Yeah, I'm still in Wanaka. It's currently 8:30pm on Friday night and I'm back in the kitchen - I've had a challenging week, but it really has been nice to be up here while I go through it all.

Sometimes I find myself being overtaken by anxiety (this is a new thing for me), and the oddest thing is that it seems to happen really late in the night. I'll wake up and suddenly feel really vunlerable. Not in the conventional sense, I feel 'safe' in in the camping ground and everything. I think it's more of a 'what am I going to do?' kind of panic. I'm not sure if I should be concerned about it, mostly it just goes away. Probably it's just adapting to not having the usual patterns and routines in place - Funny, I've been running 4 times and every time I've run exactly the same route! And every time it takes me exactly one hour.

I have been spending quite long periods of time without talking to anyone.. but I've also had the opportunity to catch up with some really special good old friends while I've been here.

Brent Harridge (photo to come) and I basically grew up together and he now has a very impressive snowsport/urban streetwear store in Wanaka called BASE. He was travelling to Queenstown the other day to look at a few clothing ranges for winter and asked me if I wanted to tag along. As you can guess my answer was an emphatic yes! I think I might have slowed down the process for him a tad because I kept wanting to try all the clothes on! I had a ball! And the conversation there and back was 'wicked' too (did you know the crown range road is entirely sealed now?). Ohhh I finally got to meet Karen too!

And this afternoon I had the priviledge of having coffee with Jane who is one of the owners of Relishes cafe. She was my first boss (working for them was my first real job) and boy is she a good person manager. As you know, these things count with me, and I thought it was about time I let her know what a profoud impact she, and being part of the team at Relishes had on my life.

I reckon I'll be outta here in the next day or so. It's to the west next.. I'll no doubt jet up the coast in order to get to Wellington before December! Which reminds me, I must book a ferry crossing.. how does one do that?

Righto!

Chris