360

The only time I used the metric system in my life was with Ski Jumping pertaining to weight, height and distance. Down here all I know is to never go over 100 kilometers and hour or face a serious ticket and I've all but forgotten the conversion to Celsius so I'll just got with cold for now. It snowed somewhere in the vicinity of a foot last night, maybe a bit more in places. In Utah that amount is shrugged at but here it is rejoiced and also feared. Everyone has snow chains no matter what pedigree of vehicle they are driving. My arrogance having driven Subaru's for the majority of the last nine years led me to believe I didn't need to put mine on and, Wow, did I feel like an idiot when I started sliding down this "S" shaped turn near where I'm staying. The typical thoughts running through my head, "don't brake", "power through" and "please, don't let me fuck this up" but the wheels still went opposite of what I was guiding the steering wheel to do. Talk about an akward experience sliding by groups of people photographing one crash as another seems to be occurring. Hyenas and paparazzi would look juvenile compared to this carnage starved group. I keep fighting and giving it gas but to no avail and helplessly keep spinning. A group of three cars crunched together are all but in my path, and their drivers already having tasted defeat are watching with the lot of photographers. Apparently this is an event after a big snowfall in Queenstown and I obviously didn't get the message. I give up and anticipate the sound of screeching metal
but it never happens. I spin all the way around, correct, and drive out of the debacle, unscathed. All I can manage to do is throw a thumbs up to a passing driver who witnessed the event and laugh. The snow is not fluffy, dry and wondrous here so I put the chains on and will keep them on.

Off to Wanaka tomorrow for a goodbye to Lance and Annabelle then the trip north via car to Auckland commences. Hopefully the weather subsides as expected tomorrow morning.