The Big Trip

Heading out on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was not the best of times--or so I thought. The airport was not nearly as crowded as I remembered it when I used to travel back to college to the East Coast. We left on Sunday at around 5PM for LAX. From there, we waiting for a few hours to board our plane to Sydney (a 14 hour trip). After the fun of sitting on a plane for 14 hours, we got to sit in Sydney for a couple of hours until we could board our plane for Christchurch, New Zealand.

So, in terms of Christchurch time, we left at 1PM on the 27th of November and arrived at 3PM on the 28th. I make that approximately 26 hours of travel if my math is working for me.













Christchurch is a beautiful city. The purpose of our visit was to get back on their time as well as get our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear for use on our trip to Antarctica. Raytheon Polar gave us a nice deal on hotel rooms and put us up in the Heritage Hotel next to Cathedral Square. This hotel is close to everything. We were able to walk all over for restaurants, pubs, the botanical gardens, etc.

After we received our ECW issue on the 29th, we elected to head out of town via bus and go to Lyttleton and then take the ferry to Diamond Harbor to have a few beers and enjoy the scenery at the Godley House. I'd say that it was here that our group fell in love with Montie's beer. For me, it was the Golden that was really good. For my "mates", it was the Montie's Black. It was a great way to relax prior to the big C-17 trip to the Ice.

Just starting this blog thing

Here's goes...my first entry.










And, that's it.