I stopped in at a travel agent on the weekend to look at flights home for Christmas. I’m just about to call and confirm them, and pay for them tonight on my way home from work. The plan is to head to Edmonton on December 19th, go back to Vancouver on the 30th and return to New Zealand on January 2nd, landing on the 4th. This gives me 2 weeks in Canada and New Years Eve in Vancouver. I can still change around my internal flights, but the international flights are quite rigid. I’d hate to have to shift my Air New Zealand flight and lose the benefits¹.

I’ve briefly spoken to family about this trip, but knowledge of it has yet to be widely circulated. It is the first time I’ll be home for Christmas since moving to New Zealand, so I’ll understand the shock that this decision may bring, but I hope to catch up with people as time allows. Let me know what plans are afoot and I’ll do my best to make myself available.

¹ I’m not flying through the US. At all. Not one bit. You can’t underestimate the exhilaration that this knowledge brings. No US customs, no US stamp, no US crap at all.

Road trips are great. Pack some friends into some cars and head out. It almost doesn’t matter where you go, just go have fun. Since Leanne’s last weekend in New Zealand coincided with the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, I took an extra day off work and we packed the car. There is a lot of the country that I’ve never been through, so it was a new experience for both of us, heading through the Rimutaka range towards a farm near Dannevirke. After a couple days on the farm, we paused through Napier and stopped at Taupo for the night. The last day was almost all driving: up to Rotorua and then back down towards Wellington, stopping only for food and fuel.

The weather was a bit hit and miss, but the shelter of the hills at the farm kept us from feeling the worst of it. Cold, sure, but not bitter. In most cases, if you were in the sun, it was fine. Shorts and sandals weather, and good for photos.

Getting back is the hardest part, as expected. The brain shuts off and there’s nothing in the fridge. Coming back is really a withdrawl procedure, not to mention sorting through pictures and getting through the distractions before the recovery procedure. I’m sure I’ll be back at it by the weekend…

The series of flights to get home has made me entirely rethink my desire to take part in air travel. Sure, it’s better for the environment, but it’s definitely better for my sanity.

It started with a simple delay. While on the airstrip in Wellington, the pilot made an announcement about a flock of seagulls persistently occupying the runway. It wasn’t long before we were off and away. However, it did leave me running between the domestic and international terminals in Auckland to get to my next flight. Once boarded, we were off to San Francisco.

I’d been thrilled about not flying through Los Angeles for this flight. I hate American security policy – it’s demeaning and unnecessary – and LAX stands for most of what I hate. Going through SFO was going to be a dream in comparison. It’s almost surprising just how wrong I can be. SFO is a horrible airport. It’s a horribly boring airport. The only thing of interest that I found over the course of my scheduled 5 hour layover was an aviation museum, but it was closed for a private function. By the time that it was announced that we were delayed by another 1.5 hours, I was looking for a rafter to hang myself from.

As it turned out, Air Canada had a mechanical problem with our scheduled plane and we had to wait for another flight to come in before we could fly out. Luckily, I was scheduled for a 2.5 hour stop in Vancouver before my unconnected connection to Edmonton. I’d be there an hour before the flight was to leave. We seemed to wait on the airstrip for a long time, however. The pilot announced that this was a short delay while they were checking numbers; we’d be pulled to the runway momentarily. A half hour of moments later, we were finally in motion. By the time we landed, I had half an hour to get through customs, get my luggage and get transferred to my flight to Edmonton. Salting the wound, we had a last minute gate change – 10 minutes stolen. To make matters worse, I managed to leave my borrowed laptop on the plane and had to return for it. It didn’t matter in the end, however. My suitcase didn’t come through until 5 minutes before my flight was leaving. I hit the transfer desk as the flight was leaving. It was never going to happen. I was directed up to ticketing to see what they could do for me.

“Welcome to Air Canada ticketing. I will be your personal assailant. How may I frustrate you tonight?”

It was 11pm, the last flight to Edmonton had already left and I had very few options available. The ticketing agent proceeded to tell me that because I was transferring from Air New Zealand, operated by Air Canada, and missed an Air Canada flight, they had no obligation to me as a passenger. I was brushed off and pissed off. I booked a nearby hotel for the night and fumed over my options for the next day. Thankfully, I’d picked up travel insurance to cover the borrowed laptop. I’ll get back the cost of the hotel. The next morning, I’d see about flights.

When I got back to the ticketing desk, the evil robot had been replaced with several humans, one of which was willing to put me on the next flight out to Edmonton. “No need to add insult to injury.” I arrived in Edmonton just after noon yesterday, nearly 12 hours late. I’m still trying to decide whether I should write a letter of complaint to Air Canada over the issue. It worked out in the end, but there should be some sort of record of my disapproval.

My return flight will hopefully be better. I’ve got a longer delay between the Air Canada flight and the Operated By Air Canada flight, so it should be less likely to have that sort of problem. I’ve got another 4 hour layover in Suicide SFO, but I’ll have a bit of shopping to do – not 4 hours worth, but maybe I can fake breaking a leg and humour myself at the expense of the airport, thinking that I might sue them for something.

I don’t remember hating flying this much. I don’t remember so many delays, so much hassle and annoyance. Is this the future of air travel? I think it’s time to rethink my travel plans. I don’t think this is worth it.

In light of the medical stuff going on at home, I’m taking 3 weeks to spend with family. I leave Wellington tomorrow afternoon and return on the morning of April 11th. I’ll have my phone and at least intermittent internet connectivity, so I won’t be entirely out of contact. Understand that this is not a social trip, though. It will be time to spend with family.

I flew up to Auckland this past weekend with a friend of mine to see the Snow Patrol concert. Since it was a Thursday, we planned to take two days off work and spend the weekend. Being the peak of summer, there was a lot going on to choose from. For those who know me, it’s a surprise that I ended up at the beer festival.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to visit everyone I wanted to see, or spend as much time with them as I’d like, but that’s the nature of weekend travels. There’s never enough time.

According to this snippet, Air New Zealand may be adding a direct route from NZ to Vancouver, bypassing the usual stops in Honolulu, Los Angeles or San Francisco. I can’t imagine better news; I’ve been hoping to find a flight path home without being subjected to the crappiness of American policies on in-transit passengers.

I received a card from my dad yesterday, in response to the letter I sent a few weeks back. In the card, he placed several bank notes, all in pristine condition, from various countries. I’ve never been a collector of things, but I now find myself with a collection. I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. I should take care of them and put them into a photo wallet of some sort, but after that, is there anything to be done? The idea that I had was to use it as a travel guide – a list of places to go:

• Haiti
• New Zealand
• Columbia
• Paraguay
• Guatemala
• Argentina
• Canada
• Scotland
• Some country with Cyrillic script
• Chile

I’ve obviously already been to Canada and New Zealand, which means that I’m off to a decent start. Now it’s just a matter of keeping it all going.

I was picked up for work this morning just before 6am. Luckily, I’m normally awake at that time, and it wasn’t too much of a shock. We were on our way out of Wellington nearly immediately. A shade under 6 hours later, we reached our destination: an office of a forestry company that we’re doing some work with. The plan: data collection at a logging site. We avoided a few pitfalls, and got what we wanted. It’s nearly 11pm, and I just arrived home.

The ratio of travel to useful work is pretty horrendous: 12 hours to 1.5 hours. With some luck, we’ll get results that are coherent. I really want this trip to not have been a waste. Of course, it was intensely cool to see a 4-ton harvester running. It is surprising how delicate one can be with a 25m tree.

Before leaving for the 4-day trip, we’d decided to take two nights in Taupo and one night in Rotorua before spending the last day driving back to Wellington. We had a short list of things that we wanted to do, but with the dire weather forecasts, it seemed as if the outdoor activities were going to have to wait for another trip. In the end, the weather turned out to be mostly fine up until the drive back down. It may have slowed down traffic, but it didn’t stop us from doing anything in particular.

The hostels were booked before we left, based on recommendations from a travel guide. With two nights at Burkes Backpackers and one night at Funky Green Voyager, we were not disappointed at all. The closest thing to a criticism we could come up with was the smell of sulphur around Voyager, but it’s Rotorua, and that smell is nearly everywhere.

We were a little more relaxed about booking activities. With the uncertain weather, we didn’t want to be stuck with a bad choice. The only thing we booked in advance was the Maori cultural show [1]. For everything else, we relied largely on information picked up from the tourist information centres. It’s amazingly clear to see that New Zealand’s tourism industry is in good hands.

Having only one day in Rotorua was quite limiting. There were a lot of things that we could choose from to do, but only time for one. We went to Rainbow Springs to check out the wildlife, including a live kiwi.

The drive back was largely uneventful. It took a hellishly long time, but cost us little more than time. We were back in Wellington around 5pm, back to regular lives and crappy spring weather, looking forward to the next chance to take a long weekend away. It’s almost funny that it’s taken me over 4 years to get around to doing this stuff.

¹ It turned out to be a hugely popular show, and all 4 buses that traveled to the village were fully booked.

Highlights

• There’s a kick-ass playground in Levin. I never would have guessed how many times I could end up on my ass in a single go.
• Gravity Canyon—We could have done more thrilling stuff there, but I got some amazing pictures from a chair ride that went down 80m from the bridge to the canyon floor.
• The walk from the edge of Taupo out to Huka Falls. There is a warm spring just at the start of the trail that seems to be very popular with people with a bit of time to soak in the setting sun.
• For a longer soak, the Taupo Hot Springs leaves little to be desired.
• There is a strip of geothermal parks along the way from Taupo to Rotorua. Orakei Korako stood out above the others that we visited.

I’m back at work after a wonderful 4-day weekend trip into the central plateau of the north island. The weather held out much longer than the forecasts had warned. In fact, compared to what we’re getting hammered with today, the whole trip was spectacular. There were a few traffic hiccups along the way, but only one that had any significant effect.

We each made an effort to take pictures along the way. In total, we managed to go through around 300 pictures. It’s probably the most tourist-y I’ve ever been. After I get home from work today, I’ll make an effort to post a bit of a summary, and maybe some of the pictures.