The Book of Ashes

Pay rise and tramping the Holdsworth-Jumbo. 8:48AM

A whole week has passed. Last week I was a little short on work. This week I am on a course. Next week I start working back at Branz, 3 months out in the wops. It will be good to get away from TT for a while.

So I finally got a pay rise. 6 months late and half what I usually get. Still this is good compared to the rest of the company. It seems I am lucky to have got anything at all.

This weekend I went tramping with brother Tom, Martin and Natalie. We were up and packed and ready to go by 10am on Saturday morning. Off over the Rimutuka's, past Carterton and on to the start of the track. It was only a 2 hour drive and we were ready to go. Martin was a little hung over having only slept for 4 hours the night before. The day was threatening to rain and the weather forcast was for heavy rain warnings but we were determined to go none-the-less. The walk up was good. It didn't rain until we hit the bush line and then it was only 20 minutes to the hut. We were all a little buggered and relieved by then.

Once inside the hut we changed into warmer clothes and brought out the cards and my hip flask of bourbon. I had made the mistake of not filling it right up. I've now learnt that lesson. After walking for a couple of hours up hill in the cold and wet, you can drink a lot of bourbon. Damn it was good. So we settled in for a game of 7s. There was no heating in the hut so we relied on hot drinks and alcohol to keep us going.

We invited the other three in the hut to play with us. One of them was a dude called Lance who was in the sixth form. He reminded me that I was no longer young. He had a fresh mind, eager to learn new things. He yearned for stories of uni and a life that might one day be his. He was still in a learning phase, a blank book to write upon. It is good to see.

So later that night, after a few cooking hickups and a cask of wine later we headed to bed. Martin had crashed earlier and probably got the best sleep out of all of us. That night was one of the windiest I've ever slept through. I don't actually remember falling alseep, just turning over every 15 minutes or so. My pillow was pretty uncomfortable. Next thing I know Natalie is waking us up to see the sunrise. Cool I think. We get up to a perfectly calm and clear morning. The only clouds are those down below us in the valley. We can see the lights of Masterton and Caterton twinkling inbetween the gaps and a thin crimson glow covers the horizon above the clouds.

Then began the long wait. We discovered from Martin that it was 4:30 and even though the sunrise looked eminent, it took another hour and a half to come up. It was worth it though. I got some cool photos of the sunrise.

Next thing you know we've had breakfast, packed up and out of the hut by 7:30. One of my earliest starts ever and yet it still seemed late as we'd been up for so long already.

It didn't take long to reach the tops where we quickly discovered how exposed it was up there. I have a good movie I took of the clouds whipping over the top of the ridge. Every once and a while we'd find a calm spot in the chaos and sit back to enjoy the hot sun. Apart from the wind, the day was perfect. We got excellent views in all directions and enjoyed the walk. We reached Jumbo hut, situated just above the bush line around 12. It was much more sheltered here so we stopped in the hot sun for lunch and a rest