Tuesday, July 31, 2007

CARNAGE!!

Had a bit of carnage yesterday when a few of us attempted to paddle the leith in flood. it looked pretty sweet when we scouted the main rapids and then we went to go and do it. i borrowed brydens mac, pretty big for me but all good, big boats are safe, well usually. We came up to the first drop which happened to be a pretty meaty weir, the water had risen about a metre buy the time we paddled it. Olly got worked, andrew got worked and swum, he couldnt be seen for a very long time, lou did it sweet, i got worked and swum and was under water for so long getting thrashed around and resurted that i thought it was the end of me, luckily it spat me out, bryden came down got worked and swum and calum came down and got worked for quite a long time but managed to get out somehow!! So now we had 3 of us in the water, i ended up getting throw roped back to shore. Andrew had bruises all down his leg from hit the bottom and bryden ended up getting out sweet. So now we were all sweet but out boats had gone down the river. Andrew and I ran down the river trying to find them with little luck. We ended up getting called over by a police officer and he said that they had seen the boats floating down the river and they were wondering if there were any bodies, luckily we were all safe. he had seen the boats about 30 min b4 so we knew that they would be in the harbour by now, so three boats gone! We went to have a look at the harbour and searched the banks and ended up spotting two of the boats, bryden and andrew raced back to arana and got their c2 and went to collect the boats. They also found the other boat that i had been paddling on their way. Brydens mac which i had been paddling is pretty much a writeoff, it is dented and even has a hole in the plastic. the other two were sweet. well after we had collected all the boats we decided to have another look at the river and we see james and luke paddling down it! they had seen the wier and thought stuff that and got in below it and had a fun run down. pity we hadn't done that!!

Mum comes South and Carnage on the flooded Leith

Mum came down last weekend for some quality mother daughter time! We had planned to go to the snow for some skiing and do lots of walks and fun outdoory things but I got hit with the flu quite badly and ended up in bed being mothered by mum the whole time! I was great having mum there to look after me and give me lots of TLC but it was a bit gutting not being able to do all the fun things we had planned! we still saw some cool things with a hoar frost on the way to Arrowtown, i'll get some pics up, it looked amazing! The shotover river had half frozen over also so mum and I walked on water!! We stayed at family friends holiday house which is on a vineyard in Gibston Valley. It is an awesome house, situated in a beautiful setting but low and behold the water pipes had frozen because it had been so super cold and Mum and I didn't ahve any water. After using bottled water and the neighbours tap for our water supply we decided to bail out and we headed to Queenstown for a nice hot shower and water on tap! It was cool looking around Queenstown and we had fun tasting some amazing flavoured fudge! The next day we headed to Wanaka and ahd a hot chocolate before heading back to Dunedin where we went out to a lovely restaurant with James and Alice. All in all it was soooo good to catch up with Mum and even though I was a little under the weather it was fun with Mum!! I'll get some photos up soon as!