Ryan Hellyer’s Website

Our uber awesome, wonderful and truly incredible professional ice hockey coach Jenel Bode is leaving Hopefully she’ll be back next year though

Rhyan McMillan and our uber awesome coach Jenel Bode

For her goodbye bash, she organised a goodbye party in a cave at Longbeach. It sounded boring, getting stuck in a cave all evening on a cold, wet, rainy day Luckilly Sarah was heading out to take Jane so I hitched a ride along so I could make an appearance and bail home early with Sarah. Darn glad I went though, coz it was totally awesome. The cave was wicked, the fire kept us all cosy warm, everyone had fun and there was loads of entertainment provided by my teammates who provided firebreathing, guitar and flame throwing demonstrations for us all. There were even baby blue penguins in the back of the cave hanging out with us!

Neil Dudley and Rob Owens demonstrating how much effort it takes to burn human skin … Read more

The Beasts (my ice hockey team) headed to Stewarts Gully Mini Golf. The facility is owned by Clive Murphie, a top bloke who is also heavily involved with the Aardwolfs Ice Hockey Club who we played against in Christchurch. As it says on the label, this is “Mini Golf”, so basically big golf shrunk to a small size, no castles, water features or other fandangled things to navigate, just good old putting greens.

Clive Murphie, the owner of the course

Estelle Baker expertly sinking the ball in the hole after some advice from Jane Soper (on right). Conveniently I clicked the shutter just as the ball was falling into the hole.

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I’ve gotten a lot of questions about GimpCam and NetCam recently. To save me feeling like a broken record, here’s a selection of pre-prepared answers …

• Yes I did look like a gimp while wearing it
• No I’m not going to lend it to you to wear to school
• No it doesn’t have X-ray vision
• No I don’t use it to spy on girls in the changing room
• No I’m not going to lend it to you for that purpose!
• No I’m not going to buy a pinhole camera instead (too expensive)
• Yes GimpCam and NetCam have the same internals
• It cost $80 from a dodgy computer store in SE Calgary
• Yes NetCam is housed inside a tupperware container and no I’m not going to integrate it inside the goal post instead
• Yes GimpCam looks stupid and no it can’t fit inside the lip at the top of my helmet
• Yes I am considering allowing goalies to wear GimpCam but I need to find an appropriate way to protect it as its unlikely to survive a puck impact in it’s current form
• No I’m not planning to stream it direct to a projector screen in the warm room
• Last of all, NO! You are not allowed to fire slapshots at my head while I’m wearing GimpCam!

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I’m now famous! My rather crappy videos have made their way onto the What Now TV show. I received an email from them the other day asking if they could screen some of my videos of the recent New Zealand Ice Hockey National Championships on their show. Pity I didn’t know before hand as I’d have prepared some far better quality footage for them.

What Now: If you are reading this and don’t want it posted here, then email me via the form on my contact page and I’ll remove it ASAP.

I’ve been trying to avoid over-running the site with hockey videos from the Nationals, but this one definitely deserves it’s own post

I’ve also posted a higher resolution version here.

Thanks to Abby for the excellent video work. I’m number 98 with the black helmet and white gloves.

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The New Zealand National Ice Hockey Championships are on in Dunedin at the moment. I’ll be videoing a few of the games to post on here. I’m not bothering to play as I object to the ~$200/game fee!

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During the Christchurch Aardwolfs Southern Migration we stopped off at the Manorburn dam to see what the ice was like. We expected to see nothing but water, but a slither of ice on the bottom basin was enough to give our resident

ice expert Clive the hope to have a crack at skating on the top basin. So we trudged up the valley and had a gander at the ice up there. Apparently there was enough ice in the middle to skate on, but getting their proved a tad treacherous!

Ted had a decent crack at standing on the ice but kept dipping his foot into the water. He even clambered over a branch like a monkey to reach the ice further toward the center which looked skateable, but couldn’t quite make it far enough from the shore.

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Here’s a panoramic photo I took of the Remarkables from the Queenstown ice rink.

And here’s a photo I took of Ted skimming a stone across Lake Wakatipu.

The brand new ice rink at Lake Tekapo is simply stunning! Gone with the old and in the new.

For more information about the new facility visit http://www.alpinesprings.co.nz/.