Phoenix Vs. Queensland Jets

Phew!  Gary and I enjoyed another Phoenix game in the box last night, which we had to ourselves this week.  It was a windless balmy evening in the Capital for the 5,500 strong crowd.  It looked like the Yellow Fever fans had increased in numbers with the pale yellow Ricky shirts starting to spread around the stadium. I counted six Jets fans who happened to be situated under our box. 

We won in the last few minutes, scoring two goals to nil, and it was a lucky win at that.  If it wasn’t for the two red cards on the Jets side I would hate to have guessed the out come.

It took a long time for the Phoenix to take hold of the two man up advantage.

The Jets goalie was having a great game.  And I must say so was our goalie Paston saving a penalty kick and numerous other attempts at goal from the Jets.

It was a nice result after a frustrating game.  Watching the Phoenix struggling to play forward was winding me up.  The Jets played very well under the circumstances.

Thanks Gary.

Poor Knights Diving Trip

Finally I got to see what Tutukaka is like as a holiday destination and experience the diving of the Poor Knights Islands; one of New Zealand’s top dive spots.

We had hired a catamaran, Pacific Hideaway Charters, to hang out on for a few days.  Our lovely hosts Denise and Mark Barnes cooked and entertained us the whole trip.

The water temperatures hadn’t warmed up for summer yet, still sitting at 16 degrees, normally it gets up to 22 degrees.

A unique feature of diving these islands is that it is the only place in the world that has both cold and warm water sea life.  It is sub-tropical marine life.

We dived the Waikato Frigate wreck which has lots of coral and sea life growing on and amongst it.  Vis was good but it was cold as the wreck is in an exposed area compared to all the other dive sites.

Two of our crew dived the Taravana cave which is 30m under and 200m long.  There is a mermaid at the end and a whale bone but no time for dallying as you have 200m to get back out and 30m up whilst trying to avoid a deco dive and/or running out of air.

We slept the night in Rikoriko cave which is the biggest sea cave in the southern hemisphere.  Apparently rock concerts are held there, bands record music there, people get married.  Fantastic acoustics.  The next day I kayaked back in to the cave and it was even more impressive being at water level inside it.

We did a night dive in the cave.  It was weird watching all the fish sleeping amongst the rocks.

We dived lots of caves, arches and crevices and saw all number of fish from blue and pink Mao mao to scorpion fish, red snapper, parore, nudibranchs, sand sharks, short tail sting ray, eels … you name it we probably saw it.

Keen to go back to Sandy Bay for a weeks holiday, it has beautiful white sandy beaches in a nice sheltered bay, like in the tropics.

Rihanna and Chris Brown Concert Wellington 2008

Go the teeny bopper concert!  We felt like the golden oldies hanging out with the wrinkle free crowd down in the pit.

With the doors opening at 6:30pm at the TSB Bank Arena we thought oh yeah roll up at 7pm.  Wow!  The queue was massive and the doors weren’t open.  We jumped in to the queue that snaked all around the water front, we were probably three quarters of the way back thinking this is going to take another hour to load these people in the building.  The doors opened just before 8pm and there was a huge swarm for the door, no queue!  We ended up at the front due to our canny postition near the back of the queue.  All the way in we ended up being in the right place at the right time through the pushes and strolled on in to the front of the pit to wait for it to fill up…

Chris Brown (CB) came on first and rocked the crowd, fab dancer!  Didn’t think too much of his singing (lip syncing) but you weren’t there for that…

An hour later he left the stage and we had a 20+ minute wait while the crew geared up for Rihanna.  By now I was thinking damn my feet, back and legs are sore.  But this was a great opportunity to stake out your space at the front while teens went out for drinks etc.

Rihanna made a great entrance in a sexy little body stocking.  All of her outfits were fine.  She definitely put on a better show than CB.  It took a few songs for Rihanna to warm up to the crowd though, it wasn’t until half way through she connected with the crowd.  It took her chart topping songs to do it.

Then CB came back on to finish the night in a duet of Umbrella.

Nothing beats live music, we had a great night despite the lengthy waits.

Guy Fawkes on Wellington Foreshore 2008

It was another stunning night in the capital. The water front was packed out with 100,000 spectators for the annual Guy Fawkes display that the Pelorus Trust Sky Show hold each year.

The Ride Of Your Life spectacle also took place earlier in the evening and is was the perfect curtain-raiser to the fireworks. Ride Of Your Life was a three-hour show featuring live music from the Beatles Review and the Beat Girls, and choreographed water-sports performances from jet-skiers, wake-boarders, Thunder Cats and more. The event was a fundraiser for the Wellington Free Ambulance.

My favourite fire works is the gold coloured bursts that come out to meet you in 3D and they slowly drift to the ground – stunning.

Apparently the boat from China was late so some of the fireworks had to be sourced locally…

Wild Wellington MTB 12hr Race 2008

Score!  My team came first this year, we won gold.

Leading up to the event it was proving difficult to get a 12hr mixed team together but two days prior I manged to merge with a friend who had a 6hr team that had fallen apart around him.  The only dilemma we had was do we do 6hr or 12hr, majority opted to 6hr.

So 6hr it was!  We had five of us and we did 17 laps of a 6km course winning our mixed category and overall by 2 laps.

Mike from Searletech Moble pimped my bike after I had completed my first lap which made me quite a few minutes faster next time around.

It was actually quite nice finishing at 4pm with the sun still shining then toddling off home at a reasonable hour.

See results and photo’s on Wild Wellington, our team was a sponsored team, Searletech Mobile 6hr.

There were a few red faces due to a sunny day, probably the first of the summer season for most.

I think everyone enjoyed the course which had a lot of new single track, the mud dried out over the morning.

Thanks to Jill, Lynne and Annie for all the hard work behind the scene’s.