Hello all,
I appoligise for my long break in regular blog updates, but I have spent the last two weeks settling in to life in Wanaka. I have started working at Base full time, and its really starting to get fun, the people I work with are absolutly awsome and the shop treats us very well. As for the accomodation aspect of life, well, its kinda sorted. I have found a hostel that charges $100 a week, which is nice and cheap, and its nice to be able to have nice long, hot showers and turn on the lights all the time without worrying about bills, but living in the same room as 4 other people is getting a little tiresome to say the least. The biggest problem is that there is absolutly nothing free in the area unless you want to drive 15-20 mins everyday which would get a little old after dishing out money for gas as well as waking up even earlier on those 7am shifts. So for right now, I think my best option is to stay in the hostel and wait for something better to pop up.
As I said earlier, Base treats us really well, its a really cool shop and you can definitly tell the two guys who own/run it are really into skiing. Our rental/demo fleet is the most extensive that I have ever seen, in demos alone we have every single ski that we have on the wall and then rentals we have even more. The snowboard side of rentals is even more impressive being that they stock a tonne of really highend boards so good riders have their pick of the goods. On top of having good gear and everything, the boys really try and get their staff on board, there is a real feeling of community, and more then any other job, I really want to work hard for the shop and do a good job. The way they bring this togethor is by making sure we are sorted, and want to work, for instance: last week, after about my third day working with them, we had a staff dinner with all 20 staff from the shop and from rentals. They took us out to "speights Ale House", which is quite the nice little restaraunt down by the lake. Now you can all imagine me, after backpacking for the last month and a bit, to get to go to this awsome place and order anything I want on the menu. We all started with some awsome bread, and then out came the lamb and even finished with an awsome dessert all washed down with a seemingly endless amount of beer. I dont even want to know how much it all costed because my dessert alone was more pricey then the most expensive meal I have had in my travels and I wasnt ordering the most expensive items as some others were. Let me tell you, it felt very nice to feel all full and satisfied after an amazing (and free) meal like that after a month of pasta and rice.
Now that I am finally sorted here in Wanaka, meeting people, living in my hostel and working. The ski season has finally opened and its starting to look great. All the skiers at the shop headed out today for the big ski test, where we test everything in the shop, and write up what we think about them. It really was interesting for me because out of the many different brands we carry, I had only skied rossi before, so today I jumped on some really fun Armadas, Fischers, Nordicas and Dynastars. It was really cool to get skiing, and also get to play around on next years gear. The resorts here are definitly smaller then what Im used to, kinda like the height of COP but with more terrain, I guess it would be like skiing in Ontario except with all the ice (so basicly not at all like Ontario... right?...). Today was at Cardrona, and tomorow, if all goes well, I am spending my afternoon at Treble Cone, I work 7-10 and then 4-8 but I can hopefully jump out and get some turns in that time, plus I hear TC is the place to be for actualy fun terrain. Even with the size of the hill and everything, it was still pretty amazing to get skiing soft, dry snow, under an incredible bluebird sky and then being able to look down at my ticket and read "June 26th", definitly worth the effort of getting down here.
With that I leave you, I hear its 28C back home in Cowtown, and I hope everyone is gearing up for a fun Canada Day, I am trying to get something going with some people here in Wanaka, and failing that I might drive over to Queenstown.
Thanks for the emails, those of you who took the time to send me some, its always nice to read up on news from home.
-Jesse