Fire Walking for the Guinness Book of Records in Wellington

The Fire Pixie team has returned safely and successfully from our New Zealand trip.  Such good times.

We spent the second week of our trip in Queenstown and the South Island, having adrenaline rushes and looking at gorgeous scenery, and then headed back to Wellington in time for a world record attempt at Fire Walking. 

The fire was Huge!

Neither of us had ever tried fire walking before - in the San Francisco area it usually comes with a weekend-long seminar and a hefty price tag - and so we jumped at the chance to do it in Wellington for a $20 donation (much of which went to charity).  

We dressed up in our flamey pants and headed out there at around 10:00 am to register. 

There were hundreds of people there all geared up to walk across the coals (though we were the only ones in costume.  Had this event been in San Francisco, *everyone* would have been in costume, I think).  The fire took a couple hours to burn down to manageable coals so we hung around and watched the local performers and basically jumped up and down a lot and got all excited.

When the coals were ready, we headed over (we were first in line, oh yeah). We bared our feet and wiggled our toes in the mud and tried not to be too nervous.

 

We sort of expected to be given some direction.. do we need to step light?  Step down hard?  Should we have wet feet?  Be in a trance?  But no.. the organizers just lined us up and said "go."

The fire was four steps across.  Darrell took it like a superhero:

As for me.. well, I walked calmly for the first two steps and then it got HOT so the last couple steps were more like a little skip and hop and then WHOOSH I plunged my feet into the tub of water they had waiting at the other end.

So yes.  It was hot!  They were real coals.  It was exciting.  And yes, we got burned - Darrell got a bit of a blister on his toe and Andrea, who was walking with us, got a couple blisters on one of her feet.  I seemed to get off easy with just a reddish patch on the bottom of my left arch.  We all headed across the street and put our feet in Wellington Harbor immediately afterwards, which felt amazing.

And it turns out we DID make the Guinness Book of Records - for the most consecutive fire walkers.  We also made the Wellington local paper: We're famous now!

New Zealand Fire & Aerial Show Photos

Some photos and video from our shows here in New Zealand!

Fire Show Photos

This one is my favorite:

...and a (dark-ish) video of my aerial performance!  Enjoy!

Fire Pixie in New Zealand

I'm in New Zealand!  So far it's been awesome.

We had a mostly uneventful flight in spite of some Southwest screwups (which the subsequently fixed with no harm done).  I discovered that Ambien on the plane is just about the best thing EVAR and I'm never flying a long long way without it, ever again.  :) 

We're staying with my friend Josh just outside Wellington.  He's got an awesome crazy industrial warehouse space converted into ManCave(tm) and we've got a little Pixie Lair set up in one corner.  This means I've got a kitchen and unlimited internet access, which is awesome.  He's also got an aerial rig point, 3 Tesla coils of varying sizes, a theremin, a vastly overpowered hand-built electric go-cart, and an incredible vast array of geek paraphernalia.  (Yesterday he spent the afternoon making his own screws)

Josh is Mr. Google New Zealand, and used to be our Fire Safety guy when he lived in the bay area.  Incredibly interesting people keep dropping by.  He's friends with what he assures me is most of the circus community here in Wellington, and now we're friends with them too and planning a day of fun and circus training tomorrow, followed by a fire jam on Tuesday night.  Yay, Circus People!!

Last night Josh had a party at which we performed.  I did my newest tissu piece, which went off without a hitch despite the alarming proximity of a built-in bookcase with very pointy corners and the fact that I was on an unfamiliar and VERY stretchy tissu.  Evidently that's just how they are, down here.  Like, you reach up as high as you can and take your first climb, and you find you are still standing on the ground.  I had to do a few modifications to some of the moves I was doing (on a stretchy tissu you can't just "grab higher" on the pole because as soon as you let go it rockets upwards and you reach but then end up grabbing *lower*) but with a little practice, it worked out just fine. 

Andrea (the tissu artist whose tissu I was using) did a performance next which was gorgeous, and then we did our fire show and it was really well-received.  The rest of the night was meeting all Josh's fascinating and highly geeky friends.  It was a perfect mix of wacky circus people and geeky tech people, which really works better than you'd think.  :)

We've got plans to hang around Wellington this week and then visit the south island next week, where we will take plane rides and go canyoning and possibly bungee jump and ride the luge and have all kinds of lovely adventures. 

YAY new Zealand!