If you plant ice your gonna harvest wind

In general, pizza chefs do not talk to customers. We work out in the restaraunt. With the exception of those sitting on the balcony, we can see every almost every customer in the building. But it's kind of an unwritten understanding that if we should not engage the customers unless it's absolutely necessary. I have no problem with this and tend to just look straight down and make the pizzas, absently tuning the customers out. One night a lady caught me off guard and asked me for some serviettes. Thinking that I had heard silverware somewhere in there I handed her a fork and a knife and she looked at me like I was crazy, handed the utensils back and once again asked me for some serviettes. I had to find a server who quickly handed her a stack of napkins and she walked away satisfied. I let the servers deal with the customers because customers can be a royal pain. We have to deal with the servers, who can also be a royal pain, but not nearly as bad as customers can be. The servers also get tips. It is not customary to tip in New Zealand and few people do it. I certainly don't. But some do and it can provide a nice chunk of change at the end of the night for the servers. They don't rely on it, but they enjoy receiving the additional income. Even though we try to avoid the customers, every now and then one will swing by the pizza bar and compliment us on a pie we made that they enjoyed. At times like these, a few of us newer guys questioned why we were not getting a piece of the tips. Well as it turns out, we have been the whole time.

At the end of each shift, a manager takes all of the accumulated tip money and divides it by the number of servers working plus one. The plus one is the kitchen staff. That money gets socked away and eventually when it has built up to some substantial amount gets kicked back to us in the form of.....river surfing. So a few days after the Super Bowl, I joined some fellow kitchen staff for a river surfing excursion, compliments of the tip jar. River surfing has an interesting history that I cut and pasted from the Serious Fun website (http://www.riversurfing.co.nz/history.htm)
"Jon Imhof, a surfer from Hawaii, came to Queenstown to go snowboarding and he liked Queenstown so much that he decided to stay for summer. Missing the waves of the ocean, he looked for an alternative and came up with the crazy idea to follow the rafters down the Shotover River and surf waves on his bodyboard. Although the rapids were great, he found it was too shallow and decided to go down the Kawarau River instead, and the sport of riversurfing was born.


In 1989, with riversurfing in high demand, Jon established Serious Fun Riversurfing, the original riversurfing company. A few year later, after looking for other suitable locations around the world, he started a sister company on the Zambezi in 1995. A few years after that, some of the African guides took the sport up to the White Nile in Uganda, and to this day, these are the only three places in the world you can go riversurfing!"

During the week leading up the river surfing trip, we were all warned of the potential dangers involved and a story of a girl drowning in the river last year was repeated several times. I've heard different versions of the story, but the general consensus is that she did something that the guides had specifically told her not to do. I made sure I paid close attention to the guides on the bus ride to the start point.

So basically river surfing is swimming through a white water river on a body board with a life jacket and helmet for protection, and flippers to help push you through the water. That's all you've got: a wetsuit, life jacket, helmet and flippers. I've been running, hiking, strength training and cycling consistently for a few months now. None of these activities prepared me for the way I would use my muscles and lower body in the river. As the guide explained to us - "it doesn't matter how strong you are...the River is stronger." And the river is damn strong. I mean that water is moving and the second you don't respect it, it will put you into the rocks. We all struggled at first to get used to the flippers, the powerful current, and finding the proper body position on the board. We didn't have very long to get situated before the first set of rapids. The guides were helpful and any time we started to float astray, they would swim out to us grab and boards and pull us in the right direction.

We eventually reached the section of the river called the chinese dog leg. One of our guides, Bjorn, had explained to us that due to the recent rainfall, conditions were perfect to surf this part of the river. Basically there is a set of standing waves and if your timing and positioning are on point you the wave will hold you and you can "surf" on it for as long as you like. Obviously, none of our timing and positioning was going to be anywhwere near on point. We would need help from the guides to get on the wave. So our plan of attack was for Bjorn to swim out into the rapids and start surfing. We would then attempt to do the same and he would attempt to catch us and get us up on the wave. As luck would have it, I got up on the wave the first time for about 5 seconds.....with nobody filming. When I went back for a second turn while one of the guides was filming with my camera, I missed Bjorn and passed right through the rapid. But you can kind of get an idea of the thrill of river surfing from watching the video. In the video you will see me swimming upstream in the river. I am swimming upstream at a 45 degree angle against the current trying to position my self for Bjorn to be able to catch me. As I come into view fully I am turning completely around so that I am coming down the river feet first on my stomach on my bodyboard. You will hear the guide start to count. She is counting off the standing waves. The reason she is doing this is because on the third wave you want to be kicking as hard you possible can to slow your momentum down to ease Bjorn's task of catching you. You will then see me fly past Bjorn who is surfing the wave. So if you can imagine me actually stopping and surfing with Bjorn, then you will have an idea of what happened on my first attempt. This is the thrill of River surfing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXpOwM-LaSg

The chinese dog leg was definitely the high light of the excursion. We hit a much longer stretch of rapids towards the end, about 800 meters. This was very intense as the waves were high and we were forced under them several times. We also had a nice stretch of just cruising down the river. The trip also included two magnificent sitings. The first was a Lord of the Rings filming location. I can't remember exactly which movie, but I'm almost positive it's in the Fellowship. Frodo and members of the fellowship are traveling by boat in a river and pass between two giant statues of kings. We did the exact same thing except the statues of the kings are CGI's. What we saw was just two giant mountains of stone. But I could definitely recognize the setting from the movie. The second site was that of the A.J. Hackett Bungy jumping platform. One of the most famous and popular adventures to take part in in Queenstown is the A.J. Hackett Bungy jump. We swam directly underneath the bridge and platform where the jumpers leap from and got to watch a jumper go before we crossed under. It was awesome.

I have to say river surfing is easily one of the top five experiences I've had in New Zealand and I'd recomment it to anyone looking for a wild adventure. The only downside was that while kicking up the river I tweaked my back pretty good and have been unable to do much physically since then. But it is healing nicely and I expect to be back on my Routeburn training schedule tomorrow.