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On Saturday I had my 40^th birthday party in the Dominion Bar in Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand.  The theme was “70’s meets Charity Shop Glam” and I must say there were some fantastic outfit efforts.

A Big thanks to all the WhereScape chaps who attended with their lovely, lucky ladies and also to Michael Whitehead who turned up as a “70’s boss” in full stay press grey business suit and tie(he managed to escape before the photo was taken).

There are actually a lot fewer wigs in the picture than you would think….can you spot them ?

Once again, Steve, Jason and Doug and new recruit Jake took on the2010 Kona Colville Classic, a 72km (45 mile) mountain bike race around the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coromandel_Peninsula).  The section of the race around the top is not accessible by road so careful riding and packing of tools was required.  On the day, we all got round the course safely in one piece and with various levels of physical discomfort!

We all beat our previous 2009 times largely due to our increased fitness, strength and in part due to the fact there was no rain this year so no mud bath.  Photos show before (pre race nervous smiles at Colville) and after (rehydrating and carbo loading in Coromandel Town)

before:

after:

According to post race banter, the 2011 race will continue to feature some WhereScapers on bikes……     

WhereScape participated on a TDWI webinar today. The intention of this webinar was to position the current leaders in a newly defined category of Data Warehouse Automation tools against each other. The inspiration for this webinar was a thread in TDWI’s group on Linked In about WhereScape. And to their credit TDWI saw value in running this webinar to open up this discussion from an independant standpoint.

Our bit in webinar was supposed to be a 5 minute presentation by Mark our VP of Sales with myself present to answer any technical questions. Unfortunately due to technical problems I ended up having to do the presentation as well. Now I have seen the presentation (in longer form) several times, but to give it with a moments notice was tough. If I was incoherent then I apologise. If you are new to WhereScape I would recommend viewing our online videos, asking for a sales demo or catching the next Webinar that we are running (5/19/09 1pm PDT), register for this webinar or any others at WhereScape Seminars.

The short answer to “can a techie present?”, based on feedback from colleagues, is a resounding “almost”. But don’t give up the day job.

One the Easter long weekend, Wayne, Steve and another WhereScape hanger on (there’s always one or two around) were in Taupo in the middle of New Zealand’s North Island and decided to go trout fishing.

Taupo is New Zealand’s largest freshwater lake which is central to numerous adventure activities and has a back drop of not one, not two but three volcanoes and has some of the best trout fishing in the world

Of course we could have trekked for hours through dense bush and had a go at fly fishing on a river in the middle of nowhere or if you are a touch lazy you can hire an expert with a boat to take you out on Lake Taupo itself.

We (of course) chartered the comfortable Stratus launch and our skipper Marty delivered the trout fishing goods with more than ten trout landed and six of those were over the legal length limit.

The tea, biscuits and boy banter were most excellent and Marty proved to be a bit of a “Gandalf of the lake”, with no place to hide for trout through his years of fishing experience. 

All trout were safely smoked and eaten.  A great morning in paradise….

A couple of years ago Yann and Steve got the WhereScape team into running.  The first half marathon we did saw seven of us hit the course.  Last year there was a real drop off - one into the marathon and one entering the half.  This year, however, has seen a rise in new sports.  Steve, Jason and Doug took on the Kona Colville Classic, a 72km (45 mile) gentle pedal in the middle of summer along some mostly paved roads with the occasional puddle.

A couple of weeks before I did a gruelling 4.6km (2.9 mile) swim from the island of Rangitoto to St Heliers beach.

The island we started from can be seen behind Jeremy, while the next photo doesn’t quite capture how good it is to be back on dry land.

The WhereScape activities continued with a weekend trip to the National Park in the middle of the North Island.   Doug, Chris, Keith, myself(Steve) and assorted other non WhereScape hangers on successfully completed the 42nd Traverse mountain bike trail on the Saturday.  Very challenging track with stunning views and 46km in length which we all managed to cover in around 5 hours with no serious injuries.

The track finished at a small village with a great local pub called the Owhango Hotel, where we took the opportunity to rehydrate ourselves.  The attractive hotel barmaid where we were staying on the Saturday night just happened to run a rafting company so we found ourselves white water rafting on the Whakapapa river for 3 hours on Sunday morning before heading back to Auckland.  Well done all for a fun weekend.