Rippon! W00t!

The Rippon contingent this year consisted of Signor John Ong, the lovely Mademoiselle Hannah August, Monsieur E. Le Roy Higbee and moi. We travelled in the Merc up the Pig Route imagining what the Rippon acts that we were missing were like, and playing Rippon-related music loud on the car stereo.

By the time we got there, it was early afternoon and we had missed Kora, PBass Expressway, and a couple others. So to show our remorse we did what everyone else was doing and lay in the sun getting boozed on cheap Rippon wine. Ah! Glorious!

And that was basically how the rest of our day went, in the sun. With booze. Lazily eating cheese and salami. Watching this complete LOCO guy devour a whole chicken carcass with his hands and teeth. Until shapeshifter came on about 6, and they shook our little booties off with a *fantastic* set. Then it was Shihad, and let's face it, I'm not a fan. And he swore 34 times. But they had a good lighting technician. After that "rock out", smooth and beautiful Fat Freddy's Drop came on stage and played for a restrained 1hr45mins, nice and mellow and so not suitablly placed in the schedual - between two rock acts (The Mint Chicks played last).

Then it was time to leave and head to the afterparty. Which was a great idea in theory, apart from we had no sober drivers, and a car full of stuff, and no patience to wait for buses. So we decided we'd have a couple minutes of shut-eye in the carpark.
Yeah.
At 6.30 am, when we finally woke up, cold and in pain from sleeping in a car, I realised that yet again I had missed the Upbeats, and about 2/3 of the afterparty gig. We still, a little belatedly, made it to see the Irie Eyes in beautiful morning lit Cadrona Valley, but after a couple of hours of bopping around in the morning chill with all the hardcore BZPers, we decided we needed pies and juice.

And boy is there nothing quite like a Dough Bin chicken curry pie down by Wanaka lake after a hard night.

After we fulfilled our pie fantasies we decdied to head back to Dunedin, stopping on the way at the Wanaka shooting range to try our luck at some hole-in-ones, and to see how much clay pigeon shooting cost. (A lot apparently).
Next stop was Bannockburn, a small place outside of Cromwell, that embodies everything that is good about Central Otago.
Hannah's family has an awesome crib there with a wrap-around porch, a cute nephew and several KiwiTubs (her dad is the genius behind these). We had a nice long soak in the sun looking at beautiful central hills and trees, and wishing we could all just move there.
We then tried the fare down in Cromwell village, choosing an Italian place that we pinned high hopes on... Cromwell Italian is as good as it sounds FYI (LOL).

Back on the road Hannah and I exhaustedly slumped over each other in the back seat, while John and Elliot discussed the place of nuclear power in New Zealand. All the way back to Dunedin.

Pie Tally: 5(ish)
Sunburn: 25% (John has a 'beater' mark)
Escargot: None, but they were selling for $2 each/