Still Waiting to Run at “Home”

Originally posted on November 28, 2014, by cruisingrunner

I’ve been silent for a while, because, well, I haven’t been running in a while. Tonga is over a thousand miles behind us, and we are quietly at anchor in beautiful, warm, and sunny Opua, New Zealand. Scratch that. It’s definitely beautiful, but at least today it’s certainly not warm and sunny. It’s gray and cold and drizzly, and you might think I’m missing the tropics right about now, but surprisingly I’m not. During the (mostly benign) ocean passage, I watched the air temperature slowly tick down, and instead of mourning the loss of the warm weather we’ve grown so accustomed to, I found myself excited for the change. And as we neared land, I didn’t have my usual tenseness over arriving somewhere new. There was a sense of calm, and this may sound a bit corny, but it felt like we were going home. This feeling must have been coming from very subtle observations, almost subconscious on my part. I’m thinking at that point it must have been mostly weather related and the fact I was wearing clothes that I would wear at home. Comfortable clothes, like my favorite Lucy sweatpants and my Uggs. As we got even closer and entered the Bay of Islands, the smell of the land was even familiar. Brenden said it smelled like Papa and Nana’s house. Tim said it smelled like the shrubs at Twenty-Nine Palms. We arrived in Opua and tied up to the Q-dock just before midnight, and when I woke in the morning and surveyed our surroundings while sitting in the cockpit drinking my coffee, I felt like we could be sitting somewhere in Central or Northern California (it is too green to be compared to Southern California) and the nippiness of the morning air reminded me of mornings drinking my coffee in the cockpit while we were still in Marina del Rey.

Then, the clearing in process began, and wow, were we quickly reminded that we were back in a first world country. I LOVED Tonga, and I loved the people of Tonga, so I don’t make this statement with any sort of negative judgment or a sense of superiority, I simply say it matter of factly. Because the difference was stark. The process was efficient, thorough, and professional. They arrived promptly. No one asked us for anything. They brought us forms to fill out and then came back (they didn’t sit there and stare at us while we filled them out). They processed nine boats in about 2 hours. I was stunned.

There are other obvious similarities between New Zealand and home, like the language of course, that contribute to my comfort level. But I don’t mean to imply that everything is the same, that would be unfair to New Zealand. It’s a unique place, with it’s own history and culture. They call French Fries “Chips” after all.

I’ve been looking forward to running here, but for now I still wait. When the rain stops the wind is supposed to pick up and blow hard for a few days. But we’ll be here the entire cyclone season, so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to run comfortably in my leggings and long sleeved technical shirts. And I’m sure eventually I’ll be sick of home and be ready for more adventures in less familiar places again.

-D.