Ryan and the Jets

For a dude who insisted on over-the-top glam, Elton John got it right when he talked about country comfort. There are plenty of ripe veggies in the garden (my pumpkin soup experiment wasn't technically good, but it wasn't bad, either), fresh eggs from the chooks, and wide expanses of flat green fields in the presence of the mountains to take the dogs for a walk. Once you get a steady gush of smoke coming out of the chimney, it's a pretty deadly spot to relax.

Not that it's completely dull, just the same. Somewhere between 200 and 300 sheep got in the wrong paddock the other day, so the herding operation got spread out over a few of us on foot and one in the jeep. Farm animals don't like anything behind them, so you have to contain them in a cluster and cover the sides in order to move them as a mass of wool and mutton. At one point, I nearly had a portion of the group directed towards the gate when a tractor kicking up dust on the road made them skittish and undid everything. Patience is a virtue, and flipping out and yelling, “Alright, #$&@ you, I can't wait to eat you!” at the thump-thump-thump of a couple hundred sheep zooming in the opposite direction isn't exactly helpful.

Two hours later, we got them back in the right field. A few hours after that, we found out they were allowed to be in the second field after all. Stupid sheep.

It's the first day of winter today, which is a weird thing to wrap my Northern Hemisphere brain around. The weather hasn't turned just yet – myself, Colm, and the boys went to Christchurch yesterday, to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, a collection of military doohickeys including a hangar full of aircraft. We're talking 28 legitimate planes, from missile-carrying Skyhawks and a Bell UH-1H Iroquois that looks like what you'd see in 'Nam, to the Canadian-made Antarctic exploration craft . . . called the Beaver. Of course it is.

This morning, I came back to Methven, and the lot of us headed to the Rakaia Gorge. Crammed into the backseat of an SUV, between two carseats and with a dog on my knees, I figured we were only missing Granny on the roof in her rocking chair.

I've said that Kiwis are innovative when it comes to adventure tourism-esque things, whether it's bungy jumping or zorbing – well, add jetboats to that awesome list. Most motorized boats need a propeller at the back of the vessel to power the thing, which works great most of the time. But if you're on a shallow, ribbon river where your outboard motor would dig right into the rocky bottom, you're sunk. So, back in the '50s, Bill Hamilton came up with the system that would eventually get him knighted – his newfangled jetboats drew water up through a pump and shot it out the back, providing a thrust that could skirt over ankle-deep water.

That's the practical side of jetboats. The 360-degree turns and careening near sheer rock walls at 70 km an hour is just the Kiwi adventure spirit. And Blair, the guy in charge of this whole Discovery Jet ordeal, epitomizes that spirit – not just in his steering of the boat through the canyon, but in the side trips he offers: helicopter tours, archery, fishing, and hunting (A Thar looks like a mystical creature, and if you can't get a date for the prom, just go up the mountains and come back with one of these over your shoulders. I wish I thought of that when I was 15).

There's supposed to be a bout of nasty wet weather coming in over the mountains soon, but the sun was breaking through the slightly overcast sky and the wind wasn't even as strong as we thought it might be. About a dozen of us plunked into the back of the bright yellow jetboat, and off we went over water the colour of sapphires, frothing at the sides as we mounted the turns and built up speed.

From the open valley beneath the bridge, the gorge walls soon engulfed the river. Don't look up too far, because the effect can be a bit dizzying – especially once Blair's hand did a pirouette in the air, indicating a full circle turn was coming.

There's a tender age window between getting a driver's license and discovering the liquor cabinet when Friday nights just driving around town are awesome Friday nights. One of my favourite memories of that sort is this one night we crammed into my buddy's Toyoto Echo and tried to do handbrake turns on the parking lot of Pasadena Beach – it's a great memory, because we sucked at it. I'm pretty sure we just braked, and that coming to a full stop at a stop sign is more of a rush. I thought of that night again today – this is what we were trying to do all along.

Even when the adrenaline wasn't doing a somersault with your body, the weaving cruise through the rocky gorge and out to the open space before the mountains was a pretty sweet way to travel. The jetboat essentially just skims the surface of the water, drifting around with a mind of its own (not literally, you're in better hands than the poor bastards who rode around in Christine). The wind was whipping and the spray was flying, but that's all part of the ride – hang on around those curves.

There are a bunch of places to take a jetboat ride in New Zealand, but after you've been surrounded by snow-capped peaks and vertical cliffs battered by flood waters, you'd be hard-pressed to find somewhere nicer to kill the throttle and spin around in place.

That's one more Kiwi experience to check off my list. I'm going to be the real deal when I get back to Canada, sweet as.

Back on shore, I got another adrenaline rush, of a different sort altogether – I thought it would be a good idea to take a dog and two kids under the age of five to the playground on my own, idiot that I am. In between looking seventeen different directions anytime we were within 100 feet of an intersection, one of the wee ones picked up a discarded beer bottle to throw into a rubbish bin, which was a totally noble gesture, but all I could think was, “Dear God, we better find a bin soon, before someone drives by and calls the police on me.”

Jetboating is much less stressful than having to be a responsible adult. And, once the weather forecast hints at sun on the fickle West Coast, I just might be able to tell you how jumping out of a plane from 12,000 feet compares to both. I have a feeling growing up might still be harder.

Cheers,

rb