Had a 5.5 and then a 6 aftershock today. First time I got under a desk!

Maaike and I are fine.. house still grand with little obvious damage… But lots of liquifaction on the roads. Fun and games

Headed away tramping with Maaike for the weekend. First time in a while I’d been able to muster up the energy to get out. Well, that and Snowpool was successfully launched so had some time again ;)

Just a cruisey walk up the Nina Valley and then onto devilskin biv.

View Larger Topographic Map

(do like the new topomap site!)

My camera is totally dying – definitely time to get a new Ixus I think, and keep the old one for snowboarding / getting mashed about.. really not too happy with these pictures to be honest.

The biv was just a small (new) two person hut. We did have a tent just in-case anyone else was there, but we had the place to ourselves. Games were played, food was eaten, wine was drunk, and for a while, earthquakes were forgotten.

On Feb 22nd when the magnitude 6 earthquake hit, I was in the middle of the city centre on the 6th floor of our building. We’ve not been allowed back in since (though rescue people did collect our bikes from the basement – which was very nice of them!).

Anyway, the city council has been allowing business’ to go back in and have a single run into their buildings to get essential stuff out. I leapt at the opportunity to go back in and have a nosey (stupidly forgot my head-torch which was a little silly)..

Unfortunately I think my camera is dying, and most of the pictures didn’t come out too well (annoying to say the least). My lunch which had been sitting there for 4 months was a little hairy – but I forgot to check the fridge (which was apparently an awesome site). I did take a video on the way in – which you can see here.

So, apologies for the complete lack of regular blog updates. Truth to tell I’ve been working *hard* on getting Snowpool up and running for Australia and NZ (the snow has singularly failed to arrive), and constant earthquakes simply take it out of you. We’ve had 8000+ quakes since September. That’s actually quite a lot…

Tis great having Irish friends in New Zealand.. So it was off to Arthurs Pass for the weekend. Maaike and I headed up a little early and went biking.

The evening was spent drinkin’ and laughin’ and playing Mafia / Werewolves and Villagers. Definitely has to be one of my favourite games.. and it was entirely satisfactory killing off Maaike in the last round (I was a werewolf) and listening to her whispered suggestions of who the werewolf might be… That said, she killed me off pretty damn quickly when she was a werewolf, still, such is the mores and wants of werewolves.

I left a little early to get back and finish working on Snowpool. Still, it’s pretty much done and dusted now and ready for the new season. Excellent.

ok ok ookkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy I’ve been a wee bit slack on ye olde blog front lately. Guilty as charged. Still, you try to find another (non professional) blog from someone born in Shankill, Ireland in 1979 which is about New Zealand and has been updated more regularly than this one. I think not.

Anyway, I have been really busy (too busy some might say. Those some might be people’s who’s names start with an M and end in aaike. Fair cop too really I guess. I’ve been working hard trying to get Snowpool up and running and completely rebuilt using the latest web framework – Ruby on Rails. Quite the learning curve for me, but the development server is live at : http://snowpool.heroku.com, and I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking.

Anyway, now for a big catch up over the last – almost 3 months. In no particular order (except chronological) ;)

My Aunt Mary came down for a weekend. It was Maaike and my Christmas present to her. Basically she’s been threatening to come visit for years.. but it *never quite happens*. So we took matters into our own gentle hands and bought her tickets down from Palmy.

We had a lovely time out at Akaroa, eating cheese, drinking wine, playing mini-golf (not as much fun as last time somehow) going for a walk at the Hinewai Reserve and altogether the weekend was over far too quickly. The only disappointing thing was that ChCh didn’t put on a decent earthquake to show Mary what it’s really like. Sigh ;)

Another weekend we went out to visit our friends Mike and Heather. They bought a chunk of forest to farm and live in. It’s wonderful. They have chickens, turkeys (unfortunately the odd stoat too), water, electricity, internet, veges… and a perfect place to play hide and go seek.

And they have an outside bath.
1) Take an ordinary bath & fill it with water
2) Light a fire underneath
3) *put a plank of wood on the bottom (else your bum gets fried)
4) Enjoy

And a quick video

Glynn and Jayne were down for a visit, with their little Isla. Isla is now walking, and talking a lot more. This is change.

Isla did make a beeline at the end of the night towards the Isla(y) malts..

Can’t blame her myself.

Finally for this catch up, was a trip (over Easter) with Maaike, Ivor and Berit to Mt Cook NP. Got some climbing in on real rock again. Rock which hasn’t been munched by an Earthquake. Great to be out there again. Ivor led me up a 3* multipitch.. it was wonderful to be “out there” again. Need to get back into climbing I think. So much to do. So little time.