Communication breakdown

Thursday, 08/08/2012 - 56 A.D.

Oh horror! Horror, horror, and further horror!

It was reasonably late last night and we were settling down to our regular games of cards before closing time. However, getting a little tired of Blackjack, Rummy and Strip Jack Naked (“Jack”, not “James”), we decided to refresh our memory of a game we’d both played years ago, but forgotten – game by the catchy name of Sh*thead. To remind ourselves of the fairly extensive rules, we searched online, found `em and kept `em on screen, with the laptop perched on the table and playing our favourite tunes. Then we accidentally knocked the laptop off the table…

…I almost caught it, but my Jedi reflexes were not quite enough. The sickening thud as it hit the floor was bad enough, but then it spewed out some terrible sound like German techno played through a busted speaker in a wind tunnel. And it displayed a blue-screen-of-death, which in itself is bad enough, but this blue screen had all its text corrupted. Together, our hearts sank. They kept sinking when we tried to power it up, but nothing happened – there was power going in, but the hard drive was endlessly stuttering. To many people this is merely one of life’s little inconveniences, but it must be remembered that this little piece of kit is our link to the outside world. It’s what we type the blogs on that keep us sane. It’s also got a ton of photos and videos from the trip which have not yet been backed up.

We left our beloved laptop overnight trying to recover its files and re-install Windows, but when we woke up in the morning it was struggling to get halfway through a job that should normally take a few minutes. Yep, that hard drive sure seemed kaput. We then had an impromptu lesson in amateur electronics and took the computer apart (damn those tiny, concealed screws!) to see if there were any dodgy connections. There weren’t…we were going to have to take it to a specialist. And the first thing that greeted us on this fateful morning (besides a dead netbook) were those strange wading birds – the previous day they’d been scared of us, but now the whole bally lot of them were sniffing around the slide door of our camper van. Maybe the Maoris treated them as a symbol of bad luck? I shouldn’t really blame the birds for our clumsiness.  

We headed into Rotorua centre and asked where there was a computer shop. We were thus directed to Talk Tech Now where we were greeted by the affable and talkative Malcolm, presumably the owner of the business, who is a big believer in conspiracy theories. Malcolm is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about his trade and knew exactly what we were suggesting – using one of his computers as a dumb terminal so that we could transfer data from our busted hard drive to our external drive (everyone with me so far?) Malcolm said that our electronic affliction was a common problem and he’d plug it into his machine and see what the status of our drive was. So far, so good.

[Nervously awaiting news on the third member of the team...]

After a couple of minute, Malcolm calls us over to say he’s got bad news. We clench. There are bad sectors on our hard drive. I unclench. I’ve had bad sectors before, you just work around them. Malcolm gravely informs us that it’s the boot sectors that are affected and therefore the drive won’t power up in any shape or form. Again, we clench. However, just as Malcolm is explaining a possible solution involving us driving hours out of our way to Hamilton and spending lots of money on manual data extraction through the use of a “clean room”, the drive powers into life, albeit briefly. Everyone unclenches.

Malcolm says that the drive is very stressed and if we want to try and get the data from it then it’s going to be a “one shot deal” – all or nothing, no picking and choosing. We decide to go for it and think that the world is a better place again. Not quite – because of how stressed the drive is, the only way a transfer can be done is if it’s put into a similar drive. He can either:

·         Put the data on a replacement drive, which will take about a day to order.

·         Put the data on a replacement drive already in a similar netbook. Like what? Like the “abandoned” one for sale on the shelf over there…

Do we really want to buy another netbook to get out of this situation? After all, it’s more stuff to lug around with us. Then again, playing Pass The Laptop can be a little tiresome and it’s fine to make notes in my jotter while I’m out and about, but I end up writing the same thing twice when I write them up on the netbook. Plus if you wait for several hours after things happen then you start to forget them and that’s bad for the blog. Sold! We leave Talk Tech Now with the view to return at 4.30 that afternoon when hopefully all of our data will be recovered.

We drive out of Rotorua (or “Road-to-ruin” as we’ve nicknamed it) to take our minds off the recent trauma. Though we’ve been united in our grief by this ordeal, a What Carcass Moment spontaneously occurs – Tim goes to check out the thermal eruptions at Waimangu and I go for a stroll in the nearby rolling hills. Nothing like a bit of clean air to clear one’s head (and to stop one thinking about a clean room).

Come 4.30, we're back in Road-to-ruin and Malcolm greets us with his usual exuberance. Unfortunately they had serious problems trying to extract our data and had to bring in senior technician, Steve, to do it manually through the shell (whatever that means). Malcolm gives it the big song-and-dance, but whatever the spiel, it means we're going to have to drive an hour away to Taupo this evening, then return to Talk Tech Now tomorrow (we're already sick of the sight of the place!) 

[Tim explains to Steve where the folder containing the nudey woman pictures is located.]

Why do we have to head for Taupo tonight? Why not just stay another night in Road-to-ruin? Four syllables - "parachute jump". Tim had always been on a mission to do one here, it was one of his main reasons for visiting these islands. Me, well, I'd like to do it at some stage, but not right now. Besides, someone's got to stay on the ground and film it, haven't they? Jumping out over Lake Taupo is supposedly the best way to experience a freefall from 12,000 feet and Tim was booked in with SkyDive Taupo the next morning at 9.30. Given how long it takes us to pack our beds away, we needed to be near the scene of the crime. Oh by the way, mum, I know I said I’d make sure Our Kid didn’t do a skydrive while we were out here, but you didn’t really think I would stop him, did you? Hopefully you’ll have forgotten by the time I get back…

We’d looked at the map and picked a nice-looking lake just outside of Taupo as the spot for us to park up and spend the night. Getting into the general area wasn’t a chore, but finding the lake proved to be. It’s ten times harder trying to spot these places after dark and given that all of the lanes we found were gated, we concluded that it wasn’t open to the public, let alone freedom campers like us. Therefore we tried Plan B and headed down a couple of lonely-looking roads further down the map…they both turned out to be long cul-de-sacs lind with private houses. By now it was gone 8 and we finally found a place to park along a county lane – far from ideal, but reasonably far from any neighbours.

We spent the evening inventing a card game called River Road, in honour of one of the cul-de-sacs. We also got to grips with the new laptop or “lapitu” (lappy two – sounds vaguely Maori (at least it does to us)). The stars above us looked absolutely amazing. I was glad of my hot water bottle. It had been a very strange day.

Friday, 09/08/2012 - 56 A.D.

Often I awake in the morning to the sound of Tim making noises from below. I have to think to myself if he’s just rolling over or in the act of getting up to greet the day. On this particular morning he was huffing and puffing a great deal. “What’s up?” I asked. “Cold!” was the blunt reply. And it was! Cor blimey, upon going out for my morning visit I was shaking all over! Worryingly, I was wearing all the warm clothes that I had with me, and it is expected to be even colder on the south island. It sucks having to go through two winters in a year! But boy was it beautiful once the mist cleared and the sun came out.

[Hat and gloves on for breakfast!]

I got him to Taupo airfield at the required time of 09:30 and left him to get ready. The girl behind the counter couldn’t give me a definite time of when he’d take off, so I’d have to play it safe and leave for an hour. My destination was the nearby Macdonalds where I could leech some wi-fi and at least get a blog uploaded – the blog had to get through before the weekend arrived! And it did by the skin of its electronic teeth – even Macdonalds only lets you have a certain amount of upload time a day. Oh to be back in wi-fi crazy America!

I got The Chartiot back to the airfield using my mad skills for 10:30. Tim was dressed in his jump gear and looked…well, like this…

No sign of nerves, eh? Not a bit. I start taking some video footage here and there, as does Tim’s “tandem master”, presumably for the personal dvd that they flog you once you’re back down on terrafirma. And then all six of them got on their plane – Tim and five girls, though the lassies had paid a little extra to jump from 15,000 feet instead of 12,000. That’s a whole 15 seconds more freefall time.

 [It definitely reads SDT on the tail.]

As the plane takes off, I do have a hankering for going up there myself, especially as it’s the perfect day for it weather-wise, but alas it will just have to wait until another chapter in my Book of Life. And besides, someone’s got to rush over and give him a big hug when he comes down again. Ahem. In the meantime, I hang around the viewing area with these two cheeky characters:

Kate is, believe it or not, from Southport (Guildford Road, to be precise). She’s been in Australia for about five months, but only been working at the skydive centre for a couple of weeks. I’m not sure what exactly she does (besides hold a walkie-talkie and wear a fluorescent jacket), but she gets paid a basic rate and a commission on top of that depending on the demand for jumping. Soon she’ll be allowed to jump for free as often as she likes. I tell her that I work at Smedley Hydro and she knows it (but of course!) She tells me the name of someone she knew who worked there, but I’d never heard of them. I’m starting to forget what they do at Smedley anyhow…

Chunkz is the guy who packs the parachutes and if there is no one jumping and consequently no parachutes to pack then he doesn’t get paid. He is the happy jester of the workforce, constantly mucking about in the background while I’m filming, kind of like what I do when other people have the video camera out. I tell Chunkz that Southport is the adrenaline capital of the northern hemisphere. “It was,” Kate interjects, “until they moved the Traumatiser to Blackpool and called it something else.”

Tim eventually lands with a smooth plop. He has an instructor called Damo on his back who is still filming Tim’s ecstatic reactions to the whole thing while they’re unclipping themselves. I get the impression he sort-of maybe totally enjoyed it more than anything he’d ever done. He even bought the T-shirt, and would have got the souvenir mug if they did them.

After a quick lunch watching Max and Paddy’s road to nowhere on the Ipod in the van, we drive the hour back to Road-to-ruin. We get to Talk Tech Now at about 13:45, but the data still has not finished downloading. We go for a walk down to the supermarket, then hang around the shop for a bit longer, desperate to finally get out of town. By about 15:30 the job is complete and we can finally say goodbye to Malcolm, leaving as reasonably satisfied customers with one extra laptop and a knackered hard drive. Maybe it was all a conspiracy to begin with? Malcolm would like it if it was.

                            [Malcolm looked blank every time we used the word “knackered”.]

By the time we reach our latest campsite on the north side of lake Taupo we’ve driven down the same road five bloody times. Road-to-ruin indeed! The road to hell has got nothing on this stretch of highway, Mr. Rea.