Surfing in the Park.

Well, thought i'd drop in a quick one here. but here are a few pictures of people surfing in the park. This is in Munchen, Germany in a park called the English Gardens.

The wave is caused by rushing water and some construction levels in the waterways. But it looks pretty cool. So here are some pictures

Up close and Personal.

Whales, awesome majestic creatures of the sea. My brother went to see the whales off the coast of California somewhere, and he got, well you could say quite close to them. Here are some photos.

Truly amazing creatures they are. I thought we got lucky in Hawaii, but he got so lucky i'm so jealous.

How long will these be clean!

Got myself some new trailrunners, after my old pair were "taken" away from me. I had an old pair of Salomon Comp 2 before and they fit me awesome. But I did take them to hell and back. Eventually the indestructible laces frayed and I went to replace them under warranty.
But to cut a long story short, they threw them away and gave me my money back, alas they don't make them here in oz no more. So I have been racing with normal runners and boy can you feel the difference. Heavy, no grip, harder to clean, and laces come off.

But new story with these new babies!! my Salomon XA Pro 3d. Take a good look at these cause they are brand new now and all clean and colourful.But by this time next week after the race on weekend, don't expect it to be even close to that. I wonder how long they will last before they turn dark and disgusting. Been wearing them in for this weekend and they are so comfy. Forgotten how good these laces were and how i missed them. Last Summer Series run had to stop twice to tie my shoelaces. Not anymore baby.

How to get from Niseko, Japan to Kauai, Hawaii USA in the shortest time, NOT!

Started the day before In Niseko Japan at 8:30am woke up to a nice day. It was snowing lightly, and the place was full of activity as everyone got ready for riding. As for me, I was busy packing and saying my last goodbyes to friends. Next stop was Hawaii, but before that a monster transit. The following is a breakdown of how I got to Kauai.

1) “Start clock now. 10:30am!” Shizenkan, Niseko – Lift to Main Bus Terminal to transfer to Chitose Airport.
2) Catch the 10:40am bus from Niseko to Chitose Airport arriving at 1:00pm (stop off at Mushroom world for 15 minutes) [Elapsed travelling time 2hrs 30 mins]
3) Get on Flight to Osaka at 2:30pm arriving in Osaka at 4:00pm. [Elapsed travelling time 5hrs 30 mins]
4) Caught the bus to Renki Premium Outlet Centre to shop for a few hours and grab some food. Back on the bus at 8:00pm to head back to Airport. Chilled out and walked around a bit more. [Elapsed travelling time 9hrs 30 mins]
5) On the 9:45pm flight back to Sydney Via Brisbane. [Elapsed travelling time 11 hrs 15 mins]
6) Arrive In Brisbane 9:45am Local Time. Sat around in the airport terminal waiting for them to clean, plane delayed for about 30 minutes. Plane ready to leave at 10:30am, and off to Sydney. [Elapsed travelling time 22hrs]
7) Arrive in Sydney at 12:10pm. Grab my snowboard bag which came out very efficiently for Sydney standards, now I had to transition and meet up with Shenton who kindly offered to take my bags home. Had a brief lunch with him and then back to the Airport waiting for Check In to open at 3:00pm. Once Check in Opened and we got the security issues through I was off to the Qantas Lounge (big thanks to Shenton again) to shower and relax for a while. Waited in the lounge area for Luke & Tsalina to arrive so we could get on our plane which was scheduled to take off at 6:00pm. [Elapsed travelling time 29hrs 30 mins]

8) Arrived in Honolulu at 6:50am Local time. We quickly raced off to get our bags and then we had to rush off to get our next flight which was to take us to the island of Kauai arriving at 9:40am. [Elapsed travelling time 40 hrs 10 mins]

So after close to 40 Hours of travelling I have now reached the beautiful island of Kauai and time to relax. YES?? NO its time for action!! WOOHOO!

Just a distant memory now.

I've just returned from a great Powder Junky Tour of Japan and then some thawing out in Hawaii. What an awesome holiday. But it all ways moves so fast. Everything is fading away. Like a distant memory now. But I can still recall some of the great moments.

Had some awesome powder days in Japan, awesome partying, then in Hawaii it was like a huge adventure. From rushing around to catch a plane, to gently hiking the Napali coast, Sleeping in the car to Sleeping in a Mansion, swimming with fishes to swimming with Turtles. It was great time there in Hawaii and Japan.

In both countries it seems everything is totally different yet great experiences. Japan is organised and clean, US is disorganised and slightly dirty. Japan is cold and snowing, US is hot and raining. Both are beautiful and must be experienced again.

So i better get off my ass and update my travel blog of Hawaii. Stay tuned for that.

Powder Junky Tour 2007

Well, I'm off on my Powder Junky tour of Hokkaido Japan. For travel journal check out my Travel Blog.

Pretty good to be back in Japan, still get mistaken for a japanese which is pretty good and bad. Also with the broken japanese that i speak a lot of the time they start to forget that i'm not japanese and get fully into speaking at speed.

heaps of times i pick up every 4-5 word and can break it down but then it just gets faster. AHAHAH.. oh wells..

The snow has been ok, way better than oz, but not the awesome stuff yet. But hopefully soon.

Snowboarding in the land of the Rising Sun

Here is a little story that a friend of mine wrote about Japan Snow. Well he ain't too far off the mark. So please read, and if you intend to visit please treat the place with respect and be willing to learn from the place.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Hope you all had a safe holiday time and celebrated with all your loved one. Lets hope that this year is an enjoyable one and that we all strive to push ourselves as far as we can go and get the most out of our lives.

thanks to those who shared with me many memories and can't wait to meet all the new memories to be created in 2007!!

Enjoy life to the max, get out to the Snow and enjoy nature..

PEACE OUT!
Cheech

Wigs, tight pants, makeup, and walkman’s

It’s been a while since the last dress up party, but this year for Damien’s Bday an 80’s theme party was organise. I had no idea what the 80’s was about as I was still a young’un and running around in shorts and t-shirts. But for the laughs decided to wear some old looking clothes and super tight pants.

How this started was I raided dad’s wardrobe. Firstly trying on a few T-shirts and shirts. Once I picked out the shirt it was onto the pants. I have a waist size of 33, and have always hated tight pants, but thought ok, it’s a party might as well dress up, so decided to try on dads Size 28 pants.
This was a painful experience but highly entertaining for my brother. Eventually, we figured that it was too tight and if I wanted children in the future, it was best to try something else. Now my brother has some size 30 pants and they seemed to match the pants so I gave them a go and low and behold I could just get in., but I doubt I would be able to sit down. So I went with that and next thing to do was to get my hair done.

Karina and I went around Paddy’s market looking for some wigs to buy. But the first few stores the prices started up around the $50 mark. For a once off thought hmmm, I’d have to say some of the styles they have there were pretty cool. The first store I went to all I can remember is the mullet styles, but also the shop assistant who was putting the wig on had some really bad breath, and she kept breathing on me, didn’t want to tell her I wasn’t going to buy the wig cause of her breath.. sheesh. Breath Mints anyone.

Eventually we found the wig and the costume was ready to put to use. Karina managed to borrow an outfit from someone who went to an 80’s party so all it took was make-up and we were ready to go. Except I had to take the pants off and put them on at Damien’s place.

Everyone got into the party theme and dressed up a bit. There was a bit of bling bling floating around and a lot of the girls were wearing some funky outfits. Doug never ceases to amazing me with his cataloguing skills and produced an awesome outfit of overalls and his walkman. But to top it off he brought his Cassette music collection all organised.

So now it was the moment of truth everyone waiting around the corner quietly ready to surprise Damo, it dragged out for a bit , but eventually he rounded the corner to be greeted by 30-40 ppl dressed all weird looking screaming “SURPRISE!!!”

What followed is priceless, Damo, jumped like he stepped on a rat, then ran down the road like lava was pouring down the mountain. (video will be up soon of this) After he calmed down and managed finding it safe to return to his own home, the celebrations began. Poor little Jaiden was terrified after hearing the screams, but he too settled down after a drive around with Linda.

Great night of laughing at everyone’s outfit and thinking, we should do this again! I might give the tight pants a miss tho, had to spend the whole night standing in fear of ripping my brother's pants. But really cause I couldn't really bend down to sit. But it was all in the name of fun. Here are some photos from the night. More to come.

Urban Max

After last years super wet race, this years race had super fine weather. Dekiru Yo this year featured YY as the running mate and things didn’t start all that smoothly, with YY turning up hung over from partying the night before which could mean a long day. We managed to combine the teams with Andrew/Julie, Tsalina/Luke and formed a huge team of six to race as well.

First stop this year was to meet at Sydney Aquarium. We boarded a cruise boat taking us to the start of the race, which was to run to the opera house from circular quay. Once there we set off to decipher the clues. This year’s race seemed to take us a lot further out of town than we expected, which meant more running for the dumb and more buses for the smart. Of course we were the dumb ones.

The checkpoints were Harry’s Café for a photo, followed by a wharf in double bay, Centennial Park, Mission Australia to use the Motorola Phone to take photo, Paddy’s Market’s and build a puzzle, Travel & Adventure expo to use the new Bluetooth headset, KGV to shoot some hoops and kick a goal, a boost juice to guess the taste of the flavours, Pyrmont Fish markets to find the Aboriginal Culture boat (major issue here, explain later), then over to St Leonard’s Climb fit to do some rock climbing, back to North Sydney to find the Rag & Famish (but no free beer), and then final destination in Glebe for a historical park, clipped and after also collecting donations of $10 from the public we ran back to the finish at Sydney University.

The race was hot this year and we ran heaps of it, due to stupidity. The biggest error we made was trying to outsmart ourselves and look for the Aboriginal Culture boat in its normal docking place of Circular Quay. So we basically ran Bridge street all around circular quay to KGV and then ran to the fish markets. Woohoo!. But after locating this we still felt pretty decent as we saw the race leaders at that point. But, alas we still had 3 checkpoints and they had 1.

But today was a fun day, especially racing in a bigger team. Managed to have heaps of fun which was great and also felt real good after the race, so my fitness must have improved heaps. Even ran back to Pyrmont from Sydney uni after the race and then got a quick shower and then drove up to Hunter Valley for Mel and Jehan’s wedding. The 3 teams managed to finish all together in a poor time but still lots of fun. Can’t wait til next year!!