Wilburt the campylobacter

Wilburt the campylobacter is my dear friend that I made I Fiji and who traveled with me in New Zealand for quite some time. He and I met on the beach right after I refused to pay for water at my resort and drank the brackish staff water instead. Wilburt soon discovered that my GI tract was a quite cozy environment, and therefore made himself at home.

Wilburt was shy at first, and only chirped up with low fevers and general weakness . However, a 20+ km day of grueling hiking at the Tongariro Crossing gave him just the confidence booster he needed to speak up and hold his own. Wilburt loved climbing among the volcanoes, and thought that the emerald green crater lakes were some of the prettiest he’d ever seen. These beautiful sights strengthened his soul and his will to secure his position in such an adventurous host’s body. He quickly multiplied into many little Wilburts and made himself known in a very real and uncomfortable way. Philip was a dear and carried our pack during the entire eight hour hike, but we still had to stop every twenty minutes or so for me to double over and groan in pain.

Sadly, Wilburt’s enthusiasm was beginning to get on my nerves, and it became evident that we could no longer be friends. Try not to pity him - Wilburt meaningful existence. It's not every campylobacter that gets to go skydiving or roll down a hill in a giant inflatable plastic ball. He accompanied me on quite a few crazy adventures, but the time eventually came when we had to say goodbye. I’ll always remember him with fondness ,but hope that we never meet again.

*sidenote: Tests from the hospital eventually showed that Wilburt was not actually a campylobacter, but rather a nasty GI bug of another sort. However, the name had already stuck, so "Wilburt the campylobacter" it will remain.

What a way to celebrate

What a better way to celebrate an engagement than to throw yourself off of a suspended platform into a deep gorge? Bungee jumping at the Nevis Highwire was a pee-in-your-pants experience that I'll never forget, but will probably never repeat. With regards to statistics, the drive out to the jump site was probably more of a risk than the actual jump, but no one wants to read stories or see pictures of the bus, so I'll stick to describing my "perfectly safe" adventure. The bungee jump actually begins with a traverse over to a platform house suspended across a deep canyon. Here we buckled up,stared through the glass floor at the river below, and each patiently waited our turn to take the big leap. 134 meters is a long way down, and considering that the cords stretches to a length of 124 meters, you can imagine how short 10 meters can feel when you're hurtling headfirst toward a seemingly impending death. Notice my hand gripping the nice jump-coach's hand in the second picture and you'll get a sense of the sheer terror I felt as I scooted out to the edge. But thankfully my bungee bungeed and I foiled death once more, living to tell the tale and giving my parents even more reasons to pray for me at night.

The beginning of the story of the Storeys

Leave it to me to get engaged and then disappear into the wilderness without leaving the story or pictures. Here’s my attempt at reconciliation to those I’ve left in the dark:

On a bright sunny afternoon in the beatiful lakeside city of Queenstown, Philip and I were quite busy making plans for our upcoming two week vacation in Fjordland on the south island of New Zealand. In typical Carmen fashion, I was frantically flipping through guidebooks and huffing at the prospect of having to walk around the streets in search of a payphone to make our reservations. Always quick with a solution, Philip assured me that we had passed a phone near St. Joseph’s Church, a beautiful quaint chapel up on the hill. It wasn’t until we made it to the steps of the chapel that I looked up from my guidebooks and noticed Philip’s suspicious behavior. Overlooking Lake Wakatipu, with the summit of Mount Te Tapu-nui behind him, he asked me to marry him and I said yes.

There's the story in a nutshell, though details, pictures, and celebratory squeals are all options for those of you I haven't been in touch with yet. We're incredibly excited and are looking forward to a wonderful wedding in May of 2008!