Skiing in Winter Park
I recently took my first ever trip to the US of A to visit Matt and Shell and get my first ski trip in of the season (yeah I know leaving it pretty late for the first trip). I was very excited to be going skiing again, visiting a new country and seeing them both. I was also very worried about my flights as I had a connection through Chicago with not a lot of time to get from the flight, through immigration, pick up baggage, drop it off again and get from one terminal to another then through security, but actually it all went very smoothly, flight arrived early and everything fitted together very well. The only drama was me planning to arrive at the airport the proper recommended 3hrs early only to do some brilliant math and work out that if my flight was at 11, 9 was 3hrs early.....its not, thats only 2, well done Dave!
Anyway apart from that the rest of the traveling to get there went fine. After arriving in Denver I was put straight to work by Matt in looking after some of his guests and making sure they got shown to the right coach company to get them to their resort. Then we had to wait around for some more of his guests so it meant I had some time to try the amazing Panda Express that Matt has been going on about....
Then off to the resort with a slightly hair raising drive in the snowy mountain passes. Had a lovely fruity greeting from Shell, followed by demands that Matt put socks on her feet.
Next day up and out to the slopes with a couple of the guests M&M were looking after, they had a car and offered a lift instead of catch the bus, lovely couple! Then to meet people on the slopes, very shocked to see Shell in a pair of ski boots and with 2 instead of 1 plank attached to her, took me a minute to work out she wasn't with her board. Then followed a lovely day actually SKIING with M&M and some of their guests and very nicely they invited me to tubing in the evening as Adrian was celebrating his 65th birthday and that was the activity he picked! What a legend, if I make it to that age I hope I am still as active.
I won't bore you with every days skiing schedule, but had an excellent couple of weeks, tried cross country, ate the best hot dog I ever had, saw a "b" ball game, drank some good local beers, finally bought a helmet, had bacon fudge, oh and also got some Salomon twenty twelve skis, which rock!
The end is nigh!
The end of the year that is, nothing more.....well not that I know, this isn't meant as Harold Camping told you all earlier this year. So that's cleared up? No panicking? Good.
So how has your 2011 been? My guess is ups and downs, some friends became enemies, some enemies became friends, and by the end of it, you've become richer from your experiences (not in monetary terms of course). Yeah I thought so. Welcome to the human race 
All in all 2011 has been a great year for me I think, revisited some of my favorite places, found some new ones, same could be said of people, with a few special exceptions of certain people not being seen enough (and maybe a few too much!)
I've now been in the Netherlands for 2 years and a few days, people keep asking if I think I will settle here. I can never really answer that question, mostly it friends who are only asking so they can complain I haven't learnt dutch, but really the reason I can't answer is if you had asked me 6months before moving here I would never have thought I would have just upped sticks and moved here, so who's to say what could happen in the next year? I would hate to think of limiting myself by planning to much, although I do have a couple of ideas.
In the short term I know at least the first 3 traveling type things I am doing of 2012, in Jan I am back in the UK for a week doing some training, including the weekend before and after (please see my PA for appointments to see me;) Then I will be doing a little trip to visit the most excellent Danger Matt and Super Shell for a couple of weeks, hoping to squeeze in New York City on route as well as I have never been to the US and feel I should try and take advantage of going all that way as much as possible, while still getting some quality time with them, and the mountains. Then in March there is a long weekend in Zell am See in Austria, a work ski trip, which I would really like to try and turn into a week by also visiting Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
So 2012 is already looking to be a good time, even if it is a completely arbitrary man made devision of time.
New Zealand Rugby Trip
So my intention was to right a little blog every few days while out there, unfortunately I didn't do that many and then updated the app on my phone and it lost all my local posts and I hadn't uploaded them. D'oh!
So anyway, I'll just sum up. I went to New Zealand, it was pretty cool, there are some pictures here.
That is a little understatement, I loved the place everywhere we went the country was beautiful, the people so kind, the things you could do, and we did were great! I got to swim with wild dolphins and look them right in the eye and have them try and get us to play with them, its really amazing having this animal look at you and swimming around you in circles then nodding its head down to try and get you to dive down with them for fun (I tried but the wet suit was super buoyant and I hate sea water and got loads in my mouth). I did a 19.4KM hike into the mountains (Mount Doom) and really enjoyed it, made me want to do some back country hiking and skiing some time on my next ski trip.
We spent a few days in a couple of different wine regions as well, that was really good. Tried some lovely wines....well they were lovely on the day, some didn't seem so lovely when we tried them back at the hotel and no one seems to remember who really bought those particular ones...
Walking Woe’s
So this weekend just been I wanted to try out my new walking boots I bought for going to New Zealand as I thought I don't want to spoil my 3 weeks there where we will be doing allot of walking, glaciers and general outside stuff by having bad foot wear and getting blisters. So with that in mind I thought it best to try out my new boots and wear them in a bit and also get used to doing some longer walks as the most I walk in a normal day is from my bike to the office and from my desk to the coffee machine! So with a couple of mates we went to an area called Schoorl on the west cost of Nord-Holland where they have some lovely country side, the dunes there get pretty high so I walked up the first ever proper hill I have seen here! (pics to prove it)
After about 5km my feet were pretty sore and I had a blister already. We stopped for some food and then when we started I realised I really felt I couldn't complete the next 10km so our 'guide' Guido decided he knew a shorter way back, it would still be 5km as we had sort of come straight out to the coast, but we started on a paved bike path back, which was much better than the sand had been. Although after a little while it became clear that we weren't entirely sure where we were meant to be going, even though Guido kept on saying he knew where we were! I forgot to start the GPS tracker at the very start of the walk, but from the map below you can see that we really did go a pretty stupid route back and in the end did walk almost exactly 15km anyway! the last bit on roads and in the pouring rain. Although my heels are still really painful it was a good day and we had a laugh (mostly).
Above is the route we took minus the first couple of kilometres.