"Bro, should I go Tramping in Jandals?"

Climbing Mount Tongariro in Thongs (Jandals/Flip-flops) with corned beef and cream cheese sandwiches (nothing to do with AWS)

This has nothing (that I can think of, yet) to do with AWS.

If you get asked one day: "Bro, should I go Tramping in Jandals?" (kiwi slang) here's what you can tell them...


We had Minestrone soup for dinner tonight and I decided to try making it with a can of Corned Beef (this is a certain type of Animal, my son couldn't guess what it was, he guessed rat etc). It's a native NZ animal that became extinct many years ago, they keep digging it up in a preserved state and putting into cans. Yum. The soup was delicious.

This reminded of the only other time that I can recall eating canned Corned beef. When I was about 15 or 16 my Dad and I decided to climb Mount Tongariro in NZ.  This was in the summer, and we were on holidays and I didn't have any other footwear other than Thongs/Jandals/Flip flops. These are NOT suitable mountain climbing foot wear but all I had.  Mt Tongariro can be dangerous at any of time of year and the ground is covered in very rough scoria and scree slopes, boots are advised. My Dad and I made it up as far as one of the alpine lakes (pretty blue or green) before having lunch and returning back down. We had corned beef and cream cheese sandwiches for lunch (I think I must have been very hungry as I still remember this meal).  Other hikers accounts of seeing idiots in Flip flops.

Scoria (contains glassy fragments, (not) great to kick in thongs!)

The lake we reached:

The landscape is a bit what I imagine the moon to be like. Scoria scree slopes everywhere.

Rocks

Maybe I wasn't crazy, there are people who prefer minimal footwear.
And this crazy lady walks up Yosemite in flip flops (I at least had proper shoes on the time I did half-dome).

What are the best hiking shoes? When I was attempting a PhD at UNSW in the 1980's the advice I received from a friend and fellow student who was a real mountain climber (who unfortunately perished during the descent on Makalu. Dr David Hume, listed here with other fatalities) was that Dunlop Volleys (rubber soles, canvas tops) were best for (all) situations. They worked great in the dry and had marvellous grip on most surfaces, and also worked best in the wettest conditions as you were going to get wet feet anyway, and they drained fast. For in-between conditions you could wear proper hiking shoes, but why bother?!

I also recall my Dad telling me that when he was a kid (hard to imagine) he went on a hike around Mount Tarawera (NZ), and ran out of water. All they had were raisins to try and quench their thirst, and he hated raisins (or did ever after, he never ate fruit cake!). Because of his experience we had plenty of food and water for our trip!

In case you couldn't tell, Tarawera is a volcano.

The connection to AWS? Maybe only that you should always have/use the right tools (footwear) for the right job (or you might just be lucky, but probably not always).

Oh, I probably had the luck of youth (and an experience Father with me), this guy wasn't so lucky wearing Thongs on Tongariro (but survived).

PS Kiwis call "Thongs" "Jandals", and Bush walking or Hiking "Tramping"
Should you go Tramping in your Jandals? Nope.

PPS
Apart from Dr David Hume mentioned above there are a few other great fellows that I've known, that I've accidentally outlived (sorry to anyone I've forgotten!)

Frank De Bont (school and Waikato university friend), died in a white water rafting accident in NZ.

Glenn I'Ons (friend from church), died riding his mountain bike.

Paul King and Gavin McIntosh were great mentors when I was involved in the TSCF in the early 1980's (which basically worked by throwing you in the deep end and learning to swim on the job). I can't find anything online about Paul (he was the Auckland, Waikato "Travelling Secretary", and Gavin was the General Secretary, both very encouraging fellows. Gavin encouraged me to spent as many years getting formal theological college tertiary education as I had secular tertiary education, sorry Gavin let you down there, I only managed 1 year theological for 10 years computer science). Paul tried teaching me Greek (I also tried several other times, I'm a failure at dead languages, but it did mean I could read greek street signs in Greece without realising I was! Paul also introduced me to marshmallows in chocolate drinks, very decadent yum).

Paul King: Can't find official death notice online. Paul appeared as a "farmer'" - wearing singlet and gumboots - on the front page of my 3rd year computer science major project report, understanding simple concepts (e.g. Farmer, Cow, etc) with a semantic only approach to natural language understanding.

Gavin McIntosh:  "Gavin McIntosh who died in 1996 was another former missionary teacher who became General Secretary [of TSCF] in 1979"

Unfortunately white water rafting claimed the life of a cousin as well,
Staff Sergeant Andy Warren (died 2005)