Queenstown and New Years

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. With work and what not I just haven’t had the time to sit back, relax, and ponder the meaning of life as often as when we first arrived in Wellington. This post, however, will touch on some of those finer things, meanings of life, etc, as every New Year blog does in some way or another. That’s not how I’m going to start out – you’ll have to keep reading to get to the good stuff.

Queenstown
About a week and a half ago, Amy, Harsh, Brad, and I set out on an adventure that none of us will forget anytime soon. Our destination was Queenstown, New Zealand. Queenstown is a small town in the center of the South island, situated on a lake between huge mountains. The views were absolutely breathtaking! It’s a very touristy town, with little to nothing in Queenstown not tied to tourism.

We left Sunday night, first having a few drinks at Infusion, and then catching the 12:30am ferry across the Marlborough sounds to Picton. The ferry was a good 3 hours long, during which we mostly slept. The ferry smelled kinda bad, but it was a very smooth ride. From Picton we made the drive to Christchurch (~5hrs) and then on to Queenstown (~4.5hrs). One thing that I was told about New Zealand that became very apparent on this trip was the driving is never boring. The scenery changes every 30 minutes, and you’re always within an hour or so drive of the Ocean. Not too far on the drive out of Picton is where they filmed the show Zena, and watching the sunrise over the beach was gorgeous! Harsh and Brad did all of the driving for the trip, which was nice since I’ve never driven on the left side of the road. When we finally arrived in Queenstown we headed out for some dinner and beers, and then crashed at our hotel for the night. Just to show how popular Queenstown is – the hotels were filled to 100% capacity, and most charged higher rates for the Christmas / New Years period. That evening, after 20+ hours of no “real” sleep and no “real” food, I was pressured into buying a ticket to go Bungy jumping. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to go bungy jumping. But I wanted to have some time to look at the combo packages, and other deals that they had before purchasing tickets, and I didn’t want to buy the ticket without really thinking about it. Nope. Amy wanted to buy them at that time, so as usually she threw logic out the window and BAM we had some tickets to jump on Friday. Just Fucking Great. We also wanted to go Skydiving, so we purchased tickets to do that too. Turns out you have to be under 90kg to go Skydiving, and Harsh is ~102kg. Luckily they let us all get a refund since they didn’t tell us about the weight limit before buying the tickets, but it was a let down that we weren’t going to skydive too. The four of us decided to do a boat ride through the canyons instead, called “The Shotover Jet” named after the Shotover River through which the jet goes. (Note – we could have saved money by purchasing the tickets at the same time as the bungy tickets, but instead we had to pay $60 more for booking separately.)

The boat ride was really cool, however we found out we got on the wrong boat. We went on the Kuarawa Jet instead of the Shotover jet, and later were able to get our money refunded (long story, but the short version is I’m ZachMagical, and a MCS-PIMP). We also did the Luge, which can only be described as a one-man bobsled on concrete. It was pretty cool, and only later did I connect the dots and realize that the Luge is what Andy Camann wanted me to do when he said “Do the LUGE!” Sorry Andy. The Luge is at the top of a mountain, which you take a gondola to get to. Wow! More breathtaking views! I have photos at the end for anyone who wants to see what we were seeing every freaking day.

I know, I know, you want to hear about the bungy jumping. Amy and I were the only two from our group who wanted to Bungy, the others had done it before. We decided that if we were going to do it we might as well do the Nevis, which is 134 meter fall. Yup. That’s like a quarter of a mile. 8-9 seconds of freefall. What the hell was I thinking. No, what the hell was ANYONE thinking. Why would you want to jump off a cliff with a rope tied to your feet? I mean, that’s just stupid! Well instead of jumping off a cliff, we decided to jump out of a tin can held up between two cliffs, into a canyon, and risk death while doing it. We arrived at the bungy place and got all harnessed up before taking a small gondola across to the bungy platform. The platform was about the size of an average family living room, with 12-15 people in it setting ready to jump. You had to sit down in this funky chair before the jump so they could tie your feet together, and then you had to wobble over to the edge of the platform and jump off. I didn’t jump when they did the count down for me, I froze. Then, looking like an idiot, I told them to count again. Then I jumped. Well, not really jumped (remember, I’m frozen solid in fear) but fell in a rather ungraceful-not-by-the-books bungy jump. I don’t remember the fall, but it wasn’t jerky when it pulled back up. After the second bounce I released my legs so I flipped upright, and then I sat there thinking about how stupid that was. I mean really, who in their right mind jumps off a cliff?

After Queenstown we drove up the other coast to get back to Picton. The drive from Queenstown to Greymouth was stunning, and aside from Harsh’s erratic driving, I would do it again in an instant. We spent the night in Greymouth, and then drove to Nelson and chillaxed on the beach, and then on to Picton for the ferry ride home.

Overall it was a short trip, only five or six days, two of which were almost 100% driving. If any of you end up in New Zealand, be it visiting me or just because it’s a cool country, go to Queenstown! You will be amazed by the natural beauty, none of which can be captured properly on a camera.

Note – Photos and videos will come later. I can’t upload them at work, but I figured I’d at least get this posted until that happens.


Now on to the New Years stuff.

Like most, I’ve been thinking about where my life is and where I want it to go in the next year or so. I’ve always had an answer to that question, but now I really don’t. I like what I do, and I want to continue working in technology, but I’m not sure about other things. I miss my friends and family, and want to spend more time with them. What’s going to happen in the next year? I don’t know. Move back to Madison, get an apartment and a job, in another year or so build a house. I guess anything is possible, but I’m thinking about what I need to do for me personally, and for my professionally. I might start taking flight lessons again, or maybe look into going to school at ERAU or something. Maybe I’ll join the Navy and server Obama as the Commander of the Joint Chiefs. Ok that last part is not going to happen, but if it did that would be way cool.

Alright I’ve wasted enough of your time. Hope all is well in the World.

-Zach