This week has been a total shock. In work every single day this week (except for Tuesday thank God which was a day off (ANZAC day). I’m actually not joking for once! For sure I’m spoiled in my working world getting to work from home (just in case anyone from work is reading this … I do work.. savagely hard!). I think it’s more the flexibility to put in the hours which are needed – but when it’s convenient to do them. I wake up pretty early and start early ish.. but I have no issues with stopping early and heading off biking / climbing when it’s convenient. As long as the work is done and up to standard everyone is (and should be!) happy.

And a ‘real job’ will put an end to that. There may be a way around it.. but we’ll just have to see what happens…

So yes, Friday night was totally welcome. Dave Aubrey had a pre-birthday (quarter century) party. It was excellent.. Indian curry, the smells were incredible. He’s a great guy.. even came out to help me in the choosing of my new bike the next morning (a Kona King Kikapu – $2000.. now hopefully I will make use of it).

Sat was pretty cruisey. I went for my first walk/jog/walk/jog/walk in 8 months (testing to see if my back is up to it!) and it went fine. I still feel pretty stiff when jogging, but it’s not sore, and I think progress can be made.

Then out to see a film with some of Dave’s friends from Paynes Forde (Isla, Andy and Chris) before Tim’s themed party. The theme was ‘Something from your Childhood’.

I didn’t really make the time to create a funky costume. But I used to enjoy padding about (still do really) in pyjamas..(and my old glasses!) Mick even wrote a climbing junk story on it and I quote from the final paragraph in that linked story..

Alas, Patrick’s pyjamas will not be with us as they are now involved in a counterculture revolution in central Yemen.

These pyjamas I am wearing in the pic above were made in Hoi An (Vietnam) back in Oct ish. Now the funny thing is .. I asked for a styalised picture of a climber to be embroidered onto the fabric. Unfortunately as I didn’t put an up arrow on the picture, it looks like it’s just a figure crawling along the pocket, not quite what I had in mind!

Anyways.. enough rambling for one week.. am hoping to get off tramping this coming weekend if the CUTC are running trips so will try to get some more exciting pictures for then!

No adventures this weekend. At least not outdoory ones.

The work I do for the government is mainly to do with the creation and maintenance of software they use in the Contact Centre. This weekend I had to make a pretty major upgrade to the site (it’s now even better than before! (wow)). So I had to basically break it all and put it back together in time for Monday morning.

Also had some friends of my cousin Rachels in town. Laura and Christian. Laura I had met before when I was in my 3rd year of college when I toured through Canada and the US. It was lovely having them around, just a shame I couldn’t get away and show them ChCh & the surroundings properly.

So… this morning.. Monday morning.. in work for 08:30. I almost died. Was kinda nervous as to whether things would actually work or not… I mean its pretty easy to let a few things go by..

And it was actually an awful awful morning… emails weren’t being sent from the system.. panic.. only to find out the entire ministrys external mail was down (sigh of relief). No, the really awful part of the morning was David getting his second ‘down trouser’ against me since I have been back in work. A ‘down trouser’ is what they call it in pool when your opponent clears without you having potted a ball. Its certainly one good reason to spend more time in the office – that of getting better at pool.

Anyways.. the upgrade actually went totally smoothly.. I shall sleep quite a lot lighter this evening.

Ok, so there’s nothing really wrong with yoga. In fact there’s probably quite a lot of good things about it. Maybe I’m just jealous that I still don’t really think it’d be a kindness to put my body through it..

Anyways… headed outa ChCh on Holy Thursday evening and drove up to Paynes. Just over 6 hours which is a pretty decent time. Nick and Dave enthusing on their North-Of-England-Knicking-Cars-And-Hooning-Around days whilst speeding us quickly to our goal of hangdog campsite.

The weekend was pretty climbing oriented.. climbing Friday, Saturday and Sunday with trips to the Mussel Inn each night to sample some of their delicious homebrews (drawing straws for designated driver)

Left – me on an 18 on the Stone Symposium wall, the other is me on Temples of Stone – another lovely long 18. I do intend on pushing myself more in this sport.. I’d like to be leading a solid 21 ish by mid-spring!

Those two are of Glynn on Stroking the Tiger – a thoroughly enjoyable 18 (as opposed to the oh-my-god-these-bolts-are-two-well-spaced-and- why-won’t-my-leg-stop-shaking kinda climbs)

Dave is climbing really well at the moment.. his yoga definitely paying off… the evening sun climb that he led successfully is a 21… I think that’ll be my goal for next time!

Some swimming was done (only not by me.. I am a warm water weenie – mostly) And the other pic is the inside of the toilets at the mussel inn, just in case anyone was wondering what they look like.

On Monday, Dave and I took the mountain bikes off for a quick spin (Glynn went to have another go at fishing.. but not quite as much luck as on Stewart Island ;)). I really enjoyed the biking.. and am seriously considering forking out a couple of grand for a nice one. Tried on the clipless peddles too – quite a different peddling sensation!

And yes, Easter was celebrated (well, the chocolate part at any rate)!

Finally a funny picture of glynn (with his permission!)

testing again

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so that was my post while I was testing out the (funky new) comment system you can see below. It was enough to get most helpful comments left by Jana and Marcel. As my blog is stored on blogger.com but hosted externally comments don’t appear until when I next repost the blog (like anyone is interested ;) So I changed it around and the comments are now hosted locally too so they should appear straight away..

Isn’t that just great.

I also started a blog for anyone who’s interested… http://picaweek.blogspot.com. You can login by going to www.blogger.com and login as picaweek/picaweek. The idea is that anyone who likes can post a picture and a caption (no text please). Preferably each post should have a Title and the country it’s posted from. Also, just so that no one hoggs it! it’d be great if no one posted more than once a week (though I guess that’ll be amazing if anyone actually feels like putting up pictures that much).

Looking forward to the weekend – off to Paynes Ford. Looks like Dave will be coming too now which should make for even more of a party than it’s already going to be.

More kayaking this week. And, I must admit, against all my preconceptions, I actually enjoyed it. Weird I know.

(Glynns car is looking good don’t ‘cha think? :)

So I didn’t exactly enjoy having to get up at 06:20 after Tills party (a reasonable amount had been imbibed). I was pretty petrified at the first glance at the river. We’ve had quite a bit of rain over the last wee while and the river was quite full. I didn’t even have a creek boat (read nice boat with lots of volume and no nasty lines to tip you over) to paddle, and I felt lot more off-balance in the boat.

Still, with Waricks ‘PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE’ echoing from last year in my ears I got down all the rapids intact. In fact, not even a swim. Of course this means I wasn’t playing hard enough (but it also meant I was keeping my hot body out of the freezing water).

The pic above was Dave playing in the final rapid.

Then it was off to Tekapo to camp for the evening.

(pic from the trip with Mick – no I didn’t have the BMW this time!!)

Meridion Energy dammed the lake and made a massive canal down through multiple power-generating dams town to the coat. When they did this they changed the river patterns (no kidding) and a condition of being allowed to proceed was that every year (12 times I believe) they release water down through a specially constructed white-water course.

It was kinda fun to watch it fill up.

The course itself is a 3 (or 3+ maybe?) so that’s out of my league at the moment. Especially as the sides are brushed concrete that would happily rip through wetsuit and skin with ease.. maybe next time I’ll run it!

We did the grade 2 which leads onto the course.. but also – there’s a play wave at the top of the course which is safe enough to get onto, and really fun to just try to have a go at playing.

I had a go on it, got capsized a few times and had a couple of swims.. however.. it was lots and lots and lots and lots and…lots of fun!. I put a short video up of me on the wave… I was pretty happy with my (very short lived) performance!! :)

This weekend being Easter we get Friday and Monday off – so it’s off up to Paynes Ford for some climbing.. fingers crossed we get the weather. Otherwise it’ll just have to be lots of time spent in the mussel inn. Sigh.