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friday 12th may - home again!
No streetboarding, little snowboarding, lots of rain :o(
All good intentions to streetboard were foiled by a change of weather - it started raining in the 2nd half of April, leaving the ground too wet to skate, but the snow too slushy to snowboard... A great shame - as CJ has just started to learn to skateboard..!
  Our friends started leaving.
The lads from up the road, Nick, Rory, Guy, Matt, Ian then the Crystal holidays lot; Colin Horan, Alex and Chantel.
Morzine became a ghost town...
I spent much of my time putting together the Morzine'06 movie, trying to get it finished before I left during the days the weather made snowboarding impossible. Managed to finish the movie, but rendering it proved a problem till later, when I returned home. Always takes longer than you think..
CJ received word that her Treble Cone job back in Wanaka was assured, so we booked our flights to New Zealand. This confirmed, we booked a crossing back to the UK for April 30th, meaning leaving a couple of days before the season closed. We said goodbyes to friends staying on, enjoying a BBQ with kiwi Damo and night out with Dazzler - who we will be living with in Wanaka!
Leaving Morzine for the last time, we enjoyed a sunny journey back through France (the Suzuki 4x4 laden down with even more junk than we took out) before catching the 2 hour ferry back from Dunquerque to Dover, landing in the UK on a bright blue sunny day! Gorgeous!
Let me highly recommend Norfolk Line channel ferries (A division of Maersk Transport) to anyone considering a crossing; the same sailing time as Dover-Calais with none of the congestion, the cleanest most modern ferries I have travelled in - at half the price! Steal...
Arrived back to CJs home in Portsmouth that evening and stayed overnight - to find out in the morning that the Suzuki had broken down! It had faithfully transported us all the way back from the mountains, to die from a knackered alternator right at the end... I returned home (3 jumpstarts later) to see my grandparents and my mum and booked the Suzuki into the garage to be fixed. It will live again!
Met up with Adam Walder of Flipside UK streetboard distribution to go check out the new skatepark in Bournemouth, Kings Park.
 Finally! A decent marble-smooth concrete park, remeniscent of those in USA, NZ and Australia, rather than the councils usual "tennis court with metal ramps" affair. Only concrete gives the flexibility for creating curved and rounded features, bowls and lines in a skatepark - while incorporating transitions, flatbanks, stairs and handrails.
A top skatepark - although best visited in the weekdays, as weekends see an influx of children, rendering it impossible to skate due to sheer numbers of people.
The weather has been consistantly clear and hot, with the exception of a few days, and I have taken the opportunity to go around and see friends, before I have to start work to raise a little travelling cash.
I have bought a skateboard deck for CJ and we are going to kit her out with trucks, bearing and wheels, so she can make use of the good weather and practise carving before we return to NZ... see where this leads..!
My mission is now to get work for the next 3-4 weeks and top up funds. Working in the day and skating at night sounds like a great way to spend the next month..!
Back soon!
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