The Ostrom Family Adventures

Last weekend was an awesome weekend in Rotorua again! This little town was started in the late 1800’s as a touristy spa town and has quickly turned into one of the adventure capitals of the world.

Lake Rotorua and Mokoia Island in the middle from somewhere up Mt. Ngongotaha in the Skyline adventure grounds.

I am not sure if it has come across fully in my posts so far, but Leif has gotten really REALLY interested in mountain biking in the last 6 – 12 months! Mason and I have both done a lot of mountain biking in the past (before Leif was born) but haven’t really biked a ton together until this year. Frankly, after a couple of the surgeries I have had to have for Crohn’s I wasn’t certain I would ever be able to bike again. I thank God, surgeons and hyperbaric therapy that I am out there biking with my fella’s and loving it.

Leif is particularly interested in slopestyle biking where the best of the best are doing insane kamakaze tricks over massively high jumps and gaps.

We were able to meet some of Leif’s heros from watching youtube videos of tricks and prior crankwork competitions.

We watched some downhill racing as well.

Then, just down the road in Velocity Valley, Mason booked Leif a surprise session to try out jumping bikes into a giant airbag. Turns out they were there while Brenden Larsen – a new member of the NZ BMX national team was practicing!! What!!?! It was awesome! He was so sick!! (Aka Good 😉 and crazy nice and encouraging to boot!

Unfortunately, I missed getting a good video of Leif jumping and doing a no-hander. He’s still practicing on the lowest jump, but went to move onto the 2nd biggest jump and ate it hard breaking his right hand. He was pretty stoic about it though and we went back to Crankworks for the rest of that evening, visited the medic tent – got their card to work with them in the future – and got him taped up enough to make it through the next day until we could get back to Hamilton and my urgent care clinic here took excellent care of him.

Thus, we are happy to announce that Leif has officially been to NZ. :). He’s disappointed at having a wounded wing and not being able to mountain bike for a month or so, but is otherwise alright.

Overall, we’re doing well, feeling a bit of coolness come to the mornings and evenings as we enter fall and seeing so much fruit in season. Feijoa are nearing passionfruit and papaya as some of my favorite and we have had our first red kiwi fruit! It was the best kiwi fruit we’ve ever had. Till next time friends and fam.