Things have been good. Really good. I’ve spent the last week or so with Liz in and around Kaikoura, a small surf town on the South Island’s east coast. We landed at a beautiful free camp on the beach with just enough time to meet some excellent traveling companions that would soon become our family for the week. We had a gluttonous, glorious hot holiday on the beach in New Zealand. Below is a video recap for those too lazy to read or scroll down.

This is me in front of the gorgeous mountains that butt right up to the beach on one of the first days at the camp. There was about 14 of us total camping in Kaikoura for the days surrounding the holidays; some British, some French, some Scottish, some American, some Dutch, and some German. A healthy mix.

As expected, we dutifully celebrated the second annual Ephemeral Day and spread the love onto our new comrades. For those of you who don’t know, Ephemeral Day is a holiday I invented that traditionally takes place on the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; the shortest day of the year.

Groups all over the world come together and work to build structures that are designed to burn. This was our structure; a pentagonal prism built of driftwood and adorned with a sun-bleached goat skull.

As the sun sets on the shortest day of the year we burn our structures in unison to acknowledge the ephemeral nature of each day and many other things in life. This year, the holiday couldn’t have been more appropriate. A group of strangers came together for a few days, built together, cooked for each other, ate together, and became friends only to disband shortly after never to see each other again.. ephemeral friends.. ephemeral as FUCK.

Christmas eve I collected bits of cash from the crew and went to the town butcher to buy as much of a pig as I could with the intention of roasting it on the beach. He gave me a huge pig log stuffed with apples and sage and stuffing… enough to feed 20…mmm. I built a spit and a fire pit and we slow roasted the sucker for 4 hours whilst basting it with honey and soy. SOO good. Along with that we also had fresh caught New Zealand crayfish and a beach-smoked fish caught in the brackish water near camp. Not so bad.

This is the sunset god gave us on Christmas eve… no photoshop.

After Christmas the majority of the crew departed and Liz and I hoofed it to Arthur’s Pass for some tramping. On the way back we found a cave system with a river flowing through it that took about 45 mins to meander through. This is liz at the entrance. It was so beautiful down there. Kinda freaky with no guide or idea whether or not we’d survive.

The New Years Eve blue moon was particularly incredible for me. Right as the sun was setting the huge, blazingly bright lunar orb began rising over the horizon exactly opposite where the sun had just rested. The spotlight kept us well lit all night as we pranced through the foothills to the beat of secret drum and bass gatherings. This is a 40 second exposure of the full moon (notice the constellation Orion showing up nicely above the moon).

Liz and I achieved our goal of staying up all night for the sunrise. New Zealand is the first country in the world to see the sun rise each day. I am so happy to have seen the first view of the sun that 2010 had to offer.

Now I am in Christchurch taking care of some business and waiting for Christina to get here so we can get back on the travel train. SOOOOO excited.

And here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Surfer Blood – Swim

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Atlas Sound – Shelia

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Yeasayer – Rome

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If you can remember, we all entered this decade together with Limp Bizkit farting out one of the worst mainstream rock records of all time, 2000′s “The Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water”, whilst The Backstreet Boys and *NSync battled for the number one slot on TRL.

These were dark times. Since, rap/rock has ceased to exist entirely and, at least for the time being, it seems that the world has tired of boy bands. We can all give ourselves a pat on the back for eradicating that one.

We’ve witnessed the demise of tangible media, namely the compact disc, in exchange for digital versions of the audio we love. Following the CD closely down the tubes went the entire mainstream music industry as it was once known.

Thanks to this, the shift in the way we listen to our music, and the proliferation of the internet, music of all kinds became nearly as accessible as the air we breath.

Because the mainstream had become polluted and failing, casual listeners turned their attention toward the underground. This enabled independent artists to become noticed by larger audiences and prosper. With the internet on their side independent artists were defining the large-scale musical trends of the later quarter of the decade.

Everyone was making music, everyone was experimenting, and everyone else was listening. When music becomes as ubiquitous as it had by the end of the 2000′s it gets difficult to single out the true gems of an entire decade past. The flawed mainstream had skipped over nearly all of the true genius musicians of the last 10 years, unlike during the 60′s and 70′s where the artists in the limelight deserved the respect they got.

My thoughts are that the true stars of this decade haven’t yet been truly acknowledged by the world and that one day they will surface and be properly celebrated.

This was a substantial decade for music, even if the world doesn’t quite know it yet. I think we can all agree that we’ve seen a paradigm shift in popular music as we know it and the years to come are only sounding better and better. The following are the 10 most decade-defining records, in order of release.

Relationship of Command – At The Drive-In [September 2000]

You Forgot It In People – Broken Social Scene [October 2002]

The Ugly Organ – Cursive [March 2003]

De-Loused in The Comatorium – The Mars Volta [June 2003]

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? – The Unicorns [November 2003]

Satanic Panic in the Attic – of Montreal [April 2004]

Come On Feel The Illinoise! – Sufan Stevens [July 2005]

Strawberry Jam – Strawberry Jam [September 2007]

In Rainbows – Radiohead [October 2007]

Sea Lion – The Ruby Suns [January 2008]

Don’t forget to check out Michelle’s equally outstanding best of the decade list!