Mackenzie madness

I've been for what will probably turn out to be my last ski trip of the year, a jaunt through the Mackenzie.  Myself and a friend from the 'naki had a cruisey road trip, with good snow at Ohau and fair to middling spring corn at Mt Dobson.  Before this trip I'd just kind of touched on the edge of the Mackenzie, but this time I ploughed right on in.  It was one of those high-expectations-get-totally-exceeded type things.

I'm not even going to try and write how cool it was.

Although the Tasman valley and glacier was up there.

Mount Cook peeked through the clouds just so I could check how cool that was, too.

And after all the grand-scale mind-blowing alpine vistas, there were some fresh spring lakeside colours that were just - well, cool.

And it wasn't even that cold.

Them there school holiday work breaks...

Yes, the dreaded school holidays are with us again, and like thousands of parents the world over, I've been dredging the innermost reaches of my brain trying to figure out new ways to get the kids cold, tired, or otherwise to a state of exhaustion where they might give me five minutes peace.  This is a quest in which I've largely succeeded, but needless to say - by the time I've got them tuckered out, there isn't enough left in the tank to contemplate writing a blog post most days, let alone mount an assault on The Novel.

I have, however, had one minor result that I am - in the spirit of depthless generosity - going to ascribe to this fortnight of toil.  I managed to wake up this morning, after a night of unusually vivid dreams, with almost a fully-formed plot in front of me.  I flicked the kettle on for tea, and while I waited for it to brew sketched out the outline, ready to revisit once I've recovered.  Dreams like this don't come on their own - no.  They require the imbibing of copious quantities of alcohol and blue cheese, and my children - the little darlings - have given me plenty of motivation to seek solace in the arms of either the bottle or indeed, barely controlled fungus cultures over the last ten days.  So this story's going to be all theirs.

Snow and the lack of Surf

Yes, the surfing's been completely proscribed by the aforementioned school holidays.  I did take the family off skiing, up to Mount Dobson, a small field in the Mackenzie Country which is almost all beginner and intermediate terrain and which has terrific views over to Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo.  It also looks like a great place to break myself into going a bit more backcountry - lots of moderate off-trail runs accessible by relatively easy hikes, so I may revisit there on my own account if it looks like there's some really nice fresh snow on the cards.  What struck me about Dobson though - apart from the complete lack of school holiday crowds - was what a terrific place it was to just be, in the most hippy-dippy, quasi-Buddhist horseshit sense of the word.  The facilities are - well, basic is being generous - but somehow that just adds to the experience.

Of course, no school holidays or ski trip would have been worth its salt without the obligatory rising-of-the-swell.  The east coast, it seems, was all time during the time we were away.  But with the cold spell we've been having, and  legs heavy with the after-ski burn, somehow I didn't mind too much.  Yes, the clarion all of the warm north might be growing stronger, but there's days down here that are just pure magic.

Fresh tracks...

There's an old saying, which I'll paraphrase as "the body is the window to the mind", from which comes the oldest writing "do" in the book (so to speak): show, don't tell.

Right now, this window's feeling pretty broken after the first skiing of winter.  I'm certainly not in any state to pick up what I was working on - it's written in a way that demands my full engagement.  So instead, I'm casually jotting down in a notebook exactly how I do feel, for next time I have to show  my reader an utterly exhausted shell of a man who, on this evidence, is just about to have his skiing arse well and truly handed to him by an upstart daughter.  

It's a curious mixture of physical pain, mental exhaustion, definitely a sense of encroaching age, all tinged with parental pride.

I'm sure that I'll get something else out of looking back at being in that environment on such a wonderful couple of days, too, but in the meantime I'm off to finish my notes, do some yoga, and just maybe - just maybe - get enough fitness to delay the arse-kicking for another trip at least.

Slowing down and waiting

I seem to be waiting a lot this week:  waiting for my back to get better, waiting for bus parts to arrive, and waiting for clearer decks all round so I can get on with some writing, and on a more positive note, waiting for the NZ ski season to really get underway.

My back is improving slowly, although I'm still unsure as to whether the last episode marked a permanent shift in the severity of the spondy - it certainly seems to be more prominent at the moment, but that could also be because the spine's still being pulled out of alignment by muscles in low-grade spasm protecting the injury.  I'm still keeping up the cycling and yoga, though - bizarrely - as I get fitter, the cycling seems to be more a hindrance than a help.  My current theory is that as I get fitter I tend to spin the pedals faster, so using my hamstrings more, which then shorten and place tension on my spine.  Maybe tomorrow I'll just go for a steep uphill grind and see where that gets me.    I still feel a way away from surfing, although I seem to have arrived at a certain level of sanguinity (?) about the whole thing now, as I'm managing to stay fit (ish) in other ways. 

The bus has decided that 107,000 miles is as far as at least one and possibly two of the original CV joints are going to go.  Driving under load the clanking resembles nothing so much as a knight in armour out for a morning jog.  So I've got that particular delight awaiting for me, just as soon as the parts get here.  Doubtless I'll find something else to do while I'm under there too, although I'm shocked that, just for once at WOF time, I don't have a sidelight bulb out. 

I'm still enjoying working my way through this previous half-finished novel I talked about last time.  It's a nice retreat after the thriller, not least because it doesn't have the same restrictions on prose that the thriller genre does - I can walk round the whole carnival of language and take it all in if I want.  It's fun, challenging, and going well. 

And last, Coronet Peak opened this weekend.  I'm wearing my ski boots of an evening to bed them in, gazing longingly at my K2's in the corner.  The kids are nearly fully equipped - when will they stop growing? - more snow is forecast for this week, and I reckon the back will stand up well to a couple of days skiing as long as I don't push it too hard, and the chances of getting the opportunity to do that with an 8 year old in tow are slim.  Bring it on!