A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single SaaS Solution
Archive for July, 2005
Jim Hart the wizard
Jul 26th
Ok back into the NZ way of things, and it instantly made a difference. Jim incresed my binding angle to F4, this is basically the biggest angle you can make your lower leg go. When you increase your binding angle it pushes your knee down so you are “crouching” more, really painfull staying the that position all day but GREAT for my posture. My riding instantly became better. Jim also got us going through some teaching of the main progressions in NZ and we realised some things instantly clashed with the BASI way of doing things. We just need to find a way that satisfies both, which most of the time is quite easy.
SNOW INFO: Quite slushy today but it started to rain at the base station, and snow further up the mountain, all in all 5cms by 5pm.
A night to remember…
Jul 24th
Last night:
Well what can I say… it started off as an innocent meal in a Thai restaurant, it ended with people having no recollection of what happened the previous night and Mel admitting her undying love to Glin. We all bundled round shooters with a couple of trainers. We then headed round to the Thai, got very drunk… Mel pissed herself… I mean fell over in the the street and got her bum wet. Well video footage to come!! But heres a couple of piccies from the night:
Earlier in the week we had some very nice lamb shanks… Mikal bit off a bit more than he could chew…
SNOW INFO: I didn’t go snowboarding today. We had 5cm in the main basin and 8cm in the saddle basin. But today the slopes have started to melt and areas are getting really dodgy from what the people who went up today have been saying… snow dance is continuing! Heavy snow is predicted for tuesday so heres hoping!
Day 5: BASI trainee Instructor
Jul 24th
Well today we did some work on beyond the central theme, went over bumps and also some different types of excersises we could use for warm ups and streaches. We were then tested on: Basic, Bumps, steeps and piste performance. You need to get a score of around 5 for all these areas to pass your Stage 1 BASI course, most people of 2′s and 3′s, a couple of good people got all 4′s… we’ve still got a lot of work tho. I got 2s and 3s and I really need to work on my carving but so far so good. Tom our examiner/trainer is really good at the teaching of snowboarding and analysis, its been an interesting yet frustrating week in some places.
Yesterday I managed to twist my left thumb… friday I managed to twist my other one and my wrist! Not happy… i’ll take it easy over the weekend and everything should be sorted for monday.
A load of us went to “Star Burgers”, a takeaway burger bar who sell AMAZING burgers!!! if you come to Wanaka this is the place too go! Beef, chicken, fish, bbq burgers every type of burger you can think off.
SNOW INFO: No new snow about 0 degrees temp.
Day 4: BASI trainee Instructor
Jul 21st
Today wasn’t the greatest day for my snowboarding, things were just not jelling together. We started working on “beyond the central theme” which is basically everything other than teaching (riding bumps, steeps, carving). But the afternoon was better.
We ran out of food!!! Mike and Matt had to dive off the coach back from the slopes to buy…. well we wanted them to get some bread, milk and a couple of essentials, but came back with steak… wine… and lemon grass which is of course required in cooking steaks(!??!!). The wine went to good use and we now have none left.
SNOW INFO: No new snow over night 
getting really quite icy in places at between -2 and -3 degrees.
Day 3: BASI trainee Instructor
Jul 20th
Well today I did my lesson today went ok. Ran out of time and didn’t do a summary. Brook had to do straight running to a group of 8 year olds. So the rest of the group had to pretend to be 8 year olds and we had our own goals that we wanted to do during the lesson. One person wanted just to build snow men, I had to always want to go to the loo, another just wanted to go on a the magic carpet (basically a travator on snow). It was very funny…
Went to my first Swiss Ball class today with Mel and Jen. Kinda strechy! 
good fun tho. Got another 5 sessions to go.
Mel and Jen got back from there night sleeping in there snow hole. Ironically the snow hole was warmer than our house!! (NZ people don’t belive in central heating… or insulation for that matter!). A couple of people got wet while they were making there snow hole so had a cold night, but everyone seems to have had fun. Just a bit chilly if you wanted to go to the loo in the night
SNOW INFO: Had a dusting of snow last night. A lot of the powder has gone on the main slopes but its not as icy as it has been.
