Then I somehow managed to agree to haul 3 kids at once up a slope.
Found a mountain gnome...
Who treated us to a song and dance routine...
Before posing for photographs.
Then we went to Lake Taupo and messed about in a swimming pool as warm as a bath. Even the outside bit! In the middle of winter! Sliding down a snowy mountain before jumping into a pool warmed by the molten guts of the Earth is such a Kiwi thing to do.
The Flumes
There were waterslides at the pool. Actually I think they are called flumes. They are long curly tubes just big enough for screaming kids to slide down, or perhaps one large bloke who should know better.
I used to enjoy flumes. If you hold your body rigid, and try to hold everything off the surface of the tube except for your shoulder blades and heels, you can achieve very high speeds down them. I know this, because when I was younger I used to enjoy every opportunity I could to make the ride as fast as possible.
There were two flumes at this pool. With the confidence of a seasoned veteran, I chose the 'wild' one over the 'mild' one. Anyone with a Y chromosome will understand why.
On entering the flume, I was hit by a wave of familiarity and nostalgia. It must have been at least eighteen years since I last rode one, yet I knew exactly where I was. My body instinctively arched onto heels and shoulder blades, and I launched myself without trepidation into the, frankly, black hole. I had been here so many times before in so many swimming pools.
But that was when there was less of me, when gravity was something that could be negotiated with as a kind of active partner in fun. Either I am much heavier now, or Newton's laws of physics are more rigorously applied in this part of the world. I find either possibility hard to come to terms with.
Nevertheless, I thundered down that tube like a firework in a drainpipe. At one point the only thing in contact with the surface was my face. Despite what looks might suggest, it was not made for absorbing impact.
There is a pool of still water at the foot of such rides. It is designed as a sort of landing /disembarkation area for the flume riders. My landing managed to displace most of its contents in a monstrous wave, much to the concern of some small children standing by. I cared not. My arm was in agony, having been forcefully compressed against the side of the tube by my bodily inertia. Thank you twice, Mr Newton.
And so, you can imagine my reticence when my son, just turned three, points to the flumes with unquenchable enthusiasm and says, 'Slide Daddy? Slide? Ta!'
Knowing the right balance of risk to expose your children to is no easy thing. Too much, and they will hurt themselves and grow up afraid. Too little, and they will miss out on important opportunities and still grow up afraid. Isaac takes a lot in his stride. We are always wondering whether to encourage it or temper it.
Rightly or wrongly, I found myself at the top of the flume tower (after 3 flights of stairs) holding hands with a three year old boy. After the geothermal warmth of the pool, the wait in the short queue was freezing, and by the time we had got to the front we were both shivering. As mentioned before, the rides were dark - great holes into nothingness. As if to compensate for the lack of visibility, the noise is also considerable; every scream and shriek from the last two riders echos up the full length of the flume, amplified and distorted along the way. It reminded me of the kind of sound effects that might get played to the queue waiting to board a haunted house ride at a theme park.
To be honest I half expected Isaac to be in tears within seconds. I planned to ride the 'mild' slide with him on my lap (don't be fooled - the heel/shoulder blade technique nearly killed me on that one too), trying my best to slow things down. He would be sufficiently put off from his harrowing experience for us to retire to the safer areas of the pools and chill out with the more age appropriate distractions, without feeling like we've deprived him. I placed him between the gushing jets of water that fed the ride, hoping he wouldn't get swept away in the time it took for me to clamber in behind him.
As it turned out, he was hysterical on the way down, but not through fear. When we hit the landing pool at the bottom, his little body smashed into the water and he emerged dazed and spluttering. Before he even managed to stand and re-focus, he was pointing to the stairs. 'Again? Again?'
I have never heard him laugh so hard and for so long. As I write this, my throat is hoarse because we soon discovered it was even more fun to yell at the top of our voices all the way down. Before we left the pool we had riden the flume no less than 19 times. Such was the enjoyment that, even after a day on the ski slopes, a session in the pool and everything in between, his eager legs carried him up nearly sixty flights of stairs.
Needless to say, we will be doing that again.
