Secret Information about the Authors
- Why should our younger readers have all the fun? Here’s secret content for the adults - two stories about Peter and Jake.
- Jake
With an “emergency locator beacon” strapped to my chest and a week’s worth of provisions in our packs, my wife and I set out for a grueling week on the Dusky Track – one of New Zealand’s most remote and rugged outdoor challenges. This trip would be our honeymoon.
We boarded a four-seater seaplane in the small mountain town of Te Anu, and flew on a harrowing 45-minute ride over the jagged snow-capped peaks of Fjordland National Park. We landed in Supper Cove, a small inlet on the Dusky Sound. Our pilot ferried us over to a rocky beach and tossed our packs out of the plane. Before we knew it, he had the plane turned around and the propellers working again. Moments later he was gone.
A five-minute walk from the beach we found a small, rustic hut – one of several spread out along the Dusky Track for the handful of hikers who attempt to make the journey each year. Inside the hut we found a few cots, a potbelly stove, and a note that read: “Fisherman have been here, feel free to help yourself to the food that we left.” Beside the note was a bag of macaroni, hardly a cause for celebration. Unfazed, my wife and I unpacked our bags, and made ourselves breakfast. Then we decided to head back to the Supper Cove to do some fishing. When we returned to the hut, several hours later, we discovered that a band of New Zealanders had arrived, seen the fisherman’s note, seen our unpacked food supplies, and had themselves a feast – under the mistaken impression that our food was actually what the fisherman had left. Most of the eating had been done by a single, ferociously hungry teenager – who alone had eaten several pounds of cheese – and who now looked as if he was on the verge of puking it all up.
So there we were – on our honeymoon – deep in the New Zealand backcountry, a seven day’s hike from civilization, with almost no food. Yikes!- Peter
I think the moral of my story (and of Jake’s story) is: a honeymoon is a dangerous thing. Be very careful.
It was July 2001, and I had just gotten married to Nancy Weinsier in Birmingham, Alabama. The heat was as oppressive as the mosquitoes, but I was in love and the long-awaited wedding had just taken place. Our parents, family and friends had gathered in a beautiful antebellum home for the wedding. The actual event went off without a hitch, and the next day, we drove off towards Memphis in my parent’s car, which they had let us borrow and which was lovingly adorned by my brother and sister with “Just Married” signs. Our honeymoon would be a leisurely road trip going up the Great River Road, which meanders right next to the Mississippi River from the headwaters in Minnesota to the enormous delta in Louisiana. Afterwards, Nancy was coming to join me in Haiti, so all of her life-long possessions were stuffed in the car along with our travel suitcases.
I had been driving since we left Birmingham, but after a wonderful night in Memphis, we woke, ate ice cream for breakfast and Nancy took over the wheel as we headed to Dyersburg, Tennessee. Then the rain started, a pickup truck turned in front of us and…CRASH!
We were OK, except that my neck really hurt. It started to rain even harder. The ambulance came, along with the police who gave us a ticket. Our car was towed to the nearest junkyard and Nancy and I rode in the ambulance to the local hospital where I lay on an uncomfortable backboard for five hours until they gave me an X-ray and said nothing was wrong.
We took a taxi to a local chain hotel. There, we discovered that there was no easy way to leave the city. In fact, the only way to get to Chicago outside of buying a car and driving there was to take an Amtrak train that arrived in Newburn, a town about 30 miles away, at 3 in the morning. It wasn’t Dyersburg – it was Dire-sburg.
Days 2, 3 and 4 of our honeymoon were spent walking to and from the hotel to the local Walmart, where I would stagger along the aisles looking for heating pads and toothpaste. We also took a cab out to the junkyard where our honeymoon car sat forlornly on cement blocks, its “Just Married” sign drooping and wet. Finally, at 2 am on Day 4 in Dire-sburg, we took our last cab, filled it with all of Nancy’s worldly possessions, my suitcase, and a heating pad, and drove off to the Newburn train station…