Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Day 18: Queenstown, Extreme-ly Restful

Today, my good cousin and I found ourselves in the often touted "most beautiful town in New Zealand". There's no doubt it deserves that name. To it's other: "Extreme Sports capital of the world", however, it wasn't quite what I expected. Sure there are bungies and cliff swings, multiple opportunities to skydive, even a skatepark that has a cute little stream running through it. For us, however, it was nothing but serenely beautiful.

I believe the summer is actually an off-season for Queenstown. Each one of the dozen or so lodges and hotels jut out with the same angular wooden architecture familiar to Vermont's ski-topias. The kind of architecture that suggests the structure must deal with knifing through dozens of feet of snow each year. It very well might.

Today started early for me. Too early after a Saturday night, but once in a while the parents must know it's not a monkey banging out these posts. So at 7AM I woke myself up and groggly got up to speed with the happenings in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. That was the only difficult part of the day, for today, we do not travel! Instead, I perused the internet, something I have not done enough of. Looked at the results of Club nationals in Kentucky. Shout out to Chris Ellis-Ferrara for PRing through 5miles on the way to a 31 minute 10k, and Clay and Lisa Burnett for their performances in a distance they haven't had to run in who knows how long. Oh and Brian Harvey, for proving DIII guys can step up to the 10k. EYOP was about to kick off and I wish I didn't only have 4 of those. As a matter of fact, I am approaching the longest I've been away from Williams in 3, yes 3, years. Feels time.

At about noon we headed out on a run that took us along the waterfront.

47min, 7miles I did have 5minutes of shakeout 5:15 effort (AB). All in all not too bad after that beast of a run yesterday. Quads feel like I have corks in them.

We tried to get a free trial of the local Les Mils but got shut down by the one worker there. It was really small anyways (sour grapes, I know).

After a shower and a little more lounging we went out on the town at 4PM. We wandered the streets and took some photos before heading to the main attraction of the day: the gondola and luge.

The gondola was nice and the view impressive but I absolutely loved the "luge". Now, if you're like me, "luge" means sled-on-ice. So I was thinking sled-on-slide-with-anti-static-mat. What it really is, is far better. It's go-carts! Skyline Luge I wisely purchased two runs (because the first you can only go on the "scenic" course). The second you can do "advanced". Cary and I got in our carts and familiarized ourself with the ingenious breaking system. Actually, I can't really render a good description, but in the simplest terms: pull the handle-bars back and you break, push them forward and you go. The entire downhill run takes about 2 minutes at leisure. And we had some fun and took a few shots of each other.

The next time, on advanced, I went for raw speed. This course was incredibly well designed! There are some risers where I actually was able to get some air, or at least feel like I got some freefall. And the turns were well banked to allow you to keep your speed. I made it down in 1:35 and immediately asked the employees about course records. They hadn't the faintest idea.... Are you KIDDING me. Two mid-twenties workers, with all the free rides they want, don't race?! Real extreme.

After that experience we stopped at the highly recommended "Ferburger" restaurant, where they literally serve you more fries than you can eat. We got the leftovers of 2 people around us before we even started on ours and threw away more than we started with. The burgers were cheap and awesome too! Well worth it.

Afterward, I quested for some unlimited bandwidth as I had a queue of downloads I needed to perform. God thats a nerd-worthy sentence. Rubin would be proud. Anyways, that quest put me on the doorstep of Patagonia chocolaterie boasting "free internet". Took me forever in there to find the signal and get online, at which point I abruptly lost it again. Asking a chocolateur, she mildly informed me that while the store (I had asked earlier) closes at 10PM, wifi shuts down at 8PM... Whatever, they did serve an incredible hot chocolate worthy of Juliette Binoche (If you get that reference, you're either a girl or Paul Rudd[If you get that reference, you're me*]).

Well, I packed up the netbook and headed to an internet cafe I saw. Those places are the ticket. In NZ at least (being fresh out of college where free internet is everywhere I can't speak for the US), bandwidth is a commodity. And usually an expensive one. However, at the internet cafe, you walk into a dimly lit room (deja vu) and the asian at the front desk (5/5 with the asians so far so it's OK to make that generality. Also, 4/5 times, they've had take out brought to them. Now that IS a coincidence. I don't spend THAT much time in these places.) the asian says 8, meaning you are assigned to computer booth 8. To this I say, I have my own machine. "Booth 3", the response. I happily sit down, plug in, swap terabytes at blistering speed with the world, and after a while get back up. I payed $2 NZ. Incredible. All this time, I've sweated KB on expensive YHA plans, and I just did $30 of transactions in 15min. Speedy, efficient, and cost effective. Awesome. (So far, I've managed to stay under my $30 2G limit YHA plan).

Back to the dorm for a little work and a good sleep before the crowning jewel of NZ scenery: Milford Sound.

*Julliette Binoche is in 'Chocolat'. Paul Rudd loves 'Chocolat' in 'I Love You Man'.

Hush, it's dark and I can't sleep.