Mt. Maunganui Races

(11.14.08 The Café. Rarotonga. 1pm)
The next morning (11.8.08) we woke up at 6:45am ate breakfast and hit the road to follow Lance to Mt Maunganui for the races. When we arrived he introduced me to his brother Paul, who was letting me use his Fuze OC1 for the race. After registering, getting my boat inspected I was ready to go. While having my boat inspected Nicole Spalding came over to say aloha. I heard she had just arrived in NZ and when I called her she told me she would be at the race. I couldn’t figure out if I had met her before or if she just looked familiar because how much she looked like Lauren. The whole time people kept coming up and talking to her as if she was Lauren. It’s even funnier because people always say I look like Kai, Laurens husband and we were standing there together. When the OC1 race started I shot out in front, as I tend to do, but after the second or third change I started fading back. Tyrin, Troy, Paul, Lance, one other surf ski and a couple more OC1’s passed me and formed the lead pack. I battled with two others as the leader the second pack. There was a slight wind blowing us out of the harbor but as soon as we turned down the shore we were paddling straight into the wind. Its times like those that I question why I paddle?! It was a hard upwind paddle and two in the second pack overtook me. But as we neared the island which was our turn point I overtook one guy and overtook the other on the turn. Heading back downwind I felt at home; hammer hammer hammer and suuuuuuuurf! I relaxed a little bit as I realized I had put a little gap between myself and the others. I heard that the current would be pulling us back into the harbor so I took a wide course out in the open ocean to take advantage of the surf and headed up the middle of the channel back into the harbor. The others took a line closer to the shore and made a sharp turn, hugging the channel walls. I could see that they weren’t being affected by the wind as much which was blowing straight out to sea, so tucked in behind them and hammered to catch up. I passed one guy fairly easy but battled to overcome the other. Once I did pass him he relentlessly stuck to my tail. It was a hard fought battle all the way to the end but I ended up finishing first in the second pack. When I stood up I nearly fell over in pain. The canoe had been rigged in a way that I was leaning on the ama the whole time and now had a massive cramp in my left cheek running down my quad. I tried to walk it out but the pain was too much and I dropped to the ground and massaged it. There was supposed to be a couple hour break til our next 6man race but they didn’t have the turn out they expected so they decided to run it early. That meant we had to rig our boat and get ready to go. I was paddling with Team Goodyear: Troy, Tyrin, Paul, Nick, Myself and Lance. We got the boat rigged and headed over for the race briefing. The race directed said the wind had picked up which would be great for the way back. We loaded up into our boat and the boys said to just wait and let everyone else leave on the start and we’d wait about 5minutes or so then go. There were no other crews to compete with our crew so we were trying to avoid a cluster around the turn heading out of the harbor. We passed several crews on our way out of the channel and overtook the leader right before the island. The 6man race was 18K so we had to paddle another 4K past island. While paddling I turned back to Lance and asked “you guys really paddle in this crap!” We were paddling straight into swell and wind. Luckily we weren’t really competing with anyone so we were able to just cruise and not paddle so hard. At the turn buoy we stopped to bail our boat and second crew passed us but as soon as we started getting on the bumps we passed them and stayed ahead. It was funny cause we would just be cruising and then as soon as the boat with the film crew came around we stepped it up to race pace and go hard. As they pulled away we’d settle back down. After the race we un-rigged the boat and had some lunch. Steph and I sat down at Starbucks and waited for the awards ceremony to start. After they handed out awards for their season we headed back to Paul’s house took a shower, ate dinner and relaxed before the concert. We were all going see Tane Tiki, a NZ superstar who had been topping the NZ charts. He started his set with about 5 acoustic songs but then went into a techno music which I was over pretty quick. We headed back to his house around 2am and finally got to bed.

Paddle in Hastings

(11.14.08 the Café. Rarotonga. Noon)
Next morning (11.6.08) I woke up at 9:30 am and quickly ate breakfast on my way out the door. I was gonna try to get to Wai-o-taupo to see the Geyser go off at 10:15am. There is geo thermal activity all around the North Island but Rotorua is one of the best known areas and thus there are several parks where you pay to see the bubbly mud and go in the hot springs. On the flip side you can also just find bubbly mud and hot springs for free if you just know where to look. So I decided I would only pay to go to one of these places if I could also see a geyser go off. At Wai-o-taupo the geyser goes off at exactly 10:15 every morning and at another park it randomly goes off about once an hour. So my mission was to make it to see the geyser. I remember passing Wai-o-taupo on the way to Johanna’s house the day before and thought it was just out of Turangi, but the further I drove I began to wonder if I had remembered wrong. Eventually I made it to Taupo and it was already 10:15am I figured out that it must have been just outside of Rotorua not Turangi. I stopped in the snowboard shop to see how the conditions looked for the Friday and they said it would probably be Saturday before they opened the lift. On my way back to Turangi I saw a man walking towards Taupo carrying a gas can so I spun the car around to see if wanted a ride. He jumped in and I took him to get some gas. He was a Maori man and his name was Clint. He said they run the TV off the car and they had fallen asleep with the car running the night before. On the way back to his house we talked about Hunting, Fishing and Maori culture. When we arrived back where I picked him up he opened a gate and we drove through a maze of campers, trailers and make shift homes til we reach his home. The entire area we had driven through was Maori land with several Maori families scattered throughout. He said his mother had given him a piece of land and he built on it. There were a few posts with some corrugated steal on a few sides and tarps on the others. He had 6 boar hunting dogs which rushed the car when we pulled up, he told me to just keep driving and they’d move. He also had a horse, well 6 horses but only one was there, he said the rest had escaped and were off in “the bush”. He invited me in for a “cuppa”, cup of tea or coffee, and I met his wife and son while having my tea. He showed me a boars’ jaw that he had caught a week prior but had also killed his main dog. After our tea we went outside to jump his car and I was on my way. I got back to Johanna’s house, sat by the wood burning stove and typed away on my blog. Steph and I went to rent a movie and three of us watch it before bed. Next morning (11.7.08) we woke up and had breakfast with Johanna before she headed to work. We planned on going to Hastings so I could paddle with Mike at 5pm and Steph could go on a wine tour from 1-5ish. We were gonna come back and spend one more night at Johanna’s and leave early in the morning for my races in Mt. Maunganui. A 2 ½ hour drive later we arrived in Hastings and dropped Steph off at a vineyard to begin her tour. I ran errands in town to kill some time: printing postcards, checking emails, sending references for CS. I arrived at Mike’s house right as he was finishing up with a tattoo appointment and had a lil time to talk story with his wife. He took me to the river where their juniors practice and we went out for a paddle on a two man canoe for about an hour. After our paddle he invited me in for a cuppa before I had to hit the road. I met Steph at Breakers where we grabbed dinner and headed back to Turangi. We decided we’d just pick our stuff up at Johanna’s and head to Rotorua for the night so that we’d do the extra driving that night rather than having to wake up at 5am to hit the road. We almost ran out of gas but finally made it to Taupo just in time. Leaving the gas station I got a speed ticket for going 70 kmh in 50 zone for $120. The cop asked me if I’d been drinking and gave me a breath-a-liser test. It was kinda weird though, cause rather than blowing into it you just talk and it reads your level. After grabbing our bags at Johanna’s and saying goodbye we had a two hour drive to Lance’s house where we arrived at 1am for the night.