I spent Wednesday and Thursday last being assessed for BCU 4* leader award, It was taxing physically and mentally, but I passed. This is a British award with the emphasis on leadership, it is aimed at making sure people have sufficient personal skills and leadership skills to lead sea kayaking in sea state 4, i.e. 15 - 20 knots wind, waves of 1.5 metres & 2 knots of current.

The last two weekends have been spent for Douglas and me at the Cardrona valley.

The first was a cross country ski race called the Merino Muster. It is also part of the World Loppet series, so there were quite a few international athletes involved.

Douglas had entered the shortest race - 7km as part of the school team. School teams consist of three and the time of the three is added together. The best total time wins the school event. Indivuals are also racing in the individual race too.

Douglas's two team mates were exchange students from Italy and Denmark.

Here is a link to my latest recording:

[scald=33:sdl_editor_representation]

Then if you decide you want to hear some really good ones have a look at this forum thread.

Andrew, I could not figure out how to use the atom/scald thing on it pull out menu ,  I have not read the instructions and it is late at night.

Being self employed definitely has it's bonuses

Had a good day in the hills today.

Around 6pm last night, I got a txt from David Hamilton (local GP) asking if I wanted to climb Barrier Knob with him today.

I nearly said no, as I haven't actually got much work done this week, but with Nicky's help made the decision to go anyway.
The forcast was good (the only day this week), David had the day off, the avalanche forcasting was good (ie low risk), pluto was aligned with goofy, and I had nothing that had to be done today.

I enabled a new way of including media files (images, video, sound) and other files (pdf's etc) into your blog posts.

It's called "Scald" - don't ask me why; the bloke who wrote it is French so perhaps it's a French anacronym.

Now, whenever you're on a page you can edit (or even comment on) you will see a bar at the right of your browser that looks like:

Douglas and Gethin were both racing today.

Gethin was racing in the Otago Championships Kart race, and Douglas was racing in the Southland Schools Orienteering Championships.

The Otago Champs is a trophy that Gethin has pretty much made his own - he's won it in every class he's competed in. This year he's in a different class - Rotax Max.

We had an interesting morning.

firstly the snow. This is carrying on.

Then I was making breakfast and heard a thump on the patio window. Looked up and saw feathers on the window and a New Zealand Falcon flying away. There was a rather concussed thrush on the patio.

Nicky reckoned the falcon would return, and sure enough, a few minutes later, there it was on the lawn. I expected it to quickly swoop onto the thrush, but the building must have hindered it, so instead it stalked it: