To be honest, not a whole lot has happened to me this week, I'm just writing to let you know I'm still alive.
The weather was fairly poo this weekend, I did a 30km skate Saturday morning, got to the top of a massive mountain (had to walk the first few km up it, skated the rest, the cyclist I kept up to was pretty impressed, as were some other cyclists at the top!) and then it started to pee it down. The skate down wasn't as fun as intended, as soon as I got to the steeper section I promptly stacked it just trying to carve some speed off, and I ended up walking down as it was too wet and dangerour to skate. Very depressing. BUT, I have got standup slides nailed, which is awesome. That may mean something to about two people who may be reading this....
Oooh, on Friday I went to a two dollar store, and bought an amazing suit jacket which is a beigey dar yellow with a green and brown pattern. I felt bad leaving there without buying a suit jacket as they were so cheap.
I've worked pretty hard today and yesterday, and really exhausted now, so going to head to bed. Tomorrow evening we're leaving for Nelson (I'm taking Thursday and Friday off work) to do some travelling and walk the Abel Tasman track. Theres 14 of us going in two rented cars and Heathers, weather looks great and it should be an awesome weekend. Will write about it when I get back I guess.
Tata x
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Some pics
Its so hard to chose what to put in here, so heres a few. Theres many, many more on my facebook.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Lots of wandering, and me being an idiot.
The being an idiot part didn't happen til Thrusday, so we'll get to that in a bit.
Think I last wrote on the Monday when I got my new longboard, which is AMAZING. Its a 34' wheelbase, carbon fibre drop through, and its beautiful. Messing about with different bushing duros atm, will hopefully find something I like soon.
So Monday was mostly taken up with skating, and as I was heading back I met everyone leaving dancing by chance. We ended up eating watermelon and Danielle taught me how to do some modern jive, which was annoyingly quite fun. I've gone to dancing twice since then, throwing down some mad shapes!
Tuesday wasn't overly exciting; we went to an Irish pub in the eve which was nice, but reading the song lyrics was quite sad (at least I thought so) as most of the songs were to do with the war and bad times in Ireland. I have no idea what happened on Wednesday, it evidently wasn't overly memorable!
Thursday was my night of being a moron. We al went to dancing, and were planning on going out after. Part way through Josh and I left to get our passports for after, and in a moment of clarity I was curious to see if I could jump off a balcony onto concrete. Apparently I can, it just really hurts my ankle, and makes me think I've broken it, followed by a trip to hospital, where I got told that as I was walking on it, its not that swollen and the wait is 4 hours, I should get over it. Fun times. That put a damper on my weekend in which I was planning on skating and hiking lots.
So the next day, and in a fair amount of pain I proceeded to go surfing. The surf was a nice few feet, but with a massive rip. I had a lot of really nice waves, but had to get out after an hour or so as didn't want to really mess up my ankle. Also found a second hand clothes shop where I got a load of really cheap polypropylene hiking clothes. I had no idea what to do for the weekend, and was talking to Sarah when she suggested going with her, Brady, Josh and the UC Navs to Arthurs Pass for the weekend. The Navs are a christian group, but it wasn't a christian themed weekend to encourage more to go which was interesting.
We ended up staying in a massive hut for around 50 of us at Lake Lyndon (if anyone wants to google earth it), and it was incredible. I was pretty exhausted that night, so went to be around 11.30 after swimming with a load of people in the freezingly cold lake!
We all woke up at 6am the next morning (Saturday) to catch the sunrise from the top of the mountain behind the lake, which was flawed for a number of reasons. A) it was super foggy. B) no-one knew the path, so we were winging it. C) we managed to walk into the middle of the only gorse thicket on the whole mountain.
I ended up going back down with about half the people and went back to bed where I had a very detailed, strange dream. Odd. The rest of the day was fairly awesome. Sarah and I took a good couple of hour walk around the lake, and I found an amazing rock. I'll bring it back with me I think. Then we went to an incredible (I'm really starting to run out of adjectives here!) river cave thing. It took 25-30 minutes to walk through the cave in the river. It was pitch black and I forgot my torch, so followed others. At the end there was a pool you could jump into once you'd finished clambering out, a great finish.
From there we went to Castle Hill which is one of the best bouldering locations in the world (apparently). Its also where one of the main scenes from Narnia was filmed, I think its the one where the bad witchy woman dies. I need to watch that soon.
That evening was spent lieing outside in sleeping bags watching the stars, seeing shooting star, and generally being really peaceful. I also decided (along with a few others) to watch the sunrise again the next morning, as we'd found the track and the weather was meant to be good. Oh, and by this point my ankle was doing a whole lot better thanks to a support and ibuprofen!
So, 6am comes by and apparently Brady and I were the only ones who wanted to watch the sunrise. We nailed up the mountain in about 35 minutes, and lay at the top for about 40 minutes before the sun began to come up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and words can't descirbe how beautiful it was. Photos really don't do it justice.
It was very hard to leave there it was so incredible, I felt like I would never have enough time to truly appreciate its beauty, even if I spent the rest of the day there. We returned to the hut and I had a morning swim by myself with no-one else in sight. Apprently Sarah had gotten up and went up another mountain and saw me from the top which I thought was quite cool!
Before leaving we went back to Castle Hill, and I walked to one of the nearby hills by myself whilst the others limbed. It was so nice just being by myself in such incredible surroundings.
I'm not overly sure what happened on Sunday night, I think we all just met up and talked about our weekends (everyone did something different), followed by lots of sleep.
Monday just involved lab work and dancing (and no being an idiot and jumping off things this time) followed by stir fry. Yum.
Tuesday (yesterday) was St. Patrciks day, which is celebrated massively here, as in America. I don't think we really care about it, do we? After lab work I got fairly drunk by 7pm, then got really bored at about 10 when we were in an Irish pb, sobered up a bit and went skating for an hour. Once everyone came back I met up with them and Sharon and I wandered for ages talking about religion, gossip, life in general, you knows the deal! I much prefer being with friends and chilling that pubs and loud (well, most of the time).
That brings us to today, which was highly uneventful.
Hope you're all well,
Rob x
Think I last wrote on the Monday when I got my new longboard, which is AMAZING. Its a 34' wheelbase, carbon fibre drop through, and its beautiful. Messing about with different bushing duros atm, will hopefully find something I like soon.
So Monday was mostly taken up with skating, and as I was heading back I met everyone leaving dancing by chance. We ended up eating watermelon and Danielle taught me how to do some modern jive, which was annoyingly quite fun. I've gone to dancing twice since then, throwing down some mad shapes!
Tuesday wasn't overly exciting; we went to an Irish pub in the eve which was nice, but reading the song lyrics was quite sad (at least I thought so) as most of the songs were to do with the war and bad times in Ireland. I have no idea what happened on Wednesday, it evidently wasn't overly memorable!
Thursday was my night of being a moron. We al went to dancing, and were planning on going out after. Part way through Josh and I left to get our passports for after, and in a moment of clarity I was curious to see if I could jump off a balcony onto concrete. Apparently I can, it just really hurts my ankle, and makes me think I've broken it, followed by a trip to hospital, where I got told that as I was walking on it, its not that swollen and the wait is 4 hours, I should get over it. Fun times. That put a damper on my weekend in which I was planning on skating and hiking lots.
So the next day, and in a fair amount of pain I proceeded to go surfing. The surf was a nice few feet, but with a massive rip. I had a lot of really nice waves, but had to get out after an hour or so as didn't want to really mess up my ankle. Also found a second hand clothes shop where I got a load of really cheap polypropylene hiking clothes. I had no idea what to do for the weekend, and was talking to Sarah when she suggested going with her, Brady, Josh and the UC Navs to Arthurs Pass for the weekend. The Navs are a christian group, but it wasn't a christian themed weekend to encourage more to go which was interesting.
We ended up staying in a massive hut for around 50 of us at Lake Lyndon (if anyone wants to google earth it), and it was incredible. I was pretty exhausted that night, so went to be around 11.30 after swimming with a load of people in the freezingly cold lake!
We all woke up at 6am the next morning (Saturday) to catch the sunrise from the top of the mountain behind the lake, which was flawed for a number of reasons. A) it was super foggy. B) no-one knew the path, so we were winging it. C) we managed to walk into the middle of the only gorse thicket on the whole mountain.
I ended up going back down with about half the people and went back to bed where I had a very detailed, strange dream. Odd. The rest of the day was fairly awesome. Sarah and I took a good couple of hour walk around the lake, and I found an amazing rock. I'll bring it back with me I think. Then we went to an incredible (I'm really starting to run out of adjectives here!) river cave thing. It took 25-30 minutes to walk through the cave in the river. It was pitch black and I forgot my torch, so followed others. At the end there was a pool you could jump into once you'd finished clambering out, a great finish.
From there we went to Castle Hill which is one of the best bouldering locations in the world (apparently). Its also where one of the main scenes from Narnia was filmed, I think its the one where the bad witchy woman dies. I need to watch that soon.
That evening was spent lieing outside in sleeping bags watching the stars, seeing shooting star, and generally being really peaceful. I also decided (along with a few others) to watch the sunrise again the next morning, as we'd found the track and the weather was meant to be good. Oh, and by this point my ankle was doing a whole lot better thanks to a support and ibuprofen!
So, 6am comes by and apparently Brady and I were the only ones who wanted to watch the sunrise. We nailed up the mountain in about 35 minutes, and lay at the top for about 40 minutes before the sun began to come up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and words can't descirbe how beautiful it was. Photos really don't do it justice.
It was very hard to leave there it was so incredible, I felt like I would never have enough time to truly appreciate its beauty, even if I spent the rest of the day there. We returned to the hut and I had a morning swim by myself with no-one else in sight. Apprently Sarah had gotten up and went up another mountain and saw me from the top which I thought was quite cool!
Before leaving we went back to Castle Hill, and I walked to one of the nearby hills by myself whilst the others limbed. It was so nice just being by myself in such incredible surroundings.
I'm not overly sure what happened on Sunday night, I think we all just met up and talked about our weekends (everyone did something different), followed by lots of sleep.
Monday just involved lab work and dancing (and no being an idiot and jumping off things this time) followed by stir fry. Yum.
Tuesday (yesterday) was St. Patrciks day, which is celebrated massively here, as in America. I don't think we really care about it, do we? After lab work I got fairly drunk by 7pm, then got really bored at about 10 when we were in an Irish pb, sobered up a bit and went skating for an hour. Once everyone came back I met up with them and Sharon and I wandered for ages talking about religion, gossip, life in general, you knows the deal! I much prefer being with friends and chilling that pubs and loud (well, most of the time).
That brings us to today, which was highly uneventful.
Hope you're all well,
Rob x
Monday, 9 March 2009
An awesome weekend
I guess the weekend technically started on Thursday evening for me...
Some of Maggie's friends came up from Dunedin, and so we all got rather merry, and I ended up in bed at around 4am. Luckily I checked my emails just before getting to sleep and found that my tutor wanted to see me at 9.30 in the morning. Awesome.
Being a tad worse for wear, I had an hour long tutorial, followed by trying to get computer stuff sorted as the uni has decided to be as awkward as possible with my uni account, and it still hasn't sorted itself out. After that some us headed into town for a curry, and after Jon and I wandered for a while, and found a second hand clothes store. I bought some office grey trousers and a yellow shirt, good times.
That evening we went out for a bit, but I had to get up early the next day, so no big night out. This must seem pretty boring to anyone reading this, its just my life in chronological order...
Anyhoo, Saturday was the day of tramping. After meeting at 8.30 and leaving around 9.15 we arrived at our destination around 11.30. We then got a choice; either go the river route, the normal route, or the extreme route. Being the hardcore people that we are, Teddy (one of the guys I went with) and I decided to go extreme with around 15 others and 3 of the committee members who would guide us. Totally worth it. It started out with around 400m climb through forest, emerging to see some incredible views (last pic, they imported the wrong way round for some reason). There was sun to our left and rain to our right, and sadly we were going into it.
Donning coats and making our bags waterproof we continued. After a fair while we reached our first peak, around 600m above where we started. We all decided to head up the following three along the ridge before heading down to meet the others. It was interesting to note here how inexperienced/unfit some of the others were. Teddy and I had been in the front group of people the whole time, made up of about 8 or so, and we found ourselves having to wait for the others a number of times.
So, we continued some more (see third pic), and then some more. Then a rainbow came out (see second pic). Very prettyful. Our last two peaks looked fairly easy until we realised that there was no ridges between them, and getting up them meant descending around 150m and climbing another 200m. We were also not following paths, so a lot of this is simply scrambling up scree slopes, and cautiously going down wet, steep mountain sides. All with a big pack on your back.
What felt like a long, long time laster we got to the top of our final mountain. My calves were on fire, and I'm pretty sure most other peoples were too! By this point several people had left the group with an experienced hiker to get off the mountain earlier as they couldn't complete the hike. This had taked us five hours. The next two hours involved an 800m descent through dense forest. As there were no paths, this literally meant finding our way down, and was flipping awkward!
Eventually we arrived at the river that everyone else had walked up, and in half an hour we met everyone else (around 90 more of the tramping club) at the arranged place to camp. The tramp took seven and a half hours total, and was well worth it. Some cous cous and a sandwich later, I was pretty much ready for bet.
After a fairly unrestful nights sleep in a two person tent with three people in it we woke up early and hung around for a while. I'd had to cross the river the day before and my shoes were soaked, and I really wasn't looking forwards to getting into them. Teddy, Brady, Emily and I decided to take the river route back to the coaches which would take us back. This literally meant walking in the river for three hours, so it didn't particularily matter that my shoes were already soaked! A great thing here is that you can drink the water straight from the river as its so pure and clean, saves carrying a load of water at any rate.
The river walk was lovely, and took three hours at a leisurely place with a lot of breaks for sitting and enjoying our surroundings. We arrived back at the coach stop and took the minibus to the main river where we were told that we were going to learn how to cross rivers properly. Before this happened any clothes/electronics had to be remvoed from the pack. After a brief explanation, 5 of us linked arms and forged a fast flowing river which came up to my shoulders. Definitely a very interesting experience! I'm surprised we made it across so quickly, and then back again. Our return journey wasn't quite as graceful as out first with me getting dragged downstream and making our line more of a curve, but make it we did!
After an exhausting trip we got on the bus, and after a few minutes I promptly fell asleep, but not before taking some more pics (see first one). A thoroughly awesome weekend, I can't wait to get away this coming weekend!
Hope you're all well at home,
Rob x
Some of Maggie's friends came up from Dunedin, and so we all got rather merry, and I ended up in bed at around 4am. Luckily I checked my emails just before getting to sleep and found that my tutor wanted to see me at 9.30 in the morning. Awesome.
Being a tad worse for wear, I had an hour long tutorial, followed by trying to get computer stuff sorted as the uni has decided to be as awkward as possible with my uni account, and it still hasn't sorted itself out. After that some us headed into town for a curry, and after Jon and I wandered for a while, and found a second hand clothes store. I bought some office grey trousers and a yellow shirt, good times.
That evening we went out for a bit, but I had to get up early the next day, so no big night out. This must seem pretty boring to anyone reading this, its just my life in chronological order...
Anyhoo, Saturday was the day of tramping. After meeting at 8.30 and leaving around 9.15 we arrived at our destination around 11.30. We then got a choice; either go the river route, the normal route, or the extreme route. Being the hardcore people that we are, Teddy (one of the guys I went with) and I decided to go extreme with around 15 others and 3 of the committee members who would guide us. Totally worth it. It started out with around 400m climb through forest, emerging to see some incredible views (last pic, they imported the wrong way round for some reason). There was sun to our left and rain to our right, and sadly we were going into it.
Donning coats and making our bags waterproof we continued. After a fair while we reached our first peak, around 600m above where we started. We all decided to head up the following three along the ridge before heading down to meet the others. It was interesting to note here how inexperienced/unfit some of the others were. Teddy and I had been in the front group of people the whole time, made up of about 8 or so, and we found ourselves having to wait for the others a number of times.
So, we continued some more (see third pic), and then some more. Then a rainbow came out (see second pic). Very prettyful. Our last two peaks looked fairly easy until we realised that there was no ridges between them, and getting up them meant descending around 150m and climbing another 200m. We were also not following paths, so a lot of this is simply scrambling up scree slopes, and cautiously going down wet, steep mountain sides. All with a big pack on your back.
What felt like a long, long time laster we got to the top of our final mountain. My calves were on fire, and I'm pretty sure most other peoples were too! By this point several people had left the group with an experienced hiker to get off the mountain earlier as they couldn't complete the hike. This had taked us five hours. The next two hours involved an 800m descent through dense forest. As there were no paths, this literally meant finding our way down, and was flipping awkward!
Eventually we arrived at the river that everyone else had walked up, and in half an hour we met everyone else (around 90 more of the tramping club) at the arranged place to camp. The tramp took seven and a half hours total, and was well worth it. Some cous cous and a sandwich later, I was pretty much ready for bet.
After a fairly unrestful nights sleep in a two person tent with three people in it we woke up early and hung around for a while. I'd had to cross the river the day before and my shoes were soaked, and I really wasn't looking forwards to getting into them. Teddy, Brady, Emily and I decided to take the river route back to the coaches which would take us back. This literally meant walking in the river for three hours, so it didn't particularily matter that my shoes were already soaked! A great thing here is that you can drink the water straight from the river as its so pure and clean, saves carrying a load of water at any rate.
The river walk was lovely, and took three hours at a leisurely place with a lot of breaks for sitting and enjoying our surroundings. We arrived back at the coach stop and took the minibus to the main river where we were told that we were going to learn how to cross rivers properly. Before this happened any clothes/electronics had to be remvoed from the pack. After a brief explanation, 5 of us linked arms and forged a fast flowing river which came up to my shoulders. Definitely a very interesting experience! I'm surprised we made it across so quickly, and then back again. Our return journey wasn't quite as graceful as out first with me getting dragged downstream and making our line more of a curve, but make it we did!
After an exhausting trip we got on the bus, and after a few minutes I promptly fell asleep, but not before taking some more pics (see first one). A thoroughly awesome weekend, I can't wait to get away this coming weekend!
Hope you're all well at home,
Rob x
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Crickey time goes fast!
Yeeps, another week goes by, and I realised I haven't written in a while. In general everything here is awesome, weather is nice (mostly), people are great, and my research project is going well. Now for an account of what has happened to my life since last week, woo and yay!
I honestly can't remember what happened on Thursday, maybe a lab day? We'll gloss over that.
On Friday I went to town with Sarah and Brady, and later met up with Teddy and Emily. Firstly we went to the cathedral, and arrived just in time for a small service, which was nice to go to. In the square in the middle of the city there is a giant chess board, and I always walk past it when I'm there, and this happened after we left the cathedral. However this time I started talking to some of the guys there. 45 minutes later I realised how crap I am at chess, and how good some of the locals are! It was really nice to stand outside in the sun playing chess against some strangers, quite relaxing! Luckily the others put up with me, and after my chess failer we headed to the art gallery and the botanical gardens. I feel like I've been there a lot lately, not something that I really mind though. They're really beautiful, and its so relaxing there. Oh, the art gallery was cool, full of paintings and modern stuff I don't understand, you get the gist!
Later that evening we all went to a sports bar to watch the Christchurch Crusdaers take a beating in rugby. The bar looked small from the outside, but once in it was like a cinema, absolutely massive. I also ate susi for the first time, and wasn't overly impressed.
Saturday was fairly overcast, but 12 of us still headed across town to take the gondola to the top of the hills surrounding the city. The views up there were amazing, if a little obscured by clouds. Most mountain biked down, but I wanted to hike and ended up hiking by myself for a few hours. After a couple of hours the rain began, and I got a call from Sarah who told me that Danielle had broken her arm and was on the way to hospital, fairly shitty! I decided it was getting too et and started to head down, but as normal got distracted and ended up wandering around the hills for another hour and half! Eventually I came to civilisation (sort of), and then realised I was in the middle of nowhere, and that the town I could get the bus from was about 4 miles away. After watching some guys surf for a bit, I headed back. Seeing as it was a fair treck, I decided on hitch-hiking. To my joy the first car that came along picked me up, and some Maori guys and a girl gave me a lift. Even better than that, they were passing uni and gave me a lift back, which took about 25 minutes, so stoked! They also wouldn't take petrol money as it was the armys car, awesome :)
Sunday was beautiful weather, and Maggie, Emily, Melanie and I decided to go shopping. Seeing as I only brought a weeks worth of clothes with me I kinda needed some more. Ended up with two more pairs of shorts, pretty useful! The rest of the day was spent in the park playing frisbee and climbing trees, lush.
Monday through to today has been taken up with uni work in the day and hanging out in the evening, not overly exciting, but nice nonetheless. I'm heading off for a hike this weekend with the tramping club, really looking forwards to that, and after that who knows.
I'll leave with a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.
Hope you're all well,
Rob x
I honestly can't remember what happened on Thursday, maybe a lab day? We'll gloss over that.
On Friday I went to town with Sarah and Brady, and later met up with Teddy and Emily. Firstly we went to the cathedral, and arrived just in time for a small service, which was nice to go to. In the square in the middle of the city there is a giant chess board, and I always walk past it when I'm there, and this happened after we left the cathedral. However this time I started talking to some of the guys there. 45 minutes later I realised how crap I am at chess, and how good some of the locals are! It was really nice to stand outside in the sun playing chess against some strangers, quite relaxing! Luckily the others put up with me, and after my chess failer we headed to the art gallery and the botanical gardens. I feel like I've been there a lot lately, not something that I really mind though. They're really beautiful, and its so relaxing there. Oh, the art gallery was cool, full of paintings and modern stuff I don't understand, you get the gist!
Later that evening we all went to a sports bar to watch the Christchurch Crusdaers take a beating in rugby. The bar looked small from the outside, but once in it was like a cinema, absolutely massive. I also ate susi for the first time, and wasn't overly impressed.
Saturday was fairly overcast, but 12 of us still headed across town to take the gondola to the top of the hills surrounding the city. The views up there were amazing, if a little obscured by clouds. Most mountain biked down, but I wanted to hike and ended up hiking by myself for a few hours. After a couple of hours the rain began, and I got a call from Sarah who told me that Danielle had broken her arm and was on the way to hospital, fairly shitty! I decided it was getting too et and started to head down, but as normal got distracted and ended up wandering around the hills for another hour and half! Eventually I came to civilisation (sort of), and then realised I was in the middle of nowhere, and that the town I could get the bus from was about 4 miles away. After watching some guys surf for a bit, I headed back. Seeing as it was a fair treck, I decided on hitch-hiking. To my joy the first car that came along picked me up, and some Maori guys and a girl gave me a lift. Even better than that, they were passing uni and gave me a lift back, which took about 25 minutes, so stoked! They also wouldn't take petrol money as it was the armys car, awesome :)
Sunday was beautiful weather, and Maggie, Emily, Melanie and I decided to go shopping. Seeing as I only brought a weeks worth of clothes with me I kinda needed some more. Ended up with two more pairs of shorts, pretty useful! The rest of the day was spent in the park playing frisbee and climbing trees, lush.
Monday through to today has been taken up with uni work in the day and hanging out in the evening, not overly exciting, but nice nonetheless. I'm heading off for a hike this weekend with the tramping club, really looking forwards to that, and after that who knows.
I'll leave with a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.
Hope you're all well,
Rob x
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