Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt, better find yourself a place to level out

I recently found a check list of Queenstown activities I wanted to complete that I made about a week and a half I arrived here. I was surprised at how many I was able to cross off. The list has lengthened since I first created it. There's a lot to do in Queenstown. There's even more to do in the less-than-one-hour's-drive surrounding areas of Glenorchy and Arrowtown. And you could spend five years here and not cover everything there is to do on the entire south island. When the temperature dropped a few weeks ago, my buddy Nate and I both realized that most of these sought after activities are most enjoyable in warm weather. During the winter, you either snowboard, ski, or both. Daylight is scarce, and it's painfully cold. With this in mind, we started planning to get some of these warm weather adventures on the books before it was too late.

The Routeburn track is an attractive multi day trip for both Nate and myself. I need to check this "walk" out as I am meant to run it in less than a month now. It's attractive to Nate as it is one of the Great Walks and is reportedly spectacular by pretty much everyone who has done it. I've never spoken to someone who has done Routeburn and not raved about the experience. So after a few weeks of missed opportunities we finally both got the same days off work and booked beds at the Mckenzie hut for last Thursday and Friday. We had all our travel arrangements worked out and I had gotten all the camping equipment we needed on loan from my roommate, Mark. We were set, and getting damn excited about the trip. On Tuesday Mark sent me a text that read "Don't get too excited about R-burn, the road to Milford is closed due to a landslip, they don't know when it will reopen".

 As the map illustrates, the Routeburn track is a one way path. You have the option of starting at Routeburn Falls, right outside of Glenorchy or at "the Divide" on the western end. We planned to drive to Glenorchy, about an hour away from QT, walk to the Mckenzie hut, a suggested 6 hour day, and spend the night. We would then have an easy 3-4 hour walk to the Divide. From there we planned to hitch hike the four hour drive back to QTon highway 94. My roommate Melissa had agreed to let us borrow her car to drive back to Glenorchy to pick up Voodoo. Like I said, we had it all figured out. The landslide occurred somewhere around the divide. You can read all about that disaster here: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/queenstown-lakes/98807/department-evacuates-trampers
The DOC confirmed what we already suspected. We could start walking from Glenorchy as we planned, but we would not be allowed to walk out to the Divide. We were given two options: Spend the night at the Mckenzie Hut and then turn around and walk back out the way we came (not very appealing). Or spend the night at the Mckenzie Hut and then take the Greenstone Caples track out (very appealing, but turning a 1 night two day trip into a 3 night, 4 day trip). Forever optimistic, and not about to let two days off in a row get wasted, we started to investigate our alternatives.

You may be asking yourself why I provided you with a boat load of background info about a trip that got cancelled. And there is a good answer to that very good question. All of the information will be very important when the Routeburn Classic rolls around at the endof April. On that note here's a quick training update. I ran 15 miles today in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. This includes 4 bathroom stops (ridiculous), two waters stops and about 7 minutes I spent trying to find my dropped car key on the track. This is the furthest distance I've run in my training and I'm very pleased with how I feel today. I'm confident that I'll be ready on race day. The next two weeks will be the most important as far as training and nutrition are concerned. After that I will start to taper down my weekly mileage and focus on resting up for the big day. I am bubbling with excitement.

Back on point. We quickly narrowed our potential destinations down to a couple of choices. Drive south to the Catlins, or North to Mt. Cook. In his pre-travel research, Nate became particularly fascinated with this website http://www.mountainphotographer.com/ (click on the New Zealand category) and grew a little obsessed with this one photo http://www.widerange.org/photo/mueller-hut/. The picture shows the Mueller Hut. I took a look at the picture and the decision was made. We were heading North to Mt. Cook to stay at the Mueller Hut. If you really have too much free time on your hands at work (and I know some of you do), you can read about the Mueller Hut here: http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/canterbury/aoraki-area/mueller-hut-route/.

No surprises here, I have completely outdone myself and written a whole lot about nothing at all. It's gotten late on my end and I need to get some rest. But the Mueller Hut story is soon to follow.

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It really ain't hard to understand, If you're gonna dance you gotta pay the band

I'm coming to some painful realizations. 2010 is going to past without me seeing a live baseball game. I can't remember the first baseball game I ever went to. I have hazy memories of t-ball. But I do know that since I was old enough to walk and hold a baseball, I've been a participant in the sport in some fashion for every single season there after. I've been a player, a scorekeeper, a groundskeeper, a fantasy team owner and an entusiastic fan. I've read over a dozen books about baseball and I've made my pilgrimage to Cooperstown. I've watched every baseball film ever made. Baseball is the one sport that I truly love for the game itself. I can watch and appreciate baseball being played at any level and from any time period. I'm really going to miss Minute Maid Park, Dell Diamond and the New Alex Box Stadium this year. It will be one of those things that I appreciate even more when I return. I'll close the baseball sob story with some words of wisdom from Crash Davis:

"This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes....it rains."

Instead of watching baseball this year, I'll be spending a good bit of time on my ass. In the past two weeks I have purchased a season ski lift pass to the surrounding mountains of Queenstown, a used snowboard and a load of jackets, beanies and long underwear. I've never been through a cold winter and I've never skied or snowboarded before. I'd like to think that everytime I go out and embark on these little adventures I have no business embarking on that it builds character...or something.

I think I've written about the New Zealand bacon on the blog before but I can't remember. Basically, what kiwis call bacon would look like a thin slice of cheap deli ham to Americans. The bacon on the toppings bar that goes on the Italian pizza doesn't look all that much different than the ham that goes on the Hawaiian pizza. It looks more like what we would call Canadian Bacon. I'll never forget the first time I ordered a "Bacon Burger" and received a bun with a burger made from lamb meat with a slice of ham on top of it. Anyway, Zoe, one of the restaraunt managers, decided that the Caesar Salads did not look too appetizing with chunks of fatty ham on top of them and asked Muzz, the kitchen manager to try to find some more visually appealing bacon. So Muzz ordered what he calls "streaky bacon" and a few days later I was staring at a 6 pound box of proper bacon strips. I was in heaven as the smell of cooking bacon permeated the kitchen. It smelt just like my grandparents house where the house breakfast for so many years was 2 fried eggs, a plate full of greasy bacon and a fistful of piping hot grits. Oh yeah, here's an exercise for you. Go find someone who doesn't know about grits and try to describe it to them. Bring asprin. So anyway, I got to eat some good bacon but in the process, one of the other managers, Erin, had to show me this video from Wifeswap. Now I'd never watch wifeswap on my own, but I'll leave you with this clip as it is hilarious.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1919941

The beard that I'm growin, not fully grown, the years are not coming the way I thought they would

17 days. That's almost another full blown hiatus. Time to jump back into the game. I'll start by clarifying a few things about my blog. With the exception of one or two posts all of my titles have been lyrics from songs. My intention was for the titles to be a nod to fellow music lovers who might identify the song and artist by the lyric. But I realized that I need to give credit where it is due, or at least notify my readers that the titles are not my own original work. I generally choose the lyrics based on songs that I've been listening that speak to my mood at the time. Today's lyric comes from the Delta Spirit song "People, Turn Around".

The blog titles lead me to my next topic: the blog audience. I know very little about my blog audience. I assumed that the only people reading it were my family and the handful of friends who have told me that they read it. When I first started writing, I wrote the blog as if I was writing to my family members. Today I am writing the blog more like a journal. The audience is me. Someday I'm going to use the blog entries to reminisce about this whole experience. So if you find my topics and language to be strange and emotional, its probably because I am writing about the things that I think will be enjoyable to read about five years from now. And if you don't like the way I write, believe me you are not alone. I pretty much despise everything I publish. But as we've established many times before, I'm overly critical.

Finally, I'll address the issue of title of the blog itself. It would seem strange to name a blog about New Zealand after an American city I haven't called home in over a year. I created this blog account in 2007 after returning from Chicago where I attended the Lollapalooza festival. I had read the blog writeups for the fest and found them to be unspectacular. I also found most of the writers' taste to be foul as well (using Amy Whinehouse and talented in the same sentence, WTF). So I created the blog with the intention of writing about concerts and festivals that I attended. Lord knows I went to enough of them to justify a full time blog. I planned to kick it off with writeups of Lolla and ACL. Of course, I didn't write a damn thing. I thought about it alot, but never got anything out. On that note, I flipped through an astrology book the other day and naturally checked out the Libra section of the book. I read the quick synopsis on Libras and it included something along these lines "Libras are prone to developing interests in mulitple activities, pulling them in several directions at once and sometimes preventing them from gaining excellence in any single activity." Now, I believe in Astrology about as much as I believe in Scientology, but I will definitely drink to that notion. Anyhow, when I set out to create a blog for my Kiwi experience, I found that my old music blog from 2007 was still up and running and just waiting for someone to use it.

So, now you have a whole heap of more or less useless information and I have run out of time. I have to go meet some friends. But I am still going to publish this. My most consistent reader, who shall remain nameless as to not inflate his already swollen ego, has told me on several occasions that my posts are too long. I shall address his constructive criticism will this short and simple post. And I'll be back as soon as possible with some more entertaining storytelling. In the meantime, I have posted new pictures. Rock on.

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.

There was a wicked messenger from Eli he did come

I'll act as a wicked messenger. I will not speak eloquently, but put it in language that the masses will understand. Avatar sucks. Rub your eyes again in disbelief and re-read the sentence because it really is there. I just typed that and it's not a misprint. That movie is a train wreck and I'm gonna tell you why. But first, let me finish delivering my messages. Shutter Island is awesome. The Ziptrek course in Queenstown is ok. Now that you have the syllabus, let's start the lecture.

So I've had the last three days off and I've seen two films at the cinema in that time. I'm proud of the fact that I watch almost no television in New Zealand. But I still love movies and the entire process of seeing a movie in a theater. I was excited to see Avatar due to the ridiculous amount of buzz surrounding this movie. Everyone of my friends in Queenstown had seen it and raved about it. And I'd read at least two dozen facebook status updates professing the awesomeness of Avatar 3D. I had high expecations going in. Alright first things first. I don't care that James Cameron directed this movie. This does not immediately validate the movie. James Cameron is not incapable of making crap movies ("I'll never let go Jack"). So let's pretend that James Cameron was not associated with this movie in any way shape or fashion and look at it for what it is: CGI porn. To me, that's the only thing Avatar has to offer. Yes, it was visually stimulating to see the Avatar creatures running through a black light forest that looks like it jumped straight out of a Timothy Leary coloring book. But that's not enough to justify calling this movie anything more than mediocre. The dialouge is horrendous. It's borderline comical. I actually laughed out loud when Jake Sully asks hot Avatar chick why she saved him and she responds "You have a strong heart." Really? How in the hell did she figure that out? The audience sure couldn't have. The only thing we knew about Jake Sully was that he is an edgy marine who has lost the use of his legs. Guess that gives him a visibly strong heart to an Avatar and makes his life worth saving. The Avatar storyline doesn't bother me. I like sci-fi and magic. I'm a big fan of the LOTR trilogy and all of the Star Wars movies. I think Serenity is one of the best sci-fi movies made in the last ten years. It's not the Avatar story that's piss poor, it's the acting. Giovanni Ribisi and the scarred GI Joe are unbelievable in their respective roles and again comical at times. I mean the guys flying into a battle zone drinking a cup of coffee. Come on. Is this a blockbuster film or Snakes on a Plane (I actually enjoyed Snakes on a Plane, it was hysterical)?

This movies got an 82% rating on rottentomatos.com. That means that of all the reviews it was given, 82% of them were positive. This is a startling figure. It suggests to me that we've got a lot more CGI porn to look forward to. Hell, pretty soon they won't need the actors to make these movies. They will be CGI's as well. And if "Do you know how much cheddar is under that rock?" is the best script writing they can come up with, they might as let the graphic designers write the damn scripts as well. If this is your cup of tea, you don't have to look far for some more Avatar like films. "Clash of the Titans", which is 300 re-packaged for your viewing pleasure, is right around the corner.

I can't write too much about Shutter Island as you really need to see this film knowing as little as possible about the synopsis. I will say this: It does not view like your favorite Martin Scorsese movie. It's like nothing he's ever done. I was consistenly reminded of Darren Aronosky and Alfred Hitchcock while watching. Some of the shots I think must be direct nods to Hitchcock. Leo brings his A game and Ben Kingsley nails his part as well. The suspense keeps you sitting rigid from start to finish and here's a stunning concept: the movie makes you think! Can you imagine that? You actually have to pay attention to what's going on and formulate interpretations on your own. Awwwwwww, sorry Avatar fans. It won't be as simple as "You have a strong heart" this time around. Don't cry though, Avatar 2: Jake's Smurf Babies Attack will be in theaters soon enough.

While I'm on a freaking mass communications roll let me plug some other stuff that's been keeping me entertained lately. I was quite fond of reading Bill Simmon's commentary on the sports world back home. I lost track of his work while in New Zealand but I stumbled upon a great article to get me back on track. Like the rest of the world I watched Tiger Wood's press conference. I guess public speaking is not for everyone. Bill pretty much shreds Tiger on this one, but I agree with pretty much everything he says here. Read on for yourself.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100219

One of my favorite shows at ACL last year was put on by K'Naan, a hip hop artist from South Africa. My brother found this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYfa0__P_pI

Alright, that's enough media. Let's get back to New Zealand. Sunday was locals day at the Ziptrek course. Occasionally, the adventure companies here have "locals day" in which they lower there outrageously high prices for locals who can show proof of address. This is usually done by the companies whose excursions have shady reputations already. They need the locals, who otherwise could not afford the ticket, to come in and participate in their adventure, so that they will spread buzz amongst the tourists passing through. The ziptrek had mostly lukewarm to negative marks from what I could gather. But you have to take that with a grain of salt. In a town and a region that could arguably serve as the adventure capital of the world, it is going to be very difficult to excite people. You can't go from the Nevis High wire to a ziptrek course and expect to be an impressed. I actually was impressed. I liked the zipline. It was quite thrilling for me, because once again, I don't like the heights and the open space. My heart pounds, my adrenaline soars, and I have a good time. Melissa also enjoyed it. Nate wasn't too wound up about it. However we all agreed that the forcefed Eco tour was complete garbage. Part of the zip trek tour was that at each launching station we had to listen to a spiel about the environment. I really don't mind hearing about environmental issues as they are important. But I hate it when someone rattles off a bunch of stats to you and then doesn't give you any suggestions as to what you are supposed to do about. It's like here, here's a bunch of information to make you frown and feel bad about yourself as a human and that's it. I'm not gonna tell you anything you can do to make it better. Thanks. I'm glad you incorporated that into my afternoon.

I suggested earlier that I might be overly critical. Well, I might also be overly dramatic. Sunday was a wonderful day. I played the frisbee golf course for 6 over par, hiked up to Ziptrek course on a beautiful afternoon, enjoyed the Ziptrek course and then ate way too much popcorn at the theater. It was not nearly as bad as my "reviews" might have you believe.

Short Circuits

The beauty of having an Ipod with over a hundred gigs of music on it is that you get to discover and re-discover music you either hadn't gotten to yet or forgotten about. I've found two really good albums on my ipod on my days off. The first is Eric Lindell: Gulf Coast Freeway. I saw Lindell at Chelsea's last fall and had listened to the album once or twice, but had totally forgotten that I had it. This is a great album. Eric's got a nice a little following but I expect him to continue to build steam over the next few years. Get on board. The second group, I honestly cannot remember downloading. The band is called the Bridge and the album is Blind Man's Hill. I listened to it twice today and it is solid. It's got a nice bluesy feel to it with some country casually blended in.

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.

Whichever way your pleasure tends

A little over a week ago the New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts to win Superbowl 44. In Queenstown, the Superbowl would begin at 12:30 p.m. on Monday. Due to the peculiar time of the event, it was no problem for me to be given Monday and Tuesday off from work. I started making my way to Ministry of Sports around 11:15.

Ministry is the only true "sports bar" in Queenstown. Cricket and rugby matches are randomly being played on bar screens all the time. But Ministry is the only bar with multiple high defnition televisions that broadcasts the sound of the main event on the PA system. The head bartender is an avid sports fan who is friendly enough to record events for regular patrons who have to miss their games and then replay them while it is not busy. I watched the last few regular season games and all of the playoffs at Ministry, usually alone or with few others. I was surprised to find a crowd of decent size gathered to watch the Superbowl. I shot dirty looks at a few colts jerseys before joining my crew of black and gold clad friends who were busy drawing up a squares board. I was extremely pleased  to learn that Ministry had imported Budweiser longnecks for the even. I have not seen a Budweiser, or any other American beer, for sale in any liquor store, bar, club or pub in New Zealand. I had not drank a Budweiser since last July and welcomed the familliar kick of the beer. I bought 10 squares, ordered some nachos and was ready for the game to begin.

Shortly before kick off we realized that the colors of a yager bomb are black and gold. We marched straight to the bar and told Adam that for the rest of the day yager bombs would be referred to as black and golds, and ordered a round. And of course, as everyone does, I would pay for these later that day, and most of the next day. I won't try to recapture the magic of the game. You all have your superbowl memories and I can't improve upon them. It was great feeling to watch the Saints win. The only thing that I saw different from you was that we missed the damn Superbowl commercials. Sky TV, New Zealands only cable provider did not air the commercials, but instead inserted their own advertisements. This meant that I saw pay-per-view previews for Twilight and Marley and Me instead of Bud Lite commericals. (On that note I just want to say the Owen Wilson is free to stop making movies whenever he's ready. Just go ahead and jump off that ship Owen, its already sunk)

Robert's Rant
For a while now I've been thinking about commenting on bandwagon fans. I'm not going to write about jumping on the Saints bandwagon. I don't want to take away from the Saints' success and I'm happy to see everyone enjoying. What really grinds my gears is the people jumping off of the LSU bandwagon. I heard alot threats from so-called fans before I left the states. "After that game I wanted to burn my LSU hat." "If LSU doesn't fire Les Miles, I'm going to sell my season tickets." What? Are you serious. You weren't burning LSU hats when LSU was pounding Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl a few years ago. I didn't see anybody outside of the Georgia Dome with their season tickets up for sale after we won the SEC championship in 2007. Didn't see any hats ablazed or tickets for sale outside the Superdome when we won the National title a few weeks later. It's like this. As an American, I support the United States of America. PERIOD. I support the president, whoever the hell it may be. I'm not a fan of Barack Obama. But as the President of the United States of American, he has my full fledged support. Same goes for LSU. I support LSU no matter who is coaching the football team, or the baseball team, or who the Athletic Director is. I support them, proudly - win, lose, or draw. I'm sick of listening to people claim to be "life-long-die-hard" LSU fans talk about burning their LSU hats. Are you really a "die-hard" fan? Did you even own an LSU hat during the Curly Hallman days? But for the love of God, stop talking about it. If you want to go burn your LSU, then by all means go do it. Or give it to me, I can always use another one. If you want to sell your tickets, then sell em. They won't be on sale for long. LSU football has been around longer than any of these so called fans. It will be going strong long after these so called fans are in the cold earth. So if you can't think of anything better to say about LSU, then as Eddie Murphy would say "Have a coke and a smile, and shut the fuck up."

A few days before the Superbowl, I became concerned about the squares board. Although I have never had a winning square, I have been buying squares on a board for as long I can remember. I didn't want to let this time honored tradition die in New Zealand. Luckily my American friends shared my concern. We surprisingly sold all 100 squares and I surprisingly one the second half. With the Saints victory, winning an extra $50 was lagniappe. It turns out I needed that fifty to go straight to my bar tab. Apparently it wasn't very cheap to import those buds over. I was estatic though. The Saints had won, Peyton Manning was pouting and it was a beautiful day outside in Queenstown. We celebrated hard for the rest of the afternoon.

I finally got to watch most of the Superbowl commercials yesterday. I really liked the one where the people are stranded on the island like in Lost and one passenger finds a radio, but the other finds the beverage cart. Good stuff.