Kaikoura Decathlon

We participated in the Kaikoura Decathlon today! It was a small local event, taking place mostly in front of our house, and run by Ryan. There were only 3 people entered, but competition was stiff!

The events and winners were:

1. Box Jump - Jacqui
2. Throwing - Charlotte
3. Sprinting - Scott
4. High Jump - Scott (was based on % of reach, so this was pretty fair)
5. Hopscotch - Charlotte
6. Hill Run - Jacqui
7. Toes Balance - Tie between Jacqui and Charlotte (we got bored before we got tired)
8. Wall Sit - Scott
9. Reaction Time - Jacqui
10. Sudoku - Scott

Result of a complex scoring system (that factored in a few sub-categories and 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes) was that Scott won by a narrow margin. Time to start training for next year!

Ball Throw

High Jump

Measuring the High Jump was a bit complicated...

Hill Run

Toes Balance (marks for Hopscotch can also be seen) 

Reaction Time

Windy Kaikoura!

Today saw a Nor'wester hit Kaikoura and temperatures skyrocketed to 18 degrees celcius, a pretty good late fall day, really! The crazy thing about Nor'westers is that they're exactly the same as Chinooks back home! They even form a "Nor'west Arch" or "Canterbury Arch" instead of a Chinook Arch. lol.

Anyways, it got super windy in the morning (and calmed down later for our Decathlon), possibly as windy as our windy days at the farm too, but less outrageous given our proximity to the water.

Here's some pics of the wind-swept waves at the beach.

Dexter did not enjoy posing for this picture. Windy back! He was rewarded with 4 walks in the day. :)

One of the waviest days yet here on the north shore of the peninsula.

Birds dunno what to do!

I guess we'll just get blown around for a bit...

Sun sneaking in though! What a warm day.

How many games can you play in a week?

We are having an awesome time with Ryan and Charlotte this week in Kaikoura! We have mostly been hanging out in the day and playing lots and lots of games at night. I think I have finally caught up on my game deficiency for the year :)

Here is a quick run down of what we have played:

• BSG - some of the most exciting 4 player rounds we have had! Of course I have a biased opinion... Thanks for bringing this all the way to NZ Charlotte! We definitely made it worthwhile by playing 4 times :)
• Power Grid - aka mental arithmetic and planning 4 turns ahead
• Killer Bunnies - aka don't bother planning
• Euchre - Almost as good as Kaiser :)
• Spades - a new one for us all! 
• Screw Your Neighbour (this it what I've always called it, but the internet thinks differently) - I love this game! 
• Crib - I never really liked this game, but I have now a better appreciation for it! A good quick time filler that doesn't require tooo much thinking. 

Cylons attack!

So in a four-card hand Ryan gets dealt A-J of trump? How does this even happen?!?!

We also attended a couple quiz nights in town! For the first time we went to the quiz night at The Adelphi. This took 2 tries because we went down on Tuesday to find it had been moved to Wednesday night starting this week, with no update to their website :( We also took Ryan and Charlotte to our favourite quiz night at The Whaler. 

Both quiz nights are run by the same guy (Neil!), but luckily there wasn't too much overlap in content. Scott and I were very fair, and didn't answer questions at The Adelphi that were repeats from other quiz nights. Not that it mattered, because the scoring was so so terrible that I think I team just won at random. Take a look, maximum points were 10 for round 1, 10 for round 2 ,12 for round 3 and 12 for round 4:

Guess which team we are

Still it was a fun night! We had to (got to?) participate in a tie-breaking drink off, which we unfortunately lost. Also there was a bonus event of singing your national anthem with ice cubes in your mouth, and Charlotte won us a pitcher an a cricket ball! Yup, it was a random night.

It's a boat race, kinda, and with straws

A terrible picture of Charlotte singing with ice cubes in her mouth :)

Dexter loves the cricket ball Charlotte won for him!

In the theme of quiz nights and trivia, Ryan decided that he would make us a Jeopardy game to play. It was totally awesome, and complete with a buzzer app that Scott wrote! The next night Scott decided to expand his app into a full Jeopardy program and we got to all play again. More random fun!

Ryan Trebek

Scott's Jeopardy program

It's so fun! And... moustachey

Other than that, the week was filled with lots of walks and runs, yummy cooking, Charlotte baking us delicious things, watching Terminator 1 and 2 (Charlotte had never seen them!!!) and lots of relaxing and fun times.

Mmmm, buffins!

Mmmmm, chocolate cupcakes!

Using the tequila bottle to crush ice for margaritas, how appropriate! 

Playing fetch with Dexter is fun!

Ryan caught a hedgehog! Poor thing.... (he let it go shortly after this)

The Bikers Return

Ryan and Charlotte have reached the end of their bike adventure! After over 1000km of biking they have returned to spend a week with us in Kaikoura before flying home to Calgary. Charlotte is writing an account of their trip on her blog, here's the link to the first of six posts. 

We drove up to meet Ryan and Charlotte in Hanmer Springs for an evening of hot pools and dinner and drinks. It was quite cold up there in the evening, which was perfect for the hot pools. Charlotte came home to Kaikoura with us that night, but Ryan stayed to attempt the 135km to Kaikoura the next day on his bike, quite ambitious! He made it, and in quite good time too, wow!

Cows on the way to Hanmer Springs

Moooooooooooo

That's a lot of sheep!

Despite it being cloudy in Kaikoura, the drive to Hanmer was sunny and beautiful!

More sheep! The South Island is covered with them!

I didn't take any pictures actually in Hanmer Springs, oops....

Ryan is almost here! 

Part of the celebration snack we made him

Welcome back friends!

Around Kaikoura

It's been a quiet week since returning from Blenheim, filled with walks, work, video games and being sick. I've started playing Dragon Age, and I love it! Like D&D except not as good :) And Scott has been heavily into Diablo 3, along with the rest of the gaming world. 

Anyways, here's some pictures of the things worth taking pictures of. Enjoy!

A Mother's Day picture for my mom :)

Dexter's new replacement ball. It's specially designed for water....looks like a duck bum sticking up from the water, hehe!

Dexter is super excited to play fetch with his new ball

So easy to see! Too bad it's harder to pick-up and throw...

Pretty Kaikoura

Shags and gulls

A sunnier day for the ridge walk!

Dexter doesn't understand posing for pictures...

Much better Dexter!

We're having a good walk

Such a nice day!

Countryside

We can see over to the south bay

Kaikoura bathed in sunlight

Another nice view

Racing Through Vineyards

This weekend we drove up to Blenheim for Scott to run the Saint Clair Vineyard Half Marathon! We met Ryan and Charlotte there too, who are nearly done their bike tour of the south island. Turns out biking is good training for running a race, because both Ryan and Charlotte raced too and were very happy with their times! Scott's time was also great, even despite being sick all week and having to take cold medication on race day (resulting in extra dehydration, oops!)

Another good race preparation activity is watching The Avengers! Yay for being in a town with a real theater :) We saw the movie the night before the race, and it was excellent! Definitely go see if if you haven't yet.

Race details for those interested from Scott: As Jacqui said, I was sick, sadly all the week before so I had lots of time to mope and worry about it. Woke up early on race day and sucked back some meds which made the runny nose go away, woot! Fast forward a few hours and we're heading from the outhouses to the race start with about 8-9 minutes remaining when suddenly the race starts early! Gah... Oh well, they were going on chip time anyways, but still kind of annoying. Climbed over a fence and we were on our way with the pack. Water stations seemed early and tight at first, coming around 5 and 7 km on the course, neither of which I was very thirsty for, so I just kept going and hit a massive thirst wall around 8-9km as my knee started hurting too (wtf?!)... I dragged myself along to 12k where I found the next water station and was sadly given some PeakFuel instead of water... Oh well, on we go. Knee pain dissipated a bit around here but my pace was falling off and I wasn't even hitting the pace I did in a 16km training run a few weeks before... Hit 14km and was still on a 1:42 pace for the whole half marathon, but sadly it wasn't meant to be... Everything kept adding up and the fact that Ryan was behind me somewhere was a huge motivator to just keep at it as best I could... Sprinted to the finish in a personal best of 1:45:22! Pretty happy overall with my performance given how I felt all week before, but still sadly disappointed in feeling that way! Oh well, the 2nd of many races to come! Thanks Ryan for the motivation, Charlotte for finding the race and getting us to sign up, and Jacqui for all the race support that morning! :D

This is probably my favouritest GPS'd run yet, too. Very cool to see the path, especially on Google Satellite view: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/177594783

Can't wait to get home and run more with friends. Dexter's a great training partner but he doesn't talk much...

Dexter likes all the good fetching opportunities in Blenheim

About to see The Avengers!

Ryan got to ride in the back with Dexter, because our van only has 3 seats. Don't worry, it wasn't a very far drive :)

Beautiful day for a race!

Playing fetch with Dexter in the vineyards while the racers do their thing. 

Dexter waits excitedly at the finish line

His excitement was short lived...

Here comes Scott! Unfortunately this is the only picture I caught of him racing :(

Ryan and Scott are happy with their performance

Dexter wants some apple, haha cute ears

Charlotte blitzes to the finish line!

Now that's what I call a proper finishers trophy

Congratulations to three excellent racers!

Dexter gets more fetch, how spoiled!

A ditch appears out of nowhere and steals the ball

Ball is lost forever, awwww :(

The evening celebration! Didn't get many pictures here, oops. Delicious food and wine though!