Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

I got here to New Zealand a week a go to ride with the ACG team. It’s been really nice. It was guite stormy for the first days but now bluebird for the past three days.
It was crazy long flight to come here though, exactly 40 hours of travelling and 29 of them in the plane. Helsinki-London-Bangkok-Sydney-Christchurch-Queenstown. Longest travelling for me ever.
We have a nice house here close to Wanaka town for the team and two rental cars to get up to the mountains and to the Snowpark. They do not have prober heating on these houses and it has been really cold days inside and outside.
It is winter here now when we still have summer in Europe. Otherwise it doesn´t feel any different to be on the otherside of the globe. It is pretty fun to think that my home is otherway round on the otherside. What an amazing place this globe is. There are penguins here about three hours drive away from Wanaka. I really want to go see those when we’ll have a day off from riding.
Riding has been really fun again after summer. They have really good park here with quarterpipe, pipe, kickers and a rail line. All in good shape but icy. And not much snow out from the park for the freeriders. Liftlines are really long on mid days which is not that cool so it is better to ride on early mornings and late afternoons.
Mati bought a book about the old Maori culture that has been really big here but we did not see any Maoris here yet which is sad. The British have really taken over this country back in the days. Kiwis are nice though. Now I even know it is not because of the fruit why people in New Zealand are called Kiwis. Kiwi is a national bird and they do not have wings if I can trust my colleagues from Finland.
One more week to go and then back to northern side of the globe. Here are some pics from the trip so far. Take it easy, Jukka