Francis’ Weblog

Well we had our movement analysis exam yesterday and for some stupid reason I picked the movement I was worst at, DOH! … “broken at the waist” so the rider was hunched over anyway muddled my way through that but then he gave me the same thing for my teaching exam the day after and I fluffed it. My riding passed, my MA passed but my teaching failed… just. Anyway i’m off to remarkables (another mountain) to retake the teaching so fingers crossed we’ll see what happens! oh and we’ve just had some fresh snow so things are getting a bit better snow wise…

Just a quick update… its really hard… and I’m totally and utterly mentally and physically tired, because the exam is a week long you are concentrating non-stop throughout the week ANYWAY … just done some revision with mike for tommorow, we have our movement anaylsis test tommorow evening after a day of teaching freestyle to our examiner, the teaching is only a practise the actual lesson exam is on sunday! … more info later on… once i’ve stopped taking the “go faster caffine tablets”.

ok just a quick update to say my exams start tommorow! ARGH!! … and the “moon man” (a guy go predicts the weather from the moon in Wanaka) says its going to snow over the next couple of days! yupiee… ok I admit all other weather forcasts say its going to be hot with maybe some rain but I live in hope!

well off to bed so I am ready for the swimming pool… I mean slopes at TC…

wish me luck… I think I may need it!

Things are getting a bit dodgy, the mountain is suffering a quite a bit, main street (one of the main runs) is very earthy at the bottom with only a metre gap of snow to get down on. The mountain has been closed for 3 days in the past week and we’ve just been doing more MA and lessons ready for our exam next week. Good news tho its been confirmed that were doing the exam at Treble Cone and not another mountain and we also have 3 extra days training next week which will be good (I need it).

All the skiers passed there exams last week (except one person who didn’t make it, another dropped out before the exams started) so its been a bit of a party atmosphere… they are now starting to concentrate on their BASI exams.

The mountain was closed today so I took the chance to dive over to Queenstown to finish off my medical which I need to do to get my Ozzy visa. Thats been sent off so should get something soon.

Today we got asked to stand by the trainers we wanted to teach us and infact it was quite evenly spread. I choose fatty because he hadn’t trained me for quite a while and he is one of the NZ examiners which is always useful before the NZ level 1 exam anyway i’m off to sleep… up the mountain tommorow teaching some friends of Mikals.

Well we all got up this morning ready to get picked up at our usual 7.30am, as we got picked up our driver said the mountain was on HOLD. So we all headed down to town for a coffee until we find out if it is going to open or not. Then at 8am we got word, the mountain is going to be closed:

But hey look on the bright side its snowing in the saddle! Anyway we’re all heading down to Muzzies at noon to do some video MA, so at least we are doing something.

ok i’m supposed to teach people to do 180s, 360s, olies, nolies, nose rolls and tail rolls… oh and whats nolie anyway?! ok so i’m feeling the pressure, also my last part of my Australia visa came through which means I have to go have a medical (within a month), which also means i’ve had to take a day off snowboarding because the Doc has a day off on Wednesday… the rookie day off!! grrr… anyway I had mon & tue to practise my freestyle elements then I had to mess around in town finding passport photos, photo copies of things etc… There is one pain with having a mountain which is 40mins away, there is only one lift up in the morning and one lift down in the afternoon. If you want to go up or down at any other time you have to hitch which is not too bad, lots of people do it.

Anyway today I headed off to the Doc for my medical in queenstown. It was a lot more basic than I thought… blood test, urine test, answer a couple of questions… open your mouth etc.. oh and a chest x-ray, unfortunatly I have to go back for the results so thats another day off!!!! oh well.. got MA (movement analysis) tommorow and a practise teach. Gonna run through some lesson plans tonight with Mike before I hit the hay…

Mike was telling me about the conditions on the mountain today, he was basically wakeboarding on the beginners slope… hope the snow holds out for the exams! it was a nice 20oC today down in town, I was sun bathing in queenstown.