by Jimi Hunt
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ll sort it.’
‘Wow. Okay.’
‘When is this thing?’
‘Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? It’s on Friday. This Friday.’
Luke talked to Simon, explained what was going on, and Simon was in. So I now had both a film and production company on board, and they both had experience with international television shows, documentaries and ads. And they were so keen to help they were prepared to do it for free. I couldn’t believe my luck. This was the best news I possibly could have received at the time.
There was one problem. Three days wasn’t going to be enough time for them to get everything sorted. They asked if I could delay the start for a week. I didn’t want to because I was ready to go, but for this opportunity I was prepared to put it off for a week.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL
By now you’ve worked out I’m not really a planner. I had always thought that I’d take my Lilo, get in the river, paddle, get out and that would be that. Fortunately for me, Rachel, Fritha and Jess are a little more details oriented. They knew I needed help, I needed maps, I needed support and I needed a lot of things that hadn’t been sorted.
‘What do I need maps for?’ I asked. ‘Surely I just follow the river!’ I had made a valid point, but they pointed out I really needed to figure out how far I could go each day, where I would stay each night, where they could get access to the river to deliver food to me, and so on . . .
I had to admit that all their points were better than mine. They were right. I needed a support crew, including someone to drive the support vehicle and someone to kayak with me. I had tried to find people but to no avail. Then my crew did something that I still to this day find amazing. They started up a roster showing when they would all take annual leave to come and cover me for various days, and they invited others to add their names to the roster. They’d worked out it was going to take at least two weeks, and with two people per day including the changeovers, I needed about 40 days’ worth of people. The roster was soon about 50 per cent full with all my friends, and I was so grateful to the people who had put their names on it, but we were a long way short of a full crew.
I had other problems too. People were starting to freak out. Dan and Eliza had contacted both Water Safety NZ and Life Saving NZ trying to get some help and advice. I hadn’t really wanted to talk to either organisation. Other people were much more concerned for my safety than I was, but I didn’t mind them showing concern. That was until both organisations sent back their replies. Neither of them pulled any punches. Both pretty much called me an idiot for the following reasons: 63 per cent of drownings occur in rivers; loads of people had died on the Waikato River; there are obstacles along the river, including rapids and sunken trees that create whirlpools and suck you down, never to be seen again.
I wasn’t moved. People drowned in the Waikato because they did silly things, like trying to swim across it while blind drunk. I would be wearing a lifejacket—thanks again, Gavin—and I would be travelling on a flotation device and I can swim. I knew I would be fine, but nobody else seemed to be thinking the same way.
Everyone started to panic, and people started coming to me—individually, in groups, by email—saying they were afraid for my safety. They thought I didn’t know the river well enough and they were afraid about all the things written in the two reports.
Then, the Saturday before we were due to head south to begin the adventure, I started feeling sick—depressed sick. I felt as if something bad was going to happen. I was getting knots in my stomach and I didn’t want to go out. People kept going on at me with concerns for my safety. But I knew I was going, no matter what. Then Dan sent an email to my team of supporters. It basically said that everyone was concerned for my safety and we needed to complete a list of safety things required for me to be able to go. Fritha replied to all, echoing what Dan had said and going even further to say that there were ‘SERIOUS concerns’. I know Fritha and the others were concerned about my wellbeing, but I wasn’t feeling great and my reply to all showed that:
Anyone that doesn’t want to help anymore can step away whenever they like. I am going down the river on Friday. People whose job is ‘safety’ are overly cautious. Of course this is not ‘safe’. It never has been. It’s about weighing up the risks. There is no budget. There is no money. And I am broke. I’ve talked to a few people who know the river and they have zero concerns about the river after day two. I have a proper kayaker on the first days and a boat. And at the moment all I have is people yelling at me that this is unsafe a week before I leave. No one bothered to bring up their concerns months ago. All I hear is problems. Someone give me some solutions.
I was angry and after I calmed down I felt bad that I had sent my friends such a blunt message. After all, they were just trying to help me. I couldn’t take it back though. The email had been sent. Thanks go out to Rachel, ever the diplomat, who sent us all one of the loveliest emails I’ve ever received, which started like this:
Fritha I think what Jimi meant to say goes something like the following—Hi loving and concerned support crew I have taken on board your serious concerns and after much deliberation I would like to say thanks for being concerned for my safety I understand you may have some worries about my mission but it was never meant to be a safe mission, there is an element of danger yes. I take full responsibility for this and I have thought it through and done my own research. I don’t mean to put anyone in a difficult position so I am open to suggestions of what more we can arrange between now and the weekend to ease everyone’s mind on the matter bearing in mind we have a very limited budget and time constraints.
Rachel was right, of course. That is exactly what I meant to write.
However, the more pressing problem for me at the time was trying to find someone to be on the water with me at all times, for safety. I needed a kayaker on the water with me and a support person who could drive a manual bus following the river as closely as possible at all times. The roster was still only half full. No one could figure out how to plug the gaps. So I did what I do best: I made an ad. I posted it on the Lilo Facebook page and my personal page. I asked people to share it, and I sent it to George FM, The Rock FM and anyone else I could think of who hadn’t already committed time and energy to making the adventure real. There was a picture of me in my Lilo uniform and the following text:
Want to have the adventure of your life—with this idiot?
Basically we’re looking for someone to come help out on the Lilo adventure.
What the hell am I talking about? Check Facebook.com/ lilothewaikato for details.
We will need you to be free from Tuesday Feb 7th– Saturday Feb 18th.
You need to be aged 18–78, Male or Female and not smell too much.
Preferably be a 28yo female Canadian who smells like maple syrup. But we won’t be picky.
You need to be able to drive a manual van & have a valid driver’s licence.
Be awesome.
Be competent enough to work a video camera.
Be awesome.
The post was shared over 60 times. I sat back and waited for the applicants to roll in. I only got one. His name was Michiel. I called him up and asked if he could come in for an interview. Thirty minutes later he was sitting in my office. He was keen. Super keen. He went to CrossFit New-market and had read about Lilo on a friend’s Facebook page. He was a keen kayaker, he could drive a manual, he had no commitments and he wanted in. He wanted an adventure. Sold. You’re in. That was easy, now I just need one more person.
It was the Tuesday morning before Lilo and I had not felt great since Saturday. The email exchange about safety issues had not helped and, to top things off, I got an email from Jo telling me that she and her new man were moving to Cairns in a month, at the start of March . . . and she was 11 weeks pregnant.
Fuck. The first thing that went through my mind was the arithmetic. How long ago had we broken up? She’d
got pregnant a month or two after she’d left me. I knew I didn’t want to be back with her, but this still really hurt. My stomach contracted and I started getting shivers down my body. It was as bad as when I had found out she had cheated on me.
I learnt later that Jo had found out she was pregnant on the Saturday I started feeling unwell. I’d known something bad was coming. After reading Jo’s email I couldn’t work—I couldn’t handle it. I called Dan. It was a nice day outside and I suggested we go and get some ice-cream. Dan’s amazing. He knew I didn’t need to talk about it, I just needed to process it. We sat down at the ferry building, eating ice-cream in the sun and watching the boats come in. I was three days away from starting the trip of a lifetime, but right then everything sucked. I was hurting all over. I couldn’t get Jo out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about her being pregnant.
The next day I got a call from a friend of Dan’s. Caroline is a hypnotherapist and she offered me a free session before I left for Lilo. She explained how she helps boxers before a fight and other athletes getting ready for competition, and maybe she could help me. I don’t really believe in hypnotherapy but it was the right price so at seven that night I found myself sitting in a chair in a small office in St Heliers wondering what the hell was about to happen. What I didn’t know was that Dan had asked Caroline to figure out whether or not it was safe for me to go down the river. Caroline is also, apparently, a bit psychic. Not that she’ll ever say that: I think she prefers to be known as intuitive.
She told me that everyone was worried for my safety and asked me what I thought about it. I explained to her that I wasn’t afraid of anything to do with the trip, that I thought everyone was overreacting and that I would be fine.
She looked at me with absolute calm and said, ‘You’re right, you’ll be just fine.
‘What else are you worried about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing’ I said. Then I had a think about things and opened up. I explained that I was very very afraid of spending so much time alone on the river with nothing but me and my racing mind. I didn’t want to have a headful of Jo thoughts. I wanted to be finally freed from her. I also explained how I could ‘feel’ Jo, and how I’d had that weird flat feeling at the time Jo discovered she was pregnant. ‘Is that weird?’ I asked.
Caroline said she could fix those things. If she were to break the tie, though, Jo would feel the loss and get in contact. Okay. I wanted Caroline to do that for me because I wanted Jo out of my life.
I also told Caroline that I was really scared about going broke. I was about to leave my business for two weeks, plus I had to pay for all the things I needed for Lilo. It was actually scaring me shitless. I had no idea how I was going to pay for any of this. Again, she said I didn’t need to worry about it. How much money did I need for the trip? she asked. She said she’d get me twice as much as I needed. So there you have it, a crazy lady was going to break the emotional and spiritual tie I still had to my ex-wife and she was going to get me enough money to complete this trip . . . all by hypnotising me. I had my doubts but was prepared to let her have a go.
I lay back in the chair and after the relaxing hypno-speak I was waking up and getting ready to leave when Caroline said she was getting a feeling about death on the river. It wasn’t me though, I was going to be fine. She just had a feeling about death on the river.
The next morning I got a text from Jo. She told me she knew I didn’t want to hear from her, but she was sorry she had hurt me. Although Caroline had said this would happen I felt sure it was just a coincidence.
Later that day, the day before I was heading south to jump into the river, I got a call from Boris. Boris is a Croatian Maori who works for the Mental Health Foundation. Boris had started The Nutters Club with the comedian Mike King. It began as a four-hour Sunday-night talkback radio show for men with mental-health issues. It was so popular that Maori Television began filming and broadcasting Mike and his guests in the RadioLive studio. Boris and I had met a few months before and he had invited me to appear on The Nutters Club. It was a really good show and I got to explain to a national audience exactly how I had been able to overcome my depression.
In his role at the Mental Health Foundation Boris had tried hard but unsuccessfully to get me some funding for the Lilo project. This time, Boris said he might be able to give me the money. He’d email me later. A couple of hours later it had all been sorted out. He could give me some money. Yahoo! How much could he give me? Exactly twice as much as the team had calculated I needed to cover the bare-bones budget. Caroline, you crazy crazy lady, how the hell did you know that would happen? I was so happy.
This felt like fixing depression all over again: another weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I had been so scared of going broke. Now I didn’t have to worry. I could focus all my energy on making the adventure as amazing as possible. Now I could actually afford the things that I really needed. Tomorrow was going to be an amazing day. Tomorrow was the start of Lilo The Waikato. I was ready. Everything was organised and it was time to get wet.
ALL SYSTEMS GO!
Friday morning I woke up raring to go. I had all my belongings packed. My next-door neighbour Kenn had graciously allowed me to borrow his bus for the support crew. It was perfect—it sleeps two, drives nicely and has a camo paint job. We couldn’t help but get looks in this thing. We had some Lilo The Waikato decals made up but they weren’t going to be available until Monday. Michiel was going to drive Kenn’s pride and joy down to meet us then. I had the film crew with the boat to keep me company on the first couple of days, and Rachel, Fritha, Jess, and Rachel’s friend Jono were going to come down for the weekend.
I like hitchhiking. You get to meet some really interesting people. I wanted to hitchhike to Taupo—just me and my Lilo. The film crew could take my other gear. Because of time constraints the film crew wouldn’t let me, so we all piled into the film crew’s car and headed south. We stopped just south of Auckland for some petrol, and Simon, the director, decided that hitchhiking would actually be a good story within the doco, so we should fake it. I didn’t really want to do that, I wanted to hitchhike for real!
I stood on the motorway onramp waiting for them to call ‘action’. There was a cameraman in front and one next to me. Simon was going to pull up in his car and pretend to pick me up. ‘Action!’ It was the first time someone had ever said that to me. But before Simon’s car could get to me a massive truck pulled out and came down the onramp. I had my thumb out and it stopped.
The driver hung his head out the window. He was in his early forties and had about seven teeth in total. ‘Hey, you’re Jimi!’ he shouted. ‘You’re Lilo-ing the Waikato! Wanna lift?’
‘Hahahaha, yes, yes I do.’ I jumped in, called for a cameraman to come with me and we were off.
My cell phone rang. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Simon.
‘Hitchhiking,’ I replied.
Bertrand the cameraman and I started interviewing our new friend. How did he know who I was? ‘I listen to The Rock,’ he said. ‘You’re always on that!’ That was true. The guys from The Morning Rumble on The Rock FM had been fantastic, especially Andrew Mulligan who had got me on Prime’s television show The Crowd Goes Wild. Here was proof the PR machine had worked! Truck drivers from the Waikato knew what I was doing and why I was doing it.
Simon picked us up when the driver had to turn off State Highway 1. In Huntly, we stopped beside the park bench in front of the river, opposite the power station, to do an interview about my depression. I wasn’t in my full Lilo outfit, but I did have my captain’s hat on. Simon was interviewing me, but every couple of minutes we were interrupted by someone tooting their horn or slowing down and yelling things at me like, ‘Hey, Lilo Guy!’
In Taupo we had organised some trout fishing with a guy called Fishy Steve. I really wanted to catch a trout from my Lilo. It was late in the day though and we only had about 30 minutes of fishing time left. I also had no idea how to fly-fish. Steve quickl
y taught me and I floated down a stream casting back up behind me. Late in the evening on the shore of Lake Taupo it was freezing. And I was about to spend the next two weeks in the water. I thought then, maybe the doubters are right and I am an idiot.
As I reached the mouth of the stream, I was pushed out to a gravel bank where seven other fishermen were lined up fly-fishing. I was certainly dressed like an idiot, attempting to fish from a Lilo as I floated up and claimed some space between a couple of them. I didn’t bat an eyelid and started fishing as if I was one of the gang. The guy next to me looked like he had been fishing this spot for about 60 years. He had a grizzled face and classic fishing tackle. He slowly turned his head to look at me and said, ‘You’re the guy that’s Lilo-ing the Waikato. That’s pretty cool.’ Even he knew what was going on.
It was great to discover that people knew who I was and what I was doing. I had been under such a dark cloud in the previous weeks that I didn’t think about the impact of all those media interviews. I’d had quite a bit of exposure but hadn’t really thought about what that meant. It meant people in the Waikato knew I was coming and they were going to support me. It felt really strange, but also really cool. That’s worth another yahoo!
I have a friend, Bucky, who owns a bar in Taupo. We all went to his place for some food and a drink. It felt like the calm before the storm. I wasn’t nervous, just excited. I’d had to wait an extra week and I was ready to get into the river. I stayed the night at Bucky’s.
The next morning Bucky’s partner Tracy drove me to breakfast at a cafe in town for my protein fix. From there we all went down to the river. It was almost time to go.
PART TWO:
THE JOURNEY
DAY ONE: TAUPO TO CASEY AND NICKI’S PLACE
There were plenty of things to see and do on Day One, but there were also some rapids and the Huka Falls. A few months before I had received an email from a man who said he was a whitewater kayaker and he and his friend would be happy to kayak with me on the first day to help me through. Fantastic, that’s exactly what I needed.
