The Sky Jump

At 328 metres tall, Auckland's Sky Tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere and offers incredible views for up to 80 kilometres in every direction.

Something that big deserves to be climbed and/or jumped off of! We chose the latter of the two options; less time required. The glass elevator ride to the top was pretty neat too.

The jump takes place from the top skydeck, 192 meters up. During the descent, you reach 83km per hour.

It's not so much like a bungy jump, more like a parachute base jump as your body achieves the same free-fall position as skydiving.

Given the full body harness, my amazing suspension system and an extra safety line tied around my ankle (just in case), I was allowed to wear my leg for the jump.

Even at 192 meters (as opposed to the full height of the tower), the skydeck is the tallest point a person can be in Auckland meaning that you're automatically looking down on every skyscraper's roof. It's enough to weaken the knees!

A view of the skydeck in relation to the rest of the city.

Lisa taking her leap!

I came in for a perfect one-footed landing to absorb the impact then stepped down onto my prosthetic with style.

Across the Pond to Auckland, New Zealand

The last long weekend of the year... that's a lot of pressure for one little weekend!

Lucky for us, Auckland is a short 4 hour swim from Brisbane so with a $99 seat sale taunting us, we couldn't say no.

This was my first international flight with a prosthetic leg, so I really didn't know what to expect. By all reports, I was going to be asked to take my leg off, put it on the belt scanner and hop through the metal detectors. This was not a prospect I was looking forward to.

Fortunately, this was not the drill. I was allowed to walk through like everyone else followed by a quick run by with the "wand".

The second challenge was travelling without my crutches. Not for normal mobility, just for those pesky middle of the night wake-up calls and for getting in/out of the shower. Enter the collapsible hiking poles Matt gave me. When taken apart, these fit neatly in my travel backpack. When assembled, these allowed me to get around with ease after my leg was off at night.

Auckland is home to the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere, the Sky Tower. We woke up on the first morning looking out at this huge monolith from our hotel window less than a block away. As you can imagine, that was one of our first and last stops of the day!

From the top, Auckland's city scape is incredible. The food in the revolving restaurant is even better. From the top you can see the whole city stretch out beneath your feet.

Auckland also boasts several volcanic islands within a stone's throw of the city, great for quick hike on a chilly day! One of these is Rangitoto, easily accessible by a short ferry ride. On a very cold day, we went up Rangitoto and walked the rim of the volcano then hiked down to the lava caves below. These were really cool!



The caves were tens of meters in length and cartoonish in appearance. They were straight out of an Indiana Jones movie with vines and a tiny speck of daylight indicating the far end of the tunnel. At several points along the way, we had to crouch down to get under the four foot high (meter and a half) tunnel ceilings.



One cave tunnel was long enough that we had to take a real leap of faith that it would have an opening on the other side! Enter handy leg-bag flashlight to guide our way. We wouldn't have gone far without that handy bit of MacGuyver-tech.

Quick facts about New Zealand:

New Zealand was the first major nation to have universal suffrage. In 1893 it became legal for all male and female citizens of New Zealand to vote.

It was also the first country to have its three top positions of power held simultaneously by women: The Prime Minister (Helen Clark), the Governor General (Dame Silvia Cartwright), and the Chief Justice (Sian Elias).

Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in Oceania, was the source of the largest known eruption in the world in the last 70 thousand years.

New Zealand was the last major landmass to be populated (with the exception of the polar regions).

Nobel Prize Winner and New Zealander Ernest Rutherford is known as the father of nuclear physics for his orbital theory of the atom.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach the peak of Mount Everest was born in Auckland and his face is on the New Zealand $5 bill.

Auckland's skyline at night.

A nice dinner on our last night in Auckland.

Golfing with the Sharks

The truth really is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to my post about golfing in Australia!

Apparently I made a mistake when I mentioned the man-eating crocodiles in the water traps: sorry, I should have said "man-eating sharks".

For those who thought I was exaggerating:
"WATER hazards tend to make a golfer shake at the knees at the best of times, but Carbrook Golf Club has taken this element of fear to a whole new level. The course’s main lake is now officially a no-go zone because it’s riddled with 'a significant number' of man-eating bull sharks of all sizes."

Read more about it here and see the video:
http://golferpacific.com.au/process/myviews/golfpac_article.html?articleId=1323

A bit about Bull Sharks: One of the deadliest sharks off the East Coast of Australia, the bull shark is well known for its unpredictable, often aggressive behavior. Unlike most other marine sharks, bull sharks tolerate fresh water. They can travel far up rivers. As a result, they are probably responsible for the majority of shark attacks on humans that take place near the shore.

Funny enough, I have a two-for-one pass to golf 18 holes at Carbrook any day of the week and it's just 30 short minute drive south of our house!

Rough Cut of New Zealand

Took a quick trip across the pond this weekend to a land where the sheep outnumber the people and Hobbits are commonplace. We are of course in New Zealand!

We're currently staying the night in the center of a giant volcano in Rotorua. There are tons of natural geisers and thermal vents in the area making for an amazing landscape of steam and warm springs.

Oh, and we jumped off the top of the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere yesterday!











More to come soon!
-- Mobile post

The Stump Jump

Our new favorite wine! Irony never tasted so good! :)

Carving Out the Potential

I had a lot of time last week to think. When I think, I putter. Here's what I decided:

I think we often get so caught up in seeing things for what they are that we fail to see what they could be.

We're blinded so much by what we perceive that we fail to recognize the full potential of the thing.

If we can't get past that first obstacle, we can't form a vision of the possibilities or start clearing away the rubble to see what's under the surface.

If we can overcome that obstacle, we start ourselves down a path of enlightenment and potential. That vision becomes our obsession.

As we proceed, we may lose sight of that vision. Things aren't looking right and don't seem to be going the way we'd hoped or expected. We begin to think we've made a mistake or that we've been overly ambitious with what we've got. We must constantly redefine our expectations.

If we persist, we begin to see that the vision was never really lost. Instead, we come to recognize that there are other forces at play in shaping it.

It's in this realization that we recognize the true potential. By letting go of our preconceived notions and allowing things to progress as they're meant to, without force, we begin to see it take on a beauty of its own.

As we relax, things take shape. Our vision changes slightly and what it has become begins to exceed our expectations. Our vision becomes reality.

It would be easy to stop at this point but that's when the really hard work begins.

From here on out, the approach we take should be subtle but persistent. We need to smooth out the rough edges and take away the surface scars of the previous approach. Only through this effort does the work take on a new luster.

Gradually, as we polish away the debris left by such a radical transformation, the inner beauty of the thing is revealed to us. We're proud. We have achieved what we set out to achieve. We may choose to hide it away for ourselves, or we may put it on display for all the world to see. We sit back and admire our hard work.

But we're still not finished. Over time, dust collects on our effort, taking back the luster we have bestowed upon it. Everyday pressures may form small cracks or chips in the surface.

All of this happens for one reason: to remind us that we must take nothing for granted. Only with constant care and involvement will our hard work remain a thing of beauty.

We must treasure what we have created, else we lose it.

The beauty of life must be constantly rediscovered else we are blind to it.

Golfing

H.G. Wells said "The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf". I think I'm going to like this game.

Matt (cool picture on the right, check out that club!) and I played 9 holes Sunday morning at Victoria Golf Complex near the Brisbane CBD. What a great way to spoil a nice walk on a Sunday morning!

Golfing in Australia is great. From the kangaroos on the greens to the colourful lorakeets in the tropical trees, the fairways lined with Palms and the perfect sky, you really do get the feeling of being in a tropical paradise.

Of course, one should recall a few minor points about golf etiquette here:
1) rake the sandtrap for deadly snakes BEFORE you go in after your ball. This may prevent death or at least wetting thyself.
2) if your ball goes in the deep rough, a python has it. If the python doesn't have it, the python was killed by something worse than a python. Just take a drop.
3) aggressive spiders are attracted to shiny metal club shafts.
4) beware of man-eating crocodiles in the water traps.

and of course...
5) if your mate drops unconscious from heat stroke, notify the course attendant so the other parties will allow the doctor (a few holes back) to play through. Score a 2 putt on his card for the hole +1 for the inconvenience. Play on.

Is he kidding? Is he exaggerating for comedic effect? Are there really crocodiles on the course? You'll just have to come find out for yourselves.

On a personal note, I can honestly say that I'm as good a golfer now as I was before the accident... You can read into that however you want!

Walking the hilly course was a good test for me. I used a push cart for the clubs and by the 9th green I was only feeling a small limp coming on. The uneven terrain would have been a real killer about 6 weeks ago so it was a nice feeling.

As MJ told me a while back, golfing is a great way to test the full range of the leg. He uses it to judge his new fit when he has a major adjustment made or gets a new piece of hardware. I figured I'd better start getting a baseline.

I daresay my game may have even improved slightly since the last time I played. I had been a bit nervous that the twisting motion of the swing would hurt but it wasn't a problem.

I'm still hitting my shots straight and if anything, this has slowed my swing down just enough to take care of my slice. I just have to work on my aim! My follow-through still feels very natural but after video review I can see that it does look a bit off (but I don't have a video-baseline to compare to from before).

My short game still has a lot to be desired and unfortunately on that one, you can't even point to the leg! Lisa and I are going to need more mini-golf practice.

For my Uncles: no water traps near any of the tee-boxes so I still had my driver when we got off the course.



Nice course!

Aussie Rules

AFL: Australian Football League (Aussie Rules)
Venue: The Gabba Cricket Grounds
When: Saturday night, May 16th

This posed some really interesting challenges for me so I thought I'd blog a little bit about it. Also I haven't blogged in a while and it's good to let the family know I'm alive and ticking!

Aussie Rules football is very different from any other game I've ever seen. For one, it's probably football match played in a giant oval! It's also one of the only games on earth where you can score a point by missing your goal kick. Sort of a nod to "heeeeey... that was... um.. clooose... here's a pity-point!"

It's an extremely athletic game played by no less than 36 players on the field and 8 umpires. The players jump as high as pro-basketball players, run as fast as the fastest soccer players, hit as hard as the toughest rugby players and have the grace of a major league outfielder when catching a ball under pressure.

You don't need to watch the ball for the action as there's at least three other games being played away from the ball at any given time, jostling for position and moving the chess pieces around the field.

The game never stops action. A whistle doesn't mean "stop what you're doing", in fact it means "play on!". This makes the fans some of the craziest viking-like fans on the planet. It's easy to get caught up in such a fast paced game with so much action!

Oh yeah, my personal challenges for the night:
- climbing the steep stairs of the Gabba to my seat
- navigating the steep stairs holding two beers instead of a railing
- shuffling past feet in the aisles to get to my seat, trying not to fall on anyone
- bumping around in the crowds after the game
- standing on the bus ride home for lack of a seat

It was a good test. Often the subtle movements are the hardest to control so squeezing one foot in front of the other with so many feet in my way, without spilling a drop of beer, not so easy!

We had a good night. Brisbane beat Adelaide 119 to 83 and Daniel Bradshaw (#18) beat the all time Lions scoring record with 461 goals.


Quidditch meets reality.

SCUBA Diving with Shaahhks

Shaahhk: (noun) Australian for Shark.

Monday was a public holiday in Queensland, Labour Day. It wasn't a holiday in New South Wales because they don't work hard enough down there to need one.

Since NSW is just a short 2 hour trip south of us, we left the sunshine and crowds behind us on Monday and went for a SCUBA dive at Julian Rocks, near Byron Bay (NSW).

This was my first dive since the accident and it went great!

We saw a HUGE green turtle. It's difficult to get an idea of the sheer size of this guy from the picture but needless to say, it was the size of a coffee table.


We also swam along side a two-and-a-half meter spotted wobbegong shark. There were loads of other amazing tropical fish, blow-fish and giant angel-fish.

Thinking ahead and recognizing that I'm a twin-engine vehicle with one motor permanently in the shop, Lisa and I devised a way to give me back some of the propulsion I would be lacking.

We bought some webbed gloves for swimming which gave me some extra agility when required. My finger tips still poke up out of the open fingers of the webbed gloves meaning that I could still fiddle with my gages, BCD triggers, etc.

I also strapped a small snorkeling fin to the bottom of my leg inside the wet-suit giving me some extra propulsion.

All in all, the combination of the two worked really well and I didn't feel any different diving now that I would have before.


Lisa swimming like a fish.


Schools of these bright fish were everywhere.


Mike in full gear.

Tennis: Going Balls Out

Just before I received my leg, I made a list of goals:

1) Walk perfectly (no limp) in three weeks (thanks MJ).
2) Back to rock-climbing in one month.
3) Able to jog/run in three months.
4) Playing tennis in six months.

This list has been posted as the wallpaper (background image) on my phone ever since, meaning that I look at it about 30 times a day. Today I achieved item number four a few months early!

Playing tennis requires being able to do number three on the list (jogging/running) as well as a few other skills:
- pivoting
- running backwards
- stopping and starting quickly
- having the ability to lunge
- side to side quick stepping
- looking good in tennis shorts

This made playing tennis one of those "ultimate goals" for me, thinking it would take real practice on my leg to be able to play the game properly.

I wasn't as quick on my feet as I'd hoped from my running practice but all of the other skills came into play. With practice, my speed and agility will improve, but for now, I'm counting on my killer ball placement skills to foil my much quicker opponent.


Getting nice flex out of the ankle there.



Lisa working on her form. I'm glad we only played one set; near the end she'd figured out my weakness and was starting to play it to her advantage!



Returning the shot. Keeping my prosthetic leg behind me allows for maximum agility. This allows me to pivot quickly without twisting my leg in the socket while also putting me up onto the flexible toe for maximum energy return.