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don't count your chickens before they hatch!!

SO listen to this, Its been pouring rain all day so I rode down to the park to make sure the bowl didn't cave in. I stopped at a store on the way to buy a cheap raincoat so I didn't get completely soaked. I buy the coat and put it on in the store and walk outside in the rain. Only that it wasn't raining anymore!!! At somepoint between me going in the store and me purchasing a rain coat, it decided to get all sunny and hot outside!! I couldn't believe it! But you know Im a laid back guy, so I said fuck it I'll just go do some work.. SO I go to the park and get all my shit set up to weld some studs... I pull out all my leads get my magnets out and start welding. I didn't make it 10 minutes before the bottom dropped out and it started pouring rain. I had to pack up all my tools in the rain!! But gues whatt................................I stayed as fry as I could be cause I bought a sweet ass camo rain jacket today!!!!!!!

NZ

US

friends

this is what sarah looks like in america

more friends

one last friend

I have tons of photos and tons of stories to update which I'll do soon...

A forgotten friend..

Today I found an old friend of mine that I had forgotten about for some time now.  I used to sit for hours telling this friend about what was going on in my life and show them pictures.  They would just sit there and take it all in.  I know from other friends that this forgotten friend would spread the stories of my travels for me and even show the pictures I took to everyone.  They never asked for anything in return and after all this time there was no bad blood.  So this morning I decided to sign in to my blog and rekindle this old flame.  So know that I am not gone, and nor have I forgotten about my blog.  My life has been extremely busy lately and I have had no time for things such as my blog.  

A quick recap; The park is done and we opened it to the public last friday.  We had a really hard couple of weeks trying to get it done in time but in the end it turned out awesome.  The opening went off beautifully and had no less than 300 people attend.  I took a good slam right in front of the mayor of christchurch and subsequently ruptured my ear drum.  All in all it went off really well.  

The next day my mate James took up to the mountain to go snowboarding.  It was absolutely beautiful with clear skies that allowed to see all the way to the sea from the mountain.  Good snow with very little ice.  The rest of the week I spent trying to get as many skates in at the bowl as possible.  I am quite bummed to have to  leave the park.  Then yesterday James took me up to the mountain again.  This time we went up with burton to do a demo for a snow shop.  James works for burton and we went up with the rest of the guys from burton along with all of the 12010 boards and bindings for the shop to demo.  It was rad trying out different board setups.  The snow yesterday was amazing.  It had snowed for two days in a row beforehand so the mountain was covered with powder.  All my runs in the morning were on virgin powder making fresh tracks.  I had a lot of fun and am super stoked that james has been taking me up to the snow.  

Well Sarah and I are heading back to the states in less than two weeks marking an end to our New Zealand excursion.  We both look forward to seeing all of our friends and being back in the good ol' U S of A.......

see you soon

Good Morning to You Too....

Two Halves.

I have decided to break this post into two portions.  One dealing strictly with skateboarding and one for everything else that is going on in my life.  

I think I will start with everything else because I have a feeling that if I were to begin with the skateboarding, that I would not have the dedication to go through with telling you all the other interesting things that go on in my day to day life.  The last statement was a bit of a joke, one that only I might think is funny; I am under the belief that my life is not all that interesting.  On the the grand scheme of things one might consider my life interesting, but on a day to day level its pretty normal.  About the only non-skateboarding aspect of my life as of lately has been photography.  I recently bought a new flash which I am absolutely pumped on.  For those of you who are camera literate, it is a dedicated ttl flash.  the nikon sb-600 to be exact.  Nothing too powerful but it still is quite a strong flash.  I am really keen on the ttl because I am not that flash savvy and don't always have the motivation to set up the settings manually.  ttl is an automatic function that works between your camera and your flash.  Both the flash and the camera must posses the capabilities for it to work.  In a nut shell, it adjusts everything in both the flash and the camera to ensure a perfect exposure every time the shutter fires.  Some photos for ya;

Now for all the skateboarding things that have been happening in my life.  I have chosen to include work in the skateboarding portion of this.  Some might be able to debate this decision, but I honestly don't really care that much.  This is my blog and I have made my decision.  You, as the reader, are going to have to deal with it and just move past it.  

Work has been rather interesting lately.  We have made some really good progress on the bowl.  A couple more pours and well will have all the walls done and then only the flat will be left.  On a sour note, with have been having serious problem with vandalism.  A group of kids have been entering the work site at night and messing with our stuff.  It started out as just pulling down some of the forms and having a small fire and has escalated to graffiti.  And we are not talking the artistic beautiful street art, its really bad tagging.  Some crummy name scrawled on the concrete.  The tagging was bad enough, but things have continued to get worse; the day that we came in to find the tagging, we wired all the fence sections together to try and deter them from coming into the site.  It backfired.  The next morning we came to work to discover that every single pin had been removed from the fencing and the entire fence was down.  Not only that, but the little bastards had taken some of the metal poles from the fence and took huge chunks out of semi-wet piece of concrete that we had poured the day before.  They also took rebar and scratched their ugly tag in the new piece.  We are still waiting for word from the council to decide whether they want us to patch over it or if they want us to jackhammer the whole piece out and re-pour it.  The good thing is that they are going to pay for the damage.  Still feel rather gutted to come into work and see something you've put your heart and soul into destroyed by some little maggot that has no clue.  I have yet to take pictures of the destruction yet but I will make sure to post them when I do.  

This was the piece that they vandalized

This is the first vert piece that we have poured. 10' high with 1' of vert

New Zealand is a special place

So I haven't ever really posted anything about the quirks of the place.  Its quite a different place in a lot of special little ways.  I have travelled around a good chunk of the world and New Zealand has lots of little things that are quite unique to them.  First off, mullets are totally in style in New Zealand.  And I'm not talking a wee little hint of a mullet, I'm talking full on 10-80 kentucky waterfall style mullets.  There are more damn mullets here.  The funny thing is that its a fashion statement.  There are business men with full blown mullets.  Apparently its somewhat of a joke and tons of people are just playing a joke on the mullet.  However, the jokes on them, they are the ones wearing a mullet!  Maybe they didn't get the memo that mullets are a government accepted ID for white trash!  Another gem left over from the eighties that the kiwi have fully embraced is the car/truck.  Such beauties as the El Camino and the Ford Falcon are everywhere.  I even saw a brand new double cab car/truck today.  They never stopped making car/trucks over here.  You can get them in any year and tons of brand new ones are on the road.  There is an Australian company called Holden that puts out tons of them every year.  Its really quite funny seeing a well to do business man driving to work in a brand new El Camino sporting a huge mullet.  

Another fashion trend that needs to die is men wearing super short two tone shorts.  I mean really, I cant even think of anything funny to say about that, its just sad.  No body wants to see your upper thighs!  Driving here is kind of fun too.  You can make a U-turn anywhere.  GOing the wrong way? don't wait for an intersection; just turn around!  There are so many other things that are on the same par of ridiculousness as the above, but I don't feel like typing anymore.  Hope everyone is well!

ROBBED!

Well I awoke yesterday to Sarah informing me that my car had been broken into.  What a way to wake up!  I really hate thieves.  Just lazy people who would rather inflict ruin on other people than actually go out and work for their money.  The bastards smashed my window and let themselves in.  Upon first inspection I didn't think that they got off with too much.  I was rather worried that they had taken my skateboard, but for some reason they left it.  I also had a brand new skateboard that had never been ridden which they left as well.  They also left my sleeping bag and my therm-a-rest sleep mat.  They pretty much took everything else.  They took everything from my muddy work boots to my chapstick.  Really who the hell steals chapstick.  They even took a permanent marker that was in my door.  The only thing of mine that was worth some money and really made me mad is that they made off with my camera bag.  My camera is safe, but the bag had all my memory cards, filters, remote, batteries, battery charger, etc.  A bunch of little things that really start to add up in price when you have to buy them again.  Luckily I have backed up all my photos on Sarah's computer.  They also took a brand new pair of skate wheels that my boss had given me for my birthday.  I didn't even get a chance to ride them yet.  Among the other things stolen were my leather-man, my pocket knife, a cycling cap, my sunglasses, my MSR camp stove(they left the pot?!) and my charhart winter work jacket.  I went to work yesterday only to find out that Dave had left his wallet in my car the night before.  His car is in the shop so I had given him a ride to and from work.  Along with all his credit cards and Id's, his wallet held all the receipts from the different suppliers for the park.  There was no cash in the wallet, but none the less the loss of the receipts is a huge nightmare on a city funded job like this.  

It is really quite odd what they took, and even more what they didn't take.  such as taking the stove but not the pot!  or better yet, why take my muddy work boots and my dirty work coat and leave my skateboards.  Maybe he has the same size foot as me.  The good thing is that besides Dave's wallet, everything of mine that was taken is replaceable easily enough.   I just have to get the money together to get the things I need.  The only things that I really cant do without are my boots, memory cards and battery charger for my camera.  Everything else I can easily live without.  

Well I hope all is well with everyone else.  If you see someone breaking into a car, throw something heavy at them and then proceed to tell them that they are a loser and need to get a job.  

Feels like home....

Well I just got home from a squatter show.  Yesterday I met some crusty punks kids at the skatepark and one of them was playing in a band tonight.  It was quite a rad experience.  Full blown crusty punk kids everywhere getting wasted and playing fast loud thrashy punk and metal.  There were five bands in total and all but one of them were pretty good.  Somehow a nu-metal band played but they didn't last too long.  All the punks were throwing bottles and cans at them telling them to get a haircut.  It was damn funny.  

It really felt good to be around a bunch of crusty kids and see patch jackets everywhere.  There was actually another dude wearing a Death shirt.  I felt like I was home again.  

The past couple of days have been pretty slow as far as work goes.  We poured concrete on monday and tuesday and then had the earthwork guys come back to get more stuff in order for more pours.  It pissed down (kiwi for rain) on Wednesday so I took a drive out to methven.  Methven is a ski town about an hour and a half from Christchurch.  I met a guy named Trev a couple of weeks ago that own an indoor skatepark in Methven.  The park wasn't anything special but I still had a good time.  Trevor is a really rad guy.  He is on his 28th consecutive winter.  For the past 14 years he been chasing winters all around the world.  From Vancouver to Japan and heaps of other places.  Needles to say he had some rad stories to tell.  In the park he did have a really fun mini-ramp on which I spent most of my time.  If nothing else it was nice to get out of Christchurch for a bit.  When I was leaving there was an absolutely amazing sunset on the mountains.  Really orange sky that silhouetted the snow covered peaks.  I was so pissed that I didn't have my camera.  Oh well I guess there will be other sunsets to capture.  Its been raining for a couple of days now and I haven't been doing much.  Just waiting for the rain to stop so I can go for a skate.  There's not too much to do here on a rainy day.  Just biding my time till monday, so we can pour some more concrete.  I hope everyone is doing well.

I'll leave you with some pictures of the park, and some of where I was staying with dave.    

Happy birthday to me....

So today marks my 26th year in this world.  Today I did what makes me the happiest; I had a full day of hard labor.  I went to work this morning only to find that some kids had a fire in the deep-end of the bowl over the weekend.  I spent most of the day fixing all the crap they had drug around.  Around lunch, Dave arrived back from the West Coast and we started getting everything ready to start welding some coping tomorrow.  We are looking really good to start pouring some concrete early next week.  Its nice to have some templates in the ground and be able to spy out some lines.  The bowl is going to be super fun.. I can't wait until we finish a portion and have some round-wall to skate on our breaks.  

I am really looking forward to the cheesecake that Sarah has baked me for my birthday.  I love cheesecake almost as much as I love Sarah and haven't had a single slice since I have been in New Zealand.  I'm getting excited like a fat kid!!!!!

Working....

Well today We are finally going to start building the skatepark in New Brighton.  To save on costs, the council has agreed to do all the earthwork for us.  I have some pictures of the earth work they have done so far, but our internet is to slow to upload them.  At some point I will go to an internet cafe and upload heaps of pictures that I have been wanting to show people. 

I am really looking forward to starting the park.  I really hate not working.  Its one thing to be on vacation and not being doing anything; however, since we have stopped riding our bikes I have felt very stagnant.  I have been sitting in our flat until I get restless and then I go skate.  This has been my daily routine since I got back form Dave's.  I have purchased some work clothes which is nice.  I have been wearing the same shirt and pair of pants for two months.  I found a really rad Indy shirt in a thrift store that says "ALL OTHER TRUCKS SUCK"  It has quickly become my favorite shirt.  I guess it doesn't have much competition as my favorite but still.  I have three shirts and they are all pretty dear to me.  I thought about going on and on about my three shirts and what each one means to em but have ultimately decided against it.  I really don't want to bore you with my feelings about some pieces of cloth.  Granted they do make me excited every once in a while and I am glad that while I only have three shirts, they are all special to me.  So instead of going on and on about how much they make me smile, I have ended up going on and on about how I am not going to tell you how much they mean to me.  I really am sorry about that.  

You know I am in a foreign country.  I am sure you knew that but I thought I might tell you again.  Being somewhere completely different has made me do things differently.  One thing that I have been doing that has been quite strange for me is that I have been listening to heaps of old school hip hop.  Everything from the roots, de la soul, Jurassic 5, Run DMC, and shit like that.  Its been rad.  I like it.  But if you would do me a favor and not tell anyone.  It might ruin my reputation.  Its quite funny.  I came to New Zealand to ride my bike and I end up building more skateparks and listening to Hip-Hop.  You never know how things are going to turn out.  

On a side note, I am having trouble embedding pictures from Flickr into my blog.  They embed with out a problem, but the sizes are all wrong and lots of the photo gets cut off.  It really screws up the composition of the photos and to me, they end up looking like crap.  If anyone has any sort of advice on how I might be able to fix this, I would be happy to find out.  Thanks in advance..As for now you can click on any of the pictures and be redirected to the original Flickr page where they look much better..............

keep it real

Note to self......

Do not leave yourself signed into blogger and hand the computer to Sarah.....

Everything posted is right on the money and I am super thankful to have such a great girl at my side.  BUT, I am currently kicking her ass in scrabble!!!

I just wanted to say that...

I have the bestest girlfriend in the world. She makes me coffee, and loves me and runs baths for me when I have muscle soreness. Aint she the best?! Not to mention ridiculously good looking and svelte like a tiger! RAWR!

Also she is so great at Scrabble, and it blows my mind that her vocabulary surpasses mine by leaps and bounds. Damn I love Sarah. I mean, really... Could a man ask for more? I think I'm going to take her out to the movies this weekend and treat her to a delicious seafood dinner. Yeah, that sounds nice. She is superior to me in many, many ways. 

Some time off.......

On Wednesday I drove back to Christchurch early to surprise Sarah.  I took a different mountain pass to enable me to stop by Reefton skatepark.  Pretty fun park with a really fun bowl.  Not too big but the first proper roundwall I have skated in New Zealand.  The park had a decent sized street area with tons of random tranny all over the place.  I had quite a good time doing weird tricks off of random tranny.  Once again I got heaps of weird looks from the little kids at the park.  Other than that there is really nothing new going on.  I'm back in Christchurch and have a few days off before we start the park on Monday.  I am trying to do as little as possible between now and then.  I'm not sure anybody actually reads this blog anymore.  Regardless I still feel somewhat compelled to update it.  I wish I had more exciting things to tell you but I don't.  I've been skating everyday and Sarah's looking for a new job.  Thats about the extent of our lives right now.     

Now for some pictures of Dave's property where I was building boards....

working!

Been working heaps lately.... getting orders out the door and betting through a huge order.  We have several hundred more boards to make before we can start the park so we are pretty hard at it.  Daves wife Lisa has been cooking me absolutely wonderful meals three times a day.  Most of it come from their garden which is awesome.  I am really getting spoiled with the food.  just to give you an idea, we are having lobster tonight.  They like good food.  Now don't let me fool you into believing that I am living in luxury.  The house they live in is quite old.  There is one wood burning stove for heat, so at night we all sit in one small room to stay warm.  There are a couple of leaks through out the house but lucky none are in my room.  Lisa has one right above her head!.  They were going to fix the house up a bit, but are working on building a new house so they decided not to bother.  With all the age this house has it is quite cozy and charming.  I'll post some pictures later.  

while you wait, heres a pic I took on a break from work

hope everyone is doing well, i miss you all

It was nice today

I haven't been doing anything much lately.  I have no job and nothing to do really.  I have been skating a couple of times a day which has been fun.  I did go rock climbing the other day alone.  Sarah doesn't really get down on the rock gym here.  Well about an hour into climbing I ripped a piece of skin off my finger so climbing is out for a wee bit.  I really don't know why I am writing a new blog with nothing to say.  I guess I just wanted to let people know that I'm alive.  I am alive.  Just thought I would let you know.  

Dave North came over to Christchurch the other day and Dave, Cambell, and I laid out the bowl for the council to put the drain in.  Cambell is a local to Christchurch who has park building experience and is going to be on the crew for the New Brighton park.  We laid out the bowl for the city to do some of the earth work as well.  We wont start our work until the 20th of April.  Until then I am going over to Nelson Creek to help out Dave with some boards.  I'm pretty keen to be skating some vert too.  The one place I've been skating only has a five foot pocket.  It is pretty steep though which is rather fun.  5' with 5' trannies.  I get a lot of weird look skating it which is pretty funny.  No one else skates it.  Everyone is preoccupied with doing flip trips and pushing mongo!! (the mongo epidemic is alive and well in New Zealand) 

Just for the record....

So the last post was a little out there for many of my readers.  I would like to assure everyone that I am still indeed drug free.  I am sorry my babbling rant on candy might have led you to believe otherwise.  Its just that I've been eating a lot of candy while here and I get mad at every banana piece I encounter.  Its really a money thing.  I view every banana piece as wasted money hence my anger and rant.  Sorry for any confusion.

On to the good stuff...... A lot of rad things have happened in the last couple of days.  Sarah is officially employed in New Zealand.  She found a job as a bartender and an english pub called "The Bard on Avon."  Its like a five minute bike ride from our flat so its super close.  She also has been employed as a daytime bartender so late night bike rides are not an issue.  I'm sure some of you are saying  "a bartender can make money during the day!"  allow me to let you in on a secret;  It is not customary to tip in New Zealand.  Bartenders are paid an hourly wage so time of day is not an issue.  The minimum wage in NZ is currently $12.50.  Granted I am sure she make more than that.  I actually don't know how much she is making.  She'd be the one to talk to about that.  If you really want to know, tell me and I'll find out for you.  I know people who can give me answers to question like that.  

On another super rad note, I bought a car today........for $600 bucks NZ.  With the current exchange rate its like $340 US.  And the best part is that its not a total piece of shit.  It belonged to a french guy that was flying out of the country in a couple of days.  I waved some cash in his face and told him that I'd buy it right now.  On top of everything its not stolen! I got papers with it.  89 Mitsubishi Lancer.  Its got some dents and scratches and stuff but nothing major.  Its only got 235,000 kms as well.  around 140,000 miles.  Not too bad for $350 bucks.  

I'll test out its mountain capabilities next week.  I have to drive it over Authurs pass to help Dave finish a board order.  

Not much else to say,  I've been skating everyday soaking up the nice weather.  It is supposed to rain tommorow so I might go to the climbing gym.  Hopefully I can talk Sarah into going and we can belay each other.  Their bouldering room is insanely difficult.   

take care ya'll

......

I haven't been able to upload any new photos lately so I am going to treat you with some pre-trip photos... hope you enjoy..