Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration, If we don't we're gonna blow a 50 amp fuse"

As you know, I took a long hiatus from writing on this blog. This coincided with a long hiatus from uploading and publishing pictures. I'm happy to officially announce that both breaks are over. I have just added over a hundred photos to my picassa web album. The pictures cover a wide range of events including: hiking to the Ben Lomond summit, the Winnie's Staff Christmas Party, New Year's Eve, White Water rafting, the Ice Bar, and most recently Canyoning.

I talked to some friends on Wednesday and found out that the cliff jump I did on Tuesday is known around Queenstown as "Little Thailand." Little Thailand was a just a precursor to more aerial amphibious adventures to come. I opened on Wednesday and was slightly dissappointed when my boss told me to go home at 3:30 as I was planning on getting more hours that day. This feeling immediately vanished when I received a text from roomate, Mark about half an hour later that read "Canyoning at 5:30 if you're keen." I was keen indeed. If you are not familiar with canyoning, I'll let wikipedia enlighten you.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canyoning
I've been on a canyoning excursion once before in Interlakken, Switzerland. On that occasion, I paid to go on a trip led by professionals. I am really impressed that my roomate and his buddies have the gear and the knowledge to go out and do it on their own.

Mark and I loaded up his van with wet suits, harnesses and carabiners and headed out for 12 Mile Delta. We picked up two of his friends on the way, an Australian named Gavin and Martin from the Czech Republic and met 3 more of Mark's mates at the river. I barely squeezed into two of Mark's older wetsuits. You can see in the pictures that one wetsuit covers the holes from the other and vice versa. Before I knew it I was abseiling down the rock wall a canyon using ever bit of my will power to not look down. I made it, quite slowly, but without harm. I tried to photograph this entire trip but my camera battery was dying and the shots I took did not come out very well. It is pretty dark down near the water, but at the time of day the sun is shining brightly through the tree tops. So in auto mode the camera will flash because it does not register very much light, but then the pictures are blurred by the sun above. I actually have no idea if ANY of that is true, but it is logical to me. Anyway, the pictures don't do justice to the experience. We did some really fun jumps. The more experienced guys could climb higher and be a little bit more daring. The danger in canyoning is jumping and missing your target area of water, which could be very small, or jumping and landing on object that is hidden like a rock or a branch. It is pretty much a dare devil's playground. I'm no dare devil, but there were plenty of easy jumps for me to enjoy.

I had such a good time canyoning, that I went the Warehouse the next day to purchase my own wet suit. It's pretty cool to get a text message that says "meet for canyoning". I can't imagine that there is too many places in the world where you can receive that text.

It is 11:38 p.m. on Saturday night in Queenstown. I worked a double today, putting in a nice 10 hour stretch. One of my buddies at work just called and informed me that it's a full moon tonight and we should hike up to the top of the Remarkables Ski Park to check out the sunrise. Estimated departure time 3 a.m. I guess I should try to get an hour or two of sleep. Rock on.