What a day.. In fact, what a great weekend. Well, ok, Saturday wasn’t great – headed up to Porter Heights to go snow boarding. Much against the advice of Warick and Co – who explained that as a norwesterly was coming through it’d be far too windy. Ahh well, an hour and a half drive later we found that he was totally right :) However, I did get to meet up with my friend Emma Towey who works there – hopefully get up there again before I leave NZ.

But bettern’ sat was today (Sunday!) when I headed off on a 3 hour flight around Mt. Cook with pilot Leo (friend of Dave Humes), Till and a friend of Leos (Brian)

So after pulling the plane out of the hanger it was time to fill up with petrol..

It was a totally stunning day – hard to describe.. I’m only going to put a couple of pics up – but there’s a whole slideshow here. Really worth a look even if I do say so myself. We flew from ChCh up over Methven (where Mt. Hutt skifield is) and headed on up over some stunning scenery..

towards Mount Cook. Here you can see a pic of one of the many braided rivers that you get in NZ.

At the end of the last glaciation, 10,000 years ago, rivers carried alluvial outwash down the valleys of the east coast and deposited it to form flat basins between the mountains and coastal plains.

Apparently only North America and the Himalayas have such extensive braided rivers systems.. anyway.. they sure are purty to look at :)

There were so many examples of the extensive impact the glaciers have on the Southern Alps – here you can see a moraine on the way up towards Mt. Cook. Still, like everywhere else, the glaciers are retreating..

I’ve put a short (3meg) video of mount cook here us flying past the summit. In this next picture you can see the summit ridge is quite long and flat – the actual summit is on the left hand side of the picture.

Then we landed at a place called Glentanner (by the top of lake tekapo) and had lunch. It was good to sit and just relax for an hour – I think it made the return flight more enjoyable than doing the whole thing in one go. I was glad of getting sustenance.. as on the way back Leo asked me did I want to fly for a bit (once we were safely in the air.. funnily enough)

Not really sure how far I flew – perhaps a hundred km or so – … the updraught / turbulence over the mountains was a tiny bit scary – but *nothing* compared to the bouncing around we were doing before coming in to land for lunch.. that really was .. exciting (to say the least)

We then flew up over Ashburton and up the coast, over the banks peninsula and over ChCh itself. You can see our house from the air (circled in red).. you can see just how run down it is (and the big patch of earth outside is where they lifted up a house and took it away).. but also look at the river running by the bottom of our big garden. Sure the place is freezing – but what a house – what a home? it is.

Finally a word on pilots’ senses of humour.. after 9/11 – well may 12th 2005 according to this article a Cessna plane (tiny) strayed over restricted DC airspace and caused a panic (F16s (not tiny) were scrambled).. anyway – here’s a bumper ish sticker that was in the office..

Well I thought it was funny.. Anyway – thanks to Leo for a truly amazing flight – do check out the slideshow here… there were just too many pics to put up on this post.

It has been a pretty sociable week really, Mhairi has been meeting up with lots of her friends from ChCh, before heading off on Friday morning.

This pic is of Marcel Mhairi and I.. we had quite a few adventures together… The Heaphy Track, Kaikoura, the disastrous (ish) Mt. Owen trip amongst others. Marcel and Mhairi had a pretty awesome time travelling around the North Island together back in January.. I think they pretty much did everything!!

On Tuesday a bunch of us headed go-karting at Supakarts… and it was lots of fun.

It was quite different to the times I’d raced back in Ireland.. they gave you penalties for hitting into your opponents (whereas back in Dublin that’s all part of it!) I was *way* too clean a driver! I definitely should have hit into a few more people :) hehehe, still, lots of fun. It was teams of two – and each driver got 60 laps.. I’d recommend it for sure.

There’s a 30 sec video (5 megs) here

Well, my friend Eoin wrote the following e-mail the other day

You know the way you were one of the first to get a blog? And
now everyone seems to have one…. Well, I think you should
stay ahead of the curve, buy a microphone, and record a
podcast! It would be cool, kinda like Alistair Cooke’s Letter
from America, only from New Zealand and not by Alistair Cooke ;)

Well.. my first attempt is ready now.. you’ll need to download IPODDER and then subscribe to my podcast rss feed which is here https://blog.psdavey.com/old_blog/podcast/podcast.rss

If it doesn’t work – giz-a-shout..

Has been a mental week .. and I don’t see it stopping any time soon. Work is extremely busy (and, for the first time, a teensy bit stressful! I’m having to do some *real work*) which is a total shock to the system ;) No, it’s all good, but handing off projects etc. to other groups so that they can maintain what I have built – is a little challenging.

Mhairi and I have been sorting out travel plans – and, once again, it has all changed!.. but this time it’s set. You can see the map here (must put it on the main page somewhere I guess) The difference this time is that I’m flying into Sydney (not Melbourne) and cutting out Singapore and flying straight to BKK.. other than that it’s pretty much the same.

Hopefully no more changes now!! Went to see the fantastic four.. which was O.K. but not great.

Got up snowboarding with Mhairi and Dave Aubrey to broken river on Saturday.

I was really feeling confident about making turns on steepish ground. Not, of course, that it was always well placed confidence.. I took a couple of head over heel rolls.. and my bum has been less bruised at times in its life! but all in all good times. I was quite impressed at how quickly (first time) mb got the hang of the infamous nutcrackers Though as it got icier during the day it didn’t help too much.

So, a couple of things happened this week that I’ve not mentioned yet.. firstly my sister Liz had another baby.. hopefully she and Tim (who live in Minneapolis) won’t treat Ciara quite as badly as they do Fiona (in this first pic)

So yes, it’s quite exciting to have another niece. That makes two nieces and one nephew that I’ll not have seen until I get home. I’m really getting very excited about travelling now – I will totally miss NZ, and will be back in Febuary, but yes, looking forward to seeing the family (a lot)

That pic is of Liz and Fiona and Ciara..

So yes, the bad thing of course was the 5 bombs in London.. Luckily, it seems all my family and friends there escaped completely.. but it is shocking all the same – sometimes home feels quite removed from NZ, but things like that bring it all back..

On a happier note – Mhairi has arrived for 12 days (of training for her next adventure race ;) I think she’s really enjoying seeing all her friends back in ChCh again.. it’s certainly great having her visting!