Pretty sounds and awesome sunrises

Another awesome week is under my belt. I had 3 days off so took advantage and skied my little ass off! On Friday Kate was suffering from my late night poker win at Surreal and decided to stay in bed for the day so i met up with JC and Kieran at Coronet. Before winning at poker and also winning a seat at an invitational cash game (which i will tell you about later) i brought some new heat moulded foot beds for my ski boots. After a hard day riding on Thursday my feet were killing me. My feet were loose in my boots so i had been tightening them all day and they ached like a bitch. What a difference though on Friday! I skied all day and my feet were fine. So much in fact that i even stayed on for night skiing with JC. Billy also tagged along and we found some sweet little drops to jump off. Billy did an insane 180 spin off this big drop which is probably the most gnarliest thing i have ever seen. I dropped off it too but didn't spin. The landing was pitched black but i had a "Fuck it, all in!" moment (when Kate plays poker and moves all in sometimes she says "Fuck it, all in!"). I was super stoked that i did it. Hopefully it will inspire me to get on with being a bit more gnarly. Well, without hurting myself, of course. I did manage to take out a small Japanese lady though! I hit this jump but she was in my landing area, just waiting in the middle of the damn slope. I tried to avoid her, but only because i thought she was a girl called Alice that we were riding with. I clipped her and spun her as she fell. She was fine though but i was a bit annoyed that she was just standing in the middle of the slope in the bloody dark. Stupid cow! I probably shouldn't have been flying around myself but at least no one was hurt.

On Saturday we all rode again at CP (Coronet Peak). On my first run me and the boys headed off piste over by one of the runs called Greengates. As i started my run i saw this thing out of the corner of my eye and heard this strange squawking! I had been dive bombed by 2 bloody Keas! Keas are the green alpine parrots that live down here and are one of the most intelligent animals in the world, apparently. The guys saw everything and pissed themselves laughing. The Keas flew away and i escaped unharmed. I had probably inadvertently skied over their nest or something. Ooops!

When i finished for the day i dropped my gear off at the shop where i received a nice surprise. Our CEO had left us thank you letters for all our hard work over the school holidays. Pretty standard stuff but it was a nice touch. Shame there wasn't a cheque attached.

I had my first day at the Remarkables on Wednesday. The bus up to the Remarks is a notoriously sketchy road but i didn't even blink at the 200 foot sheer drops of the edge of the road as i was hypnotised by the most amazing sunrise i have seen so far. I tried to get some pics but the bumpy road made them really blurry. By the time the bus stopped to put snow chains on, the sunrise was pretty much up. The Remarks is a very different resort to CP (Coronet Peak). For one, it's an old building and all the lifts are quite dated. The shop there is tiny when compared to CP. It took me about 5 seconds to find my way around and familiarise myself. The stock is pretty similar to ours but the customers were very different. The Remarks has a few terrain parks and a lot more snowboarders and "Snow Bros" go there. CP seems to have a lot more old fashioned skiers and snowboarders. Don't get me wrong, we have our fair share of dudes at Coronet but there were tons of them at the Remarks. My first day was a good laugh and i actually felt more comfortable in the tiny shop. It felt a lot more intimate. We had a pretty quiet day but the best thing is that the bus for the Remarks stops at the bus stop across the road so i was home in record time!

Home in plenty of time to get myself for another dodgeball session. It seems all our tactics and momentum from last week were very very lost! We got spanked in our first game against the Buzz Lightyear team from rentals. Even with our new team member Eillis from food and Beverage. She's an Irish girl who is insane! She was diving all over the place and was the only girl on our team to actually catch a ball! We huddled after our first game and reinforced the tactics which worked so well for us the previous week but it was to no avail. We got annihilated by the transexual lumberjacks in our next game! (Not a sentence i thought i would ever type)
It seems we need to try harder. I may have to watch the movie again to get some hints, and some more quotes.

Thursday was my day off and instead of going skiing Kate got us two free trips to the Doubtful Sound! It basically saved us $700!! The Doubtful Sound was amazing. Mainly because of the scenery but also because out of The Milford Sound and the Doubtful, it is the least popular because it's further away, so it was nice and quiet. It meant that just 20 of us rattled around in a boat that could carry 140 passengers and that we were the only boat on the sound. Kate went to the Milford sound last time she was here and said it was packed full of boats and that planes and helicopters were buzzing around overhead. It's difficult to describe the scenery that is there. Sheer face mountains caked in moss and trees that have hundreds of waterfalls cascading down into the ocean. It's famous for it's wildlife too with regular sightings of giant bottle nose dolphins, fur seals and rare little blue and great Fjordland crested penguins! Kate was buzzing as you can imagine but we only saw fur seals, which technically were there out of season. Go figure.

The weather was typical of the area. Doubtful sound get 200 days of rain a year and Thursday was no exception. It pissed down. It meant that there were hundreds of waterfalls falling down the steep mountains which dropped straight into the sea. It was also snowing on the tops of the hills and although the cloud was low it was absolutely beautiful. I got some good pics. Because the cloud was so low and it was pretty grey, Black &White pics were the way to go. Shame as it is so green there but the light was terrible. It was a long day too and i could see why the Milford sound is more popular as we had a 2 hour coach trip, then transferred to a mini bus, then an hour cruise across Lake Manapouri, then an hour on a coach before a 3 hour cruise through the sound before doing it all again to come home. It was well worth it though. Especially since we got it for free!! HA HA HA (Evil cackle!)

Back to poker. Thursday night at Surreal was my last chance to win my way into the card sharks invitational cash game. Carlos, Mike and Kate all had seats to it and i felt a little left out. Mike and Carlos had multiple seats and had offered to sell me theirs but i was confident that i would win my own seat (I was a little drunk). Anyway, long story short, i ended up smashing everybody and winning my seat, as well as a $50 bar tab. It was probably the best i had played in a long time. So today (Saturday) we headed over to Surreal to play the cash game. It was quite weird playing not only at day time but also playing sober. I went out pretty quick getting beat by quad 10's to my full house. I wasn't mad though, quad 10's is an awesome hand! Kate fared better getting to final table and finishing 5th and pocketing $30. Not bad considering it was free to play, as long as you had an invitation. It was like a who's who of Q town poker but a girl from Arrowtown ended up winning and pocketing $300. Good fun, and we both have seats at the NPPL cash game in a few weeks with a pot of $1200! Wish us luck.

So, a pretty eventful week in all. Skiing, the Remarks, Doubtful sound and poker. Typical NZ week. We have also started looking towards our onward travels. We only have a few more months in Qtown but have been looking at options for after we leave NZ. Pretty exciting stuff which may or may not involve a 10 week road trip through the USA and Canada. Sweet huh?

Anyway guys, I'll keep you posted. Take care y'all.

Peace

D

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