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.