Apologies...............

Whoa, sorry guys. It seems that the 2 people who actually read this blog were a little disappointed that i missed out last weeks entry. Basically i have been run ragged with organising my onward travels and my 2 days off last week were spent searching for and booking hostels, hotels and cheap cars. It pretty much means that our journey home is sorted now with only a few things to arrange and get confirmed. As soon as it is all finalised, i will let you know. I can say this though, it's gonna be epic! (dunh dunh dunh! - Dramatic sound effect)

So this last fortnight has been filled with the usual merriment and fun goings on that have pretty much been the norm for life in Q town. It is slowly becoming the back end of the winter season. A fact i have noticed in a number of ways. Firstly, out of the blue last week i realised that i am now actually going to work in daylight. No more amazing sunrises over the Wakatipu basin on my commute in the staff bus. It sucks really because it was totally awe inspiring some mornings. Such a shame i share the bus with a load of beanie wearing half asleep hungover teenagers, snoring and twitching despite the loud bassy tones of some random drum and bass spilling out of their ridiculously large headphones next to me. Nah, i slip my ipod on and drift off into my happy place and let the glorious red sunshine warm my cockles. Well, i used to. Now the sun has already got his hat on by the time i get to the foot of Coronet Peak but it does feel nice to have the warm sun on my face again. Yeah the temperature here has climbed too. No more -7 degrees in the morning. Higher temperatures has meant less snow too. Our mountain is still pretty well covered but I'm not sure for how much longer as it now rains instead of snows at our base building so you are riding slush by the time you get to the bottom. The snow that does fall at the top is so wet that it freezes really easily and forms a hard crust or patches of ice which are not fun to ski on.

Last week i did get Kate out onto the mountain for a bit of skiing. She has been either reluctant (Fair weather skier!) or too hungover to ride the last few weeks so it was nice to get her up on the hill. I want to keep her momentum going as she has improved so much this season. She even said she fancied some different runs so i took her all over the mountain. There were a few testing bits but she passed with flying colours. On one of our last runs i stopped halfway down to wait for her. When she stopped next to me i asked her how her first black run was going? She gave me the stink eye big time as she realised i had taken her down her first black run (which is for advanced skiers). That said, she man'd up and finished the run no problem and was then ecstatic she had managed to do her first black run. It was nice to see her so proud of herself and she very quickly forgot about my deception. I knew it was the only way i could get her to do it. If she had known she would've thrown all her toys out of the pram and gone home in a strop! I'm very proud of her too. Although we have been here all season Kate has hardly really skied enough. Her fitness is a big problem and because she doesn't like skiing on her own she will only ski on my days off, which is only 2 days a week. So in hindsight she has done really well to be riding a black run by now. I worked out her "on the snow" time before we came away and it turned out she had only spent around 20 hours skiing previous to getting here. That's less than if you went on a weeks holiday beforehand. So she has done really well. She still moans about it and looks like a sun burnt orangutan after just a few minutes riding but i think that on the whole, she is enjoying it.

Oh, you know i told you about my Bolle incentive? Well, it came through. I got some awesome lime digital Fathom goggles with an Aurora lens (that means bloody sweet pair of goggles worth about $300!) for Kate and some cool little polarized Slap sunnies for me. There was also some other junk like a bag, a cap, a drink bottle and a huge lanyard with a big carabena (climbing latch) on it. Kate's goggles look awesome and match her green coat. The Aurora lens in them is this orange lens for low light but it has a blue coating on the front. It looks gnarly! My sunnies are cool but a little too small for my huge face so i have also donated them to Kate. She is gonna be one cool looking chick, i can tell you. I was a bit disgruntled by not really getting anything in the end (other than a cap and a bag) so i filled out another claim form at work and sent it off. I was unsure if i was going to keep the sunnies before i filled out the claim so agreed to get Blake (Tees BF) some glasses instead. That claim came through yesterday so i know have an awesome free pair of Quasar goggles with an awesome fire red 50 lens (it's a low light blue lens but has this sick red and orange mirror coating on the front) worth about $250 for free! I gave Blake his sunnies last night and he is stoked about them. After Discussion with Tee (who i work with) we decided to claim the rest of the 130 points between us. So i have put in another claim for more goggles and finally a pair of sunglasses that fit my fat face. She is getting some more goggles for Blake and some sweet sunnies for herself. If these claims go through it will have meant that our shop has claimed over $2000 worth of free stuff! Not bad eh? I went into town the other day as one of the pharmacies is a big Bolle stockist and i wanted to try on some sunnies before i ordered. I got chatting to the assistant in there and she was telling me about their Bolle incentive. She said she had 35 points so far. She near fainted when i told her that we had nearly 400 points between just 3 of us! The only reason we don't have more is because Bolle is out of stock of all our biggest selling goggles. I tried on my glasses and left with a very smug smile on my face. I have since been back to try on more sunnies and met her again. She introduced me to the store manager as "the guy with 400 Bolle points." The store manager was very impressed and i again left with an even bigger smug smile on my face (think Tony playing monopoly in France - for those of you who were there).

So hopefully more free shit is heading my way. Gotta love free shit eh? Work is fine apart from i am starting to get a bit over all the stupid Aussies i have to deal with. For the first part of the season i found it quite amusing at just how stupid some Australians are. They are like the Americans of the southern hemisphere. But now, i am getting tired of their dumb shit and if i hear another Aussie explain that they are confused by Kiwi money (our $2 coin is bigger than our $1 coin - like every sane country! Oh but not Australia where their dollar coin is bigger than the $2 coin) i will seriously jump over the counter grab the stupid dick and try to insert my cash register into their anus whilst screaming "read a fucking book you dumb Aussie bastard!!" They certainly have a "the whole world revolves around me" kinda persona. Well, alot of them do but not all of them. Some of them know they are dumb and seem to relish in the fact that they are a joke. They get their own self-deprivating comment in first before i can jump over the counter and insert my cash register into their corn hole. I don't mind that. It's when they think their shit don't stink as they are asking for the 5th time what the word piste means that i seriously want to drag them into my store room and re-enact a scene from Hostel on them. Groan.

We have to be super nice to them of course because without loaded stupid Aussies bringing their strong, but larger than the $2 dollar coin, Aussie dollar, we wouldn't have had a record breaking season. Our attendance at CP is up a whooping 40%. And we are in a recession apparently. Thanks to budget airlines, it is cheaper for Aussies to fly to our ski fields in NZ than it is for them to visit their own! A fact i get told about 74 times a day by stupid Australians!! Grrrrrr!

That said, Kiwis aren't exactly saints either. I near wet myself after hearing a story Billy told me about his mate and a rough bird from Taranaki. This friend pulled this girl in a bar and went back to her place. When he got there he needed to go for a wee so excused himself off to the bathroom. When he walked out of the bathroom, there was the Taranaki girl naked and bent over in front of him by the doorway. She turned her head, took her cigarette from her mouth and muttered the immortal and romantic phrase.........."Just chuck it in Bro." I found this hilarious and have pretty much said "just chuck it in Bro" at every opportunity i have had over the past fortnight. Classy chick huh?

So i snowboarded again too last week. I got my board and boots and enthusiastically hit the big easy slope. Man, it seemed that all my good riding from the previous try had been forever lost in some sort of inter dimensional vortex. I sucked ass on my first run. It was like my first ever run all over again. I struggled to stand for a few feet before trashing myself and landing in a heap. I feel awkwardly onto my wristguards and somehow managed to bruise my ribs. I twisted my knee on another spill and by the time i got to the bottom i was all set to jack it in for the day. I decided to suck it up and go do another run. What a difference! I was back! Carving around like a natural again. Gunned it to the bottom of the run with much higher levels of confidence. After a few more runs i decided it was time to head up to the top of the mountain and do the M1 run. On the lift up i noticed it was pretty moguly (like the dude from jungle book) so decided to do the top of the M1 then cut down Pro am (which was Kates first black run i mentioned earlier). I did the moguly bits OK by just heel edging through them and made it in one piece to the top of Pro am. That's were i realised i was way above my station! Pro am is steep and was super icy. I really struggled. It was a total role reversal too as Kate was now cruising along but having to wait for me to catch her up. I bailed out of the run half way down and boarded over to the bottom of the M1 run with my tail between my legs. When i got to the bottom i wasn't that bothered really. It was a big ask to try a black run after less than 10 runs on the nursery slope really. I was pleasantly pleased with myself that i had even given it a go. I paid for it the next day though as my whole upper body and my left knee felt like Kathy Bates had snuck into my room during the night and called my a "dirty bird" whilst hitting me with a sledgehammer, like that scene from the movie Misery. My left knee is still sore. It is strapped up and i am resting it this week. Well, apart from dodgeball last night.

Our team is officially bottom of the league! YAY!! Last week saw the official unveiling of Billys new bin bag costume. He had fashioned a nappy out of a bin bag and wore nothing else! Needless to say he got a lot of attention from the opposing team. He got hit by about 20 dodgeballs, all leaving nice red marks on his chest and back.

Last night we played again. I was dubious about my knee but was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and got hoisted into playing for another team that were short a few players. So there i was wrapped in a bin bag with the 80's aerobic instructor team called "Vaginamite!" They have a team chant and everything! Probably one of the reasons they are second in the league. Well, we hammered the other team. I was on fire catching balls all over the place whilst moving gingerly around and hitting the other team with my thunderous throws! I played 2 games for Vaginamite and won twice. A completely new experience as my bin bag team have only ever won 1 game. Needless to say my bin bag team got stuffed in our first game but somehow managed a draw, and a point, from our last game of the night. That point leaves us firmly rooted to the bottom of the league but hey, mighty oaks grow from tiny acorns. It is still way too serious at dodgeball sometimes. Last night some dude got knocked the fuck out! Not sure if he took a dodgeball to the kisser or if he fell and cracked his head but he was sparko!! Luckily one of our teams are ski patrollers who are all paramedical trained so they were quick on the scene. The guy was carted off by St Johns ambulance though. He's gonna have a headache today!

Other news is that the 100% pure NZ winter games have finally started. There's been a little bit of a buzz around town but i doubt it is close to what they wanted. It has been marketed as a lead up to the winter Olympics and the biggest winter event in the southern hemisphere (not too difficult though. Up until now i think the biggest winter event in the southern hemisphere was when JC and K dog built a little jump over at the Remarks!!). Yeah so it is looking like a bit of a washout really. The first few events at the Remarks were only watched by a handful of spectators and the first event at CP got postponed a day because there was moisture in the timing cable! Still, I'm gonna try and catch the final day as they have the big air comp at CP and the official closing party with the prime minister there too! I can add to my collection of how many prime ministers i have met. The NZ PM will bring my grand total to 2!

Anyway guys, i will try to not leave it so long next time for the next entry in this thrilling blog. Remember guys, when the world is against you and you are feeling really low, when adversity seems to be slapping you around, when the whole population of the world seem to be in cohorts against you, and just when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel............................"Just chuck it in Bro!!"

Peace

D

XXXX