Well it’s been a crazy few weeks. Practice, practice, practice, as well as seeing people, catching up, getting into trouble (good trouble mind you!) and travelling about the place.
Since my last post I’ve been luging in Rotorua, eating cheese on toast in Wellington, meeting new friends in Palmerston North and remembering why I love the old ones, Mcing in Christchurch and of course, competing with the Mighty Auckland and District Pipe Band at the National Pipe Band Championships. I’ve even managed to throw in a few jumping shots and spend time with my lovely Nana in Masterton.
And as I sit on this Tranzit New Zealand bus, its teenage frame squeaking below me with every bump in State Highway One, desperately hoping I don’t get car (bus?) sick from typing, I finally have the time to reflect on three weeks of happenings.
Being back in Taupo and not having to work was like what I imagine an island holiday must be like – entirely relaxing. After having a bit of a stressful spell over the last few months, it was grand to be able to be back in my beloved home town where you don’t have to contend with traffic lights (there is only one set in the whole town!) and there’s always a friendly face to be seen. It’s also been great to be able to spend some real ‘quality’ time with good friends.
Alise, Kylie and I went on a mini road trip to Rotorua before I flew to Wellington a few weeks ago, spending the day luging and ‘death swinging’, as well as spending more time than I would have liked to on the slowest chairlift ever. I had planned on a couple of luge rides and perhaps some lunch, before heading back to Taupo to catch the Big Yin, Billy Connolly, later that night. However, we each bought a combo of five luge rides, the gondola pass and a go on the ‘Sky Swing.’ I’d luged before and had seen the sky swing many times but had never really thought about attempting a go on it. It didn’t look too scary and was a waste of money in my mind. However, with this combo pass it was effectively free. (It’s hard to explain how it works so I will be lazy and just put a link to it here.)
So we set off up the hill in our gondola and completed our luging which is always a lot of fun. They’ve changed the layout of the luge tracks since I was there last and Kylie and I had a great time racing each other down the 2 km tracks. Alise was taking it easy but I was pretty proud of her for giving it a decent go as I wasn’t sure if it was really her thing.
After a break we headed to the Sky Swing and waited our turn. It didn’t look scary, no one was screaming and the swing only went 120 km/h at its fastest point. No worries.
We jumped in and got strapped it, all shouting the mantra “the tighter the better” as the anxiety was starting to kick in now. The worst bit about the Sky Swing is that someone on the swing has to pull the trigger to let it go themselves, and after delegating the task to Kylie, we had instructed her to not pull it for a while, so to get our money’s worth by taking in the view. Oh how we were in for a treat.
Once strapped in, the swing pulls you up but slowly you tip forward in your seat so that the only thing that is holding you in is the straps. The seat is virtually redundant and I was starting to get the shakes now. It seemed to take forever to be pulled up to the top of the 50 metre tower and on the way we had all agreed on two things. One, that Kylie had to pull the trigger absolutely as soon as possible as this was horribly scary and two, that we were all going to scream, even if no one had let out a sound before us.
We jolted to a halt once we reached the top and thankfully Kylie managed to pull the trigger to release us quite quickly. “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh!” I struggled to let a sound out at first and had to close my eyes. However after a second, I told myself to open them to check out the view over the cliff. It was a great feeling, but I was definitely feeling the adrenalin pumping through my body.
This whole ordeal was caught on video and was quite amusing to watch once we finally got off the death swing, still shaking a bit. After all the fun we decided to head back down the hill in the gondola and head off to get some lunch before heading home suffering adrenalin hangovers.
Billy Connolly was everything I had expected. Funny, off the wall and entirely Scottish. I had a seat by myself as Mum had bought me the ticket after hers and her friend Peter’s, but luckily managed to find people I knew sitting reasonably close. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening but was ready for my bed that night.
The next day it was off to my favourite city, Wellington…
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