Hike A Virgin

This morning we awoke to two things. One was the unparalleled hellish noise of a cat throwing up a hairball just outside the bedroom. The other was the breaking news that a 19 year old Kiwi lass has sold her virginity for 45,000 Hobbit dollars in order to finance her education/sexual health treatment. There was much speculation that this could have been a promotional gimmick for the website where it was apparently advertised, whether or not the virginity carries a guarantee of authenticity and general discussion about the precedent this could set.
The general upshot of the people calling in to discuss was that they were for rather than against it, since it is her body and her commodity. Money may not be able to buy you love, but it can buy you sex and that's close enough for most Kiwi blokes it seems.

We got over to Rangitoto a few weeks back, which is a recent (geologically speaking) addition to the islands around Auckland as it rose from the sea about 600 years ago scaring the bejeezus out of the local Maori tribe who named it "Bloody Sky". A dormant volcano covered in black lava and with no water facilities once you leave the safety of the harbour really is an excellent choice when it is 34 degrees blazing sunshine. It could only be worse if it were erupting fiery arseholes onto a floor covered in white hot shards of glass.
By the time we reached the top, the ice blocks in the pack I was donkeying up there had melted, but the pack-less wife was happy to accept that her ice tea and brie were sufficiently chilled to be consumable. Had this not been the case it would have been my ass plugging the lava in the crater.
Anyway, the island is considered a protected reserve so animals aren't invited along for day trips and they ask you to search your bags for mice, rats, possums, cats, dogs and el chupacabra. You know, just in case you pack one instead of sun cream. We've all done it.
At night, hunters and specially trained dogs patrol the lava flows and young forests while traps have been set around the most likely inhabitable areas and baited poison is occasionally dropped from aircraft to kill off anything that might stumble upon it.
I found out later that a solitary cat has been seen on the island, hence the rather extreme man, er, moghunt.
I don't think the US Special Forces tried this hard to get Bin Laden.

As a final point, we have been tuned into a new station of a morning. It's called The Rock. We first saw it advertised at Big Day Out with posters saying "All other radio stations are shit" and "You lucky little f*ckers!" so thought we'd give it a listen to see what all the fuss is about. Suffice to say it is aimed at a very specific audience, with adverts for a CD compilation of The Best Drinking Songs In The World...Ever (followed by a loud belch), rampant sexism as well as effing and jeffing throughout. I bet the virgin buyer is a regular listener.