remember, you must always temper nerdiness with extreme sports

the conference didn’t start until tuesday evening, so we had the morning and early afternoon to go exploring. the first place we went was arrowtown, a small former gold mining village on the arrow river and conveniently containing…that’s right, the gladden fields and the ford of bruinen. yep, more lord of the rings locations.

we went to find the river ford first and were….kind of successful. we definitely saw the area where the ford was, but aren’t sure exactly which patch of river it was supposed to be. but we know we saw it, dammit, because we walked up and down enough of the river. we even forded the river ourselves, though in not so dramatic a fashion as the LOTR characters did (i’m sure i don’t remember sam and frodo saying “wait, here, step onto that rock there, no, not that one, it wobbles CAREFUL, YOU’RE GONNA GETT YOUR SHOES WET, here take this stick, it’ll help your balance, okay, now, when you’re ready, jump onto this sand bar and I’ll try to keep you from falling in…”). we were, however, FAR more successful at finding the gladden fields. our pictures match EXACTLY the picture in the book, down the the right groups of trees. the only problem is that i barely remembered the scene from the movie. sort of the inverse problem from the river ford. but, i supposed you can’t have everything.

arrowtown itself is very nice. a little touristy, but definitely cool. we got some gelato and picked up a few souvenirs. but, heading from there to the next LOTR location, we made out big find: a j hackett’s bungy jump. for those of you kids not part of the extreme sports ‘in’ crowd, this was THE ORIGINAL bungy jump place in the world. they have had over one million jumpers and not a single one has died, not even the 94 year old. we got out and watched a few more people bungy jump and not die. there are multiple viewing platforms from which you can watch your friend stand terrified on a platform 47 meters over a river while you yell “jump, you bastard!” at the top of your lungs. it’s fantastic free entertainment. anyway, right across the road from the bungy jump place is chard winery, about which i cared little except for the fact that it has the section of the river with the pillars of the kings from the fellowship of the ring. we definitely saw this location, too (at least from the road; you can’t really climb down into the canyon to see it up close and personal).

afterwards, we came back to town so that I could get started with the conference. the first evening had a session discussion the view of science in new zealand and by all accounts it’s even worse here than in the states (at least our government representatives don’t say things along the lines of ‘why do we need to fund all this science stuff, anyway?’). the conference will cover all areas of medical science, but only has about 100 attendees, so i’m concerned that that likelihood of my finding anything similar to what i’m working on will be pretty small.