Week 41- Lest we forget

Having spent the weekend kayaking, I was quite tired on Monday morning. I didn’t get up until 07:30 and then went to class. I had a bit of a headache so it was a relief that on the back of the handout in control the lecturer had put some pictures of My Little Pony and Spiderman to colour in. On my way home I was planning to just get into bed and have a nap but once in the door I was treated to an amazing surprise. Marlene had bought some freshly baked bread, fresh cold meats, delicious cheese and it was all beautifully laid out for lunch. It made my day and I felt so much better after such a treat. I spent the afternoon cooking food and washing clothes before I took a quick nap. Harry was round for our usual Monday night dinner and we had vegetarian lasagne. My nap went on a little longer than I had anticipated so I missed the actual cooking of the dinner. It was a fun evening but I had to go to bed early in an effort to not get sick.

In my 08:00 lecture on Tuesday morning I had a new lecturer. At one stage he was talking about different coordinate systems and how a vector remains constant independent of the coordinate system. He was explaining how it was much easier to use spherical coordinates when looking at the earth, rather than cartesian, because the earth is a sphere. There were gasps from the classroom to which the lecturer responded ‘Okay, it’s not quite a sphere. It’s a little squished at the ends but it’s pretty close’. Little did he realise that the gasps were because he tried to tell us the earth wasn’t flat. He also used mixed fractions in his equations so I knew he was not to be trusted from the start. My 09:00 class was solids and amazingly the lecturer is a big fan of sweater vests with horribly vibrant patterns. I went to a study abroad society breakfast between classes and enjoyed some real Nutella. In control, we were guessing what game would be on the back of his handout and we decided that it must be a word search (or word find as they call it here). Amazingly, it was a word search! I took a nap once I got home and then I went to frisbee in the afternoon where we were holding trials to represent the engineering department in the Interfaculty Frisbee tournament.

While I was eating dinner that evening I received a phone call from Mum. She would usually send me a message first so I immediately expected bad news. She told me that my horse, friend and companion, Arrow, had died. He had been sick for a few days and Dad had found him that morning. He was bred at home, I had named him age 6 and begun riding him aged 13, commencing a partnership that spanned eight years. It’s hard to put into words how this experience affected me. We were quite the team, competing in International tetrathlon, Eventing Ireland, pony club championships, cantering up the gallops or just going for a hack down the road. I spent much of the evening in a mixture of tears and laughter and I think it was, perhaps, the first time I really felt a long way from home. Thankfully, Marlene was very kind to me and I was also able to ring home.

We had a day off class on Wednesday for Anzac day. This is a national celebration in New Zealand and Australia to commemorate those who lost their lives fighting for the countries, particularly in the first world war (The name comes from a cove on Gallipoli where the troops first landed). We were up shortly after 05:00 to collect Harry, Bridget and Alice to go to a sunrise ceremony in the Domain. It was a very well-done ceremony with a beautiful sunrise over the service and the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern presenting a wreath of poppies. The only thing I thought it was missing was an emphasis on the overall goal of reaching global peace. Marlene and I had breakfast, scrambled eggs, with Harry to start a bit of a lazy day (while Ulysse wrote an article on the ceremony). It was very chilled with the sun shining. Our flat, along with Harry, Alice and Bridget attempted to make Anzac cookies at Harry’s before walking up Mt. Eden to watch the sunset.

On Thursday I found myself elected onto the UCD ultimate frisbee club committee as the safety officer and I will also be looking to coach next season. I had class in the morning and lunch with Marlene. I spent the afternoon practicing questions, going to a tutorial before I took the train to go see my doctor to review my MRI. I was essentially told that there was nothing structurally wrong and I was okay to keep progressing with my running, so I proceeded to go running. I felt it went pretty well. I was already at the location of the Canoe club’s gear shed so I waited to help load the trailer for our trip to Tongariro over the weekend. There weren’t many of us so it took a bit of time and then I ended up waiting around, to get a lift back, as some organisational things were sorted out.

I had my regular two lectures on Friday morning, went to the physio before Marlene and I baked cookies for the weekend. We were a little pushed for time as we had to cook batches in our tiny over and I had to go coaching from 12-2. It was going to be our last training session on the full-size pitch so it was important for me that we made us of it. I wanted to have a look at our presses but as it was school holidays and they had rehearsals for their musical I didn’t have all the players for the whole session which made it quite challenging. Once home I finished the baking, packed my bag and went with Ulysse and Harry to the train station to catch the train to Penrose where we were collected by Mark. Mark is from the Bristol area but now works in Auckland and had a company car for the weekend. It was a very smooth ride in the big hybrid and Mark also took fruit, ginger beer and flapjacks from work for us on the way down. The journey flew by and we soon arrived at the back packers that we had stayed at last semester for the equivalent trip. Despite being a dorm room, Harry and I shared a double bed.

We were up early to go rafting on Saturday morning on the Access 10 section of the Tongariro river. Harry, Marlene, Ulysse, Bridget, Alice and I were all in the same raft with Obi as our guide again. We had so much fun going down the river with 60+ rapids in the two and a half hour run. The gorge that the glacial melt flows through is spectacular and the company was top notch. Obi was just as entertaining as last time though we did manage to lose him out the back of the boat three times during the run. That certainly added to the excitement of trying to rescue our guide and steer the raft without him. He later told us that he hadn’t fallen out of a raft in years prior to that run. Once back on land he gave me a big hug for rescuing him. I had managed to borrow a dry top for the trip which meant that I wasn’t nearly as cold and I was able to put my own socks on after (unlike last time). We headed to some commercial hot pools after to heat up though I didn’t like it as much as natural pools. Our car cooked dinner together and then I played some exploding kittens but there were eight of us playing so I thought it wasn’t as good as with just four or five.

We were supposed to be in second group for rafting the Access 14 section of the river on Sunday so we were allowed to lie in. However, we were woken shortly after 07:00 by Katrina explaining that because of the large amount of rain overnight the Access 14 was in flood and we wouldn’t be running it. We had a choice to do the Access 10 again or not raft. We all opted to raft and got ready to go. The Access 10 is dam released and the dam wasn’t released on Sunday so the river was running lower despite the river being in flood. This meant that one raft wasn’t able to go due to it being too heavy and another raft was pulled as a guide went kayaking instead. This meant that there were too many people wanting to go rafting. I ended up volunteering to not raft so that none of my friends missed out. I went to the get in to help run shuttle for the rafters when I was told there actually was space so I got changed and was able to raft with all my friends again.

This time James was our guide and I was very thankful we had him as the river was a good bit lower and the rocks were hidden by the brown of the water. We got pinned on rocks quite often so we had to use great teamwork to free the raft each time. About two thirds of the way down, Obi’s raft got pinned and we ended up bashing into them, freeing their boat but getting stuck ourselves. It was quite dramatic as the raft was wrapped around a large boulder with the water gushing into it, keeping it under. We all moved to Obi’s raft and spent about 45min trying to free the raft. Eventually we had to rig up a pulley system and pull the raft off from the shore. While this was going on, the third raft and a few kaykers were further down-stream and couldn’t see us so Zac (who happens to be deaf) decided to climb up the cliff face to the top of the gorge and walk along to find us. He was on his way back down to us when he realised that he was stuck, unable to get down or go back up. Ben and Dean then had to climb up with a pulley to rescue him. We ended up waiting another 45min while they decided what to do and in the end, we sent them further downstream to a bridge and we put their kayaks on the raft. James had to paddle Dean’s kayak part way down the river with no skirt and nearly ended up sinking the kayak!

With the rain falling, it would be easy to have let spirits fall but James had a speaker so we had a great singalong in the raft. It was actually one of my highlights of the trip! We got to the get out after five hours, two hours longer than the run is supposed to take. We packed everything up quickly in the rain and set off home, ordering burger fuel along the way.

You can see more of the photos from the weekend here.