February 6th, Tuesday
Biking day!
And I was worried about the biking! Man, this was the best day so far! The team and I really bonded. We had an awesome time on the bikes and it was so much easier than I thought it would be. Even going up hill was no problem. We had so much fun this afternoon riding through the woods, crossing streams, yelling a lot “Rock, right!” “Hole!” “Woman with a baby, left!” It became a joke to yell out everything we saw. We totally have the best team, ever! We all get along so well and laugh a lot together. I feel like I have 4 big brothers – it’s awesome!
The last thing we
had to do with the bikes was change a tire faster than the other teams. We
worked really well together to get the tire changed (though poor Joel had
a hard time letting the air out of the first one), but we failed in one thing.
We didn’t make sure Shariff understood where he had to ride the bike
when we were done. We just shoved him on the bike, laid the old inner-tube
around his neck and pushed him off shouting “Go, go!” Then, we
were quite shocked to see him wandering around on the bike, instead of going
straight around the flags like he should have. We needed a little better communication,
there.
But, even before the bikes, we had a great morning. Today’s theme was
conflict and we had a really effective activity – virtual
mountain climbing. There were 2 mountain climbers that came and, using
video from their actual climbs up Mt. Cook, here in N.Z., they created scenarios
for which we had to make tough decisions – actual decisions that they
had to make before. It was kind of like those old books where you make a choice
and then you turn to a certain page to see what happens. We had to, as a team
and as a tribe, make decisions and that often meant we had to hash it out
or have healthy conflict, as they say. We did really well and even on the
last decision that we all felt bad about because we split up our virtual team,
we learned from that and learned how to make decisions together better. We
ended up feeling very good about the whole experience.
During this session, we discussed our guiding principals and our goals. Guiding
principals take precedence over goals and they are safety, sticking together
as a team and having fun. Our goals are to be in the top 10 and top 5 as a
stretch goal. The exercise helped us to understand how the guiding principals
are more important to keep than the goals and I think our team really believes
that.
We’re also learning the Haka with our tribe. Each tribe has to perform
the same Haka tomorrow night and the best one gets a lot of tokens for the
tribe. It’s totally fun and I love learning about the culture.
I and Deb Berard get to be the 2 lady
leads and my teammates Tommy and Joel are the male leads. We’re learning
actions, too and we’re going to wear costumes and have face makeup like
the Maori performers. It will be totally cool! We still have work to do but
we’ll get there!
You can read the words to the Haka here.
Tommy and Joel doing their Pukanas!
Our team is always getting kudos and tokens for our enthusiasm. If that were
the thing that mattered most, we’d have the gold already! I don’t
know how I got so lucky to get such a great team and we even like to hang
out together. This morning our tribe got to do our chant for everyone. It
was totally fun and we did a great job.
We’re having lots of fun with Tara, too. Other teams have scrunched
their tuataras up into plastic to keep them dry and manageable but we really
treat her as part of the team. She’s going paddling with us tomorrow
and will likely get soaked and dirty but we don’t care. She deserves
to have as much fun as we do and we are NOT going to stuff her in a bag. She
will live open and free and be one of us. We love her! We’re often seen
holding and petting her like a pet – it’s so cute.
Tokens! We have 45 so far. We started with 26 but get one for each person
that goes to exercises in the mornings. We got 5 others, today for enthusiasm
and communication on the bikes (all the yelling I talked about). I think we’re
doing well but because winning as a tribe, not just a team is important, we
talked to a couple of other teams in the Tui tribe and we agreed to be helpful
with each other in terms of tokens and information. So, if we see a team in
need of tokens and we have some extra, we can give them some. Very strategy
oriented.
Tonight we went to dinner at a local place with just 5 other teams. It was
great having time to just sit and laugh and have a good
time – and it was a lot of time since the restaurant took about
3 hours for the whole dinner process. If we weren’t all so tired, I’m
sure we would have stayed later. We are so awesome! Paddling, tomorrow!
|
Adventure starts |
Ropes Training Eco Starts! |
Mountain Bikes |
Paddling |
Orienteering |
Race Day! |
