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)