Geek

It's windy. Like unflyable windy.

I've been eyeing an Ipod Touch recently and they're cool as hell, but unfortunately one thing just kills it... no Skype. No Flash either. That's a one two punch in my book. Oh well. It was a fun idea. Then I remember my old solace for not having an Ipod was that I already had a Nokia 770. My little eeepc had long since filled it's shoes. But hey, let's see what kinda hacks people have come up with for the 770!

So... can it be made to run Skype and Flash? The new model, the n800 can. Well it seems that what prevents the 770 from doing so is licensing, not hardware. The 770s the slow cousin, but it might have enough juice. And hell, it'll be fun trying either way.

Well the hackers out there have found a way to make the 770 think it's a 800 and trick it into running the 800s operating system. Getting the software to run was also a bit of a trick, but he he he... I've got Skype running :)

Now it's on to flash.
Can you tell I'm bored?
(tomorrow looks better)

The finished box

I completed the enclosure today. Stick a fork in it :)

It's alive!!!!

I got the final parts for my drum kit mod yesterday :)

What I've been up to is hacking my Rock Band drum kit to use my electronic drums. It's been an analog hack till today. Now it's digital :)

Big deal right?
Well the difference is in the accuracy. The analog hack was just that, a hack. It sorta worked. I wired the drum sensors directly into the Rock Band circuitry. This only works at best as well as the original kit, which isn't exactly stellar. What's worse is that it was even less accurate than the plastic crap drum kit.

Soooo... I found instructions on the net (of course) on how to make a digital link and use all the precision goodness of the electronic drums "drum brain".

I finished it this morning. Holy crap what a difference!
(it's not a just little better... it's amazing)
Very happy :)

Gary's Beach

This is Gary's Beach Site
Gary's a local Hang Gliding pilot who's parents live on the bay... and let us fly from their place. As luck would have it, they own a park on the cliffs of the bay. The cliffs are 50-100ft high.

When the wind's right (NE at 15mph), the wind gets deflected up over the cliffs and sets up a standing wave. We can surf that wave :)


Adam taking off.


Steveo surfing the wave.


Me and Adam.
As if we aren't lucky enough to even be able to fly this site, Gary's parents are happy to let me fly my paraglider too... out of their front yard! The hang glider takeoff isn't suitable for PG, so they let me takeoff in front of their house. They're even moving a big post to make it easier.

We are insanely lucky.
It's invitation only and we're thrilled to be on the invite list.

Wind

And with fall comes the wind.
Typical stuff... the hurricanes start bashing the East Coast which pushes us into windy season.

Well. This year... a buddy of mine (Steve) has hooked us up with a cliff launch beach flying site that faces the magical North East :) (Hurricane wind direction is E for us, typically NE). There's nothing all of us love better than beach soaring. Adam and Sunny used to do it constantly when they were teaching down in North Carolina. We just don't have... well didn't have... a beach flying site here. Till now.

Kristen got some pics of us all flying and I'll get them up once I get them.
Looks like an other NE day today :)
(it's a 2 hour drive, so it takes a bit of organizing)

Jim

Times are changing

I'll have to get a picture up of Grant.
Grant holds the distinction of being the first student here. He started 10 years ago.

Grant's 60 (70) something? He lives down the road and comes out for lessons when he can. He had some medical issues that got in the way for a while, but that's all cleared up now. One of the hurdles Grant's been facing is that he tires out pretty easily. Now just flying around, this isn't really a problem. But when learning to fly, it can be. The last thing we work on is landings. Well to land you obviously have to take off. Which means you have to tow up... well that's where the real workout is. The tow up is the hardest part physically.

So learning to land has been hard since we just can't get a lot of repetition in. Add to that you need near perfect weather. Fortunately Grant's very patient and persistent. He just wants to fly. Man he wants to fly.

Well this year we've got what's called a "scooter tow". It's a ground based winch that I can use to pull a student into the air... to practice... you guessed it... landings :)

We took our original tandem glider and configured it especially for Grant. Yesterday tweaked it so that I could scooter tow Grant. It already had really big -BIG- wheels and a harness that would fit him. He chuckled when I showed it all to him... it was the glider he did his first tandem flight in! It was even the same harness. He liked the idea. He said he was really keen to scooter tow back when he first saw it... thought "hey now, that'll work".

With scooter towing, you fly alone. Grant's never flown solo... always tandem. You're only 5 feet off the ground on the first one and the thing maxes out at a couple hundred (90% of the time, I pull people under 20 feet up)... but YOU'RE flying.

So we drug it all out and had at it.
I take people for their first flight all the time. They're always happy when we land "wow, that was cool!"... but I gotta tell ya... I don't know that I've seen the kind of happy I saw in Grant's face after his first scooter tow. "Jimmy, I've been looking for that for 10 years".

Jim

Booked

Well, it's official again, I'm heading back to Queenstown.
I leave San Francisco November 10th.
I'm back in LAX on March 31st.

I have no definite plans beyond that. I always book the "big" flights first as they are the most expensive and you save a lot by booking early. For now, I have some tentative plans to visit some friends in SanFran before I jump the pond.

Jim

Drums

To say I'm obsessed would be a gross understatement.

"Rock Band" is a game that competes with "Guitar Hero".
(If you haven't heard of Guitar Hero, you live under a rock.)
Well, Rock Band adds singing, bass guitar, and my favorite... drums :)

For those of you unfamiliar, I used to have a drum kit. I was never much good, but I took lessons for a while and did a good job of pissing off my neighbors. See in the military, I lived off base with one of the guys I worked with. Well, he just happened to play bass guitar... we had an attic and one day the neighbors below us moved out. So...
Every Friday night, some other guys from work that happened to play guitar would show up and noise would ensue. Eventually the cops would show up too, then it was show over for the night. I think we eventually settled on an 11pm curfew. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Eventually I left the military and things fizzled. Rounding up people to play with and finding a place to not piss off the neighbors is a bit of a task. Lugging around a drum kit doesn't mesh well with a vagabond lifestyle either. So the drums faded away.

Then along comes Guitar Hero.
Close, but no cigar. It looked pretty fun, but I couldn't care about guitar. The potential was there though and rumor was afoot that a full band version was coming.

It showed up in the form of a game called Rock Band :)

Rock Band was an instant party hit. I mean people flocked over to the house on Friday nights for the sole purpose of rocking out. It's a riot. Even the singing is done well.

What captivated me was the drum "practice mode". It had far more depth than I expected. When I saw how well practice mode worked, I bought a WII the same day for the sole purpose of playing Rock Band.

The next part came very unexpectedly. I'd set my kit up in the "pilot lounge" at the airport so I wouldn't have to go home just to play. There's a local pilot we call "Bunkhouse Bob". He's a super nice guy. He comes down and usually camps for a week at a time. At night, he can be found picking away at his guitar sipping some wine. We've talked from time to time about him bringing out his electric drum kit sometime so we can jam. But that's a bit of a pain and just never happened.

Well, Bob sees the Rock Band kit (and that I'm completely obsessed) and that sparks up the "hey let's jam" bug again. Well, instead of lugging out his drum kit for a weekend, he gives me one of his old sets!

It needs a few key parts, but Ebay fixes that straight away. Ha, I think Bob was a bit surprised that I ordered the parts (kinda pricey ones) as soon as he told me I could have the kit. Hell yeah buddy!

Bob's not been back just yet, but I very much look forward to jamming with him.

...but it doesn't end there...

See, the Rock Band kit is a plastic toy game drum kit, which is fine for what it's supposed to be.

Parts fail and there's lots of info out there about how to fix them... including the part numbers of the electrical components ;)

Well hell, a quick trip to Radio Shack and I've got a second set of drum sensors. I've got wiring diagrams off the net. We've got every tool you can imagine here and loads of space to build things... so yeah, I started tearing into the kit. At first I just figured I'd add some cymbals (it has none). As I got used to how it all works, I decided that I could probably wire the Rock Band kit into my real kit. It took some time and effort, but... hahahahahah... yup.

The Rock Band kit is fun and it works, but playing a real kit is over the top happy!





So now I can play either real drums or Rock Band drums... or both at the same time :)
My drumming's gotten loads better too.
Good times.
Jim

Rain

Holy crap!... It's raining!
Seriously, I can't recall the last time I heard rain on the roof. Ridgely's in a wicked drought btw.

Sure, we've had passing thunderstorms through the summer... lot's of threats of rain, but they keep seeming to miss us.

Oh, there ya have it... it was just a few drops (not even a "sprinkle") and it's over now. All of 2 minutes.

Forecast is for "showers" today... riiiiight.
The upside... droughts make for wicked good flying :)

Summer Crazies

If you haven't noticed, I don't post much in the Summer (between Memorial Day and Labor Day). Some of it's that I'm just flat out busy. The other is that I spend a lot less time online. I check my email and read the news in the morning, but other than that, I'm offline.

Now that we're coming up on Labor Day, things quiet down and I get back to the internet a bit.

BTW, sorry... not just yet ;)
I've got some video editing to catch up on.
See ya
Jim

Guitar Hero

Here's Guitar Hero on the big screen.

Solo Hang Gliding


Solo Landing


Oh yeah, He jumped out of a plane too




Can't tell if he liked it

June go bye

Summer in general is busy for me, with June in particular being especially insane.
It kicks off with our annual competition and rolls right along into our annual "fly-in". Of course everyone wants to fly in the summer, so we're always busy as can be. Good times.

It's raining at the moment, so I figured I'd take a sec to catch up on my blog here.

I'll have to dig out the pictures, but John came down recently and I was able to set him free... he now flies solo. :) Yeah kids, you now have two crazy hang gliding brothers.

He also joined in on the latest craze around here... Rock Band. We've had Guitar Hero for a while now, which keeps the guitar fans happy, but there's been nothing for us drum nuts... till now :)

As an added bonus, the singing (yes, it has vocals) is rather impressive. I expected just some Kariokie type setup, but they actually make it work. It registers pitch and has the vocal track backing you so it doesn't have that Kariokie sound, but it does have the Kariokie fun.

It's great being able to have four people play a video game together. Much like Wii Sports where you can have a four player tennis match. It makes for much party fun. The 8 foot projector screen doesn't hurt either (no bumping elbows).

I'm naturally obsessed with the drums. The "tutorial" stuff kinda blows, but the "practice mode" is nothing short of stellar. I'm so hooked that I've ordered a second Wii and drum kit. (I love Wii sports too) In October, Guitar Hero will release a band version too. I'm very excited about this since the drum kit is especially good.

Jim

Been a while

As you may have noticed, I've been a bit busy.
We just finished our annual hang gliding competition. Here's the first cut version of the DVD...

ECC4 Cut1

Now that's some creative graffiti

Adblock

Wow.
I was doing a little bit of computer clean up today. I wound up working on a system that I hadn't installed my adblocking software on. I pulled up a few websites and wow... everything was nearly unusable! I had forgotten what the web looks like without adblockers! What a complete and utter mess!

Step one, pull up Firefox's extension page
Step two, add in adblock and flashblock
Step three... ahhhhhhhhhh

Jim

Geeks

In case you haven't noticed, I don't post as much when I'm in the states. Just a bit more of a mellow life here.

The airport house is geek central these days. It's me, Adam and Zach... all hardcore geeks. Well, we got a movie projector and hooked up the Wii and a computer to it. We have no TV. We have movies on demand over the internet (with netflix). Any TV stuff we download. The Wii is the kicker though. I've never played it on a TV... and now I never can. Once you play bowling in life size, a tv sceen just ain't gonna cut it. Lately we've been playing lots of golf and guitar hero. Hahahahaha... it's insane.

Me and Zach got our car running too. He did the majority of the crap over the winter and I fixed the alternator and belts a few days ago. It's nice to be mobile again. Of course the furthest I really go is a couple miles to the grocery store, but hey... sometimes you NEED some ice cream right?

Got the "phantom" ultralight all nice and cleaned up too (yeah, it's called a phantom). It's nice to be able to just go fly whenever I like... hell, I live at an airport right?!

Well that's all that's going on around here for the moment.
See ya

More NZ

Couple more for ya...

Only a geek would shoot this ;)


This is one of my friends from Dunedin James. He flies hang gliders too. His cast says "I did this rollerskating", which is true.



This is the mountain I get to fly in Queenstown as seen from the airport. Yes, we are that close to big jets.


Sometimes you need to stop and... pick the apples?
Mmmmmm

NZ pics

Ok, here's some NZ ones.
One day we went up to fly the Remarkables Mountain (yup, that's it's name), but it was shall we say, a tad too strong. Peak winds were over 100kph (just over 60mph).

That last one's Gerardo "jacket flying". Open your jacket and jump and it actually pushes you back a bit.

Good times

Delinquent

I'm over my jetlag and the weather sucks, so I have no excuse to not be putting up some pictures.

Kinda funny what comes to roost when you're away for a while....
I left my helmet on my motorcycle tank and forgot to close the visor. A bird found it perfectly suited to being a nest. Hahaha


A mouse found his way into Lance's computer.
Woops.

Ahhh, grasshopper

Wow, wisdom on ... youtube?
... wait much better version...
Music and Life

Hrm... looks like the guy's got a lot out there... have to kill some time and read it I guess.
Allen Watts

Jetlag subsiding

Now I'm at the level of college student... up all night, sleep all day ;)
This would be opposed to the horrid "sleeping twice a day" jetlag you initially get to deal with.

Settling back in. It's cold and windy here, but it's spring so it's on the upslope to warmer days instead of fall.

Good times
Jim

back

jetlag... sleep.. see you

Layover

At Aukland.. short layover.
Queenstown was kinda cool... my plane was delayed so I got to watch my mates at work. We flight right next to the airport. I've not seen it from the ground... let alone from the seat of an airplane. hahahahaha

Ah well... onto the international flight in a few. 12 hours later and a little layover in LAX and it's the moster flight... the one from LA is always the worst cuz you're flying with jetlag... uhg. It'll all be over soon enough.

Jim

Tick Tock

Ah, the long wait... before the long wait.
A couple hours till my flight. I have a few things to do before I go (post office/etc) but it's before 9, so nothing's open. I just wait. And wait.

Jim

Addict

I'm such a freakin junkie.

Today is what we call "stable air". There's not much movement in the air. If it were kayaking, it would be a glassy lake. Most pilots don't even bother to fly on days like this. It's a good bit of effort to get up the hill... after the gondola, it's a 10-15min hike up with a 40lb pack. No worries on days where you're going to spend an hour or so in the air. Today would be a few minutes glide... straight from the top to the bottom. We call them "sledrides" cuz it's like snow sledding.

So, ok... it's not worth it... just hang around the house... maybe take a walk in the park... mellow day right? Uh.... no. Fraid not. What can I say? I can't help myself ;)
What's worse... you think I could just boat around the sky all nice and peaceful like. No. I burn up my altitude quickly with aerobatics (makes you sink about 4 times as fast).

Fortunately, I'm ok with my addiction.
Jim

It's over

But what a wonderful summer it's been.

I leave tomorrow.
It's the last day of Easter here... sunny and warm (70s). Easter is like Labor day for Kiwis. It marks the end of Summer. One last Hura before settling in for winter. My flatmates are busy at work (lots of tourists to fly today). It'll be quiet till the evening. The soaring (staying up in the air) in late season is quite low since the air has few updrafts in it... so I'm hanging around at home cleaning for the move (my flatties are moving to an other place tomorrow too).

It's like a mellow Sunday after a party.

I'm in denial about the hours and hours (and hours) of traveling I'll be doing tomorrow. I like it this way... "I'm not done yet!" hahaahaha. Got some wacky plans for tonight. I've still got 5 cents of fun left ;)

tick tock
Jim

Toothpaste

So I'm over at a friend's house. It's a slow day, so I figure I'll watch a movie. Only catch is that the DVD's pretty scratched up. I pop it in and it eventually plays. I have to skip over some garbled stuff, but it gets going. Naturally, once it gets a good way through the movie... yeah, it dumps.

No worries... toothpaste to the rescue :)
See, toothpaste is a mild abrasive. You can polish up a CD pretty good with it. Not all, but most stuff. Well, it worked like a charm.

Jim

Dunedin

(Duh-Nee-den)

I woke up the other day to my phone ringing... this is odd because I stopped working last week so there's no real reason for someone to be phoning me, esp early. "Jim? It' Hagen, I hear you have a glider for me... I reckin it's on today, you should get down here".

Hrm... phone up the wind station on Coronet Peak... crap weather here. Ok... off to Dunedin it is. Really, what's a four hour drive when there's flying to be done? Chucked a few things in a bag and see ya. I quite fancied a bit of time hanging out with John, Lisa, Hagen and the DFC (Dunedin Flying Crew)... always a good time. And it has been. Crusey and mellow.

Spent the day down at "the pool", soaking in the hot tub and playing in the wave pool. Yeah, the local pool has a wave pool... and a water slide (and no small slide... like there's three different enclosed ways to go down). When we get done with the pool, we get a text from John... "Come over to Sandy Mount, it's on. I've got your gear". Sandy Mount is one of the local flying sites. Spent the rest of the day flying Sandy. Bliss.

Jim

Acrofest

Just back from Acrofest.
It's a fun little competition... mainly paragliders, but me and a couple other guys flew some hanggliders too... mostly my flatmate Gerardo.

Here's some news coverage...
TV3
Jim

Coming to the end of it

Wow... two weeks left... to the day. Yikes! (I leave March 26th)
Summer just flew on by.

It's been an absolute blast, but damn... it's getting cold here now! No-thank-you. I won't be happy to leave Queenstown, but I will be happy to leave the cold.

Fortunately, I have good friends and good times ahead. It's flat as hell, but Maryland is fun too. I'm excited to see all my US friends.

On the docket here before I go... last day of work is tomorrow... then I just do whatever I like. I head directly to Acrofest (no coincidence that it's the day after my last day of work). After Acrofest, I'm heading to Dunedin to hang around with John and Lisa (the guys I worked for for the last two years) and hopefully get some coastal flying in. Then back to Queenstown for the "Warbirds over Wanaka" airshow. After that, I hop a plane and jump the pond.

I think I'm going to head back to MD and get some things sorted. I like dropping in on FL, but I got schedule issues this time... I'd rather not run around with my head cut off. It'll be a nice couple weeks of recovery from jetlag followed by a trip to Phoenix for a hang gliding competition.

Anyway, that's the plan for now.
Who knows what will actually happen ;)
Jim

Mt Ida

Ida... like Idaho
Me, Tom and John took a trip out to Mt Ida for the weekend. Meet up with a bunch of friends from all over the place. Mainly sat around and watched the wind blow. Bit too strong to be flying hang gliders. Oh well... such is March. Good times anyway.

Pics!

Ok, so I finally got around to putting up some pics!
Me, Gera and John did a little hike up the Remarkables Mountain Range (yes, that's it's real name). We drove up most of the way, but it's still a bit of a hike up to the peak (1/2hour?).

Um... the remarks ain't small ;)
I think the top is 6,000ft high?

Me and Ulf hiked Ben Lomond the other day (3hour hike)... I'll get to those a bit later though.
Enjoy.
Jim

A smile

Oh the mighty power of a smile.
I was reminded of this today. If you want to change your outlook and the world you interact with, just smile. It's crazy powerful.

So I was in Fresh Choice (local supermarket), standing in line picking up a little stuff for dinner. Now normally, I'll chat a little with the checkout people. I figure, they're bored as hell and generally seem to welcome a break from the monotony. Mostly I try to get them to talk about their day... good, bad, otherwise. People just feel better when they get the chance to tell someone about silly things like that.

I wasn't feeling like talking though (loooong day) and I only had two things (not much time for chit chat there), but... hrm... what to do. So I just smiled. Bigger than your average polite smile... not huge, but definitely a bit on the goofy smile side. Man what a difference. The check out lady dropped out of highway hypnosis for a bit and lit right up... started to smile. Bingo :)

As I walked back to my car, I noticed (again) how good it felt to brighten up someone's day. But that wasn't it... It was that all it took was a smile.

Still working on it

Still gotta get around to posting those pics. Sorry.
Been busy. Not busy flying, busy with other stuff... "normal" type stuff.

Finally got over to see Ian today!
There are just few nicer people in the world. I'm so happy I finally got a chance to pop over there. Even went to the gym with him and Rob (works for Ian). Yup... imagine me with a bunch of muscle-heads weight training. Think of hanging out with Terry Schutts... eventually you start weight training without even realizing it ;) I'll sleep good tonight.

Now where did I put those photos?
Jim

Busy with other stuff ;)

Sorry.. been busy doing stuff.
Got a bunch of pics, should have time to put them up today (looks potentially windy).
Might have to go visit Ian first.
Jim

GObama!

Came across that when reading some news about him crushing Hillary in Wisconsin (go cheese heads!)
I think it'll be a sad day if Hillary gets the nomination due to superdelegates. I also think there will be rioting in the streets if the supers go against the votes on this.

I'm getting nervous because I always seem to like the one that loses. The outcome will be determined by the superdelegates no matter what (neither can win without them), so the chances of "politics as usual" is pretty high I think.

Anyway....
On with other things :)

I'm feeling much better now. Almost 100%
The weather's warm and sunny again too (it was FREEZING last week!)
Yeah... I'll rub it in... it was 75 deg out. It's 85 now (ahhhhh)

Jim

It's about time

This grabbed my attention
I wouldn't expect behavior like that in any competition... much less from polatitions.
So I did some research.
The more I read, the more I liked the guy.
This wasn't an isolated incident that looked like character. This is how the guy is.

It's been a long time since we've had an inspirational leader. Longer than I've been around anyway.
Have a look.

Some people got together and turned it into this

I look forward to him crushing McCain.

Jailbreak :)

With a price.

Yesterday I was feeling much better. Just in time too as we had a very busy day. We've not had much work lately, so it was nice to have a full on busy day. In fact, the whole time I was sick, I didn't need to fly anyway. I was quite happy to be recovered enough to fly. Well, almost recovered enough, as it would turn out.

I noticed as the day went on, I was losing my voice. Just the same as if I were shouting a lot, but I wasn't shouting. In fact I started talking less and less. Now, my job requires a good amount of talking. But I was limiting things. By the end of the day I sounded like the godfather.

Today I don't sound like anything. I can't talk. I feel fine otherwise, I just can't talk. Well, I can in a sort of "old man in the hospital gasping for air" sort of way. My flatmate's flying the one customer I had on today. Weather's going to hell and the schedule's light, so no worries there. It'll be nice when all this is over though.

Jim

Bleck

I'm horribly up on current events at the moment.
I've been living on my couch for the last day or so fighting a headcold. So I've had way too much time to read the news... all of it. Uhg. I'm feeling quite a bit better now, so hopefully tomorrow I can escape this wonderful little prison.

Jim

It'll come up...

A friend of mine lent me an old "piece of junk" glider to fly. It's old as dirt (in hang gliding terms) and a "stiff horry beast"... "If you crash it, you'll be doing me a favor... I can use the extra space in my garage". I was starting to get the feeling that he didn't like it (or maybe me?).

So yeah, I just had to try it ;)
Let's see how bad this old hunk of junk really is!
I've got this strange fascination with old gliders. Some truly are obnoxious pieces of junk. It's interesting though to see just how far modern gliders have come and to see where certain things came from.

I've been flying an old Moyes Mars lately. It's an old trainer glider and it is a bit stiff. But it's exceptionally light weight and easy to setup. I love it for that.
The other glider in the picture (on the left) is an Airborne Shark. It truly is a stiff beast. It's a fairly modern moderate preformance glider. My flatmate and fellow maniac Gerardo (pronounced Herardo) was flying it.

He'd flown the Apco the other day and deemed it "not so bad".
Unlike the Mars, the Apco takes FOREVER to setup (uhg!), but whatever. It was a cold grey day with no flying, so why not?

So we drove up Coronet.
The wind was blowing down the mountain (not flyable) but would "come up" just enough to tease us into thinking that we "might get off the hill" (fly). It's kinda like waiting for a wave when surfing... you get ready so when it comes, you just go.

So we setup.
Now the worst thing in the world to a hang glider pilot is to "pack up on launch"... to get ready to fly and then not be able to and have to pack the glider back up and drive down the hill.

While we were setting up (takes a while), waves up "good cycles" were coming up the hill... we were getting optomistic... "this might actually work".

Oh yeah, you know where this is going.
After we get our snow suits on "I gotta pee"... yup, the wind starts blowing pretty definitively down the mountain. CRAP! (no more up cycles).

No... we're waiting!
Neither of us showed any signs of wanting to pack it in. We could see each other checking to see if the other wanted to give up... nope. We were both hating waiting and getting less optomistic by the minute (esp with the wind getting worse) but NO... just a little longer.

After an eternity... "ya know what's going to happen?"
"as soon as we give up, it'll come up"
"yup, just a little longer eh?"
"yup"
(an other eternity)

Eventually, Gera gets out of his harness and starts walking around. If he was throwing in the towel, he'd start taking apart his glider... this was just frustration.

After a bit though, we started to very begrudgingly give up. Lots of explatives followed.
Then... yup... the wind died.
Down is bad.
Up is what you want.
But nothing is ok too... you just have to run like hell.
We don't do "no winders" with tandems cuz we have to be ready for them to not run so well, but solo we'll even do a (very little) bit of "downwind".

As I start to charge down the hill (it's a full on sprint in no wind) I hear Gera saying something... "uh, whatever". After I'm in the air, I look back. I thought he was saying something about liking the left launch better (I used the right) and sure enough there's Gera lifting off on the left.

Sweet :)

It's fun to kayak in the rapids from time to time. Tandem flying is the easy stuff... like going out in the family stationwagon... it's nice to take the Ferrai out every now and then.

Oh, and the Apco?
Yeah, pretty nice actually. Takes forever to setup, but flies quite well.
Jim

Reggae Mon

So I head down to the Salvation Army today... What? Closed?
I'm not really sure, but I'm reasonably confident that it's a weekday. It could be Sunday, but I'm pretty sure it's not. So WTF? OH! Riiiight! It's Waitangi Day! (national holliday)
nzhistory.net.nz/politics/waitangiday-introduction

Well that would explain the Circus being in town. We can't land at the High School cuz that's where the big tent is... we have to use the Rugby field.

And... the Reggae Festival down at the Queenstown Gardens.
Big to-do with lots of music and people. So I wandered down to check it out of course. It's going on all day. I think it ends around 10pm cuz it gets dark then. I had some hours to kill. Something struck me as odd (aside from the distinct lack of rednecks), no cops. Big festival, whole town (it's in town)... no cops. None. No need.

I'd be surprised if they don't bring a couple in after dinner time, but you never know. And yeah... this is a serious gun control country... the cops won't even have them.

Ja Mon
Jim

Omarama

Been off flying in the middle of nowhere.. a place called Omarama :)
(one of my favorite places on the planet to fly).
I'll put up more later.

Jim

Fail

Sunset

This place wouldn't be so hard to handle if it wasn't so blasted ugly all the time ;)

3 nutters

Landing on the Steiger range is a blast.
So, well... we had to get our good mate Regan in on the act.

He was keen.


Here he is getting ready to take off... again.


Here's a shot of Gerardo flying just over the range after we took to the air again.
We land on the spine of the mountain just below him.


This gives a good idea of what we're landing on.

The weather's been so good lately that we just take off and climb back up into the sky over the range.
Crazy fun.
Jim

Steiger

Coronet Peak is the main flying site in Queenstown.
The primary takeoff is 2300ft over the valley floor and 2 miles away.
The landing field is below the next mountain over... the Steiger.
The Steiger is a bit lower (only about 1,000ft) but is directly over the landing field.
Most of the Steiger is covered in a pine forest... except the top.

So the other day, my flatmate Gerardo decides... "hey, let's land on the Steiger".
"Sure, sounds fun"

Hahahaha... something you definitely do not get to do back home (on the east coast).


Me after landing


Gera


The view looking down on the landing field.
(the white dot in the middle of the picture is the landing building)

My face feels funny ;)

I'm horrible about going to the dentist. So bad I can't remember the last time I went (well over 10 years ago) But then, I felt my back tooth wasn't as smooth as I figured it should be. Time to go I guess... for the first time, I needed a filling.

Strange process really. Painless (doc says their needles have gotten much better) and quick... 10 minutes. I was expecting so much more pain and time.

The doc said the same thing I've heard any time I've gone to the dentist...
"you had floride in your water"
First thing out of their mouth... every time.
They used to ask if I had... now they just comment on it.
They talk about how they see it all the time... city kids with floride vs country kids without and city kids where they've stopped florinating the water.

And the tooth with the cavity? A wisdom tooth. Came in when I was 25... it never saw floride.

Anyway.
I don't know any different.
From talking to the dentists (on the rare ocassions that I do), I'm happy I had it.
Jim

Soaking

Nothing like a good soaking to break things up a bit :)

Been pretty stellar weather around here lately. Sunny, mid to high 80s, lots of flying.
There's a weird side to it all too. One of my pet names for Queenstown is "Disneyland for adults" (along with "crazytown" and "adrenaline city"). And it is... everything's a little fake and very (very) temporary... if you're here for more than a week or two, you're pretty much a "local". It's a bubble onto itself.

It's nice to escape sometimes (like my last trip to Omarama), but sometimes all it takes is a bit of rain. Big rain = no fly... no town... no hiking... nothing. It's kinda the opposite of growing up, where mom would tell you to "get outside and do something". A rainy day is an excuse to sit inside (read: sleep in) and do nothing... all day.

That works well for a few hours... but then we all start getting itchy. So the phone starts ringing and friends start showing up ;) We start swapping hang gliding videos and whatnot... BSing mostly. Good stuff.

Then the rain broke (like 6pm?)... oh, it stays light here till around 10pm. So we all disperse into the city. I head down to the lake and have a cruise around watching the sun go down and soaking up the "this is why I love it here" vibe.

On my way back... screw it... I'm getting a FergBurger
FergBurgers are easily the best freakin burgers you'll ever have...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergburger
fergburger.com
You can eat in, eat on the sidewalk cafe, or take away. The sidewalk is heated (ski-town) and there's always cool music (seems like a night club often.. common in Queenstown... ha, some places actually double as a nightclub after hours).

Life is good
Jim

Frankton Beach

Ah, once again.
I'll have to get some pictures or something.
Frankton beach is one of my favorite places. It's a small park on the banks of the Frankton Arm (inlet) of lake Wakitipu (the big lake that Queenstown is on). Frankton Beach is cool because, when the wind is right, you can fly there.
And the wind was very right today :)

It's also rather convenient that when the wind is right for Frankton also happens to be when the wind is wrong for everything else... so, oh darn... we can't work ;) We'll just have to go play.

Frankton is a ridge soaring site. The wind comes up the beach, hits a 45 degree incline for 20 yards or so and sets up a standing wave that you can just fly back and forth and back and forth and... you get the idea. It's playland for pilots.

I chose my flat two years ago for the sole reason that it was next to Frankton Beach.
Me and my flatmates headed out there today for some fun.
We took two hang gliders and a paraglider.

At the begining, the wind was too strong for PG, so we "flew" the hang gliders for a bit. I say "flew", because at a beach site, you can fly them without a harness :) We call it "flying monkey style". You climb up onto the frame and hang on. It's much fun. You're only a meter off the ground, so it's no worry.

Things calmed down and smoothed out, so we headed down to the main ridge and played around for hours. Towards the end, some other pilots started showing up and joining in the fun.

Good times
Jim

Slow News

Slow with the news lately.

New place is pretty setup now. We even have a Kitchen Table (we got the livingroom couch first). Internet's humming along. Summer's in full swing. Pretty good.
The season seems a bit slow for now. Suspicion is that it will be a slow summer... all the businesses are down.

I have to dig through some recent photos today. I have a few things meant for here. Tweaking with my little laptop at the moment, so I'm a bit distracted.

Jim

Internet Good :)

Ahhhhh.
After a bunch of waiting and a good long chat with tech support, we're up and running at home.

See, they have this service over here called Xtra broadband (as in Extra). Part of your password is xtra, not extra. No worries, but if you put in the wrong password (like, oh, I don't know... extra), then you not only don't get on, you get locked out.

After a while tweaking with things and pulling my hair out, I got a call back (yup, they called me) explaining this and how to get unlocked.
Bingo

fun fun
silly willy

Keys

Karma was smiling on me today.
But let's step back a bit.

Omarama is a town a few hours North of here. It is the home of world class sailplaning. We also get to fly hang gliders there. It is absolutely mind blowing flying... some of the best in the world. I get out there every year and have loads of fun flying with friends. Well Tuesday was slated to be an Omarama trip. An added bonus was that a few old friends were in town for the trip. I was psyched :)

After a bit of fun local flying, I reached in my pocket to lend a friend the keys to my car... OH SHIT! Yeah, no keys. I instantly knew what had happened. I was messing around doing aerobatics and had my keys in my pocket. Dropping something in the air pretty much garauntees that you're never going to see it again. Dropping it from a couple thousand feet makes it a certainty. And that's exactly what I'd done. Bugger.

I called around and found out that a locksmith would be able to "remove the cylinder" and fix things. In addition to sounding very expensive, this didn't sound fast either since it was new years day. ARG!

On a very long shot, I called the previous owner of the car. He'd given me all the keys, but would "have a look" anyway. Oh yeah, I couldn't find my spare naturally.

Well, Tuesday morning rolls around and I'd given up on the trip... when my phone rings. He's found something that "looks like it might work". I wasn't getting my hopes up. I borrowed my flatmate's van and headed over. I picked up the key, but it indeed looked a bit different. I drove over to my car if for no other reason than to explain to the property owner that it was going to be there for a bit. I didn't even expect the key to fit in the lock... can I tell you how thrilled I was when it actually worked!

Off to Omarama! WOO HOO!
But wait.. there's more :)

The Omarama trip was all I expected and more. I don't have a hang glider over here (just my paraglider) and the weather was very much hang gliding weather. Well I have very good friends. I had many people offering to loan me their gliders. We all had a great time.

When I got back to Queenstown, I still had an other day off. Some old friends are in town teaching paragliding, so I decided to help out. As a bonus, an other friend is in town and just hanging out with us. He flies hang gliders. Well, Lisa suggested that I teach him paragliding for the fun of it... woo hoo.

Well, we're half way through the day, setting up again for an other flight down the training hill when one of the other instructors (from an other school) asks "hey... did anyone lose some keys?"

You've got to be kidding me!!!!
From three thousand feet up, my keys landed on the training hill!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I still can not believe it!

Getting there

Well, now we're on to getting the net setup at home. I should be able to post from my living room rather than up here (up the street a bit). Surfing outdoors is fun and novel, but not when the weather goes cold or rainy ;)
Mmmmmmm.... couch.

Jim

Been Moving

Hey guys.
Been in the process of moving. My new place is in town and currently lacks internet. Unfortunately, it's in a dead spot for the town wireless too. :( I currently go up the sidewalk a bit and sit under my neighbor's tree.

That would be my excuse for not posting much up (and it does have something to do with that), but the real reason I guess is that I've been a bit busy. Of course with the move, but living close to town has a bit of a side effect too... it also means you're next to all the night clubs. My flatmates are from Argentina, which means they like to go out all the time and have "siestas" (to recover). So yeah, I've been a bit nocturnal lately. I mean, there's like twenty or thirty bars in a few blocks... and they don't have cover charges here.

Today hopefully I can get the phone company. Being Christmasstime and all, it's kinda well.. a difficult time to move. We'll see. At least I sorta have wireless, which is plenty.

Jim

Queenstown

I'm not sure there's too many places in the world where you can spend a lazy Saturday down at the local rugby game and watch paragliders landing in the background ;)

Ok, I know of no other place where you can.
I was flying my paraglider when I saw that the rugby league was out for some matches, so I flew over them to see what it all would look like from the air. I landed in the school field across the road and headed over for a watch.

Good fun
Jim

wow

I often find myself thinking... "wow, I get to live here".
Seriously, that's exactly what goes through my head. I just look around, seeing what a stunningly beautiful place this is... "wow". And it's not just that. This is the escape. This isn't exactly "normal" New Zealand. It's populated mainly by tourists. This is where the world goes to party. It's also where everyone comes to "get away from it all". You have this mix of "Adrenalin City" and "crunchy granola hiker's paradise". It's crazy (and I love it for that).
It also dawns on me that part of why I love it here is I'm not stuck here. I come with the seasons and leave with them. It's hard to get too upset about things when they're all going to be changing soon enough.

Jim

Geeking out

Weather's been a bit lower than perfect lately, so I've been getting to know my eeepc.
(see below for what it is)

My opinion of it is still, OMG I love this thing!
It is one badass little linux box.
It comes setup so that non-geeks can very comfortably use it (good job Asus!), but underneath the hood, it's a mechanic's dream.
You have to know what you're doing to get under the hood too, which is very good design.

But that's secondary. It's nice to be able to tweak things the way I like them, but it's what this thing can already do that I love :)

Start off with "boot time". Yeah, 10-15 seconds.
That's right... and it's not "waking up" at the end of that... it's fully up and useable.
Ye Haw.

The wireless is the best I've ever seen... hands down.
For comparison.. My little Nokia 770 thing's wireless range kicks butt... I dropped in on one of the techies at the local municipal wifi place for some tech questions... he started tweaking around on it to get it connected. HE was surprised. "Wow, no one's ever able to connect here... this is normally a dead spot"
Well, this eee thing makes the 770 look bad.

Lets see ... what else...
No hard drive (it's solid state flash)
3 usb 2.0 ports
a built in SSD card reader (that it can easily boot from)

Stupid easy to use.

Happy.

Hrm, so downsides?
Yeah, the keyboard is slightly cramped (to be expected). Still useable.
Battery life is 3 hours or so of continual use. It's enough, but I'll be happier when the extended batteries come out.

Now, I got the expensive one $450.
Mine's a 4gig capacity.
The 2 Gig systems will go for $250.

This is one hell of a laptop for $250!
Jim

Scary

Out of the internet's backwater news media...
First McDonnald's commercial

If it's not scary enough, Ronald is Willard Scott, and he was Willard Scott's idea.
Seriously

Go scrub your brain now.
Jim

Not just a pretty (mountain) face

There's a lovely health benefit to living in New Zealand.
We're allowed to fly off one of the mountains that borders town. We land in the rugby field or school yard. There are few other places I know of where you're able to not only fly over town, but land in it. It's kinda crazy.

Well, to get to the takeoff spot, we take a ride on the gondola. That takes you up to the observation building/resteraunt. But you're not done there. We start a bit higher. So, up the ski lift that goes to the "luge" (downhill racing).

Oh no, that's not it either. After the luge, it's a 10 minute hike up the rest of it. Well, that's 10 minutes if you don't have a 40lb pack to haul up with ya (my paraglider).

And this is serious up-the-mountain stuff... welcome to New Zealand.

I gauge my fitness by how many times I have to take a break. It's always funny to see how soft I've gotten living in the flats at sea level. Day 1... eight times. And I had to rest a while each stop. Today? Two. And I only had to pause for a few seconds. By the end of the summer, I won't need to stop.

It's funny when the commercial paragliding hauler guy (serious 4wheel atv thingy) takes my pack for me... I fly up the track without it ;)

It's something I truly love about this place.
Jim

Asus 701

They're calling it an Ausus Eeepc 701.
It's a TINY laptop.
I mean seriously tiny... about the size of a portable DVD player.

I've wanted one of these suckers since I heard they were going to make them. Simply knowing I was going to be able to get one allowed me to leave my laptop at home.

Well, I had one pre-ordered since they were not going to ship till I left for NZ. You still can't get them back home. Well... they've started showing up here! Yup... I checked the local version of Radio Shack here and they had 3 in stock :) About the same price as in the States too!
They now have 2 in stock.

I'm connected to the municipal Wifi.
I've got my 60 gig external USB drive hooked up.
I've transfered the picture from the card in my camera to the hard drive, by simply plugging it into the built in SD card slot and click-drag. Then I heaved it up here.

Oh yeah, and I was chatting with some people on Skype earlier. Built in mic, built in speakers, built in webcam.

This little monster rocks.
Jim

Sumo!

Got a bit windy the other day.
We had to stop flying.
Not a problem... Nzone (skydiving) and Canyon Swing (bungi) were having a sumo wrestling contest. Free food/beer/fun... why not?

Gotta love this crazy little town
Jim