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friday 16th june
Consistantly brilliant weather gave plenty of streetboarding opportunities over the month I was home - almost unknown to be good for this long at this time of the year.
Flipsides Adam Walder joined me skating on a number of occasions at Kings Park in Bos Vegas Bournemouth, Salisbury and Blandford. Taking stacks of photos, we had some excellent days - Adam has improved loads since I left for travelling - his style is really tight now, landing almost everything, with some really sweet combos. Adam kills the halfpipe bigtime now - a really solid rider doing Flipside proud!
 Aside from streetboarding, the weather gave an excellent opportunity for a photoshoot with Adam.
We painstakingly set up and took images for both Adams sponsor Dreadworx and upcoming Flipside media...
 The new Romsey park looking amazing - probably the best outdoor park in southern England - designed by Mark Churchill.
Fantastic layout with almost unlimited lines, and incredibly compact without being compromised. Good looking launch box to boot, roll on the inverts..!
Failed to get work through the temp work agencies, so wound up doing gardening for my grandparents. Due to the ongoing good weather, I had much contact, and it Was really good to see them.
Also managed to catch up with my uncle Andy a couple of times for pints down in Ringwood. He has recently been working with Bournemouth-based advanced lighting systems manufacturer LumiCycle - making cutting-edge portable halogen lighting systems for mountain-bikers and other specialist uses. These lightweight high-output lamps have taken the biking world by storm, and I will be testing them in a variety of configurations and posting my report here soon...
Seen many London-based friends recently, including Ricki Guy, my Johnny Redd co-conspirator, collecting documentary photos from our Johnny Redd and Bugger All escapades at long last. These will have their own websites soon, more as it comes...
Saw many other London friends at Devils Gun concert in Bournemouth. electronic/live music crossover Devils Gun is the brain-child of my good friend James Bird and Olly Goodman, sounding much like a hybrid of Prodigy and Groove Armada to my Philistinic ears (sorry James!)... They are doing very well, go see them if you get the opportunity - I guarantee you will like what you hear ;o)
On a less cool note, my beloved and trusty highly modified Rover 220 GTi has been sent to the crushers illegally by a 3rd party - I have passed on days of careful research to the police, who will find out whether it was malicious or just plain moronic negligence. Either way a court appearance will be beckoning for the person involved, and I will be pushing to see just how far this can go... :o(
This left painfully little time to prepare for my journey to NZ, but CJ & I successfully left the UK on Friday 9th June, to turn up in Christchurch jet-lagged and mentally shot, but glad to be back in NZ again! As if to mark our arrival, we woke on our first morning in Christchurch to find it snowing outside - good omen!
 I have bought 1991 Subaru Legacy 4x4 as the new tour vehicle - slightly more practical than the 2 off-roaders I have had in the previous seasons, but not so capable in the snow... Although snow chains will be required, it will make easier going of the travelling, especially for the longer distance runs, over the Crown Range etc.
Met up with Dazzler and Shaz, our friends from Morzine who we are living with, and made the beautiful journey down to Wanaka in convoy with them - having to take a slightly longer route there than usual. There has been so much snow here in the past couple of weeks that the route via Twizel and Lake Tekapo (the route we took both ways on our last visit to Wanaka) has been closed due to it being snowed in!
Cardrona skifield is due to open on 23rd June, my birthday, good present! The weather forecast is for loads more snow over the next few days, so there should be plenty of snowboard action coming our way soon - and if its wrong, then skating will be the order of the day...
Look out Wanaka - we're back!
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