Banff National park
I’ve visited Banff township in Banff National park in the rocky mountains a few times now. It’s only an hour and a bit away from Calgary. It’s similar to Queenstown but without the lake. There’s lots of hiking (tramping) and site seeing to be down there.
The above photo is of Tunnel Mountain. It’s not much of a mountain, more like a steep hill. I walked to the top while there.
Cascade mountain (above) is out the other side of Banff township.
Oh yeah, they have Bears in Banff! Even the rubbishi bins (see above) have to be made bear proof!
Elk in the area are allowed to wander free around the town. They’re huge beasts which look quite scary but are apparently quite harmless.
Posted on 2004-07-29 by
Los Angeles
And the prize for my worst first impression of a city ever goes to … Los Angeles. The stench of smog at the airport was simply foul. The following photos I took from the plane show the yucky smog quite nicely.
Posted on 2004-06-21 by
Prison Break In!?
Okay, soooo … most people who pick locks in prisons are generally trying to get out. But in our case, we were actually trying to get in! Yes that is as warped as it sounds. My old flat in Christchurch was built inside the original prison walls of the Addington Prison. But the old Victorian era prison block was still there, albeit abandoned, awaiting development. The prison block was built in 1874 and named the Mountfort block after it’s architect Benjamin W Mountfort.
A photo I found on the internet depicting how the prison looked back in the old days
My flatmate’s and I discovered one day that one of the access doors to the prison was, er, accessible, ie: if you jammed a credit card in it then you could pop it open 
Through trial and error we found that by tracking along one of the walls you could bypass the security system and gain access to the main prison hall and all of the cells. We did this at about midnight and only had our cell phones for lighting! It was totally freaky as we couldn’t see jack, and there were mice and all sorts of creepy crawlies around. We methodically went through each and every cell, seeing what we could find, most had some rather boring doodling by former inmates, however cell number 28 was quite spectacular. It had lots of drawings by an inmate called “Willy Two Worlds”. He was apparently serving a life sentence for killing his mate for stealing his shoes! As you can see by the photos, some are just funny looking cartoons, but others were quite sick and twisted. Later on we found more of his artwork in the isolation cell underneath the guards quarters.
Posted on 2004-03-24 by
Silver medal
The Otago University Falcons inline hockey team won a silver medal in the 2003 New Zealand University Games held in Palmerston North. We were beaten in the finals by Massey University.
Clockwise from top left: Ryan Hellyer (me), Simon Lovatt, Kyle Matthews, Daniel Jang, Andrew Sykes, Kerry Perkins, Mark Eatherly (goalie), John Thomsen and David Mason.
Otago team hanging out with the third placed AUT team. From top left: Kyle Matthews, Kerry Perkins, Mark Eatherly , AUT goalie, Simon Lovatt, random AUT player, Tenille Lynn, Casey Redman, Daniel Jang, Ryan Hellyer (me), random AUT player and random AUT player.
Posted on 2003-10-01 by
Videos of Dunedin Vixens in Nelson, New Zealand
The Dunedin Vixens (aka Dunedin Aces women) in action in Nelson, New Zealand.
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And the result … um, yeah, they got caned. Seems to be a recurring theme for the Dunedin Aces
Posted on 2003-07-01 by
Videos of Dunedin Aces in Nelson, New Zealand
Here’s some videos of the Dunedin Aces senior team playing in Nelson (South Island of New Zealand) in 2003. We got totally thrashed, but it was a good trip. I’m number 27 in white with black pants with bright blue stripes.
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And last of all … here’s a video interview with the team by Daniel Jang. I managed to avoid Dan while he was doing the interview 
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Dunedin Aces
The Dunedin Aces are an inline hockey club which was started initially by Daniel Jang and within weeks myself, Kerry Perkins and a bunch of others were recruited to help run the club. We eventually got our own uniforms and headed off to the South Island Regional Inline Hockey Championship where we were promptly gobbled up and spat out for breakfast by the Christchurch and Nelson teams. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience though and some of my toughest games were played for the Dunedin Aces.
Posted on 2002-08-11 by
Dunedin Vixens
The Dunedin Vixens (aka Dunedin Aces women) were an awesome team. Unfortunately an extra Y chromosome ruled me out of joining 
Although I did play in goal for them once as an honorary woman.
The photo below is from their 2002 journey to the South Island Regional Inline Hockey Championships. Clockwise from top left: Emma Gordon, April George, Kezia Bibby, Tasha Szeto, Kate Williman, Martel Letica, Becky Szeto, Kerry Perkins and Natalie Syddal.
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George St school
This was where I learned to play hockey! A random question by someone at the staff club one night about making a chemistry inline hockey team prompted me to go buy a stick, a pair of inline hockey skates and the rest is history! A life long (so far) obsession with hockey was born and I haven’t looked back since.
I’m the guy hunched over in the blue uniform about to take the faceoff.
Posted on 2002-07-28 by
