Weekly Pictures (delayed)

This is from my speech at the Paraparaumu club on the Kapiti coast. I am exchanging my Rotary flag for theirs with the president, Geoff Gregory.

I stayed the night with the Gregorys, and the next day they took me around for a bit of sightseeing. One of the places we went was a wildlife sanctuary and native flora preserve, and it had fantastic views of the mountains to the east.

Of course, being a wildlife preserve, I got to see things like kiwi birds and swans and owls, but there was a fair amount of ducks waddling around, as well.

Now, Paraparaumu was two weeks ago, on 12 September. This past weekend I went up to Taupo. This is a mountain nearby Taupo (I don't believe it is Mt. Ruapehu, I believe Ruapehu is a little to the left), and Lake Taupo seperates us from the mountain in the picture.

Now, what did I go up to Taupo to do? To go SKYDIVING of course! This is me and my 'tandem' Phil right before jumping in the not-so-stable plane to fly up to 12,000 feet.

I don't have any pictures of me from really high up (although I do have a fantastic DVD), so this is the best we are going to get. We had 45 seconds of free fall from 12 to 5000 feet, and then we floated down on parachutes. I believe here we are actually spiraling down quickly to lose altitude.