I woke up in even more pain than I’d yet been. That night had been one of the most painful experiences of my life. When I woke up, I could not lift my right arm more than a quarter of the way up. The left was a little better and made it almost to the halfway point, or nearly straight out. Amanda put some of the blue aloe vera on me that we’d purchased in…was it Nelson or Picton? I think Picton. It was aloe vera with menthol in it, designed to cool burning skin. It cooled me too much. It made me downright cold, and the cold hurt the sunburn. I’d been getting chills ever since I’d relinquished control of Lucy to Amanda a few days past, and the chills have hurt more than just the burning. My skin felt like it was on cold fire. The addition of this extra cooling sensation was killing me. Eventually, the lotion dried, and I felt well enough to attempt to put on a shirt. I only packed one button-up shirt for the entire trip, its intent was to slip over a black t-shirt in case we decided to dress up nicely for a night on the town during the trip (probably Auckland, which Alyssa and I have resolved to get drunk in), but I’ve now worn it for two days because it’s the only shirt I can get into with relatively little pain.
We spent most of the day in Wellington, which is a nice place. It really does remind us of Madison, now that we see it in the daylight. We first drove around in search of Peter Jackson’s house, since he lives in Wellington, but couldn’t find it. It’s not as though we had his address, anyway. We then tried to find our way to the center of town, where we hoped to find some breakfast/lunch (Amanda and I had eaten some moofins at the cabin, Alyssa had none. She wanted breakfast, we wanted lunch…easily accomplished together). We found a restaurant called Burger Wisconsin (slogan: "The World’s Best Burgers!" Really!), but they didn’t open until 5pm. I’ve noticed a bunch of places that don’t open until supper time; the first was that pasta place in Te Anau but there’ve been several we’ve seen since. Next door to Burger Wisconsin was, ahem, Hell. We got some takeaway from Hell. As we sat there waiting for our pizza, we kept making wisecracks about Hell which I’m sure that many, many people have made before. I just about killed Alyssa, who receives plenty of pain from her sunburn when she laughs, when I motioned toward the area behind the counter and said, "All of these people work in Hell’s kitchen!" I got a bumper sticker that says, "I’m Going to HELL!" and has a picture of Satan driving a delivery hearse. Hell’s phone number is (keep in mind this is a New Zealand phone number, so yes it will look wrong to you US fools): 0800 666 111. Also bear in mind that 111 is the number for 911 in New Zealand. They had a poster on the door, which the other Hell we ate at didn’t have, that said: 0800 666 111: The Number of the Feast.
Then we drove around looking for a place to eat Hell’s pizza. We were hoping for a park or something with a picnic table or at least a bench in the shade, I stress the in the shade part because the sunlight even touching my arms is painful, but we ended up parking Lucy in a ramp and eating there. Then, we ventured out into Wellington for some shopping. We also saw the Parliament building (Wellington is the capitol of New Zealand, and its second-largest city), and the theater where The Return of the King made its premier.
The end result of the shopping: I managed to buy some CDs for mostly reasonable prices, finally. My main purpose for CD shopping around here is to find stuff you can’t get in the States, but I’ve been largely unsuccessful in that. It seems that New Zealand has mostly the same stuff, just more expensive. New releases around here generally go for $34, which does not even out by the exchange rate at all. The average price seems to be about $30, even for used. It’s ridiculous. Today I bought four for $10 each, one of which is extremely difficult to come by in the US but not impossible (Radiohead - My Iron Lung), and one is a two-disc set where the US release is only a single disc (Silverchair – The Best Of Vol. 1). The other two I wanted, but mostly just paid that much for so that we could listen to them in the van (I figure it’s roughly US$8 each, for The Dandy Warhols – Welcome to the Monkey House and Tool – Opiate, which I think might have a different cover in the US but I’m not sure). Then I paid $15 for an Australian pressing of an album by an Australian band (Grinspoon – Thrills Kills + Sunday Pills), a band which is largely unknown in the US and I rarely see their albums but have managed to score two others for US$3 or less. Then I bought a magazine (NME…it’s from the UK) which came with a free CD, which has 14 songs, 13 of which are covers. I’m a little worried to listen to it (haven’t yet)…it does have My Chemical Romance on it, who I hate, and they are covering Song 2 by Blur. There’s also covers of Nelly Furtado, Rihanna, Amy Winehouse, and Devo, among others. I’ve never heard of most of the bands committing these covers, but some have cool names, like Does It Offend You, Yeah?, The Futureheads, and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, for example. Some of the bands doing the covers on here are also being covered on here. Alyssa bought Trapt’s second album Someone In Control and Darren Hayes’s second album which I can’t think of the name of right now. I didn’t even know that Darren Hayes had a second solo album, I thought his first one tanked so badly he’d retired. Must’ve done better outside the US.
There is this Pearl Jam boxed set that I saw at the record shop where I bought Punk-O-Rama 8 that is seven discs worth of live Pearl Jam, three complete shows, that they were selling for NZ$70 and I thought that was fairly reasonable then, I just figured that if I bought it we’d be so sick of Pearl Jam by the time we reached Auckland that I’d not be able to listen to them for a year. I saw it today for $60 and was going to buy it, but the clerk at the used record shop couldn’t find the discs. The next two record shops didn’t have it. I was hedging on this before, but now the fact that I can’t seem to get it has made me want it very badly. I’ve tried reasoning with myself that I don’t need it, I own three or four legitimately purchased discs worth of live Pearl Jam already, plus I downloaded some, and I know where I can download more, but for some reason I just really, really want this boxed set now. I’ve never seen it back home so maybe you can’t get it in the States, or maybe it just came out and I haven’t heard of it but it will be there when I get home, I’m not sure. I wish I had greater access to the internet so I could look this stuff up.
We drove on and ended up in Levin, where we ate at McDonald’s (Kiwiburgers…they’re cheeseburgers with poached eggs under the patty an a beet above the patty. Interesting, and satisfyingly yummy). Then we decided that since it was almost 9pm, we’d find a place to stay in Levin. We found a holiday park where we got a cabin. As we entered the park there was a metal sign with the words "Live Dead Slow Children" on it.
This cabin is like a palace. It’s huge. I said we had three people, they gave us a cabin with six beds in it, one of them being a double. It also, unlike every other cabin and lodge we’ve stayed in, has its own toilet. It’s simply excellent.
I seem to have healed some today, I’ve got a greater range of motion in my arms now, the right one can come up a bit above straight out and the left one can get over my head. I look really nasty, though; my right shoulder is pretty much one huge blister. The left seems to have some very small blisters on it as well. I was feeling more comfortable with my skin, but as I’ve been typing this suddenly my chest has become uncontrollably itchy and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. This sunburn is the worst thing that’s ever happened.
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