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Published: October 6th 2010
Things To Do When You Turn 28:
1. Quit your job.
2. Take an impromptu samba lesson from your friendly Brazilian workmate.
3. Spontaneously decide to jump off a cliff on the world's highest swing, including a 210-foot free fall and (count 'em) 1000-foot "swing" over a narrow river valley.
4. Drag your petrified husband on said canyon swing.
5. Collapse in overwhelmed relief that you actually survived said canyon swing.
6. Go to bed at 9pm because you ain't as young as you used to be...
Some of you may be receiving our last three blogs all at once, because I was just notified that a lot of blog alerts were never sent last week when I published our last two (about our eighties party and our day on the mountain)...so if you got hit with all of these at once...sorry about that!! Lots of reading and photos to catch up on, I guess...
Anyway, Jeremy and I have officially (as of yesterday) joined the land of the unemployed!! (This, coincidentally, just happened to fall on my 28th birthday). Yes, our final shift at Rydges hotel commenced at 6am yesterday and ended just before noon (and with a
free samba lesson from my Brazilian workmate, Diogo)! Feeling incredibly, stupidly relieved that we didn't have to work there anymore, we spontaneously decided to jump off a perfectly good canyon ledge, fall over two-hundred feet, and swing one-thousand feet across it. Yes, a good time was had by all...the photos shall tell the tale!!
To be fair, the swing actually wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. The anticipation is the worst part (made worse by the sick-minded guys who run the thing). One of them "forgot" to tighten our harnesses (as we're dangling precariously over the ledge of the canyon)...all a joke, of course, but it's enough to give you a heart attack. Once we're securely dangling...we're given the option, "Okay, for Team America...countdown or surprise?" The video is priceless, because as I'm in the middle of turning my head to say, "Countdown, please" - WOOSH!!!!! He releases us with no warning whatsoever. Down, down, down we go, freefalling for a good four or five seconds before the "arc" begins and you swing, light as a feather, high above the canyon floor. As we're being pulled back up, one of the guys working the swing says
to the other: "Good set of vocal chords on that one" (being me, of course, who screamed bloody murder from the surprise release). It was scary, it was fun, it was an awesome way to ring in my 28th year and not feel like such an old lady. (To be honest, though, the Skycoaster in Kissimmee and the Big Shot on top of Stratosphere in Las Vegas are both much scarier than this one was). Not that I'm complaining. It was well, well worth it.
Meanwhile, we are actually in the middle of stressing about all the things we have to do before we leave the country...first and foremost being the sale of our car. The buyer in Christchurch has (understandably) had to back out, seeing as though the city is still in the throws of massive aftershocks from the earthquake and no one is doing much buying or selling at the moment. Now we're leaving NZ in eight days and we have a vehicle sitting here with no home to go to! Not to mention the joys of packing, deciding what to take to Asia, what to send home, what to leave behind here...you'd be amazed at the
amount of junk we've accumulated over the past year! *Anxious sigh* (And yes, it feels ridiculous to be packing our snowboarding pants and scarves and writing FLORIDA for the destination on the box.)
So what's new? Well, I am officially registered for 3 weeks of Thai massage training in Chiang Mai, Thailand, starting on the 8th of November. That will be exciting! Jeremy, I'm sure, will find some activity to keep himself entertained while I'm in school all day...to be honest, we've barely given any thought to our plans for the three weeks before Chiang Mai, as we make our way up from Singapore through Malaysia and into southern Thailand. We are going to go pure backpacker style and just "wing it" and see where we end up! Right now, we're so wrapped up in our last few weeks here, spending time with all our friends, getting up the mountain as often as possible, and taking care of all the necessary arrangements...our Asia trip has definitely fallen onto the back burner. Ah, well...I'm sure we'll have just as great a time on the second go-around as the first!
The snowboarding has been coming along fantastically...the past week, we've
The Dynamic Trio
Jeremy's last shift with his breakfast crew - Diogo (Brazil) and Atsuko (Japan)made it up five out of seven days! The spring snow is just gorgeous...soft, slushy, lightning fast, and plenty of warm sunshine (we're all up there in short sleeves now)...I had my first fall-free day on Sunday and, on Monday, went down my first black diamond run (which is loaded with all sorts of crazy jumps and obstacles for the fearless - I stayed on the ground and just wound my way down the run)...amazing, amazing, amazing. I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do when we get back to flat Florida. I think the mountain is in our blood now! (On a side note, one of our friends from work just scored himself a winter ski job in Vail, Colorado, and invited us to come and visit this winter when we get back...gee, let me think...YEP, we'll be there!!)
Now that we're not selling our car in Christchurch, we're staying here in Queenstown all the way through the 14th (next Thursday), when we'll then fly to CHCH, stay overnight, and catch our early flight out (the first of three) towards Singapore. It wasn't exactly the plan, as we were going to swing back through Balclutha, visit
our old friends there, and hang on Kate and Steve's farm for a few days...but alas, it wasn't meant to be. We're very much hoping our car sells before we go; otherwise, we shall entrust it to a friend here to sell for us after we leave! It's a strange sensation, as we went through these same exact steps exactly one year ago before leaving the states...selling cars, quitting jobs, deciding what to send and what to leave behind...it's quite bizarre to be doing it all in reverse. All of our friends here are telling us how much we'll be missed, and that is a nice feeling, I have to admit, knowing that we've been able to make some true and wonderful friends just in the short amount of time we've been here. Having been gone officially one week of shy of a year, though, it will be nice to get home and see some familiar faces once again, too...
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shine
non-member comment
great! incredible time and blogs you have shared with us. Thank you. Enjoy the last drop of it!