Up in the sky

Skydiving didn't eventuate. Dave and Luke were far too tired to bother with any type of exciting activity on the morning of our flight, and it was too cloudy (and slightly rainy) to do anything anyway. We ended up playing some giant chess at Cathedral Square. I was giving Dave some bad advice and his black side lost quite spectacularly to Luke's red side.

Afterwards, we caught the free bus around town because we had nothing else to do. Dave and I stopped at a sushi train for a quick lunch before heading to the airport. To my delight, there was a Timezone in the airport with some really old arcade machines. Dave and I played Sega Rally and I won a couple of times before we boarded our flight.

It was cloudy all the way to Sydney, and the weather conditions were almost as bad as the in-flight movie (21) when we approached the airport for landing. Being the thrill-seekers that we were, we were really excited when we went below the clouds and the plane was still shaky as it approached the ground. Some of the other passengers looked a bit worried, but despite everything the plane landed safely with the help of the reverse thrusters. It was really cool.

Sydney was warm compared to NZ, and it was nice to be able to complain about temperatures above 10 Celsius as being cold again.

New Zealand overview

Days spent: 9
Temperature: Cold
Days on the ski hill: 5
Crashes that would have looked very amusing to other people (but really hurt): 2

The long white cloud, continued

So yes, the Internet cafes in Queenstown wasn't that great. It was 1 NZD per 15 minutes and damn slow, so I wasn't inclined to spend a lot of time on it. Back to the story...

The rest of the week brought some more bad visibility. We all woke up late on Thursday – on Wednesday night Dave and Luke went out on a pub crawl, while I stayed up to watch the final big mountain stage of Le Tour de France – so we caught the late bus to the Remarkables on Thursday. It was more or less the same experience as the previous day.

In contrast, we woke up really early on Friday so that we could catch the bus heading to Treble Cone. The day got off to an interesting start when we ended up at different places due to Dave and Luke taking the wrong fork (the resort's runs weren't clearly marked at all). We eventually all met up again at the cafe when visibility went down to almost zero (the worst we experienced all week). It was interesting getting back down when you were a few feet from a ledge and couldn't see more than a foot in front of you. Anyway, it eventually cleared up later in the day and we had a great time boarding for a few hours before heading back to the hotel.

Our last day on the snow was Saturday and we decided to catch the early bus once more. It was back to the Remarkables, in time for the opening of the new board park called the Burton Stash. I actually managed to get in there before it was officially open by accident. It was a very nicely set up park, but I wasn't game enough to try any of the features. The powder in between sections was nice, though not long enough to really count. I think we all managed to hurt ourselves, too. For me it was the old bailing out of a funbox routine. I tried to slow down too late and caught an edge on the box then fell off at the end landing on my back on the moderately hard landing. The only thing bruised was my ego (and my back). The weather eventually turned bad again and we ended up heading back to the hotel early.

Dave and I bought a book each for the 8-hour bus trip to Christchurch the next day (I had finished American Gods the previous day – one of the best books I have ever read) then we all had some dinner and watched the Bledisloe Cup match at a bar. We headed home at halftime and slowly packed for the trip the next day. I stayed up to watch the penultimate stage of Le Tour de France and was slightly disappointed that Cadel Evans couldn't get the Yellow Jersey back.

The bus we paid for to get from Queenstown to Christchurch today was cheap, and we got what we paid for. It was rickety at best, and Dave didn't have any room to move his legs. Luckily, it was a mostly empty bus, and we were able to take up as much room as we needed. I started reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and I lent Dave American Gods to read, but most of the trip was taken up by us trying to catch up on some sleep.

We're now in Christchurch on our last night in New Zealand. I've decided to stay in while the boys are going to try to have a big night out. Our plans for tomorrow still aren't clear. Our flight leaves at 3:40pm, so we have time to do some sort of adventure activity, but we have yet to decide what to do. We're contemplating some skydiving, or perhaps some paragliding.

My best guess is that the next update will come from back home.

Christchurch / Queenstown

It was a long two days leading up to and leaving for my New Zealand trip. The night before involved Dave B haggling up a bouncer, as well as paying ludicrous amounts of money for cab rides (thanks, World Youth Day organizers!). Not having gotten much sleep that night, I groggily stuffed all my things into my snowboard bag and managed to get to the airport pretty early, though it was soon after the pope's speech at Randwick Racecourse so there were lots of people at the airport lining up to leave the country (and you could tell that they were there for World Youth Day because of their bags with the horrendous bright orange and yellow colour scheme. Anyway, we spent a lot of time lounging around in the airport waiting for our flight (which was slightly late).

After what was the shortest I have ever been on (and which had the best airline meal ever), we arrived in Christchurch late on Sunday night and managed to steal some sleep at the Base Backpackers hostel in the middle of town before heading back to the airport once more to fly to Queenstown. I was still half asleep during the flight but managed to catch the great landing, which was where the plane went through a narrow mountain range and put on the brakes really hard to land it in the short amount of runway.

Our first day in Queenstown was spent sorting out rentals for Dave and Luke, and buying our lift tickets. We finished a bit early, had a famous Fergburger, then went off to do our own separate adventure tourism activity. Luke did a bungy jump and Dave did a canyon swing, while I chose to do something a little less voluntary and went on the Shotover Jet - a high speed speedboat tour of the Shotover Canyon. I had a grin on my face the whole way through, partly because it was a hell of a lot of fun, and partly because the wind blowing on my face kind of forced it. My face only defrosted at around the time I made it back to town.

The long white cloud

Either we chose a bad time to come to Queenstown, or it's always really cloud here, because our first two days on the snow involved very poor visibility. The first day, at Coronet Peak, had fog at the top of the mountain and ice at the bottom. We eventually found the groomed runs after the fog cleared slightly, but even then it wasn't that exciting repeating that over and over again. After biting the ice a few times, Dave decided he needed to buy a helmet. Almost concurrently, I lost my gloves, and I had been meaning to buy a new pair anyway (my previous pair were horribly torn up) so Dave and I went shopping later that afternoon. Ironically enough, Dave managed to somehow injure his wrist the next day.

We were disappointed with Coronet Peak so we decided to check out The Remarkables for our second day, and for a moment, we thought we may have had a chance to get some decent runs in. Unfortunately, the sun disappeared above the clouds, which quickly came in a few hours after lifts opened. Flat light made runs very not-fun-at-all, and after Dave injured his wrist, we checked out the snow tubing - going down a short run with massive rubber doughnuts. That was enjoyable enough, but didn't provide enough entertainment, so Luke and I checked out the beginner terrain park while Dave nursed his injury.

(I would like to note that more things have happened since, but is being bogged down by slow and expensive Internet. I will attempt to update once more when we get back to Christchurch.)

Filmfest diary 3.0: Condensed edition

The Sydney Film Festival has come and gone, and I haven't even gotten around to posting about it (I've noticed that I've only been updating once a month this year, but I digress), so consider this the obligatory film festival report.

Much to my disappointment, I was told that the Sydney Film Festival was not as huge as the other festivals I've been to in the past (namely Berlin, Toronto, and Vancouver), and didn't have the usual Q&A fare at the end of each session (with the exception of some of the competition movies as well as the gala movies). However, this did not take away from the quality (or lack thereof) of the films. I saw nine, and my reviews of the films can be read here.

My pick of the ones that I saw was The Square, which, to my surprise, was actually a red carpet world premiere. Anyway, it was a thoroughly enjoyable Australian noir that I could find very little wrong with. There was also the added bonus of having the cast and crew on hand to answer questions.

Apart from the film festival, not a whole lot has happened, though I suppose being at work full-time gives that perception whether there were things to do or not. Off the top of my head, I can remember that there was a party at David B's house where I caught up with a few people, I went and saw Mixmaster Mike, who has inhuman mixing/scratching skills, and I saw Holly Throsby and her band at the Factory theatre, where I was just as impressed with her stage presence as I was with her music.

I guess that's it for now. The next update will probably be a post-New Zealand report. All the details are finally sorted out, so now all I have to do is wait, and pray for snow.