Free New Zealand Verbal Post Number One

First and foremost, friends and lovers, ignore or politely deal with whatever rambling strange punctuation burrows itself into this post, as I am not at a computer, in the flesh, typing away to you; rather, I yell my post across Lake Dunston to an unnamed (not that he doesn't have a name, just that he won't tell me) and highly-tatooed Kiwi sitting on a dock with a Brilliance 150P3 comp and a large dull gray satellite dish aimed above the mountains. 'Wry and stanley dot com!' I yell to him. 'Ryan Stanley don't work, mate!' he yells back. And on and on.

I've named him Teddy (not me name, not even close).

Greetings from the old gold-mining town of Cromwell, Central Otago, New Zealand. Used to be quite the gold stockpile, the tatooed man tells me (the kid's right) then things slowed down, fruit farming came into play, it was decided by the New Zealander powers that be that the basin was prime real estate for a giant dam. Subsequently, half of the town is underwater, much of the good apple and cherry orchards, a few bridges, maybe two or three dozen homes, half the rugby field. But with this new great lake came awesome water sport tourism and the realization that with all the sunlight hours (bright as a doctor five in the morning till ten thirty at night, real bugger for sleeping) and the lake recycling heat and sunlight, why this would be a great place to grow some dank Pinot Noir. And henceforth and so on.

So here I am, swimming in the lake at night, getting sunburnt, riding my bike around to all the little wineries, tasting bottles in the owners' kitchens and living rooms, trudging around in the cellar, doing a bungee or two, getting sunburnt again (a lie if there ever was one: kid wouldn't do a bungee if the fate of the world depended on him), playing my mandolin on the front porch of my cabin, trying to make friends with the Germans who live next door.

Pictures and the like on their way. Teddy says Hi (Did not, but I do. I do say Hi.)