Early morning wakeboarding... again!

It's becoming a bit of a habit, but we're not complaining! On Tuesday morning we decided to head out for a wakeboard before work. The lake's generally at it's best first thing - even if it is cold! The weather has been pretty much perfect for a fortnight now so we're making the most of it.

There aren't any photos of Greg as he decided that with him heading out rabbit shooting that evening, he didn't want to be too tired so gave it a miss this week. Andrea made the most of it and had twice as long on the board as usual!

A few photos:

The lake was a bit ripply. Hehehe

Photographic proof of the world's smallest wakeboarding jump. In Andrea's defense, there were bigger jumps on the other side of the wake but the photos of those all came out blurry.

Carving it up

We also took Greg's workmate Mike out - it was his second time on a wakeboard (the first being last week) but he was managing to cross the wake by the end of the morning - this photo was as the sun came up over the Remarkables.

As far as the rabbit shooting went, Greg ended up getting back home at about 1.30am - and the Cardrona farmer was delighted at the tally of well over 100 rabbits.

Morning!

We went wakeboarding at 6.30 this morning (Tuesday) which has the added bonus of views like this:

The water was like glass (especially first thing) and we both got a good ride in, along with teaching a couple of others to wakeboard and then throwing them around on the biscuits. One of the perks of Greg's new job is that we can borrow the demo gear any time we want, for free - including kayaks, wakeboards, executive carving skis, snowboards, mountain bikes, fly fishing rods etc etc so we had a play on a few new boards this morning too! Lots of fun.

Out on the water

Summer returned on the weekend (after a week of winter) treating us to two days of absolutely perfect weather. Not too hot, not too muggy, not too windy... just right.

On Sunday we were trying to decide whether to go fishing or wakeboarding. In the end, we decided on.... both. On the way we saw this beach, which we would have pulled up on if we hadn't already finished our lunch. Very pretty! And we also figured out we can walk there (easily) from home - it would take about 20 mins.

We didn't catch any fish this time, which is quite unusual. We think it's because the fish could see us coming:

You wouldn't believe that the photo was taken from the boat, into 10m of water! Because conditions were so still, the water was unbelievably clear - we could still JUST see the bottom at 40m depth which is about the height of an 8 storey building.

After the fishing we met up with Max and Fin and Morgan. Greg, Andrea and Max all got out wakeboarding, with Andrea staying on shore with Morgan so that Fin could watch Max on the board. It was Andrea's first time back since dislocating her shoulder and it went really well - the physio's strengthening exercises seem to have made her shoulders stronger than ever before.

The last photo is Max, photo taken by Fin.

Wakeboarding!!

The last two evenings (Thursday/Friday) have been relatively calm so we headed out both nights wakeboarding after work. Greg's workmates Jim and Matt came along, as did our friend Max. Also a couple of random friends of friends - it's great to be meeting new people all the time!

A great time was had by all, especially on Thursday night when we managed to get into some flat water just before sunset. We got a few good photos, so thought we would put some up here for you.

The first photo is Greg with the sun behind him laying into a big carving turn.

The next photo is Andrea, not carving quite as much.... she does also jump a little but the "air" is so short lived that it's almost impossible to get a photo of :-)
Greg in Mid airAnd the last photo is Greg's workmate (and our friend) Matt - just had to include this photo! He's about a metre in the air, in the middle of a 180.

Two extremes

Well, we sucessfully went out wakeboarding last night and had a load of fun. I didn't end up getting into the water as we were running out of daylight and the coastguard was watching us. Rusty and Sarah (Jen's liftie friends) hadn't wakeboarded before but we got them both up and wakeboarding. Always really rewarding!

This photo is of Jen, and you can see how little snow is left on the Remarkables in the background. Definitely the end of the season!

Sarah and Rusty on the biscuits. That is Rusty in mid-air!

Anyway, we woke up this morning and looked outside and it was snowing!! Big fat flakes, at home in Kelvin Heights. Met Service had previously said "snow above 1100m" so not a whole lot of warning. Burton was less than impressed and was sulking on the couch when I left home. If he had been upstairs I would have considered leaving the heater on, but there's no way I am going to light the fire for the cat when we're not home. It had turned to sleet by the time I left for work and is now normal old rain but still snowing up the mountain so hopefully closing weekend will be a lot of fun.

Seemed to be the right thing to do at the time

Well, everyone else is doing it so I thought we should start up a blog too. It's nearly the end of the ski season, with only one week remaining. The forecast for most of the week isn't what you'd call fantastic, but with any luck the freezing level will drop and we'll get some fresh snow for the weekend.

This is what the Remarkables looks like today - blue skies but not a whole lot of snow left.

We didn't end up going skiing or snowboarding on the weekend as the weather wasn't flash on Saturday and then on Sunday we needed to do really exciting stuff like mow the lawns (it hasn't been good lawnmowing weather for the past 4 weekends, other than when we have been out and about) and tidy the house. It's not all that great when the highlight of your weekend was shifting the couches to vacuum under them, but it happens....

It is fine and sunny today, with a light frost this morning. A pretty typical spring day in Queenstown. Hopefully it won't get too windy this afternoon as we are intending on taking Jen and two of her liftie friends out wakeboarding. It's going to be cold, no doubt about it, but it always is in the water (the lake is about 400m deep, so the temperature tends to not change a lot). I only have two wet suits and they will be used by Jen and her friend Sarah so I likely won't be wakeboarding tonight. Oh well, I will take the time to take some photos of the others and brush up on my boat driving skills!