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DINNER ON THE BACK DECK

This morning's petrol price at BP station down the road from the wilderness house was NZ$1.829 per litre!
As 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres that translates to NZ$6.92 per US gallon of petrol. At the current exchange rate that is equal to US$4.92 for a gallon of gas. The TV news tonight reported that the price per litre down south was NZ$1.859 ... I'm not kidding!

Welcome to WWW - Wilderness Wally's World - A place where one can read a story about Americana or discover information on the many people and places of interest in beautiful New Zealand.

Click here to read more at Wally's Front Porch - Woman, 101, grows horn? ... I'm not kidding!

Click Here for Pot Luck - 9oz Miracle: World's Smallest Ever Baby Boy Doing fine ... And Dope caught trying to snort amphetamines off the top of patrol car!

Lord, please keep Your arm around my shoulders and Your hand over my mouth.

Enough politics, now for something important!
Crash caused by driver shaving bikini line
A car crash in Florida is being blamed on the fact that the driver was attempting to shave her bikini line at the wheel. (That should have read 'while at the wheel' but the mental image was interesting for a moment.)

Trooper Gary Dunick says the 37-year-old woman was attempting to shave her pubic hair, while her ex-husband held the wheel. Her car then crashed into the back of a pickup truck, injuring two women, reports the Key West Citizen.

"She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit," Trooper Dunick said.

"If I wasn't there, I wouldn't have believed it. About 10 years ago I stopped a guy in the exact same spot who had three or four syringes sticking out of his arm. "It was just surreal and I thought, 'Nothing will ever beat this'. Well, this takes it."

Two female passengers in the pickup truck were treated for minor injuries following the crash in Cudjoe Key.

To make matters worse, police said the woman motorist has been banned from driving for five years the day before the crash for driving under the influence.

She now faces charges of driving with a revoked license, reckless driving, driving with no insurance, and of leaving the scene of a wreck with injuries. Besides that, felony stupid charges should be laid for doing all that while driving with her ex-husband to meet a boyfriend.
Whatever!

Dog adrift on ice saved from Baltic Sea - Link to story of Dog's Best Friend coming to the rescue

In the US, 'everyone' is up in arms over the price of Chicken wings! That's right, you might say chicken wings are flying sky-high! I wouldn't but you might.
Never-the-less, The primary factor driving up wing prices is the growing number of restaurants, including many national chains, that are adding wings to their offerings, says Richard Lobb, spokesman for the Washington-based chicken industry trade group the National Chicken Council. (I'm not kidding!)

According to the Agriculture Department, the average wholesale price of wings in 2009 was $1.47 a pound, up 39% from 2008 and the highest it has been, adjusted for inflation, since the mid-1970s.
By the way, here in New Zealand we're paying around NZ$3.50 a pound at the retail level.

Sunday 7 March 2010
Torrential rains and gigantic hailstones have lashed Australia, flooding the city of Melbourne and bursting riverbanks further north.
Melbourne was hit by a thunderstorm which drenched the city with 19mm of rain in the first 18 minutes. Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Wasyl Drosdowsky said the hail that hit in one suburban area was up to 10 centimetres (four inches) in diameter.

"(It was) tennis ball size roughly," he said. "As far as we can tell, that's close to the biggest hail we've seen in Melbourne."

The Australian Weather Bureau has issued flood warnings for parts of the state of Victoria but the ferocity of the storm, which has been likened to a "mini-cyclone", has taken many by surprise.

... and then in Queensland:
ST GEORGE - Once-in-a-century flooding has caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage in southwest Queensland, with authorities focusing on hard-hit communities after the town of St George escaped the worst.

St George, the township at the centre of one of the state's major cotton-growing regions, was spared a potentially ruinous river-level peak of 14m yesterday. But the record-breaking flooding is causing problems for the townships of Thallon, Bollon and Dirranbandi, south of St George.

The water has breached the levee at the Moonie River at Thallon, and road access to all three regional communities has been cut off. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the damage bill from the flooding was expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cheaper 'cheapest' flight upsets tourist - Shop before you buy! - Link here to NZ Herald

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard practice'

In a related story:
STOCKHOLM – Dozens of ships including a passenger ferry with nearly 1,000 people on board were trapped Friday in heavy pack ice in the Baltic Sea off Sweden's east coast, officials said.

Ice breakers were trying to free the ferry Amorella and two cargo ships stuck at the edge of an archipelago northeast of Stockholm, while rescue helicopters and military hovercraft were on standby to evacuate passengers if needed. Gale-force winds were hampering the effort, the Swedish Maritime Administration said.

"As soon as they break the ice, it freezes over again," sea rescue spokesman Peter Lindquist said. He said no one was hurt and there were no immediate plans to evacuate the ships.

Jeff Foxworthy on Illinois - Internal Link Here

Why do we drive on different sides of the road - Internal Link Here

Seats on a Plane, How to Score The Best Ones-Link Here

Health care in the paradise of Cuba ... Link to Wikipedia here. "... Challenges include relatively low pay of doctors (physicians are paid only 15 dollars a month, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and frequent absence of essential drugs. Cubans often rely on 'sociolismo' and corruption."

In the midst of all this, a story of HOPE and CHANGE - Mystical' stone puts plumber on new path ... Well, more hope and change than we've seen of late anyway!
A Polish plumber has become a faith healer after finding a 'mystical' stone while digging up drains under his house.

Jacek Slominski has been swamped by demands from hundreds of patients since he pulled the stone from the earth where it had lain undisturbed for hundreds of years.

"It has a huge Z carved into it and as soon as I touched it I felt this tremendous energy coming from it," he said.

"I've had a bad back for years but all of a sudden all the pain left me and never returned," he added at his home in Bialystok.

Now Mr Slominski has become a full time healer and claims that patients travel hundreds of miles just to touch his healing stone. "I don't understand it but it works and it's better than fixing broken toilets," he said.

A while back we made one of our regular pilgrimages to Martha's Backyard in Mt Wellington to stock up on things American. I suppose those who live outside the Auckland area would just laugh at our description of 'challenging long treks' in the quest for root beer, Libby's pumpkin pie mix, wheat thins, Triscuits and Cheez-Its.

You must remember, we are out here in the wop-wops of Whangaparaoa and we must navigate our way across the 'big smoke' of Auckland.

Never the less, it is a matter of priorities, our stash of Kool-Aid, Wish Bone chunky blue cheese dressing, Jell-O, Bisquick and Jack Daniels hickory brown sugar barbecue sauce was getting dangerously low. Mrs Wilderness found something new on the shelf, a single serve mini bag of Orville Redenbacher's pop corn!

If, somehow, you have not heard of Martha's Backyard oasis, it is located at
114 Lunn Ave, Mt Wellington, Auckland – Tel:09 570 7976
Shop hours:
Mon-Fri 10am-5pm
Sat & Sun 10am-4pm

PS - No, we don't make anything out of this. I just know there are times when a root beer float is soooo important.

Joe writes: "Hiya, does anyone know where I might be able to purchase some 'Diet Rite' soda from?? That or Botannicals Ice?"
(If you have an answer for Joe let me know with comment or e-mail and I'll pass it along.)
Sorry Joe, Diet Rite doesn't seem to be on the shelf in NZ. I 'still' don't know what Botannicals Ice is!

Leslie writes: ... might you also know where i can find Hersheys choc chips???
(Mrs Wilderness says she has seen them at Woolies/Foodtown in the past. I have done a piece on the Hershey's importers in NZ in the General Store (See Table of Contents on left) Wilson Consumer Products bring some Hershey's products into New Zealand but not a complete range.

Wish you were here?
Anyone who promised to visit friends or relatives in New Zealand and just never seemed to get 'a round toit' have missed one of the best summers this country has experienced in a long, long time. Of course this is just my opinion but it seems to be shared by a lot of people we know.

By all measures I know, like the number of days when an outdoor barbecue was a good choice or, the number of times a cold beer was the better option over a sauvignon blanc this has been one great summer.

Of course it isn't over yet but you had better hurry. There are a couple of flights a day from almost everywhere this is read.

Next Time You Think You Are Having a Bad Day ...
MARJAH, Afghanistan — Thousands of NATO and Afghan security forces encountered pockets of resistance and a fierce sandstorm Sunday as they pushed deeper into Marjah, a Taliban stronghold and linchpin of the militants' logistical and opium-smuggling network in Helmand province.

In addition to the storm — which cut visibility to just a few feet — coalition forces faced sniper fire as they moved through the town of 80,000 people. Marines and Afghan troops used metal detectors and sniffer dogs, searching compound to compound for explosives rigged to explode. Blasts from controlled detonations could be heard about every 10 minutes north of Marjah.

Click on 'Miscellaneous' in the Table of Contents to expand and find US Contacts In New Zealand and other items.

Update for Non-U.S. citizens entering the U.S.
As of April 30, 2010 ALL visa applicants are required to fill in the online application form (DS-160) Link Here. Once completed, the information in the DS-160 will be electronically transmitted. The applicant must then print the confirmation page that includes some biographical information and a bar code confirmation number. Applicants must bring the DS-160 Confirmation Page to their interview. http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/forms/forms_4230.html Link Here

Click to view some of our photos of New Zealand As usual, a work in progress.

Come back often, have fun, keep in touch...
Mr and Mrs W-W