In this installment of the increasingly degenerate tales of Nexus’ travels, Nexus decided to visit some snow as a counterpoint to hopefully going to the beach once Spring has sprung. The nearest and most convenient snow was Snow Planet in Auckland, who offer student deals and are open at night, which suits Nexus’ schedule rather nicely. Nexus organized a team and set a time and date upon which to embark.

At about 6pm, an hour after Nexus agreed to depart, Nexus departed for Auckland, stopping for delicious beverages and petrol on the way out of Hamilton. Due to engaging road-trip conversation and a particularly riveting game of ‘I spy’ that nobody won (it was a Warrant of Fitness sticker), the Nexus-mobile threaded its way out the shit end of Hamilton, arriving eventually in Gordonton before realizing that it was meant to be heading Tirau-wise. This turn of events fortunately enabled Nexus to bypass Ngaruwahia. Two of Nexus were reasonably seasoned snow-troopers, while other Nexus had only skied once before, but had thoroughly enjoyed the experience of tumbling down the slopes of Cardrona on the hard course as well as leaving a picturesque trail of blood on the soft powder of the scenic route. Other Nexus preferred the idea of skiing to snowboarding, because you get to look like a henchman from a James Bond movie, but conceded the point that snowboarding makes you look more hip.

The conversation inevitably turned aside, meandering through literature, music and other enlightened topics worth of a sortie of journalists before inevitably arriving at dorm-room staple ‘Would you rather X or Y?’, where X and Y are two evils, the lesser of which is to be determined by the interviewee. This culminated in a real stumper: ‘Would you rather fuck Agony Art or be fucked by Agony Art?’ Silence all around (all present were male). Varying lines of reasoning slowly emerged; the first of which was that if you fucked Art then you’d have to spring a stiffy first (not the snowboarding maneuver) and that would imply that you are gay. Aside from the interesting workings of a mind that erects this façade of homophobia, it was elucidated that the question precludes any context, and simply presents the condition that you have an unquenchable and unrelated boner. We later presented this conundrum to Sophie who works at the dairy on campus, who instantly arrived at the same conclusion that we did; “Art would dominate the shit out of you.” He would. Not only that, but he’d lord it over you forever. That said he’d also lord it over you if you fucked him in the ass too. A tough call. For the sake of survey, please send your thoughts to features@nexusmag.co.nz or text them in. Another deciding issue is comfort. Quote of the night: “You’d be able to feel the shadow of Arts cock in your ass long after it was gone. Like, when you were asleep and shit.”

Nexus arrived at Snow Planet an hour later in silence. Snow Planet is a huge building packed full of snow on a big slope, with some jumps and stuff. The Nexites who needed gear rented some (at decent-ish prices) and frolicked into the icy yonder. Nexus who hadn’t snowboarded got taught the basics by Nexus who snowboard the best, and found that it was reasonably straightforward to pick up. This was immeasurably helped by the fact the student and teacher had a through grounding in physics, so ideas regarding the board’s interaction with the surface were communicated well. Nexus then went its separate ways (all of which were ‘up’) and got on with the snow boogying. By and large the hardest part about snowboarding is riding those stupid pole-things up the mountain. It took Nexus who hadn’t snowboarded like 8 times before it was able to actually get to the top of the slope without wiping out. Stupid poles. If you haven’t snowboarded before, it’s pretty cool. Obviously with any physical activity it takes a little while to get to grips with the relationship between what you tell your body to do and what ends up happening, but it seemed that once this is learned, fine-tuning the control is very intuitive. An easy mistake to make is to over-estimate your rate of turning. When the board is pointing off to the side it’s easy to get the impression that you are travelling rapidly off towards the wall or whatever, but due the relative lack of friction between your control surface and the snow that’s not really the case. This led mostly to Nexus rookie making rapid descents in a straight line, trying to focus on balance. It seems this is not the best way to start, and in a subsequence snowboarding escape Nexus rookie will focus on doing the whole picturesque meandering routine which has the added benefit of keeping your speed down.

As for the third Nexus who had also boarded before, he found the entire experience quite agreeable. Rad jumps and sick boardslides were performed, and much pride was held, until Third Nexus ran into a friend from Kerikeri who Third Nexus knew when he was a toddler (the friend, not Nexus.) Turns out Keri-tot was now a Sick Boarder of the 33rd degree, and he wasted no time in driving Nexus into an abyss of skill-less shame by a display of boarding that would have done a seasoned pro credit. By the time he spun his third 540 off the big jump, Nexus was feeling decidedly like comfort food.

However, the journey home was filled with sadness, as Snow Planet closed at 10pm, Nexus had a wet ass, and also this was around the time that both Wendys and Dunkin Donuts closed. The gap in our souls an stomachs was filled when it was discovered that of the 5 cassette tapes in the glovebox, one was the cassingle (remember those?) of Shaggys ‘Boombastic’, replete with a half dozen early 90’s house and dub remixes. Also a clerk at the petrol station mistakenly gave us $5 worth of free petrol. Score! Next week; Nexus Goes To: The Aotearoa Student Press Association awards!