Chris's excellent Kiwi Adventures

Okay, so maybe I'm not the blogging type. Its been over a year since I've updated this thing. Well it hasn't been a boring year, I've just been lazy about keeping it up to date. I guess dealing with computers all day means I'm not keen to do it outside work hours.

So what can I say about the last year? More fun stuff, went on a few more South Island roadtrips with various friends. I moved into a nice new flat in Petone, Lower Hutt with a couple of crazy Canadians from Canmore, Alberta. Paul and Heidi were fantastic, we did all sorts of crazy rock climbing trips, and even a 12 hour mountain biking race. I think that was easily the most fun I've had in NZ. They've moved to Tazmania for Heidi's PhD, so its a bit boring now.

I did a couple mountain bike races. The Porirua Grand traverse was great, its always nice when you place around people that look much fitter than you. I also raced the mountain bike section of the Crazyman, but broke my Shimano freehub (the ratcheting mechanism in the rear hub) halfway up the first hill. Words cannot describe how much I hate Shimano freehubs; they're 100% worthless. This is probably the 5th or 6th freehub I've gone though in 13 years, and the 2nd to fail me in the middle of a mountain bike ride. I decided to ditch Shitmano, and bought a wheelset with Hadley downhill mountain bike hubs. Wow, these things have the best machining I've ever seen, and they're light. After a bunch of rides, they seem excellent. Lets see if they can take my abuse.

So around 3.5 years after moving here, what are my thoughts? Like most people living a long way from home, its easy to get homesick. Unfortunately I won't get home this year, but I'll try to get back next year in the summer. I can't wait to get back in touch with friends and family, and my dog Abbey! I try not to make "5 year plans", so I don't really know what its store, but its easy to miss Canada. New Zealand is excellent, but Canada really is home; even with it's extremely long cold winters. Winter sports make it okay though.

My latest pursuits have been mostly water based. I bought a wetsuit in hopes of doing some windsurfing, and also got some snorkelling gear. I went snorkelling at Island Bay last week, which was excellent. This wetsuit definitely isn't made for diving, but it should be an excellent all-round wetsuit for all sorts of water sports. I really should have got one of these when I was 12, instead of getting hyothermic while racing small boats!

I'd love to buy a dingy sailboat like the Laser I used to race (brrr!), but I can't fit a dingy into my garage and don't want to mess with a trailer. Instead I'll try windsurfing tomorrow, and hopefully take that up as my next big sport. I can't wait!

Sorry, no photos this time.

Ok, so I know its been a little while since I posted anything on this blog. Ok, so its been well over a year. Ok, so I'm lazy. Here's a new posting about something I wasn't sure I'd ever do, skydiving.

I can't remember who suggested it, but one of my mountain biking friends said I should go skydiving for my 'big 30'. It almost didn't happen, because in the last 5 weeks there were only 2 days of acceptable weather for skydiving in Masterton. Needless to say it was raining the day after my birthday, so had to reschedule. Oh yes, the birthday... It was great. A good BBQ, good beer, and good friends, its hard to go wrong. The weather next week was amazing though, like a beautiful summer day. I only managed to convince one other person to jump out of a 'perfectly good plane' (that phrase kept coming up!).





Having planned it for a while, I wasn't nervous at all. Even when I was in the plane, climbing to altitude I still wasn't. Then they opened the door... Phew, then it hit me. It was also bloody cold up there. I looked down at the ground 10000 feet beneath me, and started to get a bit nervous. The instructor and I both inched closer to the door, I stopped so I could sit on the edge and get ready for what I was about to do. Maritin, the instructor, told me to get a bit further out, presumably so he would be sitting on the edge. I knew we were going to jump pretty soon, but I was expecting some sort of warning. Before I know it, I'm falling out the door. Actually I would use the term "pushed". I don't blame them though, its probably the best way to get someone out of a plane.



So now I can see why I was nervous. Man, this is not a normal place for a human to be, free falling from 10000 ft! The acceleration was intense, it felt like there was no end to how fast we were going to go. Even when we reached terminal velocity, you still had a serious sensation of speed. I totally messed up the body position, as you can see in the photos. The hands were ok, but I had absolutely no backward bend, in fact my legs were pointing down for a while. Thats an excellent way to be unstable in the air, as I found out. At least I'd know for next time. It was totally new to me. Once I got "used" to the feeling of freefall, it was a lot of fun. I can see why some people are addicted to this.





So as soon as I'm getting used to freefalling, and have the legs in the right place, I feel us both go upright, then a serious upward g-force. Man, those chutes really slow you down quick. I guess we were going pretty quick, so it took a while. I think the photographer kept going down, so thats the end of the pics in the sky.





Once the cute finally slowed us down, it was amazing up there. It felt so calm and relaxed compared to freefall. All the nervousness was gone, it was great. Its amazing how far you can see up there. We could see a couple Sopwith Camels flying around, getting ready for another Peter Jackson movie. Then he starts doing these big swinging turns with the chute. Again, the g-forces were pretty intense, but I was surprised how disorienting it was. It was hard to get a feel for where your body was going, lots of fun though!






The instructor was very experienced which made the landing easy. We just slid on the grass for a short distance, and it was over. Man! That is a serious rush. It wasn't physical at all, but both of us 'first time jumpers' were drained by the end of the day from all the adrenaline. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, too bad its so expensive. Surprisingly, its actually cheaper in NZ than Nova Scotia. Glad I did it hear then!

The skydiving people in Masterton are 0800 Skydivenz.

Labels: skydiving

Wow, it seems like forever since I've updated this. Here are some new things:

I've got a few pics from the "Wings over Wairarapa" airshow. Its not the typical North American airshow with loads of high tech American hardware, quite the opposite. The coolest planes were probably from world war one, like an old Sopwirth Camel. The authentic world war two planes were also very cool, especially the mustangs and spitfires, very classic looks.

My brother came down in early February for a well deserved vacation. It took a while to get geared up and moving on our South Island roadtrip, but we got moving after a few days of logistics.

We were planning to do some pretty intense hikes (opps, tramps) in all kinds of South Island terrain. We were going to use my car as a portable base-camp, and carry our tents and sleeping bags on us. This would have worked out fine, but in the end we had to cut back the distance and intensity of the hikes because of a couple injuries.

As everyone does, we started in Picton after an overnight trip on the Interislander ferry. It was expensive, but unlike the ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland - they let you curl up and sleep on the floor. We had just about every book we needed, apart from a good South Island roadmap. A road atlas just doesn't cut it for that kind of detail. We ended up touring the wine growing region of the Marlborough region in the early morning, trying to find a place to camp and get some rest.



At around 8:00 and after doing a ~80 km loop, we found a little DOC (department of Conservation) campsite, quickly pitched our tents and tried to get at least a little bit of sleep. Minutes after putting our heads down, the angry family camping beside us woke up and started swearing at each other. Shortly after that a couple of large lawn mowers arrived to trim the grass. Not getting any sleep, we ventures on somewhere further from the masses of "Britz" and "Maui" rental camper vans.

In our tired state, we checked out the Marlborough Sounds. Wow, what a place. We could have easily spent the entire vacation just exploring this place. The roads are small, twisty, steep, and totally fun to drive as long as you don't get into an accident with the fearless local drivers, or the questionable RV drivers! The next place we camped was the Kenepuru head campground, another DOC campsite. What an amazing place, at what seems to be a small estuary teeming with life. The local Wekas have a keen sense for scavanging after people, and were totally intrigued with my car's tailpipe. You could look our at the water and see fish jumping all the time.




Sleeping at this place was some of the best rest I've ever had, amazingly quiet and peaceful. I think the 1.5 hour drive through the tight twisty roads is enough to keep most people away. I can only imagine the camps further in the sounds were even better, but we had to keep moving on our roadtrip.

After checking out some of the local tracks (trails) in the sounds and a bit of free camping, we headed in a large counter-clockwise loop around the island. We stopped into a "Backpackers" (hostel) Havelock, tried to find a nice pub, and checked out Nelson the next day. Nelson is an excellent little town, it seems to have everything, nice weather, nice people, sandy beaches, excellent mountain biking, almost perfect! We stocked up on outdoor gear, and were glad to shop anywhere other than Kathmandu.

From there, we headed up to the Abel Tasman National Park, and headed for the Totoranui camp. Its hard to know what you're going to get before you get there, but I expected it to be pretty remote due to the long and windy gravel road. It turned out to be a meca, one of the busiest spots we could have chosen, but still a fun place to be. Very oriented to the family campsite with RV, jetski, and satellite TV dish ;) We slept at the campground for the night, relaxed at the beach the next day in an ideal beach setting, and went for a big hike up Gibbs hill later in the day, camping at a campground halfway through the trail. The sights we saw the next day were like something out of a travel brouchure, I didn't think these places existed. The cloudless sky, the white sand beaches, the unspolied scenery, and warm weather were like nothing I'd ever seen before. I really want to go back, what a place! We took our time hiking back, cause the place was perfect. While the scenery was amazing, there was a lot of red tape invloved to book a hike/camp spot, so we were looking for something a little less rigid and structured.




We continued on our trip, and decided not to go onto Golden Bay. We've heard amazing things about it, hopefully I'll be back there sometime! We headed towards the west coast, going through the Buller Gorge. We decided to stop at Lake Rotoroa for the night, and as usual we got there after dark. There were an absolute ton of sand flies out (nearly identical to a black fly), so we quickly put the tents up, jumped in and went to sleep. I thought it was raining in the morning, but it was just the sound of sand flies hitting the tent. There were so many, that wasps were coming into the tent and feeding on them! While the lake was beautiful with a large mountain in the background, the flies drove us away. This was the worst the flies were during the trip. I shouldn't complain too much, these flies are nothing compared to some of the swarms of mosquitoes and horseflies I've seen in Nova Scotia - I'll take sand flies anyday! The 'mossies' here are pretty wimpy, a small bit of clothing is enough to stop them, which is fine with me.

We had the need to get to the beach, so we headed for the Westport area, got some more food, and headed out to a nice little campsite down the coast. This place was absolutely magical, as good as some of them had been, this one was even better. It had soft grass perfect for camping all around, a nice little beach nestled between the rocks, no bugs at all, almost no one else around, and no camp fees! This place was the best so far, just amazing. Unfortunately, my crappy car alarm malfunctioned (no really it did, its a real POS!), and the alarm went off at around midnight. I'm sure the other people were pissed, but they didn't say anything.



We spent the next night in a pretty bad hostel in Greymouth (the nice one was full). Dorm rooms and squeakey beds are just not cool, none of us got much sleep - too much door slamming and bed squeaking. Oh well, the next beach we stayed at was a huge step up. It was a long way from the motorway, but totally worth it. We met some great locals, one guy had an incredibly cute puppy; Rufus.




Phew, I'm getting long winded here. So after another excellent beach campsite, we hit the Franz Joseph Glacier. Wow, again, this was quite the sight to see. It was an easy walk to get near it, and you could actually get as close as you want - I'm sure this would be behind large gates if it was in Canada. The glacier was huge, an amazing site. We saw a large piece break off of it, and didn't want to get too close to that. Shortly after that we saw a few guides leading people up the glacier, on steps carved into the ice. I'm not mountaineer, but some of these people didn't look like the had the gear or aptitude to be climbing it, its easy to trivialise the danger involved; it would be easy to get serious hurt or worse on that glacier.



After that we headed to Wanaka. This place reminded me of Canmore or Whistler, a serious adventure tourist town but far less trendy and artificial than parts of Whistler. We didn't have too much time there, but its another place I'd love to return to.

From there, we headed to the east coast through the Haast pass, and made good time through the very flat farmland. We checked out Kiakorua and a nice little campground, went for a bunch of good hikes, and general relaxation. We messed up the timings, and had another day before the ferry left, so we headed back to the Marlborough Sounds for another excellent night at Kenepuru head before taking the Bluebridge ferry back to Wellington (cheaper and slighlty better than the Interislander).

There it is, the roadtrip. Even with two weeks, we missed a ton of stuff. We didn't get to see Fjordland, Queenstown, or Dunedin, Invercargill, Stuart Island, or a whole bunch of other "todo's". I like the advice from one of my coworkers: "If you try to see everything, you'll end up seeing nothing at all", I'm glad we took in the good stuff. Oh well, I'm sure I'll be back, and this time I'll have the map before I get there!

Heres a link to some of the best pictures from the trip: Pictures.

Well its been a fun couple months here, the weather has finally warmed up. Its about 25 degrees today, but it feels a lot hotter because of the intense sun.

Over the last couple weekends, I've gone to an airshow and done a 50 km bike ride at the Tongariro National Park. Both excellent experiences, and I'll update with photos as soon as I copy them over.

The bro has landed. I only have to work a couple more days, then the South Island roadtrip can begin. Bring on the fun!

This is sure to please. I got a little tired of the beard, so got rid of it. Luckily I took some pictures of various wild facial hair during the 'deforestation'. Check out the pics here. Maybe I should've kept the mutton chops, they're kind of cool.


With a South Island roadtrip, and the Karapoti Classic coming up, there will be a lot more content here.

Oh yes, and here is a mildly interesting video:

Alright, so I haven't updated this thing in a long time. I lost my net connection at home, and updating a blog isn't exactly 'work related'. I'll have the net connection back pretty soon, better than ever...

I did manage to get out and climb mount McKerrow on the Christmas holidays. That was a nice little trip, and only took about 4 hours in total. I have a couple semi-interesting movies from it, maybe I'll stick them on soon.

Christmas in NZ was very different from what I'm used to. Its really hard to get in the Christmas spirit when its 18 degrees outside. I managed to use Skype with video to call home from a friends house, it was great. I can't wait till I have that setup at home, it makes such a huge difference. Even though calling cards are cheap here, its hard to beat free.

Another thing, my beard is history. Its funny trying to get used to my face again. I look so much different in the mirror.

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.