A happy-go-lucky English rambler dude goes to New Zealand for a year. Here he interfaces with some of those he left behind and details his nefarious activities. Or summat.
Recently clicked on MP3s - 7th June 2005 The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners
Jens Lekman - When i said i wanted to be your dog
The Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting
Teenage Fanclub - Man Made
Laura Veirs - Carbon Glacier
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Eels - Blinking Lights
Monday, December 31, 2001
Feeling a bit angst ridden, ennui getting you down? Then you need to let Paragliding into your life!
I decided on a whim this morning that I should end the year on an XTREME note, and so started ringing round all the Paragliding schools in Christchurch. Sadly most of them were either fully booked, or had better things to do, so my last option was "Dave" who's number was down in the hostel's Paragliding contacts. This suited me perfectly, as highly trained, reputable pilots were far too wussy for my requirements, I WANTED to go with a fly by night, dodgy geezer who screeches up in a Black Toyota Celica, to add even more XTREME-ness to the whole thing ;o)
Once we were stood at the top of the clifftops (erk) near Taylor's mistake, everything happened pretty quickly. I was bracing myself to have to charge headlong over the clifftop, when we were yanked straight up into the air, and before I knew it, we were swooping around with the greatest of ease. We zoomed up and down the cliffs for half and hour or so, doing all sorts of fancy spins, and er, went up and down a bit. Not to mention, chatting about Dave's website, which apparently needs a bit of work doing on it, and he mentioned the possiblity of a website work / paragliding lessons exchange! I was planning this as a one off, end of year, head sorting out jaunt, but it really was one of the best things i've done in NZ thus far, and so any excuse to do it again (+ on the cheap), would have to be taken up.
Well a happy New year to the lot of you, and have a great night. I'm not sure how exactly i'll be marking the end of 2001, but i'd imagine i'll have a daft grin on my face, and be daydreaming about doing clever spinny things in a paraglider :-D
And to all my chums back home - you're the biggest, gayest bunch of Big Gay Bears - ever! And i love the lot of you :-x
6:47 am Sunday, December 30, 2001
Just a quickie, as Echo records shuts soon, and i NEED some cd's
Spent the last couple of days in the indescribably beautiful location of Mount Cook village, with Jo. On the first day there we had a fairly dull wander for a few miles along the side of the Ball glacier, as the lateral moraine wall (Yes - I am a fully qualified glacier-ologist) hid the actual glacier from us for most of the way. We scrambled up on to the top of the moraine for a view, but didn't spend long there as it seemed rather unstable, and there was nothing between you and a few 100ft drop into the glacier below - erk.
All this was more than made up for the next day though, as we climbed the mighty Mount Ollivier, at 1920m, the highest mountain either of us have ever been up. Mount Kitchener, a few k's along the ridge was over 2000m, but as we were being lashed by a blizzard at the time, and had been warned that the ridge was a bit "crumbly" in places by the Mueller hut warden (Fancy the job?) we decided against it and went back to the hut for yet more muesli bars, feeling completely satisfied with our summit :oD
3:58 am Thursday, December 27, 2001
Xmas Barbie - Picture Exclusive!
12:03 pm
As Ronan Keating once sang "Life is like a rollercoaster" and lately mine's been like the ThunderLooper on crack :oS
Fear not though, as only edited highlights are included here, sparing the need for hankies and sick bags ;-)
Managed to have another scrape with doom on a brief hiking trip with my new partner in climb, Jo. We were ascending Wahi Peak (1400m) in the Mount Somers/Peel area, when our somewhat casual attitude to navigation left us stuck in the middle of impenetrable, spiky bush, on a steep slope, 800m high, in thick cloud, at 6pm with noone knowing where the hell we were (least of all us).
Happily, after scrambling back up a 100m or so, we heard a river, which seemed a far better option than the spindly, killer bushes that we'd been swearing at for the past few hours, and after wading down that for an hour or two (With the odd detour to avoid waterfalls!) we came out of the clouds, and ended up back at civilisation - a fence.
Embarassingly, for two experienced outdoor types, we had emerged on completely the wrong side of the mountain, and 10km's from the car. So we were forced to knock on the door of the first farmhouse we came across, to ask/beg for help, and to our rescue came Eileen. A gnarly old country lady who had been busy chopping the tails off lambs all day, and who had the blood stained trousers to prove it, nneeuw! Nuff respect to her though, as we would have a rather dark & depressing walk back to the car otherwise.
I managed to cause further mayhem when we finally got back to Lyndon's house, where Jo is currently living, by dropping my glasses down the back of the shower unit thingumy. Meaning that Lyndon had to dismantle his entire bathroom, at 11pm on a saturday night, after working a 18 hour shift on a rebellious tractor - erk.
Many apologies and beers have since been offered as compensation.
Xmas day was spent mainly at the New Excelsior Hostel, my home in Christchurch for the first few months i spent in NZ. Things kicked off with a Barbie at 5pm, and after a slow start, a variety of drinking games, and water pistol related shenanigans got things going, peaking with a boozy version of Mallet's mallet. I was wearing my new LCFC shirt, my best Xmas prezzie by far (Thanks very much Jane), though sadly this made me a prime target to be picked on during the drinking games :-(
People in the northern hemisphere, please avert your eyes now Boxing day was spent on the beach, playing frisbee, football, splashing about in the sea, getting tanned and eating ice cream - sorry guys, don't want to brag, but i have to tell it like it is ;-)
11:53 am Friday, December 21, 2001
Feeling rather square eyed at the minute, after a 12 hour day at work, to get our latest project finished off before the deadline.
I'm not really in the mood for doing an in depth review of Lord of the Rings at the minute, but, at the risk of incurring James' wrath, i'd have to say it wasn't quite as good as it could have been. Things such as the slightly cheesy music, letting you know exactly what was about to happen in each scene, the way they pronounced Mordor (Imagine Taggart saying "Murder") - and yes, i admit it, the fact that it was DIFFERENT FROM THE BOOK!! slightly annoyed me. But, I read somewhere that that Peter Jackson said he wasn't aiming to make a film for fans of the book, but one for everyone, so taking that into mind, i probably should stop being pedantic about Tom Bombadil ;-)
However, while discussing this at work today, the urban philosopher that is Jacob, pointed out that a picture tells a 1000 words, and that 24 pictures are shown a second during a film. There are 1216 pages in LOTR (Isn't the net just full of useful stuff), and maybe 500 words on a page? That's 608 000 words to visualise, which should take 608 pictures, and so in your average modern day cinema it should be quite feasible to show a film, covering the whole of LOTR's (WITH Bombadil) in 25 seconds, Quid pro Quo, I rest my case and the letter of complaint is in the post Jackson!
Er, did I say something about not being pedantic earlier :op
Anyway i'm off down the pub / Two fat indians to say cheerio to my flatmate Michael, who's back of to Aussie for Xmas.
8:17 am Thursday, December 20, 2001
Went out for a couple of beers last night to say farewell to Paul & Clare, two English Solicitors I met while doing the Milford Track. They have been working in Christchurch too, but are now sensibly heading up to the Abel Tasman NP to go camping over Xmas / New year, on some island paradise no doubt.
However, I seemed to spend most of the evening talking to Masada, a Japanese guy living with Paul & Clare, who simply had no concept of the letter 'r'.
Me - "My name's Mark"
Masada - "Maok, Ok!"
"No Mark, with an r"
"Oh, OK! Maok, with an o"
"No, r"
"o?"
"r"
"o"
"R!"
"solly, English is very bad"
I then got a pen, and wrote an R for him, to prove it's existance, and before the whole exchange turned into an episode of Fawlty Towers ;o)
Am hotly anticipating tonight's trip to see Lord of the Rings, though the anticipation has dampened somewhat by learning that my favourite character Tom Bombadil has ended up on the cutting room floor. If you've not read the book Tom's basically a great big fat jolly bloke, who goes around singing about how jolly he is, and saving everyone from evil trees - how a character like that have been overlooked???
I'd have thought the ideal casting for him would have been Brian Blessed (On ecstasy), but we'll never know now, sigh.
I'm still reading the book at the moment, but my progress has been slowed greatly by getting a job :-(
Tom's Song:
Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!
2:30 am Tuesday, December 18, 2001
Had my first two encounters with the NZ Police last night. Firstly i had to, single handedly, bust into the main Police Station in town - er, to return a lost purse I found on the way home from work.
Then later on, after visiting Keith's new house, I was fiddling round with my road map in the car, when a big copper, with a bigger alsation came strolling out of the bushes, asking if I was the prowler he'd been looking for? :-s I did my best "I'm foreign and stupid" impression which seemed to satisfy him, and finished it off nicely by leaving the street down a Cul-de-Sac, meaning i had to drive past his secret bush again, no doubt much to his amusement.....
Anyway, back to work, this web site won't write itself y'know.
9:28 pm Monday, December 17, 2001
er, hello - is anyone still there?
Apologies for the rampant ignorance i've shown to this Blog which Boney so thoughtfully set up. However, inspired by the entertainment i've had reading the Bone-meisters' Blog, i've decided to pay a bit more attention to my own. Though having said that, you've been a bit slack lately haven't ye Craig?
I've also got free internet access via my job which makes writing stuff on here seem a bit more appealing.
Well, skipping the last few months....... On Friday night i achieved a long held ambition - To watch the Big Lebowski, and match the dude White Russian for White Russian. Which meant drinking 6 as far as I can 'remember' :-S Not to mention the Wine & Mac's Gold (NZ's premier lager style beverage) we'd had before hand.
I was accomanied all the way in this Booze marathon by Michael (My Aussie, Limnologist flatmate), Alison (Pro boozer sister) and Mark (The World's most widely travelled West Brom supporter). I felt that i'd fared as well as anyone on the Christchurch W.R. Marathon, but the next day showed me to be the wuss that i am - all i was capable of the next day was moaning and wailing about how bad i felt (Which was quite bad), wheras Michael went out and did his X-mass shopping, and Alison did one of the most remarkable things imaginable.......
After 2/3 hours kip, she drove the 6 HOURS to Queenstown (After failing to persuade Mark to come - a fellow wuss), and slapped her cash down to do NZ's highest Bungy jump the next day, featuring no less than 8.3 seconds of freefall, from 134metres - SheCrazyMadStupid!
I did perk up enough to go out and play Pool terribly and drink a couple of Cokes, with Jo, Michael and Mark, but even that was more than i fancied, when i knew we had another (see post below) Mountain Biking session planned for Sunday.
I turned out though that an hour or so of sweating my arse off, peddling up to a pass on the Port Hills (In super hot conditions) was just what the doctor ordered, and i even summoned up the energy to put in a Lance Armstrong-esque burst to try and be first to the top, but sadly Michael put in a slightly better one soon after, and I turned out to be Jan Ullrich instead :-(
After plenty more ups and downs along the Summit road, and some super gnarly tracks, we wizzed down the hill into Sumner, the local Home&Away style resort, and crashed out on the beach with Ice creams and sore arses :-D The perfect end to a somewhat up&down weekend.
Meanwhile.... Alison's bungy went according to plan, ie she bounced, rather than splatted, and apparently was even complimented on her dive, which i have to say was the only part of James' recent "Bungy for World Peas" that could be faulted ;-)
8:14 am
