2025-11-01 (Saturday) — Of Kitchen Knives and Fingernail Clippers

(written on November 25th from notes taken previously)

Wasn’t the best night’s sleep. I was nervous because of my surroundings, not wanting to get in trouble for my very bad decision.

I should have just told some people who were in the building the night before that I was hanging out in the building for as long as I could. Knowing that I was a member, I’m sure they wouldn’t have cared, and I likely would have even been offered a place to stay for the night, but I was antisocial.

I think my recent relapse had me reeling again a bit because I had hoped to make it my whole trip through New Zealand without relapsing.

And that hope was gone, and I have been… yeah… reeling is a good word.

I should have just slept outside in a park or something, but I really wasn’t wanting to risk getting rained on, and I was too cheap to pay for a hotel.

Having lived the way I have and traveled the way I have for so many years, I don’t really think about it much. Sure, sleeping outside isn’t always the nicest. Bugs and rain and Rocky, uncomfortable ground to lie down on, but I’m used to it.

And being used to it, it’s hard to pony up 100 or $200 or whatever just for a comfortable place to sleep.

I guess that’s the same issue I have with spending a half a million dollars or more for a house.

I don’t want to live my life inside of a house. So it’s basically just a place to sleep, so when I can do that quite comfortably inside of my van, why on Earth would I spend a half a million dollars or more for a more comfortable place to sleep?

But here… I’m not really prepared for wet weather yet, other than having a good rain jacket and rain pants that my mom bought for me prior to my first New Zealand trip.

I thought about sleeping on the back concrete patio under the overhang, in case it rained, or in the little building that had tables and whatnot in it, as the doors were open, but… I was already inside, and there was a bathroom available without having to use my New Zealand Little John.

So… 😕

I also didn’t use the church’s Wi-Fi for what I should have. 😞 Relapse in a church, Stephen?!?! Really?!?! It’s bad enough anywhere let alone in a church.

Embarrassed.

Disappointed in myself.

So many bad choices. I just feel… broken. I’ve lost myself. I have no strength, no resilience. I’m a blade of grass in the wind. I can’t do hard things anymore. I can’t work hard anymore. Anything more than small challenges in my path are enough to get me to fall apart.

Everything feels so complicated, even the seeming simple things are laden with obstacles or seems, and I… just can’t.

I have no hope in a better tomorrow, which I think must be why I have no resilience, motivation, or passion for today, no ability to persist through the obstacles–even for what used to be so important to me.

I can start, but the of things get complicated, or if there’s more than one hurdle to overcome, I shut down.

I just… have next to nothing left.

And that adds to the darkness, as I’ve fallen so far from who I wanted to be…

[sigh]

And I see myself and the choices I’m making, and it’s all so far from my heart.

But then… I’m doing it, so is it?

It’s not me, but it’s me?

I think so much of me is just trying to escape pain and fear.

Being a Saturday morning, I realized, people might come early to clean the church, so I got up early, got my stuff cleaned up and the couches back in place, and I slipped out the back, anxious, worrying that I might have left something inside. It took me a good little while to finally allow the door to latch behind me.

Once again, I hung out at the picnic table, a decent place to wait for the people I was buying my van from to reach out and let me know they were ready to meet me to make the final purchase.

The cleaners did indeed come, which I was actually grateful for because I hadn’t needed to use the bathroom before I left in the morning, but boy did I ever an hour or two later. 😅

I could have used Little John, but there wasn’t really a good place to use it, and I needed to go badly.

So I swallowed my embarrassment and walked over to the church, walking inside and using the bathroom while other people were cleaning the building.

No one saw me walk inside, and I used the bathroom apparently without anyone noticing. I wanted to leave without anyone noticing, which is really dumb because I’m a member of the church, and no one would care at all that I was stopping by to use the bathroom. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I was in this whole stealth mode worried about any sort of interaction with anybody, apparently.

🤷‍♂️

I cleaned up some more trash, hung out a little longer by the picnic table, before some people who were on their way out let me know that I would need to leave soon, or I would get locked inside the gates because they were going to be done for the day.

So I got my stuff together and started my walk away from the church, destination the nearby Pak ‘N Save.

It was a decent little walk, and I was pretty tired and sweaty by the time I got there. There was a big field right next to the grocery store, and I spent my time just chilling underneath a tree in the field watching a group of men stretch and then practice rugby drills.

I tried to do a little bit of JustAnswer work.

Then the people I was buying the van from showed up rather quickly, we completed the transaction, and there I was with a new home.

They had named it Nugget (in clear reference to its color).

I’m not sure what I want it’s name to be.

I bought some groceries, loaded up the van, and started to drive a little bit, but oh gosh.

I didn’t remember the brakes being this bad. Holy crap. These aren’t even safe.

😶

Crap.

Ugh.

Starting off my fear purchase with a project.

😓

I managed to get gas, still having issues with my credit card. I called and got a pin added to my account, which hopefully will resolve the issue.

From there, I headed over to a key maker to have some duplicate keys made for the van, as there was only one key, and I know well enough that eventually, there’s a good chance I might lock myself out of the van, and I’d rather have a backup key hidden on the van somewhere, so that no matter what happens, I always have a way to get myself back in the van.

It wasn’t cheap, little in New Zealand is, but I got two or three copies made, and now I’ll have that mild concern become a complete nothingburger.

And finally, finally I could get away from Auckland with no need to go back.

I really dislike being in cities.

Although, Auckland has a familiar feel to it. Driving around Auckland feels identical to me to driving around Seattle–the green everywhere, the terrain, the same kinds of retaining walls along the roads… The only difference is that I occasionally would see palm trees. At least, that’s how it feels.

So it’s not unattractive in every way: It’s just… Busy and crowded, and I want my countryside. I want to be out in God’s world.

Not knowing where I wanted to go, I sort of did a little bit of a nostalgic drive, heading toward the very first place that Chase and I stopped after we drove away from Auckland 3 years ago.

It was just some random river with a boat launch and dock. I remember that I jumped in and then was scared that there might be sharks in the river because it went to the ocean, and sometimes sharks will swim up rivers.

I’m always worried about sharks whenever I’m in the ocean or water connected to the ocean. 🙃

The river was much much lower than it was the last time we were there, and I didn’t jump in this time. Still just as dirty as it was last time, basically just brown from dirt erosion, I assume.

Oh it’s so green!!! Soooooo green!!! I love this country. 😊 That brought green just makes me smile.

Anyway, took a different route to that boat launch than before, mixing some new with the nostalgic.

Texted family and friends to connect, sending Chase some pictures of the boat dock and then the gas station we’d stopped at in ’22 where the car wouldn’t start after getting gas, and I used a kitchen knife that I had found in the storage compartment in the back of the wagon to clean off the battery posts because it was just bad battery connections keeping it from starting.

No starting issues this time. 🙂

And I got some pictures for memory’s sake, sending them to Chase.

Fun memories. Loved that trip.

From there, I drove up to the Waipu Caves parking lot, one of my highlights of Northland my previous visit to New Zealand.

I’m not… in adventure mode like I was then. I’m much more nostalgic this time… Yeah…not so much hungry for new adventure as I am to simply remember the good times and recreate some of them.

The van came with a little portable folding solar panel for charging cell phones and little electronics and whatnot, so I set that out charging up one of my power banks. Right next to the dirt parking lot for those who want to enter the cave was a pasture with maybe five or six horses in it, so I spent some time loving on the horses.

I also started organizing my van a bit, getting myself set up to be my home for the next 6ish months.

In the process of getting things organized, I realized that the window on the passenger side sliding door wouldn’t go down, and I realized that the window on the driver’s side had suddenly stopped going down.

😒

Ugh. More projects.

I also realize that there was some sort of a short in the system because the rear blower motor stayed on if the key was in the on position even with the blower completely turned off.

Double ugh. 😩

I started looking up trying to find information online about the fuses for the windows and blower and whatnot, and that led me to pulling out the glove box on the passenger side. I didn’t have any tools at this point, but I did find a broken wire underneath the glove box and used my fingernail clippers to strip the wires and twist them together.

And the drivers sliding door window started working again.

That was amusing and fun. Our first day with our vehicle last time I was in New Zealand required to fix with a kitchen knife, and my first fix my first day with my new vehicle in New Zealand this time was fixed with fingernail clippers. 😁

I also found the relay that controlled the rear blower, after a massive amount of research trying to figure it out online. They’re just aren’t the resources that we have in the United States for finding information. But I found the relay, and I removed it, so now I can have the key in the on position without draining the battery even faster with the rear blower going. 🙏

Started chatting with the woman parked next to me, she was from France, probably in her mid 20s or early 30s. We chatted for a bit, and then I wished her a good night (it was dark by then, and I wanted to head into the cave because of how magical I remember it being at night at the entrance).

And it was. 😊

Just… magical. Seeing the glow worms in the huge first room by the cave entrance is like like looking up at the night sky and seeing a whole bunch of incredibly bright stars, brighter than anything that we have in our sky. And then make them all turquoise.

So beautiful. It’s just mesmerizing, like staring at a fire.

Alicia was tired, but I knew that that very first room in the cave with that magical view is the very very best part of the whole cave if you’re going there to look at glow worms. Certainly, there glow worms in other parts of the cave, but nothing as incredible is that very first room. But if you go during the day, you won’t see them. That first room is right next to the entrance of the cave, so there’s just so much light pollution that the magical nature of what you see just… isn’t there.

So I went back to Alicia and dragged her into the cave so that she could see that incredible sight, since she wasn’t planning on going into the cave until the next morning.

So many people miss out on that first incredible opportunity because they go during the day. They might even show up at night, but they wait until the morning to go into the cave because, well, it’s a cave. It’s going to be dark whether it’s light outside or not.

But it’s that first room. That first room is just so magical.

Anyway, so she got to see it, and I showed that first room to some other people as well.

There was a British couple Abby and somebody, and a French couple Lucas and Anna.

I love sharing the places that I love with people.

And I wrote a review on Google maps telling people to make sure that they come at night. 🙃

I hung out for a good little while inside the cave, just staring, and then finally headed back to my van, ate a snack, and crashed for the night.

Lift the world.

Bring it on.

~ stephen