Hike

Decided to have a hike out back the other day. Up past my neighbor's house. There's a trail that starts just up there.


Here's the view.
I know, just horrible.


Here's a bit further.
I don't know how I put up with it.


You can see the shotover bridge pretty well from here.
I'll get some more pics of that later... it's right outside my flat. Seriously.
It's called the "shotover" bridge cuz it crosses the "shotover" river.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotover_River
Ok, but what's in a name?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotover

You might know it from... dum de dum... yeah, Lord of the Rings... like everything else around here ;)

Tea?

The Kiwi's take their tea pretty seriously... One of our pilots, Swanny, likes to have a cup of tea before he takes his tandems for a flight. So on takeoff, there is a permanent propane fired tea kettle with tea, sugar and water. That's dedication.

Aaaah... Queenstown

Yeah, it's like that.

Aqualand!

Couple bad weather days here lately. Ah well, that's Spring for ya.
No worries. We all headed down to Alpine Aqualand by the airport. New Zealand's idea of a public pool... well... kicks ass!

Lets see... there's a lap pool of course. Big deal. Then there's the waterslides, the funpool... complete with water cannons! No kidding. And not like just water jets... these are full on aim at your friends swiveling turret water cannons!... the "lazy river" where you get swept along by the current round and round a winding path... and my personal favorite, the gigantic hot tub :) (like 20 people gigantic)

Well worth the $8 admission price ($4.30US)

Glorious Internet :)

Ahhhhhhhhhh
Oh that's much better.
Got the internet sorted out today. Happy times. Now we have net at home. See, I'm living just outside Queenstown at the moment and my car is in the shop. It takes me an hour to walk to town... it's less if I hitchhike, but that's not exactly reliable. Besides, I don't like being separated from my gear (paraglider) since you never know when the opportunity to fly will arise.

Anyway, it's all better now. And just in time... the weather's meant to go back to crap for a bunch of days. I can only watch so many movies before my head explodes. I find the internet sooooo much more entertaining.

Now if I could only get my car back! Hahahahaha. Priorities. I'll take the net first thank you.

So today was lovely.
It's been pretty crap lately, but that turned around today. Sunny, warm, good flying and flying all day. Yum. Then went down to the local pub where all the pilots hang out after the day's flying is done and hahahaha... there's some guys basejumping off tandem paragliders over town and landing on the beach. Would you believe that's not an uncommon occurrence here? I love this town. :)

Net

Sorting out the net at the moment.
Hopefully have that up soon. Living without internet is... uh... well it sucks. At least we've got plenty of access in town. My car's out for inspection at the moment, so that leaves me to maybe a daily hit... but it should all clear up soon. Oh well.. guess I just go fly ;)

Cheers
Jim

Auckland

Just got into Auckland.
Couple hours till my flight to Queenstown, so I figured I'd surf a bit.
Easiest Pacific flight yet... slept almost the whole flight :)
Did get one movie in "Tropic Thunder". HA HA HA funny stuff.

A mate of mine, Tom, hooked me (and him) up with a sweet flat so that's sorted. Arno's been looking after my car for the winter. Gera's picking me up at the airport. And I got my work visa done before I left the States, so hell... let's just play! Too easy.

Tick tock... hour and 1/2
Jim

Fun at the beach

So my main excuse for being up here in San Fran is to help Tom with his paragliding. So, oh darn, we had to go fly today ;)
I've been staying with Paris and Toni till now. I hopped a train South last night and am now staying right next to Stanford (Tom's doing his PHD here). We drove down to Seaside (next to Marina) and had loads of fun mucking around on the dunes.


Muggin


The locals know how to have fun on the dunes as well.

Keepin busy

Yesterday, there wasn't much flying to be had, so we all went over to the local park (two blocks away) and played frisbee golf.

Today however was different... there was flying to be had.

So we went over to "Mt Tam" for a fly.
Mt Tamapai is the park on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge. It's a nice isolated nature place. Me, Don and some of the locals took a little hop.


Tam's neat cuz you land on the beach. You can fly over the ocean for a bit, which I did. Fun stuff.


Here's one of the locals, Phil, doing a very nice landing.

SanFran

Arrived in SanFran today. I'm visiting some hang gliding friends of mine, so what do we do after grabbing my checked bags? That's right... straight to the flying site :)

Got a lovely flight in at Ft Funston... an icon in the hang gliding world.
Oh yeah, took a hike later by the Golden Gate bridge too. Of course.

Mmmmm... jetlag kicking in.
Jim

Where does the time go?

It's that time again... well almost. I'm heading out to San Francisco to visit with some friends and teach a little paragliding before jumping the pond. That'll be next week.
But all loaded up. I was worried about my bags at first... I'm taking my drum kit and was afraid it would wind up too heavy. I did what I could to lighten things, but it still felt bricky. 70lbs max for Qantas. 50 for Southwest tomorrow. Uhg... Well the scales told a different story. 40lbs. Whew. Even if the scale's off a bit, that made me feel a whole lot better.

Ah well. Off to la la land.
Jim