Yoggi-yo!

Long time no blog, been a busy busy boy.

Had a great trip at Chinese New Year (end of Jan) to South Korea for a bit of war-zone snowboarding. It was very cold, down to minus 19 at night - nippy! The hotel we stayed at was all out of western-style rooms, so we ended up in a traditional 'ondol', which consists of a heated wooden floor onto which you lay thin mattresses each night to sleep. This may sound like a wonderful zen dream, but the floor was hot enough to fry eggs on and the thermostat fixed, making it all a bit sweaty - next time I want a bed!

The resort was fun but pretty limited, you'd get bored if you were a black-run maestro but it was fine for my friends and I, plus it was nearly all floodlit each night until 2am, which was great fun. The snow was thin but the koreans are masters at regrooming 3mm of snow into something useful so it was all good, save the occasional ice-patch. The local skiing/boarding style was gun-ho at best - I got run into a lot without really doing anything, which kept it edgy.

We kept ourselves entertained asain-style by going to a karaoke bar; I did a frankly unpleasant rendition of "Gay Bar"

Don't have any good photos of me boarding because, basically, I was too darn fast for the the others to keep up with their cameras. So here is a pictures of me and my mate Stew saying "yoggi-yo!!!" with a lift girl (every time you get on the lift you are welcomed with a wave, a smile and a yoggi-yo - very un-french), and me standing still trying to look extreme...





Since then I've done a couple of extreme events. The Hardcore Hiking Ninja Playboys strolled out again to complete the Green Power Hike, a 50km trail walk on HK Island (with bits of running). Our team time was 9 hours 15 mins, which was respectful and put us about 40th of 150 teams. In actual fact 3 of us finished in 8 hours 5 mins (would have been sub-8 but I needed a toilet break near the end, which took 7 mins!) but Big Stew seperated some cartilage in his knee, dropped out, decided to drop back in and kept going to finish, getting re-strapped at each first aid stop - truly hardcore behaviour!!

Last Sunday a group us of did the Outward Bound adventure race, a 15km trail run/scramble/kayak with some challenges thrown in. It was brilliant! Somehow we came third in our category and won medals, I celebrated with a caipirnha so strong it put me to sleep.

Apologies for the lack of pictures, if any offical ones get posted I will add them to this blog.