The 100kmh Flying Fox

Debbie and Sheila came back down for the weekend 10 days ago. They came down in May last year to do the St Clair Marathon. They liked my apple pie, so they came back for more! This time I outdid myself and made bread, jam tarts, lemon and coconut biscuits, apple and boysenberry pie, and meat balls. I may not be able to keep this up, so they may be disappointed next time!!

I picked them up from Nelson, and we went to the Nelson Markets. It was my first time there and I really enjoyed them - lots of art, food, plants, food, drinks, food! We picked up a variety of things for a 'picnic', and I managed to persuade someone to give us four plastic glasses, as I had packed a bottle of wine for lunch, then realised half way to Nelson that we may be drinking directly out of the bottle!

Over to Rabbit Island for a picnic lunch in the sun. Beautiful day. Fabulous friends. I spent the whole time trying to persuade them to miss the port of call on our way home. They were determined that we were going to do the Skyline Flying Fox. Over the treetops at 100kmh. I suggested that I needed to cook dinner. That the vineyards were a good bet and if we didn't do the fox, we'd have time to try some wine. I offered to buy some champagne.

No avail. They tied me up and took me up to the top!!

This is at the top and looking at the 'contraption' we were about to be strapped into...

Notice the locks. Yep - you are locked into the seats. There is no way you can undo your seats halfway over the forest. We paid good money to be locked up!

Debbie and Sheila persuaded Steven to wear a silly hat to keep his ears warm. He didn't need much persuading! To keep my cochlear implant on and safe, I used toupee tape and taped my implant to my ear with that.

Here's debbie - she threw me a nervous smile!!

This is Sheila being locked in to her seat.

Looking down the valley where the ride was going to take us. See that patch of earth way over there. That's where we are going!

Another view over the valley. By the way - when we got to that patch of earth on the other side, we didn't get off. The flying fox proceeds to go backwards at the same speed to where we started.

This is the speed we got to!!

This is Deb, Steven and Sheila after the two rides we had. Deb still has her eyes closed! She didn't open them again for at least 2 hours!!

Oh wait - She opened them a few minutes later for this photo! Here's all of us, smiling, feeling lucky to be alive!

Now we are safe again, we could enjoy the view! Pretty place when you're not screaming at 100kmh on a wire!

And if you want to see the movie - then here is the link. Make sure you watch it from half way through as we go back to really get the feel of going backwards at 100kmh!  (Clic on 'The Movie')

The Movie

A Trip to Nelson

Just wanted to show you a few images I took on the way into Nelson back in May. I was with my friend Nikki and we headed over to Nelson for the day. We didn't stay in the city too long, headed over to Mapua and had lunch on the wharf.

We left fairly early though, and as we came down the hill and round the corner, this is what greeted us...

I simply had to stop the car, walk across the road and start shooting. Who could resist such beautiful reflections when one has a camera in the car?

The mountains/hills were covered in cloud, but below that cloud is Nelson's boulder bank. A natural occuring bank of boulders that make Nelson a very sheltered harbour. You can walk along this bank, and at low tide, it looks like you could actually walk across the sand to the boulder bank as well. The water is quite shallow, but the tide comes in and out very quickly.

I played around a bit with these images, This one I made it to look like a bit earlier in the morning, than at the time we were actually there. Pink in the clouds! But this was photoshopped. For the life of me, I now can't remember how I did it! Here's what it did look like, although it is not exactly the same image...

Here's a shot of Nelson city reflected in the harbour. Nelson reminds me much of Wellington, with the old villa type housing, perched on the hillside. It has better weather than Wellington though!

I experimented with the Orton effect on this image. Here's the result. I'm not sure if I like it or not...

The Orton Effect is when you take one image. Copy it. Blur one image. Oversharpen the other, then you merge them together. It's meant to give the image a dreamscape quality. Which it does, and on some images, it's lovely to have. The jury is out on waterscapes though for me.

Finally, my favourite of the series is the reflection of the yellow boat. The yellow boat gives the whole image proportion, plus it gives something for the eye to rest on, which makes the image better than the others in my opinion.

I hope I see a lot more scenes like this one in my explorations around this area.