The master and the pupil

Went out after school today for a quick walk. Quick because 1km in it started hail-stoning! We did however take our tripods and took some shots of Johnson's creek in full flow, possibly the fullest I've ever seen it. TeeJay and I joked that these were the only shots we had taken that day so the likelihood was that we would have the same blips - again!
On the way back however we saw two mad kayakers preparing to go into the Matakaitaki - it turned out to be our intrepid student Z (Zacvswild) and our resident world class kayaker Mick Hopkinson. I took a good few shots of them, this is one that shows the master and student at work :-)
It wash;t my best shot of the day, that came when we found a little waterfall that had formed as a result of all the flipping rain - but I left that for another day because this was the event of the day for me.
Mick is somewhere in the region of 65 years old (apologies if I am wrong) and here he is still imparting knowledge and love of the water to a 17 year old lad.

Here is a quote from a kayaking blog:
"Mick Hopkinson is one of the pioneers of whitewater kayaking. Hailing from Yorkshire, in the industrial North of England, he spent the 70s traveling the world looking for the fiercest, most remote whitewater he could find-an ambition that took him to Switzerland, Austria, Nepal, the Karakoram, Baltistan, and Ethiopia, to name a few. According to Canoe and Kayak magazine, the documentary he and the late Mike Jones made of their first descent of the Dudh Khosi, Canoeing Down Everest, remains the most watched paddling movie of all time. Few people on Earth have as much experience and knowledge of rough water as Mick. "

God love him, I know I do, he hails from my part of the world. In fact decades apart we taught in the same area :-)