Rolling over to check the time, I was excited to see Charlie snuggled up with one of the Australian girls in the single bed right next to mine. My excitement manifested itself by immediately hollering out, “Charlie! You Dawgggggg!”
Living in Brickahau5 my senior year, I made it a point to have awkward morning small talk with any of the ladies that were generous enough to spend the night.
For whatever reason I really enjoy asking questions like: “Did you have fun last night?!?” “Did you guys kiss on the lips?!?” “What are you doing today?!?” and then, regardless of what their response is, immediately reply with some combination of “You Dawggg!” “Oh your bad!” or “Yeah you did!”
Some girls really embrace the conversation to show that they can hang and some girls literally want no part of it. Belinda (what I found to be the Aussie lass’s name) was the latter and she stonewalled my barrage of inquiries with one-word/dead-end/unenthusiastic answers left and right. Charlie was a great sport about it, but eventually had to put an end to the painfully awkward conversation and give her a ride back to her hostel.
Still riding the Queenstown high, we called into the sky diving place to make sure we were still a go for that morning. The day before, they told us if it was too windy the jump would be cancelled so to call at 8 AM and find out. Apparently their definition of too windy is pretty soft because standing outside our hostel we could barely feel any at all. Although initially pretty bummed, we all agreed it was better it got cancelled than we all jump to our deaths. So were still gonna chalk that one up as a win. #stillalive
Unwilling to let a little weather throw off our good time, we decided instead to rent bikes for a couple of hours and ride around that gorgeous body of water we drove past on our ride in. 4 regular bikes and 1 tandem later we were off. We all took turns on the back of the tandem while rob had to ride on the front the whole time.
“You’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two!”
For anyone that has never ridden a tandem bike, it is not as easy as it looks. This is especially true going down a hilly dirt path, so the whole group was lucky Ernie brought a tandem bike to school for Rob and the rest of the Clams to ride to the bar their senior year. Thanks Erndiggler!
Aside from the views (see below) and us getting back to our biking roots after living in LA for four months without a car- one highlight from the ride was Rob’s decision to ride the bike into the lake. Starting at the top of a huge hill, he stripped down to his boxers and road straight into the water with the rest of us filming and laughing. Looking back, still not really sure what possessed him to do it but god dammit, it’s going to make great footage for the NZ B.D.E. Video (stay tuned).
Said View
That night there was a lot of talk going on Southern Laughter about hitting up a bar crawl. 5 bars, 5 drinks, $25.00. Not a bad deal but, being the cheap backpackers that we are, we decided to just get really drunk beforehand, not pay the $25 dollars, and just follow the crawl around.
Moving from the first to second bar, we quickly saw the advantages of paying that $25 dollars. Because we didn’t have a wristband we had to wait until all the members of the bar crawl got into the bar before we did.
OHHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!!
Wait two minutes to get into the bar?!? Fuckkkkk we should have paid that money for sure. #shitnoonesaid
We continued along, having a whole bunch of fun until we heard the guide say. “Time to go! Next Stop, ICE BAR!!”
We were recently swindled into thinking Ice Bar was a cool place a few weeks earlier in Vegas and spent 45 dollars to stand in a freezing cold room, wait in line only to get two super sugary drinks, and then got asked to pay another $40 to get any pictures in case we wanted to pretend like we were having a good time… we decided this was the end of the line.
Wanna go to Ice Bar??? I’ve got a better idea… No Fucking Way
Instead we opted for another club/late night pizza and went to bed hoping the wind gods would be on our side tomorrow and we could have another shot at sky diving glory.
Moral of the Story: I would rather go skydiving with 100 MPH winds than ever go back to ice bar.
The Excellent Adventure 