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.

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!