Day One, words Adam Yates Kia ora aotearoa. The land of the long white cloud and some mega sweet hills from 30,000 ft above. Where be all the kuzzi rippers? They'll be found in all due time. With hills this good, there's sure to be some talent lurking, ready to take it to their Tasman brother, the ozzi! Three of the Hopkin Team and the "token pom" flew into Wellington today. Myself, Jacko, Gabe and Josh were to be the first of the crew to sample the goods. After getting the van organised we  hit the road to get to the house. After driving through peak hour traffic, 20 kms in nearly an hour we we got a good feel for the city. Its a real nice setup. Down by the water with surrounding canyons and plenty of terrain ducking in and out. Another screw around was finding the house. Up a crazy lil' alley on top of a sweet assed hill in Ngaio Gorge will be home for the next week. Hell dawg!! Jacko done well here. An old home stay of 100 yrs old and there was some character I tells ya. The outside shed was stained in the blood from the old abattoir! hectic. The first of many hills skated in NZ was the Gorge. Such a rad way to start the trip. Mellow but fast. Nice running curves and butter pavement. Not to long, just hell fun. Massive stoke! Gabe, Jacko and myself hit it for a couple hours doin shuttle runs in the van. Real fresh conditions about, 10 degrees and blowin. When I say blown I reckon in the ball park of 30knts. Dry eyes and tears. A midnight pickup for the rest of the team Lea, Luca, Kam, Kelly and Benbro. The team will be assembled and New Zealand to be Shredded. Yatesy continues - Day Two Mondo sleep action from the team and a hell cook up kuzzi styles by the Gabwagh and we were ready to sample our local run on the way to sessions out at Mount Wellington. Such a great way to start the day. I truly miss waking up, walking out my front door and stepping on the board and rollin' down hill. Nothin'' beats the feelin' of the freedom! Mount Wellington. Well, what a freeride hill. Similar to so many other places I've been round the world ( Hout Bay, Llandudno, BP's). So many features. Driveways, banks, early grabs if that's your thing. Whatever! Its all FUN. The view from the top was beautiful. Take that shit in and hit it up. Butter pavement in sections, space pavement in others. Tight hairpins and big banked sweepers is just too much to pass up. We all had fun. Even Lea robbo took to it like a kiwi to a tui and was hell stoked. Again, lucks been with us on the 5-0 front. Ur always gonna get some lame resident hate on us and so be it the local kuzzi from the 5-0 came see what was up. His reaction went a lil like this." Oh bru, what do u call this owe? oooo Downhill? Yeah I used to skateboard! Sweet as kuzzis. u bro's look to have all ur gear and i see u know what ur doin so I'm just doin' my job owe and checkin on u guys. Chur kuzzis, sk8 safe, have fun!!" Then left without a worry given us the hell devil horns suggesting he was a player. yeah man!! Benbro was the last of the team to rock up. Picked him up and swapped out the tin of sardine excuse for a van they gave us first, with the IMAX. an option that needed to be takin even though we all packed light. Jacko: We packed the van with BenBro and his gear and it was pack to the pad, back up the rad hill watching Benny's eyes widen whilst looking at the terrain. Very chill arvo farting around getting done what needed to be done and tee-ing up the locals to come meet up for some shredding. In the midst of the chilling we realised that Yate's lid was still left in the van we swapped, so that meant mondo chilling local style while the van was in use going to pick up The Dog's lost lid. However that was not about to stop a solid group of skaters sitting on top of a hill with nothing to do. A car load of locals showed up and we lurked out hard getting tech with the boards, then the lids were on and cameras out, full session time on the hill in the front yard. We got a mondo amounts of runs in with a crew of about 12 riders, taking turns hitchhiking back up and getting rides in the only available car. The wind had swung around and was pushing a solid tailwind, hurling the group down in a tight pack through fast sweeping turns mobbing about 70-80km/h. Luca and I played camera man and ripped the hill with the radness-capture-device getting sick footy. After many many runs of course residents and local traffic were sure to notice a bunch of board riders mobbing down the hill, and as it would come the 5-0 showed up again. Luca and I were doing a run and at the bottom I noticed the blue and red flashing and jammed down the foot. They were already occupied with some other skaters at the bottom but we were already making haste towards the nearest bushes hiding away from potential fines. Ozzie experiences with cops can be a pain in the ass, and we live by the rule: If they can catch you, they can fine you. But it did not take long lurking in the bushes watching it all go down that we realized that everything was sweet, he was there just having a chat. I was then told by Ash that skateboarding down the road was actually LEGAL. That's right, you can mob hills here, you are the same class as a bike. as long as you wear your lid and don't break the speed limit, your good to go. Copper's only concern was the phone calls, which he then told us that he would call them back and let them know we were all here training for a competition this weekend and everything was sweet… I couldn't believe it, but it was true. The weather has started to settle in and raindrops sprinkled down which marked the end of the session, got a ride back up to the top with copper-cuzzie and dinner was on. what a day. frickin' stoked