdoor mineral-based things. (and it hasn't done me any lasting damage at all, twitch twitch). i thought i was over the habit, having had no sand-cravings whatsoever in the intervening 20-odd years, and even joked about it a couple days ago with some friends. little did i know.
yesterday some friends and i went to check out a horse trekking place about an hour south of auckland. we were booked in for a three-hour ride, and were joined by a fourth rider plus the guide. the first stages of the ride took us down through beautiful farmland and valleys to the beach, on the west coast of the manukau harbor's south head. the cliffs were misty and green, and the sea was pounding blue and brown, making for a spectacular landscape. ours were the only hoofprints on the beach. the horses knew as soon as we got to the sand that the best part of the ride was coming up, so although we kept them at a walk partway up the beach and back, they were dancing at the bits and raring for a run.
my horse, a dun mare named kahlua, turned out to be a speed demon. as soon as i gave her her head, we were off up the beach like a shot, although to my surprise she preferred to run up in the driftwood line, and nearly unseated me jumping a log. i guided her back down to the water's edge, where the real excitement started. we had a fantastic gallop for a few hundred meters, until kahlua aimed to overtake the horse in front of us, but instead of passing politely, headed right up her tail. i guided her off to the left, but she immediately shied at a rock, this time tossing me out of the saddle for real. i slid down her right side (lightly clunking my head on the way down, probably against saddle or hoof) and into the deep black sand... with my right foot still stuck in the stirrup.
well, if kahlua was spooked by a stationary rock, she really didn't know what to do with a flailing body trailing off her right side. so she kept running. i was dragged for probably a few dozen meters, in which time i flipped myself over from back to stomach a few times to try to free myself and to see if any other rocks were approaching that i might get dragged over. in the end i opted for stomach - fewer pounding hooves in front of my face, and i probably didn't want to know about oncoming rocks anyway. and did i mention eating sand? yeah, lots of that.
in seconds, or minutes, or years, i came free and came to rest on my side. at this point i knew i was fine - not dead and pretty sure nothing was broken, so the next few minutes were probably the worst for the onlookers, as i lay in the sand unmoving. shortly i was able to take stock of my limbs and found that although my left leg, which had been flapping around under the horse, was very sore, nothing else seemed painful, including the foot and knee that had been snagged in the stirrup. i was too dizzy to sit or stand for a while, but was otherwise completely fine, to my own and everyone else's amazement. i did catch a ride back up the hill in a truck instead of on horseback, but other than the developing bruises on my leg nothing seemed amiss. i spent the rest of the day with a light headache, icing and elevating my leg, and sleeping, and today can confirm that i actually i did get off with only bruises. they even cover the normal day-after discomfort of sore infrequently used muscles.
the most lasting effect, in fact, seems to be the sand, which i expect will gradually dislodge itself from my ears and eyebrows over the course of some months. maybe i'll even be sandless again by the time i next go riding. :)
i will get some reflections posted about the colossal squid stuff one of these days, but in the meantime, i want to share something else. this fine fellow is a tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) and he's been sitting in a big tree above our back patio singing his heart out for the past two days, in spite of heavy rain and generally wretched weather. last week was fun and exciting, but the tui's bubbly whistles, squawks and constant chatter have also made me glad to be home.
