Pretty crazy week, but all good. Wednesday headed out to the tramping club

meeting for TWALK. Got quite a lot more information about it, sounds great, though I may not be saying that tomorrow morning! It’s going to be a cross between tramping, orienteering and a fancy dress party. There’s a prize for the best outfit, which we will not be winning. Last year a team came along with their theme of ‘couch potato’. They carried a couch all the way from the start to the end of the first leg (probably about 15km) dressed as potatoes. How cool is that ;) Also sound like there are some pretty excellent hikes coming up on the west coast, heading to the hot pools – could be quite a lot of fun, though perhaps crowded on the weekend they are thinking of going (june bankholiday)

Last night – Thursday was both fun and sad. This picture has Yvonne and her friend Kirsten in it (me in background) from the murder-mystery party last weekend. (Yvonne with red wig on right)

However, last night we headed out for Yvonnes going away dinner. Not bad Thai food, better than the last time we were there. But definitely will miss her, she’s been a really good friend over here. Now off to Sydney to work, and co-incidently be a little closer to her boyf who is the manager of the Warrtahs (OZ rugby team in the super 12 league). Still, depending on how cash goes over here, I might head over to say hello, ’tis lully altogether over there I’m sure.

Tonight off to a hypnotist show in the university, am 3/4 tempted to see if I can volunteer, but I imagine I will chicken out. Wouldn’t really mind if it was going to be -umm – non-biological humour.. but you just never know.

Finally, I wonder how many can spot what This page and This page have in common. Both authored by a Mr. Declan Flood trying to cause mischeif, there’s just something a little strange… Easier to spot on the first page.

Well, last night was great fun, Glynn, Maeve & Andy hosted an excellent dinner – Mexican, quite delicious (as usual ;) There was a good bunch of people there, 10 in total. Watched one of the super-12 rugby matches… the crusaders (that’s our home team) beat the stormers (South African) and are now in second position in the league, which isn’t too bad really!

What else, so yes, headed out for a few drinks, and then a few more, which wasn’t incredibly smart perhaps seeing as I wanted to get up (and did, just about) early to get to the ski-sale which was on today – Sunday. I found a pair of boots for $60, they seem to fit, so I’m hoping they’re going to be ok… Can’t see anything obviously wrong with them.

you can also see the desk I bought in this amazing picture of my room

Boards however was a different story, I was a little slow I think picking a board, and they’d pretty much all been sold… or at least all the decent ones of my size… so I ended up (perhaps a bad idea!) spending $450 on a new board and bindings.. I figure the difference between a new one and an second hand is about $150, so call it 80euro (whenever I feel bad about spending lots of kiwi dollars I convert back to Euro as it’s a much smaller number :) Hmmmm, I wonder if it will be economical to ship the board home at the end of my time here… still, either way, I’ve got all I need now, except for wrist guards and perhaps some clothing gear… will have to see. So yes, spent roughly double what I was expecting to, but I suppose it’s still cheaper than most other places… Well, actually I’ve no idea if that is true, but it’s what I’m telling myself… hope I can come back boarding well!

Well, what happened this week… hmmmm, work started off with getting into detailing the requirements for the companies office web-help system that I’m going to be to building over the next couple of weeks, so that’s interesting! Monday had a squash match and got completely trounced. Which was a shame! Still, I got over it when I got my own back with an uzi. No, that’s not true, I was just totally off form.

Pretty excited about going on TWALK My friend and sometime squash partner Thor invited me to join the team he’s on. Should be – well.. completely tiring. It’s kind of a Rogaine (a 24 hour Orienteering event), but the clues are cryptic… and it’s based up in the mountains somewhere.. I’m not entirely sure how much I will do, will decide on the night I guess. Starts with getting picked up by a bus and dropped in a mystery location, then the first leg takes about 3->6 hours depending on fitness! That takes you to some DOC hut where there’s food (yay) and more looping routes that you can do out of there. Well, that’s what I understand of it all anyway, guess I will know more next weekend.

Climbing again on Tuesday and Thursday, though nothing too special, I got the 3 month pass again, and I really have to make the most of it, been out of practice for too long.

Friday was great fun, pics to follow hopefully. It was a themed party with work. I invited Sam along as Glynn was feeling off, and we were stuck for one person to come along, and it was great that he headed. The theme was that we were on a ship (in 1938) on the way to Argentina, when it goes off course and gets sabotaged. I was the dodgy owner of the fleet (Sly Sinker). My info was that I’d been embezzled out of my fortune by Harry Hood the accountant, so there was no insurance on the boat and I was penniless. There were some British and German agents on board too, kinda, and nuclear devices, and film stars, locals (who’ll look after your every need..) Yes, all in all a fun evening. Everyone got dressed up and made an evening of it.

What was also cool was that my boss Andrew, offered to take Sam and I out sea kayaking in Littleton sometime.. so will have to remind about that one from time to time ( ‘Yes Andrew, I’m sure I can make this release, but I’ll sure need a relaxing weekend on the water’ ) that should do it ;)

And tonight off to dinner in Memorial Ave, should be great fun, and tomorrow I have to get my snowboard and boots and bindings in the ski-sale.. Well I hope to anyway.

This week was fairly lazy as they go, well, didn’t get away for the weekend, but I suppose that’s needed once in a while. Monday was funny, – see I recently changed my squash clubs when I moved house, and on Monday a league match came up against my former team… there was an amount of slagging ;) but all fun.

I guess the highlight of the week was heading to Lyttelton (which is like a small seaside village over the Port Hills (the hills just by ChCh). It’s really close, yet feels like it’s far away, has its own chilled out atmosphere, cool place. The reason to go there was to see a travelling Scottish / Irish music band play. There were pretty good really, though I have been quite spoiled by great Irish music back home. I think some of the best evenings I’ve ever had was in a place called the Cobalt Café, which is on North Great Georges Street. My friend Caoimhin O Reilleigh (excuse the spelling) organised them. Comhluadar is the website, but doesn’t look like it’s been updated in years. Probably ‘cos Caoimhin is now in Co. Clare (Miltown Malbay I think) learning to make Uilleann Pipes. But yes, there were a couple of evenings in the café, listening to a piper and fiddler playing, having a bottle of red by the fire.. Yes, those were great evenings. So I’m slightly prejudiced now when I hear other players. I think I might try to get back in contact when I come back to Ireland and see if it would be possible to get those evenings running again, it was amazing.

So that was Thursday. Saturday I went out to the Super Shed, which is a great place. When you go to the dump here you dump by weight.. So here they have a setup, where if what you are throwing out could still be of use – books, furniture, crockery, sports gear, garden stuff etc. etc. that you can bring it to the Super Shed for free, and they’ll sell the stuff on, thereby reducing waste (through reuse) and making a little money for the council.

Here you can see hundreds of pairs of skis… I dunno if they’re safe or not, but you can pick up a pair fo $8…. So that’s kinda cool. So, for the princely sum of five dollars I managed to pick up a table, lamp and bin!. I mean you can’t really complain about that. The table is fine – not a wobble anywhere in sight!

Well!, quite a busy week really, started off very well, and ended slightly better except for a minor mishap with a bar of peanut brittle chocolate thing and a recently patched front tooth!

So yes, started very well with me getting a new contract from work. The M.E.D has bought me out of the recruitment companies contract, and I have signed a new one with them. The net effect being that I will probably get some more interesting / challenging work to do, and a 43% payrise. So that was nice.

Back playing squash too, which was great, am a little out of practice, but still, it’s great to be back on the court again. The new place is working out fine, nice and close to work – and toasty enough at night.

But the big excitement of the week was the trip back up to Takaka – to go caving in the Harwoods Hole.

Left on Friday night – and besides getting some pretty awful chips (which were made worse by the fact that they had managed to get their salt and sugar shakers mixed up) it was a fine trip up to Takaka again. The hostel we were staying in -well – caving club hut, was quite like the one in Waitomo, but smaller. Still – at $6 a night with beds, gas, and a pretty great location – it was pretty perfect (situated right on the top of Takaka hill)

The Next day started with me reading this newspaper clipping.

Harwoods has a slightly evil reputation as quite inexperienced people go down it and then get into trouble. The woman in that newspaper cutting sounded quite idiotic really. She got freaked out 20m down, and tried to swing herself over onto a ledge. Which she did, which was fair enough I guess (except that you really don’t want to fray your rope too much over a 180m vertical fall. So yes, once she’d established herself on said precarious ledge she then untied from the rope, because it was pulling her off the ledge. Insane behaviour. So she was then perched on a ledge, 180m above death, with no line connecting her to anything at all. Mad. Luckily enough the rescue people got there before she fell in.

The main scary part (but not the most difficult) is the 200m absail in. That’s what… 50 ish Stories??? Quite big. You first go down 20m, and then you have to swap over ropes (called a re-belay) and go down 180m on the second rope. The changeover is the scary part.

The other slightly more impressive rescue was when a group of – well – 15->17 year olds decided to do the trip as the weather wasn’t quite nice enough for climbing in Paynes Ford that day. So they tied 4 dynamic ropes together (for the non-climbers out there, there are dynamic and static ropes – the dynamic one stretches, so that when you fall off a climb the rope stretches a little so that you don’t get a sudden stop). However, dynamic ropes aren’t the thing for caving with – or at least descending 180m – well about 200 in total. Aaaanyway – so the lads got down the bottom of the cave and then realised that they didn’t actually know how to get through the cave. So one of them prussiked back up the rope (with one prussic and a gri-gri) Pretty impressive stuff. See they’d only told one person (informally) at the campsite that they were going to try this trip.. and so they might not have been spotted for days. All ended well though.

These pics here, were taken by Dave Hume (our leader for the trip), but on a previous trip.

You’ll excuse me a little … flowery description of the absail. Hehehe, someone also had left a little plastic skeleton hanging by it’s neck 15m down on the first pitch – I didn’t see it though, but anyway – yes – the absail. It was scary, no doubt about it. Easy enough to get down to the re-belay – where Dave had also absailed into and was watching people go through it (which was just so great!) Then, once you’d switched over ropes (a lot easier than in the practice session we did) it was a total free-fall to the bottom. Well, not fall, but you know what I mean. IT was slightly strange, as you do start to rotate (any momentum and you just keep on turning) so there I was, twirling around in mid-air, trying not to get disorientated and not particularly liking to look up – or down (long way down!!). Eventually though you settle into it and just enjoy it, then it was cool to look up and see Dave suspended sooooo far above. So far. It was, to be honest, quite beautiful to watch the drops of water caught by the sun go whizzing by. Really spectacular.

Once down the bottom we all moved off to one-side while the others came down (there were two trips made – both on the Saturday) It was great – I was in the second trip so got to have a nice lie-in until 11am Lovely. So when Dave had come down to join – Joe, Susan, Clare, Greg and I, it was off into the cave itself.

Here again is a pic of Daves – this time from inside (no kidding)

The cave itself was a marble cave – with some limestone formations. It was ‘sporty’, which means it was quite tricky, lots of little absails inside, and squeezes and bits of climbing. But all in all it was one of the best caves – well the best longest cave I have done to date (though I still loved the blow-hole one in January)

Then we came out into the Starlight Passage. So called ‘cos it’s covered in quartz and it shines like stars. Quite pretty.

Heluva slog back up the mountain, quite glad to be doing it in the dark (we came out of the cave at about 7:30pm) The best part of doing it second was that Chris, Nick and the others had cooked dinner

Which was just amazing of them. Quite a few beers and most of a bottle of Port later, it was time for a well earned sleep!

–Sunday–
Very lazy day – reading my excellent book given to me by a friend (Paris) before I left. Called ‘A Mad world, my Masters’ by John Simpson – he’s the BBC foreign affairs correspondent. And an excellent writer he is too, and finally the long drive back to Christchurch.