Queenstown Snowboard Jam 2010

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Hi everyone! We hope this blog finds all of you well and enjoying your summer season!! I know it’s been a while since our last blog, but we now have an update on our itinerary and a rough idea of when we’ll be homeward bound. It’s hard to believe we’ve been gone for so long already, but in just a few short months, our visa for New Zealand will be expiring. On October 15th, exactly a year to the day since we left Florida, we will be leaving New Zealand…but not going home just yet!!

It will take twenty hours and three separate flights, but when all is said and done, we will be tackling southeast Asia once again. Our port of entry will be the much-loved Singapore - we just didn’t get enough of it the first time around! Better still, we made friends with a lovely family from Singapore who vacationed here in Queenstown for a month, and they’ve kindly offered us a place to stay during our visit. So we’ll get another look at the glamorous city, this time with the added bonus of a few locals to show us around!

From Singapore, the plan is to travel overland up through Malaysia and into Thailand. Malaysia is definitely the place we know the least about, but we’re starting our research and chatting with friends who have traveled there before. It looks as if the highlights will be the coastal town of Melaka (an old Portuguese trading post), glittering Kuala Lumpur (home of the world’s former tallest building, the Petronas Towers, which you’d recognize from the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones), the Cameron Highlands (known for its cooler temperatures and bountiful tea plantations), and the Chinese settlement of Penang on the northwest coast.

After taking in all of that, we will cross the border and begin the journey, bottom-to-top, all the way up Thailand. After experiencing our very first winter, we can honestly say that we understand why people want to go and lay on a beach for a week (being Floridians, the very notion seemed terribly unexciting to us, as we could do that any ol’ day we wanted to!). Now, though, having not even seen the ocean for months, the idea of lounging under palm trees for a couple of days in the likes of Phuket or Krabi sounds pretty darn good! As an added bonus, one of our friends from Florida is actually moving to Bangkok next month, and has kindly offered us another place to stay and, of course, the grand tour of the city! How’s that for a deal?

The final leg of our journey will be in the far north of Thailand, in the city of Chiang Mai, where I will flex some very out-of-shape muscles and jump right into an intensive three-week course in traditional Thai massage. For what I would pay for a one- or two-day seminar back home, I can study for over 100 hours in Chiang Mai and, best of all, the courses are fully recognized and accredited back in the US. (They’re even taught in English - can’t beat that!) To everyone scratching their heads right now and wondering how “Thai” massage is different from regular “Swedish” massage, allow me to briefly explain. Thai massage is performed on a floor mat (not a table), uses no oil, and, for the self-conscious of the world, does not require the removal of a single article of clothing. A traditional Thai massage lasts in the neighborhood of two hours and is basically an “assisted yoga” of sorts - deep stretching, holding the stretches, and specific pressure points applied to the body. It is insanely relaxing, to the point where you literally feel like mush for days or weeks afterwards. And there aren’t too many therapists in the states who practice Thai massage (and even fewer, I’m sure, who actually studied in Thailand), so hopefully the training will add a little shimmer to my résumé.

All of this will take approximately six or seven weeks, which will put our departure from Bangkok somewhere in the first or second week of December. More than likely (as the flights layover there anyway), we will also stop and visit friends in Seattle for a couple of days on the way back (neither Jeremy nor I have ever been to the northwest, so it should be a nice treat!). And, if I must be totally honest, we figure it will give us one last chance to snowboard before settling back into life in the tropics…

Speaking of snowboarding…if you’re wondering what we’ve been up to for the past month or so, look no further than the Remarkables Ski Field, where we’ve been spending every free afternoon we get! Having finally progressed off the bunny slopes, we’re making full use of the season passes we bought, tackling the beginner runs very successfully and attempting a few of the intermediate runs (not quite as successfully - ha!!). We were having fun and loving it even down on the baby slopes, falling every ten seconds and looking like absolute morons. Our love for the sport has multiplied a hundredfold since we’re getting up the lifts and actually making visible progress with each passing day.

What a rush!!! The cold air on your cheeks, the wind whipping by your ears, the bright sun shining overhead, and everywhere you look - pristine, glimmering white. Often we’re above the level of the clouds, so you look out and just see endless mountaintops above the clouds, and you wonder for a moment if you’re actually in the Himalayas, scaling Everest or something like that! The chair lifts pass over the “terrain parks,” where the more daring try their hand at Olympic or X-Games worthy jumps, rails, boxes, tunnels, and all sorts of crazy obstacles (skiers and snowboarders alike). Jeremy is hoping (with his skateboarding background) to one day attempt some of the park activities. As for myself…it sure looks like fun, but as I’m one of the most uncoordinated persons on the planet, jumping onto icy railings at high speed and sliding down them on a board strapped to my feet sounds like the perfect recipe for disaster. I am very, very content with sticking to the runs, carving through the powder, and enjoying the fresh air. I’ll leave the extreme stuff to the younger, braver, and more graceful athletes!

This past weekend, however, was Queenstown’s annual “Rail Jam,” an X-Games type event that draws competitors from all over NZ, Australia, Europe, Canada, and even a lone American from Utah. They hauled massive trucks full of snow right into the center of town, dumped them, and created an artificial ski slope down on the wharf. Then they lined up two separate rails (one that was round, the other flat, with two small flat rails below it, somewhat resembling handrails on a staircase). We joined half of Queenstown, probably, and watched as thirty or so competitors (skiers and snowboarders) flew down the slope and leapt onto these railings - forwards, backwards, sideways, flipping, spinning, sometimes as much as 540 degrees! Being new to the whole sport, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it - it was an adrenaline rush just to watch it, I can only imagine how exhilarating it must be to attempt! I hope you enjoy some of the photos I snagged at the event - they look stationary, but I can assure you that these guys were moving fast.

So how are we progressing? Jeremy still has the upper hand on me, with his skateboarding background and compact build - he’s taken to it like a pro. He can handle the beginner runs with no problem now and is starting into the intermediate runs (which are considerably steeper and require greater control). Although finally, last Friday, I completed my first whole run without falling - a milestone for me!! I’d been struggling for weeks with one section of this run - probably 500 feet of totally flat terrain. You have to build up your speed coming down off the hill, enough momentum to get across the long flat part, and for the life of me, I just could not get it right. If I had enough speed, I’d lose my balance and fall on the flat. If I watched my speed and had more control, I’d come to a dead stop halfway across. It was maddening! Now, though, I can cross it (nine times out of ten) without incident. I finally mastered exiting the chairlift, too, which is tricky when you have a board attached to one foot and you have to kind of “glide” off and try not to crash into the other three people beside you. It’s an art form, for sure, one that’s much easier for the skiers.

The one hindrance I’m still having is the inescapable fact that the board I purchased is far too long for me (being novices, we didn’t really understand this at the time)…while it’s lightning fast and great for quick stops and cutting through the deeper powder, it’s difficult to do any small, controlled movements that are required for the more advanced runs. (And no, I can’t use Jeremy’s board - his is actually far too short for me, as weight plays a huge factor. So although he and I are the same height, I outweigh him by more than thirty pounds, meaning I’m simply too heavy for his board).

Today, just out of curiosity, I tried out a friend’s board that was 12cm (or about 5 inches) shorter than my own…it might not sound like much, but when it comes to snowboards, every centimeter counts. If my board is a Ferrari, then the board I tried today is a snail…on Valium. In all fairness, we got a massive dumping of snow (finally), so the powder was deep and would’ve slowed my board anyway, but seriously, I couldn’t do a thing on the shorter board. It crawled, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any slower, it came to a dead stop. About a hundred times. All of this in the middle of white-out blizzard conditions and -7C. It was not a very fun day, to say the least. We were up with a huge group of friends, and all of us were frozen solid and frustrated at the poor visibility. I’m going up again tomorrow if the weather clears, back on my long board, which will be perfect for the fresh powder - woo-hoo!!!

For the most part, our falls have resulted in little more than sore tailbones and a few aches and pains, but I did have one rather intense fall last week. It was the day I completed my first perfect run, and I’ll admit it - I got cocky. Figuring I was now invincible, I determined that I was fully able to fly over the top of a short but steep hill and quickly switch from my back edge to the front edge (which involves whipping the board around to face backwards towards the mountain). Sigh. Next thing I know, the front of my board catches, I face-plant into the side of the slope, come down hard on my knees, and slide about, oh…fifty feet or so on my stomach before finally coming to a stop. My knees were screaming and I knew they’d be black and blue before I even stood up (see accompanying photo of how my right knee looks now - ouch!). I valiantly kept going and have been back up every day since - the bruise is ugly, but honestly doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think. At least now I know that I am, in fact, NOT invincible and should not be attempting such radical maneuvers at my current skill level. I’ve since gone down that same hill many times and successfully switched edges, but going at a modest 5 or 10MPH instead of probably 30MPH like I was the first time (I’m an idiot, I know, I know).

When we’re not up on the mountain, you’ll find us still working away at good ol’ Rydges…Jeremy has been promoted to restaurant supervisor for the morning shifts, and I’m finally getting a steady five nights of bar shifts…the only downside being that we’re on totally opposite schedules. Usually we have a couple hours off in the afternoons together, though, sometimes even enough time to sneak up the mountain for an hour or two, so that helps. Hey, in couple months, we’ll be back in Asia and together 24 hours a day…wait, did I think this through??

As soon as we booked our tickets to Singapore, we both actually got a wave of sadness…as much as we’re looking forward to going home and seeing familiar faces, we’ve really come to love Queenstown, we’ve made some amazing friends here, and it’s doubtful we’ll ever live somewhere so breathtakingly beautiful again. We pretty much agreed that if we had the option of extending our visa for another six months or year, we probably would (although, since it’s not an option, no point in dwelling on it, right?). It’s been such a great experience for us, and it’s time to move on to the next thing…whatever that may be!! You guys will laugh, but we’re actually planning our next move around proximity to ski fields (I kid you not). We will of course go back to Florida for a while to regroup, but our long-term plans were going to take us out west, maybe to Arizona, where I have family. Now, though, we’re thinking a little further north…Nevada, Utah, northern Cali…who knows?? We’ve been pouring through all the western ski resorts, though, and getting a feel for the areas that might somewhat resemble Queenstown…

So!! The last weekend of this month, we are heading seven hours east and north to Christchurch for our district convention. We spent four days in Christchurch way back in December, when we first arrived and were trying to buy our car. The drive was gorgeous (remember all those amazing alpine lakes?) back in the summer, so we’re looking forward to seeing all the lakes and mountains blanketed in winter snow (lots of good photos to come!). We’re bunking with some friends from the UK and should have a really nice five days over there (three days at the convention, and two days driving back and forth). We’ve barely been out of Queenstown since we went to Milford Sound back in April, so it will be nice to have a change of scenery.

Hope all is well with everyone back home, we love and miss you all and are looking forward to seeing your smiling faces about four months from now!! I'd love to keep writing but I've gotta go meet some girlfriends and hitchhike up the mountain...

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Comments

[anonymous]

Amy, you guys should move o Jackson Hole, Wyoming.... You are gonna love it there!!!! I think it will remind you of Queenstown:>

[Joe Smuin]

Aha!
Amy and Jeremy: I have kind of wondered about tires and traction down there. This image shows equipment every true Canadian living outside of the lower coastal area of British Columbia knows about. Did you have to put these ones on yourselves? Joe

[Joe Smuin]

Whiteout, you say??
Whiteout, phooey! :>) Them Kiwis are big sissies!! When you can't see the closest cars from where you are standing when you took the photo - that's more like white-out conditions that northern mid-westerners and Canadian prairie folks consider a white-out. Or likewise for folks in the coastal mountains. Still, I'd agree that you wouldn't want to lose your bearings out there in those conditions, most especially if you didn't know the terrain. Joe

[Joe Smuin]

As usual.
Amy and Jeremy: As usual, great photos and a great story. To tell you the truth, I'm a little bummed that your stay in NZ is coming to a close. You have absolutely no idea how thoroughly I've enjoyed your blogs and seeing your photos. In your last blog, you answered many of my questions and thank you for that, but one last one remains: you state that the standard of living is lower - which doesn't come as a complete surprise to me - in terms of material comforts and goods, but what about equity in society? Do you see the howling gaps between the comfortable and the less well-off to the extent that is so apparent in the United States? Do you think the people are happier or less happy there than the society you lived amongst in Florida? From what little I've seen through your photos and comments, it looks to me that a case could be made for a less consumer-oriented society if fresh air and beauty is the end result. In spite of the costs and the inconveniences, I can well imagine that you will leave Queenstown with more than a little twinge of regret. How wonderful you have had this experience. I highly recommend that you folks have a look at the American Pacific northwest if snow-boarding is going to have a permanent place in your life. You might want to have a look at the Wenatchee or Spokane areas of Washington State. This is much drier country, not so much rain like Seattle, but good ski areas are easily accessed from those places. Portland, Oregon, is a particularly beautiful area, but it gets more rain. Still, skiing is not far away. Leavenworth, WA., is a really neat little tourist town on the east side of the Cascades where folks with your experience might not have much trouble finding work. This is about three hours east of Seattle. hugs, Joe

[Aerogers]

Response to Anonymous
Funny, you are the second person today to mention Jackson Hole. Even funnier is that I've set my last two novels there! Maybe everybody is right...

[Aerogers]

Hi Joe
We're sorry our adventure is coming to an end too! Still plenty to see and do yet, though, not to worry. To answer your question about society here, no, there does not appear to the class distinction and visible gaps that you'd see back home, at least not here in Queenstown. I think that the people here are content and appreciative for what they have, materially and in the way of the natural beauty of the place. There is an incredibly strong sense of community here, too, that is non-existent in a big city back home - everyone actually knows their neighbors here, and if you go into town, you see dozens of people that you know all over the place. That is a huge change and quite refreshing, actually! It will be strange to return to a big city and get "lost in the crowd" again. And yes, when it comes to snow, these guys are sissies (sorry). Living in a "ski" town, you'd think they'd be a little better equipped to handle such conditions!! And thanks for the tips on the NW. To be honest, I still think that year-round, those regions would just be too cold for me personally (though I'm sure they have central heating - something I'm dreaming about as I shiver in my 8C house!)...I think we'll stay farther south so we still get the nice warm spring, summer, and fall, but within driving proximity to some ski areas. Everyone keeps recommending Colorado or Wyoming, which are equally beautiful but definitely too cold for me!! And as far as the snow chains, that was on a friend's car, and he put them on, although we did one time back in June put ours on (with some assistance, of course). What a pain in the neck!! :-)

[Joe Smuin]

Pacific Northwest
Hi Amy and Jeremy: Colorado and Wyoming WILL be cold and unpleasantly so. That's what makes the difference from those places and the PNW. Seattle gets a bit of snow, but very seldom -10 Celsius or lower. Lots of rain ... it's damp, but I think you'd find the climate a LOT like NZ where you've been on the South Island. Portland is a bit drier and a bit cooler, but still MUCH warmer than inland points. The major difference from NZ is that in the PNW, wherever you go, the houses will be properly heated, no matter how old they are. More to follow in a few days. We are moving out the valley in a couple of days to a place called Chilliwack, BC., so will catch you up again in a week or so. Stay safe on the slopes in the meantime. hugs, Joe

[Bill Brown]

Having Fun
This is time of a lifetime! You guys seems to be having so much fun you make my life seems boring. nyway I am so happy for you guys. This is the best time to do what you are doing. Take care of yourselves, and God bless! Bill and Donna.