Home Sweet (as) Home

Sarah and I spent the night before our departure from Utah on the floor of the Salt Lake City Airport.  We were getting good at this, as we'd already spent a night sleeping in Denver airport on our way there.  A fairly boozy dinner and a couple of more beers at the SLC bar drifted us off quite nicely, and it was soon time to groggily awaken to say goodbye.

We were both flying to Los Angeles, but on separate flights.  And Sarah was heading onward from there to Paris, while I was returning to New Zealand (however briefly).

Why, you ask, was I making a return trip across the Pacific?  Well, before we departed on our holiday, I'd had my application for a grant of New Zealand citizenship approved.  But to make it official, you must physically attend a citizenship ceremony within one year of being approved (or, as I flippantly put it, shake hands with a mayor and say you love the queen).

I flew from LA to Auckland and spent a day and a night there.  My awesome friend Julie happened to be visiting from Christchurch, so she very kindly picked me up at the airport and we spent the day visiting various beer-related venues before I met up with mate's Brendon and Kim with whom I'd be spending the night.

Eaaaarly the next morning it was off to Christchurch where I had a lovely breakfast/brunch with a couple more friends before meeting up with Sarah's mum Olwyn.  As my citizenship ceremony was actually being held at Akaroa, 90 minutes drive from Christchurch, and as we were meant to be there by 07:30, we'd decided to make a little holiday of it and spend the night near to the site at Barry's Bay on Banks Peninsula.  We stayed at the lovely Half Moon Cottage, a pretty, cozy backpackers with a very nice rambling garden. Dinner was (appropriately Kiwi) fish and chips at the Akaroa chip shop.

My ceremony was to be held on Waitangi Day at the Onuku Marae.  Waitangi Day is New Zealand's national day, which commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, largely regarded as the country's founding document,, betwee various Maori Iwi and the Crown.  Onuku was where the treaty was signed by three chiefs representing a huge swathe of the South Island, and was the site of the official commemoration for the region. So the whole affair was a pretty big deal.

It was a cold and grey day (the only one I experienced in my two weeks in NZ) that began with a Powhiri (official greeting ceremony) and the commemoration proceedings, with several speeches, including one by the Governor General and another by the former head of the South Island Iwi, Ngai Tahu, on the past and future of the treaty and the relationship between Maori and the Crown which was one of the best political speeches I've ever heard (probably at least in part because he's a retired politician and can say what he wants without having to worry about pleasing enough people to get re-elected).

As I said when a news reporter asked me later, doing my citizenship ceremony there and then gave me a strong sense of the history of the nation and and an even greater feeling for what I was becoming a part of.  There were about fifty of us there becoming official Kiwis originating everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. My pink floral suit was a big hit, with the Department of Internal affairs reps asking for a photo with me and the Christchurch mayor (dressed in her mayoral robes and chain) joking that she felt overdressed when she handed me my certificate.

Afterwards Olwyn and I joined everyone else for a fabulous BBQ put on by the local community before we headed back to town for our own little celebratory dinner at her new home.

I'm very happy and proud to officially be a Kiwi, and it was great that I had Olwyn there with me to celebrate the special day.

The next afternoon I headed up to Wellington for a bit of a visit with friends and the old home town.  My friends Steph and Jonny who (yet again) kindly welcomed me to their home had a BBQ, lots of good beer and several good mates waiting for me shortly after I got off the plane.

And soon after that I was off over the hill for a weekend of wine, cheese, boardgames and fun in Martinborough with my former brewery mate Annika, her partner and my good friend Dylan and fellow Canuc-Kiwis Dave and Gina.

After Martinborough we made a quick overnight visit to Dylan and Annika's “country home” near Masterton where Annika and I brewed a beer together (first one in ages for both of us!) and I planted the native tree (a Ribbonwood) that I'd been gifted at my citizenship ceremony in their expansive and lovely garden.

Back in Wellington on Monday I arranged my first NZ passport (big ups to the NZ Passport service for probably being the most helpful and efficient government department I've ever dealt with anywhere in the world).  I spent the remainder of the week catching up on developments in NZ brewing and Wellington friends. Fortunately lots of the work in the brewing and hospitality industries, so doing both of these at once in the middle of the week was actually quite simple.

The final night before my departure was spent with a big crowd of mates at the Yeastie Boys pub quiz, where our team triumphed and I swapped shirts twice to leave with Sam's fabulous Gunamatta t-shirt, which will motivate me to slim down a bit on my travels, as Sam is rather smaller than me!

My final 36 hours were spent in Auckland, again with Kim and Brendan. I had lots of fun talking to one of Kim's school classes, just blethering away about engineering, brewing, walking Te Araroa, travel and life generally.  And a further great time at a Wellington Phoenix match with my hosts and mates of Brendan's visiting from Aussie for the match.

They had their own plans the next day, so after brunch we said goodbye and I concluded my visit to NZ in a very appropriate fashion with the Auckland City of Ales beer festival before heading straight to the airport for my return trip to LA.

In a surprisingly chilly Los Angeles I got to spend a few days with my good friend Nick and his son Sebastian. Nick and I spent most of our time playing boardgames, which I won't bore you with the details of, but a few non-gaming highlights included a fabulous lunch at the Mexican seafood restaurant across the street and my bemusing Nick by insisting on taking regular public transport (not even the express bus!) to and from the airport.

Back at LAX it was time to cross another continent and another ocean to be reunited with Sarah, this time in Barcelona, Spain.

Bluebird, Blackbird, Snowbird

The story of our time in the US is going to be a short one, as it was mostly about a family visit with Sarah's dad and step-family and there's only a few things that will be of interest to general readers.

The primary reason we were in Utah in particular was for the skiing.  Sarah only skied a couple of days, and I only went for one. But it was a good one.  Bright blue skies, not too cold and enough terrain that you could ski all day and not cover the same bit of ground twice. It always takes a little while for me to get my feet under me, but once I do I usually manage pretty well (as I'm fond of saying, I'm brave and I have a low centre of gravity).  I even managed my first time skiing in powder okay (though I did fall down in the easy bit right at the end of a run as several familiar faces passed overhead on a lift).

In addition to the skiing there were a few other fun activities we got into:

The Sundance Film Festival was on, so one afternoon we drove the 90 minutes to Park City to check it out and see if we could catch a movie. It proved to be no problem.  Mid-week there were still tickets available for a variety of shows up to a couple of hours before they started. We ended up watching the world premiere of a documentary about Steve Bannon, which was good and the Q&A with the director and producer after, which actually really added to it.

I wasn't a huge fan of Park City itself.  It's jam packed full of overpriced stores selling pointless goods, and there were truly ridiculous numbers of temporary no parking signs and barriers and people directing traffic and telling you when you could cross the street.  And the city owned garages had tripled (or was it quadrupled?) the price of parking during the festival. But the festival itself was awesome. Still mostly volunteer run with a very real sense of community spirit behind it, and screenings taking place all over town (the one we went to was in a very nicely retrofitted room in the library!) We also had some of the best Gin! I've ever enjoyed at the Alpine distillery.

Speaking of drinks, we had a fair bit of Utah beer as well.  It's worth mentioning this so I can comment on Utah's unusual alcohol laws.  There are two types of license to sell alcohol from a shop: a beer license (usually at supermarkets, corner stores, etc.) and a full license (for full on liquor stores).   If you have a beer license you can only sell beer of 4.0%abv or under (same goes for all draft beer). Which many breweries have responded to by taking (for example) their 6% IPA and brewing a version of it with 50% water added at the end, leading to a lot of thin and unsatisfying beers.  Why not just focus on styles that taste good at 4%? Or at least brew low alcohol versions of other styles from scratch with recipes designed for the strength? That said, once we realized this and went to a liquor store to buy beer we had some great full strength beers, including a 10% Imperial stout and a cracking 9.6% double IPA.

I guess none of this should have been terribly surprising in the state that's the centre of the Mormon church.  Speaking of which, we did have a decent look around central Salt Lake City. It's an incredibly clean and nice looking city.  The volunteers at the LDS (Latter Day Saints, what the members of the church call it themselves) holy sites were incredibly friendly and happily took “I'm not religious and not really interested in being proselytised to,” for an answer.  But it also felt rather soulless and boring. Downtown was practically empty (on a Thursday afternoon) with ridiculously wide and pedestrian unfriendly streets.

I've saved what was perhaps my favourite activity for last: a visit to the Hill Air Force Base museum.  It featured USAF (and a few other) aircraft from the second world war on, including some really cool stuff like a B-17 and B-29, P-38 and all seven of the Century Series (a series of supersonic USAF fighter planes from the '60s and '70s) all parked in the same room.  But the clear star of the show for me was the SR-71C Blackbird. Like many tech-nerds and engineers roughly my age, I'd jbeen fascinated by this plane (still the fastest ever built) since I was a kid, and so the chance to walk around and get right up close to one made me feel giddy and childlike again. I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, due also in part to how excited Chris was too, and how enthusiastic the museum volunteer, a USAF veteran who'd worked on bases that the Blackbird flew out of, was about sharing his knowledge and excitement.

Other than all this, of course, there was lots of time spent at home with the family.  Everyone took turns preparing dinners and cocktails for the whole lot (we made a Tex-Mex feast with creamy-rum-infused-Peruvian 100% cacao flavoured hot chocolate).  People did burpees whenever they said the word “delicious”. And everyone spent a good lot of time out in the lovely warm spa pool.

Huge thanks are, of course, due to Chris and Julie for arranging this whole trip and getting everyone together.  After six months on our own it was just wonderful to have seen my family, Raj and all the Sparkses and Clarkses in quick succession!