Rest is not getting up until after noon. It's pouring, so looks like
I won't be doing any of the several hikes I'd planned for today.
No worries: the Monteith's brewery tour starts soon. Like
Philadelphia's Yard's brewery tour, this is more about tasting beer
than exploring the intricacies of the surprisingly complex art of
beermaking. Even with ~45 of the ~50 people on the tour being senior
citizens, it's a lot of tasty fun. The tour guide even leaves myself
and some other backpackers alone with the ~7 beers on tap. The fact
that I can only sip instead of chug is the biggest disadvantage of
having rented a car.
The tour, or more accurately the tasting, runs long and I give 3
fellow backpackers rides back to town, so it's after 4 before I get on
the road. In spite of racing to try and make Arthur's Pass in the
light, I'm still on mountains in dark. I have to go frustratingly
slow with the rain, but I'm in Christchurch by ~half past 7.
WTF is with W.O.T.W.? My entertainment for the night is more than
mildly disappointing. Hollywood's really in trouble if Spielberg and
Cruise's big-ticket hit of the summer is this incoherent piece of
action-packed silliness. Apparently Tom's good looks make him
unhittable by alien death rays, able to talk his way through
barricades of armed soldiers, and tough enough to kill a
shovel-wielding survivalist with his bare hands. He's also so dead
sexy that some army guy rallies a dozen other captives to help save
Tom from becoming fertilizer. Never mind that the alien machine just
ate somebody else with little to no protest from anybody. Somebody
else doesn't do an annoying gaze into the camera every few minutes. I
bet Orson Welles is wishing one of his alien death rays would wipe out
Hollywood right about now.
Night's end is a few hours spent in a net cafe, trying to catch up on
life outside of my travel bubble or at least read Doonesbury and send
my family pictures of me bungee jumping. Geeky discovery: there's
freeware file-splitting software that'll let me use gmailfs for files
bigger than 10 mb, providing convenient storage for my bungee videos.
Just weird is my discovery of 2 shots of nude models as I'm uploading
my pictures. It jumps from glaciers to Arthur's Pass to a Hustler
magazine cover. I'm really confused for quite awhile, and then I get
it: I left my coat at the buffet bar last night with my camera in its
pocket. This is definitely weirder but preferable to somebody
stealing it.
Finding the car rental office, it's got an awning over parking that
does a very nice job of blocking light and noise from the street.
I'll call it my deluxe accommodation for the evening:)