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Return of the Camera and Coromandel

Two days later I got a call from the store that someone turned my camera in. After celebrating for a minute, I got a group together of people who just wanted to go to Coromandel for the day, and that same Friday rolled out at 830 to head back to New Chums. Picking up the camera was a cathartic moment for me, since it would’ve cost a couple hundred bucks to replace and I thought I lost all those sunrise pictures.

The hike to New Chums had a surprising amount of spider webs hung over the trail, but I was actually really happy about that since it meant we were the first ones to the beach that day and we had the whole beach to ourselves. We did some swimming, tossed the rugby ball around, and I got in a nice run while everyone else relaxed or read.

Following pretty much the same schedule as the past weekend, we went to Opito Bay next, except this time we added cliff diving. To get to the cliff diving spot, you have to hop a couple electric fences and head down an old cow path, but for cliff diving I was more than willing. The cliff is probably about 100 feet and the spot you dive off has got to be around 40. The view from the top has everything from green sheep fields, to mountains, and of course, ocean.

To get to the jumping spot, you have to work your way down the cliff. One of the already people in my car had already been here so he showed us the way and where to jump, so he went first and I got some good action shots of it. After he was safely cleared, I took the plunge. It was a long enough fall you had time to think about what exactly it was you just did. I also had enough time to realize the angle I was hitting the water was going to hurt, but there wasn’t much I could do at the point. It was about a 5-10 minute swim back and it was fantastic. I wanted to go a second time, but getting all the way back to the cliff and down to the spot to jump was a lengthy process.

Exhausted and exhilarated we went straight to Cathedral Cove to try and catch the sunset there, but by the time we pulled onto the street, the rain we had been avoiding all day finally caught up to us. It’s a 30 minute walk to Cathedral Cove and at this point it was getting cold and raining, but we figured we might never be here again so why not go for it. There may not have been a sunset to see or even good enough light for a good picture, but we put all our stuff in the “Cathedral” to keep it dry and let the waves toss around for a while before heading back soaking and smiling to Auckland

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Cameraless Coromandel

The weather is starting to get a little cooler here. I can’t bring myself to call it cold or say winter is coming when the lowest the temperature ever really gets is in the 50’s, but still not 70’s and sunny every day like it has been. Since the Coromandel is all beaches and natural beauty, its way better to see in the summer sun, so I decided to grab a hold of a warm weekend while I still could. Two of my roommates and I booked a car and headed on the 2.5 hour drive out to Coromandel. We dedicated the first day to climbing the Pinnacles, the tallest point in Coromandel. The hike is supposed to be a 7 hour round trip if you do the loop, and it’s a pretty steady uphill, but the trail is well cared for and there’s even a giant hollowed out Kauri trunk on the trail. The trunk is so big I could fit in it.

The summit push is literally straight up and you have to navigate a series of relentless wooden stairs and metal rungs to the top. My legs were on fire by the time I made it to the top, but the views were worth it. Since it was the highest point, I got a 360 degree view of the entirety of Coromandel. It was fantastic. We were able to do the hike in a little under 4.5 hours, which got us back before dark at the cost of the now giant blister on my foot.

I spent the last few hours of the day stopping in Coromandel town and driving to the campsite. Past Coromandel town, which is little more than a strip of small shops and cafes, the road becomes 1.5 lanes of unpaved adventure. The stars blanketed the sky when we pulled in and I don’t think there was an electric light on for miles. Our campsite was a two minute walk from the beach, so the next morning I got up to catch the sunrise. Glorious is really the only word I could use to describe it and I probably took a couple dozen pictures. New Chums beach was our first of the day. New Chums is supposed to be one of the top 20 beaches in the world, and it definitely did not disappoint. To get there you have to walk over a rocky beach point and 5 minutes down a bush trail that I would not recommend walking barefoot, but the beach itself is beautiful soft sand in an idyllic cove. From there we bounced down to Opito Bay and lunch in Whitianga. The final two stops were Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. Cathedral Cove is the cave the kids re-enter Narnia through in Prince Caspian and I was really excited to get a lot of pictures of it. Until I realized my camera wasn’t anywhere to be found. After doing everything short of dismantling the rented sedan, I dropped my two roommates off at the Cove and booked it back to New Chums, which was the place I remember having it. Despite making record time, I didn’t find my camera, so I left my name and number at the only store in town and went back camera-less to Cathedral Cove. Even without my camera, Cathedral Cove was stunning. I checked out the “Cathedral” and used the two story outhouse with a window and an ocean view. Pretty fancy for a beach, but I’ve come to expect that from New Zealand. Hot Water Beach is right down the road, but digging a big enough hole in the sand to get to the heat isn’t really worth it. It was an awesome weekend, but losing my camera but a big damper on it.

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Boston Strong - "What every act of terror fails to understand is that Hope rises from the ashes"

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First Week of Work - My time at the Goffice

This semester I'm starting my first internship (since I don't think ROTC really counts).  BU Abroad hooked me up in a big way and I'm working for Phil Goff, one of New Zealand's Parliamentarians and the former leader of the Labour Party (one of NZ's two primary political parties).  I'm an International Relations major with a focus on Foreign Policy and Security Studies and Mr. Goff is the Labour spokesperson for foreign affairs and defense, so it couldn't be a better fit.  

I have to catch the bus to work every morning, which I originally wasn't too thrilled about, but once I figured out how to get the student discount on the bus and discovered the super cheap produce store and butcher right across the street, I warmed up to the idea.  I'm pulling 9-5's Monday, Wednesday, Friday and 9-2/3 on Tuesdays.   My two coworkers/supervisors/sources of entertainment over the work day are Elaine and Terry, two veterans of the NZ political system.  They're both great people and helped me get set up in the office (which was actually fairly difficult, there's no wifi and getting my laptop on the internet was a lengthy process).  Phil comes in on Mondays and Fridays, which always ups the work level, but in a good way. For work, I've done everything from trying to decipher handwritten petition data about stopping State Owned Enterprise sales (if you're from NZ you know what I'm talking about, if not I'd need a whole other blog to explain it) and enter it into the Labour Party website to canvasing constituents to attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at a local rugby club.  I'm starting to learn the minutia of the New Zealand political system and what electorates are where and I even got a glimpse into the proposed future of New Zealand social supports (welfare, education, et al) at a meeting of all the local Parliamentarian secretaries.

Phil seems like a great politician to work with, because it's he seems genuinely care about his electorate.  He tries to maintain a prominent community presence (which is great because I generally get to go and stretch my legs) and his electorate seems to appreciate him for it.  Although I do wish his handwriting was a little better when I try and type up his facebook posts.

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Christchurch and Glaciers - South Island Trip Part 1

While Auckland, at the tip of North Island, is far and away New Zealand’s largest city, the southern end of South Island is home to the adventure capital of the country and perhaps the world.  Two weeks ago, I embarked on a 10 day trip which took me from Christchurch, down the South Islands west coast, across the Routeburn Track, and into the adventure capital, Queenstown.  If I tried to fit the entire trip into one blog, it would be a lengthy and hard to follow endeavor, and would like more like an essay than a blog, so I’ll break it up into the three different segments of the trip in an attempt to make it more manageable.

None of us has had any experience with domestic flight in New Zealand, and we budgeted for security here taking as long as TSA does back home.  However, I probably could’ve taken a later shuttle to the airport, because the BU dorm security is less trusting than airport security here.   We touched down in Christchurch and had our car a little before afternoon rolled around.  It’s getting significantly easier adjusting to the left side of the road (which’ll be a problem when I come back).

Christchurch has been pretty devastated by earthquakes over the past year and huge chunks of the city were either blocked off or abandoned due to the damage.  It kind of reminded me of Detroit.  Luckily, the beautiful Botanical Gardens were largely unaffected, so we spent a couple hours kicking around there. Someone assembled a moose, giraffe, and penguin out of plants and flowers.  It was unlike any garden I’d ever seen.  After that we decided to explore a little down to this place called Sumner Beach.  Sumner Beach was a giant beach with a cave carved out by the waves at the end of it.  We spent the rest of the day exploring the cave, grocery shopping at Pak’n Save, and struggling to find our campsite in the dark.

We had to settle on my third choice for campsites that night, which put us squarely across the street from train tracks, but it was free so I couldn’t complain too much.  The next morning I awoke to a kea pecking around outside my tent.  Keas are a type of parrot native to New Zealand and look like a large hawk.   After trying unsuccessfully to get a clear picture of the bird, I made my way over to the fire pit and was able to get a pretty solid fire going off the embers of the night before.  I didn’t even need matches to start it.  My young Boy Scout self would’ve been proud. 

After everyone woke up, we drove a little down the road and stopped at Devils Punchbowl. The Devil’s Punchbowl is a giant waterfall in Adam’s Pass that if you do about 5 minutes of bushwhacking and rock scrambling you can get right underneath, so of course, that’s exactly what I did.   Drinking from the Devil’s Punchbowl was a good way to wake up and get the morning started.  

From there, most of the day was committed to driving down the West Coast.  We stopped in a small coastal town that boasted some really cool driftwood sculptures and homemade ice cream before reaching our first destination of the day, Franz Josef Glacier.    You can pay a few hundred dollars to climb Franz Josef or Fox Glacier, or you can figure out where the tour goes and walk until it gets dangerous for free.  We chose the latter. 

The trek to Franz Josef took us through a breathtaking glacial valley with waterfalls feeding into a pale blue glacial stream.  Sadly, Franz Josef has significantly receded, so we couldn’t get too close to the terminal face of the glacier, but the views around it were still fantastic. 

Fox Glacier was a different story.  It was a slightly longer and steeper walk, but the trail took us right up to the face of the glacier. I could see the ice chunks fall into the river and watch a tour group try and scramble up the side.

Spending my whole life in New England, snow and ice are nothing foreign to me, but the sheer size of the glaciers blew my mind.  That night, we made our way to another free campsite that took us half an hour down a dirt road to Gillespies Beach.  An oceanside campsite with Mt. Aspiring National Park and the glaciers looming in the background.  If it wasn’t for sandflies (New Zealand’s nasty answer to mosquitoes) the campsite would’ve been perfect.   True to New Zealand stereotypes, I found a wild sheep wandering in the woods nearby, and he kind of became the camp mascot for the night.  Growing up on the east coast, it was the first time I’d ever seen the sun set over the ocean, and it was so cool watching it sink into the waves.  The stars were breath taking that night and I slept well in preparation for the next section of our journey.

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Marian and Milford, the 8th and 9th Wonders of the World - South Island Trip Part 2

That morning the sunrise over the mountains was blocked by clouds, but besides that, the weather was perfect.  My car made sure we were the first ones to pull out so we wouldn’t have to deal with the massive clouds of dirt car tires kicked up on the long dirt road drive out of the campsite.   After stopping in town to get directions (can’t exactly use smartphone GPS without smartphones or service), we started the long drive to Te Anau and Milford Sound.

It was an eight hour drive, but the national parks and coastal cliffs we drove through and over made it a little more bearable.  Our final destination for the day was a campsite in Milford, but we stopped in the lakeside town of Te Anau to restock and pick up our Routeburn information packets.  Routeburn Trek is one of New Zealand’s Great Walks, the eight best backpacking treks in New Zealand.   Some of the group signed up for a night glowworm cruise on the lake, so after everyone left for the campsite, I stayed behind to give them a ride back.  The time to myself was great, and I did some sunset crossfit on the beach of Lake Te Anau and checked out Te Anau’s outdoor bird park.  I used a big rock as a kettlebell, and it did the job surprisingly well. The sun setting over the lake and the Southern Alps was a nice touch too.  The bird park on the other hand looked like a setting from a bad horror movie.  It was dark and all the birds there are in giant cages and squawk like they’re trying to cover something. The birds were fairly exotic and the park was interesting, but I was 80% convinced someone was going to come out of the caretaker cabin with a shotgun.   On the drive to the campsite that night, the almost full moon illuminated the mountain ranges and we pulled over to take it all in, and I got some great moonlight pictures.

I woke up the next morning freezing cold, but I guess that’s what happens when you camp in the bottom quarter of the world.  To warm up I hiked to Lake Gunn from my campsite, which was just starting to collect the rolling morning mist.  After venturing back to the campsite, I got together the few other people who woke up and drove to Marian Falls, as a nice morning wakeup.  The morning light caught the falls perfectly, and it was surreally beautiful.   By the time we got back, the rest of our group was awake, and we went to check out Milford Sound.  Milford Sound is supposed to be the 8th Wonder of the Natural World, and it certainly lived up to the billing.  The road to Milford Sound protects it from the flood of tourists and over development.  Just to get there, you have to drive a mile in a one lane tunnel straight through a mountain and then weave your way down a series of hairpin turns to the bottom of the same mountain.   I spent the next few hours poking around Milford Sound and checking out all the short day hikes in the area.  These day hikes culminated with Lake Marian.  

Lake Marian is a two hour hike straight up a series of rock scrambles.  The trail is hard to follow, poorly maintained, and often painfully steep.  That being said, this was one of the best day hikes I’ve ever had the pleasure of taking on. After sweating and slogging up the trail, it suddenly opens up to the perfectly picturesque Lake Marian.   Lake Marian is what people expect when they come to New Zealand, it is the embodiment of untouched natural beauty.  So of course, I pulled off my shirt and jumped right in.  After that hike, jumping in and swimming felt almost as amazing as Lake Marian looked.  This lake was framed by the Remarkables mountain range on all sides and fed by run off and massive waterfalls.   I decided to try and hike to one of the waterfalls, but after an hour of walking around the lake, I realized how massive the scale was and that it might take all day just to get to the other side, so I turned around.

My last full day in Milford started with a sunrise kayak tour of Milford Sound.   The sandflies were vicious before we got on the water, but almost as soon as my kayak’s nose touched the water a wild Fiordland Penguin popped its head up out of the water.  When the tour guide pulls out her camera, you know it’s a good sight.  We went past Sinbad’s Gully, the only spot in New Zealand with no mammals, just a huge variety of native bird and lizard species, waterfalls twice the height of Niagara Falls, and because it was high tide, we could kayak right up to one of the waterfalls.  Six hours of kayaking tires a man out so we spent most of the rest of the day exploring the wilderness around the campsite and skipping stones on the river there.

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Routeburn and Rockslides - South Island Trip Part 3

With the morning came the third leg of the South Island journey, Routeburn track.  We packed up, did a sweep of the campsite, and we were on the trailhead by 10:45.  About an hour in, we hit Key Summit. Key Summit is an hour and a half long side hike that rewards you with 360 views of the Remarkables, the Southern Alps, and Lake Marian if you look down.  The clouds cleared just as we got to the top, and the pond resting on top only added to the view.  Continuing on the trail we passed lodges with solar powered everything for people with $1500 to spend on a 3 day hiking tour (we were being ambitious when we decided to tackle the trip in two days).  After getting past that, we made it to our campsite at Lake McKenzie and set up our tent on one of the green felt squares the Department of Conservation set up.  It felt kind of like a Boy Scout camp.

We made good time getting to the campsite, so we had a lot of clock to burn before the end of the day.  My roommate and I decided to do a little exploring and decided to see what’s on the other side of the lake.   There hadn’t been rain in a couple of weeks and the stream bed/rock slide that feeds the lake was dried up.  It led up to a bowl where the ridge curled back on itself and we decided to see if we could get up there.  It was a crazy rock scramble and it got steep at times, but it was a lot of fun and definitely a good workout.  We made it to the bowl fast and then we got more ambitious.  The ridge was right in front of us, straight up, but right in front of us, and we decided we were going to get to the top of that ridge.  Up until this point we had been following cairns left by other ambitious hikers, but as we started climbing to the ridge, those cairns stopped.  The hike got a lot scarier very quickly.  It wasn’t steep anymore, it was straight up.  The views were incredible and sobering as we realized how much elevation we were gaining and how small the lake we were camping at now looked.  We hit our drop dead turnaround time, and the ridgeline wasn’t getting any closer.  As much as I hated to do it, we made the call to turn around.   The next step was figuring out how to get down.  Getting down was exponentially more dangerous than going up.  One false move and that was it, and we were deathly aware of it.  There was thick grass that grew on the slope that we used as hand holds.  It tore at our hands, but it was much better than the alternative.  As we started heading down, the fog started rolling in, and I was satisfied with the decision to turn around.  Getting down was dangerous enough.  I don’t even want to think about what getting down with 0 visibility would have been like.

The cold air mixed with our warm breath soaked the inside our tent and we woke up at 3:00am cold and wet.  It was a full moon with no cloud coverage, and we decided to do a moonlight night hike.   We started on the trail at 3:30 in the morning and when we broke tree line, the views illuminated by the moon were haunting.   Coming around to the other side of the ridge, the views opened up to Hollyford Valley and extended all the way to the Tasman Sea.  We hit the high point, Harris Saddle, at around 5am, and passed Harris Lake right around sunrise.  It was surreal because I’m used to finishing a hike in the evening, so the sun perched part way in the sky kept tricking me into thinking it was evening.  Since we left so early, we ended up lapping one of the groups doing the trip in 3 days that started a day before us.  Their faces were priceless when we rolled into their campsite at 730 in the morning.   The trail out from their campsite was well maintained and relatively flat, which was nice because it let me take in Routeburn Flats’s views. 

After crossing the long suspension bridge to the trail end, we drove into town and got breakfast at a local café in Glenorchy.  On our way into town, we got stuck behind a man on horse driving his flock of sheep down the road.  It was arguably the most quintessentially New Zealand thing I’ve seen to date.  Glenorchy made the average small town look like a city.  There were maybe 5 roads, a general store, and a one room school house entitled “School.”  I don’t know if it was the small town charm or the fact that I’d been largely surviving on apples, peanut butter, and trail mix for the past week, but the bacon and egg frittata I had was one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had.  We drove back to Routeburn to pick up the girls and got a nice two hour nap in the car before they showed up.   Back in Glenorchy we headed to our bach, a vacation home we rented for the night and spent the rest of the day drying out our tents, cleaning our clothes, finally showering (you have no idea how needed this way) and reading.  The bach was essentially a really funky tin shed that someone made livable and it was even used in the movie Vertical Limit.   Besides a cat sneaking in and jumping on my face at night, it was a great place to unwind after a 23 hour marathon of hiking.

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Adventure and Burger Capital of the World - South Island Trip Part 4

The baying of a nearby donkey and the equally exuberant response from a local rooster woke me early the morning in the bach.   Everyone else woke up at roughly the same time, so we cleaned up the bach, I had my leftover trail food for breakfast (an orange and canned tuna) and we took off to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world.   The drive was an adventure all its own.  The road wove through the valley, with sweeping turns, and very few other drivers.  It was like a F1 race, bombing up and down the hills and around Lake Wakatipu.  I was really glad we opted for the full insurance, because I hate to think what that road did to our car’s suspension. When we got to Queenstown, he headed straight to Nevis’s Bungy.  Two of the girls in our car were taking the plunge that was born in the heart of Queentown’s reckless abandon. Luckily for us, Nevis also had computers/internet connection for anyone jumping.  Emails tend to pile up when you’re nowhere near a computer for over a week.  It’s here I learned that ProjectGO was offering to send me to Senegal for 8 weeks this summer, and since I only applied for 4 weeks and in Boston, I was taken aback.   I emailed my parents thought longingly of the Sunset nachos that I would now have to wait an additional few weeks for. 

After some grocery shopping, moving into my hostel, and checking out the Queenstown library, I threw on my swim trunks and got on the bus to go river surfing.  River surfing is one of the myriad of adventure activities Queenstown offers and consists of taking little more than a boogie board and a wet suit down white water.  Serious Fun River Co. offers a trip down the longest class 4 commercial rapids in New Zealand, and when it comes to high adventure, it doesn’t get much more exciting than class 4 rapids on a boogie board.

When it comes to swimming, kicking is far and away my weakest skill, and it’s what I fully had to rely on for this venture.  I’m not going to lie, there was chunks that were frightening, but with an exhilarating kind of fear.  We passed through the Pillars of the King from Lord of the Rings, I surfed on a rapid’s wave (it’s a crazy feeling and it suspends you in the river), and then shot the Chinese Dogleg, the half mile of class 4 rapids.  I ended exhausted with a big stupid grin on my face.

The rest of my time in Queenstown I spent getting to know the city, and perhaps more importantly, getting to know the city’s food.  Queenstown is famous for Fergsburger, the best burger in New Zealand, and possibly this side of In n’ Out.   I stopped there twice and had the Southern Swine (my first American bacon since getting here) and the Sweet Bambi (a burger made with Fiordland deer).  The Cookietime store, a lamb and kumara meat pie (the penultimate NZ food stereotype), and a cup of honeycomb ice cream made up the remainder of my inspiringly healthy food choices.  I wandered through the Queenstown rose garden, and took a few pictures by a stone arch emblazoned with Service Above Self, watched a street perform balance himself on the pier, and went to the local craft market.  I’ve loved everywhere I’ve been in New Zealand, but Queenstown is the first place I could see myself actually living.   After the crafts fair, I hopped on a bus to the airport and the plane back to Auckland.  

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Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

William Lord Henley

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Stirling Sports Half Marathon.  My alarm went off at 6am and I hoofed it the three miles to the starting line (buses don't start running on Sunday till late morning).  After warming up, stretching, and futilely trying to do last minute kilometer to mile conversions, my heat went off.  The course had us running down Auckland's coast and into the heart of the city.  From there it looped around back to the coast and started up an old volcano.  The volcano is a quiet suburb now, but that didn't stop it from trying to kill me.  Kilometers 8 through 13 were fairly relentless uphill climbs, which led to some awesome views and a strong urge for me to find a motorized wheel chair.  I was cruising till about mile 10 (16k) but the last 5k was rough.  It was right along the coast and the sun was out in full force.  It took most of my willpower to keep moving through that, but as I came around the turn and I got the finish line fever and kicked in everything I had left.  

Overall, the race was great. I did mistake a Powerade cup for water, which I found out after I dumped it on myself to cool off, but that was really my only problem.  There was a 70 year old man in my heat named John.  He came to the starting line in crocs and wool socks and I was very much wondering what he was doing there.  I stopped wondering once the race started.  John and I ran together for much of the race, and looking at the clock over the finish line, he easily came in at under an 1:45 (not to be outdone, his wife came in at under 2 hours).  Not bad for a man old enough to get a senior citizen discount on his race registration (especially one racing in 10 dollar crocs).  

A few of my friends from the abroad group came to catch my dying body at the finish line.  More important, then helping me limp home, they brought homemade brownies, which was probably the worst but best post race food I've ever had.  I'm pretty sure I ate back all the calories I burned during the race within 20 minutes of finishing, but it was definitely worth it.  

After passing out on the beach for probably an hour, I hobbled to the bus and didn't move off the couch for the rest of the day.  Picking up dominos from the lobby was the extent of my exertion.  I've still got to even out my tank top tan from the race, and I'm pretty sure I have more blister than foot right now, but it was an amazing experience  

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Full body fitness has been one of my personal goals here.  In Boston I ran and did Crossfit themed workouts a lot, but it was always on my own with no real guidance and minimal stretching at best.   When I got here and started doing Crossfit with a group and a trainer, I learned just how much I had been leaving out.  My mobility was awful and it hurt my form on squats, deadlifts, and really every calisthenic except pushups.  Trying to touch my toes in a stretch was a harrowing adventure that rarely ended well.  I also painfully discovered how disproportional certain muscle groups were compared to others.  For upper body heavy Crossfit sessions I would finish my WOD 2 minutes before anyone else, but when it came to grip, lower back, and legs it wasn't what you would call "pretty."  

When I figured this out, I made it my mission to fix it.  I've been doing around 20-30 minutes of stretching a day and most of workouts are much more lower body focused.  I've noticed a huge improvement in the month I've been here but I still have a long way to go (although I can touch my toes now).  

One way I've been trying to work on that is by educating myself on it.  I got my hands on a copy of the ACE Personal Training manual and I've been starting to study up on that and putting away money for the test, so hopefully I can get certified when I come back.

My other big fitness goal is my half marathon on Sunday.  To date, my longest run was this past November where I went out for 11 miles in roughly an hour and 16 minutes.  This course has a volcano halfway through it and 3 miles are spent running up it, so I don't know how I'll do time wise, but I've been more focusing on Crossfiand, lower body strength, and mobility instead of running, so I'm not really running for time (never thought I'd say that ever).  Regardless of if I come in at 1:30 or 1:50, I still get this sweet racing shirt that is going to become a gym staple.  Hopefully I 

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This is my new baby, my new rust coated baby. Everything in Auckland is very spread out and the bus is super expensive ($3.50 a ride) and I'm super broke, so up until now, I've pretty much hoofed it everywhere.  I spent an hour and a half yesterday walking to the nearest post office delivery center to pick up a care package from home (although that was worth it because it had a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies and if I'm being honest with myself, I probably would've walked at least 10 miles for that).   The walking significantly cuts down on my free time leaving just random fairly useless chunks in the day, so I just bought the bike in the top picture.

 Picking it up itself was an adventure.  After a bidding war I probably got way too into (although I only ended up paying $85) I caught a ferry across the bay to the small suburb of Devonport.  The ferry was a much nicer commute than the bus and I sprawled out on the bow and took in the harbor view.  Devonport is a quaint quiet beach town and it reminded me a lot of Marblehead.  After picking up the bike, I went to the local hardware store, fixed it up in the parking lot, and took it on the ferry home.  

So far it runs great, and the guy I bought it from was nice enough to throw in a lock and lights.  He offered a helmet too but it was comically small for my over-sized melon so I had to buy one separately.  I did some research and found out this bike was actually made in New Zealand in the early 80's so it's definitely retro (and rusty). Now I have a way to get to my internship and the Waitakere Ranges (an awesome set of small mountains outside of Auckland which I'll now be spending my weekends at) so I'm pretty pumped.  I just have to avoid getting run over by the vicious pedestrian hunters otherwise known as Auckland City drivers.  

[bukiwilivin]

The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Christopher McCandles

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Waitakere Waterfall Jumping

Last night, Joe, a professor at University of Auckland and an avid outdoorsman, asked me what I was doing tomorrow (today), and then asked if I wanted to do the best day hike in Auckland.  It didn't take long for me to say yes.  He warned me I shouldn't bring anything I wasn't prepared to have soaked (turned out to be very good advice) and my interest was piqued. Within thirty minutes of waking up this morning, I was on the road to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park in West Auckland (west is the best). 

After getting out of the car, we hit the trail running, literally.  A good 30 minutes of tramping and trail running later, a river showed up on the right of the trail.  Little did I know, this river was our trail back.  Stepping in the cold water felt amazing on my now overheated feet. We quickly came upon a waterfall dropping straight down into a small pool.  I wasn't sure what our next step was, so Joe took it, backwards off the waterfall.  I quickly followed suit.  The adrenaline and cold river water hit me at about the same time. If I wasn't fully awake before I was now.  We kept trekking down, kept hitting more wateralls, and kept jumping off of them.  The highest waterfall had a rope swing waiting for an ambitious tramper who wanted to add a couple more feet to their drop.  I took full advantage of it. 

Once the river leveled out, we would hit sections of bush and just take off.  There's something instinctually exciting about tearing through the woods, and it was a pretty decent way to warm back up after all your body heat washes down stream.  I'm pretty convinced my shoes may never fully dry off, but being barefoot is normal here (I'm writing this barefoot at the university library) so I'm not too worried. 

[bukiwilivin]

Half Marathon Training Schedule

(Dates go day/month here)

26/1   Rest   (My training started a couple weeks ago so I'm just hitting the rest for last week)

27/1   Rest

28/1   Crossfit + 5k

29/1   Hill workout + 1 hill rep 

30/1   Crossfit + 5k

31/1   Distance run (8 miles)

1/2    Crossfit + 5k

2/2    Rest 

3/2    Rest

4/2    Crossfit + 5k

5/2    Hill workout + 2 hill rep

6/2    Crossfit + 5k

7/2    Distance run (9 miles)

8/2    Crossfit + 5k

9/2    Rest 

10/2   Rest

11/2   Crossfit

12/2   Distance (10)

13/2   Rest

14/2   Short easy (2 miles slow)

15/2   Rest

16/2   Short easy (2 miles slow)

17/2   RACE DAY

[bukiwilivin]

Driving on the wrong side of the road and other mini culture shocks. Life in Auckland isn't that much different than life in Boston but there are mini culture shocks.  For one, I used to think Boston drivers were out for blood, but I really believe there's a point system for hitting pedestrians here (I think I'm worth around 5-10 because I've been dodging them fairly regularly).  Besides battling for my life in a real world version of international frogger, I've gotten into a little bit of a routine here. I'm starting to learn how to cook (banana coconut pancakes are my current go to specialty).  I was able to snag a microwave cook book for a dollar at a used book store, and I've gotten more mileage out of it then I'd care to admit.  I'm still working out with the Crossfit guys, which is helping me pick up a little bit of Kiwi culture (one showed up to the last workout barefoot).  Touch rugby is on Tuesday, so I'm pumped for that.  After watching rugby games on the New Zealand version of Sports Center, I'm not really sure how anyone lives through them, but they do, so it should be a good time.

[bukiwilivin]

This is the Auckland War Memorial Museum at night.  I can't take credit for this picture, since I was on a run when I stumbled on it, but I thought it deserved a spot in my blog. 

I'm a firm believer that the best way to see a city is to lace up and explore. Two nights ago, it was around 11 and the only thing on TV was cricket.  Cricket is not the most enthralling sport in the world, so I decided to go for a run.  I ran to the Auckland Domain, the largest park area in Auckland and started exploring all the roads and paths that ran through it. There weren't any street lights but the moon lit up the road well enough and after a few minutes of pacing down dimly lit paths I was greeted with the above view. 

The museum is at the top of a fairly sizable hill, but I was feeling good and I had to get a closer look.  I ran up the steps and did a Rocky pose, although I'm not sure anyone here would really get the reference.  Then I turned around and actually took in the view.  The museum is up high enough so if you stand on the top of the steps you get a view of the whole Auckland skyline framed by the grassy hills of Auckland Domain.  It was probably the most breathtaking sight I've ever seen while running.