Why a Toaster?

Thought i'd fire off another quick New Zealand post while i'm waiting for some files to back up before i can leave school for the night. I tell you what, i bitch about not getting enough sleep all the time but today when i say i hardly slept at all last night, i mean it, and it's almost midnight again. So this one might be a little less coherent than most.

On our way to Mount Nguaruhoe, better known as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies, we stopped in a quaint little town called National Park Village for gas. While we were filling up at the gas station, we decided that we were getting hungry, and it might be a good idea to have a meal before ascending a volcano. So while Amanda pumped the gas and Alyssa did...well, something or another, i ventured into the convenience store to get directions to a restaurant.

The two clerks were both busy when i entered, so i wandered around for a bit. It was a rather large convenience store, especially for a small town in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. Probably it was the town's grocery store as well. Finally a register opened up, so i approached the clerk and made my inquiry.

"You need to talk to this guy," she said, pointing at the other clerk, whose register had freed up in the time it took me to ask my question. He was facing the other direction when i slid over in his direction, but he was an observant one.

He turned around, looked me right in the eye, and said, "Why a toaster?"

I was taken completely off guard and at first i was highly confused, like, what is this guy trying to say, but after thinking about it for a moment i realized that he'd spotted the fresh ink on the back of my left leg. Only a couple weeks before we left for New Zealand, the three of us as well as Amanda's mom had gone out and gotten tattoos. Mine was a toaster.

I laughed a little and explained the origins of the toaster. Though he didn't completely understand, he accepted it. Then he asked, "Where are you guys from?"

"Oh, Wisconsin, if you know where that is," i responded.

"OOOOHHHH, the BIG CHEESE," he said with much gusto.

"Ah, so you DO know about Wisconsin!"

"Yeah!" he confirmed enthusiastically. "A couple of summers ago, me and two of my buddies went up to Wisconsin, filled a boat with beer, and floated down the river for three days!"

I laughed out loud. "That's a very Wisconsin thing to do," i said.

He directed me to a decent restaurant nearby, where Alyssa and i got drunk, then we climbed a volcano, and i pushed her off.