Canterbury Show Day

From last month:

Last Friday was the beginning of another three-day weekend. It was Show Day, the Kiwi equivalent of the county fair. But this county is the District of Canterbury, by a good margin the largest on the more agrarian south island. The fair only runs three days, but the first two are sort of warm-ups, with the early competitions and school field trips. We joined the masses on Friday to visit the show.















The weather was beautiful, perfect. In good Christchurch fashion, the commute from driveway to car park was less than ten minutes, even with cars pouring in at the rate you would find at the state fair. We loaded the kids into the double-wide (stroller, that is; pram; trolley), each weighing a pound extra due to sunscreen, and headed in to meet the McKenzies and Lettinks inside.














The surprise of the event was the paucity of surprises. For the most part, the event was a proportionate version of the Texas state fair. Show animals were there, and people mingled among the barns, but it was a more commercial affair, with rides, restaurant booths, shows.


Among the surprises was the popularity of horse events. There were two arenas running simultaneously, one for youth events, another for the big people. Another difference was the increased variety of species showed. It makes sense that the fine wool and meat production species of sheep would be abundant, but the cattle breeds were also wider ranging than we would normally see. They didn't have the heat tolerant breeds that we would see in Texas, like the bezu breeds, but then why should they. Another difference, though not surprising, was the variety of foods. They had both the standard state fair affair, the we-can-fry-anything booths. Cotton candy (or "candy floss" as they call it here) was there, hamburgers and hot dogs were there. But they were not what you think; for that you would have to go to the AMERICAN hot dog stand, the one with the American flags on it. Otherwise your hot dog was a crispy fried corn dog! But they also had a good variety of ethnic foods-- Indian, Chinese, German. There were also vegetarian booths! Anyone see that in Dallas last month?


Mostly we milled around. Ryan learned about honey bees, as we see in the photo, including letting a male crawl on her hand and arm. Brave girl! The freestyle motocross show was scratched because of wind gusts, but I noticed that their bikes were not exactly tuned. Knobbies worn, a couple of years old. Maybe it was best that their show was reduced to a few power slides around the main show arena, where the horses had been jumping earlier. The tractor pull went as scheduled. There were the wood chopping competitions, tractor displays, and helicopter rides! We got together and ate on the grass and took some great photos, as you see here. Trey joined with Antoni to debate the latest tractor models while the rest of us spoke of simpler topics.


All in all, it was a great day. The walk back to the car took longer than the drive, so we still had the evening to prepare for Trey's first birthday party. But that calls for its own blog entry and photos.

Port Hills

The last couple of weekends have brought us beautiful weather, that great time when the chill is gone, the peak temperatures are still quite nice, and it is all that much better when you have been hoping for this weather for weeks.

Photo: Walter Lettink, friend, trail guide, wicked rider.


On a sunny winter day a couple of months ago I tried tackling the Port Hills, the range that is the southern limit of Christchurch and its 'burbs. Homes are built up maybe the first quarter of the way to the top, and above them is a large system of trails managed by the District of Canterbury. At the time, the ride was a genuine slag. The trails were saturated. They apparently stay that way during the winter. I only saw a couple of miles of the trails, and it seemed nice, but I had to watch the clock due to the limited daylight, it was a little cold, and I didn't know exactly where I was or where to turn to head down off the hills.


These last two weekends have proven that these trails are much better when it gets a little sunshine. You have to start out with a pretty good workout getting up to the trails along the summit. Then the views are great off each side. Finally you get to enjoy the long downhill run back to sea level.

I have also learned that there are a ton of cyclists around here. No wonder there are so many bike shops. Seriously half the people that I saw on the roads around the Port Hills were either on bikes or toting them with their cars.

Both rides the past couple of weekends started in about the middle of the hills. A week ago we got to the top then headed out on toward the coast. The views were spectacular, as the photos show. One minute the Kaikoura Mountains were in view on the northern horizon, snow covered; the next we were looking down on Lyttleton, the same town on the southern side of the Port Hills where Ana, the kids, and I went the day before for the farmers' market and coffee. At one point we watched some paragliders taking trips from the summit to a valley below. (see photo)

Toward the end of the ride we descended into what can best be described as beach villages. Sumner and Scarborough lie out on the end of the foothills. As maps show, in contrast to the photos, they are only a matter of kilometers from the center of Christchurch, but they feel like they could just as easily be a world away. Out of sight, out of mind. They have their own rhythm, clearly their own scenery, and some great coffee shops, as I can attest after the stop we made in Sumner at the end of the ride.


Sitting in the coffee shop, looking out at the traffic passing on the street, I watched literally dozens of bikes go by-- mountain bikes, roadies; some in packs of five or six, others individually. There were a lot of folks cycling.

The next week Walter and I left from the same point, ascended to the summit, then turned inland. We dropped back down Kennedy Bush Track, the most inland trail of the system, then turned back uphill on Worsley Road (the same surname as on of the officers on the Shackleford expedition. Coincidence?), which terminated into a jeep trail, a rutted, steep trail that, at least for me, was a gutbuster. After traversing back toward the middle of the hills, we dropped down some technical track that intermingles with the downhillers' tracks. It was a warmer day, so the sweat was pouring, but again the views were worth it. I also noticed that the snowcaps have also shrunk significantly on the inland mountains in just a week's time.


And as for the cyclists, there must have been twice as many as last weekend. The hills were crawling with them, both on the trails and the roads.

There are so many trails to still cover, and so few weekends to get to go see them!

The view of Sumner from above.

The view from the trail past Sumner toward downtown Christchurch.

Gondola

Mainly the latest requests have been for more photos, so we have worked on taking more of them. It has been easier with such beautiful weather lately. For me the best has been the past couple of weeks, when it has been a little to cold during the early hours, nice in short sleeves for a couple of hours in the peak of the afternoon.

Ryan knows the word gondola now. We took a trip up to the top of the Port Hills, a ridge that forms the southern boundary to greater Christchurch. We timed it perfectly on a clear evening so that we got to have dinner watching the sun set on the city and all the lights come on. The building at the top has a viewing balcony about 270 degrees around. There is also a restaurant. Fortunately for us, it closes at 8 pm, about 45 minutes before sunset. They also leave the dining areas open, since they consume a strong majority floorspace but shelter is needed, as the winds are near constant up there. They are also darn cold! Surprisingly, there were only another half-dozen people there.

So the timing and the setting were ideal. We took in the views, took some family photos, then went inside and enjoyed our picnic while the sky changed colors. It was a great time. The play area was available exclusively for the kids' use. And there were educational posters throughout the restaurant. A couple of photos of them are below, including some of the more spectacular species of birds that have passed into extinction, such as the Moa (the largest bird ever to have lived), the largest eagle ever to have lived, and the laughing owl. I recommend looking them up online if you have the chance.

There was also some information on the first European to find New Zealand. Interestingly, he never set foot on the land, and it was more than a century later before Captain Cook would be the first European to do so.

Views north into Christchurch:

The view west.

Lyttleton

Under good weather

The last time we passed an illness around the house, we had to cancel any plans of celebrating Ryan's birthday. So here I sit, 7 minutes from my birthday, palpating the enlarged lymph nodes in my neck and rubbing my temples. Nausea seems to be the common thread for each of us. Trey was the entertaining one, kicking it off with the gastrointestinal equivalent of fireworks the day before yesterday... in both directions... while buckled into his car seat while Ana drove the streets a good distance from home. Poor fellow. But he was a trooper, and hasn't really acted like he felt badly, oddly enough. He just showed it.
So Ana has pulled out of tomorrow's duathlon, birthday dinner was canceled, the Halloween party across town went by without us, and any activities for the weekend seem too difficult at this point. In fact, we were all asleep by 6 pm! Which explains why I am composing this in the middle of the night.
On a lighter note, last weekend was wonderful. Ana let me go for a weekend trip with the guys, so four of us hightailed out of town on the Friday afternoon of our Labour Day weekend for Picton a port town for ferries connecting the south island with Wellington. After an overnight stay there, we caught a morning ferry to the northern tip of one of the peninsulae formed by all the long sounds through there, then spent two days climbing and descending the hills on the way back to Picton. Company was great, the scenery incredible, and the riding was the best I have had the opportunity to behold. What a weekend.

This is the traffic at the start of a three-day weekend, south island style. The only way it could be made legitimate traffic was by people's irrationally hurried behavior and by the one-lane bridges on major highways, as pictured. This is from the most major route north and south on the island.
These were the fellow travellers. Who knows why we decided to continue wearing our helmets on the ferry. It wasn't a group decision, but it was one less thing to hold in the wind and waves. Anyway, these are Walter Lettick, born in Belgium, raised in NZ; Heath Lash, who spent most of his youth in South Africa, where his father was a veterinarian to all sorts of animals; and Tom McKenzie, best friend of Walter, husband of one of the plastic surgery registrars, who, by the way, is the best friend of Walter's fiancee from childhood.
This was the kind of scenery we had to deal with all weekend. Dangerous when a view like that pops out at you on a downhill! Fortunately there were plenty of steep, gutbusting uphills to take up our time, much of it pushing.
This is one of the examples how we were NOT roughing it. Beers at a plantation-like resort inaccessible by car, just ferry, bike, or hike. Despite the seclusion, there was jazz music playing, all the amenities of a good resort, very good food. This was where we had lunch on day one. We continued on to another resort to spend the night. After hosing off the tons of mud (from both bike and man), we relaxed in the hot-tub before dinner. Night-time entertainment was a hike down from the restaurant at the top of the resort (FAR from the top of the hill however) to the bar on the shore, where the only satellite TV was. The joint was chucker, as people gathered to watch the New Zealand equivalent of the Super Bowl, the rugby union national championship. Canterbury, the district for Christchurch, beat Wellington. The crowd, literally standing room only-- and not much of that-- was clearly bipartisan. We were on the south island, but barely, and Wellington was only about 30 km across the water.

It was interesting at the end of the match how half the folks headed back to their bungalows, the other half got on dingies at the pier and headed out to their boats in the bay.

It was a 71 km journey, and here we are at the finish. Notice how we are not burdened by our packs. The beauty of the trip is that the ferry makes numerous stops on the way back to Picton, so they are happy to ferry your packs along to your stop for the night. Our timing was so good that, as we emerged from the trail into town at the end of the second day, the ferry was just pulling into dock.

Even the ride home was nice. The mountains are still snowcapped in the distance.
Ana has had her own outdoor projects going. She did her first duathlon and the South Island Masters Games a couple of weeks ago and brought home the silver! It was a lot of fun. We put street tires on the same mountain bike and she was good to go. Mind you bikes ranged from triathlon bikes with disks for the rear wheel to decrease drag; to lower-end mountain bikes with knobby tires.
The run was actually on a short road course for cars. Hence the tire barriers and concrete walls.
The kids are getting more playful, as Trey gets stronger and more independent, and as the weather gets warmer. Note the excellent demonstration of the scissor-hold, unrivaled since the days of the Von Erichs.

Trey has found that he can entertain in his own right, with this face of his. All of the sudden his eyes grow huge and he does this Valsalva maneuver. We are trying to catch it on video.

Ryan took it upon herself to don us all with capes. She raided the dishtowel drawer to find us all costumes.
Ryan has started swimming classes and is happy to strut her new swimming cap and the goggles. When she was informed that her teacher was named Zoe, she exclaimed, "Oh good, and Elmo can teach Trey, Big Bird can teach Mommy, and the Cookie Monster can teach Daddy!"

As the weather has gotten better, we have been able to get out into the "garden" on occasion. I had an afternoon of studying, while Ryno brought out a book of her own-- and some dreams.

Let me know if you have anything you would like us to report on, photograph, or answer.

By the way, it is now two in the morning and everyone is awake. Today may be a long one...