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Noam Chomsky , originally an American linguist who was Ian 's hero in his days of speech synthesis at Essex and now a leading left-wing intellectual in the US , came to Waikato to give an inspirational , and awe-inspiring , speech on the new world order . The latter are considered stupid , and you might insult a person by implying that they were weaned on buffalo milk . So Ian stood down , collected US $ 500 , meal tickets , and a free hotel room ; and we spent an unscheduled extra day in the US . One weekend with Pippa and John we sailed Beulah to Tiritiri Matangi Island , the closest you 'll ever get on this earth to the garden of Eden . Another life experience was a ride in a combine harvester with Marie 's brother , with whom , at a tender and impressionable age , we had castrated cows and collected the prairie oysters in a rusty tin can way back in 1969 . We took him to the West Edmonton Mall and he had the guts to ride on the most stomach-churning , boneshaking , disorienting , gravity-defying , suicidal roller-coaster ever created - - twice ! Anna , with a couple of friends , came along to the gig . Here 's a final image : a traditional cowboy breakfast with two visitors , one from Berlin and the other from New Zealand , Ian cooking pancakes bacon and coffee on a blazing campfire , watching the sun low over a prairie lake near Lethbridge - - wait for it - - setting , a gorgeous and unforgettable breakfast sunset . And the Waikato Sympathy Orchestra ( they hate it when Ian calls it that ) has been going from strength to strength , with gigs at the local winery ( Sunday lunch and opera songs ) , and the local Christmas festival ( Hallelujah chorus with a choir of 1500 ) , as well as some very challenging concerts of " serious " music ( Dvorak 's non-New-World symphonies , listen out for them , they're fantastic ) . We now see them almost every time we visit the area where the Cup races are to be held , between Rangitoto and the Whangaparoa Peninsula . After one of those trips from hell where you find yourself stranded in the US , wearing only shorts , T-shirt and sandals , carrying only a computer ( no toothbrush , sweater , or clean undies ) , at an airport thousands of miles from anywhere on your itinerary , getting to a hotel at 1 AM ( after a long argy-bargy with airline officials ) and being collected from it at 4 AM , with a dinner voucher and a breakfast voucher ( only to be used on that day , at that hotel ) , he eventually arrived at Calgary and set off in search of Anna . Off early the next morning , and the wind contined to increase as we beat across the Firth of Thames to the Coromandel peninsula . Except that one of his hosts in the International Development Center he was visiting at Tulane University , an expert on disaster cleanup and management , was spirited away to the Nevada desert by the US Army for secret meetings for most of the duration of Ian 's visit .