Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Makara Mountain Bike Park
Alright, so I finally managed to get some decent video captured from my helmet mounted camera. Nothing too thrilling here, just some good xc biking in Makara park. The videos are low quality, but you should get a sense of the terrain. Makara park has a lot of steep hills with native bush everywhere, very nice. Most of it isn't technically difficult at all, not rocks of roots to speak of. They make up for it with other things though, like crazy dropoffs, extremily slippery clay, and gale force winds that can blow you off the hill. This place is only a couple minutes away from Downtown Wellington, pretty amazing.
The Kennet brothers (legends in New Zealand) have been a pretty big force behind this park, and it shows. The condition of the trail is great, probably the best maintained trail network I've seen.
I'd put some thumbnails up, but blogspot isn't cooperating so here are the links:
Missing link 2 (4.3 megs)
Missing link 1 (22 megs)
Lower Ridgeline (31 megs)
The ridgeline is a difficult trail with sweet views, but it was just far too windy to try it that day.
The Kennet brothers (legends in New Zealand) have been a pretty big force behind this park, and it shows. The condition of the trail is great, probably the best maintained trail network I've seen.
I'd put some thumbnails up, but blogspot isn't cooperating so here are the links:
Missing link 2 (4.3 megs)
Missing link 1 (22 megs)
Lower Ridgeline (31 megs)
The ridgeline is a difficult trail with sweet views, but it was just far too windy to try it that day.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Back in North America!
A trip to Houston, roadtrip from there to New Orleans, a conference and a vacation back to Halifax. Not bad for 2.5 weeks.
I was really impressed with the trip to Houston and New Orleans, the 'southern hospitality' thing isn't a myth. It can be easy to get jaded about big US cities, but I had a great time at both spots. New Orleans was a blast, I'd love to go back. We had a meal at a very Cajun place, where a live band was playing. The music sounded familiar, then I realised I've heard it before, it was the group that does the music for the 'iEEEEEEEE' commercial for Hyundai - pretty funny. I was too busy with the conference to venture out to see some of the damage from Katrina, but you could see bits of it around. The condition of many of the flooded houses is a shame, a lot of them are far beyond fixing and will have to be bulldozed. I can see why so many people are reluctant to return.
The conference was a blast too, this was my first time 'behind a booth' at a conference, and I think I managed quite well. I had some 'demos from hell' with out software where people were asking super in depth questions, but I think I managed to impress a couple people. The guys asking the tough questions are probably the most serious anyway. Note for next time: get more comfortable shoes even if they're a little ugly!
The french quarter in New Orleans is definitely still alive and well, we had a fantastic couple nights there. The flight back home was made more interesting by the fact that I was still feeling the effects of many 'hurricanes' and Abita restoration's.
I was wondering how our family dog would react to seeing me again. I think she was as happy to see me as I was to see her, what a great dog. I'd love to get a lab in New Zealand, they're such nice dogs! I took her to the cottage for the weekend where the family and I had a nice lazy long weekend. I spent the rest of the week going tramping (err, I mean hiking!), seeing friends at the old university, catching up with family, and generally eating way too much. I meant to do so much more, but I still had a great time. I'm really looking forward to getting a bunch of great friends in NZ as good as I have back home. Here's a picture from the kayak trip we went on, the weather was incredible, but crawling through the mud at low tide wasn't.
One of the hikes I had was kind of cool. I went out the the 'bluff wilderness trail' or whatever its called - great trail. Almost near the end of a 4+ hour hike I stumbled on a bird on the trail in front of me. I stopped and it came right up to my feet, so I got a few pictures of it. I'm sure Adam wishes he was there with a shotgun! What kind of bird is this anyway? partridge, ptarmigan, grouse? I don't know.
As always, I've got some photos of the trip on the gallery.
One thing I'll be posting in the future are some mountain biking movies. I managed to zip-tie a mini camera tripod to my biking helmet. It looks really dumb, but it lets me capture some pretty wild downhill biking movies. Its actually hard to get a good setup, but I should have some cool movies up before too long.
I was really impressed with the trip to Houston and New Orleans, the 'southern hospitality' thing isn't a myth. It can be easy to get jaded about big US cities, but I had a great time at both spots. New Orleans was a blast, I'd love to go back. We had a meal at a very Cajun place, where a live band was playing. The music sounded familiar, then I realised I've heard it before, it was the group that does the music for the 'iEEEEEEEE' commercial for Hyundai - pretty funny. I was too busy with the conference to venture out to see some of the damage from Katrina, but you could see bits of it around. The condition of many of the flooded houses is a shame, a lot of them are far beyond fixing and will have to be bulldozed. I can see why so many people are reluctant to return.
The conference was a blast too, this was my first time 'behind a booth' at a conference, and I think I managed quite well. I had some 'demos from hell' with out software where people were asking super in depth questions, but I think I managed to impress a couple people. The guys asking the tough questions are probably the most serious anyway. Note for next time: get more comfortable shoes even if they're a little ugly!
The french quarter in New Orleans is definitely still alive and well, we had a fantastic couple nights there. The flight back home was made more interesting by the fact that I was still feeling the effects of many 'hurricanes' and Abita restoration's.
I was wondering how our family dog would react to seeing me again. I think she was as happy to see me as I was to see her, what a great dog. I'd love to get a lab in New Zealand, they're such nice dogs! I took her to the cottage for the weekend where the family and I had a nice lazy long weekend. I spent the rest of the week going tramping (err, I mean hiking!), seeing friends at the old university, catching up with family, and generally eating way too much. I meant to do so much more, but I still had a great time. I'm really looking forward to getting a bunch of great friends in NZ as good as I have back home. Here's a picture from the kayak trip we went on, the weather was incredible, but crawling through the mud at low tide wasn't.
One of the hikes I had was kind of cool. I went out the the 'bluff wilderness trail' or whatever its called - great trail. Almost near the end of a 4+ hour hike I stumbled on a bird on the trail in front of me. I stopped and it came right up to my feet, so I got a few pictures of it. I'm sure Adam wishes he was there with a shotgun! What kind of bird is this anyway? partridge, ptarmigan, grouse? I don't know.
As always, I've got some photos of the trip on the gallery.
One thing I'll be posting in the future are some mountain biking movies. I managed to zip-tie a mini camera tripod to my biking helmet. It looks really dumb, but it lets me capture some pretty wild downhill biking movies. Its actually hard to get a good setup, but I should have some cool movies up before too long.
