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Word to your mothers.
Last weekend I went to Krynica and stood on a snowboard for the first time.
Quickly afterwards I fell off again.
This pattern continued for about half an hour, during which I managed to bang up my knees pretty severely and test the snowproofness of my clothing to a degree which probably wouldn't be considered "normal wear" under the terms of the clothing's 1000-year guarantee.
All in all, though, after about 2 hours on the snow, I was riding pretty 'normally' .. No problems going or stopping (face down on occasion, but I still stopped..) .. turning is another matter. I was having a lot of trouble with "Toe-side" turns (where your toes are in the snow and your heels are in the air) .. but it turned out that what I felt were comfortable if not-entirely-tight boots were probably a contributing factor. If you're turning on your heels then your weight is transferred straight to the board and the bindings hold your legs in the right place, but on the toe-side you rely on your boots to hold you, and mine weren't. Just something you have to live with when you hire all your gear. :)
One thing I bought before I went was gloves with built-in soft wrist guards. I had read a bit about this beforehand and given that a basic model with wrist protection didn't cost much more than a decent pair without, it seemed like a good idea.
Another invaluable thing was a home-made bumpad .. in fact I think my bum was the only thing which suffered little or no injury.
Without question there will be a next time, and if I'm lucky there'll be many more after that. But before next time I'll be buying some knee guards too.
Posted by Andrew on
05/02/2006 @ 21:11 +1100
Tags: holidays, snowboarding
I'm off to Perth this morning for 10 days, with my brother and Ela. We're visiting with my cousin, and also spending a few days at Monkey Mia, so we can fu.. see the dolphins.
Should be a fun trip. I'm taking my laptop, so that Filip has something to do when we're at the beach, so I may be checking emails at least.
Catch y'all!
Posted by Marcin on
01/12/2005 @ 14:39 +1100
Tags: blog, holidays
This isn't going to be very exciting. I'm pretty much over my sickness now, and will hopefully find the motivation to start posting interesting things shortly.
I put up a selection of NZ photos on Flickr, in the NZ 2005 set.
I've been looking through the SBW Spring Program and working out what walks we're going to do over the next 3 months. Looks like some good ones there! Will hopefully have a lot of interesting photos to post from those, of various areas of Australia not many people get to see!
Posted by Marcin on
31/08/2005 @ 07:19 +1000
Tags: holidays, snowboarding
Apparently that's Maori for "Greetings to everyone". If not , I apologise to you and your mother.
We've been having a good week in sunny NZ (fucken). We're still waiting for the promised snow. Luckily the conditions haven't been too bad despite the lack of fresh snow, it's kind of slushy ice - almost like those things you get at 7-11 except with a bit more flavour - my favourite is yellow!
The average day is:
- Get up at 7am
- Get up at 7:20am
- Have a breakfast bar, banana, coffee.
- Call reception at around 8am and ask them to get our car around front in 15 minutes - really!
- Drive up to Coronet Peak, park, change shoes to boots. This is around 9am.
- Timo drives back down to the Novotel, gets his ski jacket and drives back to Coronet Peak. Actually, that only happened once.
- Snowboarding until around 2pm with a break for morning coffee and later lunch.
- Back at the Novotel at around 3pm.
- Shower and then nap until about 5pm.
- Have a strong drink with duty free alcohol we bought on the way.
- Go out and eat expensive meal
- Drink some more at random pub.
- Asleep, usually at the Novotel, by 10pm
That wasn't as funny as it could have been, but I just ate a big Fergburger. Boy, was Ferg imrpessed! Now we're catching up on Interet crap for a bit, and then we're off to find a drinking venue for the evening.
Not so many photos this trip (everything looks pretty much the same), but will have some to put up on my return on Saturday.
Posted by Marcin on
24/08/2005 @ 02:34 +1000
Tags: holidays, snowboarding
Getting Around...
If you insist on driving yourself then hiring a motorcycle might be the best option for getting round the village. You'll need to produce an international driver's licence although many motorcycle hire agencies will also accept a clearly visible tattoo.
By law rental agencies are obliged to supply a helmet but this will often be a home-made version, constructed out of spray-painted egg cartons. There have been numerous reports of unsafe motorbikes offered for hire in Queenstown. Before riding check carefully the state of the bike - anything with less than two wheels should be treated with caution.
Remember that New Zealanders drive on the left-hand side of the road except for the period leading up to a full moon at which time the right lane is considered more auspicious. The middle is always a safe bet.
adapted from Phaic Tan by HGB books
Posted by Andrew on
20/08/2005 @ 12:56 +1000
Tags: holidays, snowboarding
I'm off to New Zealand early Saturday morning for a week's snowboarding in Queenstown. Forecast looks good, rain in Queenstown which hopefully means snow in the mountains - if the temperatures are right!
According to Timo there may be "laptop ports" in the hotel room, so I'm thinking of taking the Powerbook for some photo uploading and SnowBlogging™, I'll see how I feel. No doubt it'll cost money to use, so it wouldn't be all the time or anything like that.
Hopefully Zuid can keep you entertained during my absence, if not i'll have to have words with him when I return. Words I tells you!
[Update: "laptop ports" == RJ-45 socket according to the hotel, which == dialup internet. Fuck that. I'd rather just go to an internet cafe for $2/hr or whatever and post from there :)
Posted by Marcin on
18/08/2005 @ 07:38 +1000
Tags: holidays
As Zuid said I have spent the weekend in Parkes, which is about 360km west of Sydney, with my family, my aunty and her husband, and another set of family friends. The aerobatics championship was a bit of a let down, none of the "good" people were there, so there wasn't much to look at. Kind of weird but that's the way it is. Still, saw a few planes doing some aerobatics so I guess it's not all bad.
I also went and saw "The Dish". That is, the CSIRO Radio Telescope which was the focus of the movie called "The Dish" which is an amusing movie. In fact, I was planning on getting it out on DVD later this afternoon and watching it again. The actual radio telescope is pretty huge and impressive, no one was playing cricket on it or anything though.
Anyway, I did visit one cafe, although I didn't have coffee as we just went there for lunch. It was called the "Paragon Cafe" (I assume it doesn't have a website) on the main street of Parkes. It didn't have any particularly "fly tail", in fact in general I didn't see any "fly tail" in the country at all. It must've all been in hiding for the weekend. Actually, no, there was one kind of nice chick at Parkes McDonalds where we had breakfast one day.
On the whole though, it was a nice weekend although we probably spent more time driving places than actually doing things, but that's the way things are in the country I suppose :)
Posted by Marcin on
31/03/2002 @ 20:27 +1000
Tags: holidays, cafe