Motorcycle Trip to Napier

Napier is about 5 hours southeast of Auckland on the east coast in Hawkes Bay. I attended a conference on push biking in New Zealand. Luckily I had a free ride via my employer, though now I'm going to have to produce some work out if it... blah blah work blah.

I can split the ride into two parts, there and back. Easy enough.

Getting there entailed packing up and getting the appropriate gear together:


I'm riding on a Suzuki SV650, 2005, with soft side packs, and a waterproof german push bike carrier strapped to the top in green.

Getting there was an easy five hour trip with a halfway point in Taupo where I took a nap beside the Taupo River after eating a risotto stuffed potato at a yummy cafe hmm:



NOTE TO TRAVELERS: between Taupo and Napier on the second half of the journey through an isolated Eastern Oregonish stretch of terrain there is a stretch of road with nary a gas station to be had. I'll leave the untold fun to your imagination but needless to say, I made it...

The ending point was a top floor room overlooking a beautiful NZ coastline, totally worth it. I was exhausted, promptly fell asleep and awoke the next morning to this beautiful sunrise.



The next three days were spent listening to very active bicycle advocates orating freely. Luckily the wine of the region flowed generously to dull my senses. During the day I 'went on site visits' to check out the local bicycle infrastructure on free bikes. There should be more free bikes.


OK now the journey back was definitely the highlight of the trip. It was a physically demanding ride from Napier to Gisborne to Tauranga to Auckland. It took me a week to get the feeling back in my ass. Ok, here's the route on Google Maps:

View Larger Map

All in all the return trip was over 700k on very windy roads, through some of the best road conditions for motorcycling. My favorite stretch was between Napier and Whakatane, it was incredible for the scenery and complete lack of traffic. It smelled like fragapinis the whole way, which is a lot better than somebody else's exhaust.

Enough typing, here's some more photos:

My First Glider Outlanding

Last weekend we went to Matamata for the extended labour day weekend. Thanks unions!

The Piako gliding club flys out of an airstrip just north of Matamata. Saturday the first day was packed, there were a lot of gliders on the field and there were some vintage aircraft pilots that were showing off.

For most of the day I was duty pilot, which means I write down the names and times of everybody else gliding. The Kaimai ranges just to the east were pumpin' and nobody wanted to come down. I don't blame them. Towards the end of the day the bad weather started rolling in and most people were putting their gliders away.

It was obvious that I wasn't going to get up in our club's Twin Astir MW, so I was unlikely going to go up. The Piako club invited me to go up in their PW6 with one of their instructors. I initially said no because I wanted to continue training in the glider I knew with an instructor from my club. Screw that, if it meant getting up in the air, I might as well give it a go.

They attached the tow rope and off we went before I knew it. The PW6 has a notch trim so I set that forward. It was heavy cross winds but the Pawnee powered us through the wind (as opposed to the tired old Cessna DML). I did most of the tow. I think at that point I remembered that the Taupo club has a PW6 where I had previous experienced with this same plane. It is much easier to fly than our club's Twin Astir.

We released at around 2500 feet and headed straight to the nursery hills. I'm not used to flying faster than 60 knots at Whenuapai so the instructor took over and we headed straight for the ridge at about 70-80 knots. When I say straight, I mean literally straight for the range, in what felt like a crash course trajectory and at very high speeds. You can hear the wind going much faster and the plane feels 'tighter'. About 1000 or so meters before the ridge the winds pick us up and send us up as it should.

We experienced some turbulence, but overall it was smooth upward sailing. We cruised over to the waterfall. I told the instructor that I was pretty happy just doing turns around the waterfall. We practiced emergency turns with air brakes, for getting out of cloudy conditions and losing height quickly. This is usually not a problem in Whenuapai, where we are typically eaking out additional height on fleeting thermals.

The weather was picking up, meaning more clouds were coming in and starting to 'sock-in' the range and the cloud base was starting to drop. We were told that we probably should not leave the range for the return flight at any height under 3500. Having reached cloud level we came off the range just short of that, hoping to pick up height on the way back. Unfortunately the cloud base was starting to drop clear across the valley.

All the while the instructor was chuckling in the back, 'the gps unit is no good when it's in the car, haha' Whah? I'm thinking as we are continually doing 'practice' emergency breaking through the clouds. The instructor takes over and we head back to the range to get more height and travel north along the ridge, closer to the field.

We get some more height and our bearings, we had passed north across the railroad crossing and tunnel. These landmarks are of course no use to me because I didn't check out a map before take-off. So I just kept telling the instructor every landmark I saw in hopes that he would remember how to get us back home.

We left the ridge the second time and headed back. I *think* we left the ridge at 3000 feet. We quickly lost a lot of height avoiding clouds. The instructor was no longer chuckling. At about 2000 I started getting worried. There was no airfield in sight and the clouds were dropping quickly.

At his point I was starting to get nervous. My instructor seemed to be doing the best with the conditions that rolled in but I still didn't know his skill level and if he had ever outlanded before this flight. I was mentally preparing myself to take over control and land the glider in the paddock if anything went wrong. All I could remember in my head was Adam mentioning it was best to land on the west side of the river because it's less bumpy.

We were losing height and at about 1800 feet I knew were were going to outland. Luckily, last weekend at Whenuapai, our instructors had devised a simulated out landing using toi tois as a fence line. I wasn't at that stage in my instruction but I was certainly glad I had eavesdropped.

We were now on the west side of the river getting into flat territory. Still no airfield and I think at around 1500 feet the instructor made the decision to outland. We circled around and found a cluster of good looking paddocks. The instructor and myself were both communicating, agreed on a paddock and both confirmed there were no wires or fences. We did a full circuit and landed.

It happened so quickly, I'm glad to say I didn't have to interrupt the instructor to show him my newbie landing skills. It was a very smooth landing and we only took up half the paddock. Though I do remember the fence getting a lot closer during the landing than how far it actually was upon ground inspection. I'll have to remember that for next time.

The instructor starts chuckling again, muttering how his wife was going to kill him for having this happen again and the club was not going to let him live it down. My heart was beating fast and I was very hot from the adrenaline. I physically felt the same way I did after I almost drowned while rafting the Upper Klamath River in Oregon. During that experience I recall thinking my mom would be very upset if I drowned, likewise I was thinking about how worried Adam must have been.

We had lost radio contact with the Piako club shortly after leaving the ridge the second time. The speaker in the front seat of the PW6 is very weak, but I do recall the instructor making numerous attempts to inform the glider base of our predicament. We got out of the glider and the paddock turned out to be quite bumpy and full of cowsh1t. I couldn't figure out how the landing was so smooth. I think my brain is just remembering a smooth landing as one that doesn't end in a crash.

We tried to radio again to no avail. We didn't have any tie down pickets so I was left with the glider to make sure it didn't blow around. I hopped in the back seat to be near the radio. I made another attempt to radio contact. That's when I noticed how little the instructor could see from the back seat. I was imagining how hard it must have been to navigate with that small view window.

At that point I noticed water dripping down my pants. It seems as though I sat on the mouthpiece to a camelback. Uggh, wet cold jeans, who knew how long it would take for my recue. Piako Club called again and I responded, at which time I was able to let them know I was OK. Luckily I just got done with my FRTO training so I sounded real legit. Matamata traffic Glider Papa Kilo.....

The instructor was able to phone in the location at the nearest farm house, because at the glider I was unable to tell anybody where I was. Next thing you know a farmer and all his kids pull up in a pick-up wanting to take a look at the plane. So I acted cool and showed the kids the glider. They assured me that help was just a few minutes away. Nevertheless it was freakin' cold at this point so I hopped in the glider again waiting for support.

Adam had hitched a ride with an advance crew and walked in to give me a beer. The Piako club didn't make me derig the plane in the rain but sent me back to the clubhouse where I had to tell the story to everybody a number of times. I was so amped this wasn't a problem.

It wasn't until five more beers that I was able to have a reasonable nights rest. I usually don't drink but my adrenaline was not going to let me sleep easily.

I had to get my rest for the next day, just in case the ridge was pumpin' and it was. The following day I had a few runs along the ridge and we soared close to 8000 feet (3500 is our limit at Whenuapai). Adam was afraid because of the outlanding I would never want to glide again, luckily it had the opposite effect and I am now anxious to go solo. I was getting distracted by motorcycling but I'll have to focus on gliding now that the weather is going to get better for soaring.

More Photos here

Ride Right Ride Safe Motorcycle Class

I took a motorcycle safety class for intermediates last weekend and somebody was taking a few pictures. Here are a few of mine.



A few differences between US style classes and Kiwi classes
a) You can have a drink if you know what your tolerance limit is vs. the US where they taught no drinking and motorcycling. Not that I would ever drink and ride, cause I'm a little paranoid about these things.
b) The instructors where riding wheelies up and down the runway, whereas in the US the instructors would only ride super conservative during the course training.

Overall I enjoyed the Kiwi class a lot better. The instructors where volunteers and everybody was having a really good time. Except for some of the hog riders who had such big bikes they kept knocking over all the cones. haha none of my cones went down!

Hot-As Garbage Men

I was walking home from the pool and the garbage truck pulls up and out from the back jumps this hot shirtless crew of garbage men. They were wearing their high impact running shoes and running shorts. It's like they were running a marathon behind the garbage truck and just happen to be throwing the recycling in the back.

This country is so fit. Everybody works out a lot it seems.

Other things of interest. They cook eggs on the pizza. They just crack it open on top of the pizza and bake it. It's called an Aussie. Obviously I'm not as fit as anybody else.....mmmm....pizza!

Freaky as flight

Yesterday I went out to the glider field for a flight and the conditions weren't the greatest. The cloud base was at about 800 feet which was easily the lowest that I have ever flow in. We basically towed off the end of the field and were looking for a hole in the clouds to climb into. We got up to 1500 feet and thats about as high as we could get safely. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was raining and the tower was on watch so we were in controlled airspace. It was a good test of my flying ability to be up on that day.

Really the only reason that I went up was to test out a new toy. It is a Compaq Ipaq 3970 with a GPS sleeve running some gliding software called Winpilot. The software functions as a moving map, flight logger, final glide calculator, compass, wind speed calculator, and so much more. People use them for competitions because you program the goals into them and it helps you fly to the goals more effectively. At this point in my gliding I am just using it for data logging and final glide to make sure that I can get back to the field.

I recorded my flight on Sunday and converted it to Google Earth format for your viewing enjoyment. If you don't already have Google Earth installed it is a must have. If you have it installed then click on the following link to view a record of my 11 minute flight. Be sure to angle the camera down so that you can see the profile of the flight. You can also press play on the right and it will do a fly through of my flight. Cool use for technology.

Enjoy: Click to open flight in Google Earth

Trip home to Portland

We went home to Portland earlier this month for a week and a half as our yearly check-in. It was really nice to be home. I think I was a little home sick and missed some stuff about the US but I'm still glad we moved to New Zealand. The family and friends would be the reason we would move back to the states.

We started off with a couple nights in Portland which were much enjoyed. Portland is such a great town. The vibe of Portland is crazy but in a really cool way. People definitely spend the time just to chat. The bicycle traffic jams were good to see.

Our first party was my dad's 60th birthday party/retirement party. Dan(Gene) had been working for some 29 years at Intel and said that he was done last month. Good on him.

The party was on the farm so we were able to have about 60 people show up. There were all sorts of cool people there which were a mix of family, dad's co-workers and friends. There was a huge table of food that got put out which was devoured at a frightening speed. Maybe getting lost in the country trying to find a goat farm makes people hungry.

After the party about ten of the people set up tents and camped out over night. It looked like a wee little hobbit village. I know, I live in New Zealand.

Pretty much the next four days were devoted to eating and shopping. Things are more expensive in NZ so it is good to buy things like clothes and bass amps while stateside. I also bought a Costco sized box of Peppridge Farms Goldfish. Mmmm....


Our friend Dan happened to have two seats left in his three person raft so Roberta and I spent a day floating down the Deschutes River. It is amazingly relaxing on a raft because there is really not much do aside from chill out.

We got back from the rafting trip at 7:00PM, I showered and was playing a board game called Talisman by 8:00. The game happened to take four hours so I wasn't in bed until 3:00. What I forgot was that I had to get up at 6:00AM and do some stuff and then head to a wedding up at Timberline. Needless to say the wedding was rather difficult for me.

The wedding was great, not too formal but more than just some simple party. Mt Hood was a great backdrop for the festivities also.

We had one day to pack before we had to hop on a plane. Roberta and I are good at judging exactly how much crap we can legally check onto a plane. We had 5 checked bags in total. Four of the five bags weighed as close to 50 pounds as possible. We put all the heavy pots and pans and books in our carry on bags since that is free weight if they don't catch you. We found out the hard way that freight M-Bags no longer exist but it all worked out.

The plane trip back wasn't as good without sleeping pills but it wasn't horrible. Our plane out of Portland to San Francisco was late so when we got to SFO we had to run to make our plane to NZ. In NZ we waited at baggage claim until the last bag came out and then they put the sign out "There are no more bags for your flight". Crap. They managed to lose all five of our bags. That wasn't particularly bad since Roberta and I didn't really want to carry 300 pounds of stuff through the airport. AirNZ shuttled the bags to our house the next day. If you get the opportunity then fly Air New Zealand. I have never flow with anyone better.

Back to NZ.


Here's some pictures (30)

Whakapapa pronounced: Fuc-a-popa

Last weekend we went snowboarding at Mt. Ruapehu which is the tallest mountain on the north island at 2797 meters. This year has been a crap year for snow but we decided to go down with some friends to make it fun. We actually went down to procrastinate packing for our trip back to the states on Thursday.

Our friends' mom has a bach(vacation home) at the base of the mountain with 4 bedrooms so we had a nice place to stay. It was a nice old house with a big garden and a stream running through it. Very quiet and relaxing.

The mountain didn't have that much snow but I was on a rental board so bring on the rocks. The snow softened up after lunch and turned out to be pretty good. The main problem was that there were tons of people on very few runs. You were shoulder to should with people who should not have been on the upper lifts.

Then there was our friend Graham. It was his second day snowboarding in his life so I went to visit him on the bunny slope to check his progress. He was kicking ass and making turns so I took him to the top. After a bumpy dismount getting off the lift we were on our way. He was going way too fast for a noob and making some good turns. He didn't have quite the control to dodge people though and he took out four people on his first run down. On the second run I made him promise to limit his takedowns to one on this run. He used his allocation at the top of the run. He is going to be a good boarder.

All in all a great trip.

On a side note: A friend who was board trip with us just moved into this house in Parnell that has 21 bedrooms called "The Big House". It used to be a catholic boarding house and someone bought it and turned it into communal housing. The house has a constitution. There are 21 people living there so all chores and duties are distributed among everyone. Cooking is done by 3 people per night and everyone eats together. Supposedly they have big ass parties with 1000 people. Can't wait to get invited to one.

Weekend trip to Wellington

Christ! It's been a long time since we posted. Going back to work kind of sucks all of my blogging energy right out of me. But, work did pay for a trip down to Welly (short for Wellington) so we decided to make an extended weekend out of it. So here's the blog posty to go with it.

Wellington is a pretty cool city. It's situated on the south of the the north island and is New Zealand's capital. God, I sound like a friggin' tour guide! Wellington is known for it's art, music and general coolness. It reminded me a lot if you combined the capital of Salem (kind of griddy state buildings) and the people of Eugene (art hippie types)and put it on a water front like Seattle (about an 1/8th many people) and throw in a couple of snow peaked mountains in the distance. That's Wellington.

I don't think I'd go back except if I was seeing a show, but it was definitely worth a weekend. The weather was pretty crap, but that's to be expected in the middle of winter.

So here are a few pictures to give you an idea:


And how can we not include a picture of a random cat killing a tree!

Cats stuck to things. Ver 1.0

This is going to be an ongoing series of pictures of our cats stuck to things. Enjoy.

Poor Knights: More Diving

Two weekends ago I went back to the Poor Knight's Island for a dive weekend. It's was really fun.

If you want to see some pictures of the underwater wild life we say go to Margaret's posting.

New Zealand Taxes...

First lesson, do not do taxes after a few...Morning review of previous nights tax adventure - ? How can you get an $15,000 refund if you only paid $12,000 in taxes?

phew! Glad I caught that one...better use the online calculators.

All in all it took about 20 minutes to do my New Zealand taxes online and I ended up owing a little more. bye-bye beer glasses :(

All I can say is that New Zealand taxes are way easier than US taxes. Basically nobody is eligible for anything - payup bitches!

Meat Bombin'

Last night I went to parachute training at the Whenuapai air base. The whole concept is that if something were to go seriously wrong in the glider then we would have a chance of getting out and living to tell about it. With that said, mechanical failures are rare with gliders. If I crash it will most likely be because I did something stupid on landing.

The training was at the air force base where they train the military how to jump. It was like we were all secret agents in a clandestine military facility. In reality we were just a bunch of glider geeks studying self preservation.

The concepts are simple.

1) Make decision to exit glider
2) Jetison canopy
3) Remove straps (Not parachute straps)
4) Exit to the side of the aircraft
5) As soon as you are clear of the plane put both hands on the release and punch out
6) Count to 3 as the parachute inflates
7) Look up and make sure there are no knots or problems with the parachute
8) If there are problems then correct them
9) Assess the wind and pick a landing area
10) Use the steering handles to aim at your landing spot
11) Keep knees and feet together
12) Right before landing turn the lower half of your body into the direction of travel
13) Roll
14) Once you have stopped pull the bottom cables of parachute to deflate it
15) Unstrap your self from parachute
16) Wash pants

If I were to ever have to get out of a plane now then I feel much safer about getting down safely. The instructor said that above 500 feet you could open your parachute and live.

Byron Bay Trippin

Roberta and I are now back in NZ and are already planning our next next vacation. Hmmm.... We are dreaming about Japan, or Thailand, or maybe Vanuatu or Fiji. In the short term we will be coming back to the states in August to visit friends, go to a wedding, and be there for my dad's 60th birthday and retirement party.

Our trip to Australia was great. The security conference was a real eye opener (There is another post coming) and the trip down the east coast of Oz was great.

We start the vacation part by having Roberta's flight on Emirates Air from NZ to OZ canceled with no compensation. Normally the airline would offer some type of discounts on future travel but nope.

I picked Roberta up from the airport in Brisbane and we drove about 2.5 hours south to Byron Bay. Roberta wanted to stop and see Surfers' Paradise but I just told her to imagine Reno with a beach. We pulled into Byron Bay and were only planning on staying for a night or two but when we saw this cute little hippie town we decided to spend our whole vacation there. We would also highly recommend the Byron Central accommodations as they were reasonable priced, walking distance to everything, and nice. In the off season ask them for a deal on multiple nights.

The weather there was as close to perfect as you could get. Nice and warn during the day but not oppressive. The water was warm enough to swim in after a brief period of screaming like a school girl getting used to the temperature. The sand on the beaches reminded me of flour it was so fine.

Our first walk around town we noticed that there were almost more crystal shops than people. You could get all your fire spinning needs filled at a couple shops that only sold fire spinning goods.

And the restaurants.... Oh the restaurants.... We ate well. After leaving the states we haven't had high expectations for Mexican food but we decided to try the Mexican joint anyhow. It turned out to be as good if not better than most of the Mexican food in Portland. Oh great, I just made myself hungry thinking about it, time to cook some burritos.

We took a hike up to the lighthouse and saw two packs of dolphins swimming by. We were hoping to see whales but no luck. We had some extremely good ice cream up at the lighthouse also. Mmmm....

The next day we took a kayak trip into the ocean. I am glad that I did it as a guided tour as the waves started to pick up. We were out in the ocean rolling throw the waves in these tiny sit on top kayaks. Super fun. We didn't end up seeing any dolphins on that trip but it was fine since we got our dolphin fix the day before. On the paddle back in Roberta and I (in a two seater kayak) got to surf in the waves which was great fun.

Supposedly Byron Bay used to be a nice little community of alternative thinking people. Now it is more of an alternative tourist destination. At points it gave me the feeling of being in a hippie zoo. But hey, we were tourists and we hadn't seen real hippies in a while so it was refreshing. When the housing prices went up and all the ferals (crusty hippies) got kicked out they then took over a town called Nimbin up in the hills. We were going to go check it out but were told that the only redeeming feature of Nimbin is the ease of scoring drugs.

Instead we took a recommendation from a nice lady we met in Byron Bay to go to the Sunday market in Bangalow. We were expecting a couple dozen stands with some produce and hand made tile mirrors. We were shocked to see something that looked like a toned down version of the Oregon country fair. There were booths as far as they eye could see and they all had some cool stuff. Back on the topic of food, one booth had a sugar cane press and was making ginger/sugar cane juice. Roberta got this antique tin with a koala bear on it and I got a camphor wood cutting board. There was also this family band playing there that were absolutely amazing. It was this old hillbilly guy with 5 kids who all played a number of different instruments playing old timey songs. It was a little ego deflater in that these kids could rip it up harder than me and they were only 10.

On a side note, I am joining a band right now and are planning our first gig soon. We are a cross between Johny Cash and Pink Floyd.

After leaving the market our next destination was a glider field in Boohna which was closer to Brisbane. We got there and met some really nice glider folk and got to go up in their ASK 21M which is a large two seater self launch glider. We turned the motor off at 2000 AGL and then I took control and we thermalled up to about 6000'. We hauled ass all around the area for an hour and 16 minute flight. We only came down because Roberta was waiting on the ground to go up. She also had a great flight.

We spent the last night in Brisbane and flew out in the morning. Our Emirates flight back to Auckland was 45 minutes late which was the icing on the cake of never flying Emirates again. Air New Zealand is so much nicer in every way.

The Yellow Brick Road in Oz

Currently Roberta and I are in Australia at a little beach town called Byron Bay. If you were to take downtown Ashland and move it to southern California and put it on the beach then that would be Byron Bay. There are almost more crystal shops here than people. It has a good vibe.

Here are some maps to get your orientation on places in Oz.

Byron Bay Map

I originally came to Oz last week for a security conference called AusCert which was really thought provoking. It will require a whole post to itself when I get back. But in the short of things, I realized that the security concerns in Windows might drive me to get a Mac.

AusCert Conference

There was a very interesting talk from an engineer on the One Laptop Per Child project. He designed the hardware and security requirements of the project. If you have not heard of the project it sounds like a good thing.

One Laptop Per Child

Expect more updates when we get back to NZ.

Lost cat == found cat

We recently got a cat door installed so the little terrors(cats) can practice their interrogation techniques on birds when they choose. It is one of the cat doors that has the magnetic lock so that only our cats can get in(or any other cat with a magnet) but we haven't been using it yet.

About a week ago I was walking upstairs in the morning and saw this big black cat in our house. Needless to say Haka and Tica didn't like the idea of sharing their food bowl with this guy. He slinked outside when I yelled at him but I could tell that something wasn't right. I went outside and found that he was extremely skinny and his collar was wrapped around his leg and had been for some time. You could tell by the look in his eyes that he was damn hungry and need a vet quickly. I tried to get his collar off but it was too tight and worn into his skin so I ended up cutting it off with a pair of scissors. He seemed fairly happy about that. Roberta went down and got a small bowl of cat food and some water which he scarfed down. It looks like he hadn't eaten in days.

I ended up taking him to our local vet who handed him off to the SPCA. I got word yesterday from our vet that he got reunited with his owners. Woohoo!!!

I doubt that they will be letting him outside again for a long while.

Blow Jobs in the Viaduct

Last night I went out with some co-workers after work. We ended up in the Viaduct. I had not been to the Viaduct yet, been meaning to do so. Quite the happening place. The Viaduct is this mini-harbour place where fancy boats are parked and there's this walkway around it with lots of bars and restaurants.

We came around the corner and there was this girl giving a blow job in front of all the restaurants and everybody is pointing and laughing. Whoa, didn't want to see that! They stopped after a few minutes. Neil my co-worker turned to me and said last week they saw another couple getting it on full stop!

Well I guess this is where the exhibitionists go. Adam's first thought was "was she a prostitute?" I have no idea, but prostitution is legal in NZ. I just don't know about public acts of sex.

At this point I'm more traumatized by my hangover and the fact that I have to go play a soccer game in a half an hour. My stomach feels like a gurgling, stuffed up and flowing sink. ugh Ah, yes, this is why I don't go out too often...

Congratulations Andrea!

I'm very proud of my little sister. She aced a test to get into a nursing program. She's always wanted to be a nurse. She got a little distracted by a cute little boy named Andre (my nephew), but now she's on a mission. Good on ya!

*Big thanks to Kurt for reformatting my old hard drive and cleaning up my old college computer for Andrea. May she suffer as I did with late night studying! The rewards are worth it.

For every girl and every boy, Yay!

Here's a link to my favorite radio station here in NZ. If you want to hear what all the cool kids in Auckland are listening to, this is it. I recommend listening to it at 7 am our time or 1 pm Portland OR time for the morning show. Then you'll get the title.

Radio 95bfm

Exchange Rates

When I was living in the States I couldn't care less about exchange rates. Now I'm a little obsessed. The kiwi dollar has risen against the US dollar to the highest it has been in 23 years.

This means that in the last six months our kiwi dollar is worth about 15% more against the US dollar. It was .60 kiwi cents to the dollar and now it's about at .75.

The US dollar has also been dropping against the euro as well.

We've been planning on sending some money back to the states to pay down some house debt but we might as well wait to see how high the kiwi dollar gets compared to the US dollar. Plus a regular savings account here gets about 7% interest as compared to 3-5% in the states.

High,stinky, hot, and cold.

Roberta and I had the opportunity to take a week off from work and have a nice vacation. We started if off by heading down to Taupo which is about 4 hours south of Auckland. There is a "World Famous in NZ" glider field there that does week long training courses. Roberta was interested in going solo so this was perfect. When we got there the weather couldn't have been any better for gliding although it could have been a bit warmer in the mornings. Luckily we found a nice natural hot spring river that you could go sit in and bake.

We stayed in bunk rooms on the glider field for our time there and they were really nice. There was this Czechoslovakian guy named Dennis who had some sort of OCD which made him the perfect club mother. He was always running around making sure that everything was done just right and that everyone had what they needed.

I was expecting to go down there and do training myself in the two seaters with an instructor. We did one check flight and he oked me for flying in their PW5(single seater) which was a little scary as I only had about 5 solo flights in the PW5. It turned out nice because the thermals were booming the first couple days and I had a few really good flights.

I took a second check flight to get my ridge orientation. To fly on a ridge you use the up going wind that is striking a ridge face. That means that you need to fly really close to the ridge face, which at times can be fairly nerve wracking. After getting checked out on the ridge I spent two days carving out the corners and having a great time. It really teaches you control because if something goes wrong you don’t have much time to recover.

Roberta was able to get some really good compressed instruction on flying because the weather was so good. She had a number of hour long flights which leads to great instruction time. By the end of the camp she was doing the takeoffs and landings with little help from the instructor. With a couple more days she could have been solo.

The final day that we were supposed to fly there the weather packed in so we decided to head over to Rotorua which is know for its stinkyness due to geothermal activity. The good part about that is it also means there are a ton of hot springs. Roberta was to do the swimming portion of a half triathlon the following day so we just chilled out in Rotorua and did the tourist thing. We checked out out the Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland which was really nice and stinky.

The following day we headed down to the lake where the triathlon was and Roberta and her team got mentally prepared.

Roberta started off the swimming portion in a pack of about 200 people.

If I was doing it I probably would have ran into the water and then scampered back out because of the temperature of the water. I am a cold water weenie though. Their team finished in a good time and everyone seemed to have fun.

It was a fun vacation and good to discover new parts of NZ.

Oh yeah, our cats are still cute.

Click here for more pictures of the trip