Spontaneous Road Trip

Hopefully the pictures will make up the lateness.

Everything has been going really well the past few weeks and there have been a lot of changes to my regular routine. The biggest change is that I am no longer living the janitorial dream. The main reason is that my flatmate Matt hurt his back really bad snowboarding to the point where he was going to be out of his job so long that the cleaning company deemed it more economical for them to hire someone fresh. Matt has been my ride most nights to work. Not always, but at least 4-5 times a week, which made the hitchhiking ventures acceptable in my eyes every couple of times a week. With him out of the job I would have been constantly hitchhiking to and from work, which usually takes an hour and a half. Adding this time on to what I’m being paid for cleaning it works out to me getting paid just over 6 dollars an hour. Minimum wage is $13.50. Not really worth it. I was ready to be done too, I grew pretty tired of improvised sign language with my Portuguese colleagues and the task of cleaning in general. The situation proved to be a great experience and perfect for skiing which is the main reason I picked Queenstown.

Skiing has been amazing lately. Spring conditions and good moods by all on the mountain are constant. The scene is very relaxed and its normal to see people skiing beer in hand dressed in silly costumes. Obviously I’ve partaken on occasion. The park has been great lately. The park crew recently turned the beginner park into an intermediate rail garden, which has consumed most of my time. Don’t worry I’ll never be a park rat. Give me powder over jumps and rails anytime. I’ve definitely gotten a lot better skiing here for the season and am extremely anxious to get home for another season and continue to ski. Yes that means I’ll be returning to NH in December, but only for a brief stint then its on to the west coast.

I went swimming with Bronwyn and Martijn in Frankton a few weeks ago. The facilities were amazing. One of the nicest indoor pool set ups I have ever seen. Bronwyn swims all the time to stay in tip top chef shape. I dug deep to find my Concord Sailfish Swimming roots, but gave up after 5 laps and made my way to the Jacuzzi. I forgot how demanding swimming is and it made me feel out of shape. I could vacuum for hours though.

My parents sent me a really nice care package stuffed full of Granite State Candy, A Book, Specials shirt from the Wilson’s, newspaper clippings, and Bindings. It was very kind and greatly appreciated. I had the bindings shipped over because I found a pair of Rossignol Scratches in the local Salvation Army for $90. I would have been losing money by not buying them. They have proved to be a vital part of my park skiing antics. The skis I traveled over with were all mountain skis. The bindings on those skis had been giving me problems all season. Along with the skis, I found a shirt that was made for my Dad. Its a picture of a man golfing with the slogan "Work is for people who can't Golf", I love Salvation Army. Another notable purchase was a Wheres Waldo Book. The specials shirt led to a bizarre meeting with an old man named Gary who happened to be wearing a specials shirt the first day I wore it. He was pretty drunk and kept shaking me in disbelief while singing special songs. He also asked me where my ladies were at about 20 times. He seemed nice, but I decided not to introduce him to any ladies I was with. The book was one I’ve planned on reading for ages, but never managed enough motivation to start it. It’s really small print and about 1100 pages. Its different, but I would recommend any book by Ayn Rand after reading half of Atlas Shrugged and another one of her works titled The Fountainhead. If anyone is looking for an entertaining biography read Mr. Nice and you won’t be disappointed.

I haven’t been out in town for about 3 weeks because it’s so expensive, so I’ve been making my rounds to house parties. The only noteworthy party was one where we celebrated Garsmas. I’m still not entirely sure what Garsmas is, but it was a great time. I guess it was a cross between Thanksgiving and Christmas for the lone reasons that there was a cardboard manger, and we ate turkey for dinner. A better explanation is it’s just an excuse to have a house party. The manger was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen because baby Jesus was replaced by David Bowie (refer to the pictures below).

Hockey has sadly come to an end. But our team triumphed in the tournament and managed a podium spot coming in third. 1st or 2nd would have been better, but 3rd was an impressive feat for our team. We won a case of beer, and a trophy made of golden spoons. They might have been wooden ones spray-painted, but I doubt it. Even though the league is finished, people still play pick up every Tuesday. I’m not sure how I missed this in the first weeks of playing hockey, but every Friday and Saturday the rink has Disco Ice Skating. You really can’t go wrong with an ice rink, smoke machines, disco balls, and a good playlist.

I did a hike with Bronwyn one day to the top of the Gondola. She hadn’t been to the top and it’s a really easy hike to do. Most of the other ones require planning from the day prior. It was a beautiful day in terms of blue skis, but one of the windiest days I’ve ever experienced. Neither of the mountains opened. At one point the wind sounded like a 747 no more then 500 ft above my head. One unlucky employee that had to drive to the mountain even though it was closed returned down from the mountain rear windowless. I still find it hard to believe, but its true. It was really windy. The hike turned out to be pretty lame. After hiking for 5 minutes we got to a dirt road that doubled as a hiking trail. We ignored the signs saying no walking, and returned down via a downhill mountain biking track. The hike down made me respect downhill mountain biking a million times more. I struggled enough on the way down trying to walk, grasping how someone could do it on a bike escapes me. I’m pretty fearless, but I don’t think I’d try this particular track on a bike.

I’m going to try to put potentially the best 36 hours of my entire trip into words. I’m sure my description won’t do it justice, but I’ll do my best. Last Friday I got up to the mountain around 11 AM. It was a crappy day, but I had nothing else to do. I ran into two kids named Shawn and Nick. I had met three days prior skiing. They were up at the mountain early practicing for a rail jam they were going to in Dunedin later that night. They had told me about the rail jam the day that I met them. I told them that I would be interested in going, but unfortunately they didn’t have any room in the car. I wished them luck as they were heading in the change out of their gear and I was heading out. I made two runs and found them waiting at the bottom for me. Turns out the kid who was going to drive bailed on them, and now there plan was to go into town to rent a car and make the 3 ½ hour drive to Dunedin which meant they had room for me to tag along. Without hesitating I agreed. I called my boss to see if he could cover for me and he could. We met up with two other friends of theirs named Morgan and Joel, and before I knew it I was in a car with 4 other people I barely knew on my way to Dunedin. We hit it off immediately and the drive was filled with general road trip tomfoolery. At one point Joel was going to streak through a field or sheep naked, but he bailed after merely taking off his shoe. It was still funny. The drive was beautiful and surprisingly we didn’t get lost. Until we got to Dunedin at least. It was strange to see streetlights. We arrived to the rail jam pretty early and checked out the set up and mingled with the other competitors. It was situated right in the middle of Otago University, where Lyndsey studied, so the venue was packed full of rowdy college students. The atmosphere led me to try front flips and rodeos over the entire setup negating to even touch the rails. It was enough to get me through to the finals, which was my goal from the beginning. Rails have never been a strong aspect of my skiing prowess so I wasn’t planning on winning in the first place. I just wanted to have a good time and it was a great time. It was by far the most fun I’ve ever had competing in a rail jam and the set up was great. All competitors were given free drinks from the neighboring bar. Most were enjoyed after, but I couldn’t resist a few during. Its important to stay hydrated right? It started raining at one point which wouldn’t have been so bad if I had came prepared. Oh well. We had plans to drive home after, but we were having so much fun that we decided to go out and explore the city. Our plan changed from driving home after, to sleeping in the car for a few hours after partying and then driving back. That quickly changed as well. We were literally wondering the streets asking random people we encountered where the good bars were or if they knew where we could find a house party. Luckily we found someone willing to bring us to a house party. The house party turned out to be the best house party I’ve ever been too. It put parties at UNH to shame. It was in an old colonial style house with high ceilings and music was provided by not one, but two DJs. The house was overflowing with people, and how or why the police didn’t shut it down baffled me. I wasn’t to worried about that for the time being. I ended up meeting a nice kiwi girl there who was kind enough to welcome us all into her apartment for the night. It turned out being the most ridiculous apartment for any college student. It came equipped with a pool table and two extra king size mattresses so we all managed a great night of sleep. We woke up around 930 and quickly realized we weren’t going t make it back to QT for a day of skiing. Instead we ventured off to roam the streets of Dunedin to find our car. I was still wearing my snow pants and an overly large green shirt I borrowed from Shawn. I was walking barefoot as well because my shoes were soaked through from the rain. We were a sight to see, and got a lot of bizarre looks. We stumbled across a really cool Saturday market. We roamed through looking for some food/water to cure our hangover. Morgan had already cracked a beer in attempt to ease her pain. We found our car and decided to drive around in search of the steepest street in the world. We found it and conquered it with screams as if we were on a rollercoaster ride at six flags. Our next mission was the beach, which was beautiful. The waves were huge, and the surfing looked amazing. We sat in silence for nearly an hour taking it all in. After the beach we found the local Salvation Army and browsed for a bit. I was disappointed, but found a tape loaded with sing alongs for the ride home. Radio signal was non-existent for 90% of the drive. On the ride home I dozed in and out of sleep, but there was still some stupid fun to have like when we stopped near a damn, found an echo spot, and yelled funny sayings for nearly a half hour. Oh the joys of road tripping. I’m sure you get a sense of how fun it was from reading this, but I assure you it was way more fun.

We all get along really well, and I’ve stumbled upon a new circle of friends. I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t meet them earlier in my trip. I ride with Shawn and Nick pretty much every day now and we always have a great time. We’ve been attempting to learn Ski Ballet, which has led to many good laughs. If you want to be impressed type Ski Ballet into youtube. I met up with Shawn yesterday and rather then hitting the big jumps in the park, we decided to partake in a pond-skimming contest. I had never done one before and have always wanted too. You win by being entertaining so Shawn tried to cross on one ski and I tried to backflip out. We both failed. It was a ton of fun and set the mood for the rest of the day.

All is well with me and I hope everyone is doing well. Hopefully I didn’t take to much time out of anyone’s day with this massive post. Enjoy the pictures.

Pat