Good timing

Vacations!

There can never really be a BAD time for them, now, can there?

But sometimes those fun little stat holidays that show up throughout the year can really be extraordinarily timely.

Here in New Zealand (for my northern-hemisphere homies ... you outlanders currently up to your frozen giblets, covered in polar-vortex splooge) we get a lot of holiday days during our summer months. (This includes December before Xmas, and well past January 1 ... as this is our summer). I'm knee-deep in the hoopla of summer and these exciting holidays now, as we speak.

There are the regular 3 and 4-day weekends that never change (where you get a Monday, or a Monday and Friday off. And there are a few "floating" days that appear on a specific day in the month no matter what. So sometimes you have to get creative (like Enron-math creative!) in how you might be able to factor a mid-week holiday day into a nice long weekend.

This coming week, we have a national holiday called Waitangi Day. It has to do with the signing of the treaty where the English formalised the invasion and take-over of New Zealand from the native Māori. You know, just like how Canada and the USA got started. It was, essentially, a heist. Or as Frankie Boyle explains: (Click to view a :10 second video of Frankie Boyle outlining the essence of how a lot of countries get started).

Much like every holiday in Canada and the US, it's another day off work for most folks here, which also means a good excuse to go drinking. There are concerts and tributes and whatnot, but mostly, it's a day off.

LBQ is a cool, fun craft beer bar here, and this
Thursday - Waitangi Day - Panhead takes over the taps!

And, as the Good Timing Fairy would have it, on Thursday, one of the super-fun craft beer bars here – LBQ – is hosting a Tap Takeover by one of our top local brewers, Panhead! So guess where I'll be on Thursday afternoon!)

Waitangi Day falls on Thursday.

Which leaves Friday as a sitting duck for most people to take it off, too (as an "annual leave" day) ... which is one of those sneaky end-around-runs I talked about up there, for making a floating holiday day into a long weekend.

This particular time, it all adds up to a four-day weekend. Not too shabby - for the cost of one annual leave day (we get a minimum of 4 weeks of them here every year, and I'm up to 5 weeks now), we get a four-dayer.

This is ESPECIALLY timely on the "Big Fun" scale, because the annual Sevens Rugby Tournament starts here in Welly on the Friday.

I have expounded loud and long on this Sevens event before. It's a bunch of rugby teams from all over the world (Canada included!) playing this 1/2-sized, scaled-down version of full Rugby matches. The clue is in the name ... there are 7 players aside instead of 15 (a full rugby team), and the games are much shorter (7 minutes a half, for a grand total of 14 minutes**). It's an offense-fest, and a speed test.

Each day of the two-day tournament features 20+ matches. It's fast, it's furious. It's fun ... and for lots more reasons than just fast, furious rugby. It has a LOT to do with drinking, and, the wild costumes the fans wear!

** (Due to the short duration of each half of a Sevens rugby game, it is entirely possible to miss a whole game, as you leave your seat and attempt to go for a leak and a beer run in a crowded bar, or the stadium ... yep, take if from an expert. Missing a match is extremely easy to do).

Yes, the costumes ... THAT concept is mostly the rumpus! There is no rule that says you, as a fan, HAVE to wear a crazy costume. But here in Wellington, home of the New Zealand leg of this Sevens tourny, Wellington fans do. Bigtime. HUGE time. And not just individual costumes – people get together in large groups and dress everyone to a theme. There is a contest, with a good chunk of change as prizes, for best costumes in various categories.

The part of the costume thing I like are actually three parts.

(1) Hot babes – Loads of really hot women dress up in slinky, revealing costumes. No surprise there why I find that appealing. For you North Americans, think "Hallowe'en", and the sorts of costumes hot babes wear to parties. Yeah.

Now factor in that drinking for the fans is just about as fast, furious, hard and heavy as the rugby action on the field.

(2) Superheroes – there are lots of really cool and well-executed superhero costumes too. These are worn by both guys AND girls. As The Avengers, Superman and Batman (and affiliated characters) from Marvel and DC have really been popular in movies lately, I'll expect lots of these sorts of outfits. It's here, too, that women can tweak a superhero costume and make it WAY more sexy than what the costume traditionally is meant to portray.

(3) Other really wild bursts of creativity – There'll also be lots of sci-fi themed outfits, cartoon characters like The Simpsons and The Flintstones, and many other sorts of creative, interesting or fun outfit themes you can imagine.

And yes, as mentioned, there is drinking. Easily accessible, relentless and heavy ... excessive in some cases (lightweights happen, much like on New Year's Eve). But the whole tourny, from a fan perspective, is clearly an alcohol-driven bit of fun (like so many things in New Zealand are!)

The two main choices for viewing the games, and the costumed fun and hilarity, are either buying a spendy ticket to the stadium (which I've done a few times, and is excellent fun), or just front up for free at one of 5-6 bars around the Queen's Wharf area and drink there. Pretty much every costumed reveller shows up there too, throughout each day (the tourny start at Noon on Friday, and people start amasssing at these bars then ... however, many people start drinking WELL BEFORE noon. And given that the day before (Thursday) is a holiday ... yeah. It's going to start out in high gear when the first game kicks off at noon.

Bin 44 is a great little spot on Queen's Wharf, that now
features excellent craft beer. I'll be right there, on that patio.

My plan this year: front up to the bars at Queens Wharf and meet friends there. It's location-specific too, it'll be Bin 44, the relatively new Craft Beer Bar there. In previous years it's always been Chicago bar, which is a blast (and they have the huge jumbo-tron style screen for watching the games). But they only serve the bog-standard "big boy" mass produced beer. And as you well know, if you've been following my blog, when given the choice between good craft beer and that other boring sludge? It's crafty beers all the way.

So – that's just about the most perfect equation imaginable for "good timing" ... a really long weekend to stretch out the fun, with a couple of days afterwards to recover from it. Oh, I didn't mention, I'm taking the Monday off work too. You know, for ... reasons. And science! Science, because 5 days off is "> greater than" (aka: a lot more) fun than 4!

Now as evidence of how much fun goes on at this Sevens thing ... here's a montage of costume photos from past Sevens events. I snagged a bunch, but there are endless more I could have grabbed. This will give you the idea of what's in store for the casual viewer camped out at Bin 44 or any of the other bars in the Queens Wharf area:

So you get the idea – just endless blasts of creativity and hotness, in the sun, with drinks, over two days.
Oh and some great rugby matches too!

And as an added bonus, here are a whack of my own Sevens photos from years past: 2007 2008 2009 2010.

Now as also mentioned, I'll be in the middle of all this from about noon on Friday. Traditionally Canada plays either the first or second game, so it's good to be down there, with beer in hand, near the big screen, to watch and cheer on my countrymen's rugby boys as they tilt away and do their best.

Also, it's wise to have a really good lunch so as to avoid the rookie mistake of pouring a lot of beer into an empty stomach.I will of course have cameras at hand (my phone and my pocket digital) so expect a follow-up blog with loads of current photos soon after.

I may be able to manage that on the Sunday or Monday just after the big finalé on Saturday. For certain, I'll blast a few up on Facebook as the day unfolds. And you can bet there'll be many photos of absurdities ... when you mix sun, drinks and crazy/sexy costumes, you know nuttiness is going to happen.

After all ... heavy drinking, in the sun, in disguise, is the perfect SUB-equation for hilariously absurd photo opportunities! (Yeah, bitches, MORE SCIENCE!)Ah yes – I left out the other really good aspect of this week and all this fun.

The work week that kicks off tomorrow is only going to be THREE days long ... and just FOUR days next week.

Go Canada!

Oh and as per usual, be sure to tune in to Don's merry beer drinking blog over at Brew-Ha-Ha! He's been hard at it, researching heavily, and mixing it up bigtime in his quest to know more about the various beers at hand!

And a big shout-out goes to my pal, and fellow Canadian Rob Martin (and his mates!) as they embark on a two-week journey of fun and adventure, touring the South Island – they'll be arriving in Wellington (from some dairy farm up north) to catch a ferry on Waitangi Day, which is super good timing to join me at LBQ for the Panhead Tap Takeover!

Yours, in maximum fun ...