I’ve visited New Zealand — Aotearoa — twice now. Both trips were a fantastic time and I really enjoyed seeing the country, meeting the people, and enjoying the culture. Often it’s interesting to see how other countries approach issues that arise in your home land.¹

When first I visited New Zealand they had already done away with the one cent coin. In the intervening two years they abandoned the five cent piece. The smallest denomination they have is ten cents and they use Swedish rounding to compensate for values not on the ten cent mark. In the USA the elimination of the one cent coin, which now costs more than one cent to make, has been opposed by the zinc industry and it is just plain ridiculous that companies can fight something that makes sense for our country. Also in New Zealand and Switzerland² the lowest paper denomination is the five dollars/francs and anything below five units is in coin.³

What is this all leading up to? It was hard to pin down for a while, but I’ve become unsatisfied with the state of the nation I call home. For the longest time I never thought about moving out of the USA. I look at how our society in the USA is falling down and I don’t like it. I was always told to try and change the system from within, but when you have a corrupt administration blatantly ignoring the populace what are you supposed to do? Sure, the last election had some hope, but then the ugly bi-partisain nature of our political system reared its head again and showed how it will continue to fail us. There’s always revolution to be sure, but we’re not anywhere near that state.⁴

The Constitution still works, and I have faith that the legal system will work through all the issues, even if it takes a long time to happen. In spite of that I have a feeling of dread that most people don’t really care though. They’re willing to be lead about by the nose, snapping up the cheapest products and latest gadgets they can and giving fuck-all about the world until it impinges on them, and by then it’s very hard to make changes, but they can be made.⁵

New Zealand is the one country I could consider immigrating to. The country was clean, the people friendly, and the government seemed responsible from the discussions with Kiwis that we had. People didn’t seem concerned about showing off if they were wealthy but more about if they were living a good life.⁶

I know that while on vacation a place can seem magical and it’s hard to see the tarnish. I can assure anyone that more research would occur on my part before I jumped in. This kind of decision is not one to make lightly and I’m not going to pack up and move as soon as I can. I’ll wait and see what happens with this next election at the least. I should give our representative process a chance to work, but I do despise the fact that there are only two sides that seem well versed in shouting, disagreeing and railroading just because of perceived opposites with labels.⁷

For sure the decision is made harder because my entire family is in the USA. I’m also still single, which could be a good thing or a bad thing were I to move. Moving 6,729 miles (10,830 km) from all of my friends and family is not something to take lightly. I’ll be thinking this over but one never knows, I might revisit this subject in a month or a year and come to the conclusion that I’d be insane to move. Only time will tell if this bug will stay.

1. Notice, that’s “home land” like where you live, not the fascist “Homeland” like the USA’s security theater department.↩
2. Places I have traveled and payed a little bit of attention.↩
3. With the Swiss having a five franc coin as well↩
4. At least, the levels of oppression that would make me revolt aren’t apparent.↩
5. I too like gadgets but I’m not going to go for consumer gratification over being a citizen.↩
6. We only saw one Hummer the entire time we were there and trucks we did see usually looked like work vehicles and showed it, not showpieces.↩
7. I don’t identify with any political party because I think they’re all flawed. I vote for the candidate that best meets my ideals be they from the Republican party, the Democrat party or the Baby-Mulchers party↩

I’ve been back from New Zealand for a couple of days now. I’m not terribly jet lagged which is good. I do want to return to that fine country as soon as I can.

For now I’ll just have to make due with pictures from the trip.

Sometimes you get your wires crossed. You keep working but you feel like it could be better. For the last three weeks or so I’ve just been telling myself “red is positive, black is ground.” It’s all about keeping my head together, getting progress made on the project I’m on, and generally not screwing up until I get to go on vacation.

In a few days time I’ll be winging my way back to New Zealand for another snowboarding vacation. This time Keith and I will be joined by Cortney, Mark, and Ben. I’m looking forward to meeting Ben (he’s back at Blue Sky) and the other people on the trip. We’ll have our friend Mani as an instructor again so that should be a hoot.

I’ve put wax on the snowboard. I found the NZ power plug adapter. I’ve gotten everything I need for the trip. Now I just have to work on not exploding before I get out of here. I’m getting so excited to go because this will be a good stretch of time off and then I’ll come back and jump back into my project at work. I only wish more friends could have joined us on the trip, that would surely make the time feel like it’s going slower.

The flight is 12.5 hours or so.  I’m kind of looking forward to it.  Hopefully I’ll sleep most of the way and kind of use it as a decompression time. I’ll post updates if I can and for sure once I’m back. Until then you can see a smattering of the pics from our 2005 trip.

Well, now some time has passed since the New Zealand trip and I
figured I should write a post wrapping up the actual snowboarding.

To say I was the most inexperienced rider in our group would be an
understatement the likes of which I’m not about to make. I was the
bottom of the barrel. Everyone else was good and confident and there
I was, the slowest one, falling coming off the lift and all. And to
think I thought I was decent going down there.

After the first
day I did feel more confident because I was doing boardslide spins
going downhill and I had ollied at least a couple of times. As the
days went on I got more comfortable with what Alain was instructing me
on and getting all that down as what I was supposed to be doing while
riding. The one thing I seemed to have a problem with was my arms.
Generally it’s a good idea to have them out and use them to balance.
Somewhere along the way I had picked up the bad habit of keeping them
at my side where they do no good. It took a couple of days, but I
finally broke myself of that habit without thinking of it.

Another bad habit I had was not bending my knees enough. I can’t
stress enough how much more control you have when your knees are bent.
Thankfully my bindings have highbacks that allow you to push them
forward so that they are pushing against the back of your boot. This
causes you to have more forward lean and thus more bend in your knees.
Dialing those in only took a day, but once I had them set I was
rocking on the bent knees.

I had never done any freestyle riding (terrain park with pipe,
kickers, boxes and rails) before and getting to do some showed me how
much more control over your board you learn by riding that way. You
begin to see how learning freestyle helps with freeriding in that you
take the natural bumps and jibs without batting an eye. On the
href=”http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/08/18″>snow cat day there
were wind lips on a field as we came down. Thanks to hitting the much
bigger kickers and rollers at
href=”http://www.snowparknz.com/”>Snow Park I was totally ready
for them and did ollies off of them. I’m pretty sure I would have
just avoided them before the trip, but now I’ll be on the lookout for
things not in the park.

Speaking of park, I really want to go harder in the pipe now. After
watching myself on video in the pipe I was horrified that I barely got
to the halfway point on the wall. While I was riding I thought I was
getting pretty well on up the wall, but the video analysis later that
night shattered that myth.

I feel like the last thing to work on is my personal confidence level.
I was surprised at the steepness of slope I was hitting toward the end
of the trip and then actually quite ashamed of my performance on one
of the last days in Tahoe. We hit a steep icy slope and I did
everything wrong on getting down. I won’t be making that mistake
again thanks to Alain and Mani from
href=”http://www.accesstrips.com”>Access Trips.

So, I’ll work on my confidence and I’ll hit more park. I’ll also be
willing to try much steeper and more difficult routes now. On our
href=”http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2005/08/19″>last day Alain and
I were sitting in the lodge and he said that he was really happy with
how far I had progressed. He also mentioned that he was surprised
that every bit of instruction he gave me I picked up on right away
(except, to me, the arms, but that was only a day or so, especially after
seeing the video of me not using them). That made me feel better and
want to push myself more. For those wanting to learn and have an
awesome time traveling I can’t recommend
href=”http://www.accesstrips.com/”>Access Trips more. The
instructors (all pro at one point) were amazing, patient, friendly,
and willing to work with you until you got it. They took questions,
they explained clearly, and they were great people both on and off the
hill. I’ll be keeping in touch with them as having them as friends is
the least that I would want.

I’ll get back to it this next season in Tahoe. For now I need to
repair my board and make sure all my gear is in good shape and then
riding will begin again in a few short months.

Well, New Zealand was an amazing trip. On the last day I didn’t want
to leave. A few days of rest and then more snowboarding in such a
lovely country would have been perfect.

My favorite place that we stayed was definitely Wanaka. It’s a great
little town that was comfortable and not too pretentious. Queenstown
had a lot and was pretty good too (I mean, href="http://fergburger.co.nz/">Fergburger is there as well as the
Dux de Lux brew pub, both of which you should check out if you’re down
there), but it did seem a bit much of a resort town.

On my return to work I did get a bit depressed walking through the
Mission. I mean, I had to return to urine and feces on the sidewalks,
trash, and people panhandling. I didn’t see any of that in New
Zealand (granted, it could exist, but I didn’t see it). The people
were super friendly and I would like to think I could fit in well down
there. It’s strange how I find myself dreaming of ways to try and get
down there. There’s the food angle, start up a small place that does
one thing really well like Fergburger or href="http://www.freebirds.com/">Freebirds, but I know I don’t
have the experience for that. I really envy Alain and his starting up
Access Travel. He seems happy
doing it and it’s exactly what he wants to do.

But that’s all just dreaming right now, but with the right
determination and chutzpah it could be reality. I’ll just have to
keep working away and maybe something will come to me, but for now,
I’ll keep dreaming of that far away land that was awesome to be in.

Well, August 20th was Keith, Patch, Jake, and I driving from Mt. Potts
back to Queenstown so Patch could catch an afternoon flight. Keith
and I were flying out the next day and Alain drove everyone else to
Christchurch to catch their flights.

Keith and I walked around most of downtown Queenstown and waited for
Alain to show up. We all split a room and had more of the most
excellent Fergburger to top off
our trip.

Sunday the 21st found us getting up, grabbing a muffin for breakfast,
and making our way to the airport. It was the longest one day I’ve
ever had and I’m glad to be back home. I am also sorry to have left
New Zealand though. It’s a beautiful country and I would love to go
back and honestly I really wanted to stay longer. I will not soon
forget this trip and how much fun it was at just the right time in my
life. I got a lot better at snowboarding and I came out only sore,
not injured.

I’m looking forward to the next snow season here and I
hope that I can continue to improve. I guess I’ll write more specific
snowboarding notes later. For now it is time to sleep and get back
into the time stream here at home.

Well, Keith and I were going to do a second snow cat day, but we
started thinking we might like to join the rest of the group at href="http://www.nzski.com/mthutt/">Mt. Hutt. Well, our decision
was made for us when we were told that winds were too high to do the
heli ride up.

A group of us drove the hour or more to Mt. Hutt. I have to say that
the access road, as with almost all of them on the trip, was dirt and
gravel, but this one was the worst we had gone on by a long shot. At
Treble Cone there was some
slim track and a one lane path at one point, but that was nice
compared to the Hutt road.

We got to the mountain and warmed up and and did our first ride. Even
on the chair lift ride up we could tell the snow was pretty crappy.
There were rocks sticking up in places and pebbles in parts of the
groomed fields. It was pretty icy at the top and the snow was okay
towards the bottom. Had the snow cat not been canceled and I had
chosen to goto Mt. Hutt I probably would have been very pissed with
myself.

As it was this was the end of the trip and I was pretty beat. Keith
and I did three runs with Alain and called it quits. I ended up
tagging a rock on the last run and put a gouge in my board I’ll now
have to repair. Oh well, that’s the way it goes.

Today we had to get up the earliest of any day so far, but that’s okay
because breakfast was served and we were getting ready to go snow cat
riding. At Mt. Potts you don’t
take a lift to the slopes or even use one once you’re up there. You
get a heli ride up to the hut on the mountain and then once up there
you ride a snow cat.

The first run was pretty good and they purposely made us go easy to
get warmed up. Then we did a hike up a little bit higher and that was
kind of scary because it was very steep. Gitti (a bronze medal winner
from the Nagano games in our group) gave me some advice on turns and
from then on I was doing it just fine (well, better). The snow wasn’t
super powder, but it was nice. The coolest part was when the sun was
behind you and you could see your own shadow and the snow was shooting
up in a rooster tail behind you.

I took it pretty easy. I pushed myself a little, but not much (no
hikes up too far when the others did) because I still had one more day
of riding to go. The day was the biggest confidence builder I’ve had
so far. We got eleven runs in before the snow cat decided to get
fussy about the fuel filter and it was time to heli back down. Chris
got hurt on the run right before lunch and blew out his knee on a
steep. He’s a good skier and I’m sorry to see him get hurt, but at
least it was towards the end of the trip.

As for Mt. Potts, I’ll come back here again when I come to New Zealand
to snowboard, but I’ll just have to remember that the accommodations
are a bit more basic than other places. That’s okay though, the food,
free pool table, and bar make up for it.

Nothing much exciting today as we just drove the five hours or so
North to Mt. Potts. It’s pretty
remote and there’s a simplicity to that I like.

There is a large hill near here called Mt. Sunday. It’s where the
village of Edoras (home of the Riders of Rohan) was built. It was
very recognizable as you’ll see once I get pictures up.

One of the great things about Mt. Potts is that they include the meals
in your stay. Of course they kind of have to because it’s so far out,
but the food there is excellent and the staff super friendly and
sociable.

src="/SenorTaco/images/freeride-day-10.jpg" />

Our last riding day in Wanaka found us returning to href="http://www.snowparknz.com/">Snow Park for some more
freestyle work. The whole group started on the half pipe and Alain
video taped us from the bottom. I got a few runs in after I got over
the intimidation of the launch hill and the really good riders also
riding there.

After lunch we did the superpipe one more time and then went on to
ride the kicker and the flat boxes more. Keith and I were just
working on that and I landed pretty much every time. The one time I
went to do an ollie off the box I was too far forward and ended up on
my back. Another couple of good runs and the day was over on a good
note.

Tomorrow we drive to Mt. Potts for snow cat riding. The rest day will
be good.

The picture up there is of Keith actually doing an ollie off the box,
something I still have to work on.