Highlights of 2014

To start this blog going, a few highlights from 2014 before we get into the 2015 adventures:

2014 started with New Year celebrations at Makaroa with Myriam, Ron, Erik, Leon & Tina. Then mountain biking with Jon and Row around Queenstown. Four days of biking the 160km of the Otago Rail trail with Laura, Paul, Riley, Tara, Granny B, Kev, Clare & Matt was experienced in widely varying weather from blistering heat, to torrential rain and the dreaded headwinds. 4 weeks in the South Island was finished off with a day rafting the Clarence River with Paul as our guide.

At the end of summer, Alan and Julia were part of the Theta team at the CureKids great adventure race. A tough race eventually saw us come in 7th place after an early navigation error put us at 23rd ( of 25 teams). But best of all Theta raised over $14,000 for this excellent cause.

At Easter we were off to our first National Orienteering Champs north of Wellington, here Ryan came home with medals for a 2nd and 3rd. The rest of the week was cruising around Hawkes Bay in a campervan, tramping for a night at sunrise hut in the Ruahine ranges and mountain biking at Eskdale and Taupo.

Winter holidays we were back in the South Island with the Barrett's looking for snow. The White stuff was pretty slim on the ground at Mt Hutt but we managed a day up on the mountain before heading off to Hanmer Springs for mountain biking and hot pools instead. Alan and Paul did get to experience some snow on a very cold mountain biking ride while the more sensible members of the family stayed inside playing games.

One fine winter weekend we tried our first winter skiing and camping trip. Camping at the DOC site below Mt Ruapehu was freezing in the mornings but cosy overnight in our warm sleeping bags. Well worth it for the amazing days of skiing, our first time of skiing all over the mountain with both Ryan and Kyla. Skiing off the top of the far west t-bar at the end of the day was a moment to be savoured.

Orienteering became a big focus this year with the Nationals at Easter, Auckland champs late in the year and Oceania champs in January as well as many of the local Auckland races in between. Ryan is the star orienteer of the family regularly getting podium places while the rest of us make up the numbers and count the number of places above last. As usual we were also at many other rogaines, adventure races and MTB orienteering events. A 12hr event at Whangamata resulted in a 1:30am finish a mere 14hrs after starting and over an hour after our biking lights had run out of batteries. The kids are currently leaving these long races to mum and dad but are happy to join us on shorter races with Ryan and dad completing 6hr Great Forest Rogaine in Rotorua and all four of us at the 6-hour P6 adventure race.

The year finished with Ryan graduation from Lone Kauri School to head to intermediate school. A week after receiving an award from ICAS for the top Science score in NZ we were at the school prizegiving where he had several call-ups to collect trophies then topped it off with being awarded the Dux for 2014. A fantastic end to a fantastic year.