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On Sunday, 15 April, Dakin flew to New Zealand. For three days, Dakin and Jamie drove away from Auckland toward Wellington, where they would see Richard Buckner play at the San Francisco Bathhouse. The journey, while an adventure, is but a prelude.


Day One


I am exhausted. It takes 9 hours to drive from Wellington to Auckland, and I've done it with as few stops as possible. I just wanted to get there, check in to my hotel, and go to a pub. It was 9:00am when I left Wellington, and it was getting dark when I hit the Auckland motorway at 6:00pm. Everything was going relatively smoothly, so I was able to reflect when I finally sat down with a pint of Guinness at a small Irish pub on Victoria Street.


The last time I saw Dakin was in 2001. Before he moved to Seattle we spent the hours dreaming to life record label schemes (this led to the birth of Duck and Cover), drinking too much, and experiencing the odd brush with death here and there. Too often we promise each other we won't smoke before meeting, but end up running to the nearest gas station to buy a pack of Camels. This latest encounter promised to be no different.


Though between various emails Dakin and I swore (pinky swore, in fact) that no cigarettes would grace our fingers, not one hour after stepping out of the hotel, I walked into a Superette and put down a tenner for a pack of Lucky Strikes. Sitting with my pint and watching a rainy Saturday night gear up, I lit my first cigarette in three years and hoped to myself that the ensuing week would not destroy me.


Upon finishing my cigarette, I looked for an ashtray (the fact that I didn't just flick my butt into the gutter betrays how unaccustomed I had become to the smoker's world). There on the wall of the covered patio was a hollow tin box, and printed on its face was advertising for advertisers. Something to the effect of "advertise here," but using a homonym pun that just wouldn't work outside of New Zealand / Australia. In centre-aligned layout, four words cascaded down the page: hare, hair, hear, here.


Subtle differences such as these for me make the horizons in an ever-shrinking world just a little bit broader.

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