Time passes....

Well, here we go with another month passed since my last ramblings.  And I must admit, what a month it has been.  We have had skiing, beer festival, sick children and more fishing (or casting as it is now known).

And in all these events, there has ben much hilarity (maybe with the exception of a sick child).  Firstly I would like to share with you a picture that proves that not only is Jesus alive, but that he likes beer.  So forget those sightings of Brad Pitt in Wellington; I have gone one better and saw his Ultimate Holiness.

No gnatty tricks such as turning water into ale were preformed.

This snap was taken at the awesome event, Beervana, in Wellington.  A load of boutique  brewers get together and offer their wares.  The unfortunate point is that thy issue you with a small glass to do the tasting with, and as we all know you seem to drink more when you have a small glass....that is my excuse, and I am sticking with it.  As you no doubt know from my previous ramblings, I am not a huge fan of the Kiwi beers.  There were some however that certainly were very good indeed, especially the Number 3 IPA from Townshend Brewers.  And then at the other end of the scale you had Mike's Organic brewery and Gisborne Gold; their offering tasted like burnt crap.  There was even an importer of some of the German pilsners, but unfortunately some of the taste had been lost in the 10,000 miles of transportation.
It was an epic night, and one that I shall remember for a long while; and not just for the candle-lit dinner for two in a chinese restaurant.

Surf casting at Tangimoana

As I said earlier, there have been some more fishing adventures, or more appropriately, casting adventures. So named for the complete and utter lack of catching.  I have been giving surf casting a go; mainly because I do not own a boat, and also for the impending trip over summer there will be some awesome places to go.   I am the proud owner of a 12' rod, and much fine, fine tackle....the only drama, is that I have not a clue what to do with it.  I guess that it just gets flung into the ocean and hope for the best; these damn fish just don't seem to have the courtesy of impaling themselves on my hooks.  Still, we shall see what the future holds.  Rumour has it that as the weather improves so will my luck; I am not so sure.  There are some more trips planned for the not so distant future, and with a bit of luck we'll manage to get out onto a boat.  The family is going a bit hungry at the moment without me providing food for the table.  I am possibly coming around to the thought that it might be easier just to go to the fishmongers....?

A day on the board

Next on the agenda has been the skiing/snowboarding up at Turoa.  There have been some great days up there, and I am now in credit on the season pass, which is always good!  Liz got her skis for her 30th, and not be feel left out, I bought a pair as well.  This is where I have to admit that there is something, aside from ironing, that my wife is better than me at.  Not for long though.  Jocelyn has much fun in the daycare centre at the top of the mountain, where she gets to wear her 'ski-gumboots' and mum & dad do their thing; it is great!  So weather permitting, we will be up there next weekend.

We need to make the most of it as I am due off to Australia at the end of September for a month.  Then not long till the epic tour of New Zealand begins, again!

Getting on in life...

So, it has finally happened; I am officially getting old.  This is in no part my fault.  It is of course my wife's fault.  She had the indecency to turn 30 last week.  Also, I suppose I could apportion some blame to my daughter, who turns 2 next week.  As ever, the world moves on at pace and I feel myself content to sit by watch it all happen.  Forever young is what I say.

Jocelyn at the the park

The weather has been pretty good of late, and we have made some excursions to the park, so Jocelyn can meet the new birds at the aviary (if only she was a boy.....!).  We nearly made it to the model railway, but the fact that I had to have a coffee made sure there was no change left....how selfish of me, yet who am I to stand in the way of a strong caffeine addiction?

Captured and forced to wear All Blacks shirts...

We also made it down to Wellington to watch the second test of the All Blacks vs the Springboks.  A superb game, and indeed superb evening was had.  We have also identified the worst curry house in the entire world.  It proved my theory of "...its run by Indians, so it can't be too bad..." to be a complete pile of horse-shite.  Never before have I had floppy poppadoms, or have I tasted butter chicken so bad.  In fact the butter chicken was a tin of Heinz (or Watties, depending on the hemisphere you are in) cream of tomato soup with a few bits of chicken in; this restaurant (term used so very loosely) would win awards for crapness.  Of course being totally British, and sober, I did not let them know this at all........

Surf Casting legend...?

With trout fishing under the belt, I thought that I would give surf casting a go.  It is definately one of the funnier things that I have done in my life...  Armed with a 13.5 ft surf casting rod, a lead weight that could easily pass for an anti ship mine, 2 suicide hooks and some chopped up squid; off I went to Himatangi beach:


View Untitled in a larger map

I quickly realised that this was going to have to be a manly effort.  Middle of winter, off came the shoes and socks, trousers rolled up, and into the surf I waded.

The author, hard at work.

I also quickly realised that wielding this 13.5 ft monster was going to be tricky, especially if i wanted to avoid catching my own head.  My colleague who lent me the rod informed me that a cast of 100m was entirely possible....I was left questioning this when on the first attempt I nearly broke my foot with the anti ship mine...however this was no problem as in mid winter the water was a bit chilly, so I could not feel my feet anyway...

Perseverance was the key, and I was soon achieving casts of well in excess of 20m.  Well done me.   I believe that the fish were more in danger of being knocked out by the high arcing piece of lead, than them accidentally swallowing my hooks.

Still, I had a huge amount of fun and will definitely go back...maybe in summer though?!

Some paisley stripes to enhance...?

Ex Brimstone

Well, they say that a change is as good as a rest?  As usual I have fallen a bit behind in the blogging department.  I would like to say that is because I have been busy....well actually that is true, I have been busy.

What have we done?  Well, the was the Santoft Sizzler; a 5 hour mountain bike race through the forest near Bulls.  It was the first race that Liz has done, and she became a honorary member of team 'Lazy Crankers'.  The weather was awful, which I maintain contributed to my 5 'rapid dismounts', luckily the ground was soft.  As I have always said, "...if you don't fall off, then you aren't trying hard enough...".  Next race is scheduled for 11 September up in Taupo.

We also have the All Blacks vs Ireland test in New Plymouth.  This was possibly the wettest weekend in the history of weekends.  The rain was almost monsoon like in its torrential'ness.  Luckily we had our farmers jackets and Jocelyn had her gum boots.  We also became honorary Kiwis for the weekend, as I couldn't possibly ever lower myself to support the Irish.  And luckily we backed the winning horse, as it was a comprehensive victory, to say the least.

Complete with 'gumboots'

 I had the delights of Waiouru in the winter, which is a cold a desolate place at the best of times.  Add snow, rain and wind to the mix and then it does become really quite unpleasant.  The only plus side of the whole exercise was that I was able to keep tabs on the mountain, and watch the snow build up for the boarding season to start.

So a glorious 10 days on exercise with the look forward to at the end being a weekend on the slopes playing in all that snow that  had so miserable in previously.

Being the honourable man that I am I decided it would be prudent to join a colleague of mine and head to the slope a day early just to make sure that everything was in order, and nobody had moved the mountain etc...luckily they hadn't.  I also accidentally managed to buy a shiny new pair of Oakley goggles and a new pair of gloves that came with 2 free rabbits....how strange.

Despite the weather, Waiouru can be a
truly beautiful place

So, off we set on the friday morning with clear blue skies ahead of us.  We made good time, checked into the house and made our way to the mountain road.  Only to be stopped by the ruddy Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr John Key.  Apparently opening some poxy cycle path next to a giant carrot (maybe that explains the rabbits?), I mean, who does he think he is?  Closing off the road, and delaying my accent of the mountain.  At least the security dude was helpful "...excuse me good sir" I asked, "how does one get round this road block to ascend yonder mountain?".  "...follow that car, bro"  was the reply, with a vague point at a car in the far distance quite clearly travelling in the wrong direction.....marvellous.  Still, we made it; and what an awesome day out it was.  Not quite the whole of the mountain open, but certainly enough to have a damn good time.

The rest of the gang joined us in the evening, and after a few well deserved beers and pizza an early night ready for the following day.

Jocelyn on the slopes

This was Jocelyn's second time with snow, and she enjoyed (slightly grumpily!) it building snowmen and sledging about the place.  The photo (courtesy of our professional friend) is excellent, we think.

So, I am on leave now and hopefully the weather will improve slightly, and I'll be able to get up the slope later on this week.  Luckily I met Jesus (Son of God) whilst on our last weekend, and now complete with his phone number I have ask him to do some of the divine intervention stuff, so hopefully it will work?  Also I can confirm that Jesus was/is really a carpenter.

Messing around with paint.

With a bit of time on my hands, I thought that I would get all creative with some of the photos that we have taken. Here is the first result; it only took me an hour.......

The photo is of the Wellington cable car, taken from the Botanical gardens. I used Photoshop Elements 8 to get it the way it is looking now, and I think that it is quite a striking image. But there again, as it took me an hour to work out how to do it, i am bound to be impressed! No doubt there is a quicker way to do it, and hopefully i shall find this out as time goes on.

Seeing as I am on leave for the next 2 days, expect to see many more images appear from our travels around New Zealand, and from my experimentations with Photoshop.

If there does happen to be a guru out there with the programme (and knowing how many millions of people read this blog, there must be...?), then please feel free to share any of the tips with me.

Jocelyn's feeding time!

This moment of pure magic was captured a few days ago. There was no prompting from behind the camera either...

Jocelyn is coming on really quickly with her 'talking', she is most definitely making herself known.  Unfortunately there is a slight Kiwi twang to her words; "pen comes out as "pin" to name just one, and there is all sorts of other gibberish.  Some say she sounds like her mother!?

We have the Queens Birthday weekend to look forwards to this weekend, and we'll be spending the long weekend up in Tauranga with some friends of ours.  The weather is looking like it will be good, so hopefully i'll manage to get a spot of sea fishing in, while the Snapper are still biting.

Piggy Wiggy needs drawing now, so I'd best turn to my artistic talents (?) and see what I can do.

Fresh back from a weekend away

Well, it is a Sunday evening, and the hangover has just about abated.  Lunch followed by an evening out in Wellington  was the reason behind the exceptionally sore head this morning.

I have come to the conclusion that I a getting too old to mix drinks the way we did last night.  It is neither big, nor clever.  The main reason for this was a cocktail bar called Motel (their website being as random and funky as the bar itself).  I am convinced that this place is somewhere that you could only find drunk, and that in the hours of daylight the place doesn't even exist.  A secret knock on a metal door behind a skip bin allowed you access to this place, up a very steep flight of barren stairs and then your in this opulent & well stocked bar.  One of my fellow drinker was complaining of heartburn and indigestion (possibly caused by the 5 pints of cider and 3 of beer that had preceded our arrival), so the ever handy barman knocked up a concoction of what we can only believe to be distilled deer.  It worked.  But it was the foulest drink known to mankind.  Unfortunately we then had the second most filthy cocktail in the world....Champagne and Absinthe.....never try it, trust me.

So with all that drink, a good friendly chat with a Marxist, some dodgy whipping action, a happy slap following Burger King and waking up surrounded by thousands of tiny war planes and tanks; it was a top night out.