Don't look back it won't do any good, And don't look ahead you'll just be misunderstood

It's a beautiful night in Queenstown. There's a full moon outside that is so bright I can barely make out the craters. Although steady rain accompanied strong winds for most of the day, the evening sky is eerily still. The clouds look like cotton balls stretched accross a navy blue canvas. On these nights the stars are unbelievably visible and distinct. I hate to admit it but I think that the summer is officially over. It's about 55 degrees outside right now and we haven't had weather fit for swimming in over a week. I experienced only about three weeks of true summer. That's definitely not enough for me, but I will make amends for now.

In a previous post, I expressed intentions of writing about the entire Winnie's menu. I think I only gave a description of the Monty pizza. My sister Chelsea (aka Food Court) has requested that I write more about New Zealand cuisine, so I'll oblige her with two more pizzas. I've chosen the Thai Chicken pizza and the Chicken, Cranberry, and Brie pizza (CCB), because just like the Montanara I cannot recall having a similar pizza in the states. The Thai Chicken is one of my favorite pizzas. The CCB is tasty but needs to be eaten in small doses as it is quite sweet. The definining factor for both these pizzas is that they are not made with tomato sauce. The thai chicken gets a base that we make from coconut milk along with red and green curry. We put tumeric in this mixture so that the final base comes out to be a nice "thai" yellow. So to make a Thai chicken I start with my flat dough, spread the thai chicken base evenly across and then cover that with cheese. Next comes chopped red onions, baked chicken breast that has been sliced and then red and green peppers. At this point, I will have a nice colorful pizza that is almost ready to go in the oven. But first I'll drizzle sweet chili sauce over the pizza and then top it off with some coconut and peanuts. After the pizza has been cut, I'll make a nice mound of crispy noodles in the center. The thai base and the sweet chili sauce melt together to build a taste that is sweet, but has a kick to it. The crispy noodles, peanuts and red and green peppers give each bite a nice crunch. This is really a good pizza and I'm kind of wishing I had one right now since I've starting describing it.

The CCB is really like nothing I've been accustomed to eating before. The only thing I have ever put cranberry sauce on is turkey. The CCB uses cranberry sauce as its base. So from the bottom up I have flat dough, cranberry sauce and cheese. The CCB gets sliced smoked chicken, as opposed to the baked chicken breast like the Monty and Thai. I throw on a sprinkle of fresh rosemary followed by a few slices of brie and that's it. The CCB is done. This is a great pizza as well, but like I mentioned before, it can't be eaten too often and you'll never want to eat too much of it. It is also the pizza that is most likely to burn the living daylights out of you. That cranberry sauce gets piping hot and its temperature is very deceptive based on it's appearance. I accidentally turned a small CCB over onto my hand while pulling pizza out of the oven one night. It felt like I had submerged my hand into the deep fryer in the back.

That's enough about food. I really am getting hungry. While the summer may be over I've found a new way to enjoy the heat that I love in the form of Bikram Yoga. After spraining my back on the river surfing trip I decided I needed a better injury prevention plan if I'm going to make it across the finish line at Routeburn. I decided to give "hot yoga" a shot and I freaking loved it. The temperature of the training room is about like the fourth of July in the south. Within 10 minutes of starting, everything I was wearing was completely soaked through with sweat. It reminded me of my lawn mowing days in college when I'd sweath through 5 or 6 t-shirts per day. I love that kind of heat. I've made alot of foolish mistakes in my time, but one of the biggest ones is never getting my other sister, Hannah, the certified yoga instructor to teach me about it. If I carry out my training plan and incorporate this class in a few times a week, I'm confident I'll have a great race in April.

I found another great album on my Ipod that I had forgotten about. It's Ryan Binghams sophomore release "Roadhouse Sun". Bingham essentially recreated his first album "Mescalito", but it doesn't really matter because NO ONE else sounds like Ryan Bingham. Mescalita was an excellent album anyway. I've been playing the track "Tell My mother I miss her so" on repeat for about three days now. This kind of music sounds extremely country to people around here who generally only listen to hard rock, reggae, and club music. But they still like it.

I finally finished reading The Fountainhead. I could write for days about the book but I won't. I did find one line delivered by the primary antagonist in the story to be fitting with my thoughts on Avatar:

""Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed."

Write that down. Good night.