The Book of Ashes

Snow on the road to Ohakune... 11:27AM

Thursday it was on the road again. Literally. I went for a 30km bike ride round the bays to keep up my fitness. Thomas came down for a job interview and I hitched a ride up to Palmy with him. It was time for an adventure...

Friday morning we arose early (before 6am) to a dismal pissant day. It was pouring down outside Ma's place in Palmy. After calling the ski hot-line and getting yesterdays report we decided to risk it and go up for an adventure, and what an adventure it turned out to be.

After driving for just over an hour through solid rain, we reached high country and it began to snow. This wasn't just ordinary road snoage. It was real snow. Within 20 minutes of driving through it, it had acumulated a good 10cm on the ground and we were forced to drive on the open highway at under 50km/h. There were so many colours, reds, blues, greens, all mixed together to form the brightest, prettiest white you've ever seen. Thomas and I decided to stop in Waioru at the War Museum to play in the snow.

Of course the first thing you do in snow (after you've run around in it and thrown a snow ball of course) is to make a snow man. So we quickly and efficiently began rolling snow balls. Both of us are veterans in this field, having rolled over 100 snow balls each and being masters of the snow sculpting art we quickly had large balls...

Of course before this we became quite cold and decided to put on gloves and a jacket as snow as you know is not warm. Before long we had constructed the basic body for the snowman when suddenly a two ladies from the war muesuem came out trying to get our attention. We thought, shit, they're going to tell us off, run away... but no! She kindly offered to us a slighly old and saggy carrot to use as the nose. We found some gravel for the eyes and created a moe-hawk for hair. He was a pretty cool dude, sitting there, doing the peace sign to all who drove past. We got plenty of honks as people drove past and watched us making him.

He was one of the best snowmen, Thomas or I had ever made. So finally tired, worn and getting cold we hopped back in the car, trying to decided what to do. The ski fields were obviously closed so we decided to head on up to Taupo for the day, hopefully it would be snowing there and we could relax in hot pools while it snowed (cool!). But just outside of town they had begun to close the road and we were trapped. We turned around and decided to head to Ohakune instead to visit our friend the pub and say hi to Kirsty and Lizzie and their flatmates.

The landscape around us was truely a winter wonderland. Everything was blanketted in a white layer of beauty. I just wanted to keep taking photos. Both Thomas and I were really excited as we drove slowly at 40km/h down the last 20kms to Ohakune. At one point all the cars stopped. Up ahead had been a collision and two cars were pulled over. The line started up again after they moved to the side but one silly fella had pulled over to the side of the road and was now stuck in snowy mush. While everyone drove past I told Thomas to pull over and went and knocked on the guys window. He wound it down and I asked if he needed a push. He said in a strong Aussie accent, tha'ed be great mate. Figures... stupid Aussies who've never seen snow before (hehehe). We managed to get him out no trouble at all then continued our trip to Ohakune.

In Ohakune 11:50AM

At Ohakune we pulled into the pub where Kirsty and that worked to see if she was there. She wasn't so we ordered a coffee and looked around. We were in a cool, almost log cabin, type of pub, wood everwhere with an open fireplace in the middle of the room and a funnel above it sucking the smoke away. Outside the antique looking iron rimmed windows it was snowing down and it snowed pretty much continuously for the next 4 hours. Ohakune was quite warm though so it wasn't getting too thick too fast. While drinking our coffee, Thomas and I sat up at high arse sculpted seats (they had cheek marks carved out of the wood and were really comfy). The table had a chess (or checkers) board built into it so we decided we would ask to exchange some coins so we could play chess with all the denominations. Of course they happened to have a chess set there so we played with that instead. 4 hours and a Drambuie later, Thomas had won 4 games to my 2 altho one of them should have been mine, considering I wiped him out, he gave up, I told him to move there then he flukily checkmated me the next move. Anyway the atmosphere there had been awesome. We headed out and round the corner to Kirstys house to say hi. They were all inside, trying to keep warm and getting ready to smoke a joint. Thomas and I hung round for a coffee and caught up on the goss and wondered at how legendary the snow would be the next day (the next day it was a 250cm base, up from 205cm the day before, fucking legendary). So eventually we headed off, keen to try out something we had seen on the way up there...

The snow had died down now and it was sometimes raining which melted the snow a little. We came across a fire hazard sign and couldn't help ourselves...

We changed the fire harard sign from reading low to extreme and took a photo. We just had to do it with all that snow about. We put it back afterwards. It was then time for the obligatory snow angel...

Then noticing a big grassy bit all covered in snow, I couldn't help myself and had to make a crop circle...

It would have looked better from higher up, but there was no higher ground to take the photo from.

So then finally it was time to go home. Our day was done, our fun had. We decended back towards Palmy and quickly left the snow region. We got home, quite tired and quite wasted. We hired out two videos and watched those till midnight then fell warily asleep after an 18 hour day.