Erics Gliding Experience

These are just two pictures of a gliding day I attended on labour weekend with ATC. The two gliders in the picture is the two ones that we were using that day. The one furthermost to the camera was the one i flew in, it was a tight fight as you can see in the photo showing the seat just before i climbed in, and bumpy landing finished my first gliding experience which i really enjoyed. The picture you see of me is when i won a free trip in a two seat er powered plane, i took the picture myself just before i took over the controls until we were on final for the airstrip. All over i really enjoyed it and hope ATC plans to do it again. We are hoping to post some clips on YouTube of the plane and we will publish the links when we have done so.

By Eric Bryan

Christchurch Part 2

These pics were taken on our day off after the chess comp in Christchurch.
We made the decision that we would do some extra fundraising so that we could take a day to explore the city. Last year we were in a hurry and had no spare money, so we finished the chess and were straight back in the van for a 13 hour drive. Not fun.

This time we had time to go exploring the city at night, take in a movie and have a meal and then had a whole day with a hire car to get out of town. We headed south to the Port Hills. These are the site of a huge volcanic eruption some considerable time ago. I am quite pleased with the picture of the lamb surveying the city. Over to the west we had uninterrupted views of the entire range of the Southern Alps all covered in snow.

After a bit of a walk we headed off to the port town of Akaroa. This was originally settled by the French and it cultivates a french atmosphere that certainly does it no harm as a tourist attraction. Lots of brightly coloured wooden houses and other buildings. Tres beau n'est pas? I was showing off my rusty French to the Chess Team and pretending that I was French, when one of them pointed out that I was wearing my England T-shirt!

We flew back home on the Tuesdy morning and had a leisurely drive back north.

Eric was on the B-team this year and he has become quite obsessed about chess. He is very keen to make the A-team and to go on a similar jaunt next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These pics were taken in Christchurch.
The group photo on the steps shows the three Northland school teams that competed in the Interschools Finals. Kaitaia College at the back, Taipa Area School in the middle and Whau Valley School at the front. Whau Valley did best out of the three, coming about halfway in their field. The Taipa School team had the best team strip - check out the berets! It was their first year and they found it tough. Taipa and Kaitaia supported each other during the comp and will hopefully have some joint training sessions in future.

We went to an Indian restaurant in Riccarton on the Sunday night and had a very pleasant meal.

The top picture shows a building that was flattened by the quake. It was weird to see a single shop knocked down whilst its neighbours were intact. The whole earthquake is hugely expensive with something like 30,000 homes suffering damage. They had a 5.0 magnitude aftershock today that got everyone back out on the streets and all worried again.

Spring, Chess, Earthquakes and flu

Last Friday of the break and a post has not been made for quite some time now. Some bloggers post several times a day... how do they find time to have a life?

Term 3 finished in a whirl of strong winds and stormy weather. Eric went up to Spirits Bay to help with a major stranding of whales. This was the second one on thelast few months. He worked through the night to keep the beasts wet and alive. The wind was very strong. It sounds like an exhausting experience but also pretty special to get close to such normally elusive animals. The whales had beached on one of the most remote beaches in Northland. We are 4 hours drive from Auckland and the whales were 2 hours North of here. There are some pics here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/image.cfm?c_id=1&gal_objectid=10676472&gallery_id=114106#7106088

While he was up there, I took off on the last day of term for Christchurch with the College Chess Team. We had spent the whole term preparing, both for the games and for the costs. We raised $3000 to pay for the trip - half of it came from a charitable trust and the rest came $1 at a time from selling frankfurters at about 10 different events. So it was great to have all the prep done and to start driving down to Auckland.

We had a flight from Auckland to Christchurch and for two of the team it was their first flight. Not the easiest initiation to flying as we hit some pretty serious turbulence coming over the Southern Alps. There was a team of girls going to some other event in Christchurch on the same plane and they were laughing and screaming at the same time. Everyone else on the plane was gripping their seats and hoping the swooping and shuddering would stop!