e.g. I thought I’d give it a whirl as I was flying out of Houston, out over the Gulf of Mexico. Alas all I got was a blunt denial:

So don’t actually travel to remote places and expect this feature to work. 😔

And then this Hantavirus “outbreak” is announced, and gets worse over the weekend – more deaths, more confirmed cases, more suspect areas of the park – and, well shit.

After much consternation, we decided it would be best to just cancel our reservation. Without knowing more, it’s hard to make an informed decision, and it’s unlikely we’ll know substantially more by this weekend.

The gnat in the proverbial ointment was that these campsites are expensive ($111 a night), and their management states that they won’t refund your deposit (first night’s stay) if you cancel. Not if it’s cancelled less than seven days in advance, anyway. “No exceptions.”, they emphasise.

‘course, that riles me the wrong way. So when I rang to cancel, I was expecting a fight. I was thus very surprised when the guy on the phone stated simply that the deposit would be refunded. I didn’t even have to ask. I thanked him, and that was that. Aside from the ten minutes on hold (plus a disconnection by their retarded robot), the call took all of a minute.

So colour me surprised and pleased. Now we’re able to look forward to when all this is resolved, and we can make a new reservation. They’ve earnt some brownie points, by handling this situation respectfully and sensibly. It’s sad that we’re so cynical as to expect anything less; that simply being pleasant and rational is considered extraordinary, but, there it is. The reality of accomodation reservations, both bad and [occasionally] good.

This year it’s at Squaw. I’ve been to Squaw once before, but only for dinner; never skiied, on the basis that it’s always been a relatively expensive resort tickets-wise, and insanely expensive accomodation-wise. The room in which I currently reside is ~$350 a night. Granted it’s in Squaw Village, and I can walk to a bunch of nearby chairlifts… but then Heavenly is also equivalently accessible (via the gondola) for a third the price.

Anyway, I rant. Getting here today meant being out of bed at 5 AM in order to catch a 5:30 bus. The ride up was uneventful but uncomfortable, given there was no way to sleep on the bus – I know I’ve done it before, but I don’t for the life of me know how – and that getting up that early in the morning just makes me feel like throwing up to begin with.

But we arrived and luckily my room was already available, so I could dump all my stuff, get changed, and hit the slopes. I guess I got in about five hours skiing, nearly. And I’m evidently very old because that feels like a lot. My feet in particular, surprisingly, are adament on that point.

The weather was nice – a little warm, but it cooled off by early afternoon – and the conditions were… okay. Some of the groomed runs were nicely consistent, packed snow… but there was ice scattered across others, and in particular the higher peaks were, well, crap. I took one chairlift up to such a peak, on a whim, only to find that there was no way down that wasn’t dominated by steep, icy moguls. Of the two options, one even involved a six foot ledge jump just to get started. No thanks.

All told it was a good day, though. Now I have to decide if I’m up for ice skating before dinner. I should go, but I feel so very lazy. Times like these I wonder about my aversion to caffeinated beverages.

Tomorrow is a 95%-full day of skiing capped with the bus ride back home. Not so keen on that last part.

One thing I dislike about Squaw is that it’s surprisingly hard to get around the mountain. It appears that the majority of it, in fact, is readily accessible only via gondola, which is inconvenient. So I was more or less relegated to a small handful of areas today.

Which apparently they did for the rest of the week that they were here. They’d been backpacking in South America for five or six months, I believe it was, so I guess they were over seeing things and had moved solidly on to the material goods phase of their lives. ;)

They were dropped off at my place by Sean’s family. I hadn’t really put it together that it would be the last time Sket & Sean would see them all for some time, so I was somewhat taken aback by the tearful farewells.

Once we’d shipped in their metric ton of luggage, into the house, we set out up to Alice’s for some food, and from there on down La Honda to the coast, and up to Half Moon bay. I’d never been down La Honda [that side of Skyline], nor along the coast there. It was surprising – a lovely drive (though that wasn’t unexpected) but also some things I didn’t expect, like the real gritty biker bar down in La Honda or San Gregorio or wherever it was. Or the huge rodeo that we passed, complete with grand stands and all the other bells & whistles. And beaches! There’s actually a couple of rather nice beaches right there, at the end of La Honda thereabouts. I had no idea; I’d looked on Google Maps before but hadn’t noticed anything like that. I’m going to have to head over there sometime, before I move, and actually take enjoyment from them.

At Half Moon bay we just wandered around a bit, watching the fog ever so slightly dissipate, the wheels clicking over in my head as it dawned on me that hello, it’s summer, good luck getting a clear day. ’twas something that gave us grief a fair bit during the week, though we weren’t without at least one good day, when we went down the coast to Big Sur.

But I skip a bit.

I believe it was the next day that we went on up to S.F., taking the coast from Half Moon bay so we could come up around Sutro Heights Park, where we stopped for food at Louie’s, before heading over to Coit Tower by way of Lombard street – which Sket & Sean had no real prior knowledge of, pfft. :P

And we ended up parking down near Fisherman’s Wharf, taking the cable car over the hill to union square to at least see the place, and so Sean could um and ah over a MacBook Pro for a while, before returning to check out Ripley’s Believe It or Not. That was actually somewhat interesting, although the sections composed largely of body parts or strange sadomasochistic practices didn’t really do much for me. The highlight for all of us was actually the tunnel at the end; you walk through on a suspended platform that is itself not moving at all, but the tunnel rotates about you, and has mirrors at either end, in such a way that you feel like the tunnel walls are stationary and it’s you that is rotating. It was amazingly effective; I’m inherently quite sceptical of such things, as many of those sorts of illusions rely on belief and willingness, but this one actually worked with precious little effort on my part.

After that we found Fisherman’s Wharf was essentially deserted. Even Hooters was closed. So we left, stopping for dinner at Denny’s.

Oh, and we went over the bridge too, because I got turned about heading into the city and figured what the hell, while we were there. And we drove through Golden Gate Park; we didn’t have any time to stop by that point, and there’s much too much to do there for one day anyway.

I filmed our whole ride on the cable car, to Union square, hanging off the side of it. But it turned out to be way crooked. Camera’s need fluid levels built in.

So, what else… as alluded to earlier we went down to Big Sur for one day; stopping in Carmel Valley for food, driving down to a little past Big Sur, and back to Carmel proper to wander around and indulge in English chocolate (hint: the same as Australian, but more expensive) and so forth, and Italian food, before heading back. Alas the weather ruined the sunset entirely – we could not even see it for the damn clouds. Curse you Californian summer!

At some point we also went down to Palo Alto for a wander, though as was evidently the status quo, we got there after most places were shut, so, it was purely sightseeing (aside from food).

Otherwise… Sket & Sean thieved my computer for most of the week, to do their job & house hunting, and flight booking, and whatever else. While they were occupied with that I demolished “MacPerl”, which was actually as helpful as it was amusingly outdated. That and half a Dilbert book. And some podcasts. Generally not doing a whole lot, which was just fine by me. The week off (well, short of Wednesday where I did go in) did a lot of good, I think.

Monday morning we left at 3am for SFO for their 6am flight. Booked through Air Canada who then after taking the money disclosed that the flight was actually with United, who then proceeded to gouge $100US out of them for the privilege of having their luggage hauled as well. #%@! United is most likely the worst airline in the world. Hawaiian Air are second, but their stupidity is more an incompetence than actual malice. United makes no such illusion.

And Air Canada can take spot #3 for being such dicks, too. I’ll give them a miss in future.

So we never made it to Santa Cruz, which Sket wanted to see. It has minimal attraction to me now – I much prefer Half Moon bay or Carmel. In any case, Sket & Sean chose dealing with real life over sightseeing, so that’s their problem. :P

A good excuse, though, for them to come visit again sometime, once they’re solidly on their feet, wherever they end up sticking in Canada.

Vegas. The Return. I finally had the bloody foresight to book the flights across the weekend, not just the Thursday and Friday I’d actually be working there, so that I could enjoy myself a bit. I still owe myself a trip to Disneyworld from last year’s NSBE.

The fair itself was good – not too hard work compared to the uni fairs, since even though NSBE is the biggest the ratio of Apples to attendees is much more in our favour. Not as busy as I might have expected, given it was in Vegas, though the big ongoing sook about the economy no doubt should be blamed – it’s used as the excuse for everything else these days, innit?

As per usual, the accommodations were rather swank indeed; stayed in the MGM Signature Suites, which while a bit off the strip and thus a little inconvenient, were very nice. Once I got into them; the first room I was given had a broken lock on the door. After three round trips between reception and the room, they transferred me to a different room. Then, that night when I returned to my room I found all my stuff gone; naturally no-one had entered it into their fancy system that I’d been moved, so they presumed it was left by a previous guest. Grrrr.

I flew in Wednesday, though there were minor delays and taxis and traffic and all the usual such that I didn’t really get there ’til mid afternoon. I wandered up and down the strip for the afternoon, grabbed something to eat, and then went to see the Blue Man Group. They were good, entertaining, but didn’t live up to expectations – they simply couldn’t, given how massively over-hyped they are. I was still adjusting to the ticket prices in Vegas, as well – $110+ for pretty much any kind of live show – so, yeah…

The next night, I think it was, I went and saw Ka, one of the several Cirque de Soleil shows based permanently in Vegas. Unlike the travelling variety, these really make the most of their fixed venues; the theatres are custom-outfitted for each individual show, in an insanely elaborate fashion that truly only Vegas could afford. Ka was technically amazing – there were two main stages, both suspended and fully articulated, such that they could alternate between hidden below the floor, front and centre, and front and centre vertical – and all the graduations inbetween. Very, very impressive – seeing people dance around on a vertical stage, swinging and tumbling from point to point, is totally original to me.

Unfortunately though the theatre was maybe 25% full at most, I happened to be sat right next to some middle-aged couple whom talked through the entire show, about all sorts of rambling and meaningless crap. I felt compelled to just knock them both clean out, though I begrudgingly settled with shuffling a few seats away and stubbornly ignoring them. They did definitely wet the show for me, though. Not impressed.

The other show I saw while in town was another Cirque de Soleil, ‘Love’, based around the Beatles. I’m not a Beatles fan… I’m almost an anti-fan in fact, if only in response to all the rabid obsessives who still sit them on some holy pedestal. Pfft. They had some really good stuff, they were good guys, but they were fundamentally tripped-out stoners that wrote teenage bubble-pop. I’m sorry, it’s just true. That said, that show was also really good – they combined the more classic songs with recording studio excerpts and various other snippets, all set to an overwhelming dance ensemble that my only major critique for is the fact that there’s no way you can take it all in; you’d have to go see the show two or three times to have any chance of seeing it all, so to speak. Which so far as critiques go seems almost ridiculous, but it’s really not… anything going on outside my peripherals is at best redundant and at worst an important part that I’m missing. Kind of like video games that pretense to be massively open and non-linear which almost inevitably means massively inconsistent and demotivating.

That bit of literary wank aside – I can feel the channelling of Yahztee coming on even as I write – the three shows were all very good. Combined with the pedestrian sights of Vegas – the casinos themselves, the water show outside the Bellagio, the Secret Garden at the Mirage, the pirate show at Treasure Island…. only, I didn’t get to see that last one. I tried twice on Saturday to see it, but both times it was cancelled. In the first case they started the show, but only a precious few minutes in the sound abruptly failed, and they immediately announced it was aborted “due to technical difficulties” (over what appeared to be the exact same sound system that was supposedly broken). That was unexpected enough to bemuse me, so I let that pass. But when I came back later for another show and, after standing there on their mock dock for forty minutes only to be told right on show time that it was cancelled due to Earth hour, well… we was not amused.

In any case, it’s no longer the classical pirate show but instead some sexed-up thing called “Sirens”, involving what are ostensibly dancers, but certainly of the exotic persuasion, so… it’s in the theme of Vegas, no doubt, so you kind of have to go with it… nonetheless for whatever reason it was in my head to see the “real” pirates show. Never to be, though – it was apparently switched out over a year ago. Sod.

This trip was the weekend after my little skiing adventure at Heavenly. Pleasantly, the hours on end spent walking up and down the strip seemed to do a lot of good for my shoulder – just having that tiny bit of movement presumably loosened it up a lot, for the better – so I was feeling pretty good overall. And then I badly twisted my ankle on some lawsuit-waiting-to-happen pavement outside the Mirage, on Saturday, and was from then on burdened with a ridiculous limp. That healed up more or less completely after a week, maybe week and a half, but nonetheless it was an unnecessary bit of universal comedy, layered as it was upon my existing injuries.

And come Sunday morning my ankle was slightly swollen and stiff as a result, so while it was not a debilitating injury in any real sense, it did pretty much rule out an action-packed day. Conceding defeat, I retired instead to the pool at the MGM. That was pretty sweet – not nearly as much a bikini show as you’d think, given the age spread was almost linear from eight to eighty, but I took the time to listen to some podcasts, read some books on my phone, and just sunbake. Which is really odd for me, but when in Vegas, right? ;)

It’s relevant that I was reading The Time Machine just prior to this trip, on my phone, which was interesting as it differs considerably from the modern-most movie based on it (which I quite liked, let it be said – yes, I’m that one guy). Succeeding that was The Island of Dr Moreau, which is where I was at by the pool. An interesting story, also, though surprisingly brief – it came to mind that if many of these famous early-century writers were writing now, they’d be told by publishers “that’s great for a first chapter; where’s the rest of it?”.

Furthermore, I in fact had a spa, in my room, Saturday night. I haven’t had a spa in forever almost – heck, the last time may indeed have been New Zealand. Eek. On the other hand, after New Zealand spas and spring-heated pools, you’re kind of ruined for the more pedestrian types you’re familiar with. :)

I also had rather nice company for those. ;)

It costs $230US for a cucumbers-on-eyes-and-elbows-in-kidneys “spa” at the MGM, I’m told. There was a horribly cliché guy-vs-girls moment when that was announced, as I just had to feign naivety and ask if that was some kind of juice card system.

The flight into Vegas was with United. They absolutely sucked, as always. Shitty planes, no service, everything’s about extra charges – hell, they even charge you for the so-called privilege of them carrying your bloody luggage as well – etc. In contrast, the way back was Virgin, which was just heaven in comparison; on-demand TV/movies/etc in every seat, complimentary food, [relatively] comfortable seats…. and seriously, the old-boy airlines can keep a straight face while asking why people hate them? WTF?

I had hoped to get out to the Grand Canyon while I was in the general vicinity, but that didn’t happen… it turns out it’s not exactly a short cab ride away, and while it is possible to do day trips to the west Grand Canyon, I ascertained, it’s ten hours or more of travel time, so I can’t imagine you actually get to do much when you’re there. Had I planned better I might have stayed out at the Canyon, or nearby, Saturday night… but then I wouldn’t have been able to sit by the pool and get a tan (yes, I did get sunburnt slightly – Vegas sun has the now-almost-unfamiliar bite of the Australian sun).

I also visitied Madam Tussauds on the Saturday, which was vaguely interesting in a tourist mindset… there were some models that were uncannily realistic, but many there were just kind of creepy… some I couldn’t even recognise, they seemed so wrong. I also got the feeling they weren’t quite to scale… that or Hollywood is populated largely by tall midgets.

And there was a whole section on Nascar drivers and whatnot, which meant nothing at all to me. I wanted to see Master Chief, like they had right there on one of their damn posters, but he was not present. Boo.

My feeling as the weekend fled me was that I need to get the hell out a whole lot more. Also, that I have no excuse for going very nearly two whole years between Vegas trips; I commit to weekend it again sometime sooner, as soon as I can convince some others to go with me.

And as always, the trip reminded me that lo and behold, there are still human females out there, beyond the Californian borders. There is something seriously wrong with California, or at least all the parts of it I occupy. I continue to be befuddled and perplexed by the limited social opportunities of my bedroom, my car and my office.

So I flew up in the morning, but with the delays – I suspect they tried to cancel the flight (as it was so empty) but couldn’t find a replacement, so they eventually ran it anyway – I didn’t get there and to the hostel until mid afternoon, so the first day was a bit of a bust. I met up with Laz in the hostel, where he was camped out in the common area on his laptop, naturally, pissing away the time. :P

We went shopping and other such tedium, though I did pick up a Camelbak which was invaluable over the trip.

That night I ended up in one of the random Irish pubs – Doolins, from memory – near the hostel, just watching the band play. It’s so refreshing to see a live band again. [[ I’m tired of repeating myself, so just insert your favourite previous monologue about how boring S.F. is ]]

That was good, apart from some random guy who was way too far gone and seemed to alternate between hitting on me and trying to start a fight with me. All in front of his girlfriend, who was clearly embarrassed. Awkward.

Anyway, the next day is when the touristing started proper. Laz had his own stuff to do – job hunting and whatnot – so I went off by myself down to Stanley Park and the aquarium there, taking the long route starting at Canada Place. That (the long route) was spontaneous, actually – I was walking down towards Stanley Park and happened to look up a side street to see Grouse Mountain framed brilliantly by the skyscrapers. Fantastic. I had no real idea what Vancouver looked like – it’s not a place you seem to get a lot of holiday snaps from – so it was a complete surprise. And a very good one.

The aquarium was pretty cool… much like aquariums everywhere, really, though I did like both that they had dolphins and that they do shows with them – tricks, jumping out of the water etc – very cool.

The weather was a little cool, so although I walked for a while along the seawall in Stanley Park, I quit that once I got to the aquarium. I wandered more or less straight back, but sort of through the West End area, which was amazingly quiet and consequently quite pleasant. Talking to some people later on, it was noted that the real estate anywhere in Vancouver central is ridiculous, and it’s easy to see why.

That night Laz & I went off down to the Gastown area for dinner. It’s really just one street with a bunch of restaurants in it.. lots of cities have similar things, although – despite the similar name – it was thankfully much more affordable than San Diego’s Gaslamp district. Later in the night we ended up back down that way again, at yet another Irish pub called the Blarney Stone or somesuch. It was a long way from pretty much everywhere, but Laz was adamant that we find somewhere not overrun with Aussies. Which was fair enough – everywhere you went on the main strips it really was overrun with us. Which is great, sure, but not much good when you’re out to meet girls, since the Aussie girls are likewise looking for someone who’s not actually Aussie as well. Snowball effect. :)

And brilliantly Laz did manage to get us both invited to join half a dozen girls, out for their friend’s birthday, so we had company for much of the night. Very cool.

Given my ridiculous propensity for spontaneous dancing, as all who know me can attest to, ;), it should well come as something of a surprise to know that I did actually dance a fair bit that night, largely because some random girl asked me to. Twice, in fact. Each time she ultimately disappeared as suddenly as she came. Very mysterious. Laz was flying my wing, but nonetheless couldn’t find her later in the night before he himself piked. It was fun for what it was, anyway. :)

We’d actually gone to that particular pub because Laz intended to meet up with some other guys he’d met in the hostel, one of whom – J.W. – was leaving the next day. Distracted by the lovely girls as we were, we didn’t actually bother to catch up with them until 1am or so, where I think Laz had to actually hang with them for at least a little bit to save face. :) So we did, and I hung about a bit after Laz left, meeting all the random people and doing some very bad line dancing with them. :D Drunk people are very easily impressed, so by that late hour it was actually possible for me to do so. Hooray!

However, we’d already talked about going skiing at Grouse Mountain for the next day, so about 2am I too piked.

It was quite interesting walking back – I cut a straight path, which took me through the seedier part of town, where I got offered drugs twice within – literally – 50 feet of four police cars, whom had gathered around because some dope had rear-ended one of said police cars at the traffic light. Oops. Right out the front of a club, too, so there was an audience of sixty or so people for the whole event.

Why you would put a club in such a down part of town, I’m not sure. :/

We did indeed go skiing the next day, Laz trying snowboarding for the first time. There was certainly a lot of emotion on his part, if nothing else… :) I had warned him that snowboarding was the more frustrating of the two (vs skiing), but he insisted, so… as expected he spent 99% of his time on his arse. I managed to convince him to keep at it at least once when he was otherwise going to give up, but eventually I ran out of patience for noobs, so I went off and did my own thing while Laz went in search, ostensibly, of an instructor.

He never found one, and I found him just wandering about. He ended up heading back pretty early, I think, but, ah well… I myself kept at it until closing, which there is 10pm – night skiing for teh win! Consequently, even though we were slow getting out there and didn’t really start skiing ’til noon, I got in a good eight or nine hours of skiing. I was surprised that I didn’t tired out. Though it was pretty easy skiing, admittedly – it’s only a small mountain, a dozen runs or so, so I was quickly familiar with most of them.

It was a very good day, anyway.

So that was Saturday. Sunday morning we packed up all our crap and hoofed it to the other side of the street, where our tour was to begin. We spent Sunday just cruising around in the van, checking out the sights (which I’d already seen a good portion of, but anyway). A little superfluous, but I suppose a nice enough idea if you’re assuming that people doing the ski tour don’t otherwise stay in Vancouver. And we did go to a few places that were more out of the way and tourists might not make it to as a result, including Lynn canyon which was very pleasant even in the rain.

’twas the next day, Monday, when we finally headed out. Off to Whistler. Alas, the road was closed for a few hours, so we didn’t get up there until about noon. Then there was a long delay in getting the lift tickets, and I had to get rental skis, so I don’t think I was actually on the snow before 1pm. :(

While we’d been stuck on the road, a bunch of us had needed to get out at one point and push the van, as it was really icy on the road and once we stopped – forced to by the traffic in front of us stopping as a result of some other van spinning out – it was a real pain to get going again. Anyway, given I was out of the van at that point anyway, I just kept on walking down the road, intent on at least stretching my legs, and hopefully finding out what the hold up was.

We were about 15km from Whistler at that point, and I probably walked nearly half of that while we were waiting. And that’s including some time where I turned back – thinking traffic was flowing again, but alas it was just a temporary thing. We were stuck for a while. It took ages, when the traffic did get going again, for the van to finally catch up to me. At some point we’d seen a wolf next to the road – well, virtually everyone but me, alas – so apparently some people had started getting worried for me. :)

It seems I’m forever fated to take ages to get to and from skiing.

One thing which made the trip a whole lot more pleasant for everyone was Daisy, a rather cute little blonde Brazilian girl who hitched a ride with us after missing her intended ski bus. Given there was only one other girl on the tour at that point, Jenny, we were as a group unanimously willing to be so chivalrous. ;)

Anyway, Whistler/Blackcomb… I went up Blackcomb the first day, just going in random directions in search of good skiing. Unlike Grouse Mountain, which had a plentiful 3 metre base, Whistler has been suffering just like the California ski fields. It wasn’t quite as bad, but as a result of a few pitiful inches of new snow the night before, they had deliberately neglected to groom anywhere that day. So it was really, really cut up, and not that much fun to ski at all. Towards the end of the day I found some half-decent runs, but when I concluded and met everyone again around 4:30, I was quite unimpressed overall.

That night we didn’t do much – Flash, Drew, Laz & I hit the town to grab something to eat and to hang out for a bit, but being a Monday night in a really slow season, Whistler Village was really quiet.

Now, Flash… he was something else. You’d swear he were gay if you didn’t see him with a woman. He wore a big boofy, fluffy hat a lot of time – like you see on stereotypical Russian soldiers and all that, and a bright orange ski jacket, but mostly it was his pants… he designs clothes part time, you see, so he has quite the collection of rave pants and stylised jeans and whatnot. [[ he’s in several of my photos ]]

Anyway, it was one of the only times where I’ve been walking around in t-shirt and shorts – old habits die hard, so sue me :P – and not one person cares, because they’re all completely taken by Flash instead. He was forever getting compliments from random people. A very ingenious plan to engender attraction, I must say. :)

We ended up back at the hostel fairly early – before midnight, I think – and in bed not long after. Not a whole lot to do. :/

The next day was significantly better all round for skiing. They actually groomed most of the two mountains, so the conditions were infinitely better, and consequently I had a lot of fun. I checked out a lot of Whistler on that second day, as well as repeating a few of the better runs on Blackcomb.

The facilities at Whistler/Blackcomb are quite good compared to a lot of mountains, in that at the top of most lifts there is a snack bar or somesuch. A lot of resorts make the rather unforgivable mistake of putting all the food at the bottom of lifts, ensuring that after you emerge from the heated buildings into the cold, you then have to endure a ten minute chair lift ride as well. Not so at Whistler/Blackcomb! Which is good. However, particularly on the higher parts of the mountain the facilities are sometimes a little.. bare. At one place in particular, the toilets were of the wooden-box-over-a-hole-in-the-ground kind. Worse, the hole was shared by the bathrooms of both genders, which meant whenever either door was opened, a wind would rip through… it would have been quite unpleasant if it weren’t so humorous. :)

At at least one other point there were toilets similarly, but marked “for emergencies only” – because, honestly, they don’t want the hole to fill up any quicker than it has to. Supposedly this whole lack of plumbing is done because it’s more environmentally friendly, though I fail to see how dumping sewage in a hole on the mountain is more friendly to anyone than just piping it away for treatment like everywhere else. Anyway.

So the second day redeemed Whistler/Blackcomb for the most part. It ultimately still came in last for my favour of all the mountains we visited on the trip, but still, not by that much and it wasn’t bad by any means. And I suspected it would be the case from the start, as it struck me that Whistler is this golden destination for Australians, yet you won’t find people in other countries crowing over it like Aussies do – in fact most probably have never heard of it. There’s so many resorts in Canada, most of them probably better than Whistler… why Whistler has affixed itself so well into the collective Australian psych I don’t know.

At the end of skiing we headed straight away back to Vancouver, where we stayed the night back at our origin before heading off towards Kelowna the next day. That night, in Vancouver, we just went out as a group to some random Chinese restaurant. I mention it mostly because, well, this was the night that Pies first tried using chopsticks. It seems a little odd to me that someone from Oz would never, by their 20’s, have used chopsticks, but here was the proof of such. Anyway, he was doing most admirably, and things were going fine, until all of sudden there was a crack and someone two seats to the left of Pies found their own meal being attacked by bits of chopstick. Pies had somehow managed to snap both chopsticks in half. Plastic ones, not wooden ones. I mean, these aren’t iron hard but they’re certainly strong enough that it boggles the mind to imagine how someone can, in normal and completely serious use, accidentally snap them clean in half.

It was quite hilarious, and we summarily gave him permission to use a fork instead subsequently. :)

Also a good laugh that night was when our tour leader, Matt, went around the table checking that he had people’s nationalities right. Drew was sitting on his right, wearing a shirt with an outline of New Zealand on it and the words “Born Here” or somesuch on it. He was the only person Matt got wrong, labelling him erroneously as Australian. I suppose it doesn’t convey so well in writing in hindsight, but it was just one of those hearty-laugh moments, as Drew feigned gross insult (well, mostly feigned ;) ).

Back to the travelling… we headed off towards Kelowna in the morning, having not done anything in particular that night that I recall… *ponders* no, can’t remember doing anything after dinner. Anyway, we headed off, having picked up one more person – Jamie, our second girl and American to boot – and arrived… late. We didn’t ski that day, from memory, but instead did the shopping and whatever else that needed to be done, as well as generally touristing around Kelowna and the lakes there, stopping once or twice for photos and snowball fights.

While we were in town and people were out shopping, I found myself back at the van with time to kill, so I made a little snowman and stuck him on the front of the van. Matt added some eyes and turned him into a male snowman (men *rolls eyes*), and we headed off. I didn’t really think he’d last more than the first couple of corners, but it turns out he was perfectly capable of handling them. It was only after ten minutes of driving or so that he finally started to suffer, exposed to the warm air off the engine as the poor guy was, and he did eventually turn slushy and start to slump. Matt them hit the brakes and sent him hurtling down the bonnet to his doom. Flash & I photographed the remains, for forensics to pore over later. ;)

So that night we stayed at Big White, in the village, which was cool, although the hostel we stayed in was a bit divey. For a start the door to our room didn’t lock. The place was also generally messy and the staff there a bit useless… Matt noted that they always had trouble with this place. That night in fact the door to his room locked him in – the pin fell out while the door was closed – and they ended up bashing the whole door handle off. So he didn’t even have a door handle, let alone a lock.

That aside, it was a good little place, the village. After a warning that there was a rapist in the village – not the best way to set a light mood, I can only concede – we had dinner as a group (well, more or less… Pies, Ryan & Chris went off earlier, but the rest of us coincidentally ended up hitting the same restaurant and sitting two tables over :D). Afterwards some of us hung out in one of the bars there for a while – Drew, Jamie, Flash & myself, where we were all impressed by Flash’s dancing, though I piked fairly early and went back to bed. The bar had been 80% guys, and the 20% otherwise were either waitresses or wasted, so while it was good to hang out with Flash et al, there wasn’t really anything to do there. Nor any band; just the usual house music and snowboarding videos.

In the morning ’twas skiing Big White. It was better from the outset than Whistler/Blackcomb, especially once I found some really great blacks off Gem Express, on the far side of the mountain.

There were only two skiiers on the trip – Drew and myself. And Jamie, supposedly… though I could have sworn she was snowboarding. Anyway, consequently most of our group spent the majority of their time in the terrain parks. I was off by myself the whole time to this point, as I’m terribly impatient when it comes to getting out there, and wasn’t inclined to wait while everyone else piss-farted around and made their way down the runs. I have no problem skiing by myself, since I have a very erratic pace in any case, but I was at this point a little left out; the others that were hanging together were gathering the usual stories of jumps taken and failed, falls fallen, etc.

I had tried to meet up with Matt, but despite hanging around the chairlift he said to meet at, we somehow missed each other – and me everyone else to boot – so I ended up by myself, as noted, anyway. The next day I did go out with the group, since we actually started together, so that was better. But Matt took us straight over to Gem Express, where I’d been anyway, so it was old hat to me by then. :) And the conditions were quite poor – visibility was down to a handful of metres on the top half of the mountain, and there was a strong wind, so after just one run all the snowboarders couldn’t hack it and left for their precious terrain park. Pfft, pansies. :)

But I’m getting ahead. To cap off a great day skiing, we all went on some snowmobiles leading into dusk. That was a lot of fun – they weren’t nearly as limited as I had expected, being capped to a still-respectable 100km/h or so, and additionally were really unstable, so, plenty of entertainment and challenge. Though I was stuck behind grandpa Flash for most of it. :P

So that was all very cool, in summary. That night… that night Matt made a giant pot of chilli for dinner, which was very good (and ridiculously giant… eleven people didn’t get through even a quarter of it, I reckon). Afterwards… I really can’t remember what we did… I had wanted to go in the spa, but they’d just refreshed the water and it was still warming up. We hung out in Matt’s room for a while, I remember… Jenny fell asleep on his bed and was subsequently heckled and teased appropriately ;)… hmm… but I can’t remember going out.

Oh, I did do some night skiing for a little while, but that was before dinner in any case, and only for an hour or so… what was lit up wasn’t particularly entertaining, being just greens. I spent some time practising skiing backwards and doing spins, but after pulling my hammy for the tenth time on the latter, I had finally had enough and quit for the night.

Well anyway, the next day was more skiing as previously introduced. Despite the weather it was good, and the weather improved gradually through the day, so by afternoon it wasn’t too bad.

One highlight of that day was where Matt dropped a pole on the Gem Express, near the bottom. I was quite happy, as that gave me an excuse to go fetch it – under the chairlift there is mostly black and I’d done about half of it the previous day and had a real good time… anyway, Drew & I did that, but Matt seemed to think we could just cut across from one of the runs rather than going down under the chairlift the whole way. Despite being pretty sure that the run he was talking about wasn’t the one he named, he was adament, so Drew and I went down the named one. Sure enough, it was the run over, so when we tried to cut through the trees we quickly gave up. But by then I’d slid just a little too far down the hill, amongst the trees, and I had to walk out. Well.. I say walk… the snow was three feet deep and too brittle to hold my weight standing up, so in fact I crawled out. It was amusing, but really tiring – usually the way.

Anyway, we ran past Matt at the bottom where he was waiting, informing him that we were still on the quest albeit slightly set back, :), before going up again and this time getting it right. Drew was a similar level to me – probably slightly better – but in any case we were a fine pairing. Which was lucky, because as mentioned other than Matt we had nothing but them wanky snowboarders :P.. Also, Matt wasn’t such a great skiier, as proven by the several hilarious videos Drew & I have of him failing to do what are honestly some very pathetic impressions of jumps… :)

Anyway… we got the pole back eventually, and further skiing and amusement was had by all.

However, most people piked quite early – around lunchtimish or somesuch – and I too decided I’d had enough by about 2:30 or something… we ended up all congregating in one of the bars (the one looking over the ice rink), which while it did make me a little uncomfortable for wasting otherwise good skiing time, was really comfortable and relaxing. :)

Plus, it had been noted that on the tour that day is usually a short one, and that if we were all finished early we’d head off early, so I hadn’t wanted to drag that out and be the one guy holding everyone up.

From there we headed over to Silver Star. We arrived at night, and Matt first dropped us off at the tube park where we all had a few goes. That was good fun, even if it was a little below our collective demographic – a sentiment entirely supported by the fact that we were all ten years [or more] older than everyone else there. :)

But it was good fun, and surprisingly cruisy – I had expected there to be spills and catastrophe, yet you were surprisingly stable on the tubes. I think the fastest I managed to get going was 67km/h – they had a fixed radar at the bottom. Alas they don’t let you do running starts – you have to be pushed off by one of the guys working there – so that was probably about as good as I could get. Matt had laid down the gauntlet at 84km/h or somesuch for his personal record, when we arrived, but that was with a running start.

And 67km/h was fast enough – that sent me straight into the inflatable barrier at the end of the run, to the mild annoyance of the people working there, so I didn’t want to be too boisterous lest I get our group into trouble. Though having said that none of the employees there had any problem with Flash, Jamie and I having a snowball fight as we were towed up the hill. :) Nor with Jamie attacking me, someone significantly taller and bigger than her, which sadly resulted in her on the ground with ice down the back of her shirt. Tragic accident, that. ;)

I was apparently the most amused by the whole thing, as everyone else was well over it by the time I finally finished. Matt eventually picked us up again, though not before Jamie tried attacking Flashing, resulting in her yet again lying in the snow – and half buried by Flash, doggy-style – and we hit the hostel.

I distinctly remember that Matt had unloaded everyone’s gear into the hostel for us, while we’d been fooling around on the tubes. That was very cool of him. Granted he’s technically working and he’s paid for all this, but nonetheless it wasn’t necessary and consequently well appreciated.

He took us on a tour of the hostel when we first arrived, which was a little odd because when we went down to the lower level, with the kitchen and all the common areas, there was like forty people all seated at the long table… so it was kind of like being on show as we were introduced as a group and all. Little awkward. :)

Anyway, after getting everything sorted and settled in everyone made their ways down to the various bars in the town.

I’m reminded at this point that at Whistler we wandered through pretty much the whole village looking for the most happening place, and one in particular – Moguls I think it was, was a laugh; the guy on the door admitted straight up that there were literally two (2) other people in the place already. He suggested hanging in the bar ’til it picked up, but the bar we had already tried, and had found that were were literally the only people there. A little too quiet for my tastes. :)

Back to the present… so to speak… nothing particularly interesting came from our bar-crawling that night, that I recall… we tried at least two places that I recall, but there wasn’t any particular excitement to be had in either of them. I probably had a fairly early night… I don’t recall.

The next day was skiing Silver Star. It turned out to be a very cool mountain – right above the hostel were some cute little blacks (Show Off, Face, etc) that I started on – mainly because I’d wanted to get some photos from the top of them first up – and then I eventually found the blacks and double-blacks down the ‘bottom’…. it was a very confusing mountain to get around, I found… when you looked at things on the map it all made sense, but when you were actually out there and catching the lifts about, I kept getting lost. Partly that’s due to the village being towards the top of the mountain, I think… another part is that I went down some of the blues and ended up over to one side of the mountain without realising it… then when I was traversing across, thinking I was getting away from everything and heading towards the assumed backside, I suddenly found myself coming into the village. Kind of like leaving a room and impossibly walking into it from the other side…

I wasn’t doing any drugs, I swear. :)

At one point on one of the mountains I shared a chairlift with a guy that reeked so strongly of weed, I’m amazed he had any motor control left. At another time – at Silver Star, I think – again I shared a chairlift with a guy who lit up a joint while we were on the chairlift. I’m not sure what the intended benefit of being high while skiing is… seems to me it would impair you and consequently be a bit dangerous… though these were both boarders, naturally, so they were probably parkrats in any case…

So anyway, I mentioned double-blacks, and I do so proudly because I did in fact go down two of them by the end of the day. I’d been eyeing off double-blacks the whole trip… in fact this whole season I have. I can’t recall ever doing a double-black prior, so it somehow got built up a bit in my head. Anyway… the first one I went to had a sign at the start saying the conditions were “very, very marginal” in red. I’ve seen plenty of signs warning about marginal conditions, but this is the first one ever that felt the need to prefix it with not one but two “very”s. That spoke to me in some fundamental way to say “no, this probably isn’t the best double-black to make your first”. :)

The second one I looked into was called “Freefall”, and the name isn’t ironic. I stood at the top and looked down, and thought… you know, I could probably handle that. It wasn’t that scary in itself. However, if I did fall, it was steep enough and flat enough that I would not stop until I hit either a tree or… well, a tree, since that was all you had at the bottom ultimately. In hindsight I should have gone for it – I would have been alright, I reckon – but as it was I played the patient card and kept searching. I think the germ that really put me off was the fact that one of the other single blacks I’d done had been steep enough that I couldn’t actually stop on it; you’d just slide straight down if you weren’t moving fairly fast so as to cut in.

So I eventually found an easier double-black, Spirit Bowl, which turned out to be only mildly challenging – given it was very moguly and so ‘safe’ enough – and so I dub it a great first double-black. I had afterwards intended to take it easier, getting later in the day as it was and trying to be conscious of my level of exhaustion, but I couldn’t resist going down Three Wise Men as well, which was also good fun.

Now, granted both of those were pretty easy double-blacks, so it’s not as great an achievement as I would like, and I took them pretty slowly to boot… but if nothing else it’s torn down the psychological barrier of doing double-blacks. I now feel comfortable enough to try pretty much anything short of a cliff, which will be good for the rest of the season. I’ll finally go up The Wall at Kirkwood, for example, if I’m there again this season.

Also, I practised jumps a bit with Matt & Drew that previous day at Big White. Normally I suck at jumps – roughly a third of the time I land them perfectly, and the other two thirds the landing is horribly rough and I often pull something. I’d done that a few times over the trip up to that point, and while luckily nothing serious enough to stop me skiing, I did have a few very tender muscles by then. Anyway, somehow I got it together while practising with Matt & Drew, so I now feel a whole lot more comfortable with jumps as well.

So all in all, a real good trip in terms of not just enjoyment but also development.

Alas it had to end, and so skiing concluded for that day. We didn’t stay there that night, which was a shame because the hostel there is really nice – especially after the relatively shitty one at Big White – but instead went down to Kelowna. First up we went to an ice hockey game, which was a lot of fun – as idiot tourists we had no real idea who to go for or what was going on when it came to penalties and all that sort of thing, but it didn’t stop most people from yelling insults the whole time. It was all very redneck, but very entertaining. Also, Matt knew one of the wigs running the place, so he was able to choose Flash and Jamie to partake in the little games they do inbetween periods. Flash did great, but alas was – grossly unfairly, I might add – handicapped by the fact that the last item in his run was a chocolate bar, whereas at least one of the other guys had a box; much easier to grab. Backing up, Flash’s challenge was to run the length of the ice with a shopping cart, picking up four items at intervals while wearing big, bulky hockey gloves. He had two challengers. Most notable about the whole thing was that when they introduced the contestants, Flash got a huge applause, and then for the other two guys – both locals – it was cricket-chirping quiet. Everyone noticed, and we all felt a bit bad for the other two guys. :)

Jamie’s game was a little less entertaining – she simply had to shoot the puck at the net, though said net was covered by a board with only two smaller holes in the bottom. She hit the board, but not the holes. So she didn’t technically win anything, but it turns out she’d bet one of the guys running the challenge that she’d actually hit the board. Consequently he had to buy her five beers, or something. Which explains why it took half an hour for her to turn up again after that challenge – no-one had any idea where she was. :)

So that was all really good fun… in contrast to the Superbowl, which I had deliberately chosen to watch while I was in Vancouver, in the Beaver. The place was mostly full of Aussies of course, so the atmosphere was surely nowhere near as charged as a typical American bar would have been at the time… nonetheless, it was decidedly not charged mostly for the fact that it’s just a really boring game to watch. Granted there were a few exciting bits, such as the two-yard intercept right before half time. But otherwise… meh. But I did at least give it more than a fair go, so I can fairly say now that American football is paint-drying boring. And this from someone who can actually watch a good portion of a five day test match… I mean, the bar was about as low as it could get, but nonetheless it was not met. :(

Anyway, ice hockey is infinitely more interesting. Not something I could do regularly, but certainly a good evening to be had sporadically.

After that it was off to some favourite bar of Matts where it was promised that the girl/guy ratio would be 4:1 in our favour, directly converse to the state of affairs pretty much everywhere else we’d been on the tour. It was a little less than Matt made out, but by midnight it was at least pretty even, which is, in contrast to ‘home’ in Silicon Valley, ridiculously promising. So it was alright. :)

Alas I just didn’t really feel the mood to dance, even though most others did quite a bit, so I sat there looking uncomfortable – as I was told by some random girl that stopped by briefly – until some fairly early hour, where I gave up and headed out. Along with everyone else, as it turns out, though it was close to 2am by then and as it turns out most of the places were closing, so that became, for most people, an unexpected end of the evening.

It was a bit of a flat night, sadly, especially given it was the last time I saw most of the group; I was headed back to Vancouver while all but Jenny & Laz were continuing on further east with the tour, or flying out from Kelowna directly. I blame Flash (partly in jest, but partly seriously) as he was distinctly out of it that night, for reasons unknown but suspected to involve Jamie. :)

Though Pies and Ryan both went home with some new girlfriends, so it’s not like there was anything wrong with the bar. :)

Anyway… ah well. I’d had a great run in Vancouver for the few nights we were there, so I guess when Matt was repeatedly building up the place, my expectations just went stratospheric.

In the morning it was a 10am departure or somesuch, so a relative sleep in. Back to Vancouver. It was a fine ride back – largely uneventful and a little quiet, as we were all a bit tired. But good.

I have no recollection of what we did that night… at first I thought that was the night out with Matt and Candy and all, but I realise after writing as such that no, that was Monday night, because it was my last night.

Anyway… so the next day I again went off by myself. ’twas Monday. So I figured I’d hit up the maritime and space museums. Alas, they were closed as it turns out – pretty much nothing touristy was open; all closed on Mondays only. I did go up to the top of the Harbour Centre, which does actually have a good view despite what my initial suspicion was; that it was too built up around it to see much. And I ended up following the seawall all the way from the maritime museum back around False Creek and up to Stanley Park, just in time for sunset. I stopped at the Granville Market for a while, checking out everything there. We’d stopped there briefly the previous Sunday, on the tour, but had only really had enough time to wander the market quickly and get food. This time I was able to check out all the other stores around the place. There’s one there devoted entirely to dragons and fairies. It was sweet. :)

Alas there was no-one carving totems in the exhibition area they have there, which would have been cool to watch.

One advantage of Canada is that it has a large ‘French’ population, even in Vancouver, so the French bakery next to the market was genuinely French.

It’s a really nice walk, along the seawall there. It’s trivial to imagine living there and going out for a morning jog or ride.

I wandered through the Olympic village being constructed. They even built a little fake island, for some reason. I also saw a bunch of police or military or whatever out on their boats in the ‘creek’, practising their whole anti-terrism schtick. It seemed a tad pretentious to me, but whatever.

I wandered up to the Museum of Science, but it seemed very kid-orientated so I didn’t end up going in. Though I did watch the ball machine out the front for a while… alas only half of it was running, but such machines have always enthralled me since that first one in Northland.

So yeah, I ended up rocking back up to the hostel well after sunset. When I got back I chilled in the hostel’s common area for a little bit, chatting with a few of the people that were there. Matt came in and hung out for a while too, prior to Laz’s friend “Candy” finally getting her arse ready so we could all go out for dinner. (“Candy” in quotes because it’s not her real name, which annoyingly escapes me currently). Candy Laz met before I arrived, during the Australia Day celebrations. We went to some fairly nice Thai place which has hosted Pierce Brosnan (as demonstrated by a photo on the wall), so it must have been good. ;)

Afterwards we hung out in the Royal or whatever it’s called underneath our original hostel, the HI Central. We were there until closing at 2am, though it was a little… meh. I was actually quite happy, but Laz piked pretty early (it was back to 4:1 ratio against us) and Candy repeatedly noted that she wasn’t much interested – rubbish music, she insisted. Not sure what was going on there all told. Anyway, I did meet a bunch of Irish and English guys, friends of Candy’s, who were really cool. Couldn’t dance to save their lives, which made them even more entertaining. :)

Notable is the fact that there was a girl there, with her friend, that quite caught my eye. But she was intercepted by some random guy before I had a chance to make a move, and by 2am when we were getting booted out I was too lazy to do anything. Go me. :)

Laz & I had both, via Facebook, been attempting to tease out for that last night the girls we’d meet a week earlier in the Blarney Stone. Granted half of them had boyfriends as it turns out – which was a welcome confirmation that my spidey-sense was not in fact on the fritz when I got the impression that they were being nice but not that nice, despite Laz’s optimistic assertions otherwise – so it wasn’t with any biblical intentions… alas we didn’t hear from them. Still haven’t in fact… awww, blown off. :)

Which reminds me – when Daisy left us at Whistler it was abruptly; she went off to get her rentals with Matt, and only Matt returned. So only Matt got her contact details, the devious little bastard.. :) And this was after she’d actually said to us that she wanted our contact details, and had seemed genuine in it too… shit! Matt then refused to share, metaphorically blocking us at it were. Ah well… I think we got over it. But, the worst thing is that Daisy was heading back to Brazil on Thursday or somesuch, and that night we came back to Vancouver on the tour, it turns out she had invited Matt (and presumably anyone else) out. But poor Matt, poor baby, he was feeling tiredy widey, so he said no and went to bed instead. And didn’t tell anyone else. Bastard. :)

So she left for Brazil and no one had a chance, even given she was actually interested in hanging out. Yep, that’s about my luck. :)

So anyway… back to the future again… so the last night ended grandly enough with the bar closing and us heading to bed. When I woke up in the morning, though, I really didn’t feel so great. At first I thought it was just the normal slow-morning feeling; dehydration and atrophy and all that – so I ignored it deliberately and set about doing things for the day. The girl at the front desk of the hostel recommended the Museum of Anthropology at the university there. Matt had also mentioned it as somewhere he really liked, so it came with enough rave reviews to well convince me to visit. Alas, it’s closed on Tuesdays (but not Mondays, argh for bad timing). Thank heavens the hostel girl checked for me while I was still there, so I at least didn’t get there to find that out. Instead, I ended up going around the corner to the Vancouver Museum of Art. And I forced myself to go through the entire museum before heading back to the hostel, despite being obviously crook at that point – I was wearing my Central jacket and yet was still freezing, literally shivering, which I just don’t do…

Back at the hostel I went to bed. Laz also did, too – as he later confessed, he too felt like rubbish at that point as well. It turns out Jenny was also sick, which aside from Matt covers everyone in the van on the way back. So something we all came into contact with was no good, evidently.

Anyway, I slept for a few hours before I had to head out to fly back, and when I woke I actually felt better. But I then got some real rum directions from the guy at the hostel desk about where to go to catch the airport bus… long story short I didn’t end up in the right place, so I was standing in the cold (2°C and at one point snowing) for nearly an hour before I first realised the error and the cab I called instead finally turned up. I made it to the airport with more than enough time to spare, but the damage was already done, I think – I felt really terrible by then, and having to push myself through the airport and the flight back, then wait again in the cold and rain in S.F. for the shuttle, etc… it was just exactly not what I needed at that point. I thought about, at the time – and in hindsight absolutely should have – moving the flight back a day or two. As it turns out all I did when I got back was sleep until Saturday, basically, missing those three days of work anyway.

’twas just the flu, I guess, though it’s the sickest I’ve been since I had glandular fever, as I think I noted previously. I’m mostly over it now, though there’s still a real bugger of a cough that I can’t quite shake, and an ever so slight lingering tiredness. Still, I rarely get anything worse than a 24-hour cold, so I’ve no real right to complain.

And it was nice to just sleep for a few days, and take a real relaxing break rather than adventurous one. I didn’t miss much at work, in any case, luckily… it’s been same old since I got back, for better or worse.

So that covers it, and signals a return to actually writing here in my journal (there will be an after-party, I’ll send out invites ;) ). It was a real good trip – great to get out, do lots of skiing, see actual girls again; all the usual stuff. Now I’m back in miserable, raining California for another six months or more. :)

In vaguely related news, my finances are now at least laid out even if not fortunate, so I can affirm that I’m not needing to move into the gutter just yet. But unless the Aussie dollar fortuitously crashes for me in the next few months, it’ll be at least my birthday before I knock out my HECS debt. Which leaves precious little time, especially with my reduced income now, to save for any kind of trip in the summer. I haven’t spent any significant time contemplating it yet, short of this little blabber, but I may have to fall back to a November trip, as seems to be my inescapable habit. Still, could be worse.

Oh, and almost forgot, photos are up. I’ll also put up the videos at some point.

I was very successfully tricked by the travel insurance website, failing, consequently, to include the additional medical and baggage coverage I wanted. So I can’t afford to lose anything nor injure myself… leaving my travel insurance good for what, I’m not sure…

Laz has been busy in my stead, making the papers within four days of his own arrival. I had a link, but I ated it apparently. I’m hoping he’s left something for himself to do along with me; he seems to have knocked over a lot of the obvious attractions already. He informs me that the place is crawling with Aussies who’ve been moved on from the ski fields, given the somewhat miserable season it’s been so far. It’s snowing a little this week at least, so I’m optimistic, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

It’s peculiar, the idea that I’ll be leaving the country on a two and a half hour flight. It’s nearly as bad as having to remember your passport when you go for a drive out of San Diego. Countries should not touch each other.. it’s just wrong.

I might lay off them a bit in future… they take bloody ages to stitch together. And I really should be doing it in Photoshop or somesuch, so I can get better edges, but experience tells me the mere act of opening Photoshop explodes the time required of any project by an order of magnitude (I suppose that’s a pun).

Anyway, they’re all now done. Enjoy.

I also threw up the two 360° ones as QuickTime VR movies, which are viewable for Twin Peaks and Spanish Bay (the first two below, respectively). When they first display it’s just a low-res preview; wait a little while for it to load fully and the quality improves markedly.

Anyway, philosophy aside, the important thing was to get right down to it and get all touristy. :) I figured the first thing to do would be a bit of a scenic drive; get mum familiar with the area a bit, see what it’s all like, and also allow for the possibility that they’d both be pretty knackered and not so inclined to actually do much of their own accord. Typically when I fly back here I feel fine and awake, more or less, but can’t find much motivation to do more than just watch some movies.

So, we briefly visited my current abode, just so they wouldn’t be able to complain I hadn’t showed them, before heading up into the hills to have lunch at Alice’s. There weren’t that many people there, compared to a weekend, though there were still plenty of nice bikes and some quite okay cars – a few Ferraris, you know, the common folk.

From there we took Skyline up to 92 or whatever it is that cuts across to Half Moon Bay, which we visited, though there was such cloud and generally miserable atmosphere that it didn’t seem too appealing. But at least I’ve been there now, and I reckon I’ll check it out again once the weather starts to improve; hopefully it has some nice beaches and whatnot, and I’ll actually spend some time there over summer.

From there we drove up 1 to San Francisco, past Golden Gate Park, up and around and through China Bay and thereabouts, then over the bridge to the point (where we stopped for long enough to take a handful of photos, and not much else given the wind and the cold), then back… then over to Lombard to drive down the wiggly bit, as all tourists are Required to do by Californian Law, then over to Coit tower – it was well dark by then, so although pretty in lights not a whole lot was visible – before ultimately heading back to Palo Alto to grab some dinner. We had intended to go to somewhere in China town – and I thought about stopping in North Beach, as we drove through on Columbus street or whatever – but unsurprisingly [Friday night] parking wasn’t readily available, so rather than waste all evening driving in circles, we said buggerit.

After all that I dropped then back at their hotel.

In the morning I arrived spot on 9am, as arranged, and then waited an hour and a half for mum to actually get up, get dressed, get ready. :P We did finally get going, heading up to S.F. once more to see it in daylight, and with the prime intention of visiting Alcatraz (hopefully the authorities are lenient on us despite not doing this the very first day, as mandated ;) ). The weather was actually pretty clear, not too surprisingly given the wind, but that and the general lack of significant heat deterred mum quite a bit, so she was done with being a tourist on Alcatraz before dad & I were even half way through the audio tour. :) We caught up to her in the gift shop, where dad accidentally bought a Golden Gate Bridge pen – after marvelling how they ‘accidentally’ sold him that Alcatraz pen below list price :D – before we headed back. We wandered over to Pier 39 for food and to, again, be idiot tourists and follow in the footsteps of all our peers.

Surprisingly, though, I didn’t mind it this time. Previously when I’ve been there it’s either been the height of summer and just ridiculously busy, or in similar conditions in winter with virtually no one there and nothing open. This time, though, it was all open – even the carrousel was running, for the first time that I’ve seen, I believe – and so it was actually quite enjoyable. We swung by various shops, as mum was attracted to their warmth and windbreaking capabilities, which ultimately resulted in my purchase of a pair of chocolate truffles, as well as a tuple of English chocolate (Flake, Crunchie and Aero). So I have now tasted what genuinely appeared to be real English Cadbury’s (and Nestle’s), and so I can fairly say that the Englishmen’s claim of its universal superiority is pure poppy-cock. It tastes somewhat different to what I remember of the Australian equivalents – slightly heavier, richer, tad less milky – but in fact pretty much exactly the same as Ghiradeli, which is to say, quite nice, but no substitute for good old Aussie Cadbury. This I rule with the authority vested in me by the many times my own weight in chocolate consumed by myself, in my brief time on this Earth. :)

We ended up eating there, or near there anyway – some quite nice restaurant on the waterfront there – before heading back home.

Sunday morning I again arrived right on 9am (I’m not sure what the odds are of me being punctual two days in a row, but it’s got to be less than 1st division Tattslotto), and once again waited on mum to actually get ready. :P Once finally so, we headed down to Santa Cruz first up, to pretend it wasn’t hopelessly foggy and rainy and that it was in any way attractive in such weather. You could still make out the pier from the lookouts towards the lighthouse point, grey as it all was. I managed to find UCSC and go to the very same spot that Simon took us all those years ago (well, two), but alas you couldn’t see a thing. I also gave my car a good underside knuckling over the rotten ground there, though to no ill effect that I can discern.

After much driving in circles – Santa Cruz has been, is, and always will be a right bastard to get around (though perhaps not quite as bad as Monterey) – we finally circled in on the main street, or at least parking therefore, upon which we wandered as briefly as humanly possible given the weather, which again drove mum into a random warm shop, again resulting in purchases – in this case a new coat for her, and dad also picked up one because the collar on his previous one was just too “daggy” :P – before ultimately ending up, for lunch, right back at the place we in fact walked through from the carpark to the main street. Yay for variety. :)

After being there for quite some time, we headed down to Monterey to visit the aquarium. It’s quite a long drive down there, when put on top of that to Santa Cruz [from Redwood City], especially when it’s raining constantly and, given how relatively rare rain is here, you’re not really familiar with how your car handles in it. Not that we had any issues, but I was constantly guarded, and that’s surprisingly tiring.

Also, I forgot to mention, it hailed briefly while we were in Santa Cruz, while we were driving up to the lighthouse point. Kind of amusing. :)

We made it to the aquarium eventually, late as it was (just after 4), but we did get to see pretty much all of it in at least cursory detail. Though that’s sadly not very hard, as there’s relatively little to it once you throw out the children’s crap and the educational but very sterile posters and whatnot. The penguins were cute but basically stationary, which isn’t in my rights to complain about but nonetheless isn’t particularly exciting. They did have some baby otters, though, which I didn’t see when I was last there, and which are undeniably cute. They’re basically cats – kittens – with extra big tails, and the exact same instinct, when playing with things, to make things unnecessarily difficult for themselves. :)

That and all but one of them were asleep. Further proof of their relatedness. :D

It’s something of a shame that Monterey’s, like most aquariums I’ve visited, doesn’t have anything in the way of larger animals – dolphins, big sharks, whales, etc. Seals we saw at Pier 39, dark as it was – you can still hear ’em no problem, and probably smell them had we hazarded so close – so that’s fine, but… it just seems strange to me, still, that the biggest actual aquatic show I’ve seen here was at an amusement park (Six Flags in Vallejo), not an aquarium or zoo. :/

Anyway, after that it was dinner time naturally, so we had that, stopped at another chocolate shop briefly afterwards in order to again purchase sweet, sweet candy, before heading back. The drive back wasn’t too long, really, though again in the rain and dark about as boring as such a thing could be. I really do need to get myself one of those Leerjets, like all the other cool kids.

And that covers the weekend, cursorily. It was hard to be excited, or to actually do a lot of things, given the weather, but on the flipside of that is the snow it dumped up in Tahoe, which all going well we’ll visit next week for at least a couple of days, so, perhaps it’s all good. It’s really not the season to be visiting here as a tourist, alas, though I wouldn’t change having my parents here, especially for Christmas.

Only Qantas’s website was pretty adamant it had gone through, so I had to phone them, which meant spending about forty five minutes on hold for the three minutes it took the guy to send the charge through again. He was very nice and directly helpful, though, I’ll give them that.

I fly out tonight. I’m well aware and not amused of the “perfect” timing of this; we have a few days off next week anyway for Thanksgiving and the week is basically a wash anyway because most people are on holiday, so time off isn’t an issue, and in much the same way flying out of the U.S. this weekend is really cheap, as is the return, since most people are going the other way.

It’s a pretty melancholy trip overall, obviously. I’ll be catching up with friends and family and in all honest probably having a good time for much of it, which only makes it feel all the worse right now, thinking about it. Nonetheless, everything at this point is purely for the sake of the living, there’s no illusions otherwise, so going into exile and converting to emo seems pretty pointless.

It has raised the cost of living here, away from everyone. I don’t think I’d change having done that even if I had the time over, but I would seriously cogitate on it a whole lot more.

[[ and I’m vaguely aware I’ve probably used that post title before, but this case has much more meaning ]]

I’ve just spent a little while looking at the various costs associated with such an endeavour, and I’m pretty jovial about them, overall. It’s roughly the same in Canadian dollars for hotels and lift tickets etc as it is here, in U.S. dollars, at Tahoe. Which right now is to say, nicely cheap. Getting there of course is a little more interesting, though if I can convince myself to tolerate the Greyhound from Seattle, that’s also laughably cheap.

Which is all pretty surprising, because the time’s were considering are in the middle of the season, where it’s at its priciest.

Anyway, there’s a lot to check and do before the credit card comes out and it becomes real, but I’m looking forward to it already. :)

I didn’t get up there ’til well after lunch, so I didn’t get a chance to see half of it, and the planetarium was entirely booked out by then. :( Still, what I did see was cool – they have a fairly extensive aquarium, along with various exhibits on all sorts of other random things – the standard T-Rex skeleton (fake), an exhibit on rainforests which I wandered around several times but didn’t actually go in… yeah, I pretty much didn’t see most of it. Ah well; next time. :)

I wasn’t there to be an idiot tourist, per se, so I didn’t really bother much with the photos. I took a few, though.

Back on the bus for another morning. Our road time today is about five hours, of which we’ve covered about half as I write, heading to Wellington from Taupo. We’ve just stopped at some cafe in the middle of nowhere, called Flat Hills, for 45 minutes. It’s

It’s been pretty quiet on the bus this morning – a lot of seedy people. No-one’s puked yet, I don’t think, but there’s plenty of plastic bags on hand.

The caves at Rotorua [[ Waitomo ]] were really amazing. I’d love to do the longer tour – really check them out properly, and do some more clambouring about. I asked Danny about it; he’s done the tour we did but not the longer one. Unfortunately they never get to Rotorua [[ Waitomo ]] early enough to do it. If I come back some day I’ll have to.

So, on Frid Saturday we left Rotorua Waitomo for Rotorua. We stopped first at the Agrodome, where they put on shows that are educational but comical. They introduce about 19 var breeds of sheep, show how to shear a sheep, milk a cow, herd sheep (and ducks). It was quite a laugh – Kiwis have a very dry sense of humour, at times, very ironic [[ & sarcastic ]], it’s good.

From there we went just across the road, basically, to the Zorbs. Giant plastic balls about three or four metres in external diameter, with an inner sphere, in which up to three people sit, about two meters metres in diameter. They have warm water inside so you can slide about freely. The hill you go down is probably all of about 100 metres in length, so the ride is over in about ten or fifteen seconds. But it’s great fun – everyone really enjoyed that. I went with Albert & Maureen, whom yelled loudly all the way, which was funny.

Then from there we continued on to Rotorua itself, I presume, to catch the gondola up the hill, where they have – aside from the incredible view, a luge track. Three, actually, all running down the hill in varying lev degrees of difficulty. We each had two rides provided, but we had to take the “Scenic” track first as beginners.

The luges were a little dinky, with BMX handlebars, so from the photos I’d seen I didn’t expect too much. They were actually pretty cool, and certainly went fast. Since you had steering it was your job to follow the track, which was wide enough in most places for a couple of luge’s side by side, so you could race quite happily.

The scenic track wasn’t that bad, actually. I went full out straight off, thinking I wouldn’t need to worry about braking, but that fallacy was soon quashed. My c luge was a bit weird, I think – while I po passed about a dozen people on the way dov down, but then came to a stop a near the end when my brakes seemed to lock up. So, everyone I passed caught up to me, eventually, and “helpfully” knocked me down the hill. :)

The second time around I went down the advanced track, right after Mark. He’s a sparky from somewhere in Victoria – sou somewhere between Ballarat and Bendigo, I think it was.

It was cool racing him – I bumped him a few times, and vice versa, and we passed each other a few times, but in the end I reached the end first. :)

I would have gone a couple more times at least, but we didn’t have the time, sadly.

At this point I drew a line marking where I’d stopped writing momentarily. And the next bit starts talking about stuff again, but it doesn’t really remind me when it was. So, I cheated and went to the Contiki website to review the itinerary. Hopefully it hasn’t changed since – it doesn’t appear to have, though they now do this silly thing where days 1 and 2 are “Depart for New Zealand”… grr… probably think they’re being smart by knowing I’m looking at their website from the U.S. Bad presumptuous web designers, bad!

So I’m going to assume, as noted, that this is all talking about day 4 still.

We’ve arrived in Wellington now – I’m currently sitting in the basement carpark of our hotel – the Abel Tasman waiting for the only washing machine in the place to become free. Brilliant system, that.

On the upside, our room – 201 – has a door out onto a bare concrete area outside, which might be a cool place to hang out.

It’s funny how after a few days of excitement, things become a bit of a blur – I’m trying to remember what we did after the gondola down, but it’s coming too to me only slowly.

Actually I lied – there are actually two washing machines here, but one was signed as out of order. But two people from reception just came down, completely at random, and showed me how it works – you have to pull out the knob first, before putting your money in, otherwise it eats the money.

Two italics make a normal.

So now at least my washing is happening, so I won’t be stuck here quite all night.

So after the gondola we went to visit the hot springs, where you can walk up quite close to one of the geysers. It stinks like sulfur all through the town, but of course is strongest next to the geysers & springs.

We also did a quick lap around the town at some point, stopping briefly at one point to look at a heated spring, which had water in it bad but the hot sulfur and whatever else bubbling up through it.

This broken grammar might be indicative of extreme fatigue. I do remember by this time starting to feel the effect of so little sleep for so many contiguous nights. :)

⎡⎡ Even today 4% of NZ’s electricity comes from hydrothermal. ⎦⎦

We also looked at, from across the bowls, croquet and boche lawns, some random tudor-style manshi mansion building, which is apparently the most photographed building in NZ, so I guess it has some strong historical significance, but all I can remember about it is that it used to be the public baths.

This would be “The Bath House”, Google confirms, which is now the Rotorua Museum. We didn’t go in, oddly.

D’oh! While I was explaining how to use the 2nd washing machine to Shaun, I noticed there’s a bag of washing powder already in the laundry. And I paid a dollar for it like a chump! Bah! Sea Shawn also stole off with (accidentally, I think) my washing bag – just a plastic garbage bag, but now I’ve got nothing to take them back up to the room in.

Shawn’s from Victoria – his parents live about 100km northwestish of Bendigo, but he himself lives in Bendigo itself. He’s cool – I first met him in the Waitomo pub, playing pool against him & Leah. He’s good looking, in a kind of cute scruffy way, and has apparently been covered in girls every night. He’s cool though – he’s very photogenic, and it seems his standard thing is to impersonate a monkey as a way of approaching people.

From memory he’s a builder, but I’m not certain.

So, at the hot springs where we stopped there’s a lot of Mauri stuff – standard museum things, but with some pretty cool technology – like one exhibit of Mauri musical instruments that plays a recording of each instrument when you hold your hand over it.

They had a meeting house there, as well as several smaller buildings including a granary & woodshop, where they have Mauri creating carvings – statues and whatnot – although we didn’t have time to watch anything.

We also got to watch some Mauri men & women perform a traditional welcome dance for all the tourists – and there were hundreds of us – which was really cool, but at times funny and I felt I shouldn’t laugh, when they widen their eyes and stick out their toung tongues.

Here again there was a break.

Apparently clothes don’t l dry within twenty minutes in a dryer. More waiting.

I’m not sure if this was really a genuine realisation, or me being sarcastic given the machines only ran for twenty minutes at a time (per dollar, from memory… how I hated that stupid little laundry).

So, after the springs we hit the hostel for an hour or so after dinner. The hostel wasn’t too bad all in all, but the clear star attraction was the pool, heated to ~40°C by the hot springs. When I first stuck my foot in it actually burned slightly, like a freshly-run hot hot bath. It was beautiful in, although it was so hot that you had to hang yourself out of it most of the time. But it had ledges round half of it, so it was a good setup for just sitting back and chilling.

Which I did for a bit, chatting to a French guy who didn’t speak English all that great (not from our tour, by the way) and two Canadian sisters who’s names I just can’t remember [[ Genelle & Nyla & Janelle ]], since I was never actually introduced to them. One works for Ratheone, the big Canadian military technology company. Their mum is from NZ, I think they said.

The plan for dinner was to hit some hotel restaurant where they put on a Mauri show after dinner – I think it was called a Haigi. That was pretty cool – lots of dancing and singing from a group of seven women and about six men, dressed traditionally and apparently all descendant from two famous Mauri from the legend area, from a love tale, which was part of the enactment of the evening.

One of the girls didn’t look all that Mauri – probably part European – but was pretty darn attractive. She was either inexperienced or not very skilled, though, as she took part in only the easier routines.

They performed many dances, but of course the most well known was the Haka. The women also danced with these ball things on strings (which it turns out were just shopping bags with sponges in them; presumably they were traditionally made some more natural way. That was pretty cool.

They also had a lot of the girls stand up on stage and take part in the string-and-ball thing, although it was quite tricky so while lai enjoyable they weren’t all that good.

They also got a lot of guys up on stage to perform a very simple Haka, which was similarly bad and amusing.

24th of March, 2007
[written three days later]

I felt a bit funny at the Haigi (?) dinner – the food wasn’t much what I like, and while the entertainment was good, the conversation just wasn’t happening at our table, so things were a bit boring and awkward.

I was very happy when we left – I’d been keen all night to get back in the pool and just chill. Plus I wanted to try the net again, since both computers were occupied when we first arrived. While waiting for that I wrote some of this journal.

I did eventually get onto the net, and despite the really crap computers rebooting and crashing several times, managed to read my email and send one to mum, dad & their parents, just to say I had at least arrived safely.

I had drunk a bit of water after arriving back from dinner, as I’d been feeling a little headachy. After a while, having written a bit and sent those emails, I went to the pool.

24th of March, 2007
[written four days later]

The pool that night was cool. Nearly everyone from our group was in it by the time I got there. More or less as soon I as I hopped in Roxanne offered a massage, which I think was just her way of finding out which guys gave good massages, as she had me return the favour, before moving on to a few other guys with the same thing.

It was so relaxing in the pool. Some of the guys – Nick, among others – were a bit boistrous at times, wrestling and jumping in (to a 4-5 foot pool), but they largely kept to themselves so although I was worried about them getting us kicked out – officially the pool closed at midnight – they didn’t really bother me.

I chatted with a few people – Roxanne, for the first proper time; she really loosened up that night, as well as Andy, Brandon, Christine, and various others at various points… Mark as well, I think.

There was also a guy called Justin, I think – although Brandon & Christine can’t recall if that’s his name, despite the four of us chatting with him for an hour or more. He was call cool – a teacher or somesuch travelling with a high-school sports group. I thought he was someone from our group that I just hadn’t ne met yet. I can’t remember where in NZ he was from. He was there with his friend and/or colleague Fergi (or Fergus, or similar) whom I didn’t speak to myself.

People were in and out a bit all night, but a few had left by the time I did, sometime in the early morning. I noticed Andy & Lyndsay talking off at some tables on the way out, so I went and ja chatted with them for a bit.

Lyndsay is an architect from Las Vegas, whom I think does c concept art & illustrations. I first talked to her earlier in the day on the bus, I think – or it might have been a prior day. Prior to that she’d kept largely to herself, sitting alone on the bus. She’s much more open & outgoing in now though – just took a little while to get comfortable & meet people.

There’s a lot more people I’ve met thus far, and I can’t really recall the exact details any more – things are becoming something of a blur. There’s Nyla (blonde) and Genelle (brunette), two girls from Canada whom I’ve already mentioned bref briefly.

There’s also Nikki, a 2nd girl from South Africa – also Capetown, same as Skye – who’s not shy as such, but seems to keep to herself for the most part.

And probably many others – I can’t remember who I’ve written about.

At this point I kept writing but started on about the next day, so that’ll be in the next transcription.

23rd of March, 2007
[written two days later]

I commented previously that Skye probably wouldn’t have cared or even noticed me with my shirt off in the strip musical chairs, but she made some comment about it today, acknowledging it explicitly, so I guess at least she noticed.

So, yesterday in my writings I caught up to Thursday – my second – night. Friday morning we were all up reasonably early to head off to Wat Waitora Waitomo, via Auckland to drop off the old crew group (16 or so of them) and pick up the newbies.

The trip to Auckland was fairly uneventful, from memory. I think I wrote in my diary for a bit of it, and hung about the front with Kate, Danny & Country Dave, whom was DJing from his laptop. He had something like 15,000 th songs, I noticed. That’s nuts! I thought I was doing pretty well with 3,500 or so.

We were a little late – Amanda & _______ [[ Joe? – girl ]] failed in both their attempts to set an alarm, and ended up waking up about 2 minutes before we were supposed to leave. So we left late, which meant we didn’t have a whole lot of time to grab lunch in Auckland.

I said goodbye to a few people, but most were more interested in their original tour group, so I didn’t actually get a proper goodbye from many of them. :(

I went off to grab lunch, and ended up in the foodcourt in the Westfields shopping centre with about a block from the Mercure. I set down for lunch there with Andy, Helen I think, and a few others – their names [[ & faces [[ (I think the two Irish girls were there) [[ – Sabrina & Suzanne (Sue) ]] ]] ]] escape me now. That was cool, and there was a table of the old group there two too, whom I said goodbye to on the way out.

The new people we picked up seemed to be more male than female, and the girls weren’t especially stunning physically, but as it turns out they’re all pretty cool.

Conceding that someone’s good by all meaningful measures completely negates opening shallowness. Yep.

From there we headed to Waitomo.

I should also note that Carl [[ guy with annoying girlfriend [[ albeit hot ]] ]] threw up several times on the bus, both in a plastic bag and in the toilet, which didn’t especially please Danny, although it could have been worse. He was the one whom at the very start of the trip had been separated from sitting next to his girlfriend (by Andy, it turns out), and who’s girlfriend had made quite a scene about it. Apparently they weren’t particularly liked, but I never actually met them.

The plan at Waitomo was to do the black water rafting. It took my interest to start with, but also the old group strongly recommended it. Unfortunately there was a screw up with the booking – 26 people signed up for it on the activity sheet, but then when it came time to pick which of the two trips to go in, 31 people wanted in.

Kate was cool about it though – despite impossibly bad mobile reception, us running late and the last minute realisation of the problem, she managed to book a third tour, with the extra five of us. There was myself, Joe & Chris, Alan and Wayne.

It turned out to be a fantastic turn of events. Our guide was ______, in his late thirties [[ early 40’s? ]], and really easy-going. He studied to be a geologist, but found it wasn’t really what he wanted, and became a cave guide instead – his first job, in fact.

Because we were a small group and all guys, we were changed into the wetsuits (a 5mm body suit with 5mm jacket, plus booties, gumboots and shorts) in about 10 minutes, a good 20 faster than average. In fact we were so quick that in the haste our guide forgot his waterproof camera.

The wetsuits really weren’t all that flattering, and pretty restrictive, but they proved – thankfully – to be quite effective.

We got to the cave entrance – taking a bus ride there and walking up from the river, just as our previous group had gone in – we could hear their voices from just inside.

Picking & testing tyres was fun – once you’d chosen one, you went down to a little platform on the side of the river and jumped backwards with the tube in place around your bum. The initial rush of water all over you is quite cold, but very refreshing.

I thought we were going to float down into the caves, but where we were was downstream of them – thus the short bushwalk up to the entrance.

By the time we entered – after waiting for Chris & Joe to go to the toilet, the other group had moved on. That was fine though, because our guide suggested that since we were quicker we should take a detour. This detour is part of the big five-hour trip, and takes you in a loop. It was awesome – lots of tight crawl spaces, climbing up a small (but surprisingly strong-flowing) waterfall. It was just the best thrill & challenge I’ve had in a long time.

After that we followed the usual route. But our detour had also shown us even bigger versions – up to 20cm in leg-length – of the cricket-like insects [[ Weta ]] which live in the caves. They were kind of scary, in an amusing way, simply because they were so big although they shied away from me and my headlight. They are of course not at all dangerous.

The glow worms themselves were not what I expected, but exceedingly beautiful. I had kind of pictured them as like glowing maggots, whereas they are of course little worms [[ 5-8cm long, 3mm thick ]] who’s very tips of their tales glow.

They looked like little sparkling diamonds, each one of them. There were thousands, in various caverns and corridors through-out the caves. Really amazing.

For one part you hook together in a line, and the guide pulls everyone through in the darkness, so you can admire the glowworms. You had to be careful though – there were a lot of protruding walls and similar obstructions. I was fine, although many others apparently got some good scrapes & bruises.

We ended up catching the other group just at the end, where you climb out of the caves. That was handy, as we were then able to join their group picture. So although we didn’t get photos of ourselves inside the caves, we at least have a group picture (albeit blurry).

Man, what I wouldn’t give for a water-proof D3…

Also, this reminds me that there was a point in the normal portion tour where there was a separate little ledge/waterfall thing, which you had to jump down. It was a prime spot for photos – there were some great ones taken of people in the other group. From memory it was Albert, as always, stealing the show with funniest expression. :D

We also got back to the base (via bus again) before the other group. And changed faster. And ate faster (tomato soup & bagels). They just took forever, all in all. I hung about, nonetheless, and caught the last bus back to the motel, simply because I was enjoying hanging out & chatting with people (and yes, Skye was there).

Ahahahahaha. Substitute ‘Erin’ for ‘Skye’ and you get the next twelve months of journal entries too. I suck. :)

It was in all respects a fantastic event.

We arrived back in time to catch dinner – pizza, followed by ice cream – and then head out th to the pub. We went to the pub right in front of our motel, where they had two pool tables that they opened up for us so we could play for free. That sold me – I started playing and spent half the night at the pool tables.

It was a good night – much more my style, a pub with pool and music – but not so loud you can’t actually carry out a conversation.

I got to know Teagan, Leah & Shaun a fair bit better by playing pool with them.

There was also an amusing but slightly scary guy with dreadlocks & a top hat that queued up only Guns ‘n’ Roses on the jukebox, and sang very loudly to them. I managed to avoid his boistrous attentions for the most part, although Maureen wasn’t quite as lucky – she spent much of the time talking to the locals, most of the middle-aged.

I ended up heading back to the motel fairly late, but quite happy. I was feeling dehydrated, though, which came around to bite me the next day.

I’ve realised in re-reading this that my writing style has apparently changed… when I play back this as I’m reading it in my head, it doesn’t work. My use of hyphens and abrupt context changes throw me right off. I can still remember how it’s meant to flow, though, when I take the moment to recall… kinda weird.

I’ve just arrived back from our day around Lake Taupo. Funny story, that, actually – when we left the party boat I decided to head straight back to the motel. There’d already been copious amounts of alcohol consumed, and I’d already had my bit of partying, so I figured the most of the night was over.

Thus I started walking back, with Jade as it happened. She hasn’t been feeling too great today – probably the Contiki Cold, which I think is what I’ve had the last few days.

Anyway, I was pretty sure where the centre of town (with associated bars) was, and where our motel –

Lakeland Resort of Taupo
282 Lake Terrace, P.O. Box 1179
Taupo, New Zealand,
+ 07 378 3893

– was; just follow the main road east. I wasn’t sure of the distance to the motel though – I knew it was a little out of town, and suspected it was a fair walk – I guessed half an hour. Queeny [[ Fuemi ]] (guessing at spelling), the little girl from Japan, also followed us. I wanted to walk, both to save money & because it was a nice night for it, and Jade was a bit more in favour of a taxi, but I convinced her to walk.

Anyway, long story short Jade wasn’t entirely trusting of my memory & navigation skills, which made me doubt myself, so after fifteen or twenty minutes of walking, I decided to ask for directions, just to be sure. I felt quite bad that Jade was walking, given she visibly wasn’t well – she didn’t complain though – so I figured it was time to call a taxi.

So I stopped by the first place that seemed to be open still, which was a restaurant called:

[[ Mumm? ]]

The guy there told us it was indeed where I thought, and only a couple of km away. As we were walking off however, he asked if we were walking and then offered us a lift. We accepted, and five minutes later were back at the hotel. We all thanked him profusely, but he seemed quite happy & cool about it.

I’m impressed, though. That was a really friendly, good gesture. Above and beyond the call of duty; if anything I’d expect them only to call a cab.

So I’m feeling very lucky, blessed even, and although I’m not sure how, I hope I can some day repay the favour.

However, when I add all this up, I’m still looking at ~$3,600 just for the flights, given that for whatever reason MEL -> SFO anytime in September is waaaaay expensive ($1,800+, one way).

At $3.6k, I’m not really happy with the ratio of getting there to being there… the latter should never be more than the former, imho. But what I think I’ll do is track down an actual travel agency, go in, and see what magic they can work. There’s one in Palo Alto which I wandered past a week or two ago, claiming here to Australia for $800 or something like that… off peak, obviously, but then I’m pretty hugely flexible with dates, so, maybe…

Obviously time is passing, so as noted I’m looking now at September rather than August. Still trying to think up other options that don’t quite involve not travelling at all this year. :/

Our corporate travel agency hates me, this is clear. They routed me through Atlanta on the way over, L.A. on the way back. Granted when you’re sitting in an airport for three or four hours, it’s particular geographic location is largely irrelevant. Still.. they’re both big airports with an annoying habit of ensuring all common transfers require walking across the entire airport at least once.

But, the original flight plan had me going through Dallas, which would have been infinitely worse given they closed the airport about when I would have been flying. Dodged a bullet, I guess.

So going east is only four hours (just over), which was mildly bearable in the 737; one aisle, three seats either side, noticeably but not hugely smaller seats than your trans-Pacific 747s, which I use as a guide because they’re the smallest size you can actually be passably comfortable in.

So anyway, it was a little cramped and the plane was approximately full, but I watched The Ark of Truth and listened to music and the time passed quickly enough. I also saw the second half of August Rush, without sound. I have this strange habit of doing that these days, on planes… there’s still a couple of movies I’ve watched start to finish only without sound.

I had three hours to kill in Atlanta anyway, so I sat down and worked a bit. Because of the bad weather they’ve apparently been having there – it was perfectly fine while I was there, so I’m suspicious of their claims ;) – many many flights were being cancelled, and there were people desperately still trying to get onto alternative flights, having become stuck there the day before. My flight was the last one out to Orlando that night, leaving behind some thirty or forty others who still were stuck in Atlanta for another night. People were actually sleeping randomly about the place in the terminals and whatnot. I can’t recall ever seeing that before… I mean, in the only case where I’ve been stuck for a night, in Sydney, the airline put everyone up in a hotel; it seems the least they can do.

Anyway, so five or so hours later I finally got onto the 767 down to Orlando, which was a much better flight. Completely full, but a bigger plane, more spacious seating (always relative, of course). Music passed the time.

I didn’t get to the hotel ’till 1:15am, though it was lucky I got there at all given the crazy cab driver. It took a good forty minutes just to check-in; there were only two people on the front desk, and a steady stream of people arriving for the conference.

Which I should mention at least in passing, given it’s why I was there. ’twas the annual, national NSBE – National Society of Black Engineers – career fair, in a nutshell. It’s a very big affair, compared with the campus career fairs I’ve seen thus far – we had a large booth with 14 iMacs running, surrounded by a gaggle of us Apple folk. It felt quite a bit like a trade show – Macworld, say. The whos-who of corporate America, with nice, fancy booths, doing raffles for iPhones and giving away freebies and all the usual tricks.

It didn’t feel as personally busy as my previous experiences, but then there were five or six times more of us there, so there were undoubtedly far more people coming through. It was nice to not have such a feeling that you, individually, had to deal with every one of them, though. 🙂

As always, I was quite impressed with many, many of the people I spoke to. They really take it seriously here, career goals and internships and whatnot. Compared with Australia at least. Students much better understand the importance of real-world experience in terms of how it ultimately improves their chances when they graduate.

The fair – or at least the portion of it to which we applied – was Thursday and Friday afternoon. Well, actually it was apparently Thursday morning as well, but that never trickled it’s way from the organisers to our people, so, we rocked up a bit late to the party. 😕 Anyway, it was a long five or so hours each day, but we had a good time Thursday night – dinner with representatives of various NSBE chapters at Roy’s, followed by general hanging in the bar at the hotel. It was a surprisingly effective way to unwind.

I should have stayed for the weekend, though – there’s plenty to do there, and though it’s approximately spring break at the moment, it didn’t seem that busy. This time of year’s not nearly as crazy as summer, apparently – so say the various taxi drivers we had. 🙂

They use Suburbans for taxis. Seriously. They can seat seven (plus driver), or, as in the case of getting to the airport, just one (plus driver). It seems so horrifically unnecessary.

Friday night most people were flying back, but the ten or so of us remaining went out for a last dinner, to Hooters of all places. 😆 I’d never been, and the idea tickled my fancy at the time – probably a combination of exhaustion and sleep deprivation, at that point 😁 – though it wasn’t my idea, for the record. 🙂

It was mostly what I’d expected – I mean, I think most people in the free world have some idea what Hooters is about. But I was expecting the waitresses to be in their thirties, which is how Hollywood’s portrayed them that I’ve seen. They were early twenties for the most part, in line with most chain restaurants here. All good looking plus – I wondered how the restaurant can get away with clearly biasing their hiring, but I suspect it’s the “models that serve” loophole I’ve heard about.

Anyway, the place was fine, the waitresses were polite, the walls were covered in kitchy crap and photos of forgotten 80’s celebrities back when it was hip for such people to visit Hooters… :) It wasn’t actually sleazy… corny at worst… and the food was actually good; I guess it has to be these days where PC is King.

There was a cool blues bar just across from that, though they had a $10 cover charge – I hate places with cover charges; I’ve never been to one where it was worth it… the plan was to go back to the hotel for a bit then head back out, but, I didn’t hear from anyone else and I myself immediately wanted to sleep as soon as I sat down in a half-comfy chair… I suspect everyone else was the same. As it was, my return flight was 7am, so a late night wasn’t wise.

Flying back wasn’t as good as the way over. The USB cable I took decided not to work this time around, which didn’t surprise me, but nonetheless left me with a dead iPod and a nearly-dead iPhone… the MacBook I took was giving me a solid five hours or so battery life, but I couldn’t work on the plane – people looking over shoulders and all that – and didn’t have anything else loaded up on it to do, short of writing my memoirs or starting the great American Novel, as they say. I toyed with the latter idea – creative writing – for a little bit, but couldn’t settle on an opening line that wasn’t a cliché.

I tried to sleep a bit… I dozed, but couldn’t really get comfortable. The seat next to me was empty, which was a mild blessing, but it was a 757 which is apparently exactly like a 737 but 20 model numbers higher, and very important distinction. Pfft.

The scary thing was the plane from LAX to SJC:

Seriously. I didn’t think they still ran prop planes, except for regional transport and skydiving. Certainly not between two of the biggest cities on the west coast. It makes no sense. This thing seats exactly 30 passengers, with one lonely air hostess and the pilot. That’s it. There must be more than 30 people flying this route every day – heck, I’d wager there’s thousands. I don’t understand why they still run these things.

The flight itself wasn’t too bad – slow, at about 85 minutes or so, which is nearly twice what it takes in a real plane. But it wasn’t actually that uncomfortable – noticeably better than the crappy-arse “American Eagle” thing I flew on a few years back (on the same route, too). It had a novelty to it, with the small-plane feel over all the small bumps and pockets of turbulence. Not that we really had any, which was a shame… the invention of weather radar has really made air travel boring. 😔

And the air hostess was cute. I mention it only because it’s actually very rare. I think I’ve been around enough now – on planes, naturally 😜 – to be fairly qualified in such judgement. The whole “cute air hostess” stereotype is a complete fallacy.

Flying across the country, in the middle somewhere – Texas? I dunno – there’s a part where all the square lots of farmland have circles of crops in them. Some of the circles are sectored into different crops. Some have a 60° sector cut out with nothing in it, just dirt. Can you picture what I’m seeing yet? :) Even better, some have a big circle with the 60° out, and another smaller circle in the wedge. It’s picture perfect. All they need is a small crop circle to mark out the eye, and it’s the true embodiment of PacMan himself, in Maize. :D

I so want to buy a few thousand hectares and build out an entire level. 😁

Video games don’t affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we’d all run around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

Kristian Wilson, CEO at Nintendo Gaming Corporation Inc.

I’m not sure about the accuracy of the attribution there, given the quote is culled from bash.org, but, I love the quote nonetheless. 😄

Anyway, I digress. ’twas interesting watching the PacMen munch by far below. Didn’t do much to moot the drudgery of the flight. iPod & iPhone were dead, and as noted I only dozed lightly. I caught August Rush, in mute, again, this time from the start.

All in all it was a good trip, even counting the travel involved. In terms of work I think we did very well – many, many promising people – and as noted it was quite fun socially. Next time I’m taking a working USB cable, though. And a few days to check the place out properly, going beyond merely the hotel and convention centre.

One of the weird things is how much Florida – Orlando, at least – is actually Hollywood’s California. It’s attractive, it’s warm, it has good restaurants and entertainment and bars, live music, shows, hot girls everywhere… it is exactly how California is described. ‘cept California’s not like that, at least for pretty much every part of it I’ve seen.

They probably don’t have good skiing though. 😁

For a country that has such a massive volume of domestic airline traffic, especially between L.A. and S.F., I will never, in my life, understand WTF they still run buses-with-wings. If I cannot stand up in any part of the aircraft, not even the aisles, it should be crushed into metre-square cubes. With the designers of said atrocities in the middle. Seriously, people, what were you thinking… “hey guys, lets make a plane that’ll seat 30 small toddlers moderately comfortably… yeah!”…

Alas I don’t have that much spare time in the trip, which is kind of poor planning on my part – I could have delayed the return flight and taken the weekend – and means I probably won’t be able to enjoy much of the amusements on offer. Ah well.

So, we drove up Friday night… we were delayed leaving for reasons unknown to me; I played through a good portion of Portal while waiting with Greg, in his apartment in S.F., for Tom & James to rock up. We finally set off around 8:30 or something… but luckily James’ little Subaru WRX is AWD – with all-weather tires – and the conditions were very clear and clean all the way to Tahoe City, so we arrived at the cabin not long after 1am, even with a stop for dinner along the way in Sacramento somewhere (in that strip where there’s every fast food joint you could ever name, all huddled together), and a flat tire.

The flat tire was annoyingly predictable; the trip had been going far too smoothly, even counting the delay departing, for my luck. It went flat while we were eating, and given the tires were low profile anyway, we didn’t make it much beyond the next exit off 80. The first servo we stopped at had an air pump, as they do, but it a) cost money (WTF?) and b) was broken (which could only be discovered after putting in your quarter, naturally). They did however sell that spray-in goo stuff for repairing punctures, so we tried that out. James then did a brief run to get the stuff distributed and set, then stopped at another servo across the road to inflate the tire fully (the goo can couldn’t inflate the tires very much, even given they were low profile, which seems contrary to my memory of it previously :/ ).

Luckily the goo worked perfectly well, and although the wheel was slightly off-weight as a result, we made it without further worries.

It was a very pleasant surprise when we got there – I expected what I assume is a more typical ski lodge affair; essentially a big open lounge/kitchen and a bunch of bunkrooms. Instead, we had four individual bedrooms – the master of which had its own ensuite, fireplace, couch, etc… very swanky. So this really was more of a “cabin” than a lodge, despite being the size of a decent house.

So we hit the hay more or less straight away. We awoke around 7:30 to get ready and head off. We stopped by a rental shop on the way, in Tahoe City, to grab breakfast and our gear. I decided to go with skis; only Greg was snowboarding, and although it was his first time snowboarding (and thus we’d likely be good partners), I was still worried about my toes. They were pretty mangled after the Northstar trip, and although they’d stopped hurting after ‘only’ a week or so, they were still dodgy looking. So anyway, I figured skiing would put less pressure on my toes overall. Plus, I kinda wanted to ski again so I could chill a bit more and enjoy some more challenging runs. [[ in hindsight there was so much powder that I was leaning back pretty much all the time, so there didn’t end up being that much difference ]]

We got up to the mountain in reasonable time. James dropped us all off and then headed to Truckee to see about having the tire repaired. It turned out that Truckee didn’t have suitable facilities and/or replacement tires, so he ended up having to go all the way to Reno – and buy a whole new set of four tires, though his old ones were approaching their expected end of life anyway. Luckily conditions in the morning were still good, so that wasn’t too bad – he got back not too long after lunch and did at least get in a half day. It really sucks, though – we all felt pretty awful that he had to spend half the day just fixing the car, while we were able to ski around in blissful ignorance.

So initially I wasn’t sure what kind of state my skiing abilities would be in – it’s been two years since I did downhill skiing proper, and still eighteen months or so since I even did cross-country, so… all three of us started on Meadow, the basic newbie green. Tom quickly grew bored of that, after two runs, while Greg of course was still mastering the art of falling every fifty feet. :)

He did very well, actually. He also had the problem that his bindings were wrong-footed for him; he went with natural assuming that was him, but it turned out he was more comfortable goofy. I sympathised heavily. :)

Anyway, after two runs on Meadow, Tom & I left him to do his thing, having imparted our meagre collective wisdom. Unfortunately we hit the slopes just after 10am, so we just missed the morning lessons which Greg would have benefited from.

So Tom & I headed up Hot Wheels, which is all blues. At first I was unsteady and had little confidence, but I got better pretty quick as it came back to me. There was a bit of powder about – half to a foot, maybe – and it started snowing around midday, so it built up more and more… Greg met up with me at one point and I took him down one of the blues, except he ended up going off randomly down a different run that I hadn’t planned, and we ended up in a solid foot or more of powder, on flats, and he discovered the first inescapable truism of snowboarding – powder sucks. He persisted for quite some time in trying to sort of shuffle and jump his way along, but just kept falling and taking the exhaustive hit of trying to get back up out of powder… eventually he gave up and hoofed it.

So, after that he went off to his afternoon lesson, anyway, and I continued on my blues.

At some point while going up Hot Wheels I noticed a nice looking gully running along below it, which looked like a lot of fun. So I found my way down into it, part way down, and had a bit of fun – it was quite steep and tricky, and I fell a lot, but it was good fun, and much more the kind of skiing I like – winding runs through trees, as opposed to the barren, wide, linear runs that are so common here. There were some other places where I’d run off through the trees as well, and had great fun.

There was also, at the bottom of Hot Wheels, a beginners’ terrain park with a few snowboarder thingies and some small jumps. I couldn’t resist trying those a few times, and was somewhat surprised to find they weren’t that tricky – though I didn’t really get much air, as I wasn’t [intentionally] bouncing off the tops and couldn’t really get up the speed anyway to do any better. But it was fun.

I realised later that the gully I’d been having fun in was Hot Wheels Gully, which is actually a black diamond. So by the end of the day I was pretty happy with myself – not only had I met my weekend goal of doing some jumps in a terrain park, but I’d even done a black diamond, which I’d been hoping to get to but hadn’t concreted as a goal.

The weather got a bit nasty in the afternoon, though – the wind picked up a lot, and the snow was pretty heavy. I made the mistake of heading up to the summit at one point, and was nearly blown completely over at the top as I came off the chairlift. It turns out the wind was gusting up to 160kph up there and on the other high ridges, so… it was pretty nuts. And I’d thought, for whatever reason, that there were some nice blues down from the summit… but when I got up there, all I could see was this giant steep expanse going straight down – Alpine Bowl, I later found out – which looked scary as hell, so I skied along the top looking for a better way. I gave up on that when I reached the black diamond signs (and looking at the trail map, that area’s all double-black diamond too… glad I didn’t randomly try that). So I had to go down the Alpine Bowl. It wouldn’t have been bad at all, actually, if it weren’t a complete white-out… I just rocketed across the face of it, in absolute flat greyness – I couldn’t tell where I was going, where the sky was, how fast I was going, even just which way was up. It was kinda weird but cool, and strangely calm, until I hit some random unseen bumps, and then suddenly hit the other side of the bowl and felt the incline change… I managed to slalom down, and further down things did clear up enough that you could make out the run against the trees… it was kinda fun in a challenging way, but I prefer challenges where I can see where I’m going and need to rely on my skill, rather than challenges where I just wait to hit randomly something.

So I didn’t try the summit again. At some point Tom & I played around on the runs from the Lakeview chair, on both sides of the mountain – it’s one of the good things about Alpine Meadows; it has runs facing all directions, so there’s always somewhere that’s relatively out of the weather.

Anyway, much fun was had, all in all. By the end of the day I was a little tired – though not nearly as much as snowboarding – and my toes seemed okay (though my right big toe did ‘pop’ and bleed a bit, which actually relieved the pressure a bit such that it didn’t hurt at all, all day). We returned to the cabin and cranked on every heater in the place – unfortunately the boiler was broken, and the plumber was a <censored> who refused to fix it because there was supposedly too much snow, which just… grr… anyway, we defrosted for a bit, then went up to Squaw for sushi there. We also dropped by the bar there before & after dinner, but the others didn’t seem too into that, so we didn’t stay long afterwards. We returned to the cabin and shortly went to bed.

I forgot to mention that I’d slept okay that first night, Friday, but woke up at 6:30am freezing – there was no heating on at that point, in my room, and the single-glazed window ensured the room stayed at the same temperature as outside… *rolls eyes* I cranked on the electric heater there, but by the time it actually took the edge off, it was 7:30 and we got up anyway.

So anyway, this second night I had the heater in my room fully cranked right from the time we first got home, in the afternoon, so it was nice and warm. However, with the door shut while I slept, it got way too hot, and I woke up feeling heat-exhausted at 6:30 or so again. I turned the heater off and went back to bed, which seemed enough to save me; once we were up and about and on our way to the mountain, I felt fine again.

The weather that day, Sunday, was pretty awful – it had been snowing all night, adding another two foot or so to the higher areas of the mountain, and it was already windy-as even in the morning. But, I knew the upside on that – it meant the slopes would be empty. James disbelieved my assertion as such; he’s from Washington, as I understand it, where people appreciate fresh powder, even if the prevailing conditions are a bit miserable. I, on the other hand, had experience with these conditions twice before already, and knew that Californians and Nevadians are pussies, and couldn’t hack actual weather with their skiing. This should have been proven by the fact that we only got the cabin because the women who had it booked previously had cancelled after hearing it was going to snow. That’s right, cancel a snow trip because it was snowing…

Anyway… although there was a queue to get up to the mountain and it took us a while, when we did finally get there we found it was indeed virtually deserted; only the carpark in front of the main building was in use.

Greg went off for breakfast there first, but by then I was eager to get out onto the slopes again, so we did that. Only Meadow & Hot Wheels were open at this point, which suited me just fine, though James was a bit miffed – he’s a diamond skier, and was bored by the blues off Hot Wheels. But I had access to Hot Wheels Gully from there, so I was set. The wind was annoying, especially on the chairlift up – it was so slow, it was infuriating; it fully took ten minutes – at least – to get up to the top of the chairlift, and less than two to ski down, so… that sucked. But the gully was fun, and I explored around a bit more as well – there was virtually no-one else about, so I just went wherever the heck I felt like, and that was great.

I was really enjoying the powder; it slowed me down enough that I felt much more comfortable on the blues, even the steepest ones there, although it was tiring. But it did have the pleasant benefit – from my point of view – of evening out the difference between Tom & myself; the day before he’d been leaving me behind most of the time, as he went flying off confidently down the hill while I carefully and slowly slalomed… but Sunday he had more trouble than I with the powder, so we skied together a bit more, which was good – I like the challenge of skiing for skiing’s sake, but going down the slopes with friends is more fun than alone.

Anyway, Hot Wheels Gully was much more powdery and I was now able to do it from top to bottom without falling, which was good fun.

It was cold, though. Tom & I were both freezing our fingers & toes off, so we were pretty happy, actually, when lunch time came around and we could find respite from the cold in the dining hall. And after eating and chillin’ briefly, Roundhouse opened, which pleased James particularly, and gave us some new runs to check out. So we did that, Tom & I – and James went off and did his own thing, for the most part. It was mostly white-out at the very top of Roundhouse, on all the runs, but they weren’t too tricky and you quickly got below it and were able to enjoy it more.

Greg, by that time, was also using Roundhouse, so we skied down with him a few times. I laughed so much when he and Tom collided and both fell over – we were the only three people on that entire side of the mountain, and those two managed to hit each other. :D

I was super impressed by Greg, though – by that time he was handling the snowboard way better than I had been even after three days, let alone one and a half… he did really really well.

So anyway, we pretty much did that – going via the beginners’ terrain park where possible for the jumps, at the bottom of the slopes, but otherwise just exploring the various blues. There was one other black diamond accessible from there (beyond Hot Wheels Gully), which was Symphony Face. It looked pretty bloody steep in spots from the chairlift; it basically runs under it. James was all over it most of the time, but Tom & I alternated in our hesitance to try it, for most of the day… but eventually, as 3pm or so came and went, we decided to try it out. It turned out to be pretty good fun – challenging, given the steepness and the presence of random trees and rocks – but nothing we couldn’t handle. (though Tom had two good stacks, one of which left him lying on his back, head down hill, skis spread eagled… Greg was riding over in the chairlift right at that moment, too, and laughed at us :) ).

Tom had the problem that he’d had a ski come off in the powder the day before, and it took him an hour to find it – even though he’d only slid a few metres when he’d fallen, and it hadn’t really gone anywhere – so he was pretty crazy paranoid about losing the skis again… he’d made the mistake of calling the rental place when he first lost the ski, and they’d told him it would be $500 if he couldn’t return it, so… yeah, every time he fell after that he immediately freaked about where his skis were. And they did seem to come off really easily – I lost a ski only once, the very first time we hit deep powder on Saturday and both stacked in it, being unused to it – so… yeah, he wasn’t having so much fun with that.

But things went fine – we both clipped rocks, we think, on that run down Symphony Face; Tom on one that stuck out ever so slightly, and I on one that was hidden just below the powder. I managed to recover and stop gracefully after hitting it, Tom not so much, but neither of us suffered any visible damage to our skis, so that was all good.

We ended up coming in relatively early – 3:30 at the latest; we had just one more run down Blue after Symphony Face. James had already headed in, Greg told us, and he himself was doing one last blue (while we did Symphony) before going in himself… I was eager to keep going ’till the lifts closed at 4, but Tom was tired and wanting to head in, and I realised after Symphony that I too was completely buggered in the legs, so I relented – not wanting to keep everyone waiting solely on my account, anyway – and joined the others at the bar. We hung there for a bit, chatting with the bartender and enjoying the fact that there was, by then, all of about ten other people in the whole place still – excluding the staff, for which there were more than one per actual skier… it was there that we first heard that 80 might be closed. We didn’t really rush, but we did head off not long after 4 or so, to get back to the cabin, get our stuff, drop off the rentals, etc.

We did all that, then headed off towards Truckee.

And we made it all the way to the roundabout at 80 and 89. And there, in the roundabout, was one solitary cop. Whom informed us that 80 was closed going west, and we could either go to Reno for the night, or go back to Tahoe City. So, we went back to Tahoe City… we had dinner there anyway. Tom & James seemed particularly keen to get out that night – Tom particularly couldn’t believe 80 was really closed, and kept trying to plan ways around. We also weren’t sure how accurate any of the road reports were – in Tahoe City you can’t get the AM radio station that covers the road conditions, which is the most authoritative source (aside from the cop, I guess), so we were constantly pinging various websites and whatnot… but nothing changed. 80 was closed, westbound, all the way from the border to Applegate – 130km. And it was probably closed eastbound at least from Applegate to Truckee, too…. the cop reckoned we could go east from Truckee to Reno, though the snow reports all said that was closed too… :(

I was neither surprised that 80 was closed – I remember very well the conditions last time I was up there – nor was I particularly bothered; so we had to stay another night, big deal. And heck, we might be able to ski Monday as well, being stuck there anyway, and the weather was expected to be perfect for Monday – warm, with all that fresh powder, and relatively few tourists given the weekend was over.

Tom did get word from Chuck, a friend of his that had been down in South Lake Tahoe for the weekend, that they had gotten out just fine. They said they’d gone out via 89 to 80, but of course they were just retarded and/or drunk, and actually meant they went down to 50. I was extremely surprised that 89 down to 50 was open when 80 itself was closed… I’ve been under the impression ever since I was first up there, two years ago, that if any road in that whole area was going to close, it would be 89 through the south mountains. But, apparently not this time.

Unfortunately 28 was closed at Emerald Bay, so we didn’t have a direct route down to there… we weren’t sure, but it seemed like 28 might be open all the way around the other side… however, that would have taken two hours just to get to South Lake anyway, and there’d be no guarantee 89 would be open still at that point, let alone the four or five hours further driving after that – it was already well into the evening as it was – so, we didn’t really seriously consider that option.

Anyway, we were stuck for the night. I would have been all for hanging out in a bar or something, but, I don’t really recall seeing any in Tahoe City… it’s a fairly quiet little town, like all those – South Lake Tahoe aside – that ring Lake Tahoe. But we ended up just grabbing a DVD – Die Hard 4 :D – and watching that on Greg’s MacBook back in the cabin. That was pretty cool.

And the girl in the video store amused me, at least – it came up that we were from S.F. and stuck for the night, and she mentioned that she didn’t like S.F. – that it’s dirty and has a bad vibe. I completely understand what she means. But Tom is chronically in love with S.F., and James quite likes it too (Greg was in the car still, so, his opinion is unknown :) ). Anyway, I knew what she meant, and was very happy that someone else – even albeit some random – agreed with me exactly on S.F.; I’d been deflecting positive assertions of S.F. from the others all weekend.

Through the whole weekend I was somewhat missing the true lodge atmosphere I’m used to – where you have a dozen or more people, in various groups, all hanging out together at night, playing cards or games or just chatting, whatever. With the four of us in that relatively large cabin, it was a little quiet. Alas, we never chanced upon four random hot girls in our travels. ;)

I had to laugh at myself at one point, though, on Sunday – two rather attractive girls had gone past us from the top of Roundhouse, just doing blues like us at that point, and they’d ended up behind us in the lift queue at the bottom. I was just pointing them out to Tom, as subtlety as I could – though given how sound travels over snow, I’m almost certain they heard me – and while I was sort of just day dreaming as we waited for the lift, I completely forgot about the lift chair coming up behind, and got whacked on the head real nice. Only my self-esteem was critically injured, though… and we didn’t see those two girls again anyway, for better or worse. :)

So anyway… the movie killed time before bed. I set the heater to something more reasonable this time around, but still had the same problem – I woke up at 5:30 or something, completely dry and heat-exhausted. Though I turned the heater down, opened the door, and drank some water, it was too little too late – when I reawoke a few hours later I felt like crap, and that never really lifted all day. The drive back was relatively quiet – though I’d been planning ‘shotgun’ all morning, so I scored the front seat the entire way. [[ we’d all been surprisingly good at playing by the shotgun rules all weekend, but I was still surprised that Tom & Greg accepted my stake without appeal ]]

We made reasonable time coming back… we left around 9:30 or so, maybe, and made it back to S.F. by about 1:30 or so, perhaps. The conditions were fine; it was just the traffic that sucked. All the trucks that had gotten stuck in Reno – along with the cars, too – were heading through all at once, so it was even more congested than normal. In fact, the road all the way to Squaw was barely moving; every man and his dog in all of Lake Tahoe appeared to be going there, and I can’t blame them… it felt almost criminal to be leaving rather than skiing; after all, the day was virtually a wash anyway, work-wise, so it wouldn’t really matter if we got home in the afternoon or midnight… but James did want to go to work, even late, and I was very tired, as were the others… Greg was at that “I can barely move” stage, thanks to two days of heavy crashes… so we all kinda didn’t like not skiing, but no-one really complained audibly about skipping it. :)

Anyway… we dropped off Tom & Greg at their respective homes in S.F., then went down to the valley (via James’ places, briefly, so he could shower and change). James actually dropped me right at home – though he works in Mountain View – which was super cool of him.

I felt like crap, as noted – not really dead-to-the-world crap, just generally “I couldn’t be bothered doing anything” crap… I had hoped I’d be able to work a bit in the afternoon, once I got home, but after showering, eating lunch and drinking a lot, I cranked up Hayley Westenra and just lay on my bed… I ended up dozing on and off for a few hours. Then I had more to drink… then slept more solidly until I awoke into the mid-evening dark.

At about 10pm I finally gave in to my hunger and put dinner on, and got out of bed and started going through the backlog of email, RSS feeds and whatnot. I think by then whatever fever-type-thing I had had broken – I awoke in a pool of sweat – and I started feeling better. Which more or less brings me up to the present moment; it’s now 1:30am, and after a mere hour and a half my photos of the trip have finally finished uploading – thanks Comcast; you and your shaping can rot in hell – so I’m winding this up and going to bed. :)

[[ note that I took a bunch of photos from the top of Lakeview, of the lake, for a panorama, but I haven’t had a chance to stitch that together yet… I’ll make a note when it’s added ]]

At some point I also met Marie? [[Moreen [[Maureen]]]], who’s name frustratingly escapes me all the time. She’s from just south of L.A., and at 35 is just pushing the Contiki age limits (18-35). She doesn’t look too bad for her age, though, although she’s a fairly tall girl, and fairly stocky. [in hindsight it’s come to my attention that I use the word “stocky” to describe anyone who can’t fit through a keyhole] She’s an attorney, who’s had been working on workplace safety stuff, but is sick of her job and 3 weeks ago decided to go on this trip, at 2am in the morning.

I spent a lot of today talking to her, on the bus as we did our full-day “Awesome Adventure”.

I got up at 6am this morning, as our tour left at 7:15am & all three of us in this room – Albert, Marcin & myself – were doing it, so I figured I’d need to allow a fair bit of time for showers and all that.

I showered first, so I was ready for breakfast by 6:30am. Unfortunately breakfast didn’t start ’till 7am, so I went for a quick wander down to the beach, and checked out the rocks for rockpools and whatnot. They were pretty lifeless though, other than the odd bit of seaweed. The water was a little murky, but mainly soapy… there’s not much in the way of beach sand or anything near where we’re staying, although just round the corner I think there is. I wandered back up at about 7 and had breakfast. I sat with Amy, Kirsty’s sister, who’s quite attractive and seems quite nice. Kirsty joined us, as did a few others – including the cats. (Albert & Marcin were also there, and I think Jade and someone else; at our table, that is – there were others of course).

These cats appeared at dinner last night – a stripped ginger one + a black & white one. They’re quite large cats – I gather they get fed rather a lot by all the tourists in the hotel motel. They’re quite used to people, and reasonably friendly, although if you don’t have any food they quickly lose interest.

I need some sleep tonight – we have to be out of here by 7:30am, and have plenty of time on the road writing, so I’ll continue this then.

22nd of March, 2007
[written the day after]

We’re on the bus on the way back to Auckland, so things could get messy from this point on.

So we headed off at about 7:25am yesterday morning, when the bus finally turned up. I hadn’t really paid much attention to what the “Awesome Adventure” entailed – I hadn’t realised we’d spend most of our time on a coach. But then we travel very far north, to 90 Mile beach & [[Cape Reinga]].

Our first stop, however, was Manginangina where there’s a few young (300-400 years) Kauri. We did a quick walk there. I thought it was quite beautiful, but a lot of people were saying along the lines of “not another Kauri”. The tour we were on also had a whole bunch of other people on it, many from a Kiwi Experience, and many of them Poms – of the whinging variety. They were nice enough, I guess, but they just complained about everything.

Many people seem impatient with the long hours of travel, and the regular scenery. I’m not sure what they expected – I certainly thought this is what it would be like, more or less. I really enjoy the long relaxing drives. The scenery is by and large not “spectacular”, but it’s certainly pretty. “Serene” is probably a good word for it.

We then went to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga. Unfortunately a cold front swept in the night before, so there was a lot of low cloud in the morning, which at Cape Reinga turned into thick, sea-level (and up) fog. We walked out to the lighthouse, but couldn’t see much – you could just make out the whitewash from the breakers on the rocks far below.

More people took photos of the signpost – showing distance to various places around the world – than the lighthouse itself.

From there we went down to a beach, which looked a lot like Norman Bay & Tidal River at the prom, in miniature. It was quite nice. We stopped only for a short while. I wandered down to the river at met Ella (I think), from Germany although she’s lived in New Zealand for a while, and is now touring with her mum who’s come to visit. She was really nice – friendly and smiling. She was taking the Dune Rider [[naked chick painted on the side of the bus]] trip, or whatever it’s called, and we’d first seen her at the lighthouse, where we’d shared a passing smile.

[Sick bags will be replenished at regular intervals. Please hold.]

We were under to fog at the beach, luckily. I hadn’t brought anything other than my sunnies, wallet & camera, although I had the foresight to wear Speedo’s & boardies. So I went back to the bus and asked if anyone would me a towel. Roxanne did, a nice pink floral job. :)

So I went for a quick swim. It wasn’t that cool – it’s roughly the same latitude as Sydney, so I think if anything it was slightly warmer in the water there than in Melbourne. And while it was a bit foggy and wet in the air, it was still warm – “subtropical” as they call it.

The swim was great – really refreshing, washing away the remaining sleep from me. From there we headed to the sand dunes just behind the north end of 90 Mile beach. They’re about 80 metres high, which is [emph]really[/emph] high when you have to cary a boogie-board, and yourself, up them.

I had three runs down the dune. It was really exciting – not quite scary, but you certainly get up a bit of speed – about 50kph they say on average, with some people in past clocked at 80 or 90.

At the bottom of the dune was the river, which was wide, flat and had only a few inches of water at the deepest. But it was enough to get you quite muddy – on the last run I went almost full out the entire way, hoping to make it all the way into the scrub on the opposite side of the river like the driver on one of the other tours – a rather heavy guy that took a run-up.

Unfortunately I went too far across to one side, down the hill, and there was quite a sharp dip down to the river, so of course I dropped into it and ended up eating a bit of mud. Hilarious, though, and great fun.

I just stood up a minute ago (2:10m) and hit my head on the overhead rack, biting the tip of my tongue, which then bled a bit. Great fun. Stupidly enough it only really hurts that now my hopes of kissing Skye have been dashed by it. However, last night she was getting pretty friendly with Mitch (?) anyway, and while I was looking forward to him leaving us in Auckland anyway, Skye gave him several full kisses and jumped on him, wrapping her legs around him, so I think she’s both made her own decision and now no longer that “suitable” – I’m not sure I’d be happy if she turned around now and had interest in anyone else anyway.

Anyway, after the sand [[I saw Ella there again]] dunes we drove out onto 90 Mile beach. I was a little surprised that we were allowed out onto the beach, but apparently it’s actually an official road.

Also, at the sand dunes, Skye lost her board to the wind while standing up the top. it blew half way down, where some random guy went a fetched it. In the meantime I offered her mine, since I’d only just reached the top and wanted a break anyway, plus I hoped to attract her positive attention. She initially declined the offer, but shortly changed her mind. In any case I don’t think she much noticed or cared for the gesture.

Anyway, 90 Mile Beach is long (64.5 miles, from memory), wide and with messy surf, although of course I’m sure it gets big (6 metres just recently, apparently) and there was at least one guy out there on a surfboard. It wasn’t a bad drive, and we stopped midwayish down at a little outcrop, for photos and whatnot. There was some big swell pushing up into the rocks, crashing into them and splashing up quite impressively. I took a fair few photos which seemed pretty good – hopefully they turn out well.

From there we headed back, stopping at two places. One was a small side-of-the-road fruit store, where I bought a kilo of Nashi’s – I ate one earlier, which while delicious was sticky… luckily when I eventually asked Danny & Kate for advice Danny provided some window cleaner, which in combination with the bottle of water I’d wisely packed this morning, cleaned up nicely.

After (or possibly before, can’t remember) we stopped for a while at the “Ancient Kauri Kingdom”, a sort of combined Kauri museum & woodshop, where you can buy all sorts of things made out of various prized New Zealand woods. I think most of the Kauri used is from dead trees found in a particular swamp. The centrepiece of the place is a section of a Kauri tree that has a spiral staircase carved out inside it. It’s really impressed. The section weighed 50 tons (prior to being carved).

22nd of March, 2007
[written two days later]

Well, we’re in Rotounga (?) [[Rotorua]] now. I just haven’t had much chance to write here, as the abrupt endings and lag indicate. I haven’t been feeling too well today – I got quite dehydrated last night, not much sleep (as usual) and while I’ve been better than I expected, I’ve been feeling a bit off all day. I was particularly slow at dinner tonight, although I still enjoyed it.

So, where did I leave off? Talking about Thursday, and the Awesome Adventure trip.

I was really enamored with the wood at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. It’s something I’ve really noticed here – the way the tables and similar wooden items are really solid, textured, beautifully smooth & coloured. I’ve commented aloud a few times, and now people think I have a weird thing for wood. ;)

They had a nice double-seater lounge made from ancient Kauri, on sale for a mere NZ$40k or so. They had an even bigger one that you could sit on for photos, right in front of the staircase Kauri. I took two photos of Skye there, on her camera for her. She was nice enough about it, but nothing more came of it.

I did the good son/grandson thing there and bought some postcards, although even now I still haven’t even written on them yet. Maybe later tonight.

We don’t depart until 8:45am tomorrow, so I should get a reasonable amount of sleep.

I bought 30 minutes of net access here at the hotel/hostel, but of the 2 of 3 computers actually working, neither has been available the two times I’ve tried to use them. Hopefully I do actually get to; I don’t like paying by the minute for my net access, and at NZ$3 for the half hour it ain’t that cheap.

Anyway, we got back from the Awesome Adventure trip in the late afternoon sometime. People were milling about pretty aimlessly ’till a planned leave-for-dinner-at-7, so after chatting with I decided to go for a swim in the bay, just down the end of the road, to freshen up a bit, because I liked the idea, and to wash all the sand off me – out of my hair, my nose, my ears, etc.

Unfortunately the beach there isn’t much to write home about – sand, yes, but dirty and covered in little shells, which while pretty aren’t much for walking on. And the water itself is almost completely opaque. I walked in up to my waist, but then started stepping on slimey rocks, so I chickened out of going any further out. After much procrastination – the water felt much cooler than earlier in the day – I did sit down, and dunk my head as well. But just to get clean – once done, I left & returned to the motel.

There I killed time for a bit, chatting with Alan (the Giant) and Andy – a big tall English guy who’s voice apparently sounds like something from Thomas the Tank Engine – among a few others. After a while a fair group did actually gather in the carpark, but we were held up waiting for Kirsty, Amy & whoever else whom were really just doing their own thing, chatting with some guys in their room.

[emph]Eventually[/emph] we did actually get moving. There was apparently some pizza & pasta joint we were supposed to be heading to, but on the corner just before it the majority of our group (which was in total about twenty-strong) stopped, and seemed to just be chatting and not making any decisions. Eventually a few of us said stuff ’em and went upstairs to the pizza & pasta place without them. There we met Helen, Claira & [[Christina?]] They’d just ordered, but we joined them anyway – there we had Moreen [Maureen], Andy, Jade, Wayne?, and probably others whom I’ve forgotten.

I’ve just realised, scanning back, that I don’t seem to have introduced Jade properly. We first met in the Pipi Patch, where we chatted a little bit (where are you from, what do you do – all the usual stuff). She’s nice, but very shy much of the time. Or soft-spoken, anyway. She’s from near Perth somewhere, from memory.

So the place we went for dinner was Ruffino’s, a fairly upmarket little pizza & pasta place. It was nice – had giant raviolli, and they put up with our largish group and subsequent loudness. They were also more than happy to split the bill.

After dinner our little group hit the Cruza bar, which was occupied only by a few locals other than us, but had a pool table. We played a few games – I did pretty poorly – and killed a bit of time there. We decided to try somewhere else, and just as we were leaving the rest of the original group strolled past. We went with them to the Lighthouse bar, which was a relatively swanky place that had a DJ, dance floor, stage (complete with two stripper poles) and some [emph]really[/emph] hot staff. There were a fair few others in there, aside from Contiki guys, of which there were most of us.

Conversation was a little lacking in general, for me, so I probably wouldn’t have stayed that long if it weren’t for the DJ going around and asking for teams for “Bar Olympics”. I signed up into a team with Wayne & Country Dave.

I can’t recall introducing Wayne, but he’s been on the tour as long as I have I think – I’m pretty sure he wsa talking to Kaz for a bit as we walked along the path at the Kauri tree place on the first day.

Anyway, he’s short and pretty standard looking (not meant in a bad way), but he’s really nice – a real laugh, too; he seems to find himself the butt of a fair few jokes, but he always takes it on & even runs with it.

So, we learnt that there would be 4 rounds in the bar games, but didn’t know what they were. They dragged the whole thing way out, by putting a 15 minutes gap between each round. When they did finally start, Wayne went up for our team. The game was that the host would yell out something, which the contestants would have to grab & bring back to the stage. last one back was eliminated, ’till someone won.

The did things like a straw, something black, a belt, a shoe, a sock, and a t-shirt (not in that order though, I don’t think). The last thing the host asked for, when there was just two people left, was a “warm bra”. Kaz’s team won easily, because Kaz had guessed that would come up and had gotten one of hear teammates (or friends) to take theirs almost all the way off, just in case. Kaz’s experience as a barmaid clearly paid off.

Prior to these games, Skye & Mitch sat off on their own, talking & flirting. I was a bit jealous and disappointed, but tried not to think about it.

I heard last night from Teagan that they may have gone at it that night, after the Lighthouse; Skye was in the room next to Teagan, so I guess noises were heard.

The second bar game turned out to be limbo, and Country Dave had been sent up for it. He actually did pretty well, but it was clear from the start that a girl would win – Kaz & Melody were both in. So was Alan, which was quite amusing.

I missed the end as I was in the toilet, but Melody won, apparently by a clear margin, which was surprising because Kaz clearly had done it before, and had the right technique.

She also demonstrated a bit of pole dancing, twice that I saw, and had clearly done that a few times too.

I think it was somewhere around that point, or at least that night, that I started thinking about Kaz as actually being pretty hot.

[my journal is merely a record of my lustful interests; didn’t you know that already? :P]

The following is all in the present tense, which is two days after the bar games, and after Kaz had left the tour. I’ll leave it here because I do get back to the bar games in a minute…

I realised sometime in the last night or this morning, that I actually think Kaz was hotter & more attractive than Skye. She wasn’t as textbook pretty, of course, but really not bad either – I think she was happy not to dress up too much, but knew how to look nice, and act a bit sexy too.

She was fun, easy to talk to – I got on better with her than anyone else this trip thus far – and had morals – she got quite annoyed at Mitch when he said something a bit mean about someone that had been on the trip earlier.

She was just a good, down-to-Earth girl, in a nutshell, which I realise only now properly.

And Skye is apparently quite the dirty dancer, which is is fine in & of itself, but she also seems quite promiscuous too. Plus, she herself admits she has a boyfriend back home, which makes her behaviour here most disturbing – and that’s just considering what I’ve seen firsthand, let alone the rumours.

So suddenly I feel like I’ve been really shallow, and overlooked the clearly better girl. Still, hindsight’s 20/20.

The third bar game was a couples thing where two people from each team (preferrably girl & guy) had to walk in separate, enclosed circles, and assume one of three positions when commanded. Last pair into position were eliminated each time.

The hilarious thing was, we’d sent up Wayne for our team, and conscripted Moreen [[Maureen]] as well. Moreen [[Maureen]] is twice the size of Wayne – there’s no way he could manhandle her. The three positions were:

I drew pictures to explain this, which I can’t be bothered redrawing here – though it is motivation to buy a graphics tablet, which I like – so I’ll just describe them; there was knight, which was basically hugging, girl-wrapping-legs-around-guy, and mount, which was one or other sitting on the back of the other, and cavalier, which was your standard guy cradling girl.

Clearly Wayne and Moreen [[Maureen]] weren’t the ideal pairing, but they comically swapped roles for the positions requiring lifting. Everyone loved that. They were eliminated about halfway through, but it was hilarious ’till then.

At one point the host yelled out “69!”, as a bit of a joke, but not missing a beat Mitch (from memory) picked up Kaz and spun her around. That drew laughs, applause & appreciation, and earnt them bonus points. I think however it was they who came second – the Kiwi accent of the host made it very difficult to tell “Knight” and “Mount” apart, and they misheard the call.

The last game I was set to go into regardless, since I’d weaseled out of the others. The host adjusted the spotlights to all point at the stage, and I was almost certain it would be pole dancing. I was actually warming up to the idea, and thinking up a comical routine I could use, but as it turns out the final game was strip musical chairs. That is, if you lost out on a chair you could stay in by discarding an item of clothing.

The following paragraph has a noted beside it which reads “Emma read this and laughed, god how embarassing; I’d forgotten what I’d written“. Beats me why I’ve learnt nothing from this and am repeating it here. ;)

I was enjoying the night, so I was actually willing to strip a bit, but I was just wearing Speedo’s, boardies, t-shirt & thongs, so I didn’t have much to lose. I would have gone down to boxers if I’d had them, but I figured no-one wanted to see me in budgee smugglers, plus they’re a bit loose around the groin, so I was afraid of showing a bit too much.

They’re loose because they’ve stretched, in case you’re snickering and making mean assumptions. :P

I did okay, I guess, but was knocked out midway after losing my thongs & shirt. I was secretly hoping Skye was watching with appreciation, but I really seriously doubt anyone was. [[photos were taken, & Skype apparently filmed some of it, but I think from after I was eliminated]]

Anyway, more or less straight after that I headed back to the motel, where I eventually went to bed.