Jono tries Waterskiing

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to spend two days waterskiing/wakeboarding/[various boat tow methods] at a place called the "Hidden Valley" (nearish Taupo). Chris, an old workmate of mine asked me if I wanted to go since some people had pulled out. I'm so glad I did, coz it was heaps of fun!

It's actually not that hard to get up on two skis, but I never quite mastered the single ski technique, getting up out of the water is a real challenge - so that's a goal reserved for next time.
The process of crashing is both scary and exciting, and usually doesn't hurt too much - although this can vary a lot depending on how you "choose" to land.
Skiing for any length of time is actually surprisingly hard work. Here's a pic of me shooting off to the side of the boat:

There's lots of geothermal activity around causing holes to pump steamy stuff all over the place. One of the spots had a couple of bathtubs that you could fill up with hot and/or cold water to lie in - they looked a bit skody though, so I didn't really use them.
The sign was quite welcoming, in an odd sort of way:

And this is the view across the river from the lodge:

Across from the lodge there are these steaming terraces - unfortunately you have to pay to actually hop over there. I imagine they're similar to the original pink and white terraces that were around till the 1800's (back then considered one of the natural wonders of the world ;). Although those ones were probably a bit more pink.

This is Chris, showing us how it's done on a single lonely ski:

I even watched someone do barefoot waterskiing - talk about hardcore. Think about the size of someone's bare foot compared to a ski. To keep them above water, the boat has to be going very fast, so crashes happen very fast too...

But anyway, that was an awesome weekend I'd love to repeat one day.

Earlier this week, my good friend Robert cooked a few of us important people an awesome BBQ dinner. I'd been looking forward to the meal all week :) and thankfully, it didn't disappoint.
After gorging ourselves we played some Wii on his wall to wall projector set up - impressive!

The Crusaders will be kicking the Blues' arses in tomorrow's Super 14 opener! I'm certainly looking forward to reminding a number of select individuals of our glorious victory come next week...