Trip of a Lifetime

Two Weeks Left!

Hey everyone! Apologies for not posting very often of late, I've been incredibly busy for a change! I've only got two weeks left, as this post's title suggests, and I've still got to do the entire south island of New Zealand. Things will be tight, but it can be done! Let's just hope I don't get stuck somewhere and spend a lot longer in New Zealand than I was hoping... I'd love to show you guys some pictures of the amazing things I've seen over the past week, but this computer is a pile of dung, using windows 98, and it can't figure out my camera. Stone aged piece of... Anyway, I can still tell you a bit about my travels, which is not nearly as cool, but all I can manage given the present situation. Hey, at least the net is free! And thank God for that... I used it last night for about 5 hours, getting my university courses in order, planning, registering, changing my mind a few times, and finally giving up and going to bed. This has been the lowpoint of my last week (Though I'm glad it's over, I can forget about university for a little while longer now!), as I've been rather busy, climbing mountains and bussing around the country. The coolest thing I've done is hike Tongariro crossing - What a fantastic time! It wasn't nearly as gruelling as I expected, and I got to climb almost all the way up the top of a very famous mountain, or so I'm told - Has anyone seen that movie, Lord Of The Rings? Kay, well apparently there's this mountain called Mount Doom in this movie (Can't say any of this rings a bell, honestly...), and apparently that's the mountain I climbed. I got some amazing pictures of it too... Stupid windows 98... I'll show them to you guys later on, when I get a free day to putz about the internet and throw some pictures up. On the way down the mountain, though, was the very best part. Someone further up dropped their water bottle, which went whizzing past me at about 100 mph, flying down the steep icy hill as fast as gravity could allow. Luckily we were provided with clamp-on spikes and such, to keep us from doing the same. And then I thought... You know... Why the hell don't I launch myself down the hill at 100 mph! Having so much sledding experience from so many childhood winters in Canada, I decided to give it a try. I asked the guide first, of course, if there were any dropoffs or cliffs or... Polar Bears... or anything that might slaughter me were I traveling at 100 mph. he told me there was nothing there but snow, but he didn't think that launching myself headfirst down the hill with spikes on my feet and a bag on my back was a good idea. I, of course, took no heed of this warning and began my slide. Absolutely fantastic. I passed about 20 people on the way down, all of which I'm sure saw the Canadian flag on my back and thought "I guess they do this after they build their igloos...", but eventually some of them tried it too. I ended up at the bottom of the hill, about 300 meters down from where I started, and all I wanted to do was climb back up and do it again. So I did! I can tell you, I slept well that night... And the experience reminded me a lot of my time down in Elbow Park, sledding with my best friends Riley and Dan. Can't wait to see you guys, by the way. Well, with that, I'm off to visit a large museum in Wellington, of which I know not the name or contents... The girls are dragging me out. *Sigh*... It's a hard life kids, it's a hard life. Don't get too comfy over there in Kelowna, I'll be crashing that party in T-minus two weeks! See you then! Spiker

posted by Spiker @ 4:25 pm