Rugby, Riptides and Races

Just when I thought I was all caught up with the blog… oh right… there was nearly a month and a half of adventure time between the end of spring break and now.

Well for starters, I have school which has been quite challenging at times with huge evaluations, not like the U.S. where your overall grade tends to be split up into more than just two projects. But even so these things need to be done, that is after all why I am here (need to be reminded of this from time to time, this country has a way of stealing you away from reality). Aside from the daily grind at Massey University I have been having an absolute ball here in New Zealand.

 Shortly after we returned from the Spring Break trip I went with Benen and Graeme to my first Rugby World Cup game in New Plymouth where we watched Ireland put a beating on the U.S.A. This was rather entertaining as most of the American fans strutted around in Captain America outfits and the Irish of course sported the looks of Leprechauns. All in all it was a great time and I mean even if the game had have been boring I had “witty banter” between an Irishman and a Scot, which is a show in itself.

 Not long after this I jumped on the opportunity to go surfing at a place called Castlepoint, which is on the south east coast of the north island (I tried to find a spot to fit ‘west’ in there but couldn’t). Now I had never been surfing before but after a caffeine fueled ride on a four wheeled rollercoaster over New Zealand countryside, I was just feeling fortunate to be alive. Now if you can just take a moment to picture a hardcore surfer dude in your head, just take that image, and multiply by 10, this was our driver. We screamed over hilltops and nearly took flight as the surfboards strapped to the roof started to give us a little lift (this is no way makes sense from a physics standpoint so for those physics students out there, just allow it).  When we arrived at our destination we were parked on a beach in front of a small bay that had a large cliff on the right, a mouth drinking in massive waves from the pacific ocean, and a rocky spine that appeared out of the water two hundred metres from the beach that ran parallel all the way to a lighthouse perched at the its end. Add some sun and blue skies in there, it was going to be a great day.

We donned our wetsuits which were less than flattering and followed our fearless driver into the blue walls that crashed playfully into the shore. For whatever reason none of us first time surfers thought to stay close to shore to catch some of the smaller waves before venturing out to the big ones. This was a mistake. There I was perched up on my board, falling off of it every so often and I wasn’t even moving anywhere, my arms felt like lead, I had cliffs on both my right and left, and every few seconds the water level would rise a few stories as I floated along in the corridor to the pacific. There were a few other surfers out that lived nearby and so I struck up a conversation with one of them who looked to be about forty years old. He told me about the area and then went on to say how he was stoked to see these monster waves out that day. Hmmm this is about the exact time my stomach dropped and I got that feeling that I was in a world of trouble. Mr. Surfer Dude just told me that these waves are 'monsters', by his standards. The most experience I have with waves is on beach beach in land locked Ontario. I was in no way ready for this. The only thing that was comforting me at this time were the seals that were also surfing and playing around in the nearby waves.

I wasn’t out there long before the waves slowly eased me towards their capping point without me noticing. All of a sudden Mr. Surfer Dude started paddling like hell towards shore and I started to panic, I got down on my belly started paddling with him not knowing at all what to do. I will never, ever, forget what I saw when I looked back at that moment. A wave roughly the size of a two to three story house was sucking up the water beneath me, hunting me down. I paddled like hell and for a moment I found myself rising quite quickly and for some reason I thought I had drifted over it, wrong. I now found myself atop this blue wall looking down, looking way down, at all of the other surfers. Uh oh. As one more second passed, I then realized I was not up shit creek but rather sitting upon the shittiest wave that ever raged through shit creek. For those of you that watch Trailer Park Boys, I was the captain of the shit liner and she was about to set sail.

 As the wave crested I found myself on the top lip, until it gave way from beneath me and as I clung for dear life to my board, the nose pointed downwards and I dropped through the air about a foot and a half, miraculously still on the face of the wave. At this point, all I could see was blue, it was like the tail end of the biggest rollercoaster drop you have ever been on, you can see where the hill kind of ends but you haven’t looked up yet to see where it goes, and here’s the kicker, I now have to worry about what the hell was coming up from behind me, which lucky for you never happens on a roller coaster. So here I am white knuckled, teeth clenched, eyes all squinty as mist is shooting up from the edges of the board. All I can hear is this big blue monster behind me draining the water from beneath my board, his heavy breathing is roaring in my ears and I am on his tongue, he’s drooling all over me, I look back and see the deep blue cave of his throat as he tries to swallow, and as he bites down I shoot out of his mouth riding off his lower lip and the water expelled from the great bite. At this point, I am shaking like mad with adrenaline, and traveling faster than I think I have ever gone on boat, the board vibrating beneath me as I skimmed over waves, the smaller after-bites of the beast behind me waning as I fly past all of the surfers with a stupid grin on my face half there out of joy for surviving, half there out of sheer terror. But the ride is not over, slowly one by one I catch more waves in front of me and ride them, but not like a surfer, I ride them like I used to ride my boogie board on the waves of Sauble Beach when I was ten. When I finally started to get close to shore I tried standing up for the first time ever on a surf board… a newborn giraffe wearing roller-skates on ice would have looked more coordinated and graceful.

As the day went on I managed to stay up for a few seconds longer each time but man was it tough. It’s also safe to say I didn’t go even half as far out as I did the first time for the remainder of the day. When we tired of surfing, we explored the area a bit and checked out the lighthouse, it was an experience I won’t soon forget. Bene has put together a short clip of this day on his blog, the link to the video is below and the surfing starts at around 4:24. http://vimeo.com/29902449 

Another little event I got up to was a tree planting project at the local Manawatu gorge called Living Legends. Essentially we spent a Saturday morning replanting a massive hillside in the gorge with All Blacks legend Sam Strahan. It was a great precursor to what I would be up to the very next day which was my second Rugby World Cup game, Canada vs. NZ All Blacks.

Now I knew going into the game that we were going to get absolutely crushed but man oh man what a great environment. I went to Wellington with two other Canadian friends and the first thing we did was find a pub before the game. Of course it was a little daunting at first walking into a room that was ‘All Black’ but we were met with friendly jokes as we were dressed in red. I had my Molson Canadian shirt on with a Labatt Blue hat, a Canada scarf and of course the Canada flag pinned to my back. It didn’t take long for us to find the corner of the pub that was full of rowdy east coast Canadians and pretty soon my face was painted with a big maple leaf… along with the insides of my eyelids and my mouth.

When we finally made it to the game the place was packed, and buzzing with excitement. The haka was great as always and the anthems brought the capacity crowd to life. Interestingly enough we scored the first points of the game, at which point the kiwi beside me told me to enjoy it cause they may be the only points we get. He later bought me a beer for each tri Canada scored (2) claiming that if he was at a hockey game in Canada that I would do the same for him. The final score was 79 to 15 but I had a great time and even got my favorite player, Kleeberger to sign my scarf after the game. I felt like a little girl as I hung over the barricade to shake his hand but I mean he’s pretty damn cool, and he has an awesome beard, respect.

After the game we went back to our watering hole (Wellington’s) and chatted it up with All Black’s fans and of course the mountie, beaver, moose and Inuit that were dressed up for the game. Yet another incredible experience here in this amazing country.

As some of you may recall, Graeme and I ran the half marathon in the middle of August with only six days of training. Well… we were at Rosies Pub just before Spring Break watching rugby, and one pint led to another and we came up with another brilliant idea, we were going to run a marathon. Of course we forgot about it for a while and it surfaced from time to time in drunk conversations during spring break but I mean there was no way we were actually going to do it. Until about a week after Spring Break, we were having a conversation at a party and Graeme looked at me and kind of took a serious tone and said, “We should start training for that marathon this week, because its on Oct. 29^th”. I was kind of taken aback at first but said “Ah yes, a grand idea, Sunday the 11^th of September at 4pm, see ya then” That week we found out that the Oct 29^th marathon in Auckland was full so the next available marathon was Oct 9^th cutting three weeks off our already measly seven week training time. You see most people train months in advance, 18 weeks, some people maybe a full year.

Graeme and I didn’t want to chicken out and with him already having run a few marathons, his most recent one being about 5 years ago, and me being in decent shape, and the fact that we had done nothing in the way of training since the half marathon on August 14^th, pshhh yeah 42km was just a number. Well, we clocked 44km the first week of training, that’s 2km more than we were going to do for the race.  The second week was a bit better at 81km with a long Saturday run of about 24km. The third week we ran 58km with 30km of that happening on the long Saturday run, this took just over 3hrs so we weren’t exactly flying haha. Finally the week of the race (and the week after a weekend of beers at the Canada vs. NZ game) we tapered off to 33km, bringing us to a grand total of 216km of training (just over 5 marathons).

So with 3 and half weeks of training we showed up at the Wairarapa Country Marathon in Masterton on the brisk morning of Oct. 9^th. I had my Canada flag pinned to my back and Graeme had shaved his beard into a mustache connected to sideburns mess as a way to scare off the competition.  There were over sixty runners in the marathon and this worried me a bit as most of them were tall and skinny and looked as though they had done this before. ‘Oh well’ I thought and off we went at the very back of the pack at the sound of the gun. Now for some unknown reason I thought it would be a great idea to you know, get up near the front of the pack early on, because its not like there’s 42km’s to move around or anything. I found myself in fourth place with two other runners to talk to, both of them had done three or more of these marathons and I thought we were moving at a fairly good pace. By the ten kilometer marker it was just me and the guy who had a friend giving him split times every 5km’s, probably not the best spot for me. I jumped in front of him up for the 10 to 15km marker and as we saw his friend again he popped up beside me and said “that last split may have been a tad fast don’t ya think”. Well hell if I know, this is my first race over 21km, but I just said, “yeah… I suppose it was a ‘tad’ quick”… be cool Brayden.

At 16km my buddy and his friend in the car pulled away and that was the last I thought of 5km pacing for the rest of the race. At the halfway point my friends Ema and Meg were beside the course with signs they had made to cheer me on. When I asked Ema what my split was and she said 1hr 25 something I knew I was in a world of trouble because my half marathon time had been 1hr 27minues and now I still had another 21km to go. By kilometer 28 I started to hurt like I have never hurt before and my mind was messing with me. I was starting to run past the walkers of the 5km and 10km races and it took every fiber of my being to not stop and walk for a few seconds because I knew I wouldn’t be able to start again. By 38km’s I was starting to weave a bit, straying off the road and browning out slightly, I had been pushing it pretty hard and running by myself essentially since the 16km marker. Finally I stopped at the water station at the 40km marker and realized I could barely see or stand. I grabbed a couple of cups of water and started sipping them, stumbling forward, knowing that too much water would be bad but I needed it desperately or I would pass out. It was during this time of a about two hundred meters of walking that I was passed by six or seven other people that had been lingering just behind me. It took all my might to get going again and used the 7^th guy that passed me as a pace maker staying just behind him. I don’t think I have ever felt so happy in my life to see a finish line in fact I wasn’t far from tears as I rounded the last corner to the clapping and cheers of supporters that lined the streets.

After I crossed the finish line, I downed cup after cup of orange coloured sports drink and grabbed a handful of gummie candies that were meant to be for everyone but I may have taken most of them, I then collapsed onto my back, laid the candies on my chest and explained to Ema that this may have been the most irresponsible thing I had done in NZ, more so than buying Golden Bay boxed wine (mentioned in an earlier post).

I have run my fair share of races, done enough weightlifting, and broken enough bones to know what pain feels like. I had never felt pain like this. It was like my muscles were pumping hot tar through my legs (and interestingly enough, I couldn’t walk properly until the following weekend). It turned out I had placed 11^th overall with a time of 3hrs 9minutes 48 seconds which was not bad for a first timer. Graeme on the other hand had the big surprise when he came in at 3hrs 37mins 36 seconds, a half hour better than his previous best time and placing 24^th overall. Now I am not sure how smart it is to train for only three weeks but if Graeme can take a half hour off, it makes sense to me haha.

http://www.times-age.co.nz/news/runners-make-a-marathon-effort/1132984/

Now three weekends ago Graeme, Alex, Bene and I decided to do a hike up to Mangaweka mountain and rather than have you read about it since this is a long enough post as it is, I have made a video about it. http://vimeo.com/30780010

Well I believe I have updated you all on my adventures up until this next Australia series, I hope it will be as interesting and exciting as the last one and with any luck I’ll get a laugh or two out of you. 

Oh! I almost forgot, there's a hedgehog that lives outside my flat. Awesome.

Cheers,

Brayden

Day 8 & 9 - Perilous Piha and Homeward Bound

Family, friends and followers of this blog, I apologize for my absence. It is as if I have invited you all over for a movie and paused it with five minutes to go, only to invite you back a month later to finish it… I do have a few good excuses; the main one being that I live in New Zealand and “island time” has sorely affected my level of urgency. I will however pack in the last of my two days of the Spring Break series into one entry (you will understand why after reading). I hope you have all been well, and perhaps embarked on an adventure of your own that may prompt you to start a blog like this one (though hopefully a little more updated…).  Well, without further adieu I give you Day 8 and Day 9 of the Spring Break Series:

The morning started off around 7:30am with over exaggerated goodbyes, hugs, and fake tears as we said farewell to nearly half of our group. They were all headed back to start studying again (I should have gone with them…) while Benen, Benedicte, Bene, Graeme, Alex, Giso, Danni and I stayed in Piha for one more day to hike the forests that backed the beach.

Our first stop was a small shop that essentially sold meat pies and maps, pretty standard for New Zealand. Graeme was in speaking to the owner while the rest of us dumped the garbage from Jackie Chan into nearby rubbish bins and filled up water bottles at a trailer park across the road. We were starting to develop into fairly efficient road trippers.

Not too long after this Graeme emerged with a plan and we headed towards the trailhead about five minutes away. There were houses all around the trailhead but the second we stepped into the forest we were yet again enveloped in lush green vegetation strung along a single track that led us onward into our adventure. The weather could not have been any better as we were overlooked by clear blue skies and the temperature was warm and light. Every so often along the trail there were checkpoints for us to spray and scrub our boots to stop the spread of kauri tree dieback.

Roughly ten minutes into this hike I ran into the first bit of trouble I have had here in New Zealand. You see everytime I head off to a new country for school or really just a new school in general I manage to get injured. In grade seven it was a fractured tibia, somehow I dodged a bullet at CWDHS, but then it caught up to me at boarding school with a fractured tibia and fibula in Ohio, then Roanoke College with a torn LCL in my knee, and as I shuffled my way across one particularly mossy boulder on this track in New Zealand, I slipped and started sliding towards a running water.

Now… the way I like to tell this story is as follows: There I was in the New Zealand jungle in the middle of a great storm, maybe the greatest in the history of the island (as I mentioned earlier, blue skies and sunny). I had just finished building a storm shelter for the citizens of Piha with nothing but my bare hands. It was starting to get dark and the path was becoming more and more treacherous as the winds blew branches and debris across the trail (it was the morning still, and the trail was quite clear and well marked). Then we came to a river crossing, a set of rapids infested with man eating crocs and blood thirsty piranhas (these don’t live in NZ... and it was a stream). I could hear that there was something following us, most likely a jaguar teamed up with an anaconda (though they make a likely duo, these also do not live in NZ, it was the rest of the group). Knowing full well that this was the only way (I found out later there was clearer crossing further up the stream) I jumped from boulder to boulder as the man eaters thrashed about below me (I skipped and pranced (like a girl with new shoes in the rain) from rock to rock trying not to get my boots wet in the stream). When I reached the other side I was met by a band of villainous monkeys that were armed with poison dart frogs (some gnarled trees with colourful flowers, there are no monkeys or poisonous animals in NZ) and was forced to scramble up a cliff face (boulder) next to the treacherous rapids much like Mufasa (the Lion King) does when he is caught next to the stampede of wildebeest. Just then a gust of wind knocked me from the cliff and I fell in slow motion towards an infinite number of teeth (my own clumsiness caused me to slip on some moss and I began to slide). But just before I reached the open jaws below me, I caught myself on a vine and swung to safety with only a sore finger to show for it all (I caught myself before reaching the stream but at the expense of a few fingers that got caught and twisted in some rocks). I then clicked my boots together three times and the animals disappeared and we continued our hike (I slipped on a rock, slid towards the stream, got my finger caught in a rock on the way down and it is still a little strange looking to this day, but... yeah I like my version better).

Now that I have wasted your precious time, let us continue to the next part of the hike.  With my finger looking like a half assed home improvement job covered in tape, we made our way up a series of trails to a lookout that someone had built in the forest. From the top we could see out over the forest to the endless blue waters that stretched to meet the horizon. From there we made our descent to the beach along winding trails coupled with a few stream crossings (which I made very carefully) and when we emerged from the forest we found ourselves back on the black, shell filled sands of Piha beach beside the  huge Piha lion (see previous post).

We spent an hour or so watching over the black beach and the white capped waves that crashed into it, keeping the lion company before piling back into Jackie Chan and making our way towards Waitomo. This was also the point when Bene left us to meet up with some other friends for the remainder of break. We ended up staying at the oh-so-luxurious Holiday Top 10 campsite, but this tourist run location would not budge with the price and we ended up paying $21 each for the night. This was somewhat frustrating because not only did we have to fork out more money for a campsite that was nowhere near as nice as the previous two locations but finding it was an absolute nightmare. It was well past sundown and Jackie had guzzled just about all of the gas and our GPS took us to a gas station that looked as though it had been out of service for the last decade. The second location brought us to some back alley beside an auto body shop and it wasn’t until we toured around the town on fumes that we found a pump that worked. Benen emerged from the station seconds later with a book of maps and the menacing look of GPS-murder in his eyes. That being said, we took full advantage of our $21 when we finally got to the campsite, with a hot tub, pool, kitchen, internet, and most importantly hot showers.

After a hot shower, a bottle of red wine, a package of couscous and a can of tuna I was set for bed, hoping that the morning would perhaps bring me some good news about the blue sausage that was hanging off of my hand where my middle finger should have been.

The next morning would bring me no such news and stuffing my tent and sleeping bag into their respective stuff sacks became an impossibility. The good news was that it was fairly nice weather and we had discovered a trail that would take us to the famous Waitomo caves. Gizo, Benen, Alex and Dani decided that instead of the caves they would head to a set of boulders to do some rock climbing leaving Graeme, Benedicte and I to the cave walk.

The hike to the caves was pretty sad, it followed the fences of farmer’s fields all the way to the park area. Perhaps this is just me being spoiled by the beautiful scenery of the previous eight days but I mean this was flat out unimpressive. Just as we arrived at the park it started to rain which didn’t help things because it had been beautiful earlier in the morning but no matter, we were going to see some of these caves rain or shine. All of the biggest caves had locked gates at their entrances with signs demanding tickets and a booked guide but we did manage to see some caves that were a little more broke-college-road-tripper friendly.

Like giant auditoriums, ceilings of caves rose above us as we walked through seemingly dull stone archways our voices of surprise and wonder echoing all around us. Other caves housed sections rivers that passed through them along the worn riverbeds and down into ravines at the other end.  It did not take us long to work our way through the Ruakuni Bushwalk and its accompanying caves. I am glad we didn’t have tickets to the actual caves because my first caving experience through the Piripiri caves earlier this year and the glow worms in the abandoned gold mine have some great memories tied to them. I think a guided tour through caves that have locks and gates in front of them would have left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

We ended up being picked up in the middle of a farmers field just before a thunderstorm hit on our way back to meet the rest of our group.  It was really starting to feel like the last day of our adventure. That afternoon as we started to drive home I fell asleep in the passenger seat for the first time during the entire nine day trip. Perhaps it was the fact that Benen had plugged his phone in instead of my computer but man I crashed, zero battery life, terminated, exhausted, empty, you name it.  I woke up somewhere near the town of Taupo where we dropped Benen off at a bus station so he could return to his sisters. The weather had changed back to being sunny and my god, Lake Taupo was gorgeous. If we had had another day I think Taupo would have been a good place to be.  The lake sprawled out at the base of the mountains was fitting because the peaks were so impressive they deserved to see themselves. 

Our drive through this portion of the country was incredible as we passed a series of volcanoes and mountains, Pihanga, Tongariro, Ngauruhoe all looking down on us with their snowy faces. As we passed by I tried to snap shots out of the van window but it simply wasn’t working out so we pulled over took some time to document this short but short but significant portion of our journey. The landscape was quite strange in this area because it was so desolate, a tundra with little tumbleweed looking bushes everywhere. But as we drove further and further south towards Palmerston North those rolling green hills started to come back and the little towns that boasted whatever they could came with them (Taihape - Gumboot Capital of the World, Te Kuiti -  Sheep Shearing Capital of the World etc).

After driving through a fiery sunset, one final song brought the speakers of Jackie Chan back to life as we rolled up Atawhai Hill,

Hakuna Matata!

What a wonderful phrase

Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze

It means no worries for the rest of your days

It's our problem-free philosophy

Hakuna Matata!

Thank you all for reading! I apologize for the breaks between entries and disparity in writing styles, some days are better than others. I am very excited to tell you all that there is another series coming up that talks about my week long trip to Australia! Before we get to that there will be a short (hopefully) entry to fill you all in on what happened during the month or two between this Spring Break series and the upcoming Australia series.

Cheers,

Brayden