Weekend was good.. Friday out with the work crowd, great fun. Beginning to think moving here was one of the better moves I’ve made over here. Saturday was tramping, up and heading Kaikoura direction at the ungodly hour of 7am(up at 6:20 – this is too early for a Sat morning!) The tramp this time was – well – average. Mainly because the wind was hellishly strong. Really not sure how fast it was, but it’s by far and away the strongest wind I’ve ever walked in, really physically pushed back down the path when the gusts came. That coupled with a sorta scree / stones whipping all around the place, wasn’t so much fun. I was quite happy I was wearing trousers instead of the usual polypro and shorts.

You can see in this pic the waves that were formed on this wee lake. Tiny lake, big waves.

mind you, there was a purty view too.

Then out for a couple of pitchers in The Dux a pretty nice local pub which brews its own beer and often has live gigs.

Sunday, quite lazy, though did get a bunch of stuff done, including joining the library at long last. Made a complete fool of myself asking whether they had subdivided the fiction section into non and science fiction rather than just fiction. The helpfull assistant looked at me like I had at least 3 heads but no brain. Been far too long since I’ve been into a library not to look for academic books.. In my defense (not that it is one) the sign on the board just had ‘fiction’ on it. Ok. Bad excuse. Ah well. Aaaanyway, what else, bouldering, bought wrist guards for boarding (most important apparently) and found the bus schedule so it’s all go. Then out to see Elephant which was a film – just exploring high school massacres like Columbine. Not something I need to see again, possibly slightly too arty for me.. afriad I’m just looking forward to the next Harry Potter. This link from the BBC is about Harry getting mobbed by thousands of screaming fans at the launch in New York. His quote was perfect

“It’s astonishing – it’s really, really, really scary but it’s brilliant,” the 14-year-old enthused.

So the weekend was fun, sat night headed out with Michelle – a climbing friend, firstly to her friends 30th birthday party. Great fun, the theme was a 3 year old birthday party. So played pass-the-parcel (have never, ever seen one with that amount of wrappings), and treasure hunt etc. They were a really really friendly bunch of people to hang out with. Then it was on to another comedy gig. It was 4 different comedians, one Scot, one English, one kiwi from ChCh, and a group called the flight of the concords they were excellent. A music / comedy duo, might have to get their CD sometime.

Sunday was pretty lazy really, played squash against Thor and got completely thrashed. Also finished up the work project. ish.

Other interesting news since then, interesting developments with the car, have been bought out of the car which makes sense seeing as I am not living in Memorial Ave any more.. will have to do some research and find another way of getting to the slopes.. actually a little – concerned as to where my ski-pass has gone! Still has not arrived in the post yet! However, apparently if you loose it you can just get a replacement for $5, so if the worst comes to the worst will just do that. The ski season officially opens next weekend.. they’re busy making snow at the moment. Really looking forward to it though. This weekend will be off to the Kaikoura range for a tramp on Saturday.. but a nice easy one this time!!

Odd getting mails from home complaining about just how sunburned you’re all getting… my heart bleeds ;)

Well, fairly worky week. Have been working on this self-help system that will probably go live in the next couple of weeks. Reckon that’ll be an interesting week.. hopefully it’ll not fall over and die ;)

Other than work… well was great hanging out with an engineering friend – Emma..

Pretty impressive, she’s been in the country less than a week, and has found ski work for the season, and has just left today for a 3 week tour of the North Island. Excellent stuff, but really nice having a friend from home around.

So yes, work is getting terribly busy, so much so that we just had to have workplace massages. All the rage over here ;) definitely something to suggest back home, I mean sitting in front of a computer all day, it’s really only healthy to get massages :) hehehe.

The lady who gave them quit the police force to move into massage therapy. And personally, I’m quite glad she did. Though I should have moved the head-rest a little further up as it wasn’t incredibly comfortable for the whole thing.

Did have some awful news though, one of my close climbing friends back home (Claudia) was climbing up in the North of the country (fairhead), and a rock was knocked loose and hit her on the back. There was some serious damage to her back (crushed vertebrae?), but thank God the initial reports that there might be some sort of paralyses look like not being true.. though it’s still terribly serious. And it’s strange being here and hearing about it… just waiting for news and hoping.. Get well soon C and then come visit :) Great place to convalesce NZ!

Well an absolutely great week! Started with Monday (as weeks usually do) when I got an e-mail from a previously unheard of cousin. Kate. 2nd cousin on mums side. Who was coming into ChCh on Thursday. So we met up, which was really fun. Funny really how just ‘cos someone is your cousin you just instantly get on with them (or I do at any rate). She’s on a gap year (kinda 1/2 wish I’d done one of those) between school and university. Traveled through South America on the way here, now on to Oz, then Asia and finally home. The more I hear about South America the more tempted I get… But I do kinda want to go to Africa more on the way home (whenever that’s going to be.. also getting more tempted to stay a little longer perhaps) Sounds great though.

So here’s a pic of Kate (on the right) and her friend Abby.

Headed out to a slide show (and yes, they loved it.. or said they did :) But it was given by Guillome – a French climber / mountaineer. He’s such an all round mountaineer. But then what do you expect from a guy who used to ski to school and get the cable car home again.. He’s also got the contact for a guy wot makes Down Jackets to order out here.. even waterproofs them .. so will be getting one of those. Just as soon as pay day rolls around again as have managed to spend quite a lot this week.

Though some of that was enforced savings kinda. For this hike that I went on yesterday (Saturday) we weren’t sure what the weather was going to be doing, so I hired out an Ice-Axe and crampons from the club. It’s really amazingly cheap – $10 for the ice-axe and crampons, and I could keep them for two weekends really if I wanted to.. The catch was the $200 (fully refundable) deposit, but that makes a dent into available cash!

Also booked my tickets for a comedy event next weekend, quite looking forward to seeing some kiwi comedy. Should be fun! Climbing on the Tuesday (yes we’re a little out of order here) and was quite happy with my climbing, just getting back into it, but led six routes, and finished off with a reasonably strenuous (to me) 17+ which is only 5c French, but still, after 6 other leads wasn’t awful.

Oh yeah, on Wednesday when I went along to the CUTC meeting to find out about the hike, Dave was giving a slide show on caving, pretty awesome pictures from Jonathan Carrs. Really good show.

So yes – signed up for the climb with Florian (climbing friend – and mountaineer) It was up and around Arthurs Pass. Drove up on Friday evening to the pass, and stayed in the Alpine Club hut there. Up at 5am on Saturday morning, we wanted to avoid bad conditions (melting snow ‘n stuff I guess!) Was supposed to be a 9 hour hike, and it was, but not the one which we were quite expecting (fog)

So here’s a pic of our group (minus the guy who was taking the picture) Quite a mix of people really, two kiwis, two Germans, two French, an American, and Irish and a Malaysian. Good fun though. Due to… ummm… not everyone being as fast as needed we decided not to do the entire ridge we were going to do. This left us time to play in the snow.

Here we practiced self-arresting (which is where you dig your ice-axe into the snow, lean your weight on it, and hope you don’t hit hard ice!) Good fun, though I’ve a lot to learn. We did get, well, mislaid… we unfortunately got onto the wrong ridge and it very gently did a U-Turn, until we weren’t headed in at all the right direction (ok, south instead of north if you want particulars). However, all worked out well, but next time I think I will bring my own map and compass and try to keep track of where we’re going.. Far too much out of practice me.

so yes, all in all it was a fun day, quite long though. Oh, the other good news was that an old college friend – Emma Towey (fellow engineer) has, apparently, just arrived into ChCh, so have to find some way of meeting up, I don’t think her mobile phone is going to work in NZ. So much for good old-fashioned rendez-vous appointments!

Well TWALK was fun, though more of a proper orienteering event than what I was expecting. It’s been running for around about 38 years, which is quite a while really. The event started at 9am, Thor picked me up at 8:30 and we headed to the college car park where we met the couple of hundred other people..

everyone is supposed – or at least is encouraged, to dress up.

This team – ‘The Supergrans’, dressed up well!, and actually won the prize for best dressed! Last year, the team that won dressed up as potatoes, and hiked all the 14km first leg carrying a couch. Needless to say, that team won that year for sheer effort!

So yup, the idea of TWALK is that it’s a sort of 24 hour orienteering event, but not a score event – there is a course, each of the checkpoints has a clue to help you find it – for example ‘New Zealand Salad’, was a clue to a Cabbage Tree… And, ‘A Backwards Tenor Ant?’.. Tell you at the end if you can’t work it out.

Once the first leg was over (20km ish) you get to the central base, there there’s food and drink all night, which is nice. We did the first leg in around about 6 hours, pretty average, and then at about 7:30 headed out on the second leg, and did a further 23km ish. So all in all I hiked a marathon. Though by the end of it I was completely wrecked, just completely. Feet were, and are, surprisingly fine, had one small blister, but it’s grand.

There were quite a few people there, this is about 1/4 of the tents.

The winning team completed all 5 legs in 21 hours. That was over 100 km. That’s a heluva long way! Running I imagine pretty much all of it. Quite funny, at one point they were getting trailed by another team, so they just turned off their torches and ran!! :)

So yes, got back in at 4am, and slept until we left at 11am. Our team did win a prize though. Our team name: Something Witty as we were taking the Mick out of team names… an entire bag of chocolate sweets!

lazy Sunday, and today – Monday – back to work, got out of my squash match, and then had a few games of pool, and then dinner with Glynn. Which was just great fun.