A detailed post

so i've had comments from a couple of camps that i am being slack with this. so here is a comprehensive account of what we have been up to recently... this morning because the sun is now coming up earlier, we got up at approx 8.30. haha! nah not like that...
okay - will start with SNOWBOARDING
wooohooo!!! so we went up to cardrona on both tuesday and wednesday a couple of weeks back. fantastic weather! hired our boards off the mountain which meant we could get up there and get going. the first morning was sooooo frustrating! spent a lot of time on our asses - em got it at first better than i did. i was just sitting on the snow seething for quite a while :) at one point i was sooo close to going and renting some skis and ripping up the big slopes but stuck it out. i got my front edge first while em got the back. but neither of us were that great at stopping and my way seemed to be falling down the slope flat on my back! haha! the afternoon's aim was to get the opposite edge which for me meant i had to turn around as my unfit self was unable to stand up on my back edge! but eventually got that too so by the end of the day we were both doing falling leaf on both edges and getting a few clumsy turns on there
day two- ps.. we had sore muscle to the baddest!! which made the morning a bit owee as the muscles loosened up again. i also had the unfortunate occurence of my feet going numb when i was halfway down. potentially problematic. so todays aim was to get the turns going. we went back on the learners (magic carpet) which was quite good coz there was tonnes of lessons around us which we poached the ideas from. hehe! who says you have to pay? so mid morning we both had our front turns going (mine from front to back edge and em's the opposite) and were slowly getting the other turn. so befor lunch we decided to just do it and bust up the chair!! made it on to the chair alright - but getting off was a different story! briar had earlier told us that the best way was just to fall so thats exactly what we did! i like to think i was graceful :) that first chair run was very long... we both fell over multiple times but it was great! i even got some linking turns going.. woohoo!! styling! after lunch we went back up the chair - all in all about 5 times i think. in the end run i only fell over once! yeeaahhh!!
so conclusion... snowboarding = cool once you get it :)
ps... the biggest injury of the day was when em was putting her board back on the bus (which was driven by a cute pink pompom hat wearing boy) and didn't reverse before standing up so slammed her head.. hard.. on the storage lid thingy!! haha!! dumbass!!




right... moving on....
on thursday we cruised back to dunedin for em's grad. was a good weekend. caught up with some people and went to etrusco for em's grad dinner. good times. except... civilisation did not agree with either of us and we got colds. me esp bad. grrr!!! also em wanted to stay longer to spend some time with erwin (her boyfriend). that combined with crap weather on tuesday meant we didn't actually leave til wednesday - only leaving us a few days. still better than staying in the city. el capitan is not built for cities after all!

look how pretty we look :)

went into central via the pig route which means going over the kilmog's north and then busting inland from palmerston. real remote in there (the hills have eyes!) and there was quite a bit of snow around. we stayed that night in st bathans which is a very small town next to a cool blue lake - the result of gold sluicing back in the day. went for a wee walk around the lake with a random dog friend who was barking at the water - we thought he might have been able to see spirits in there - st bathans is known to be haunted. we slept in a potentially creepy site there where i had the worst sleep ever

em and jack the dog - is he barking at ghosts?

next day went and had a cuppa with johnny's dad snowy (johnny is em's old flatty who works at etrusco) who lives near st bathans. he gave us a porterhouse steak to take with us as well. awesome! we were both feeling quite blah so went to alex and wandered around. em tried to parallel park and ended up on the pavement! haha! then went to a random, and definitely freaky, campsite just outside of alex with semi-permanent looking caravans. the hills really do have eyes!!
had to head back to dunnos (again) the next day but went and looked at the clyde dam first and lake dunstan. another stunner of a day (we have been super lucky with the weather - only a wee bit of rain and cold). did an hrs walk of part of the otago rail trail too from alex. was so warm that we stripped down to t shirts! yeah! goodbye pasty arms! then drove back through central via middlemarch. question - who knew mosgiel was so big? they even have traffic lights!!

rail trail photos...