After what was possibly the worst flight ever, and what was most definitely the most inefficent immigration process I’ve ever been apart of, I made it up to Whistler.

I slept that first night. Like someone who had forgotten what sleep was.

I had one full day at Whistler. A single day, and oh goodness, it was not wasted. I stayed in a hostel in the complex used by the Olympic athletes, and let me tell you: it was the shiniest, nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. Typically, I was randomly bunking in with two Australians. Apparently between them and us Kiwis, we’re quietly infiltrating the world.

Whistler village was pretty, and I appreciated that starbucks was everywhere, and had free wifi. I even eventually came to appreciate their hot chocolates, and that they kept their stores warm. I wasn’t in the village for long, though the main gondolas leave from there, which is kinda cool.

The snow? Phenomenal. A little heavier than talcom powder, but not by much. They’d had snow every night for the last few weeks, so I was pretty spoilt with the knee high drifts! The blackcomb side was covered in cloud, so after lunch I adventured across the peak2peak gondola (which had a glass bottom which wigged me out. I didn’t realise how high it was!) and up the whistler side, where the view above the clouds was absolutely amazing. Breathtaking, even.

The view from the Peak 2 Peak Gondola

Climbing over the Olympic Monument at the Whistler Peak

The View from Whistler Peak

Proof I made it to Whistler. Yeah! List Number 28

By the end of the day, as a straggler I’d been picked up by a few people who either felt that I couldn’t possibly ride by myself, or was amused by my accent. It was pretty interesting the way that happened, but I was happy for the company.

I made friends with two boys (Paul + Stu) from somewhere up North (Prince George??) which was amusing. In the hot tub we met another couple, and we all ended up partying that night. And oh goodness, it was alot of fun.

There was sitting in hot tubs outside as it snowed which was amazing, and then there was wandering around the village. There was an irish pup that made brilliant pizza and crappy cocktails, an amsterdam cafe where english boys taught us drinking games, and I taught them fuzzy duck + ship came into the harbour. There was an awful lot of jager bombs and even more vodka redbulls. There was dancing and flirting at Maxx Fish, and getting kicked out at 3 in the morning. There was dancing in frozen streets, and really chilled out taxi drivers.

All in all, one of the more brilliant nights out I’ve had.

Still, it felt weird not to have the crew around. To be drinking with strangers, and not have my best friends to exchange sly looks with. I miss the people at home. It would have been absolutely epic to have them all here. Pity no one has figured out how to apparate, yet.

Things I learnt:
* Its a washroom, not a toilet.
* A line up, not a queue.
* Vodka Lemon Lime is actually called a Vodka Slime, and you’ll be mocked for drinking it. I don’t know why.
* Don’t let them switch out the jager in a jager bomb for anything else. It’ll be disgusting, and you’ll feel more sick than if you just had the jager.
* Canadians really do say ‘aye’ and often, but don’t appreciate it when you laugh every time they do.
* Kiwi’s + Australians are everywhere. You’ll discover you like Australians more than you thought you did.

Up Next: Vancouver.

[Edit: I was a bit hungover when I wrote this, and posted it a little early. Google Reader is pretty quick on its toes with pushing it to the feed! Why isn't there a feed delay feature for moments like this?? So anyway, apologies if you read this well before I posted it. Accident!]

Last week, Lyth and I took a few days off work, and drove down south to the snow. To be honest, we took it pretty easy. We spent a half day at Turoa (soft snow, unlimited vis, no queues, manageable wind – nice!) and a full day at Whakapapa (super soft snow, still making fresh tracks after lunch, unlimited vis, snow in the afternoon) so that was pretty sweet.

The other two days were spent eating pudding for breakfast, and watching an awful lot of downloaded tv (Top Gear, Band of Brothers, Pushing Daises, Mad Men . . . ). We visited the National Trout Centre, which was easily the best $2 I’ve spent ($2 gets you a bag of pellets) and it was super novel feeding the fish, and watching the ruckus caused.

We also spent an inordinate amount of time at Tokaanu’s geothermic hot pools. It’s meant to be $9 for 20 minutes for a private pool, but we easily spent an hour and a half plus soaking up the warmth – they were pretty generous! And I adore being that warm. What’s more, part of the pool (or all of the pool, if you’re in #5) is open to the heavens, which is delightful when its raining.

On the drive back (which was delightfully done in daylight, and not after dark) I somehow lost a whole bunch of brain cells, and convinced myself that there were all these rural houses who had yellow flags with the WordPress logo on it. It was a little weird the first time, but after we got to five flags I wanted to steal one to get a closer look. Well, we did steal one: lo and behold it was missing the fat bit on the top left of the ‘W’. I’d stolen a Waikato Times Flag. Someone was going to miss out on getting their newspaper.

I also stupidly decided that because I’m not sure when I’ll be driving around the country again, I wanted my 365 to be in a field with cows. So after we stole the flag, I picked a field, and trudged off towards the cows. Bad idea, super bad idea. I’d forgotten that most of the country had just had 4 days of torrential rain. So I was trudging through what looked like grass, but was really a cold, sticky mud puddle that sucked your feet in with each step. After I got back to the car, my pink+blue chucks were not pink or blue anymore. My socks (which used to be yellow) were now a rather disgusting brown. Still, its just mud. And I waved my flag like my feet weren’t being cased in frozen mud. Lyth laughed at me. And said this is why I’m the best to go on road trips with. I took it as a compliment.

But on the whole it was fantastic. There was a crazy amount of driving, and naps in the car, and playing a stupid amount of iphone games (Oh doodlejump! Oh creeps!). There was eating a stupid amount of food and sleeping in, and an undefeated champion of Gin (woo!). There was rain, and snow, and sore muscles (and even more sore tailbones…) and clambering over rocks and visiting the boundary line.

All in all, a pretty brilliant long weekend, really. :)

Last weekend a few of us drove across the country to Mount Ruapehu. And even though I’ve driven the way a million, billion times, I’m still struck by how pretty New Zealand can be.

I have to say, I love this drive. Is there a particular drive that you are loving right now??

I forgot to mention that I guest posted over at casadekaloi.com while the brilliant Stephanie is away in Hawaii with her gorgeous family! Go check it out, if you have a spare moment :)

Snowplanet, the giant freezer filled with “snow”, has had this awesome deal. For the months of January – February you can ride 6pm – 10pm for $19. NINETEEN DOLLARS! That actually blows my mind, and needless to say a bunch of us were up there as much as we could be.

And perhaps it’s just that I haven’t been on a board since October, or that half my reader is filled with posts about snow, but I was pretty keen to get up there (even though everyone knows that Snowplanet has the tendency to be boring after the first little while. What with the two minutes up, twenty seconds down ratio).

And the first time was pretty awesome. We hit the boxes, and bailed and threw ourselves off jumps. I taught Zes how to not fall on his face as much, and my girl JZ taught me to be a bit more brave. The second time they’d changed up the terrain a bit more, and we hit the giant jump, and tried to throw ones off the mini ramps (we’re still learning this part, I can’t land it clean, I’m still turning as I land). Lyth even let me ‘instruct’ him a little, which made me feel like I knew alot more than I thought I did. But after a while, we were just bombing it top to bottom, trying to find a way to hit the terrain in a way we hadn’t already done.

And, after a while you make your own fun:

Like jumping shots with your gear in the carpark.

Sometimes going to a giant freezer can be brilliant. Other times you realise it’s the people you’re with that make it awesome.

I wanted to post this on Wednesday, but since Wednesday I’ve been fighting with After Effects something horrid. I’ve never used it before, but figured if I could use Photoshop reasonably well then pfft, using AE with a single specific, basic objective I should be able to work it out.

Soooo not the case. Using AE was a struggle. I was constantly fighting with it to get it to do what I wanted. And when it came time to publish? Aaaack. I’ve been ready to publish something that looks like a video clip since Wednesday afternoon. The first few times I got no sound. Then I got sound, but inverse colours. And when I finally did get something with the right colours, the right sound, in the right order? It was 2GB’s. Waaay to big to publish it anywhere.

The worst part was that all of this comes down to my lack of knowledge around video compression. Around movie making at all. In then end, it became such a frustrating drama that this post? This post was meant to be about the SNOW. It’s not. It’s about my drama with After Effects.

Mostly. On the 28th of August, The Boy, The Fourth Quarter, The Fourth Quarters flatmate Nut and I did a one day snow trip. A ONE DAY snow trip. Which is EPIC. We got up at 3 in the morning for the 4 hour drive down (which is why we had two drivers, they switched back and fourth so the other had a chance to sleep) rode ALL DAY and then drove the four hour drive back so Nut could go to her ball, and The Fourth Quarter his concert.

It. Was. Madness.

But also awesome, the wind died down, the snow was soft and blue skies appeared in the afternoon. We picked the right day, because they got storm weather on the Sunday, and it swept right on till mid last week.

We also managed to forget our awesome VADO camera, and because I was determined to get some decent footage for a snow video of some sorts, I used my point and click to take video footage. It was actually good quality. The video? Not so good quality. I couldn’t figure out how to compress it nicely, and after two days of trying, I said ‘fuck it’. So, here is what I have:

Promise to wrangle the next video project into something that’s better quality. I’ll figure out it at some point.

It’s not summer here. In fact it’s mostly been just rain. And storms. And very dark and grey. New Zealand has officially descended into Winter.

All in all, it’s not that bad. I’m still holding some things close that only happen in Winter: wearing tights, and scarves, and multiple layers. Hanging out in the evenings as close to the fireplace as possible, with it’s gorgeous raging warmth-providing fire. Watching the snow base at Mt Ruapehu go up, and counting down the days till the season starts and we can embark on snow trips again.

It’s a bit disorientating when pretty much my entire blog roll is celebrating the warmer months, and all the joys that spring brings. But then one (or two) of them spouts how fantastic something is, and I forget all about how cold it is here, and think instead of how not cold it is there. Today, it was this:

500 Days of Summer comes out mid July (in the states. Which means it’ll be in NZ in August, or September). And it looks so ridiculously cute, so very very cute. And quirky. And how great is Zooey Deschanel?

It comes out just in time to help a girly girl think warm thoughts in the winter months :)

Friendly reminder – if you haven’t already entered the 200th post giveaway, you’ve still got one day left to do so! Be into win some fancy fantastic-smelling things!

I’m sure I do this pre-season every year, but when you get a snow forecast like this, how can you NOT be excited?!

Check out all those little snowflakes!!! I can’t WAIT for the season to start – woo!

So, I brought Volcom’s Primo snow jacket in April last year, and it’s a testament to it’s AWESOME that I still love it.

With all it’s technical details that keep the insides dry (in rain or snow) and all the clever extras (hidden pass pockets, and internal music super secret pockets) it’s a pretty awesome jacket off the mountain too, and today I’m thankful for the torrential rain that means I can wear it – woo!

[edit] I should probably also mention that I’m still wearing it at my desk – it appears the aircon today is set at ‘Arctic’. [/edit]