Summer is here

29 degrees today. Taking the lads to the Show tomorrow, more of the same forecast.

Fantastic stuff!

Kane Williamson- An Emerging Hero

I have to say I'm still coming to grips with the fact that we have lost a series to Bangladesh. And we are facing a whitewash.

Like with anything, perspective is important. Lets be careful here, a few years back Bangladesh were thrashing anyone and everyone at age group level. They have a massive population and a clear love of cricket. And like Sri Lanka 20 years ago, they are now emerging as a true cricket power. Of this I am sure.

New Zealand just happened to be the unlucky possum in the headlights this time, to some degree.

But there is a brightside, particularly while we are looking at young cricketers. Make a note, last night Kane Williamson became the youngest New Zealander to score an ODI century, breaking Martin Crowes 25 year old record.

This is a very big deal.

Kane has been touted as something special- even the "next Crowe" by some. Last night he soldiered through adversity, after a harrowing introduction to international cricket with consecutive ducks last tour to Sri Lanka. Last night he managed to valiantly score a heroic century and come bloody close to winning the match. And the latter part of this was done on one leg, with wincing agony on most shots due to cramp and maybe an injury. What a legend in the making, especially when we look at the many "glass jaws" that claim to be New Zealand cricketers.

I just hope Jacob Oram was watching Kane show how to break the pain barrier.

A standing ovation for young Kane please. This is a kid who will soon be a household name.

NRL Final popular in Pakistan?

I know theres rumors about bookies, but this screen grab off the news was a bit OTT I thought

The Earthquake....

...yes I know another month without action here.

I will post a story about it all soon! Just need time to write it all

Our house....could have been worse

Swimming Stags

This is a cool article and pic from Stuff.co.nz


Stag surprises fisherman

I saw something similar once when in deepest, darkest Fiordland, in the Dark Valley in fact. We were trying to work out how to get round cliffs at Lake Grave, when a wapiti (large deer) jumped out from the bush and swam round the bend. Amazing to see, put the wind up us at the time though!

On a similar tangent we saw young seals swimming up a river by the dozen to play in a waterfall in Kaikoura on the way back from Wellington on Monday- will pop a pic or two up when we get the chance to upload them

Kepler training

Well underway. Had some niggles this year but about to pop over the 1200km mark for the year and looking better than I have in an August before. Still much work to do though....wanting to do 8 hours this year!

England

Now I don't pretend to follow soccer much, but this is genuinely funny, as stolen from Pandasport



The Football Association today proudly unveiled Total, fcuk and UPS as the new sponsors of the England football team. ‘The combination of these three corporate giants perfectly captures the ethos of the England side,’ said an FA spokesman. ‘After all, they had nothing in the tank when it counted, and they’ve proved themselves to be a bunch of expensive posers who always fail to deliver.’

The new shirts come in a range of bright ‘easy to spot’ colours after claims from England players that the old kit was painted in ‘magic invisible ink’ which made it impossible to pick out an easy and obvious pass to a team mate. The new shirts are also made of a super lightweight material, unlike the old tops which were apparently made of extra-heavy chain mail which left the Premiership stars lumbering around looking exhausted and unfit. However, one criticism has been made of the design of the new England kit with claims that the neck hole was inexplicably too small for the heads of the Premiership stars.

Players say this will make it very hard to pull the shirt off during an over-exuberant goal celebration, but a spokesman for the manufacturers said ’we don’t envisage this being a problem.’

Just another day in paradise

I love being able to knock off work, nip up the hills and see stuff like this...for free :)

Its been a bloody wet winter here in ChCh, not much snow but there has been a crapload over in the mountains. Off tramping next weekend to have a look at the new Hawdon Hut, so will post something after that.

Ouch

Is this the Whale equivalent of walking into a door frame?

Full story here

I suppose it could have been worse, the boat could have been a Japanese "Scientific" Vessel...

Doggone it!

Seems appropriate on a sad day when a Police Dog is killed that this story should run. Just the ticket for reactiviating the blog- we like this sort of oddspot here

Dog shoots man....
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10658533

Waking Up

Hmmm time to start using this old chestnut of a blog again?

Fire and Ice

Now this is interesting, Iceland is a country I would love to see, but this is pretty gnarly (click)

In other news it was 22 degrees here at 5.30am, which is pretty nuts for this time of year. Hopefully its sending some rain to save the hapless Black Caps in Wellington today

Clarke and Lara?

Well knock me down with a feather I never knew these guys were an item.

Autumn

Well todays rainy spell probably means the end of the stunning weather we've had over the past few weeks.

Off to the West Coast over the next few days to reacquaint myself with all things agricultural. Should be good.

Feb 28 Tsunami

Well Darwinists would have had a field day with the number of idiots in NZ that rocked on down to the beaches yesterday to look for the "wave" after the devastating quake in Chile.

Its amazing how poorly understood tsunamis are. We were lucky yesterday that it was at low tide, and not as big as it could have been. But as the attached You-Tube shows, ChCh may well have dodged a bullet.

The Deans Stand

Went to the cricket last night and sat in the new stand for the first time. Good spot to watch cricket from. The Black Caps made heavy weather of it but got over the line in the end. Will definitely pop back for the Aussie game

It is amazing what they can do with grounds these days, cricket one day, then rugby two days later with the Super 14 kicking off this weekend. Not sure I'm ready for the rugby season to start yet though, it just seems like overkill.

One month down...

179km run, 1831km to go :)

2010 Target

Nearly the end of January already...gulp. Anyone seen summer?

I have set a handful of training targets for this year.

Target 1- to Run/ walk/ tramp 2010km minimum. So far I'm sitting on 140-odd km so I'm kind of tracking ok.

Target 2- Sub 8 hours on the Kepler. Need to find 21 mins of improvement.

Target 3 - Run the ChCh Marathon. On a road. Yuck!

Target 4- Compete in 6 events.

Target 5- Do the Abel Tasman race. Never done that one, always wanted to.

Theres a cool website I've hooked onto via Madman Marvin to tally up the KM's for the year. If you are into running I reckon you should hook onto it.

Its here: The Daily Mile

The New Decade Is Here

Do we call it The Tens? The Teens?

Whatever the case I rang in the new years gong at Okarito Beach on NZ's wonderful West Coast en route to an excellent few days up in my beloved mountains. Pure bliss. 2 fine days- and 2 wet ones, 400mm of rain actually!

Anyway, back to work today and its a battle to remember where things were at just 10 days ago with the workflow. We'll get there.

To underline matters, yesterday I was here (yes, thats a hot pool):