After our picnic we did another hike, this time around Lake Matheson, which was supposed to give great views of Mt. Cook. But the mountain was fogged in, so the views were disappointing and the trail pretty boring. A total non-sequitir, but when I was a kid, for several years I used to have the same nightmare again and again. It involved a bunch of pirates, who were sailing very fast in a bathtub past a bunch of lines, like a bar code scanner. Most of them were skinny lines, but about every twentieth line was fat, and whenever they passed that, a creepy voice would call out, very slowly and deeply, the word picnic. I was creeped out by that word for most of my life for no reason at all, sort of like my puppet phobia. So I'm happy to report that my repeated typing of the word picnic is having no impact on my whatsoever.