13 February 2011

220 Km in Lucy

We drove over one hundred miles today to see a movie.  This is both a true and false statement.  True that we drove that far and true that we saw a movie (127 Hours – gruesome yet very well done) but the implication that our sole purpose for driving that far was to see a show isn’t exactly true.  We also were escaping Hanmer Springs.

We haven’t discussed Hanmer Springs in our blog yet, even though we spent the past three days there, primarily because of the malaise we wrote of yesterday.  The feeling of being Done and a little bit depressed at feeling so Done and then feeling guilty for feeling so Done and then trying to rally out of the Done-ness and then falling right back down off that rallying high because of being so Done but not wanting to be Done and trying hard to not think too much about the Done-ness or talk too much about the Done-ness and just sit with being Done and acknowledge that it’s okay to feel Done and then eat another cookie.

So don’t take our blog silence about Hanmer Springs the wrong way.  It’s a great destination for a weekend trip away from Christchurch, one we would recommend for anyone interested in doing a little hiking, a little mountain biking, and a little relaxing in the town spa.  We enjoyed dodging between beech trees and trying to manage that narrow-culvert-crossing-followed-by-a-steep-uphill-with-corner on well-signed, easy, single-track trails (Gina navigating that tricky culvert, I, narrowly missed the tree at the top – twice).  We enjoyed hiking up Conical Hill for its views over the charming town and surrounding hillsides.  We enjoyed watching an old movie on the one channel our cabin TV could receive.  And we enjoyed polishing off that liter of Hokey Pokey ice cream.  Very enjoyable, that Hanmer Springs.  Probably even more so if we hadn’t felt so Done.