(written on the 15th and 16th from notes taken previously)
Started off the morning just veging out, my van perched on the hillside looking down on the valley and Edoras below. 🙃
When Micro John came a-calling, I didn’t think much of it, butt I sure thought a lot more about it when, in the middle of doing my business, I saw a car coming down the hill, I in full view, glory, majesty, and splendor giving a free show.
😅
They were doing switchbacks on the steep hillside trail, and had only one switch back to go before they were right on top of me.
Boy I scrambled inside my van quickly. 😆
I honestly don’t know if they saw me, and if they saw me, if they realized the nature of the scene before them, but it was certainly a memorable experience on my end. 🙃
A veged out a bit longer after that, took some pictures of Edoras, the valley, and the mountains as I finally drove away from the area back toward civilization.
My next intended destination was to go to the other side of the same glacial river valley to see how far up the valley I could go on that side.
So I headed that direction, snapping a few pictures along the way.
Then I was only briefly back at the edge of civilization, mostly farms and ranches, before I turned right back toward the mountains and headed on in, this time on the west side of the valley.
The drive through the winding hills was beautiful, and I stopped to take some pictures.
It was there that I noticed that my back left tire was low on air. 😶
😬
That’s the same tire I had fixed in Greymouth a few weeks ago.
Gosh it seems like so much longer ago than that. 🙃
I wondered if perhaps the leak that caused the low tire last time actually hadn’t been fixed, And that I was dealing with this simple recurrence of the same slow leak and just hadn’t noticed it.
Assuming that was most likely the case, I continued on with my adventuring, snapping some pictures as the vista of the glacial valley from the west side opened up before me.
As I was parked on the side of the road taking pictures, a gentleman rolled up, and we chatted for a little bit. I guess it was his job to inspect fuel storage tanks at airports? Something like that; And there was a small airstrip on the west side of the valley, so he was headed out there to do his work, and we chatted for a little bit.
As I came around another bend, about ready to descend from the hills down into the valley itself, I pulled over to take some more pictures, and it was then that I realized that it wasn’t just a slow leak.
😬
The tire was definitely significantly flatter than it had been when I first noticed it was low, and here I was out in the middle of nowhere.
Gratefully, I had brought a tire plug kit with me from the United States, so I raced against time to try and find the whole, so I could plug it, hoping to get it plugged before the tire was completely flat.
I emptied my bottle of antibacterial spray that came with my van into an empty soda bottle and then poured some water and dish soap into the spray bottle that I had just emptied and proceeded to spray my soapy water mix all around the tire.
The first thing that I noticed was that a previous patch, perhaps the one done in Greymouth, was leaking ever so slightly–lots and lots of teeny tiny bubbles bubbling around the edges of the plug/patch.
But that certainly wasn’t the issue, so I kept spraying until I saw the massive bubbles inflating.
Found it.
Now to try to plug it!
I got my tire repair kit out, fired up my van in order to turn the heater on to heat up one of the plugs, as they were stiff and cold. Unfortunately, the heater works terribly, so it didn’t do much good.
I rolled back the van until the punctured area was in a spot where I could get some leverage to ream out the hole and plug it, and then I went to work.
There are a few more nerves plugging a tire when you don’t have any way of filling it back up with air. 🙃
Gratefuly, I was able to get the puncture reamed out, a plug installed and trimmed flush with the tire (using my scissors), and a leak-free repair verified all before I’d lost all the air. 🎉
It was extremely low, however. 😅
Being out in the middle of large farms and ranches, I figured that somebody who lived out there would have an air compressor on site (I’ve lived out in the country long enough to know that people who live out there doing those kinds of jobs don’t want to rely on going to town for things like that, so they keep their own tools to deal with such circumstances).
So I drove slowly down the hill toward the first house that I could see, trying to avoid turning and being mindful of road contouring that would put the majority of the weight of the van on that super-duper-low back tire.
I guess with this vehicle, it’s probably better that it was a back tire and not a front tire, as I would guess there’s a lot more weight in the front than there is in the back? I do have a lot of stuff in the back, though, so maybe it’s just sixes. 🤷
As I rolled up to the first house, the family dog came out to greet me as I got out of my van, and I walked up to the house, trying to figure out which end of the house the front door was on. I saw a man through the window with his back to me, his daughter, presumably, with her hands in the sink facing me, but neither one of them noticed me.
I knocked quite loudly on the door multiple times, but neither looked out the window at all. Eventually, the man turned to look out the window I think on his own, as he looked surprised to see someone standing there. 🙃
He came to the door, and I asked him if he had an air compressor, but he said he only lived there part-time and didn’t have a compressor, unfortunately.
Apparently, it wasn’t a farm or a ranch, just a little house tucked in the middle of all the ranch pasture, so I guess that’s not too surprising. He did mention that the neighbor back up the road the direction I’d come from had one, so I thanked him, turned my van around carefully, and drove slowly and gingerly back up the hill and through the gate off White Rock Station up to a house that was on the property, surrounded by other buildings, heavy pieces of equipment, etc.
It looked quite promising. 🤞
As I walked up to the house, a man came out the front, and I told him of my issue and asked if he happened to have a compressor.
He did and was willing to help. 🥳🎉
He directed me to pull up to a nearby barn, where he gathered up an air hose and walked out toward my van with it, filling it up with air as we chatted.
It was he who taught me, after I asked about the “station” being a government operation, that a station in New Zealand and Australia is the same as a ranch in the United States. 🙃
So every time I thought I was coming to some sort of government facility, it was actually just a private ranch–like at the end of the road yesterday when I was trying to explore the… Kingdom of Rohan. 🙃
We chatted for a little while after he filled up my tire. I think he was basically the caretaker of a 30-million-dollar ranch that had a heavy focus on breeding elk and exporting the meat to the United States.
Most of the deer he had looked like red deer from… I think Asia? But they would be bred with elk.
I guess that explains all the places throughout New Zealand’s South Island where I’ve seen large deer within fenced off areas. It made sense that they were breeding them like cows or sheep, but it just… didn’t make all that much sense?
But I guess there’s a market for elk meat in the United States. Seems to me a bit ironic that a species that’s native to the United States has been taken to a far away country and raised as a stock animal, only to be shipped to the United States for American consumption.
I didn’t even know that was a thing in the United States. I thought everybody who had elk meat pretty much hunted the elk for themselves.
And to spend the money to import it instead of breeding the animals themselves?
I wonder if there are laws, or something, prohibiting that, as it just seems odd.
That also might answer why some of the large red deer that I saw a handful of days ago had severely deformed antlers. Maybe they are inbred.
I don’t know what I’m talking about, clearly, but it makes me wonder.
I thanked the gentleman for his help, bid him farewell, and headed on my way back up the glacial valley, figuring I would check the tire pressure after a bit to see where I was at (see if the tire was holding pressure).
As I drove along, I snapped some pictures here and there.
I hoped to drive all the way up the glacial valley to the very end at the base of the mountains, but after going up the road a good, long way, I came to a massive wash that I simply couldn’t cross without super high clearance and four-wheel drive.
Well… I tried. I just need a different vehicle. Maybe a 4-wheeler. 🙃
Not far back from the furthest part of the road I was able to make it to was a little designated car park (a spot in the dirt and risks devoid of vegetation with a DOC info sign) for some trails that went into the mountains to the west.
Just maybe a hundred meters before those signs, I had explored a side road down to a stream where supposedly there was some kind of grave or memorial marker for somebody that I didn’t know but was important enough to have on a DOC site direction sign.
I haven’t found anything over there, but there was a pretty little stream and some trees to the south, so I figured I would go ahead and crash there for the night.
I spent some time, as I always do, veging out before crashing.
Tire (or maybe I should write tyre 🙃) seems to be holding pressure. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 