The Christchurch Experience

Hello again! I have been back in Christchurch for 4 days now and have been enjoying my time here. I leave on Monday for a couple days down south (Queenstown and Wanaka) so I thoughtI'd take a little time to update the happenings.

After the 5 days of travel, I decided I needed a bit of a rest on this vacation, so I took Wednesday as a relax day and slept in a bit. After waking, I organized the photos I had taken on the trip (570 ish after deleting the bad ones) and Jake was able to get out of work early, so he was home around 3 PM. We drove into the center of Christchursh and threw the frisbee around a bit before heading to one of my favorite spots: The Casino! Jake and I sat down at a $5 Black Jack table and played cards for a while. I was playing with $50 and got up a bit before getting raked over by a couple horrible dealers leaving me with just $10 of my original money. Couple interesting things to note about Black Jack here: a push is called a "stand off" which I think is definitely an upgrade, you can't double down if one of your cards is an Ace (Major bummer!), and the dealer only deals one of their cards face up to start (the rest of their cards come after all of the players have finished their betting, giving new meaning to the phrase "taking the dealers card".

On our way out of the Casino, I decided to let my $10 ride on Twisted Metal black at the Roulette table, and hit to double up my money. We went to get some dinner at Burrito Company and then decided to swing back into the Casino on the way to the car. I started with a $10 bet on Twisted Metal Red at the Roulette and hit again, getting me up to $30. Jake was done gambling, so I sat back down at our $5 table and got down to business. I got my money back, and when we left I was up $40 on the night,which was nice. We went back to Jake's and went to bed pretty early.

My Thursday was pretty productive. I did some internetting at a cafe near Jake's and then headed into Christchurch for some walking around and such. I went to the downtown mall to get a knee brace and then met Jake for ultimate practice around 6:15. At practice I found out that I made the Christchurch A team for the upcoming tournament, which was nice since I didn't really want to play with the B team. We did some good running around, and my knee (which has had limited mobility since a football injury almost a month ago) felt ok. After practice, we got some food from Two Fat Indians restaurant and watched Wedding Crashers on the DVD.

Friday morning, Jake's wife Michelle and her sister Amy arrived from LA around 11 AM and the three of us hung out for a while. Michelle had to go to work, so Amy and I went into Chirstchurch, had a couple beers at Dux de Lux and got some food. Friday night the four of us got some great sushi and just hung out at Jake and Michelle's place, making a pretty early night of things as Jake and were playing ultimate the next day and Amy and Michelle were pretty beat from their travels.

Saturday (today) Jake and I played in the 2nd of 3 New Zealand Ultimate Tour events here in Christchurch with the Christchurch (Canterbury) team. We started out against a team from the North Island called MUA, and took that game fairly easily. I was basically only playing offensive points because my knee doesn't really allow me to reach higher than 75% of my top speed. Our second game was a big one against 2005 Callahan Award winner Tank from Texas and the Wellington team. The game was back and forth, but we pulled away and won 17-12. Our third and last game of the day was against top seeded Blue Fish from Aukland, the cream of New Zealand Ultimate. As the tourney is a round robin and the other 2 teams we play on Sunday (tomorrow) are cream puffs, this game was essentially meaningless as we would be playing them again in the finals. Still, players on both sides really wanted the game, and we ended up losing 13-11 in a game we very easily could have won.

So, I am sceduled to wake up in 8 hours or so and get into the playing again. I hope my knee loosens up enough to allow me to play well, because I am pretty into this tourney. For the day I had one turnover on a number of touches and even got a D! Not bad for a gimp...