Life as a Hobbit

Associations are funny things, the often irrational way two things glom together like two slightly sticky pages. When I traveled in China bourbon and chicken were always the first things people mentioned when they found out I come from Kentucky.  Hell, even when I've traveled inside of the U.S. I've gotten some assumptions about toothlessness, shoelessness, and thoroughbred horse racing.  What do people in New Zealand think?   So far I’ve gotten:   Tornados (it's funny to think about people who live in a place with major earthquakes being scared of doom that comes from the sky)  Daniel Boone and his coonskin caps (as well as a discussion of his disappearance from the landscape as a cultural icon, and how NZ has few folk heroes of that ilk, though James Mackenzie the sheep rustler--and his talented sheepdog--is a good example, a kind of tall tale legend of a man who was ballad-worthy after a few jailbreaks and many stolen sheep).   Ugly p...

I shall teach you the rules to a game I played. To play properly school must be in session. I call this game “Mormons or Schoolboys?” You only need to be within earshot of the young gentlemen in question, listen to them for approximately 15 seconds and count how many expletives each spoken sentence contains. If the ratio is about 1:3 then they are Kiwi schoolboys. If the ratio is not quite so extreme, my guess is Mormons. This is what I get for living in a country where school uniforms are the norm.

Trying something a little different this time, here's the photos that I took while on my trip with a few words sprinkled in. Picton By Train