Quarter of a Century

Quarter of a Century - Holy Shit!

And what an epic week!

Snowboarding, partying, getting hurt, going out, bungy jumping, working and playing hockey.

Saturday the 15th Mike, Leyton and I decided to get some riding time in at Coronet peak, which doesn’t have a snow park, but has lots of fun natural terrain. After a lapse in judgement on my behalf, and excessive speed, unfortunately I sparked a series of events that lead to Leyton fracturing on of his vertebra in his lower back. Ouch! I still feel bad about it, but shit happens… After being sledded to the ski patrol building, they lay him down, and gave him lots of fun laughing gas while we waited together for the ambulance. Needless to say all three of us were feeling pretty painless after that!

Leyton was then shipped to Invercargill hospital to get X-rays and an examination. He will make a full recovery in approximately 6 weeks, which is consoling, but he has probably missed the rest of the snow season, which sucks!

Leyton is now recovering back at home, chilling, watching movies, and gets 80% of his wages paid by the social healthcare, so Mike and I try and keep him as entertained as possible!

The same night, Mike and I went to party with a rail set up in the back yard, and some snow from the mountains! The music was cranking, and we were shredding it on the rail all night! Mike even pulled a sick one-footed grind that left everyone speechless. Nice one Mikey!

The following day Mike and I hit Remarks to do some filming and get some solid riding in, but we were so hung over, that it was only inevitable… On the first run through the park I slid out after ollying into a backside boardslide, and cracked open a gash on my shin. Funny enough I didn’t even think to look at it until after we were on the next lift back up to the top, at which point Mike and I were both amazed that you could pretty much see down to the bone, whilst it was bleeding all over my white boots! I had to smile, as I sat there helpless on the lift, and offered to film Mike doing a park run on our way to ski patrol, this time to get me stitched up.

As the nurse started to stitch me up, I couldn’t help but notice she was asking the doctor a hell of a lot of questions, only later to find out it was like her first or second time doing stitches. Great. Anyway, she put three in, and then threw in another for good measure, after I told her I play hockey and it might put some strain on it. Luckily the anaesthetic was strong enough to keep me going the rest of the day without hurting! So we went back up to the park and kept nailing the jumps, although I did stay off the rails and boxes… hehe. Mike tried a couple of back flips off the medium sized kicker (which he then nailed the following weekend), and was still busting out some pretty big, but non-troubling airs and grabs.

This is a picture I took of it yesterday, after a fun little "take Cles' stitches out" session.

I also lost my ipod that day, mid-jump! As I hit one of the hips at the bottom of the park, the music cut out just before I landed, and since my ipod cuts out randomly anyway I didn’t think anything of it. But at the lift when I went to turn it back on, I realised it had somehow floated out of my pocket, and obviously fell into the slushy snow. White ipod + White snow = no ipod. Simple math…

Oh well, so my leg’s got stitches, that I’m beginning to feel a lot, and I lost my ipod with all my music on it, and my friend’s in Invercargill with a broken back, but at least we had Eddie to ride down in, and go straight home.

No. That would be too easy. Somehow, the battery’s dead, and the alternator is shot, so it doesn’t recharge, and we are parked at the top of the 20km steep muddy/dirt road down the mountain. Oh, and there’s a bit just past the first 200m that goes flat and even a bit uphill for a bit. So of course, we decide to just roll Eddie all the way down. Sweet.

Ha! We slip and slide our way down the first bit of windy road, with every other car looking at us like we’re insane, until we get to the flat bit. Mike slows the car into the ditch on the left side of the road. Without a plan, or a solution, we decide to get out and try and hitch down, or at least stand in the road hoping someone else might have a solution. As I step out of the car my foot sinks about a metre deep into a freezing cold stream of muddy mountain water, which pretty much made the bloodstains redundant. As I fumbled out, I managed to keep my stitched leg from getting soaked, and just stood on the road with my thumb out, not knowing entirely what exactly it was we were going to ask of people. A ride? A tow? A towel?

This jeep finally stops and pulls over in front of us, when a couple guys jump out with a towrope, and the funniest Kiwi accents ever! Just really typical, with everything ending in “Sick Bruuuuu” or “Aw Stink Bruuuuu” hehehe. They were really cool though, and really helpful. Eventually we got the rope through our tow-hole, and they started dragging us down the mountain, but not before one last James Bond-style stunt! The car was so deeply buried in the ditch on the side, with the stream running almost underneath it, and the steep mountain side right next to it, that I couldn’t really get back in the passenger side. I didn’t realise, however, that to pull the car out of the trench they would have to pull it pretty fast! So now Mike’s in the driver seat, steering hard right, while these guys are pulling Eddie at like 30km/h, he’s just sliding in a straight line along the stream in the ditch, and I’m running behind them all like a fucking nutcase in my snowboard boots with one leg completely covered in muddy water, stitches in the other, and of course Mike just leans over, pushes the passenger door open and shouts “get in!” So I run even faster, as they weren’t gonna slow down at all, and just as Eddie finally makes it out of the ditch and back onto the road I literally jumped and hoisted myself into the passenger side by grabbing the door with one hand, and the roof with the other.

Ha!

Eddie finally made it down the mountain, and we rolled him into a parking spot in the dusty car-park at the bottom, where he remains to this day. Fortunately a different guy was nice enough to give us a ride home, after he had a good laugh at the site of Eddie’s engine.
So Wow. What an epic weekend!

Monday I got home after work and everyone had got me a little cake which sweet, but I was just happy to chill out and take a breather. Not! Mike and I went out and met up with some of my work-mates for a few drinks, but I was, actually, pretty tired believe it or not, so didn’t last very long. I also met Travis Rice at work that day, which felt like talking to a high-school crush, I got pretty star-struck. (Pretty much the best snowboarder in the world)

The rest of that week was pretty cruisy, working a couple days up the Ledge, and even got Mike a couple jumps up there on Saturday, our day off. We went up to Remarks on the Friday, but the snow was too slushy, and the park was closed, I still had stitches, and was being really weary of injuring myself, so we called it an early day, and decided to have the weekend off, as it was one of my only weekends without hockey games, or work!

Speaking of which, work is going really well! I realise I haven't spoken alot about my actual work responsibilities, so I'll let you in on the scoop.

I work for AJ Hackett, the biggest, and oldest bungy company in the world. In New Zealand it operates four sites, three of which are in Queenstown: the Kawarau Bridge (first ever commercial bungy site), the Ledge and the Nevis (134m drop). I work in the Photography and Video department, and will undertake a variety of tasks at any given time. At the bridge there is a 4-person team working, using two remote-controlled and one stationary video cameras, three steady shot photography cameras, and one roving photographer running around outside with an awesome Nikon D300. This is a picture of the AV room at the bridge, filled with technology, and really fun, expensive gadgets!

The hitch with all of this is that you only get one chance to film, and photograph the jumpers, so the job entails some extremely precise timing, and media management (knowing when to use what camera/flash/settings and how to switch between them efficiently and quickly). Once the jumper is tied up and ready to go, the last thing they want to do is wait for the photographer or video guy to be ready, so we have to make sure we're always a step ahead. And when you're jumping one person every 3 minutes, you can imagine it gets pretty intense. In those three minutes, you have to find out where the jumper is from, so you can record to the right format (PAL/NTSC), then activate the DVD and backup HDD drives to record, record the intro live, make sure your camera is in focus, make sure the other camera controller in the room is paying attention, taking photographs of the jumpers via remote triggers inside the AV room at critical junctures, using the video mixer to switch between the three functional camera angles using blending effects and different fade times on the fly. Another person in the room will then have to retrieve all the photos taken, sort through and find the best ones, print them and arrange them appropriately to be sent to the sales desk, along with the finished version of the DVD, for the customer to watch and hopefully buy. All this has to finished before the next jumper begins. There is no post processing at all. Awesome!

I also uploaded a couple videos so you can see what I'm talking about.

Well, hope you enjoyed this last blog update. I certainly enjoyed everything I've mentioned.

I also want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who sent me an e-mail, message, letter, package, or just called me on my birthday. It's been one of the best so far, but also a little sad being so far away from everybody. I miss you all!!! Polla filia kai xairetismous... you know who you are!

xx Themistocles the Awesome

Work and Play

Work and Play

The relative times in the post are a little out of whack, hehe...

Winterfest. Winterfest was a fun week. We saw the town almost double in population, with lots of parties and events all over the small centre. I volunteered to work as a sound engineer at the festival, but due to work and hockey commitments I ended up only being to work on one day, which I was lucky enough to be the Comedy Debate, with Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) and several other funny funny guys! I got to see the whole show, and even had a good handshake and picture with Rhys afterwards!
There were a lot of bands playing in the parks and streets, as well as a Mardi Gras parade, which was interesting, but surprisingly scaled down and tame, compared to New Orleans.

Hockey. Last weekend a small regiment of the team travelled to Gore to play in the Erewohn Cup, the longest running sporting cup in the history of the South Island, to compete as the Queenstown Rangers. We came second, although had we not taken the occasion so ‘lightly’, we probably could have come first. It was a fun weekend though. We stayed overnight in Gore Motor Park, in these heatless, bathroom less shacks, where we froze our balls off, after spending all night in the trashiest Karaoke bar in the world! We stumbled upon the Gore Regional Karaoke Finals on the night we were there, and there were all these mullet-wearing “Bogans”, with a couple of teeth if they were lucky, singing Billy Idol and Abba! Bizarre.
This is after Kevin got hit pretty hard against the boards, and had to get an ambulance to drive onto the ice to take him to the hospital. luckily, no fractures, just some bruising and sprains.This is a funny ad for DB beer I saw in Gore. I think it really sums the town up well...

Stampede. We have officially suffered our first loss now, against Christchurch, in Christchurch, although we won the first out of the two back-to-back games played that weekend. Last weekend we played hard against Dunedin, in Dunedin and won both games, the second with a substantially large margin too! This coming weekend we play the Auckland Admirals, in Auckland, which will conclude our away games for the season. Our final two games are at the end of august, playing Christchurch (our closest rivals), at home. And then of course, the one-game final, which the team with the most points gets to host.
Last weekend I also went pond skating for the first time. There was a little pond outside this farm, between Queenstown and Arrowtown, that a few us went skating on. We got a puck and a net out, but the ice was pretty thin and brittle around the edges so the puck kept going under water. Ouch. But it was amazing fun skating on something not man-made.

I also got some local publicity through the regional newspaper here. Hehe. Turns out they’ve never met a Greek hockey player before, which is crazy. Anyway, this sports journalist came and interviewed me, and wrote an article in the sports section about me, which is available online at http://www.odt.co.nz/print/64053
Mountain. I haven’t had a chance to get up to the mountain much the last couple weeks, between working and playing hockey, but I did get a few good runs in one day last week. I got a ride up to Remarks with Bert, in his hummer! Hehe, one of my teammates manages one of the bars in town, and got a hummer with his logos printed on the side as a promotional car / going up the hill car! The snow was a little crusty cuz it hadn’t snowed in a while, but the park runs were still sweet. Nothing overly-interesting really, just a fun day in the park stomping some 360s and big airs. Think I’m going to start trying some backside 3s and 180s next time…
My rails and boxes are really coming along too! I'm getting the hang of ollying on now, and pulling some really stylish frontside boardslides and nose/tail presses! Boooooya
Apart from all the good park stuff, Mike and I have been doing some night skiing, and hiking up to the powder runs, separately obviously. Night skiing is awesome! the pistes are all floodlit, and the snow has been really nice and soft for it. It can get a little tricky off-piste where there is little or no light, but just adds to the rush of hitting an awesome meter-high jump and going flying, completely by accident!
Hiking has been good too, albeit absolutely exhausting! the hikes are pretty intense, with some pretty tricky bits, where you think, "Damn, two meters behind me is death, but a few meters ahead is the most awesome powder run..." tricky trying to prioritize there!
This is where I got stuck in the deepest powder, whilst also sliding down the mountainside.
And this is the first time I ever climbed on ice. My board was my pick-axe.

But this is what it looks like once you get through all the hairy stuff. worth it? yeah...


Bungy Jumping. So far I’ve done three jumps, and the Ledge Sky Swing. Jumping at the Kawarau Bridge is fun, the scenery is beautiful, the jump is high, and the adrenaline goes for a while. The canyon you’re jumping into is really picturesque, and once in a while you’ll get river rafters going by, right under the jump deck.


The ledge is fun in a pretty different way. It’s a smaller jump, but you’ve got a running start, it overlooks all of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, you can jump at night, and you’re wearing a harness as opposed to leg-cuffs, which means more jump diversity. So basically you can do triple front flips out of a protruding wooden hut off the side of a green mountain while watching the rugby in town and your buddy wakeboard in the lake! Plus, the first split second of airtime is really creepy, as you feel like you’re jumping into thin air, until the bungy catches, and you swing down so low you can almost touch the rocks on the hillside. And while all this is happening, the people coming up the hill in the Gondola are watching and taking pictures, only about 10 meters away!
The ledge also has the sky swing, which is basically a huge swing, on static ropes as opposed to bungy, that swings you down almost at a tangent with the hillside, and out over the city lights. It’s a crazy experience because you actually have to release yourself, after being suspended out above the rocky hillside.
My jumps so far were pretty standard dives off, but today I tried an ‘elevator’ off the bridge. You stand backwards, facing the jump controller, and jump straight down like a pencil, but the hitch is you have to look the controller in the eye the whole way down, and if you want to throw a little style by adding theatrical elements to it that’s a bonus rush. So I did a ‘Die Hard” elevator jump, which means I heald my hands out in the shape of a gun, tried to aim and shoot the controller as I plummeted down, while shouting bang, bang, bang at each shot. HA! It was fucking awesome!

Last week I showed up for work at the Ledge, and they needed to test out a new bungy cord, so of course I offered myself up on a platter to be their guinea pig, and did three jumps just off the bat. Better than coffee to wake you up in the morning!
The job itself rules too, but no time to explain!

And this is our amazing instrument collection at home. Electronic and acoustic!

So that's about it for now.


Make sure drop me some comment, or email me some notes / gossip.

Love

The Chemist of Jesus x x