Michael Jackson tribute

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Yesterday, Aug 29, was Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday.
We had made plans to play rockband, but decided to honor MJ instead by doing a flash mob at Universal Studio City Walk instead.
We did a 45 minute practice session where we learned the moves and off we went.
The whole “flash mob” thingy stated by the Swedish dance cooperative BouncE on July 9th when they performed it on the streets of Stockholm as a tribute to the late Michael Jackson.

Here is an unofficial video from last night. I am totally lost and behind in every move, but it was still fun!

Santa Monica

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I was gonna do homework yesterday, but after checking out an apartment, my friend was bored and wanted me to hang out. We usually go down to Venice, but we explored Santa Monica yesterday.

It is pretty much the same freakshow, but with nicer stores.

I saw this book, I will buy it for myself for Christmas.

Dinner at Barneys, their menu is a newspaper!


They had old license plates in the ceiling.

Helping my friend flirt with the bartender…



Waiting for the bus to take us home after an eventful evening.

More people in this city should take the bus! People are complaining over the lack of public transportation, but the bus system is actually really good, and it’s super cheap! You can go anywhere for $1.25, try to beat that with driving costs including gas and parking (beach parking is between $5 and $20).

The Ice House Comedy Club

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A friend had a stand-up performance at the Ice House Comedy Club in Pasadena. Who would say no to a good laugh? Or as he put it; “In tough times, we must laugh, or die trying…”



Jack in the Box milkshake

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Jack in the Box makes the best milkshakes ever! It is also awesome that I live within walking distance to a 24 hour Jack in the Box. To make the best milkshake ever even better, just take the shake home and add some dark rum, awesome way to end a night!

Apartment Hunting

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Since I have big plans for next year, I decided to get a new place so I can save some money. Gave my notice on my apartment and have to be out by September 18.

Time Travel!

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I left Sydney at 1:30pm on Sunday, and arrived in Los Angeles before noon the same day. Super cool that after a 14 hour flight arrive before you entered the plane! I couldnt wait to see the ocean again and stroll around in the water and pretty much tossed my bags on the floor and headed down to the beach.

I had in mind that maybe I would be a little jet lagged and wanted a nap on the beach, but I felt great and we just walked around and watched people. It took me a while to understand that it was Sunday and that’s why it was so crowded.



We had a long walk on the beach, it felt nice!

I wanted ice cream but was talked into having dinner first.

Good Bye to rainy New Zealand

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I’m sad to leave, but the plan is to come back next year!

I like having aisle seats on longer flights so I can stretch out my legs, but since I’ve got a stop in Sydney on the way home and the first flight is only a few hours, I didn’t really mind when they just assigned me a window seat. I didnt have anyone next to me either, so I got lucky.

The sun always shine above the clouds!

Flying into Sydney, Australia, you can see the harbor bridge from here!

I had quite a long stop over in Sydney, but I couldn’t be bothered with leaving the airport.

Ōtautahi

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We arrived in Ōtautahi “the place of Tautahi” like the Maori named it, or Christchurch, like the Brits named it.
We drove to the car rental place and the boys had a couple of hours to kill while waiting for the car to get fixed, so we strolled around on the streets. What city named Christchurch would not have a church as the central point of the city?


I spotted the Real Groovy record store which is the best record store in the world! I had to visit it, and since I will no longer sing for the boys in the backseat, they had to pick up a few cd’s for the rest of their NZ visit.

This Real Groovy was not as good as the one in Auckland or Wellington, but still all right.
I said good bye to my friends, they continued down to Wanaka and I am getting ready for my flight back home tomorrow.

My Last Day On Skis

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Todays weather forecast said rain, but we had such a good time yesterday, and since I am flying back home on Saturday and the boys have to swing by the car rental place to get the car sorted out, we decided to give Mt Lyford a try again today anyway.
It did not look good at all as we drove up the mountain.

Around the next corner though, we managed to get above the first set of clouds, and even if it wasnt a clear blue sky, it was still a nice day!

They had this truck that was buried in the snow, a good photo opportunity!


After our little photo session, we did a hike again, since we were still not sure if the rainstorm was gonna hit us or not we thought it was for the best to do the hike as early as possible.





The rain never hit us and we continued to play throughout the day! I’m making some turns in nice spring snow,


I am bummed that today was my last day of skiing, I was really starting to get into it again over the last couple of days. I made a decision that I will hit Big Bear at least once this winter, and hopefully even make it out to Colorado for a weekend. My life also took a huge turn when I decided to set up a goal and move here in April or May of next year.

New Zealand is the land of sheep, in 2003 New Zealands population was 3.9 million, and the sheep population was 39.2 million. That’s 10 sheep on every person!

New Zealand is also the land of adrenaline junkies, as long as the bridge is high enough, there will be bungy jump equipment set up on it, we never saw anyone jumping from this bridge though, guess it wasnt the right season.

Mt Lyford

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The road up to Mt Lyford was probably the most entertaining so far… super narrow and with sharp turns!

It was a nice little club field and the staff was super friendly, they had one button lift, one t-bar and one nut cracker lift up to the top that they open after 1pm. They said they open it after 1pm cos it was to hard up on the top before that, we think they only had it open in the afternoon cos there were noone there but us to ride it. Once it open, they asked us to unplug and re-plug the power when we got on top so rather than having it running with noone going up, they could turn it on for us each time we wanted a ride up.

During the years when I used to have over 200 days of skiing, I was super comfortable, used to go I really fast, loved tricky corridors and didnt mind a big jump every now and then. But after a three years break with only 6 or so ski days (I had actually not skied at all for two years before this trip), I have not been feeling as comfortable, but I really got into it today! It was soft spring snow, my favorite after fresh powder, and I was confident enough to go faster and do a little bit of playing around on jumps.

We spotted a face that were the lifts wouldnt take us but was super accessible by a fairly easy hike. I counted the steps, it was 618, and 15 minutes according to Stig-Ole. His watch did off course also tell us the elevation, but didnt really pay attention to the numbers.
Jr on top, getting ready for his run.


Maybe Ive just been to excited to feel it, but I have not had any issues with my feet/boots throughout the trip. Jr has been in pain every day though, and he twisted his ankle a little last night while playing around so he gave up after a while, but me and Johan decided to do the hike one more time.


Jr took my camera and snapped some photos of us.


Me coming down the hill



Johan coming down the hill



We had some issues with the rental car today, you could chose to lower or heighten up the car while driving and today it got stuck on the low. It looked like a sports wagon and even the smallest rock on the road scratched the bottom of the car. We sent out Jr to clear the road, and it took us about an extra hour to get down from the mountain today!