Archive for 2009

Heatings’s Kills

Red Truck

Another picture of the truck in front of Cardrona Hotel in New Zealand.

HDR from three RAW exposures. f/11, 1/50, ISO 100, 32.0mm. Canon Digital Rebel.

Gaelic Whisky

HDR from three exposures. Closeup of the sign at the Cardrona Hotel in New Zealand.

Cardrona Hotel Classic

HDR from three exposures of the Cardrona Hotel in New Zealand. Apparently a place that is often photographed.

For Christmas 2009 I was at Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand. I rode my kh36 out to it and walked to the top of a little mountain/rock:

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HDR of the KH36:

Mt Cardrona Station, NZ.

After driving down Mt. Cardrona there is quaint, and often photographed, hotel.

Louise and I need a shoe rack that looks nice. I decided to design something pretty in Sketchup. Here is what I came up with while on vacation:

The vertical side pieces have a slight curve to them, and the bottom pieces have a slight arch. I’m planning on using cherry for the outside, and staining the outer pieces slightly darker than the inside sheet pieces (which will be 1/2″ cherry ply). The shelves will be 3/4″ maple. The overall size will be 52″ tall by 28″ wide by 16″ deep.

Download the Sketchup file (coming soon, email me to get it).

Today was one of the best days ever. A bunch of us in New Zealand went “Heli-muniing”. For the uninformed, that is taking a helicopter to the top of a mountain and riding our muni (mountain unicycles) down to the bottom. Totally awesome. The adventurers: Andy (the ringleader/organizer), Irene (his lovely wife), Nathan (who provided rad pictures), Beau (who rode almost everything), John (amazing rode it without a brake!), Scott (who rode it with 125mm cranks), two guides from Fat Tyre Adventures and myself (on the geared 24″ mountain unicycle).

Some of the great pictures by Nathan Hoover.

John Foss walking in front of the machine we are about to depart in:

View of the ride:

Landing. The chopper took two trips to get us all there. Nathan had already arrived and took a picture of the last of us getting out. I’m on the left with the uni:

The team:

Me crossing the freezing river:

Today I rode from Queenstown to Coronet Peak.

Here’s a shot of my geared KH36, with the road in the background.

A few days ago I left for a trip into the southern hemisphere, New Zealand. There is a big unicycle conference called UNICON in Wellington, which is at the bottom of the north island. I flew into Queenstown in the south island with a few friends of mine, Nathan, Grace and Beau and we have been having a great time! We are going to spend a week hanging out and cruising up north in our rental car, and then two weeks in Wellington for the conference. UNICON is the world championships for unicycling, I’m going to be competing in mountain unicycling and two long distance events. I’m mainly coming for fun, as I don’t think I’m really fast enough to actually win (especially since I haven’t trained enough).

Here are some cool shots of Beau as we were riding downtown.

360 unispin, midair with hands completely off the unicycle:

Rolling wrap:

The next day — notice the paragliders in the blue sky:

Lupins:

At the skate park: