For our anniversary Sheila got me a session at Xflight. Xflight is a aerobatics flight where you sit as a passenger and the pilot takes you through a series of maneuvers.

Like most people, up to that point I had not done any aerobatics so I was a little nervous. I assumed it would be one of the most intense things I had ever done. That anxiety only got worse when the pilot handed me a parachute outside the plane and asked if I have ever used one. Then went on to explain that the two previous trips the passengers tapped out after move 3 of 5 and that they did a baby routine afterward instead of the full routine.

I was pretty determined that I wouldn’t be tapping out. As it turns out I am “tough enough” and was not only able to withstand everything but actually enjoyed it. He said after that we hit 6 positive g’s and 4 negative g’s.

My auction just closed. Selling two U2 tickets with a face value of $229.90 a piece the day before the sold out concert. How much did I make reselling my tickets? Good question.

To answer this question I think we should start back when the concert was announced… there was a fair amount of hype and both acts (Jay-Z and U2) could probably sell out a show by themselves. So my gambling instincts kicked in and I realized that there was a potential to make some cash by signed up for presales and buying 4 tickets and reselling 2 of them.

Signing up for presales costs $50. Which is no problem considering I will be making big money reselling my tickets right?

Signed up for presales on a Thursday they opened the next Monday. As soon as they open I snatch up four tickets for $229.90 a piece plus a $19.00 transaction fee. So for those of you that are not so good at math that brings my total costs up to $988.60 or $247.15 per ticket. Now at this point I am very pleased with myself and go to sleep that night with dreams of selling the two extra tickets for enough to cover the tickets Sheila and I will be using.

I wake up the next day to find out that U2 has sold the first show (Thursday night) this is really good news and is exactly what I expected. It is nice when a plan works out!

A few days latter I find out that U2 has announced a second concert on Friday. Disaster!!!

This is really bad news because:
a) Who would want to go to a Thursday night show when there is a Friday night show?
b) There are not enough people in New Zealand to sell out two shows in Auckland. So I will be lucky to sell them for face value

So I put them on trademe.co.nz (the New Zealand equivalent to eBay) and they sold for $161 for the pair or $80.50 a ticket. So I lost $166.65 per ticket and gained a hatred for U2. I kind of feel like they greased me out of $383.30 (amount for the tickets + the presale) because I would never have bought 4 tickets knowing what I know now.

Hope the concert is worth it!

One of our neighbours cats has started stalking us. Yesterday he showed up uninvited in the driveway and followed Sheila to the door. Sheila convinced me to let him in (which really wasn’t that hard because I am always up for abducting an animal) and give him some milk. After we gave him an ill-advised massive bowl of milk and a few scratches we kicked him back out because we are pretty sure we are not allowed to have animals in our apartment. We (mostly me) laughed at the thought of the cat going home and puking up milk and the owners being really confused.

Anyway after kicking the cat out we continued on with our night and made dinner and ate. The whole time the cat sat at our door literally crying to get back in. Thankfully after a few hours he went away.

Our Cat

Fast-forward to tonight… Guess who was waiting for me at our gate when I got home from work?  (our driveway and the property is surrounded by a 7-foot gate to keep criminals, door to door solicitors and stray animals away)

If you guessed a cat then you guessed right…he is impossible to keep out and hangs outside our door just waiting for the littlest crack to try to slither through.

Anyway our cat came in for another visit and we gave him some more milk and a piece of chicken. He is super friendly and follows us both around absolutely craving attention. I don’t want a cat but if I had to have one he would definitely be the cat I would want.

Still need to post a ton of pictures (like months and months behind) but am super lazy. Two videos from recent weekends though…with a Katy Perry soundtrack.

1. Sky Screamer Reverse Bungee

One of the 30 birthday presents Sheila got me for my 30th birthday last month was vertical bungee. I think Sheila thought that she might get away with not doing it with me but was definitely mistaken. It is hard to tell from the video but essentially vertical bungee is a cart with three seats and there is a bungee cord on either side of the cart and they add tension to the bungee then release the cart slingshotting you in a cart about 75 meters in the air. Sheila was not having it at first but after watching other people go she decided that it would be ok with her eyes closed.

It was pretty cool…launching up was ok but I wasn’t such a big fan of falling back towards the ground backwards on the first bounce. Despite the hesitation at the beginning Sheila did pretty well..:-)

2. Auckland Harbor Bungee

My first real bungee…I was really calm about it until like the night before when I started looking on youtube and came across a video of someone standing on the edge for what seemed like forever and hesitating then finally jumping. The video made me really uneasy and anxious.

Three of us went….Scott (one of Sheila’s co-workers), Sheila and myself. Sheila was along taking pictures and observing, maybe next time she will jump… It was pretty cool walking out along the bottom of the bridge that we drive on everyday and seeing the city from a different vantage point.

At the very beginning of the walk out we were probably like 5 meters above the water and it didn’t really feel that high. I was trying to calm myself down by telling myself that we were probably about 15 meters above the water and it was only a 40 meter jump so we were roughly 1/2 the total height. After another 5 minutes or so of walking we were at ~30 meters and it felt really high…then we took a 10 meter set of stairs into a pod and it felt even higher.

There were like 6 people that were there to jump and I was supposed to be #4. Scott was #2 and he was really calm on his jump…on the way down he was waving his arms like a bird which was pretty funny.

I ended up being #3 because the lady in front of me got out on the plank and couldn’t pull the trigger so she came back with tears on her face. Kind of added to my anxiety seeing someone not be able to do it… I was pretty sure I would be able to but I knew that it wasn’t going to be fun being out on the plank.

They strapped the bungee on me…it attaches to both ankles and there is a huge plastic piece right below your feet so it is really difficult to walk with it attached…you need to sort of penguin walk which is not surprisingly a little difficult on a plank 40m above the water. I was pretty nervous…. Scott and Sheila said from where they were standing I looked extremely nervous but in the video I am smiling and don’t really look that freaked out.

Being  on the edge of the plank was by far the worst part of it…actually  pulling the trigger and jumping was nothing. I was ok for the first part  of the fall too but at a certain point I think I got uncomfortable  because I was falling so quickly.

We  were hoping to just hit the top of the water but it didn’t work out  because it was low tide. I think they were dialing it in because Scott  was a few meters from the water and I was a few feet from the water but  pretty much all the people after me hit the water.

Will post the pictures Sheila took later.

Sheila has started to make some posts and we are starting to clean up some of our pictures (dating back to like January). So there have been some backdated posts that we have been making.

Shelia Posted a story about being woken up by a stick insect here and our trip to Goat Island/Tauranga here.

I just made a post with some pictures from Shelly Beach here.

Hopefully we will get a rainy day so I can clean up the rest of the pictures…:-)

Long overdue has been this first (of many to come) “Lord of the Rings” encounter.  There was so much to take in, it’s almost hard to know where to start.

Hobbiton

I guess really the story begins in the Shire – otherwise known as Matamata.  It was a bit of a long drive to get to Matamata from Te Puke (kiwi fruit capital of the world!) and in the classic 1-lane horrendously windy “highway” that always leaves me feeling slightly ill.  The adventure began downtown Matamata as we awaited our tour guide (who I was hoping would be dressed up LOTR style).  Our tour guide was not exactly what you would expect.  A nice young man, he certainly was not born to entertain or be comfortable in social settings.  He repeated the Hobbit Hole tour monologue in a halting, unnatural cadence.  At first we thought a recording was playing in the tour bus…however the first awkward long pause after a poorly timed joke clued us in this might be a very long trip.

Hobbiton, or the Shire, was filmed on the Alexander farm.  In fact during the filming Peter Jackson rented one of the properties on the Alexander farm and lived there until the filming was completed.  The Alexander’s farm is still a working sheep/cattle farm today, as well as moonlighting as a LOTR destination station.

I can’t really recall much of the trip up to the farm…however I do remember the first moment departing the tour bus when we were told the tour was kicking off with a “sheep show”.   We were lucky enough to have one of the Alexander sons be the sheep-shearer for the show.  He explained to us how sheep-shearing works, and that great sheep-shearers will successfully shave the sheep in under a minute.  This was not our video – but gives you an idea of what it looked like.

And then….it began.  First off – the sheep was not willing.  From the very start, this guy was not having it.  After Mr. Alexander explained it takes less than a minute to shear a sheep, he went out to struggle with a very obstinate sheep for about 5 minutes.  This sheep was fat, spent a lot of time kicking and screaming, and Mr. Alexander needed to use a heavy hand (or heavy body).  There were two other parties on the tour – 2 lady friends from Aussie, and a family with two young children from Toronto.  One of the children may have left screaming in the middle of this moment when the sheep was kicking so hard its whole body was elevating off the ground.

Sheep Shearing at Hobbiton

No question this was the highlight of the trip.  You have to check out the photos…they are priceless.  The second child left the room crying about the time that Mr. Alexander used his body weight to restrain our sheep.  Once it was all over you just weren’t sure what to say.  But then they brought in the baby sheep and let us bottle feed them which somewhat erased the horror of realizing the sheep had shit all over itself during the shearing.

Back on the bus we drove through the farm to arrive at the Shire.  It is a lot smaller than you might have expected.  And what they don’t tell you is that most of the Shire has been dissembled.  However they do have lots of sign posts with photos of what it did look like during filming.  The structures that have been left behind have all been altered so that they do not exactly resemble the movie due to copyright agreements.  So Bag End…is painted white.

The Shire

And as you can see…construction work.  Apparently we can look forward to Hobbiton being resurrected to its full glory as filming of The Hobbit is set to commence next year.  Our tour guide entertained us with rehearsed and memorized stories from the filming of LOTR, and we spent considerable amounts of time looking and staring at empty fields/lakes.  At the end of the tour they bring you up close to the hobbit holes, which you can’t actually walk into.  Just an illusion I’m afraid.  Bag End you can walk into a very small enclosure in the hill, but it’s barely tall enough to stand up straight in.

The tour wasn’t entirely what I had dreamed it would be – but then our tour guide came through at the very end.  He asked if anyone wanted novelty photos.  We didn’t get what he meant, and was pretty sure it would be a disappointment as was par for the tour that afternoon (outside of the sheep shearing!).  We let the two Aussie ladies be the guinea pigs, and after hearing their giggles we took a look at the photo.  There were two gems…one picture where it looks like one of you is the size of a hobbit, and the other found the One Ring making you disappear…

One Ring to Rule Them

All in all – It Was Something.  Next Lord of the Rings encounter…we will definitely be dressing up and doing it right.

During our weekend trip to Tauranga we visited the Kiwi360 kiwi fruit farm. I say we decided but really we were pulled in by the 40ft Kiwi fruit sitting just off the highway. Kiwi360 was ridiculously touristy but also ridiculously educational.

Kiwi360 Giant Kiwi

We started our visit by walking around the Kiwi360 store while waiting for the farm tour to start. Not wanting to leave empty handed we picked up the following sweet kiwi merchandise:

1. A kiwi fruit shotglass
2. A pair of kiwi fruit eating utensil (specially shaped to both slice and scoop kiwi fruit)
3. A bottle of kiwi fruit juice (which was horrible)

Since we are super keeners we were first in line to start the farm tour so we got to pick our spots on the kiwi fruit linked carts.

Sheila at Kiwi360

The tour was about a hour and consisted of a pre-recorded message playing over a loud speaker in each cart spewing out tons of fun kiwi fruit facts. There were a few stops…one was in the middle of the orchard and one was in a spot where they had some antique machinery for sorting kiwis. Unfortunately we were not there at a time when the kiwi processing plant was operating so we were not able to get the plant tour. Maybe some other time I guess…:-(

How do kiwi’s grow Clayton? I am glad you asked…take a look at this picture:

Kiwi Plants

As you can see… they grow like grapes connected to posts in a long line. Here are some more kiwi fun facts which you probably are not aware of:

• There are two colors of kiwi (gold and green)
• A Kiwifruit has twice the amount of vitamin C of an orange
• Twice as much vitamin E as an avocado
• Kiwifruit will keep in beautiful condition for up to 9 months
• Nearly 90% grow in this pocket of land – the Kiwifruit Capital of the world!
• They are as expensive in New Zealand as they are in the rest of the world

We started our “where the road takes us trip” with a stop at Mt Maunganui.  About 3 hours from Auckland (in the Vitz) we passed by a NZ must-do, the Karangahake Gorge walk (or tramp as they say here).  We drove by…not realizing what we were driving pass.  We were in a rush to get to Waimarino Adventure Park for some kayaking through glow worms, and of course hitting the BLOB.  However it seems that my neck/back gets ridiculously agitated from sitting in the car for 3 hours, and by the time we were getting close to the park there was no way that I was going to be able to kayak for a couple of hours and be human-catapulted in the water park.

We cruised on towards Mount Maunganui, or the Mount as it is more commonly called.  Turns out skipping the water park was not such a bad idea.  We hadn’t planned on walking the Mount but ended up not only walking around the base of the Mount, taking our time to stare at Shags (you heard me) and tide pools (no dead fish unfortunately).

Base of Mount Maunganui

Just as we were finishing our walk , Clayton found himself a hobbit-hole to climb into in the side of the Mount.  Classic.  This is why I pretend I am american while doing touristy things here   Scott had told us we must go for ice-cream at Copenhagen Cones.  Those waffle cones were certainly calling our names, as it was a classic hot day where we should have been lounging by the beach rather than hiking.  But looking up at the path that led to the top of the Mount it really didn’t look too impressive and figured we could get up and back in a 1/2 hour.  Rookies.  Definitely not a half hour hike, and much much hotter.  The view from the top was well worth it though.

View from the top - Mt Maunganui

There were a lot of people on the hike, and in particular lots of paragliders.  It was pretty cool – the paragliders seemed to be just hovering off the top of the Mount…gliding back and forth without wandering too far or in a different vertical stream from the take-off.  We trucked on back down the trail, and headed straight for those waffle cones   They were awesome.  It fit about 4 scoops of ice cream, and was almost ruined by loads of whip cream, chocolate sauce and candy on top.  I think I had gummy bears.  Clayton dropped his spoon on the sidewalk….didn’t hesitate for a second to pick it up and promptly continue eating.

My neck and back was screaming from the drive, and while we were standing down the block in line-up for the waffle cone we saw just across the street the Hot Springs.  Hot Springs are everywhere.  And cheap.  It was a pretty choice day.  My good friend, Red Bill, was everywhere we wanted to be.

Red Bill

We got a really good deal on a hotel through RatesToGo and stayed at a 5-star hotel on the waterfront in Tauranga.   The hotel may have been 5-star but they had us park in a carpeted “garage” – I say “garage” as it was more like parking in someones living room.  Not right.  We spent the next morning wandering around Tauranga which seems like a really cool place, definitely somewhere we will come back to.

Next stop – Kiwi360 in Te Puke – the Kiwi fruit capital of the world!

I know this is on the top of everyones minds because I get tons of e-mail asking what the toilets are like in New Zealand.

Questions like: “Do they flush counter clockwise?” “Are they white?” “Do they use water or something else that I don’t even know about?”

Well I am going to set the record straight…

I am sorry to disappoint you all but the toilets are pretty much the same here as in North America.

The buttons on a New Zealand Toilet

The biggest difference is that they all have two flush modes. #1 and #2 as depicted in the above picture.

They seem to flush really fast too so there isn’t really a spinning water motion like in toilets back home…it just kind of sucks all the water straight out.

I have decided to quit my job with Sapient and stay in New Zealand. Originally the plan was to hang out for a few months and then come back to Toronto but I had an job opportunity here and with Sheila here, it just made a lot of sense to stay. Still a lot of stuff to see and do here…

I am working as a business analyst for a consulting company so in a lot of ways it will be similar to what I was doing in Toronto except there shouldn’t be a lot of travel which is a nice change after 5 years of flying pretty much every week and living in a hotel.

So now that I am staying longer everyone should start making plans to come visit us…