Archive: Month: August 2006

Firstly a picture from last weekend – Emmas birthday. Excellent night – drinkin’ and carousin’ (and being taught how to tie a Windsor knot by Dave – as you do) until the wee hours.

It has been a funny old week, but a truly excellent time snowboarding (at last! – a weekend working is one too many in my book ;). This time back to Porter Heights with Glynn & Jayne, Graham & Myra…and… me ;) Great great day. Graham has been a real inspiration to board with – and pushes Glynn & I to improve – and try out new things.

This site has a lot of information on snowboarding stances. I tried out duck footed stance today, and really liked it. Basically it’s a symmetric stance – better for tricks & for trying to ride with either foot first (most ppl have one dominant foot).

I really was excited to try this new stance… also I really feel (for the first time) that I am ‘getting it’ (even just a little bit). I think it may actually help quite a lot with kayaking this summer. See when you’re playing on a river – a lot of it is about keeping your rail (your edge) at the correct angle so that the river doesn’t flip you over. Same thing snowboarding.. except with less water. Or something.

Ok, forget it – here’s a pretty picture taken from the top looking out across the ranges. Somewhere out there is Mt. Olympus. I am hoping to take a day off this week and get there with Michelle and maybe Myra … supposed to be an awesome field. I totally want to dress up in a toga with a strap on beard…

Alert.. this post has nothing to do with having a carefree fun time in New Zealand! be warned – next post will return to normal I promise

So.. for the last wee while I have been from time to time reading up on & thinking about this idea of peak oil.

In this picture you can see (very roughly) the idea of peak oil. The blue curve is production (due to peak in or around about now (or lots of ppl think so anyway). The yellow curve is consumption. Not due to stop anytime soon.

This, my dear friends, if true, is going to make for some *very* interesting times, and some huge changes in our way of life. Think about suburbia – say a 20 (or more in the US) km round trip to work.. It’s all going to change. Perhaps biofuels will help.. but I reckon we’ve got a long way to go.

So yes, saw a very good film called Oil Crash. Just shows in a pretty methodical (scary) fashion just how addicted to oil we are.. I mean the first car was made in the late 1800s, really took off in about 1930, and now we’re reaching the peak..

Course I *could* just be a crazy conspiracy theorist.. and this *could* all be wrong (I’m actually reasonably open to differing opinions!), but it does make you wonder about Iraq, and all the current posturing over Iran…

On a lighter note, Glynn sent through another pretty funky video (though I’ve never managed to watch it all on my increasingly hokey connection).

Work has been – well, worky, hence no pics this week.. Actually worked on Saturday (crazy eh).. but the launch of the new website happened today. Hosted using Plone. It’s an open source Content Management System I suggested about 2 years ago (off the back of my brothers recommendation). They took their time, but got there in the end.

snowpool came to the rescue this weekend. While the weather was looking distinctly dodgy (in fact most of my friends elected for a weekend city bound) I headed up to Broken River for the weekend. I figured I’d rather read a book & write my diary up there than down in ChCh anyway!

Euan was also coming along as there was a telemark weekend (a weird form of skiing.. purist?) and he has been learning that (and fast) this year. Picked up by Trevor – a Broken River club member and user of snowpool! at 7:30 – and off up we went.

It started raining when we got close, and snowing as we got higher. After checking into our accommodation headed up to the slopes. Complete white out. I had a few runs – but found it completely disorienting. You pretty much had to guess which way the slope was going, commit to the turn, and hope you were right. If not a hard bump and a shallow laugh later I was ready for the next turn.

So, after 4 runs I wussed out and went to read my book (Gold Wars – quite interesting actually)… Miraculously, when I poked my head out around about 11:30 ish, it was clearing – and we actually had blue skies for the rest of the weekend. Perfect.

So boarded about with Euan for Saturday (here is a pic of Euan in Allans Basin)

That night there was a slideshow of telemarking in Norway – they were doing 30 odd km a day on skiis! Still, looked like a great holiday.

I walked up above the lodges to have a quick look at the sky for the persiads. It’s a meteor shower the Earth passes through every August (up to the 22nd August I think it is).

It was a little cold so I didn’t stay up too long. I suppose they’re visible from the Southern Hemisphere? One would imagine they are!

On Sunday – Matt – one of the guys who I met up at BR before said a group of ppl were heading up Hamilton Peak (a mountain inbetween Broken River and Cragieburn ski fields). It was going to be fresh tracks all the way.

So Matt, Tom (Czech Republic), Lassa (Danish – who I played backgammon with!) and I headed up. It was a 30 min hike, but well worth it. Hamilton is the peak in the above picture..

The picture above is looking down into Cragieburn Skifield. BR and Cragieburn have an arrangement that you can use either day pass interchangeably. Quite handy really.

Awesome fun boarding. Unfortunately I forgot to tell Lassa that video’s had to be taken horizontally.. (as you can’t rotate them!) so no vids this time..

After a quick break for lunch we did another hike, this time heading left along the ridge and dropping down into Avalanche Bowl?. I took a couple of videos as we did the run twice. The first is Lassa Skiing down, the second Matt Boarding.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJbjHAREHDE]

You can download a divx video better quality here

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obm_EVeeJ7Q]

You can download a divx video better quality here

All in all, an unexpectedly excellent weekend, as the weather really was supposed to be awful!

So I live in this old house. In my opinion it is a great house to live in. It’s big, it’s old, it’s on the river, peopled by lovely people (though they keep on moving out – but I’m sure it’s not personal ;)

However, it does have it’s little quirks.

That’s my ceiling. Or was a few days ago. Since then it has rained even more than usual… and now it looks like this..

Not really an improvement. I have told the landlords (well, I didn’t tell them the ceiling had fallen in a bit – but I’m sure they’ll see it when they come over to fix a switch which has broken. No, it’s not a simple one to fix – it’s on the mains and I aint going near it!

Now.. on other unrelated but fun things.. Glynn sent a link to a pretty fun video..

My friends Andrew and Neil have been competing in the World Orienteering Champs in Denmark.. their website is http://woc2006-irl.blogspot.com/.

Now.. while you might think this pic

has nothing to do with orienteering… well.. you’d be right. And wrong. Andrew and Neil are.. trouble makers.. always were. Anyway, the organisers set up weblogs for everyone. Now, they soon worked out that they gave everyone the same password. Stupidly it might be argued.

Andrew and Neil, after changing their own password, went on a little tour of the sites.. the American one (would have to be ;) had a trailer of their training or something on it.. http://woc2006-usa.blogspot.com/2006/07/interviews-maps-routes-middle-quali.html. Somehow – who knows how (we do) it mysteriously got changed to the above pic. With some funny comments.. (well, Ireland’s one at the bottom anyway)

Classic.

Finally… got round to reading ‘Fast Food Nation’. Well worth it if you haven’t already. And went to see An Inconvenient Truth. Please go see it if you get the chance. It *is* scary and it is happening.. and while there may not be a massive amount we can do… we can at least try! But really really really worth seeing.

Mind you, at least if the gulf stream does get turned off and Europe plunges into the next ice age I should be warmer in NZ. Maybe.

On Wednesday night I headed out to play bugpolo. It’s a little like canoe polo – except played in these things called water bugs. They were designed by a kiwi here in ChCh, and are pretty unique to here. They’re made for hiking into rivers with – and going down serious rivers (grade 4 & 5)… madness. The polo was fun though.

Then on Saturday morning (08:30) Glynn arrived back from the US and we (Graham & Myra, Glynn & Jayne, and Dave and I) down to Mt. Dobson for the weekend… Really great time, feeling more confident on the board, and even tried a few little jumps (though none in this video)… hopefully get to Temple Basin next weekend with Dave & Co.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXEaigGaGXI]

We stayed in The Fairlie Lodge for the night. $80 for a 3 person room, and the place had a spa & sauna.. not entirely sure what Glynn is up to in this picture.. strange man really… but good to have him back in the country.