I lost ONE shoe

'How do you lose one shoe?' you might ask. One way is to put them on the roof of your car before you go to work in the morning and then forget you left them there until you get to work; get out of your car and see there's only one shoe on the roof... I wish it was in fact an April Fool's joke but it wasn't. I think it'd be almost better to lose both shoes than just one. They were my running shoes but I hadn't planned on having to replace them while I'm here. I mean Zappos charges something like $60 to ship over here and NZ prices are cruel once you start making NZ wages. They'd been everywhere with me in the last year too; Tikal in Guatemala, Granada where I almost got jumped, Panama Canal, Huayana Picchu at the top of Machu Picchu, Frederick, Peoria, the Columbia River Gorge, McMinnville, and Cromwell NZ. Damn. So now I've gotta get some replacements and figure out what to do with a left shoe.

Harvest is here. Most wineries are taking in fruit. It's a slow trickle at the moment with the majority of the grape picking happening after Easter. I spent the last 3 days helping with the picking in some way, shape or form. From actually picking clusters, to ripping the clips off of bird nets, to running buckets. It's a good time all in all. Far cry from watching the Latinos at Momtazi Vineyard run up and down the hills. So my time as a Latino/Mexican has come to a close for harvest in the S. hemisphere this year. I learned a helluva a lot but was reminded today how little I do know (I'll try to put up a post of vineyard/grape photos from the last couple of weeks. Monday I start at Gibbston Valley and they're bringing in fruit on Tuesday. Seems that people like me swimming in the deep end. Eh, whatever.

Autumn is also here. The last of the stone fruit has been harvested and we're onto apples and pumpkins and other fall/winter produce. This weekend is Daylight Savings Time. Spring forward fall back, right? Yep. Except a lot of things here are flipped upside down here so I'll be falling back tonight. West coast US will now be 5h ahead (except it's yesterday). We've had a few frosts so the leaves are starting to change color. The poplars have really started first–a yellowy orange color. It'll be really something when all the vineyards start changing colors in earnest. The whole place should look like it's on fire.

What else? Umm... there's a bunch of pictures here. Lots are from the Wanaka A&P show from about 3 weeks ago. It's the equivalent of a county/state fair. It only lasts 2 days though and it's pretty small considering the amount of agriculture here. Mmm... There's some more pictures from Zeestraten (I finally saw it spelled out). I really took a liking to that place. We spent about 2.5-3 weeks there doing ish. Yeah it's probably a money pit, but it still warms my heart when I'm there. I would forget about the neglect and smell the evergreens and enjoy the silence.

Soooo.... with me moving over to the winery on Monday, there's a good chance that I'll be underground for a while. I might get time to come up and breath every now and then but I don't know how much time or energy I'll have to post here. Please feel free to email me though as it always got has first priority.

Peace fam. Stay frosty.

Minature Horse Cart-Time Trials. Hilarious

Judging Pavilion

Fair Kid. Love the hat

Wool Judging Shed

Way before it's spun

Beta sheets and disulfide bonds

Before...

...After. What you can't see in the top picture is how massive this sheep's wool was. I could've probably buried my hand in there and still not touched skin. The after sheep look sunburned, huh?

Quantum. He weighs 1.5tonnes (that's 3300lbs). He was ginormus and wasn't the largest one there. His father was bigger.

Quantum and Gwen, one of his handlers

Me and Quantum. "You wanna a picture with him?" Yeah. Can I? "Lay on him." I don't think so.

Gibbston Valley from the Corona Range Road

Gibbston Valley Wines

Sunrise at Zeestraten 1

2

3

Spider in the Banockburn Pub toilet. It's translucent for sure

Clutha River at Zeestraten

Same

From a terraced vineyard on Felton Rd. I didn't catch the name. Poplars on the right turning yellow. I think cherry trees turning red on the left. The poles in the vineyard are windmills to fight frost