Francis’ Weblog

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Well today we worked on different training techniques and the Central Theme (a load of activities for people learning snowboarding need to master). Also did a bit of a mock lesson and what we need to include in the lessons. Big thing tho I need to present a 10minute lesson by my self tommorow on side slipping. Sounds easy its not! I’ve been going through what you need to get across in a consise way and in only 10mins. Oh and the people i’m teaching are supposed to be fat.

First day of my trainee instructor week! As we have been with the NZSIA instructors last week our stance and riding has got a lot better. Tom’s out BASI instructor and today he’s been going throught he BASI central theme (Steering, Control, Adjustments, Body Management) looked at mountain hazards and did a mock accident (what you have to do etc).

Oh yes and I fell asleep on the coach home and someone took a photo… maybe it will appear on the blog tommorow… you never know … at least it snowed a bit today but most of the day there was quite a bit of flat light which made things challenging. The TC pistes have all these natural gullies, half pipes and jumps, its just one massive terrain park.

Mel and Jo (my house mates) who do skiing (boo hiss) are doing their back country course this week so they are sleeping out on the mountain tommorow night (they’ve packed enough food for about 6 weeks tho!). They need to dig a snow hole and sleep in it and during the day are doing avalanche awareness. Hopefully it won’t be too cold as I have to do it in a week or so!

SNOW INFO: Overcast today with about 2cms of snow in the afternoon, about -4 degrees

Well i’ve been non-stop snowboarding for about 7 days now so decided to have a well deserved weekend off. I start my pre BASI instructor training next week. You usually get Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday off but because of the pre-course i’m working Wednesday too. The pre-course is basically a bit of training in how to teach snowboarding and also improving your snowboarding (stance and posture). At the end of the week they evaluate you and decide if you should continue on to the full BASI training and/or what you need to do in the mean time to get to that level…. anyway it all seems a bit scary so I took the weekend off to read up on the BASI central theme… and sleep

Part of the evaluation envoles checking to see if you “look the part” so you dont have tatty trousers, boots gaffa taped up etc. Matts goggles and board pants were … hmm… well not great so he went out and got some new kit and then pranced around the house:

When they got back we headed off for a walk around Wanaka lake before dinner got a couple of shots of the lake:

Oh and i’ve got my copy of Harry Potter don’t think i’ll be reading the BASI manuals much this week

SNOW INFO: No snow this weekend last snow fall was on the 14th July which was - Saddle Basin: 25cms, Main Basin: 18cm at the top and 8cm at base. But everything is more or less open now except the terrain park and Race training bar. But hey, with Treble Cone as it is with all the natural gullies and jumps you don’t need a terrain park!

Ok its been a bit 3 weeks since my last post, i’ve been very slack… main problem was we moved out of the backpackers and moved into our new house but it didn’t have internet and its a bit of a way out of town so getting to use the internet was a prob. Anyway everything is sorted now and we have ADSL installed.

Here are a couple of pics so far, we prolly have more video footage but we’re still editing it…

First couple of pics coming to Wanaka:

Well you would look like this too after 36hrs! :):

Its a really nice house we’re living in, everything you need… good double garage come workshop, 46inch TV with DVD and skyTV. Washing machine, dryer, Dishwasher… and even a coffee maker! I’m living with Mikal (mate from Uni), Matt (mate from work), Jen and Mel. There is also a flat under our house where Tim and Jo live. Everyone is on a Rookie Course. These photos were taken by Jen!

The official day Treble cone was going to open was the end of June but due to lack of snow we couldn’t go up so we ended up going to Caldrona, another local resort that was getting snow, so while we waited for the snow Rookie started us on theory and days out:

A night out at in Queenstown with the Rookies (These photos were taken by Jen!):

The sky and landscape here is amazing! and has to be seen to be believed! heres just one sunset out the back of our house, but doesn’t really give it justice… “frodo you must throw the ring into the great fires of mount doom!” well you can see why they wanted to film it in New Zealand!