It is that time of year again and time to head over to Japan for a bit of competition ballooning. Just for a change I am attending Saga for the pacific championship and then Motegi for the Tochigi Championship.
It will be an interesting year for two reasons. Firstly it is the year after the World Championship was held in Motegi and secondly, for Motegi at least, it will be the organising committees fist year without Masashi running the show at all.
I am left with mixed feelings about the whole thing. Had Masashi not passed away last year I may have been tempted to have a year off and put all my focus on the 2008 Worlds in Austria. These trips to Japan are expensive in time as much as anything but they do provide the only training at this level available to me. With the effort of Masahi's team in Motegi over the years, I feel it is critical to support the event and in particular show Honda that their continued support of ballooning is appreciated.
So, the end result is that I am going, I am excited and I plan to win (as always...)
My balloon is already on it's way and with some luck will be waiting for me at Fukuoka on Monday morning. My good friend Yosh will be meeting me at the airport so we can go and clear it from Customs first thing in the morning.
In other life matters since my last post, a quick update on what has been going on...
I have been going nuts with my Ceroc dancing. Not that I am a competitive bastard but I ended up doing the Ceroc Championships a few weeks back. I entered in two events, Dance with a stranger and Girls Blindfold. It was great fun! In DWAS you have no idea about the music or who you are dancing with. Every 40 seconds or so you swap dance partners and keep on dancing. The whole idea is to freestyle your way through the songs as smoothly as you can while making the most of the music and your partner.There were two rounds of heats to get the 35+ couples down to the 6 finalists (6 guys and 6 girls that is). I made it through to the final but that was it. Still, I was very happy having never participated in a dance champs before and not really being prepared as I would have like to have been.
The girls blindfold was good fun and my dance partner Charlie and I only had a few weeks to prepare after deciding to do it. This was a little different in that you at least knew who you were dancing with and could set up some moves but you still have no idea about the music and just have to interpret it on the night. The catch is that the girl has a blindfold on so it is all about you ability to lead the girl and for the girl, her ability to follow. This is bit of a fun event and we didn't make the final but again had a hell of a lot of fun.
The next big thing is Kite Surfing. Thanks to a mate from dancing, I have been learning to Kite Surf and have just bought my first rig. Having done just about every sport with a board on my feet, I have got up to speed reasonably fast over two weekends of learning and am able to get up and going with few problems. Now I just need to finesse the kite control and practice, practice, practice. Having my own kite will help too because I won't be so worried about trashing it.So that is it for now. I will try and get some links happening for the balloon events and will probably next talk from Singapore Airport....which reminds me!
My trip to Japan is with Singapore Airlines and is via Singapore. I am not sure about the flight out of Sydney but I know the return flight will be on the new Airbus A380. That is very cool as they only just did the first ever commercial flight with the A380 today.Singapore/Sydney is the first route for this massive and new aircraft. As an aviation buff it would be a bit like getting onto a 747 within the first week of it entering service back in January 1970.
