Who Are We?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately and I know others have been repeating this question as we struggle through the strategic planning process.

It struck me the other day when one of my colleagues, a person I know worked on the current mission statement for Luther college, answered this question by referring to the mission statement. I guess it never occurred to me that reasonable people would consider this a settled question due to the existence of a “mission statement.” Maybe that is the case for some, but I think this is a question that needs to be revisited with some frequency, and the fact that this “who are we?” question keeps coming up over and over again, makes me think there is much more to talk about.

In an effort to make progress in my own mind I copied the mission statement reread it a couple of times, and decided to take it apart paragraph by paragraph to see if that helps me.

In the reforming spirit of Martin Luther, Luther College affirms the liberating power of faith and learning. As people of all backgrounds, we embrace diversity and challenge one another to learn in community, to discern our callings, and to serve with distinction for the common good.

Here are the items from the first paragraph that stand out, and my take on them.

  • Reforming Spirit — Yes we must always be in a reforming state of mind. We can never say that we are good enough. We must always be wondering whether we should change with the times or resist change for good cause.

  • Faith and Learning — There is no getting around the fact that Luther is a college of the Lutheran church. We need to define what that means. I remember well, a conversation a friend (former Luther prof) and I had with a woman in a ski chalet in Colorado a couple of years ago. She made a whole bunch of assumptions about what we were like because we were a “christian” college. Lets just say that the fact that our student congregation is a reconciling in christ congregation would have made her head explode. Yes we are a “christian” college but not a fundamentalist college.

  • Embrace Diversity — I think you might be hard pressed to find a major with more diversity than CS. We have lots of international students from many different countries. I think it is really important that we have a diverse student body, but I worry that we:

    • Define diversity too narrowly: Race and ethnicity are important forms of diversity, but so too are differences based on class, political ideology, and gender/sex identity.

    • Need to think through the implications of diversity carefully. If increased diversity means more financial aid, and more student services to support an underprepared population then we need the financial resources to back that up or we are just setting ourselves up for disaster.

  • Learning in community — I’m definitely an interactive learner, I need people to talk with and bounce ideas off of. Interdisciplinary programs feel more like community to me, and I would like to see more of them.

  • Discern our callings — This is a Lutheran hallmark, and I miss the sense of vocation program and the emphasis that this brought. I don’t think we ever have been or ever should be the kind of Liberal Arts college that says “don’t worry about jobs and outcomes, just study the humanities and you can do anything.” That is not the kind of place students and parents are looking for in 2017. It is OK for us to care about outcomes and careers and helping students find their calling and vocation in life. It is also a real source of pride that Luther is the kind of place where a student can come and figure out who they are and what their calling is without getting lost in the shuffle. Many times these discoveries happen because a professor makes a little extra effort at just the right time to really connect.

As a college of the church, Luther is rooted in an understanding of grace and freedom that emboldens us in worship, study, and service to seek truth, examine our faith, and care for all God’s people.

  • I didn’t really understand this one very well until my colleague Jim Martin-Schramm provided the following list in an email the other day:

    • Lutheran higher education offers a third way between the polarities of sectarian fundamentalism versus purely secular education.

    • Lutheran colleges see no contradiction between faith and intellectual freedom, which means no questions are considered off limits from vigorous debate and discussion—even questions about religion and the nature of God.

    • The Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith is the foundation for Luther College’s commitments to hospitality and inclusivity.

    • We are freed to question the most basic and even sacred assumptions because to do so deepens our understanding of the world and our place in it.

    • A theological marker that defines Christianity in general, and Lutheranism in particular, is the notion of paradox, which enables us to resist dualistic, either/or ways of thinking and easy answers.

    • While many understand vocation as a job or career, Lutherans understand vocation as a calling from God that encompasses all of life.

As a liberal arts college, Luther is committed to a way of learning that moves us beyond immediate interests and present knowledge into a larger world—an education that disciplines minds and develops whole persons equipped to understand and confront a changing society.

  • What I hear in my head when I read this is: Life-long learning — This is a big one for me, because its a way of life in my field. We help our students build a solid foundation in computer science recognizing that much of what we teach them, at least in terms of specific technologies, will be obsolete in a few years. They need to be equipped as lifelong learners, embracing all forms of learning including on-line as well as face to face.

As a residential college, Luther is a place of intersection. Founded where river, woodland, and prairie meet, we practice joyful stewardship of the resources that surround us, and we strive to be a community where students, faculty, and staff are enlivened and transformed by encounters with one another, by the exchange of ideas, and by the life of faith and learning.

  • Residential, but a place of intersection — I think this word intersection gets lost in the woodlands…. The real point of intersection is to encounter others and I would argue that in the 21st century we need to embrace encountering others in ALL ways. Face to face as well as electronically. As Friedman says, “the world is flat”, and its getting flatter. In my own research work I routinely interact with people on other continents at all times of the day, through email, various forms of chat, and definitely face to face via Google hangouts or Apple FaceTime. We need not fear that we will somehow destroy the residential nature of Luther college by integrating online learning as a way of enhancing and enriching the student experience.

  • Practice stewardship of our resources — I fully support our sustainability initiatives as well as our environmental studies program. But to me we cannot lose site of the fact that the mission statement admonishes us to practice stewardship of our resources, which must include our financial resources. This means we need to think carefully about what programs should continue and what programs need investment and nurturing. Just because we have had a program in place for some years does not mean that it should be here forever and always.

  • A community enlivened by the exchange of ideas — Its too bad this one comes last, because I think as faculty engaged in shared governance we need a lively exchange of ideas. We cannot cast the administration in the role of “other” this governance cannot and should not be a we versus they contest. We need to be able to disagree, maybe even sharply, but at the end of the day we need to come together and pull in the same direction. If we can’t do that then we’ll tear the college apart. The best groups I’ve ever worked in have had lots of disagreement — loud, marker-throwing disagreement even — but at the end of the discussion it was the best ideas that rose to the top and were implemented, and fully supported by everyone no matter what “side” they may have taken during discussion. More, at the end of the day we saw each other as people and colleagues, not as representatives of a faction or rivals.

This certainly is not the definitive answer to the question “who are we?” Each of us will bring their own experiences and ideas to their own answer. It was a fun exercise and I encourage you to give it a shot too!

Fending Off “Day 2” at Luther College

I’m a fan of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, whether its because he “got it” and was the first customer of Net Perceptions or because of his fascination with space or just because I admire him as a leader. It doesn’t matter, I pay attention to what he has to say on a lot of things.

The building at Amazon where Jeff has his office is called Day 1, even when he moves to a new office he brings the name of the building with him. This is because he is always reminding himself to act like it is Day 1.

This morning I read his latest letter to the shareholders of Amazon in which he was asked what does Day 2 look like. Here is his short answer: “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

In the letter he goes on to expand upon his ideas for how to fend off Day 2. I’ll give you his one sentence synopsis, and in the rest of this post I would like to share with you how I translate his ideas into the context of Luther College.

Here’s a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making.

Its not a surprise that customer obsession is number one on his list. The amazon mission statement is pretty simple: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” I am not a fan of viewing students as customers, but I think student success is a good substitute. So here is a lightly edited version of what Bezos had to say, plugging in student success where appropriate.

Obsess About Student Success

Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see student success. A student success obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

That statement pretty well sums up the lens through which I view the discussion we have had on campus lately regarding program eliminations and reductions and how we evolve as a liberal arts college in the 21st century. We have to be bold and willing to try new programs at Luther. But we must equally be willing to accept that something we have tried did not work as well as we had hoped, and when that happens we should move our resources somewhere else. If we are student success focused then we can view moving on as a victory for the students rather than a defeat for a particular program of study. If we are student success focused then this frees us from endless debate about whether a particular subject is “central to the liberal arts.”

Its easy to view starting a new program as “planting a seed,” and as we heard over the past few weeks, when we do try a new program we must commit to making that program a success. As teachers and mentors I think we are always planting seeds in our students. Some of those seeds sprout quickly others need to be protected an nourished patiently over the course of three or four years. At the end of an emotionally draining faculty meeting Dean Krause gave us a great reminder that that we can and must challenge our best students as well as our weakest students.

Of course we could probably have a long discussion about what it means for our students to be successful. Some might define it in terms of outcomes, or jobs at the end of four years. Others might define it in terms of creating a “well rounded” person. For me, this translates into my classes in a different way. I have a pretty minimal syllabus with a set of goals and topics for the semester. How fast or how slow I go, how many of the topics I cover depends on the students in the course that semester.

Resist Proxies

As organizations get larger and more complex there is a tendency to manage to proxies. Bezos mentions two proxies in his letter than resonate strongly. Process and Surveys. Here is what Bezos has to say about process:

A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?

Bezos goes on to talk about a second dangerous proxy: market research and surveys. We cannot let surveys become proxies for our students, faculty, staff or alumni. Good teachers and administrators deeply understand their students and programs. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys.

I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering.

The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.

These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organizations to embrace.

What big trends are we fighting against right now? Here are a few I might suggest we think about, I’m sure others can add to this list.

  • The trend to develop alternative revenue sources?

  • The trend toward online learning?

  • A more diverse student population?

High Velocity Decision Making

Day 2 companies make high- quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations.

First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong?

Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too.

Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.

“You’ve worn me down” is an awful decision-making process. It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead – it’s better.

I think we can learn from all of these examples. But I especially worry about the second and fourth with respect to our work in faculty governance.

Note: I originally wrote this post for Luther’s Ideas and Creations blog

If you are interested you can find the full text of Bezo’s letter here: This is the Jeff Bezos playbook for preventing Amazon’s demise - Recode

Spring Break 2017

Spring Break! Boy did I need one! With everything going on at the college, I really needed a few days away from school to clear my head and have some fun. What better way to do this than with friends Tim and Sandra Peter at their home in Florida!

Noodling with Tim

Although our delta flight was full of Disney bound kids (young and old) we arrived in Orlando ahead of schedule and headed to the Peter house. I love thier house, its perfect Florida living with a beautiful covered Lanai and a pool that Tim heated up just for our arrival.

We didn’t have a very full agenda for our time with the Peter’s, sit by the pool, and visit Stetson were really the only two must do items on the list. The sun and the pool were awesome. So was the visit to Stetson.

We also had a great dinner out at Hillstone restaurant in Winter Park. I had great ribs, but Tim, Sandra and Jane all had Hawaiian Rib-eye steaks. These were so good that I had to go find the recipe for the marinade and use it the next night on pork chops! I’m really looking forward to trying this on steaks again on my Hasty Bake.

One big learning from the trip to Orlando is that we are bascially not theme park people at this stage of our lives. We enjoyed a few of the rides but mostly we though we would have more fun just hiking somewhere. I guess this is a fine place to be in, and if we have grand kids someday then the enjoyment will be back as we get to watch them experience things.

Bula from Likuliku Lagoon

Bure View

With a view like that you would think I could write something really inspirational for this final post of our journey. Four weeks of travel with some absolutely crazy sights and adventures have wrapped themselves up here at the Likuliku Lagoon Resort in Fiji. To put it mildly the resort is amazing. A maximum of 96 guests, all adults, with a staff to guest ratio of about 2:1, maybe even 1:1 during the week here. All of them greet you with a smile and the Fijian greeting of “Bula!”

You have a few options for getting to the resort from Nadi: A ferry that makes the rounds of the islands three times a day, a private water taxi, a seaplane, or even a helicopter. But whenever and however you arrive you will be greeted on the island by a small band playing welcome music and many Bulas. Your luggage is whisked away and you get a cold drink and a quick orientation session on everything the resort has to offer. Kayaks, Standup Paddleboards, and sailboats are a few of the things you can do off the beach. Every guest in the over-water Bures is issued a mask, fins and snorkel. There is a ladder right off the deck so you can climb down and snorkel on the reef right outside your room! The floor in the room has two windows so that you can sit on the couch and look through the floor at the water and the fish swimming below! Or Jane.

By mid-afternoon, high tide, the water is practically bath tub temperature. The variety of fish we have seen just outside our Bure is astounding! We saw: Unicornfish, Clownfish, Angelfish, Parrotfish, Tang, Moorish Idol, Butterflyfish, Blue Sea Star, a Blue-spotted Ribbontail Ray, an Eagle Ray, a big old Moray Eel and many more. Many of these are also visible just standing on the deck and looking in the water! But cooling off with a bit of snorkeling is even better. At low tide you are not supposed to snorkel in front of your Bure as the water is shallow and the reef is protected. But you can still see some pretty amazing sights from the deck and the walkway. Check out the video of this huge school of sardines. Watch as the bigger fish (a Trevaly) swims though and leaves empty space behind. The Sardines are also a favorite snack for the Gar. Every so often as you are sitting out on the deck a school like this will go crazy and start jumping out of the water for a few seconds.

I really don’t think we have had better snorkeling anywhere in the world! Plus the convenience of snorkeling off your own private deck just can’t be beat.

Dinner

Dinner time is really spectacular. You are seated right along the water and at 7:00 you have a fantastic view of the sunset as you have your appetizer. The menu is different every day and all the food is really good. This morning I had an omelette stuffed with mud-crab meat! For lunch we had grilled chicken with papaya salad and rice. The chicken was so flavorful. Our first night we had a feast of Indian and asian curries – prawns, crab, lobster, chicken, and lamb! Last night we had delicious steak. For lunch yesterday I had fried rice with at least a dozen big prawns with a spicy breading. I didn’t expect to be eating gourmet food for every meal here.

There are other activities you can sign up for, such as taking a wave runner for a spin to some of the nearby islands. You can go for a two hour picnic on a deserted island, you can take a tour of the island where they filmed Castaway. Or you can just relax, which is really the purpose of our visit. After going and going for three and a half weeks, these last few days are the vacation from the vacation! Today’s activities were as follows:

  • Get up and have coffee on the deck with my iPad while watching the fish. I’m trying to avoid Facebook because all of the articles and discussion about lying Donald is really depressing. “Alternative Facts” for pete’s sake stop!

  • Walk to the restaurant for breakfast – delicious

  • come back and lounge around in the shade on the deck while reading a novel

  • Walk to the restaurant for lunch

  • Do some standup paddle boarding to work off the lunch

  • Find a shady spot by the infinity pool

  • Get in the infinity pool to cool off

  • return to the room for high tide and snorkeling

  • shower

  • open a bottle of wine for happy hour and pre-sunset drinks

  • Walk to the restaurant for dinner

I’m exhausted just listing all of these things! 😀

Infinity

Tomorrow we will spend the day here at the resort, then take the 4:00 ferry back to the main island and catch a cab to the airport. Our Fiji airlines flight leaves tomorrow night at 9:40pm and we arrive 13 hours later, the same day (well before we leave) in LA. In fact we leave Fiji at 9:40pm on January 25th and we will arrive in Minneapolis at 9:00pm on January 25th. Teleportation anyone?

Sunset

Is this Hobbiton or Nerdvana?

Bag End

For as little as I wanted to go to the stinky spa yesterday, Jane wanted to go to Hobbiton today even less. She’s not a big Lord of the Rings Fan. But our guide told us that nearly 30% of the people who visit Hobbiton have never seen even one of movies nor have they ready any of the books. Having seen all of the movies more than once and read the books, I was at the top of my class for our tour group of around 30 people. I think there were two of us that admitted to loving Middle Earth that much. Do you recognize where I am standing in the picture above? If you said Bag End, you are correct! The home of Bilbo and Frodo. I swear that even though I was with a very unruly tour group I could almost convince myself I was “really” there at times. Oh, yes my vivid imagination. Only slight eye roll from Jane.

We got there early thinking we might be able to get in on an earlier tour, but as we listened to the people who had not pre-booked their tour in front of us learn that the next available slot was 5:00 this afternoon or tomorrow we realized that we were going to have an opportunity to enjoy our crackers and cheese that we had been bringing with us for the last couple of days. Crackers, cheese, meat and Ginger Beer, make a pretty good picnic. I went into the gift shop to kill a little time and other than a bottle of Middle Earth wine, I was pretty much ready to leave immediately. I was struck by the fact that they were selling “The One Ring” in multiple sizes! (what!?) for only $190.00. To be honest I knew this was coming because our tour guide, Robo, on the great ocean road told me he bought one.

Hobbiton is largely preserved as it was after it was rebuilt for the Hobbit trilogy. Its amazing to me that for Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit there was less than 4 months of filming here. Our tour guide told us several stories about how much Peter Jackson was obsessed with staying true to the book and keeping things logical. For example we passed by some apple trees in a small grove, in the books this grove was described as plum trees. So, Jackson made someone take all the apples and leaves off the tree and put on fake leaves and fake plums for a shot that got less than 5 seconds of screen time. You can only imagine the outcry of true fans who would remember that they were supposed to be plum trees but saw apples on the trees in that little segment instead!

Another example; in the picture of me at Bag End, the tree above me is actually fake! It was a beautiful old oak tree in the Lord of the Rings, but since the Hobbit was supposed to be 65 years earlier than LotR Jackson made the crew chop it down and replace it with a fake younger tree! Even worse, the company in charge of making the fake leaves did a bad job on the leaves and they had faded by the time filming was supposed to start. So, Jackson ordered someone to repaint all 200,000 leaves on the fake tree!

We also learned a bit about film tricks for making people look bigger and smaller. Some of the hobbit holes were made quite small so that when an adult human stood beside the door they looked very large. Others were built at full size so that the door would look fine when a hobbit was standing next to it. In other cases parts of the set were created special to create a perspective effect. For example the wagon that Gandalf and Frodo are riding in the wagon together the wagon was constructed to be 3 meters long. Gandalf rode in the front so that he looked very big while Frodo sat in the very back so that when filmed he looked very small, and like he was sitting next to Gandalf.

Green Dragon

At the end of the tour we stopped at the Green Dragon for Ale! I don’t think this was where the scenes were filmed as every other structure here was created for filming from the outside in, or with just enough room for the camera crew to film from the inside out. All indoor scenes were filmed in the studio, but this is part of the process of making Hobbiton more interesting for visitors. We had a couple of choices of Ale, a cider, or a Ginger Beer. This was also a great place to get some pictures of the Green Dragon along with the Mill and the pond.

The tour really makes you appreciate camera angles! On the bus back to the gift shop we saw some video clips from the movie and its amazing how large everything looks compared to how it seems in person. I can’t wait to get home and watch the extended edition disks that Josh bought me for Christmas. Maybe with a few days off we will find time to watch them together.

Today was also our last day in New Zealand and marks the beginning of the journey home. Tomorrow morning we fly to Fiji! The Novotel airport is just 25 yards from the entrance to the international terminal, so one good thing is that we don’t even need a cab to get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight! I’m looking forward to a couple days of R&R on the water!

A Day at the Spa... or 45 minutes of Smelling Bad Gas

Hot Springs

I woke up several times during the night, and each time I did I could hear the rain battering the metal roof of our condo. Around 5:30 Jane woke up enough to say, “I don’t want to go mountain biking on muddy trails.” Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. I figured she was probably right, even if the sun did come out this morning riding 20 miles on mud would not be a good first go at Mountain Biking. Especially knowing that at the end of the ride we had to get in the car and drive to Rotorua. After 3 plus weeks on the road we have lost our will to stop at any more charming roadside waterfalls, so todays trip was just a drive through the countryside.

So, we lazed around the condo and made a leisurely drive up the east side of Lake Taupo. We walked around the shopping area and had an early lunch at the Master of India restaurant in Taupo. It was quite good, I had the Vindaloo and Jane had Korma, we split an order of Naan and Basmati and some Ginger Beer. I’m going to have to talk to someone at Fareway about stocking Ginger Beer! After lunch we made our way North for another hour to Rotorua. We had nothing special planned here as this was mostly meant as a stopover night (in close proximity to Hobbiton) on the way to Auckland. However the Novotel here by the lake is quite nice, it is right next to Eat Street and we have a view of the lake.

Jane has been wanting to stop at a volcanic hot spring spa for a few days now, and I have been resisting. But the brochure for the Polynesian Spa looked pretty nice and they had either a private option or an adult only group of pools. So, I gave in. I’m 75% done with Jack Reacher #13 so I could easily have stayed in the room and finished that book. But that seemed silly. We decided to go for the adult option because that gave us a choice of 8 different pools and there was no time limit. We would have to wait for the private pool and then we were limited to 30 minutes. Anyway, communal bathing is certainly illustrative of many interesting cultural differences. The pools are constantly fed by natural hot spring water from right under the pools. There are two types of hot springs here: One that is good for your joints, and one that tarnishes the gold of your class ring. – Yes there are warning signs, and I took note and left my ring in my backpack. Jane now has a black 6 in her Luther ring. Hopefully it can be restored.

My only addition would be to say that the Sulfur and other assorted gasses were rather pungent. You may have guessed that already. As a reward for being-a-good-guy-and-going-to-the-spa-with-my-wife, the hotel left a complimentary bottle of Volcanic Hills Chardonnay by our bed. Its now two minutes past happy hour so I will post this, and see what we think. Its from the Hawkes Bay region and so far those have all been good. New Zealand is really good with their Chardonnays and their Pinot Noirs. No wonder I like this country.

Later we have a booking for dinner at a nice Italian place right on Eat Street called Leonardo’s Pure Italian.

Hot Springs

No Mount Doom for You

The goal for today had been to bike the Timber Trail. But since the forecast was for lots of rain we arranged to postpone that until Friday. My next hope was that we would be able to see Mount Doom . But we didn’t get to see that version (thankfully!), I’ll just have to watch the Lord of the Rings again to see that one. We also didn’t get to see this version . It seems that the weather on the North island has been a bit unsettled. Instead we saw this . Mount Doom (Mt. Ngauruhoe) might be back there somewhere behind all the clouds.

Instead of hiking the Tongariro Alpine trail for seven hours we took the “easy way out” an hiked the 2 hour trail to Taranaki Falls. When we started out it was mostly just cloudy and misty. But just after the falls it got bad, really bad. The rain was coming sideways and even my mantra about good gear was not enough to overcome the chilling discomfort seeping through my pants and filling my shoes. The falls were nice but we have seen lots of falls like these in New Zealand.

More than anything this walk was to get us out of the hotel and doing something for a portion of our day. We can’t just hang out in our room all day. Although we have a really nice 2-bedroom apartment that we could enjoy. We had hoped that the forecast was wrong that that once we got to the visitor center there would be plenty of trails to hike and enjoy.

Thankfully, we have a washer and a dryer, so after today we will have enough clean clothes to make it all the way back home without washing again! Our shoes are going to require a bit of work to get dry. We learned a good trick on the Routeburn: stuff your shoes with newspaper to help them dry overnight. Our room is pretty short on newspaper though so we’ll see what happens. The dryer is pretty hot so I’m not very enthusiastic about putting them in the dryer and letting them tumble around.

Soaked

As I write this, I think we might have gotten our day backwards! I’m looking out the window and at 2:00 in the afternoon the rain has stopped and we are seeing some blue sky. This is not out of line with the forecast this morning which showed a higher chance of blue sky and rain for this afternoon! There is a winery a few miles away… Pinot Noir Rose and wood fired pizzas!

Kayak Sailing

Kayaking

When Jane told me that if the weather was right we might be able to sail our kayaks I was perplexed. “How do you add a mast to a Kayak?” I thought to myself. So I had mostly put it out of my mind as an option until we were an hour into the first of two two-hour paddles today. But then “Captain Jack” told us to make a raft and he started talking about how we would sail the kayaks. The sail consisted of a big black square of fabric with big loops at each corner. We had four Kayaks so the women (Jane and Dani) sitting in the front of the two outside kayaks were instructed to put the loops around their wrists and hold on. The

men in the two outside back Kayaks (Brad and Michael) were instructed to put the loops around one end of their paddles. When we put the paddles in our laps and hoisted the sail we were off! Sadly Kayaking and photography do not go together very well so this is the best picture we have of our sailing adventure.

Sailing!

Kayaking made us both feel pretty old. about 5 minutes into the second 2 hour leg my arms started to cramp up. I’ve been having a little tennis elbow in my left arm lately and that really started to hurt for a bit, luckily after the initial flare up it worked its way out and I was able to paddle. After 30 minutes both of Jane’s hands started to cramp, fingers pointing in all kinds of unnatural directions that needed to be moved back in place manually. She wasn’t able to paddle for more than a few seconds at a time from then on except for a few key places where we really needed both of us to paddle hard. Incoming waves, outgoing tide, and a river flowing out make for some FUN kayaking conditions along the coast. I really wish we could have captured them on camera, but those moments will have to live on in our memories only!

By the time we finished our afternoon of Kayaking we were both done! Our final day gave us the option of hiking or kayaking and it didn’t take any deliberation for us to realize that we had reached our limit. six more hours of Kayaking was definitely not in our future. Looking back, we made the right decision, and we enjoyed our final day of hiking very much.

Sailing Lesson

Only Mid Thigh

Estuary

Estuary: the tidal mouth of a river where the river meets the tide.

The final leg of our hike today ended with an estuary crossing. We arrived about an hour before low tide so our guide, Jack, suggested that we just chill a bit and wait for the tide to go down before we started our crossing. So we walked around and counted the tiny little crabs and found some shrimp in a little stream. then we watched some of the other hikers standing in water up to their knees waiting doubtfully for the tide to ebb. At last Jack announced we would head out at 5:00, don’t worry he said it won’t be any higher than mid-thigh. OK, Jack was a bit shorter than me so I wasn’t worried.

The wider darker blue areas will be shallower he said, so aim for those if you are in doubt. At 5 to 5 Jane and I started walking. When we got to our knees we encountered the other hikers, still standing and waiting. I pressed and found a path that came just above my knees. “This way,” I said and just like that I’m a leader. A bit further on the water got deeper and Jane was nearly to her waist. I was definitely above mid thigh, and feeling the current of the tide heading out.

That was as deep as it got and so we made it to the other side of the estuary feeling like this was our adventure for the day. It was a beautiful 7km walk and totally different than the Routeburn. With the ocean on one side of you at all times and regular boat service to lots of beaches all day long you feel much closer to the “real world” than you do on the Routeburn. The scenery is also quite different with views of the bay rather than inland lakes.

golden bay

Like our Routeburn adventure, the day ended at a lodge that has been part of the Wilson family’s land since the 1800’s, well before this land became a national park. We had a delicious meal of lamb and mash and salad, and had a good time getting to know the other 8 hikers on our 3 day trip. We had already met Teresa and Jerad from Melbourne on the bus. There was also a couple from Northern Ireland (Michael and Dani) on their honeymoon and a family from Adelaide (Ronnie, Jeff, Craig and Lisa). All were very nice, and once again we had several educators plus some Geologists in the group. Once again it was a very fine group to share an adventure with and we hope our paths may cross again some day.

crossing

Driving the West Coast

After two weeks of organized tours and bus rides we struck out on our own today in a rental car. New Zealand drives on the left and there are many helpful arrows painted on the road to remind the foreign drivers of that fact. As always, Jane took the drivers seat and I rode shotgun in on the passenger side. We left Queenstown after a nice breakfast at the hotel and headed toward the west coast. Our destination for the first night was Franz Josef. A small little town near the Franz Josef glacier.

A couple of observations about driving in New Zealand

  • One lane bridges are everywhere! We counted twenty seven one lane bridges on our 280km journey the first day. I think this is part of the great environmental movement in New Zealand that they think really carefully before messing with anything in nature. Sure it slows you down a bit and occasionally you need to wait for a couple of cars to cross before you can take your turn but maybe a reminder to slow down is a good thing.

  • They have these nice bullseye signs that say 100 its not a target, drive according to conditions. its pretty hard to drive 100km/hr anyway as the roads are very twisty. I would guess we averaged closer to 60km/hr.

  • Cell phone coverage outside the cities is pretty much non-existent. I’m pretty sure this is again related to the environmental focus of the country. Don’t mess up the countryside by installing thousands of cell towers. This also impacts things like Google maps where the travel time estimates are wildly wrong. If they don’t get any feedback on the actual speed people drive the only thing they can rely on is the posted speed limits, which are way higher than almost anyone drives!

We stopped in the grocery store on the way out of Queenstown to pick up some meat and cheese, bread, and Ginger Beer, so we could do a simple lunch somewhere along the way. Once we reached the west coast, we drove in rain most of the day, and nothing we could see in a two minute walk from the side of the road could compare to what we saw on the Routeburn Track. Our lodging that night was at a small boutique B&B (The Westwood Lodge). It was super nice, just like the host who gave us a nice recommendation to go to Alice May for dinner. We did and we had a nice meal: Fish and Chips for Jane and I had a stuffed chicken breast with Brie cheese.

The next morning dawned sunny and clear, so we felt really great about our decision to postpone our visit to the glacier until the morning. On the way to the glacier it started to sprinkle a bit again, but by the time we had hiked closer to the glacier we were rewarded with nice sunny weather again! We were also lucky that we didn’t try to go the day before because one of the wooden bridges across one of the many creeks had been washed out in a downpour the previous day. Bridge Out we picked our way across the stone in the now-very-tame creek and continued to the glacier.

Franz Josef

On the way back we noticed a couple of construction workers with their massive power tools standing around watching each other prepare to work. We assumed that they were going to excavate and rebuild the bridge. A project likely to take weeks at their pace. Yes, construction seems to move at the same speed everywhere in the world. But as we walked further we met up with a dozen cheerful red-shirted volunteers carrying shovels and pickaxes. They were headed to fix the bridge too. I recon they took care of it by lunch time.

After our glacier hike we continued our way north. We didn’t have far to go and todays destination was a small B&B called Breakers, just north of Greymouth. We were met by the owner, Jan, who was a very delightful person to chat with. She was amazed at how light we were traveling and suggested we may want to give lessons to some of her previous guests. We arrived in mid-afternoon, with nothing else on the agenda except for lounging around and enjoying the view of the Tasman sea. Huge wave after wave coming in from the west was mesmerizing. We didn’t even leave the B&B for dinner that night as Jan made us a nice homemade pizza to enjoy in the comfort of our room or on the nice back porch.

Tasman View

Our final day of driving was the longest, but we made some fun stops along the way to break up the driving. The first was at Pancake Rock. Once again great views of the Tasman Sea, Blowholes in the rocks and just really interesting rock formations to gawk at.

Pancake Rock

The second stop was a tourist trap, but we stopped willingly to wander across the southern hemisphere’s longest swinging bridge. Spanning the Buller Gorge it was a nice view, but not nearly so much fun to have to pass someone on the bridge.

Swinging Bridge

Once we got closer to Nelson and realized we had plenty of time to spare before the rental car drop-off closed we decided to head into wine country and visit a couple of wineries in the hills Northwest of Nelson. We made a stop at Kaharunga and Neudorf wineries. This region is known for some pretty nice Chardonnays and rightly so. We need to figure out how to get some Neudorf delivered to the US.

Neudorf