Snow in between spring and summer

Here are a few pics from my couple weeks in the US over Christmas. It was a great time visiting everyone and relaxing in the homeland. Felt a bit different, and full of Americans, but it was still nice to get into the little things that count, like Wheat Thins.

With Boston being super cold, we got some snow. Lots of it, which rocked. Just what I wanted. Looks great, fun to play in, and fits the bill for a stereotypical northern hemisphere Christmas which we didn't have last year in New Zealand.

Highlights include snowshoeing, cross country skiing, making a snowman, a couple Christmas parties with warm drinks and lots of sweets, plus the usual Christmas traditions like cutting down a tree (tried our best, but only shrubs were left so had to buy one) and having a wicked feast of a dinner with the family. Lots of good presents, several good games of darts and lots of static electricity flowing around to shock me.



Snowshoeing with the mom

Playing snow-baseball

Me and Charles Bronsan, my snowman, complete with snow nose and Oreo eyes

Walking the dog with my sister

Lake starting to freeze over it was so cold

Cricket

Cricket, once believed by me to be one of the boriest sports out there, actually isn't half bad. Wednesday night I went with a bunch of couch surfers down to the Basin Reserve, the ancient cricket grounds for a match against Canterbury. What made the game interesting was that it wasn't the long drawn out famous matches of 5 days, but rather 20/20 cricket which means that you have a start to finish and a victor in about 3 hours, with only 120 balls bowled to each team, thus keeping it pretty quick paced.

Having practically no knowledge about the sport before the game other than it's a batsman not a batter as in baseball, it was fairly easy to pick up. Actually wanted to get out there and have a couple of swings myself. Each batsman gets 6 balls in what is called an "over" and there are 20 of these overs in a 20/20 match, therefore 120 balls. In that time frame the team tries to get as many runs as possible, with extra runs given when it rolls out past the fielders over the boundary rope of 4 runs and 6 runs given when hit over the boundary rope. The 6's are the big boys, like home runs and we had a bunch which always gets the crowd going, whether for the home or away team.

Wellington ended up winning, by 7 wickets in fact, pretty damn sweet, not a huge celebration as just a regular season game and the cold wind had been blowing all evening and a bunch of people had already headed to a warmer place. It was defnitely fun and I'd go to another one, preferably in warmer, sunnier weather.

Unicyles, Cricket and Summertime

So I'm back in New Zealand after a couple weeks in the US. Great time up there, cold, but super fun. Got to play in the snow every day, sledding, snowshoeing, snowman etc. Good to hang out with the family and eat some rich tasty Christmas time food.

Now i'ts great to be back in the summer, hot weather and a lot less clothes than in New England. We've got the World Championships of Unicycling in Wellington right now. Pretty funny stuff, city being bombarded with 600 unicyclers all over the place. Watched the freestyle event which was pretty much figure skating routines on one wheeled bikes. Lots of bouncing around, twists and such, which didn't always go to smoothly. Entertaining in it's badness at times and awesome in the creativity at other times. Sadly missed out on the basketball and hockey due to being at work, but hey, just got to check it out some other time.

Going to my first cricket match tomorrow , going to get some of that good old British boring sport action that's world famous. Outside, lots of people in the sun and something random going on in the pitch. Guaranteed to be entertaining.