For the last few years our friends Steve & Michelle have organised a weekend with friends down in Twizel. It gets bigger and bigger each year, this time I think there was 40+ people. A really great weekend and very well organised. Managed to get two days skiing in, one at Ohau, I do love that field..
I took a ski lesson. So. Many. Things. To. Practice !!! It’s endless… I do sometimes (ok often) wish I’d taken up skiing instead of boarding back in the day, that said, it was nice to learn from scratch at the same time as Maaike. And I’m not even jealous* that her technique is way better
Second day went to Dobson. Their coverage wasn’t quite as good, but still more than enough for a day.. The top t-bar wasn’t even going. I remember a few years ago when Dobson opened at the end of May with decent cover. Climate change? Just a bad season? El Nino? Not great that’s for sure.
And then this weekend headed off to Mount Olympus for the weekend. Left on the Friday night after work, which meant arriving in the dark and getting the rope-tow up to the lodge in the dark. It was actually fine! even with my basic head torch. It’s a really excellent deal actually, it’s $120pp/pn I think, but that gets you bed + breakfast, lunch & dinner.. a very good deal. And it’s good food.
Woke up to 20cm of fresh powder and awful awful visibility.
But then the sun cleared and there was fresh powder to be had everywhere… I have a lot of perfecting to go on my powder turns.. seeing the neat little jumps the better skiers tend to do… yes, lots to learn. Anyway, some pictures & video’s for you:
I also brought the raspberry pi up the hill to take a timelapse.
I unfortunately didn’t properly check the script before going up the hill and I’d left in the daytime check… and unfortunately the pi doesn’t really keep time when it’s not on the Internet (it has no on-board clock) .. so for the powder day, well, it thought it was night-time :( very unfortunate. Still, sort of mistake you only make once!
Well, a really lovely weekend, learned a lot, had heaps of fun – a really really good group + weekend. Many thanks to Mike Plank for organising!
Two days, no, three days of skiing so far this Winter. First up Cheeseman, even had oh, 10cm of fresh or something, lovely. Skills have certainly improved since Japan, but I’m still desperately in need of a ski lesson!
Next up it was Broken River.. Maaike’s first time? back on rope tows since getting badly pinged off them last year at Broken River. So much easier on ski’s are the old nutcrackers. Here you can see a video – easy as :)
And a few pictures from around… the basin here (Alan’s Basin) is a black – and we all (pretty happily) got down it – a marked improvement.
And finally, Glynn & Jayne & Isla & Emmerson were down for a week, and Glynn and I sneaked off on the Friday for a ski at Mount Hutt. It was pretty firm conditions but had a lovely day. It’s great being in an industry (and working for an employer) who is happy to let you switch around the odd day when it suits (I just worked the Saturday instead)
Quick trip up to Wellington to catch up with Glynn & Jayne & Isla and Emmerson… always a treat getting to hang out with them (and no, I’ll never ever ever forgive Jayne for moving Glynn up to Wellington!)
Pancakes for breakfast, they’d just ran out of gas, so Glynn cracked out the MSR, ever the resourceful one!
Went for a quick wander up to the wind turbines, which affords a great view out over the surrounds. Very nice.
There were so many awful stories, we’re so lucky that at the moment at least, we don’t have conscription etc. That said, we do seem to be doing a decent job of destroying our environment, which may very well lead to more deaths, admittedly over a longer period.
Anyway – lighter things ;)
Had a lovely time geeking out with Glynn, showing him some of my favourite vim tricks, and seeing some of the interesting containerisation technology he’s been working on as part of Solaris. Very cool.
Finally, had a very enjoyable hour or so playing mariokart for the N64. I’m very tempted to setup my Raspberry Pi as a Retropie. A project in the making.
For the last few months Maaike has been studying for CELTA, a pretty rigorous English language certification. It was at least 20 hours a week of work on top of a normal job.. she didn’t get out much (and I had to cook a lot, to the point that we’re now both sick of broccoli soup ;). Anyway, she finished, and we headed off for a slightly lazy weekend, twas good. Just over to a bach on the banks peninsula. We had a quick look around birdlings flat and went to the http://www.gemstoneandfossilmuseum.co.nz/ (link currently broken). This very enthusiastic amateur had collected a lot of rocks – very beautiful and well worth a visit if you’re passing (it’s free!)
Anyway, congratulations to Maaike for finishing, and I must say, it’s very nice having her back (and not having to cook all the time ;)
As a final word, Maaike got an “A”, which only 3-5% of students get – excellent effort!
This weekend it was off up to Thames to play backgammon. I do love the game, though I really haven’t played it in a long while, at least, not with any consistency. We ran the “National Competition” (very loose definition if ever there was one) as a part of the mindsports festival, which is an initiative the Thames county council is trying to get going, with some success. Anyway 17 players turned up, and we had a good competition, it was great to be playing again. I ended up coming third overall, but it was a very close competition.
Oh, the other picture was of the police station which was finally demolished. There is still a huge amount of rebuild left to go.. my heart goes out to the people of Nepal who are going through hell at the moment, no doubt about it, even though it has faded from front page news.
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