Wanaka

Grab yourselves a coffee and get comfy, this will be a long one.

As always, better and more photos are available on my gallery page.

Since moving to New Zealand, we haven't really left the North Island much. In fact, other than a trip down to Picton and a trip to Christchurch for work, we've not set foot down South since 2005.

Every year, a loosely knit group of Kiters migrate towards a small town called Wanaka. They gather to go Snowkiting. For those who don't want to read the wiki page, essentially, you strap a snowboard or skis on, find a fun piece of terrain and get pulled around on a kite. It's a week long adventure that's been going on for close to 10 years. Like most kiting events I've been to here it's fairly low key.

Planning started last summer, talking to various friends here to get a group together from Wellington. My friend Skip volunteered his parent's house and we bought some tickets. Fast forward almost 5 months and we were ready to leave.

Flying to Christchurch was largely uneventful, but when it was time to transfer to our flight to Wanaka, things got a little interesting:

Now, I'm not the greatest flyer in the world, but I manage. The small plane (19 seats) was definitely setting the scene for how small Wanaka was.

During the flight, we got a great view of the southern alps:

You see the strange thing about winter sports in New Zealand to this North American is that you have to drive up the mountain to get to the snow. At ground level, it's 10-15 degrees warmer then where you end up skiing.

I want to take a quick second to say just how incredible our hosts Mary and Roger were. They had 2 strangers (Ryan and me) come and live in their house for 9 days and were absolutely the most inviting and friendly people I've had the pleasure of meeting. In fact, not only did R pick us up at the airport, but when we got in we were presented with a typical Kiwi BBQ Breakfast:

(all kiwi BBQs have a hot plate on one side and a grill on the other, the eggs went on about 2 minutes after this photo was taken)

The night we arrived, I was invited to go out drinking with several other Kiter friends from Wellington, Foxton, Nelson and beyond. As this blog is targeted at my family, I'll save you the absolutely embarassing condition I ended up in by trying to keep up with Kiwis. Suffice it to say Canadians can NOT drink. The next day was a complete write off and I've earned a new reputation / nick name or two. Not my proudest moment, but I digress.

Monday morning and we were ready to head out to Old Man's Range. I'm not entirely sure what the land is, if it's crown land, a farmer's field or something else, but it was the top of a chain of hills with a very dubious road to head up.

One of several gate crossings to get to where we were kiting. This photo is about 1/3 of the way up.

An aside, as much as I made fun of SUV drivers in Canada, New Zealand (and especially people who live in the more remote South Island) has a lot of justification for having 4x4. I've touched on this before with driving on the beach, but the roads to get to the snow were impressively bad; even the commercial hills had roads that required chains and trucks. This photo is of a Land Rover Discovery (definitely a very competent off road vehicle) getting stuck half way up the hill:

Driving up the hill was like driving into the clouds:

I didn't get a chance to take any decent photos at Old Man's range sadly, I was too busy struggling to figure out the basics of Snowkiting.

I'd always thought that because I was a competent snowboarder and a competent kiter, I'd pick it up simply and easily. Boy was I wrong. The wind was light, so the kites I brought weren't necessarily the best; because I had gaps in my kiting knowledge and gaps in my snowboarding abilities, they combined to make snowkiting quite difficult.

By the end of the day, on a borrowed kite, I got my first couple of good solid runs up and down the hill. Unfortunately, just as I was heading back we got hit by a massive snow squall; visibility 0 and I just about ran into an all white kite as I was cruising back down. Packing up and heading back down, I was sore but keen to try again!

The next day, Ryan and I, both still feeling quite tender from the experience, decided to play tourist instead and drove down to Queenstown. It's known as the Extreme Sport hub of New Zealand, but really, it's the closest thing I've seen to a tourist trap since moving here. Tourism is the #1 industry. It struck me as crass compared to Wanaka, but at least the drive in was epic:

Both Wanaka and Queesntown have beautiful lakes:

Wednesday rolls around and It's time to go on another Snowkiting adventure. This time we were off to the Snow Farm. Once again, New Zealand proved that the unusual is not only common, but expected. We pulled over to gather our troops and saw that a car that had parked behind us had a 2 week old baby goat as a pet:

That's Ryan in the Orange and Michelle in the background.

The Snow Farm really is a spectacular place. It's the primary training ground for various nordic ski teams and also has a vehicle testing track for winter conditions. The view doesn't suck either:

My partners in crime and I started setting up:

It was more productive than Monday, but still challenging. Part of the issue of course is that we're not kiting on a perfectly flat surface (like on the water). Rather, we're dealing with gentle hills and valleys. What happens when you get into the valley? The wind goes away. Sitting waiting for a random gust to get our kites back in the air was rather frustrating at times. But experience is experience and at the end of the day we were still cautiously optimistic.

Thursday we had a day of relaxation, having various adventures around Wanaka. A quick jaunt up Mount Iron gave us these beautiful view:

That's Wanaka at the bottom of the hill. We also hit up a movie (Inception, for the second time, highly recommended) at the Paradiso Cinema. It's famous for it's small theatre with old couches, a car and various mismatched movie chairs and it's intermission where they have fresh baked cookies. A great experience.

Finally, Friday and we had perfect conditions. A nice 15 knot breeze, bright sunny skies and -3, just cold enough to keep the snow in reasonable condition. This was the Snowkiting Day!

As always, Kiwis never cease to amaze me. This example of jandal obsession will stay with me for a while:

I borrowed a helmet mounted camera from a fellow Canadian immigrant in Wellington and finally got it working for the day.

The setup area:

The obligatory photo of my kite (i like how it looks on a white background)

A big photo of me kitelooping my way up a hill:

Look at all the kites!!!

A stunning day. The weather went south in the afternoon and quite frankly, it was a good thing as I was completely knackered. It's exhausting!! Because of the topology there's a lot of work that goes into getting the right lines to make it up and down the hills. The terrain is much more unforgiving; legs get tired very quickly, you're spending a fair amount of time getting up and falling when you're a beginner and the kites power needs much finer grained control.

Saturday, our last day before travel and Ryan and I decided we wanted to do some proper snowboarding. Off to Treble Cone we went! It's a hill unlike really anything I've boarded until now. Completely without trees and with very open runs, it's probably the steepest hill I've ever been to. In Canada, the pitch would have made most of the runs a level higher in difficulty, but because there's literally nothing to hit and no where you can really get in trouble, they rate them a little softer.

The thing with Treble Cone is because of the pitch, once you get off the chairlift it really looks like you're skiing off the top of a cliff:

I quickly remembered what I was doing on a board and proceeded to have one of the best Snowboarding sessions of my life:

Another night on the town with Skip and we were ready to head back to Wellington. The day before of course was the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, which we were worried had shut down the airport and stranded us in Wanaka. Luckily, the airport re-opened at 1:30 on Friday so we were homeward bound.

A second small issue arose on Saturday though: crazy strong winds. Wanaka had such a strong breeze that our plane had to spiral to climb to 10,000 feet before we could overcome the wind and make our way to Chch. Landing in Chch and then Wellington certainly made me nervous about the whole flying experience in New Zealand, an issue I've since dealt with .

So that's the trip. What did I think of snowkiting? To be honest, I felt that with my current skill levels of Kiting and snowboarding I was likely not quite ready to take on another variant. It's a lot more work right now then either sport; I think I enjoy them more. I'll revisit in a year or two after I get better at the component bits. What did I think of my trip? It was legendary. our hosts were fantastic, friends (old and new) were all around, I had a great time in a beautiful part of the world and was doing what I love doing.

Some Thoughts on 2 Years of Living in NZ.

September 11th marks the day we left North America. In 2008, after selling our house, our car, giving away our cats, quiting jobs, we hopped on a plane from NYC to Wellington to start a new adventure.

It's been 2 years now. On the whole, I love it here. It's absolutely been the right choice for us, despite some setbacks. I've made a few notes:

• We will always be "the Canadians". The fact is we're both too old to pick up the dialect and speaking patterns of New Zealand. We will always have the canadian accent which makes us stand out. I'm ok with this! It really drives home what people with more than just an accent to differentiate them go through.
• Emigrants tend to attract emigrants. Many of our friends (probably 40%) are not Kiwis. The shared experience of leaving your home country for parts unknown is a powerful shared experience.
• We've been welcomed with open arms pretty much everywhere we've gone. We've met some fantastic people and helped us out at every turn.
• There's nothing quite so much fun as finding something you'd forgotten you'd missed from the "old Country". This recently happened to Ryan and I when we found proper chicken wings in Wanaka of all places.
• The number of products you import from the "Old Country" goes down as you find new and different alternatives. The ones we still bring in are more nostalgia and fun and less products that we thought we'd never be able to replace.
• Everyone is proud of where they came from. Even people who have come from countries in the midst of war and turmoil, they love the country that it was and can still be. Similarly, I've discovered how much I love Canada and am proud of what we've done.
• At the same time, I keep discovering wonderful things about New Zealand. Seeing new parts of the country never ceases to blow me away.

So what does the future hold? Carly and I are both in jobs we like, we've found new passions that keep us interested and we've got a great network of friends. We're thinking very seriously about buying or building our own home. I can't wait to see what the next year brings!

Snowboarding on an Active Volcano.

A month or so ago, a friend of mine J and his partner S mentioned that they had access to a place up on Mt Ruapehu. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Mount Ruapehu, or just Ruapehu, is an active stratovolcano at the southern end of the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. It is 23 kilometres northeast of Ohakune and 40 kilometres southwest of the southern shore of Lake Taupo, within Tongariro National Park. The North Island's major skifields and only glaciers are on its slopes.

Well that certainly sounds good. It's home to the two major Ski fields: Whakapapa and Turoa. Their accommodations were on the Whakapapa side. I really didn't know what to expect, and, as has become the norm, what I experiences was completely out of my normal understanding of a skiing weekend.

First off, Tongariro National park is a world heritage site, and for good reason. It's completely unique and epic to drive through. The desert road (which I've mentioned before) Lake Taupo the mountains and of course Ruapehu all make for a great setting.

Now, being that the hill is a national park, and happens to also be Maori sacred land, the usual rules around developing don't apply. For one, commercial space is very difficult to get. As a result there are VERY few hotels and none particularly inexpensive. Kiwis, however as is the norm, have come up with a pragmatic solution.

Various clubs (alpine, social, university) have, throughout the years petitioned the Department of Conservation for permission to build Club Huts. The one I was in happened to be one of the earliest examples, run by the Alpine Sports Club of New Zealand, however, there's probably another 30 or so Huts at the base of Whakapapa.

The way it works is that members of these clubs, after paying a yearly rate, can have accommodations for cheap. The benefits, other than a roof over your head, is that breakfast and dinner are included. This was all I was told.

When we got there, I learned the rest of the details. We were 4 to a room, in comfortable bunk beds. We all were assigned basic chores every day, some doing dinner, some doing dishes, etc. and it was all a very relaxed communal without being commune feel to it. There were families, singles, couples. I visited another Hut that a few work friends were staying at and it was all the same. After my last communal experience (Raglan) this was an great change. People were very mellow about the whole thing. it was a very convenient means to an end, and made for a great weekend.

Saturday morning I was awoken by a teen age girl and her 4-8 year old assistants delivering coffee, tea or hot chocolate in bed to all the club members. This was one of the chores :). A filling breakfast of poached eggs, sausages, toast and Spaghetti from a tin (!!!) and it was time to hit the slopes. From looking at the maps, I could see that there was a decent selection of chairs and T-Bars. There wasn't that much snow at the base, so we'd be dealing with rocks. It was then that I realized the second outcome of the national park being a sacred and protected area. None of the land the ski runs were on could be modified in any permanent way. And, as this was a volcano with giant ash boulders, lava flows etc. That meant completely alien terrain on which to ski.

The run topology changes drastically depending on how much snow is on the hill. If there's tons, you're skiing on wide open ranges with some nice undulations. Last weekend however, as there was only a minimum base, we were playing dodge the sharp pointy rocks and had to contend with some deep gulleys, icy conditions and occasional "surprise" rocks taking chunks out of the base of our gear. It wasn't unpleasant in the slightest, it reminded me a lot of spring skiing in Canada.

Which of course brings me to the weather. The mountain is fickle. We started our day around 9:00am, it was approx -2, sunny and looking great. The day heated up and in doing so changed the snow from ice to soft snow. from about 11 to 1 the conditions were glorious.

From about 1:30 onwards the clouds came and covered the mountain completely, and, being over the cloud line, the light went completely flat. So flat in fact that despite specialty goggles, I still had a hard time picking my way down the hill.

Which is just as well, because, after 5 years without snowboarding, my body was ready to pack it in after 5 hours. See, in New Zealand, despite their complaints of long lift lines, you really are only waiting a maximum of 10 minutes to get on the chair. Throughout the weekend we had to queue exactly twice. The runs were about the length of most Laurentian ski fields so we got a fair number of runs in in the end.

We headed back to the Hut where the crew prepared a 3 leg of lamb meal with roasted vegetables and apple pudding. We ate too much, had a few beers and generally relaxed.

The weather settled in for the rest of the weekend, and, by Sunday morning it was raining, +2 to +5 and visibility was about nil. As we had a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to call it a success, having had a brilliant day on the slopes.

** An interesting side note, Ruapehu has been most active since 1995, with an eruption in 95, another in 2006, a lahar in 2007(basically a run of boiling acidic water from the lake that's in its crater) another eruption in 2008. Needless to say, they take mountain safely *very* seriously. See the wikipedia article linked above for more info.

i'm digging the knitting

it's winter here in NZ and while we have had some glorious sunny days we also get some nasty grey wet ones that last for days on end. so after the success of my scarf i wanted to try to knit something else, learn a new skill and all that. i have a full folder on my Firefox bookmarks of knitting patterns, and hats are in that list.

3 of our friends have recently had babies, 2 were early the other waited the full length before showing. so small babies + winter in NZ = baby hats that would definitely be welcome. and i was told baby hats are quick to make.

they were right!!

in all this little hat took about 5 hours of knitting. it was all in the round, and i knew now that proper-sized needles made the job easier! the new part for me was knitting on double-pointed needles but i fooled around with spare wool and figured out the technique. so knit in the round, then transfer to double-pointed, decrease stitches...ta da!


lacking a proper model i have put it on my long suffering cat ^^ as soon as i get it onto one of the new babies i'll post a photo.

The scarf that travelled the world

in December 2006 Blaise approached me with a request to knit him a scarf. not any scarf, a scarf knitted with a binary pattern. he had found it off one of his sites and it came from a knitting website known affectionately as Knitty.

having just finished conquering the world of scarves (i had a made a few in a pattern i picked up on our honeymoon to NZ in 2005) i was keen to try it. It was knitting in the round and using two colours, both things i didn't know how to do so i was keen for both.

I foolishly promised it to him on his birthday of 2007. after all it didn't look that hard, it was a garter stitch (the simplest knitting stitch) the entire length. i could do that in my sleep.

the birthday came and went, then christmas, then the next birthday...yeah it was longer and harder than planned. I'd get into it for a month and make progress and then lose interest. it was hard, the knitting in the round was a struggle, i kept making mistakes in reading and replicating my pattern so i had to tear out a full row of binary and knit it again. for those of you saying, "why didn't you just leave it?", if you know me you know that's not going to happen.
it got heavy and in the summer in Canada i didn't want to knit it.

it became a bit of a joke, this big thick scarf which he was never going to get.
it travelled with us to NZ and same thing happened, i'd knit a bit and lose interest. but then something happened, i walked into a knitting shop and found another Canadian working there...yeah small world.

i explained the situation, hauled out the scarf and she promptly told me my needles were too freaking long, i needed a smaller round. i had to stretch and pull each stitch to knit, with a shorter round all the stitches were there at the tips of the needle ready to be knit. and with that i was back into it, i passed the halfway point on the scarf. i started down the 2nd side, even with the pattern now being knit upside down it was going fast and then (hallelujahs being sung) it was done...seriously?

i cast off and realized a) i was finished, b) it was huge.

The binary scarf December 19, 2006 - July 5, 2010 - HUZZAH!

my first model was accomodating but not thrilled.


my second model was much happier with his new scarf.

he hasn't translated the code yet, and yes there is a message in the binary, took me about a day to learn some form of binary (i'm not geeky enough to know what i learned but it was a binary alphabet of some sort). i'll keep you posted for when he does.

School Production

in the life as a teacher there are always things coming up, beyond the class time, the planning and paper work and staff meetings there are things that come up from time to time requiring volunteering more time. a school production is definitely one of those.

Myself and Julia, another new teacher to the school, offered back in February to run production this year and we had a lot of fun over school holidays writing a script. Think Night at the Museum mixed with your typical school play.

there were auditions, rehearsals, prop building, scenery building, teachers in classrooms worked with their kids on each scene and then we had to teach the whole school a song to sing at the end. i got some Canadian content in by doing a simplified version of The Barenaked Ladies - The Big Bang song.

some odd things came up for example how do you transport a giant dinosaur backdrop from a classroom to a school a few blocks away. this thing was huge, he was designed and drawn by a wonderful parent, Julia and I (and Julia's hubbie) painted the big bits but the artist finished his details.

he wouldn't fit in any of the cars any teacher owned, renting a trailer seemed foolish so i did what any sensible teacher would do...i used a bunch of kids.


we drew more than a few stares, and the gusts of wind in Wellington made for some exciting moments. but we made it!

the production itself was awesome...well i'm pretty sure it was, i've never seen it, i was the backstage coordinator. Blaise taped it for us (and the school) but i haven't seen the tape. Mark the principal said it was the best he had seen (but then again it's his job to say that ^^bb) and i totally think he's right.

thanks to everyone who helped make it awesome.

Some Winter Kiting Photos

The regular crew were out in Seatoun last week and a passer by was nice enough to let us know where he'd be posting the pictures he took. Grabbed a few of them, here they are (all rights reserved to him)

Concert of a lifetime!

Ok, so most people won't be too excited or won't know what I'm talking about, but Carly and I just bought tickets for what is likely to be Leonard Cohen's last concert tour!

November 1st, we're heading to TSB Arena for what promises to be an AWESOME concert. Here's hoping nothing comes up for November 1st between now and then.

I'm super excited. Also, I have to admit that years and years of exposure by my mom to Leonard's music has had a lasting effect :)

Kitkat discovers fire is hot...

We have a gas fireplace in our new home in Ngaoi. Its small yet quite potent, kicks out a lot of heat. I've done the sit next to the fire thing myself, doesn't seem hot at first but then you realize you might be a mite close and you quickly move farther away.

Kitkat had gone for her morning constitutional. Its not Canada cold but its getting into kiwi winter, about 14C, you want a jacket but you won't freeze. So she arrived home, a little damp from the morning mist, just as we finished breakfast. Now we had turned the fireplace on to warm up the house and I said to Blaise "its surprising that she doesn't curl up near the fire."

Its true she never has gone near it the last few times we put it on, she's more of a couch cat, so i wasn't expecting her to explore it today. But lo and behold about 10 minutes after i said that a large ball of fur was sniffing the air. She approached from the side, did the whole sniff the air, turn on the spot, lick the fur like she didn't care and then came closer. She obviously recognized this was quite warm but rather than slowly exploring the environment she decided this was excellent and walked straight up the the fireplace and began to nose around the protective plastic cover at the bottom near the floor. It was probably ok where her face was but her ears were high enough to be straight into the heat coming off the fireplace...3...2...1.

Ears suddenly whipped back, hackles went up, cat turned and bolted away from the fireplace. Kitkat discovery of the day, fire is hot. I got a giggle from this one, as did Blaise who had been watching the show. For those of you who think we're cruel, we checked her ears and she's fine, not even a little pink or tender, she also get a 30 minute grooming session afterwards which she really quite enjoyed.

Follow up: cat has discovered optimum point of warm vs not setting ear afire.

Exploring the North Island (pt 2)

Note: all the photos from our trip can be found on our gallery here.

Having checked out the surfing and New Plymouth in general, and, having slept in the car the night before, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dip at the Taranaki Mineral Baths. Very Alkaline, very hot and very relaxing, we spent a half hour working the kinks incurred from our previous night's makeshift camp. A warm shower after that and we were ready to hit the road.

The drive from New Plymouth to Raglan was largely uneventful, punctuated only once by a stop in Pio Pio for some of the best soft ice cream and frozen yogurt I'd ever had. Not sure if this is the norm in New Zealand / elsewhere, but the machine they had was fascinating. Basically it was a giant funnel where you put vanilla ice cream and frozen berries (The shop was part of a blueberry, rasberry and strawberry farm). Then, what can only really be described as a conical drill bit, sized to fit perfectly into the funnel was lowered into the machine and turned on. Obviously very high torque, it ground the berries into the ice cream and extruded it out the bottom into the waiting cone. It was my first time seeing such a device and the results were delicious.

Now I'd booked our stay in Raglan at a Campsite / Eco Retreat called Solscape. The main appeal was that they'd made their cabins out of what they called "cabooses" and the photos and views made it look quite nice. When we got there, we quickly realized that the "Eco" part of the retreat was what their main focus was. Not a bad thing, just not what we expected. We checked into our cabin / caboose: in reality it was an older 30s-40s style train car that had been cut in two and closed up with a proper wall. Great idea, well executed.

However, I'd accidentally booked us a cabin in the middle of the campsite, which turned out to be quite close to the common areas and the outdoor bbq. We went into town for some dinner and then settled in for the night. It was at this point that the fact that this was also a Youth Hostel became abundantly apparent. The partying started around 9 and didn't stop for quite some time. I had earplugs (thank god) so I ended up passing out fairly quickly.

This is where i'd usually list out the things I didn't like about the place. I'm not going to bother. It wasn't for us, but I can definitely see the appeal for many people so I'll leave it at that and move on with our weekend.

Waking up bright and early, we had some breakfast and headed out to the river mouth to check on the wind. Forecast was to get 13-15knots from the West, perfect for Raglan. The reason Raglan is such a kitesurfing destination is that it has a very strong current in the outgoing tide. This compensates for the lighter winds and makes for marble smooth water on which to kite.

Unfortunately, the wind didn't read the forecast and decided to move SW instead and becalmed the river mouth. I bumped into a traveling Kitesurfing instructor there that I'd first met in Wellington and he and some other tourists chatted up one of the locals to find out where to go. With the info at hand, we all headed out to Aotea. It shares many of the same characteristics as Raglan, though it's harder to get to and doesn't have as friendly a launch spot.

View Raglan in a larger map

The blue route is the one we took. It was an hour of gravel roads and windy passages through the hillsides and farm country. Yet again I thanked the excellent engineers at Subaru for building such a fantastic AWD system into our Legacy.

Once we got there however, it was worth it. A nice wind was blowing through the river mouth, perfect direction and to top it off we met some really nice kite surfers from Auckland who were down for the weekend. They'd kited this spot previously and had all the local knowledge needed. So off we went hiking down the waterline to a decent launch spot. In the end there was 5-6 of us out on the water.

The red kite on the left is me. The wind was dropping a bit so I decided to rig up a larger kite. I was obviously a little excited and rushed the setup and didn't notice a small hole in the canopy of my kite. Launched the kite, got back out into the water and things were going great until I got to the other side of the estuary, where one of the other kiters noticed that was the hole getting bigger. I managed to get back to the launch area (which was about a km from the other side where we'd been riding) and after a rather graceless landing saw the extent of the damage:

I think it was about this point that the wind took pity on me and picked up another 3 or 4 knots which allowed me to go back out on my smaller kite and finish the day in style.

The tide was coming back in, the sun was setting and I'd had a great day of kiting in conditions I'd never seen in Wellington



To be continued yet again....

Finally Exploring the North Island.

You'd think, having been in the country more than a year, that we'd have become experts of at least the north island by now? You'd think... But in actuality, other then a few road trips with friends and family (Napier, Hamilton and Pauanui) we really haven't gone off roadtripping.

First, I've got to say, I love road trips. I love driving, winging it and seeing parts of the country you don't see from a plane.

Our plan was fairly simple. Carly got back from a Montessori conference on Tuesday, we leave Tuesday night with an eventual goal of getting to Raglan. Known for its surfing since at least the 60's (there's a famous american surf movie called The Endless Summer that is filmed in part there) and in recent times has become a Kitesurfing destination as well: It's got a strong outgoing tide current that makes for smooth flat water and some fast riding. In fact, one of the large Kite / Parasail manufacturers, Ozone, moved their offices from France to Raglan.

We didn't really have any other plans. We wanted to make it somewhere that had diving for Carly and see parts of the country we'd missed throughout our travels.

Fate had a slightly different plan for us though. BEE, our trusty Legacy, had been having a bit of a bad month, having had a failed MAF and an alternator on the fritz. I'd just finished replacing the alternator when I lightly scraped the front tire on Tuesday morning. With a loud hiss, the sidewall of the tire cracked open. As I was on my way to the Kapiti coast with my friend R. (who was already in the car) we decided to deal with it on Wednesday, delaying our departure.

Tuesday night we also discovered that our dryer had kicked the can, with a full load of wet laundry in it. Not an auspicious beginning to our trip!

Wednesday morning, we slapped the spare on the car, drove to Petone where Carly had found a laundry and I knew of a tireshop with a quick turnaround. By 12:30 we were packed and on the road!

Our first stop was Foxton Beach. I'd had a few adventures trying to Kite there before, but this was the day. A beautiful 20 knot NW wind was blowing through a huge river mouth with flat water, good company (I was kiting with The Wind Warrior and a friend of his) and a beautiful sun. We kited until sundown, packed up and headed back to The Wind Warrior's place for coffee and a bit of a social call.

We hit the road around 7, shooting to get to New Plymouth, find a campsite or holiday park and spend the night. TWW had mentioned that the Women’s Surf Festival and ASP Dream Tour was being hosted there and it would be worth the trip to check out some of the action. What we didn't immediately realize was this would mean there'd be 0 vacancies at any of the parks, motels or hotels.

about an hour and a 1/2 before we arrived in New Plymouth we started trying to find a room. No luck. Once we got to the city, we decided that since we had some camping gear in the car, we might as well find a quiet corner and do some real "car camping". So we pulled into the parking lot for Fitzroy Harbour around 10:30 and, re-arranging our baggage, dropped our sleeping bags in the back of the wagon and slept relatively well! Next time we do this we'll make sure to put the kitesurfing boards on the roof, but really, it's about 6 feet long, perfectly flat, and, with an air mattress and sleeping back, was better then expected!

The next morning, after exploring New Plymouth, we decided to go check out some of the surfing action:

To be continued...

His name is MO

Its been a while hasn't it.

Well here is something exciting ^^ at least from my perspective.
I have a car....I can hear you saying "what?"
I've always been a bus person, its easy, you can sleep, read, daydream and let someone else deal with gas, maintenance and parking. However, with the recent move to Ngaio from Island Bay (I suppose we should have blogged that) my commute to school increased.

BTW here is a gallery of our new home. The commute in the morning went from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, but the afternoon commute home went from 20 minutes to 1:20h (1:00h if i get lucky on connections). I did it for a month and a bit and while i could continue to do it there was a lot of talk of getting me a second car.

The second car also lets me get out of Ngaoi on the weekends to do my own thing when Blaise takes Bee (the 1st car) off to kite surf. In general the freedom is awesome, I take scuba gear in mine and do my thing, he fills his with kite gear and heads out in the opposite direction.

After some initial shopping it came down to the following: small, electric locks and windows, AC, foldable back seats, good gas mileage (oops sorry petrol mileage) and cute...yes that last one was mine.

Shopped around for a bit, trademe, dealers etc and finally found a nice dealer where the man showing the cars spoke to me and actually let me lead the conversation. Huzzah! Ladies don't buy from a dealer that won't talk to you and keeps answering all your questions to the man.

So what did we end up with, everything we wanted and more ^^
Meet MO.


I named him after the character from the animated movie WALL-E. The grill made me think of him. That's his picture beside my MO. Was it geeky and girly, yes, yes it was. His name is MO.

One of the Little Things I like about NZ.

I walk around barefoot a LOT now. After a good day at the beach, the last thing I want to do is slap on some shoes. I typically will be wearing sandles, but they will inevitably get covered in sand and grit, so, embracing my new found kiwidom, I do without.

I've been to grocery stores, restaurants, bars, shops, gas stations and even the bank barefoot. I'm certainly not the only one either; most weekends I see a good number of adults walking around sans-souliers.

From speaking to Carly, it's a battle in the schools to get kids to wear shoes at all! I know whenever we're out about town, there's a 50 / 50 chance that anyone under about the age of 12 will be shoeless.

It's oddly liberating to be honest, and there's certainly no stigma that I've seen around it, especially on a bright sunny day in the beach towns :) Of course, I'm pretty oblivious when it comes down to it.

Our Latest Insectine Visitor

About two weeks ago, while watching TV at night, I looked out the window and promptly freaked out. I saw something. Large. Flying just outside our kitchen window trying to get in to the light.

Got closer and realized it was actually a moth, about the size of a bat, pink, and very fuzzy. So, not terrifying, but definitely out of the ordinary. It took us a little while to find what it was, but we've done so: it was an Emperor Gum Moth. Imported from Australia, these guys grow to a wingspan of about 15 cms, have soft feathery antennae and are generally considered to be relatively harmless to New Zealand.

So here's the wiki entry for them:

Opodiphthera eucalypti

Here's some photos found on the internet about them. Turns out they are kind of cute.

The Ritual

The smell of neoprene mixes with the warm coffee I've just brewed. It's 8:30 and I'm driving up the Coastal Highway heading to Waikanae again. It's become a weekend tradition; wake up early on a Saturday or Sunday, load the car up with gear, get a quick breakfast and hit the road.

Kitesurfing has become a big part of my life. It's been just under a year since my first lesson. Since then, I've gone out 20+ times. Rain, shine, winter, summer so long as the wind's blowing, I head out. In the last 2 months I've really hit my stride. Confidence is up, I'm developing a style and some good endurance. I've gone from 2 to 3 kites, increasing the wind range I'm equipped to deal with to 12-40knots.

I even had my first crazy wind experience, heading out to tackle 30+knot winds. Every time I head out, I learn something new. There's always something to try and as I expand my set of locations, more times I can head out.

I won't always be have the flexibility so I might as well make the most of it while I can.