Kayak=>Ski=>Tramp

Its been a really busy last few days. The rest of the week went swell. On Wednesday at the tramping club meeting we heard from a guy who is a white water kayaker. He is advocate against hydro power in NZ. He does not want the rivers to be ruined. Some of the videos he showed of him kayaking were amazing. Anyway also at the meeting was the sign ups for snowcraft which I was hoping to sign up for. Well apparently the club ran out of equipment and the trip was full. With that full, I talked to a guy in the club about going skiing down near Wanka over the weekend. After I signed up for skiing I talked with all the australearners and since they couldn't do snowcraft they were going to do there own trip. Well, being that I don’t really have any friends because I never hang out with anyone because I’m always skiing, I decided to take the weekend off from skiing and go tramping with the australearners. I emailed the tramping club letting them know that I wasn't going skiing anymore. I still got a call on Thursday night to be ready to go skiing on fri. morning. I told the dude I had to canceled and he told me he had a feeling I will bail. Pretty messed up but whatever, ill never sign up to go on a trip with him again!

On Thursday I went sea kayaking with University of Canterbury Canoe Club (UCCC). I'm not sure why they're the canoe club when all they do is white water kayak. Anyways, they don't use sea kayaks in the sea, but rather the little play boats for whitewater. Being that its still winter and the water is freezing, I borrowed a wetsuit from my buddy. He uses it to surf in Jersey all year round so it was super warm, I was actually a little hot in it. When we got to the beach the waves were pretty flat. Good for me because I don’t know what I’m doing, bad for everyone else. As soon as I got in the little boats I realized how different they are from anything I’ve paddled before. Super tipsy and not very smooth through the water. I tried to catch a few waves but got knocked over almost every time. Since the boats have skirts on them and I don't know how to roll I had to bail every time I flipped. Then I had to lug a boat full of water back to shore, empty it out, and start again. We did that for about 2 hours. I don't think I got much better by the end but I still had a lot of fun. I have to do some rolling sessions in the pool pretty soon and then maybe I will have better luck.

Thursday night I just couldn't stomach the idea of not skiing over the weekend. I had received an email from a dude in the snow sports club about going skiing on fri. I had already talked to my math teacher about getting the notes for fri. lecture and decided to see if the guy still had room in his car for fri. He did and the pick up was set for 7:30 am. I went to bed early on Thursday night since I was exhausted from kayaking all day and wanted to be ready to go skiing. I even had set aside some sausages to bring up the mountain because my neighbors told me that this mountain, Broken River, had a grill outside that anyone could use to cook something up for lunch. Well at 7:50 am on fri. morning I was awoken by a text from the ski dude saying "you had your chance, im leaving now". I immediately text him back saying that I slept through all my alarms and that I was sorry, he had already waited 20 min for me. He text me back saying he wasn't in too much of a rush and could wait 10 min if I could get my stuff together. I sprinted around getting ready and was in his car in 10 min. We got to the mountain and were skiing by about 10. I asked him if he wanted to take the first run together and we ended up skiing together all day. He was an older guy, 35, studying his PhD in environmental engineering. He even knew what ceramic engineering was. He was lived in Alaska for 7 years before moving to NZ 4 years ago. I had tons of stuff to talk to him about. The skiing was a little chopped up but it was still soft powdery. Some pretty good skiing and way better then being in the city. It was really tiring conditions and we called it a day about 3. We chatted the entire way back and all together it was a really good day.

Fri. night I took it easy because sat. morning we were leaving at 8am to go tramping. The tramping club organized a van for us and we drove 3 hours north to a trail head. From there it was about 5km tramp into the hut. The hut system in NZ is really cool. They're just little huts with some sleeping pads on a bunk, a table, fire stove, and cooking area. No power of coarse. The hut we went to could sleep 10, we brought 7. When we got there 1 pack was already there but no people. Most of us just laid out in the sun and enjoyed the beautiful weather. I set up my hammock and took an amazing nap. Eventually a hunter showed up. He was the owner of the pack. A 34 year old NZ dude. He chatted with us and was pretty cool. Then as evening approached a family of 5 showed up. That put 13 people in a 10 person hut. We said no worries and was going to make it work. The family of 5 slept on the bottom with the hunter while the 7 of us cuddled up on 5 mats.

We stayed up as late as we could, about 11 around a fire outside. The stars were amazing. In the morning we just hung out. Some of us went down to a nearby creek. It really reminded me of home. It was a nice place to just sit and relax. At about 1 we headed back down the van, both other groups had already left. When we got there and all packed up to leave, we turned the key and the van wouldn't start. Dead battery or something. With no cell service it was a bit of a scare. Then after about 5 min Dan jumped in the driver seat to just give it a try. What do you know it worked, Christmas miracle I guess. The drive home was uneventfully.

Its now sun. night. I have my first engineering test on tues. I am going to spend all day studying tomorrow. Mid semester break is only 2 weeks away. I need to make some plans this week! Ill worry about that after my test.

Timmy

check for new pics and ill put up more of me as I get them from my friends.