The team building exercises that were held last week were excellent fun. We had Tony Brindle – ex mountaineer and outward bound instructor as our facilitator. I really thought his course was the best I have ever been on. Mostly we would learn some theory, and then have a short exercise to put it into practice.

For example, for one of the exercises saw the group split up into 4 groups
2 observers
2 managers
2 supervisors
5? Workers

Everyone was split up – I opted to be a worker for this one. We were brought down and placed on a giant chess board. Then about 10 mins later the supervisors came down, numbered us, and went away. Came back after about 5 mins (we were getting colder!) and told one of us to move. This process was repeated. We, the workers, were becoming agitated and restless. I was all for telling them we weren’t going to do anything until the situation was explained .. i.e what we were supposed to be doing. See by this time, David and I had worked out we were playing a sort of chess game and we figured we knew what to do to win the game.

In the event we ran out of time. But it was a beautiful illustration of how much extra communication is needed when groups work remotely. The mangers you see, assumed we knew the rules & aim of the game, so they never communicated this to the supervisors, who in turn never communicated it to the workers. We, the workers, should have made it clearer to the supervisors that we wanted direction.

In the pic above we had to pour water into the vertical tube to raise the water level inside to float a ping-ball to the top.. really not as easy as it looks (we should have siphoned it).

There were lots more examples and exercises.. culminating in a sort of rogaine where everyone was running around looking for clues.. great fun..

Then there was a salsa workshop and a few drinks etc. to celebrate the end of training. I must admit, I’d completely forgotten quite how much I enjoy salsa (though in particular merengue – so much easier). There are some not incredibly amazing pictures here

So a couple of weeks ago I set up www.snowpool.org.nz as a way to help people car pool to the ski fields. I was really pleased to see the first real notice go up on the site, and decided to go and test it out!

So, after watching the crusaders (Canterbury home team) win the Super-14 (rugby) competition for the second year running.. I went home and got packed – rather than go out and get hammered!.

Jon picked me up at 6am ish (in the mist) and we drove (in the mist) to Mt. Dobson (about 2 1/2 hours drive up to the ski field). The beauty of it is though, that all of Canterbury seemed to be in mist for the whole day, whereas we were above it all in, while not quite blue skies, still pretty good conditions.

The top two pics are Jon, and Jon getting some air… (he was a *slightly* better snowboarder than me ;)… that said – I was actually pretty happy with how my boarding went! I’m still way better at turning from toes onto heels.. but I’ll get there.

The News was also here as it was the earliest for 27 years that the field had opened. Now whether that is because last year was so bad and they need the cash .. or not.. I don’t know!. The conditions were a little icy, but it warmed up and melted a bit and was quite nice for most of the afternoon. I have a pretty good feeling this is going to be a great season!

And as for snowpool… what a great idea ;) I mean the fuel cost $70 return.. so splitting that saved each of us $35… bit of a no brainer to see that it’s worth car pooling.

Quite a fun week actually – more to come in a weeks time. The reason being on Thursday and Friday we had our Annual Team Building / Leadership / Contact Centre training. The facilitator was a guy called Tony Brindle. He used to (still does some) do lots of Hard Core Mountaineering – with the likes of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates etc… Worked in Outward Bound etc. But it was great… there were lots of little exercises and anecdotes to get us all thinking. I’ll write more about it next week (just in case anyone from the Contact Centre actually reads this and I spoil the exercises they will have to do!)

Then last night had lots of friends over for Pizza before heading out to watch part 1 of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It was funny.. for all the organisation etc. that I’d learned over the last couple of days – I was too busy rounding everyone up to take them across the bridges and through Mona Vale (the botanical gardens out the back of my house) to check the oven was off. 1/2 way through my friend Neil says they might have left one in the oven … so I ran back to check. Fortunately it was on a low ish heat so no major catastrophe. The ducks enjoyed eating it this morning.. or some of it anyway! (yes, this is my back garden)

Then this morning headed out biking to Godley head with Michelle and Sheb?(sp?) a friend of hers who instructs on Outward Bound. I think I am going to test myself this week and see if my back is up to a 3km run (should be I reckon) and if so will see if I can get myself onto it.. will see.. It’s something I would love to do.

Only had one fall where I didn’t manage to get out of the clip peddles.. and it was only onto grass so not too bad. I’m still feeling really unsafe! in them – but getting there.. slowly ;)

Really should stop heading out for pints before getting up early the next morning!… This Friday it was the Chill pray-for-snow party in the Dux. Seems to have done the trick, it has been raining here (snowing up there) constantly for the last 3 days – if this keeps up twill be a good season. I even won a t-shirt at the spot prizes (not exactly legitimately but all the same..)

Then Sat morning it was back up to Arthurs Pass, this time heading up the other side. The tramp started up a valley and boulder hopping up a river. There were nice views down over Lake Kaurapataka (the lake on the way in to The Otahake Hot pools), and across to Mt. Alexander too.

The idea was to get up onto the summit of Mt. Pfeifer (1704m). We even brought ice-axe and crampons. Unfortunately we left a little later than we should have (plus the weather clagged in anyway) Also, I was going pretty slowly to be honest.. not used to wearing heavy mountaineering boots! So we didn’t make it onto the top (this time)… Back down again (note the trees who shed their bark to stop the moss + lichen growing on them..) and then a quick stop in the Bealey pub before back to ChCh.

A while ago at a party I casually mentioned that it’d be good if there was a place to go to organise car pooling to the ski fields this winter.

Euan and Darren (two of the others at the party) thought it was a good idea too, we drank our wine, ate Florians excellent cuisine, and thought no more of it.

OR I did at any rate. A couple of days ago they came back and said that it actually was worth doing..

So, no I’ve spent no time on making it look pretty, but spent today registering a domain and setting the bones of the system up.. IF anyone wants to try and break it / suggest obvious improvements (there are lots of things I want to do to it) then http://www.snowpool.org.nz/ is the link to try. Hopefully it’ll get used…

I was quietly happy with my days work :)