The Pigorilla comes to town.

1. 

 

Pigorilla Power!

 

While trawling the depths of my murky brain for a name for my collection of thoughts and stories, I was thinking how nice it would be to have the title from the end of the collection of stories. Something like “Once were warriors” which made no plausible grammatical sense until at the end of the movie, the lead actress said, “Our people, we too, once were warriors”, at which point it all fell into place. It was a brilliant film set very close to where I am here in Auckland. Interestingly enough, she used to drink in the pub I was in last night (while staying with my friends Aaron and Nigel) in Grey Lynn, a lovely little suburb of Auckland. In any event, since I have no end of the book in mind, and no idea where I’m going with it and only a faint recollection of where I’ve been, I opted out of that “title from the end “option and went for Pigorilla Power! instead.

I’ve never been too impressed with my fellow soldiers in my platoon for making the effort to bestow the name of Pigorilla upon me. The knowledge that it was a combination of the  fact that I looked very much like a pig (a democratically devised fact with a fairness that only a soldier can conceive) and walked like a gorilla (I will concede to the slight monkey-like gait) made it even harder to accept with a gracious smile. Perhaps some of the slightly thicker layers of skin that I generated as a result of it have helped me plough through some of the tougher times since then.

Today is our last day of five in Auckland after limping into port with a broken drive bearing which is quite an important part of making the ship go forward in the water. It now appears to be fixed and we’ll be heading off towards Honolulu this evening for eight very unforgiving sea days that will take us to the brink of a heightened state of cabin fever. At least we don’t have to row there.

I am preparing for the trip by giving a couple of free seminars this afternoon to attract people into my workshops during the next leg to San Francisco, but more of that later.