Crazy busy week, Monday squash, Tuesday pub with the Irish posse, Wed Yvonne back from Oz for a few days so headed out for dinner with her and friends from work, Thursday – Barry, Ben and Ronan were back for their last night, so headed out with them. Friday was a Mid-Winter Christmas party with work.

Then it was Saturday. And what a day. Blue skies.. and off for SNOW BOARDING Woo hoo. Damn it’s a fun sport.

Drove there with two friends from work – Simon and Fiona, both temps who will unfortunately be leaving at the end of the week… But a great day out. Mad road up to the slopes. Apparently a couple of cars fall off the edges each year, and some have even been blown off..

So it was to Mt Hutt that we went. Great day. Got a lesson – well two ish, 2 hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. It was a big group lesson, next time I’ll get a lesson on my own I think, but it was good. Learned how to turn on your toes, and on your heels. This is the basics of snow-boarding, once you can do those correctly then you can do S bend turns all the way down a slope..

In theory.

But sure it was such a good time. Really makes me want to get back up there again ASAP. Will have to organise a day off work next week (before I head to Sydney) and go up midweek when there are less people around.. Yup, this is a sport I want to do *all* the time now. It’s just so much fun.

There are Kia up at Mt. Hutt

So you do have to be careful. They’re a very intelligent parrot. The only thing is that the adolescents have a tendency to go on sugar highs and then attack things for fun – like it you leave a car window in they’ll happily get inside and rip your seats to shreds. For real.

But a great day. I did manage to get a couple of complete S bends (so heel & toe routine) without falling over by the end of the day.. was pretty happy about it.

Today Sunday – up and off doing some trad climbing up at Castle Rock – which is on the Port Hills overlooking ChCh. Really lovely views.. will get some mountain biking up there sometime, but will need a proper bike to do it with.

Must say though, it’s an insane bunch of people I live with, and I love it. Well, active perhaps more than insane.

Here’s a vintage Morris being loaded up with 3 kayaks (midwinter!) – the girl beside the car is Araha – Waricks girlfriend, who is back down to Dunedin to finish her 2nd year of her 2nd degree.. Good excuse to visit though hopefully :) So yeah – Warick was heading off Kayaking.. Steve & Yvonne (different Yvonne!) Michelle, Florian and I went climbing and Luke headed off to do some backcountry snowboarding (you hike with your snowboard and then head off down some slope…) Which is what Florian was up to on Saturday – except he was ‘Ski Touring’.

That was just for the morning, then in the afternoon another trip to the Supershed, got some stuff to kit out our living rooms (we’ve changed the organisation of the flat a little bit..) But I’ll make a little video of the place tomorrow hopefully and put it up.

Then it was back to move into the new place. Had a really lovely evening on Sunday evening.. Florian cooked a meal, and also Michelle (as we didn’t have enough stuff) and 5 of us ate in the main room just sitting around, no tables, just eating on our knees, but it was perfect. I love the place. I’m going to make a little video and put it up sometime too..

Oh yes, a couple more pics, this time of the Yurt we stayed in up in Nelson (sorry it’s all disjointed)

That’s the outside.. the inside (a little foggy as it was warm) was like this. Yum breakfast too

Finally, last night – Conor, Grattan, Ronan, Ben, Barry, Keith & Aisling slept on the floor in our living room (yes it’s bare).. it’s so great to have a place that I can invite people back to.. really great.

So time for a few images.. in no particular order, this was the group of people on the trip.

Front row, with his certificate – Keith, behind him – Grattan, then L->R on the middle row is Ronan, Barry, Conor and Aisling. Behind again – Me and Ben.

Next, well seeing as this pic was taken at the sky-dive centre..

So that was before we went up, then there was the nice paraglide on the way back down again..

So after arriving in Queenstown (which is where I left off writing) we did quite a lot of drinking.. and Barry, Keith and Grattan did a couple of bungee jumps. They did the ‘Nevis’ which is the 2nd longest in the world, at 237m or something.

I didn’t bungee, far too afraid of all the stories about people hurting their eyes. But did have a great chat with the ‘dude’ of a busdriver. Every bus that went the other way he’d make a sort of rap-sign at. Way cool. ehem. However, he does mostly power his house of solar and I think that’s the way to go. I really would like to go that way.. whenever I’m rich enough to have a house.

And there’s grattan jumping out of the thing.

Finally, what I thought was a pretty nice pic of Aisling and I. She and Keith are now off to travel for 3 weeks in Asia (or is it 4) before heading back to Ireland.. wow… must be odd coming to the end of the holiday.

What a fun week so far! So on Friday headed up to Nelson with Michelle, just handy that she was heading up to visit friends. Stayed at her friends place on Friday night – and what a place it was… They live in a Yurt! which is a Mongolian Tent.. I will put a pic up when I get my camera charged again (made the stupid mistake of leaving it on playback all night and it totally drained the battery!) You can have a look at a how they’re structured here. Very clever things really, they fold up completely (which is good, for nomadic lifestyles ;)

So yeah, that was Friday – On Sat, chilled out until the evening until it was time to meet up with – Keith & Aisling, Ben, Barry, Ronan, Grattan and Conor. Keith, Ben, Barry and Ronan were all friends back from primary school in St. Annes. Kinda funny to then go touring in the South Island with them! But all good. Keith and Aisling are on their way back to Ireland after spending a year in oz, the others flew out for a 2 week trip. Never long enough! but they’re making the most of it.

So stayed in a hostel for Sat night, very little was done, well unless lazing in a hot tub drinking cool beers counts! Sunday – we went to go sky-diving, unfortunately the weather was awful, so we headed off to check out the Able Tasman walk, but it really was too wet to do anything.

Monday however, it was lovely and sunny.. so off we went to go skydiving, again pics to follow. I think the scariest thing really was the build up to it. Funny really to resign yourself to jumping out of a plane. From 13,000 feet Quite a long way. Total adrenalin junkies these guys.. really.. my instructor, Bob, totally sound, had done 11,000 jumps. I felt safe.

So we split into 3 groups, I was in the second one, so we’d seen Conor and Grattan get safely down first! So up we went, takes 15mins to climb the 4000m. Air gets noticeably thinner, but it’s all good! Bob, (who had a classic flying-ace moustache) gave me lots of tips, the most important one I guess was just to take lots of deep breaths before you jump out of the plane, so that your brain is able to take it in. The other thing, was to fix your eyes on one part of the horizon, instead of looking all around the place immediately.

At altitude, Ronan went out first.. disappeared so quickly. Then it was my turn… you shuffle towards the now open door! The ground is impossibly small below.. and you basically hang out of the door (while your instructor makes a few last checks!) cross your arms, and basically arch your body into a boomerang around the instructor.

And then you roll out.

Head first.

It’s quite strange! But great, it’s – wow – Freefall rocks. It was so beautiful, looking up the coast to the top of Golden Bay, then Bob would turn us around and we’d look down the coast towards Kaikoura and Christchurch. On a clearer day we’d see all the way to Rhupeau and Taranaki on the North Island.. Takes about 56 seconds to fall from 13,000 down to 6000 I think it was where we opened our chute. Very cool. Must check out Paragliding sometime too I suppose! :) Hehehe, lots of fun.

Oh, and the other confidence-inspiring thing they do, is that you don’t pay until afterwards! Good move.

Then off to a vineyard. Grattans family own and run O Briens fine wines back home in Dublin, so we checked out one of the places they buy from. And it was pretty interesting seeing the whole process. Very much automated for the White chardonnay they make, and then the Pinot Noir was a very traditional process.

Stayed the night in a place called St. Arnaud. Or something like that. In Nelson Lakes national park. Very quiet sleepy place in winter. We had the hostel opened up specially for us! And it was a great night, off we went to feast ourselves in the restaurant down the road.

Only to find it was shut. So back to the hostel, and a feast (we were so hungry) of spaghetti, noodles, meatballs was had. It was yum. We did get the fire going though, and soon we were happily playing scrabble and drinking beer (the theme of the week – well the beer part anyway).

Then on Tuesday we headed south to Franz Josef via Punakaki (the pancake rocks) Franz Josef is a lovely place. Really small, but very friendly and compact. With huge mountains for the backdrop. Great. The internet cafe I am sitting in, is in a old converted red bus. Far too many bottles of wine were consumed for me to have any chance on the pool table, though Conor and Barry are pretty damn good. Misspent youth I say.

Finally today – Wednesday, the others all went off to do Heli-Hiking (you jump in a helicopter and they put you way up on the glacier, where you get guided around for a few hours). I decided not to, as I will be getting in some mountaineering soon anyway, so I opted for a nice 5 hour hike. To Roberts Point. I would highly recommend it actually. Lots of fun swing bridges, and a classic view of massive waterfalls and the glacier at the end of it all. And I saw just one other person on the trip! Excellent. Tomorrow on down to Queenstown. Right into the winter festival there, should be manic.

Well quite a few changes.. Glynn off to Europe, lucky man.. though I don’t envy him the 48 hours of travel. Still, the pint of Guinness at the other end will taste all the better I am sure.

Other changes this week! – well… moved out of 21 Stanton Crescent.. and will soon be at Fendalton. I moved all my stuff out last night as Michelle and Warick said it would be cool to leave it in their place for my week away..

So yes, my week away. Off up to Nelson straight after work, there I will meet up with Keith & Aisling, Barry, Bernard and Ronan – all primary school friends from Shankill.. and a couple of their friends.. Not quite sure what the plan is yet, possibly doing a tour of the vineyards in Malborough, maybe skydive over the Able Tasman (quite tempted by that – much more so than a bungee)… will see, but mostly it’ll be great fun just to hang out.

Had some Important People visiting in work today – The Registrar of Companies.. and all the heads of the different business elements within the Ministry.. I had to wear a tie.. I’m still in shock ;) hehe, but it was fun demoing some of the stuff we’ve been doing. Course fat wadges of cash in brown bags would be better.

Finally, ronan is keeping a blog here