Admittedly this sounds like it could have a double meaning. I report. You decide.
Flying at 15,000 feet, I came upon this. A list of definitions.
Spiral: style of kicking perfected during the psychedelic era.
Coathanger: Dressing room equipment which doubles as a car aerial as required:; Also an illegal tackle in which an outstretched arm catches an opponent under the chin causing a sudden and spectacular rotation of his body – making the crowd go “ooh!”
Box kick: When a kick is hoisted over the line out, scrum or breakdown to theoretically land in an imaginary box with no defenders in it. Hardly ever comes off. Not to be confused with a “chip”, “grubber” or “dink” which hardly ever come off either.
And finally:
Down his throat: Directly into the arms of the opposition fullback. See “box kick”.
This is an illustration of how fun the kiwis are. They are absolutely obsessed with rugby, but they don’t take it too seriously. Of course, they haven’t lost yet. They compete tomorrow night in the semi-finals against Australia.
This was just before landing. It was harrowing. Many mountains to miss. But what a beautiful sight even in the overcast. On the way from Christchurch to Queenstown (seen below), I observed lots of meringue in the sky. Example.
These are the Southern Alps and they run all the way down the island.
We left this morn at 5:45 a.m. to the airport. Upon arriving we couldn’t find any of our paperwork. And that’s all I’ll say about that. No telling where it is.
We got in our room early and went to get our car nearby. We jumped in the car and OMG…a standard transmission. It was the only car they had and we got it. Soooooooo…Ray managed to drive us to Lake Wanaka shifting from first to third, thereby bypassing second gear about 25 times. Of course, it didn’t help that we were taking hairpin turns that required constant downshifting…so that allowed Ray the opportunity to miss second gear on the way down too…many times. And while doing that as we approached intersections, he always signaled his intention to turn with his windshield wipers and on occasion, he tried to turn into oncoming traffic. He was very tense (an flagrant understatement) and so the other thing that he did was he kept veering toward to the left when oncoming traffic appeared thereby putting me in the position of closely examining any variety of weeds and shrubs that might be on “my” side of the road. Oh, and the drops in the gorge area caused a bit of concern on my part so that toward to the end of our outing I announced that I would definitely be driving tomorrow…with Rayman strenuously objecting…with words like damn, dead body, and my ass. But I will not bore you with the details.
The Welch captain just got ejected for slamming another player into the ground. He was “sent off”. Oh, dear.
But I digress.
The highlight of our day must be reported at this point…lest the casual reader think that Rayman’s driving is the end of the story. Au contraire. Bungy jumping has always been at the top of our bucket list. So this was our chance.
Part of the charge for the jump is free video of the jump. We welcomed that because we decided on a tandem jump. That way if anything went wrong…well, you get the picture. Problem is I screwed up the video and can’t seem to figure out how to rotate it. So, just turn your computer 1/4 rotation and you can see it the way it really was. Oh, and this is the movie so just click on the arrow on the left side to view.
So…well…we did the jump. How fun was that? Oh, you protest do you? Do you think we are crazy? No, we’re not. We tease you, dear reader. Wasn’t that fun???? Well, it turns out that trying to publish my blog with the movie was causing a problem. So, in order to get published, I have dropped the movie. I will figure out another way to share it with you. And you just have to see it.https://www.me.com/gallery/#home Click on the link and it will take you to my mobile me gallery. Then click on bungie jumping. And this is how much it costs. What a deal. The picture below is the building that is undergoing renovation at the bungie site. Rayman wondered aloud what they might be building. I chirped, “The mausoleum for all those that didn’t make it.”
Some of the other things we did:
I singlehandedly lifted this tower by myself. And we came across this giant fruit.
Ray seated in the car which has no scratches on the outside…but as we arrived at the hotel it became clear that the clutch was half gone based on the burning smell permeating the air.
And this is how we started the day. On our way to get the car, we observed this guy running up the stairs (behind us) with his behind in front of us as he did. (yes, it’s a thong). By the time I recovered from the shock of it all…he was already back down the stairs and I politely yelled out, “I’ve got to get a picture of you.” At which time all his buddies cheered as I snapped. You don’t see this every day. Oh, and he was wearing lipstick…like it mattered!!
Leave Comment