The snow in New Zealand has landed and they're already calling it the best season in years, in fact more snow fell last week than in all of last year (apparently)

On Friday one of the girls at work, Tracy, invited me along with her pals to their chalet in Ohakune on Sunday. Tracy is my boss and the best thing about going away with your boss is that when you ask for a day off next week, they tend to say yes. On On Saturday morning the roads to the mountain were still closed but we raced up Saturday night and I had Sunday and Monday in "epic" conditions.
My housemate Mike and his friend Francis came along for the Sunday as well, which made a total of 5 of us. Tracy and Toni have skiied for years and Mike and Francis are snowboard instructors, so I was in good company! Luckily I could just about keep up with everyone but by the end of Monday I was feeling like an old man with aches and pains all over the shop.

Ruapehu is the North Islands main snow mountain and we were on the Turoa side which, of the two resorts, had the most lifts open.



Saturday night in Ohakune, eagerly anticipating the snow in the morning.



Group photo!



Top of the mounain

I finally picked up a new car! Yes, the fag mobile has returned and I'm the proud owner of a new Suzuki 4wd. It's yet to be named so suggestions on a postcard and I'll pick the best. Or ignore them all and call it Suze II.

Jen turned ** years old on Tuesday, we celebrated with a night out in the pub and managed to win the local pub quiz! Having 15 biologists on hand may have been an advantage for the "Animal Kingdom" category but sadly we struggled through Sports and TV. Still, we won a $50 bar tab which may come in useful!

Once again I forgot to take a camera to the beach with me this weekend, but sadly the wind failed to come in for a change! We've had weeks of continuous wind and for 2 days it stopped completely. Oh well, it's a little bit cold now.
Instead I went to snowplanet to get my "fix" and spent a good hour falling on my face trying out the large ramp they have in the middle of the slope! I left the sliders well alone as I think they're just a little to hard for even my head to land on safely!





In other news I'm still looking for a car, although I found 3 promising cars over the weeekend, all Suzukis of course  ;o)

Athena and I went to Omaha beach today, it was 20 knots and we were the only 2 kiters around. Yay for us!
Note the blue sky in the background, the clouds do occasionally part in New Zealand!


Here's me at Omaha

No pictures this week I'm afraid, but plenty of stuff happening

1) I went to Wellington for 3 days for work. Landing in a 45 knot cross wind was harrowing to say the least, I think it's the most scared I've ever been in an airplane. Wellington is consistantly rated as one of the world's most dangerous airports, mainly due to it's insanely short runway. Not good.
Following up from this, the next night we had an earthquake! A few hundred kms away but it measured 7.4 on the Rictor scale and kept us shaking for a good 15 seconds or so, with a few pre-quakes! Madness!
I was expecting a volcano to erupt next, but luckily Mother Nature let me off with just the two pieces of excitement.

2) I went go-Karting with work where I was voted "Most Considerate Driver". I blame my slow go-Kart. Ahem.

3) Another house party, this time at a friends so I could relax and not worry about red wine spillage or vomitting housemates!  ;o)

4) On Saturday. my kites took a beating, my 16m was torn when another kite landed on it and my 12m is finally falling apart after many repeated pumellings. $140 to repair them both, which wasn't as bad as I thought it might be! Yay!
Now just to fix my lines, repair my board and get a new wetsuit. It never ends.
I count myself lucky though, on the same day 5 people were injured in the gusty winds with Shane taking the worst with a broken ankle after landing a kiteloop in 2 inches of water.

That's all I can remember for now, I'll take my camera with me more in future as photos are always more fun than a few words!

We had a house party to celebrate Mike's birthday over the weekend. Lots of drinking games, booze, more games and some more booze. First guest arrived at 7pm and the last guest left at 4am. Ow.


The Party



Drinking games


Mike with an Auckland pint



Preparing for another round of "Beirut"



Yes, well....




The end of the night

A slight change of pace this weekend, I travelled north to the Waipoua Forest area with housemate Jen and a colleague of hers, Jethro, from the Biology dept.
Initially we went on a guided night walk to try and spot Kiwis, and despite spotting many snails, trees, spiders and various insects, we didn't see any Kiwis at all. Although we did hear a couple, but they never showed  :o(

Next morning we did a few day hikes to see the mighty Kauri trees of New Zealand, including Tane Mahuta, the "God of the Forest". He's a Kauri tree over 50m high, 14m in girth and over 2000 years old.
Again we spotted plenty of local fauna, enough to keep the biologists rabbiting for hours at least, and I finally learnt what a New Zealand pigeon sounds like. ("whoop, whoop" - you can only hear their wings beating, they don't actually call)



Ready for a night hike!




Showing my hippy roots and hugging a tree

This weekend saw the New Zealand Kitesurfing Nationals, the main competition of the year for the NZ scene. With a little bit of hesitation, I thought I'd enter for a laugh as it's as much an opportunity to meet and party with fellow kiters as anything else.
So hoping the standard wasn't toooo high, I paid my money and went along.
Sadly the wind didn't really play ball, but we all still gave it a go! The wind was forecast to rise up early and die off as the day went on, so with a helpful morning current the heats were scheduled to start at 7am on both days!
So yes, I got up at 6am to go kiting. :oO

Sadly, only the first round was completed before the wind died completely, and even more sadly the wind never came through on the Sunday so there was no real competition. Luckily we made up for it by drinking lots of beer, eating lots of BBQ food and generally lazing around.

The real news is that somehow I blundered through my heat and came out on top! Yay for me!  I can now claim to be unbeaten in NZ competition ;o)



Warming up at 6:45am before the heats


Me competing at 8am!


Lots of kites but no wind :o(


1 boat, 1 rope, 1 board but 2 men! Competition was fierce to take part in the wakeboarding. ;o)

I went to the beach this weekend. So much for Jet lag  ;o)