Kingsnorth in Queenstown
With my extreme birthday done, I spent the next few days chilling out in Queenstown. After a couple of days, the Irish nurses turned up and we went out on a real extreme bender (whatever you do in Queenstown, the adrenalin capital of the world has to be 'extreme'. If you can add words like 'Awesome,' 'Hardcore' and 'Dude' without laughing then you're totally into the spirit of the place dude. Sweet.) Though we did crawl around the various bars, we spent most of the time in 'The World,' a place that sells cocktails in teapots.
I watched Karen finally do her skydive, the day before she left for Fiji. She'd been waiting almost 2 weeks to do one, but it'd been rained off every time she'd booked it. We had a glorious day and I was tempted to do one myself but I've spent so much money here in Queenstown (and I have done a skydive before) I was strong and managed not too. A real accomplishment for me as I've found I'm incredibly weak willed when it comes to enjoying myself.
It did give me time to just sit and watch what goes on at a skydiving airfield though. I've been thinking to myself while I've been travelling, do I want to go back and work in London again when I go back? Sure, I liked my old job and all the people, but hated commuting everyday. Working in the same place everyday, was I just another suit? Stuck in a rut? Doing it just for the money? I looked at the guys who do skydiving and thought to myself '...imagine working here...', doing this for a living. Following the summer. Getting jobs at airfields all around the world. With that kind of job, people always say "What a lovely lifestyle." The never seem to say "I want that lovely lifestyle." I was chatting to one of the girls who did the skydive camerawork, I asked her how she got into it and she said through doing lots of jumps and owning a camera...
I have 5 years worth of camera experience at college, I've already decided I'm an adrenalin junkie. Whats to stop me? (Apart from the obvious fact that I don't know how to skydive - hey, I can learn...)
Anyway, carrying on with my adrenalin sports, we all went lugeing at the top of the mountain behind Queenstown. Lugeing is like downhill go-carting without an engine. Push the handle bars fully forward and the luge parks. Pull them towards you fully and the brake goes on. Hold them in the middle and the cart goes into 'Neutral' and you let gravity take you as fast as your balls will let you! Add some hairpins, slalems with big drops either side, tunnels, some BIG drop-offs and you have yourself a wicked couple of hours.
My camera battery/charger isn't working at the moment, so you'll just have to look at the website here and imagine me on it...
What added to it, was Peter Jackson (the director of 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy and 'Braindead') was about 3 people in front of us in the queue up there! He went down before us and did a good blocking move on Sophie apparently as she tried to fly past. (Sophie won 4 out of the 5 races that day - I got the other) I was going to ask him for a photo with him but there wasn't a good time as he was with his family. Sometimes I hate being decent and respectful of other people's privacy. And I'll admit, I was a little bit star-struck!
Later that night we went to what can only be described as the must-do activity in Queenstown. EXTREME Indoor Crazy Golf! I went back to being a 5 yr old. The detail is fantastic, rockets (that take off and play the Thunderbirds theme tune) Airports with airplanes, castles, ski rides, volcanoes, lumber yards all with crazy moving parts that send your golf ball on a fantastic adventures, and spit it out nowhere near, or right on top of the hole! SWEET! EXTREME! DUDE!
While out drinking that night, Sophie had a TDA (Tragic Drinking Accident). Near the wharf by the lake is a huge 10ft tall concrete statue of an emu. Apparently, the cool thing to do is try and climb on its back while drunk and have your picture taken. I was chatting to Caitrina a we wandered towards it. Sophie, Luke and Richard had gone up ahead. As we arrived, we saw Richard and Luke nervously laughing, and checking if Sophie (who at that time was laying on her side cradling her head) was alright. Luke had been giving her a leg up to its back, he'd pushed hard and she didn't hold on, so she went flying over the Emu's back and landed on the concrete base on the other side. Caitrina instantly stopped being drunk and went into nurse mode. Any nervous laughter stopped when we saw Caitrina's face as she felt the egg sized lump on Sophie's head. Sophie, being the hardcore bird she is, kept saying 'Nah man, I'm alright honestly...' Luke didn't know whether to feel guilty or not for pushing so hard. Richard stopped drunkenly giggling because of the amount of glares he was getting from Caitrina. Caitrina diagnosed a concussion and calmly talked Sophie into putting an ice pack on her head, and even Sophie realised after a while that she was in a lot of pain, and very lucky not to have hurt herself even more. We all went home felling sober, worried and a just bit silly.