http://www.charlotteschocolate.co.uk/

Now everyone go and buy some chocolate.

In other news I've almost finished sorting through the photos from my travels - give me until christmas and you might see some.

Anyway, back to work

So that's it, the mighty travels are all over. We returned to the UK a couple of days ago, after a nightmarish 30 hours flying from Auckland via Sydney and Singapore we landed in Heathrow at 7am.

I am currently starting the rather daunting task of sorting through the 4000 (yes, Four-Thousand) photographs we took during our 3 months ( plus a hundred other photos from the various activies we did). These will slowly be added to the website as they are sorted.

I am also planning on doing a bit of a post dated bloging for New Zealand - I feel it's a little rude to just leave it blank.

Overall the trip was fantastic, at times it was very hard work but well worth it. Each country was fantastic, I enjoyed NZ and Thailand slightly more than Aus - they had a little more variety - but it was still great fun.

The only problem now is where do I go next...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In other news I was barely in the UK for 24 hours before visiting a doctor - this is still being resolved and I'm sure will be blogged about in the coming days/weeks.

Things didn't start off too well, upon arrival I forgot to declare an apple I had in my hand luggage to customs and was promptly given a NZ$200 (67GBP) fine upon its discovery through the x-ray machine. Welcome to New Zealand. F**k.

Anyway, things have since got better. Tomorrow we are going on the TransAlpine train journey from Christchurch to Greymouth. It's supposed to be a really spectacular journey through the mountains so hopefully the weather will hold :o)

Saturday evening we are off to watch the All Blacks play Austrailia in the Rugby, should be a fun evening.

The Day after that we start our "camper van" (think converted people carrier) hire and start heading south.

Our Blue Mountains tour from Sydney was quite good - although we never saw the mountains. Thick fog had rolled in for the day so all we saw was a thick pea soup :o( Despite that obvious dissapointment we still enjoyed the Wildlife Park and the wine tasting which were both included. We also got a "cruise" (read: ferry) down the harbour, under the bridge back to Circular Quay (dock between the Bridge and Opera House) at night which was very nice.

So fingers crossed for a fun New Zealand, where awesome fry-ups cost less that 5GBP but apples inexcess of 65GBP each...

So then, Fraser Island. At 6:30am on Sunday 25th we were both sitting in the hostel TV room with 6 other bleary eyed "4x4'ers" watching the various inane safety videos about dingos and how not to treat your 3 tonne high sided 4x4 like an F1 car...

We managed to stay awake through that only to be faced with the next impossibly hard task - understanding the young Aussie bloke who ran the vehicle hire company, he talked FAST! Faster than me on a particulary high sugar and E-numbers day!

We were all taken from the hostel to the 4x4 Shed where we checked over the vehicle and the camping gear. Then following another impromptue break neck speed talking lesson on driving 4x4s we packed up and headed out - Myself at the helm having been 'voted' to drive (everyone else got into the back of the 4x4 before me).

After a short shopping trip at the supermarket ($15 each for 3 days food) we got to the ferry terminal and after an uneventfull 45 minute crossing, we're let loose on the Island.

It took about an hour to bump, roll and rumble across the 15km wide island on the fairly gnarly 4x4 tracks and then another hour to cruise to the north along '75 Mile Beach' (it was probably only 60km but we'll let them have their fun...).

We spent about an hour at the 'Indian Point' lookout, from where we basically, erm, looked out and saw some dolphins and rays playing in the bay. After that we headed back down the beach in search of our first camp site.

Now until I get the photos up you'll just have to go with my descriptions: these tents were pretty dire. Think crap teepees, more pee then tee. You pegged the four corners out, stuck an pole in the middle and... prayed! Each slept 3-4 people in abject discomfort and squallar - the only plus point was it didn't rain ;o)

Day 2 dawned not soon enough and having sneezed too close to the tents (promptly collapsing each) we packed up and started our action packed day of driving south on a perfectly straight flat beach.

The first stop was the Coloured Sands, and area of particluary orange and yellow sand. After that was the Maheno Shipwreck, A wreck of a ship which became more wreck than ship during a rather nasty cyclone. The cyclone soon grew tired of playing with the ship and dumped it on the beach, for all to see and take beaufitfull pictures of (unless you have the ISO of you camera set to high in which case all your pictures come out grainy. Balls).
Next up was "Lake Wabby" a quite cool lake hemmed in by Rainforest on one side and ever advancing steeeeep sand dunes on the other (at this point you realise you previous camera ISO mistake, rectify it and take some nice pictures :o) ).

From there we droive further south to the next camping spot, we again recreated the 'Fraser Favela' and having sweet talked ourselves our of a 100-and-silly-dollar fine for camping in the wrong place sat down to a gormet meal of "pasta, tuna and tomato gloop". Mmmm.
That night it rained. Unfortunaly Camp-Ghetto with its collender styled tents couldn't withstand the light (mist-like) rain and our 'tents' flooded. Thank got for rental sleeping bags and mats! Fortunatly myself and SK had subconsiously chosen the high side of the 'tent' and missed the worst of it.

Day 3 dawned and having made the 'tents' collapse by giving each of them a dirty look we packed up and headed to our final stop - Lake Mackenzie, a rather beautiful crystal blue lake with white sand - all very nice. After swimming and generally chilling out we headed to the ferry terminal for the journey back.

That evening in the Hostel we ate a huuuge amount of pizza each and had an early night as we were catching the greyhound to Noosa the next morning at 6am. Ugh.

We arrived in Noosa with the plan to spent 2 days there, 1 to learn to surf, the other to visit the Austraila Zoo before heading down to Surfers Paradise where SK's Auntie lives.
Unfortunaly the free Shuttle bus to the Zoo was full, so we had to change our plans.

We spent 1 day in Noosa, where we took a 2 hour surf lesson from "Merrick Davis" a man with such broad shoulders and chest he looked like a walking triangle. He was a beast! We were both standing on the boards "surfing" within an hour and had a great time. We had a wondering around the rest of Noosa - where according the the Guide Book all the "well-to-do dahhhlings" live - but unfortunatly didn't find much so had dinner in the hostel before heading to bed.
The next day - to solve the bus problem - we hired a car and drove ourselves south to the Zoo.
Overall the day was awesome - I'll refer you to SK's blog for a proper account, I don't think I can enfuse my writing with quite as much excitement at holding a Koala.
However we did get to see "Steve - the crocman - Irwin" (it's his families zoo) in the flesh, so that made me happy!

Afterwards we drove south to Surfers Paradise which... was a shock. If you're imagining a sleepy surf town you're mistaken. It has the highest realestate prices in all of Aus, it has the highest residential building in the world and is like a little bit of Vegas dumped on the gold coast - it certainly was a culture shock!

SK's Auntie lives about a 10 minute drive away further down the coast. She picked us up from the bus terminal and we met her, her husband and one of their friends who was over from the states. That evening they treated us to the most mazing meal in the local Surf Club Cafe - Seafood lasagne really has never been sooo good.
The next day we drove to Byron bay where we had a really nice day looking around an old hippe town, eating Fish & Chips and looking around all the shops.
The next day we walked from Mermaid Beach up to Surfers itself and allowed ourselves to indulge in a little hedonistic consurmerism a.k.a Shopping! We had a look around and finished the day by going to the top of the Q1 tower - the tallest residential building in the world.
The next day we chilled out by playing some mini-golf :o) The center has 3 courses of 18 holes and we played each one. After 54 par 2 holes we were both tied at 23 over par, so it wasn't a complete disgrace!

Yesterday evening they dropped us at the Bus terminal where we caught the 14 hour overnight bus from Surfers to Sydney. We arrived this morning and have another hectic 2.5 days ahead of us. Today we're going to look around the city and take in some of the sights (the Greyhound Bus drove over the bridge on the way in :o) ). There are various little tours you can do such as climbing to the top of the harbour bridge and various harbour tours.
Tomorrow we're on a day trip to the Blue Mountains about an hours to the west of Sydney and the day after we have the morning to again look around Sydney before heading on.

Anyway, This has got to be far too long as it is, sorry for any typo/grammer errors - but at this stage I don't care :o)

Next Stop NZ !!

The sailing trip aronud the Whitsundays was awesome! We were on a 110 year old Tall Ship called "Defender". With 20 other people all wanting to experience the high seas (that honestly is the last pirate reference).

We left port early Thursday morning and after negociating the tricker parts of the shipping channel on the diesel engine everyone mucked in and helped raise the 2 sails which sped us towards the Whitsundays at a heady speed of 8 knots.
We had pretty good weather for our 3 days - the seas weren't too rough (certainly not enought to upset a 115' 140 ton boat)!

On the first day we sailing around Hook island (the northern one) and snorkelled over some coral reefs with plenty of fish before lazying on the beech for an hour to soak up some rays.
Back on the boat that evening we had a fw beers while playing various games - such as picking up an ever shrinking box off the floor and trying to climb through a broom handle - I'll explain later.

On day 2 we walked to a lookout overlooking Whitsunday Beach (the 3rd best beach in the world - according to National Geographic - with sand so pure (99.7% pure silica) it was used to make the Hubble Telescope optics). We took some photos then sailed around the coast and having moored up spent a couple of hours on the beach itself.

On the 3rd day we again snorkelled, this time in a bay absolutly teeming with fish, including the king of the area, 'Elvis' a 50+ year old Giant Maroi Wrasse who will swim next to you and even left you stroke him.

After that excitement we got back onto the boat and sailed for home. We had a few beers in the evening with our fellow adventurers on the hgih seas before catching the overnight bus to Hervey Bay.

Tomorrow we begin another 3 day adventure - this time its a 4x4 Self Drive trip around Fraser Island. The worlds largest sand island and another World Heritage Site complete with freshwater lagoons and a 75km sandy beach!

More news upon my return!

We decided to do our Scuba diving here on the Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef and signed up for a 3 day "live-aboard". We were to do our PADI Advanced Water Course (the follow on to what we learnt in Thailand). The boat had 11 dives over 3 days which was quite a gruling schedule - on both Saturday and Sunday we were in the water diving before 7am... We did 4 dives each day (3 on the last) and included deep diving (to almost 30m) and 2 Night Dives - which were really cool.
We saw loads of fish and wildlife including: White Tip Reef Sharks, Hawksbill Turtles, Green Turtles, Giant Maroi Wrasse, Butterfuly Fish, Clownfish (a.k.a Nemos), Fusilers, Flute Fish, Giant Trigger Fish (I had a stare out with one..), Moray Eels and Parrot Fish to name a few! We got a load of pictures of us diving underwater - the guy who was training us was a National Geographic Photographer - and took his camera with him whenever he could. We alos hired a camera of our own and had a go, the results it must be said weren't as sucessfull ;o)

Despite our failings at pro-photography we all passed the course - so we can now call ourselves "Advanced Open Water" Divers. hehe

Overall the trip was fantastic, the company we went with wasn't the cheapest (by far) by they had the best repuation in town and it really showed on the boat. All the guys were great and when you had 4 full (very big) meals a day it just made it all the better!

We got back exhausted lsat night and after heading to a local bar to have a final meal and goodbye to everyone crashed into bed.

Today we're having a rest and chilling out before getting the overnight bus down to Airle Beach to start our sailing trip.

More news when it happens :o)

After a fairly harrowing immigration process (never have various parts of me been sniffed so throughly by as many dogs) we collapsed into the terminal and got the bus into town, a few hours sleep at our hostel ("the Cavenagh") saw us hitting the streets at midday to see what Darwin has to offer, but about 13:50 we had seen everything and so went to the cinema to relax and watch The DaVinci Code - which was pretty good :o) Dinner that night was had at the hostel (Chilli Con Carne Spag Bol) washed down with a "schooner" of local beer - pretty good

The next day we were picked up at 6am by the tour company and courtousy of an overgrown 4WD truck we drove to Kakadu National Park.
There were 10 people on the trip including us, we were in the care of our Tour Guide 'Tex', who drove us around, showed us the sights and even cooked for us in the evening! The guy was great!

On the first day we went on a 2 hour Crocodile cruise in a billabong and saw both freshwater and saltwater crocodiles. The 'freshies' are the ones with long very thin noses and are considered 'nice' - in that they won't attack unless you really annoy them - the salt water crocs see you as a walking buffet. We saw loads of other bird life including some sea eagles - which were cool.
Sopme culture followed - a trip to Ubirr to see the Aboriginal Rock art - which was cool! We camped in a semi permenant camp ground (the normal site was overrun with Mozzies). We had a monster BBQ for dinner (lamp-chops, sausages, pasta salad and potatoes) before crashing into bed.

The next day we swam in 2 waterfalls; the first at a palce called 'Gubara' followed by a visit to an Aboriginal Cultural Centre to learn a little about the native culture. we then drove to our second campsite at a waterfall called 'Gunlom'. We setup camp and spent a few hours of the afternoon swimming at the base in the plunge pool. About an hour before sunset we walked to the top of the waterfall and watched the sunset over the plains - which was really cool :o). Dinner was a monsterous bowl of chicken/pasta/tomato slop - which despite the name was really really good!

On the final day we again went to 2 waterfalls. The first was a 3km walk from the road called "Yurmikmik" (Motor car) falls - and was really cool. The water was absolutley freezing but we all swam/did some barefoot Deepwater Soloing around the plunge pool!
The second was at a place called something springs. The waterfall was smaller but still quite impressive. We ate tortials for lunch - with left over slop. Before starting the long drive home.

On the way back we stopped in at the Adelaide River Inn for a drink - the Inn is also the final resting place of the Buffalo (Charlie) from Crocodile Dundee (which was filmed in Kakadu) who died a few years ago. Charlies final resting place isn't as restfull as you might first imagine - he has been stuffed and now stands at one end of the bar... partially on the bar. :o) Have a Google Image search for "charlie crocodile dundee" and you'll see what I mean.

We got back to Darwin at about 6pm and having showered and changed went to the local backpacker bar which had free food for anyone coming back from a trek, we met up again with all of our group and Tex.

Today we are chilling out, we had a line-in, each of the previous 3 days we have been awake at 6am. Then wondered along to the "Indo-Pacific Marine" a sort of small scale aqaruium with a difference. We were shown round by the enthusiastic owner, who show us all the exhibits he himself had put together and looked after. The difference he explained was that all his tanks etc were self sustaining - he hadn't changed/cleaned/filtered the water in the tanks for almost 20 years - everything in each exhibit worked together and ept everything ticking along. All very interesting!

Tomorrow we are on the 6am flight from Darwin to Cairns where we begin our bacpacker trail in ernest. Not quiote sure what to expect but we only have to survive 3 weeks before our flight from Sydney. It will probably be 3000km of post A-Level 18 year olds but I'm srue I can fill their minds with enough University Horror stories to keep myself amused...

Hope all is well :o)

We went to the Royal Palace/Temple - which were both incredibly grand! Also went to Wat Poh a mega huge temple with the equally mahoosive 'Reclining Buddah'.

Photos are all on SK's Photo Album

Right I have little over 2 hours to get to the airport and check-in for an International Flight...

Next Stop Oz !

We flew down from Chaing Mai over the course of a day. The flights were a bit of a mess as the one we wanted to get ended up being cancelled - which left our only option being to fly business class from Chaing mai to Bangkok. Business Class on a budget Airline though - pot noodle and a slightly larger glass of water than the rest of the plane along with a complimentory newspaper.. speak of Luxury. We got another flight from Bangkok to Krabi and arrived at about 7pm.

Various dodgy dealings and haggling with Taxi drivers (indluding us walking outside the limits of the Airport) saw 4 of us get a taxi for a little under GBP 3.

We spent the night in the Hostel before getting the Longtail boat to Krabi. We decided to Stay on the Back-packer beach - 'Ton Sai' which is a 10 mintue walk around the coast to the North from Railay West. Our heavy rucsacs made it a 30 minute death slog through the jungle but we found a nice enough place and crashed :o)

We spent 3 days doing a Scuba Diving Course - the PADI open water diver. We did 5 dives in total and had a great time seeing loads of sealife from Turtles to Sharks and even Clownfish (think Finding Nemo). We're both qualified scuba divers now so we're really looking forward to diving in Oz on the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday islands.
The diving was great, although our very last dive was cut short by about 10 minutes as I began to get awfull stomach cramps and not wanting to become "Ed the Human Squid" at 15m down had to head for the surface, remove all my kit and go for a quiet snorkel on my own... I'm sure your imagination can do the rest. ;o)

The rest of the time was spent lazing on the beach, although we did spend a few afternoons climbing at the beginner crags around the beachs. Despite a 10 month layoff from climbing I was plesantly surprised to see I hadn't forgotten everything I knew and still managed to get up a few 6a's. Saying that I probably won't be going back untill I can at least cruise 6c (everything over there is kinda gnarly).

We spent the final 3 nights in a "posh" resort on Railay itself - posh means they had electricity 24/7 not just from 6pm untill 2am. The resort had a free buffet breakfast every morning which we managed to make the most of - although it was kinda vile (frankfurters instead of sausages etc...)

So tomorrow we get to Bangkok, where we spend the day before catching our plane to Darwin, where we spent 5 days, before catching another plane to Cairns, where we have 3 weeks to do the East Coast of Austraila.

Hope all is well

Certaily wasn't amazonian bush-whacking through unchartered jungle, but equally we weren't walking along National Trust footpaths. We walked for about 3-4 hours and covered about 6km a day, so it was pretty relaxed. At points we were fording rivers knee deep or wobbling across single log bridges over small rivers. :o)

So it started on Monday, having met our fellow travellers in the head office we all bundled into the back of two 4x4s and drove for nearly an hour out of the city into the hills to the Elephant Camp. We were treated to a baby Elephant doing some tricks before being dispatched in pairs/threes to be taken on an Elephant ride through the Jungle. The ride was pretty uncomfortable but was certainly amusing as we were thrown about in our rain soaked seats trying to hang on while wearing our high class plastic ponchos.
My Elephant was called 'Muddah' and pulled off some pretty impressive moves up and down the various muddy/slimy slopes.

After that it was off for lunch and then onto the trail to begin the trek. Guiding us on our adventure was Nui, Eddy and Rainbow (who seemed to tkae too much care over his haircut to be a treking guide but nevermind).
The walking was broken up with stops at various waterfalls along the way - some of which we swam in. In the afternoon the rains came but we continued to truge uphill in torrential downpour and hill fog. We eventually got to our hill village and our hut which was to be our accomdation for the night.

Day two dawned overcast and wet and for some slightly hungover due to the massive amount of beer that was drunk. More walking lead to another waterfall and more swimming. Afterwards the merry band of trekkers continued winding their way through the various paddy fields and jungle which surrounds Chiang Mai. Lunch was had at a village on top of a hill, we arrived just as the clouds broke and had a great view over the various valleys beyond. The weather broke again in the afternoon so it was another long 2 hours truding in more torrential rain to our 2nd mountain village and another dry nights sleep (aided by more beer and more awesome food cooked for us by our guides)

A breakfast of pancakes greeted us the next morning so recharged by that we headed on to the bamboo rafting camp. Our raft made from 8 bamboo poles lashed together and was steered from the front by a local guy with a bamboo pole - he basically punted the raft along. 3 people would sit down in the middle then 1 person would be at the back with another pole to (try) and help the guy at the front steer. I ended up being the guy at the back so spent the 30 odd minutes ducking low hanging trees and trying my best to push/turn the raft away from the worst the rain swollen river had to offer. It wasn't quite Class 5 white water but it was certainly alot worse than the Thames with various fast tight turns and rapids to keep things interesting.

Afterwards we dried off and jumped back into a 4x4 for the drive back to Chiang Mai. That evening (last night) we all went our for a meal at a local restaurant and some more beers afterwards. We eventually got back to our hostel at 3am and crashed into bed.

We had a brief look around the Night Market so tonight we're going to go back and try and grab ourselves some bargins...

Tomorrow we leave Chiang Mai and fly south to Krabi to (hopfully) get some sun, sand and snorkelling done (and maybe some climbing) ;o)

I may get some photos up on the website soon :o)

- Spent Today looking around the city.
- Went to a temple on top of a large mountain overlooking the city, t'was covered in gold and very bling
- In afternoon evening we looked around the Sunday Market, which was huge - 1 square and about 4 streets, didn't really see all over it in about 3 hours.
- Tomorrow I'm going treking in the forest/Jungle south of here. 3 days and 2 nights. Doing elephant riding, bamboo rafting and general hiking to waterfalls etc. Should be fun - I am however going to get s***caked in mud because...
- The rains have come early, it's been alternatling between broken sunshine and torrential rain all day. Bugger.

Anyway, See you all in a few days

We arrived in Bangkok at 4:30pm on the 15th feeling a little groggy after the 11 hour flight which unfortunatly wasn't incident free, my water bottle leaked into the overhead compartment and upon opening promtly unleshed a deluge of water on the unsuspecting honeymoon couple sitting in the row behind. Arse :o(

After making ourway outside the terminal we caught a taxi to the Bus Depot and got on the 10 hour overnight "VIP" bus to Chang Mai - 700km to the north.
The Bus was great, fully reclining seats, 'hot' meal, drinks and snacks all the time entertained with bad Thai kareoke videos playing - complete with phonetic western subtitles...

we arrived in Chang Mai around 4:30am and got a "Sawngthaew" (Toyota truck with 2 benches under cover on the back) to the Hostel, a few hours sleep was all we got before investigating the streets to see what the city had to offer.

We had a 1 hour tour of the city by Tuk-Tuk, saw a few temples and visted one of the markets. We signed ourselves up for 3 days of the Cooking Course and following a 3 GBP meal (curry, rice and beer each) we crashed out in bed again.

So far the 2 days of the cooking course have been great. In the morning of each day you do an activity of some sort - on the first day it was a market tour the second vegetable carving.
You then learn how to cook 6 dishes throughout the rest of the day -everything from green curry, to leaf wrapped fish to spring rolls. You firstly watch one of the demonsrators cooking the meal and then you go to your own cooking station and have a go yourself, everything has been pretty sucessfull so far. After you've cooked a dish (or two) you sit down and eat it.

After each of the days I've been too full to eat anything untill the morning after.

we're doing that again tomorrow and we will then head up into the hills and do a trek of some sort, before heading south to the beaches of Krabi for some snorkelling and (injury permitting) some climbing!

More drivel when it happens

Between opening day on November 5th and April 28th I had 72 days of Snowboarding, during that time I went from being about capable enough to link turns on Blues to being able to carve/straight-line all but the gnarliest of runs as well as doing a variety of Airs, Spins, Grabs and Grinds in the park.

Desite those heady improvements it wasn't all plain sailing. Due to a (still not fully understood or recovered) injury to my right knee I missed the whole of January (the snowiest month since records began). Later in the season another acrobatic missadventure saw my left shoulder take a bashing, it's now slightly lower than my right and still aching.

Due to those accidents my biggest expenditure during my stay was... Physio, Although not 100% of the final cost I know it's a big number - greater than my season pass - to be honest I just don't want to know. On the plus side I probably saved my liver some problems as everyone else spent their spare money in Whistlers many bars and clubs :o)

Although rather nasty, the injuries we as a house sustained were nothing compared to others - no details - but none of us needed crutches, stiches or surgury - or worse...

All in all it was an incredible winter, I've made some great friends and met some hillarious people. I would love to stay for the summer but there are other places I want to see, Whistler will just have to wait for another year...

Our last meal in Whistler was at... (drum roll please)... the Mongolie Grill - comeon' it would've been rude not to! We were joined by our friend (and one of Bens old bosses) Kristina and had a fun evening of exotic stir fry, beer and cocktails.

To help with moving all the kit Ben rented a car for the day, after moving Ben into his temporary accomodation with Kristina we filled the car with our gear and drove down to Vancouver - stopping off at Wendys and a pretty Waterfall on the way :o)

Having checked into the Hostel we all went for a 'final supper' at 'Simply Thai', one of the best Thai restaurants in the City! All in all the food was excellent - with spring rolls and purple dumpings for starters followed by Red Chicken Curry, Battered Snapper and Green Pork curry for Sk, Myself and Ben respectivly.

Myself and Sophie have 5 days in Vancouver during which time we're going to:
+ See the Aquairum - meant to be one of the best in Canada
+ Do the local Brewery Tour - we've been drinking the beer all season.
+ See the Capilano Suspension Bridge - A Bridge over a gorge and tree-top walkways.
+ Shop - well, maybe not *too* much

All that before flying out of here and starting the World Tour...

Sophie had Tempura for starters and the Teriyaki Beef for main - both of which were excellent.

Afterwards we went to the main village square at the base of Whistler to watch the Telus festival finale, the Big Air contest.
A huuuge kicker, landing ramp and drop tower had been constructed for invited skiers and snowboarders to launch themselves off and pull off some pretty ridiculous tricks.

They had 3 tries and on each run had to do a trick involving ever more rotation - firstly 540*, then 720* and finally 900*.
I got some video which I will edit and put up when I have a moment.

Following the contest was a concert with a performance from 'Blackalicious' - which again was good fun.

Sunday was the last day of operations on Blackcomb (and the last chance to try and win an iPod. Sophie and I were in the lift queue for 7:15am but although coming close unfortunately didn't win. We went to the top of 'Spankys Ladder' - a small hike which accesses solely double diamond terrain, and although conditions were a little too icy to ride down we got some nice photos instead. The rest of the day was spent cruising around in the sunshine getting some last photos and then hitting the park to work on those grabs and spins.

In the afternoon we went to Whistler Park, all was going well until Sophie tried a backside switch 180* off a jump. She fell over and in the process of putting her hand out to break her fall... dislocated her right ring finger at the second knuckle.
I won't go into the gory details - suffice to say it looked vile (see the x-ray pictures) - but 4 hours in the medical centre and a vast quantity of $$$ saw her fixed again.

So yesterday and today was spent on my own riding the park for a few hours. I practiced 180* spins, I added some new grabs to my repertoire and (after about an hour of trying and repeatedly face-planting) I successfully completed a 360* spin! So I'm quite happy now :)

I'll try and get some photos up on the web in the next few days (we've got a few)

Been up the hill for the past 3 days, spent my time almost exclusivly in the park working on grabs (Indie: sorted, Melanchollie: almost there and Crail: Just starting) as well as trying to get my 180* spins looking slightly better, no major accidents but some very close calls... ;o)

Last night myself and SK attended our first Telus Festival event - the Filmmaker Showdown. The Showdown was open to anyone - ameteurs/pros/groups or individuals - the entrants had 72 hours to shoot, edit and produce short films of about 4 minutes in length on any subject.
There was a sellout crowd of 2000 people to watch the 8 best films from a total of 56 submissions.
The films we saw where all very good and ranged from the generally strange 'Attack of the 2nd Dimention' (Whistler gets attacked by a laser-beams-for-eyes triangle), to the slightly scary 'Now you Know' (Scream style serial killer stalks woman and teaches her traffic law) to finally the outright hillarious 'Stiff Nosed Dick' (A New York Private Eye - played by a stuffed dog puppet - tries to track down a womans lost cat), no prizes for guessing some of the jokes in that film...

Tonight we're off to the 'Photographer Showdown' so we'll let you know how that goes.