After not sleeping at all Friday (Feb 29) night and instead choosing to both pack and have a going away party at the same time, since I am far too much a procrastinator to pack, you know, ahead of time, we left our apartment around 8am bound for Marshall. Amanda’s parents were kind enough to offer to drive us to Chicago, where our plane was departing from. I ended up crashing in the car and woke up right as we were entering O’Hare, just in time to see an airplane cruise over a bridge right in front of us. I wish I’d pulled the video camera out just a little sooner, that would have made a cool beginning to the vacation video I’m going to put together once we get home.
There was some initial confusion once we got inside the airport regarding getting our boarding passes and checking our luggage, and seating arrangements, but most of that was figured out pretty easily. Getting through security was a pain in the ass, they made us unload all the electronics in our carryons (read: damn near everything in mine) and take off our shoes and jackets. After we’d gotten through and were partaking in a two hour wait for the flight, I discovered that I’d left something electronic in my bag and they hadn’t caught it. Oh well, their bad.
The first plane was a United Air 757, very small, very 70s-looking. There were televisions mounted to the ceiling every 4-5 rows in the center, along the walkway between seats. The plane was six seats across with just the one walkway in between, and we were scrunched. At least Amanda, Alyssa & I all managed to get our seating arrangements shuffled so that we were sitting together. There was some kind of problem and it was announced, after everybody was on board, that we’d have to deboard the plane so they could run some kind of a test. We were a little angry because we figured this would make us late for our second flight and we’d have to take a later one, but fortunately within five minutes it was announced that the announcement was a mistake and everybody could take their seats. The pilot proceeded to give us too much information over the intercom and make me feel a little leery of flying, this being my first time and all. I thought parts were going to fall off and we’d all die or something. Not really. I was just a little uncomfortable, not really scared. Amanda and Alyssa let me have the window seat since they’d both flown several times before and it was my first time. I have to say, takeoff is awesome. I probably feel this way because I am utterly in love with centrifugal force. That’s why I take corners and accelerate so quickly in my Jeep. That was a four or five hour flight from Chicago to San Francisco, and the US looks pretty cool from the air, I have to say. Especially going over the western states, we think we were over Colorado or Wyoming or something, we’re not entirely sure. We saw the Rocky Mountains, they’re big. Heh. The airline wanted to charge us five dollars for an in flight "snack box." We didn’t go for it.
We didn’t get to see the Golden Gate Bridge. We were supposed to have a two hour layover in San Francisco, and I’d have liked to see the city, but we didn’t want to be hassled going through Security. As it turned out, our first flight was late and we barely had time to find the gate to our second flight, so our entire stay in San Francisco included walking around the entire damn airport, seriously. And we had to go though Security anyway, even though we didn’t leave the airport. The gate we landed at and the gate we took off from seemed like they were miles apart. But in all, we were there for about twenty minutes, I think. We couldn’t get our seating arrangements shuffled together for our next flight, which was the longest at 13 hours, but it turned out ok. We’d been fighting a little bit on the first flight about who’d get the window seat on the second, because it would be over the ocean and neither of them had gotten to see the ocean before. Apparently they didn’t have window seats when they went to England a few years back. We all ended up having window seats one row apart, Amanda was in front of me, Alyssa behind. Unfortunately, in the twenty minutes at the San Francisco airport, it had gone from broad daylight to pitch dark. Funny how quickly that can happen. So, since we’re chasing the sun, it stayed dark for the entire 13 hour flight to Auckland and we landed in Auckland at 5 in the morning. We lost March Second entirely to the International Date Line.
The second flight was an Air New Zealand 777 and getting onto it from that first plane was like stepping from the ghetto into a palace. It was 11 seats across, a row of three, aisle, row of five, aisle, row of three. Each seat had a flat screen TV mounted to the back of it, and in each armrest was a removable corded remote control, which had a phone in the back of it, the television remote and buttons that looked like a Super Nintendo controller on the front and top. The entertainment system included games, radio, movies, and television. I played some of the games, but my controller was pretty busted, I had to hammer on the d-pad pretty hard to get it to register. I ended up playing three games of Chess because it was the only game that didn’t require quick movements on the d-pad and besides, I like chess. I won two and lost one, all on ’medium’ difficulty. There was also a mode that let you play against other passengers but I didn’t. Then they served dinner, which was excellent. It was probably the best meal I’d had in a long while, actually. Chicken, veggies, fresh fruit, other stuff…and a soda. I’m not sure exactly how the conversation about the drink with the stewardess went but she asked me if I’d ever had L&P, I said I’d never heard of it so she gave me one. L&P is really good. It’s a lemon soda, actually L&P stands for lemon & paeroa, but I don’t know what paeroa is. Apparently neither does the spell check on my laptop. Anyway, I slept for a while, then I watched No Country For Old Men. It just won a bunch of awards, Mike said that he liked it a lot, so I watched it. I thought it was pretty good, although I’m not sure why it won so many awards. Also the ending didn’t make much sense to me. Of course it was edited for content so I’ll have to watch it again before I pass real judgment on it. Then they served breakfast, which was excellent. I had an omelet, which came with fresh fruit and other stuff. Security in Auckland was less stringent than in the US. They didn’t make us take our shoes off. When Alyssa started to, they asked her what she was doing. They did ask me to remove my sweater though.
We all ended up in window seats on the third flight, another 757, but nowhere near each other. I managed to stay awake for takeoff but pretty much as soon as we were off the ground I passed out for about an hour – roughly half the flight to Christchurch. They served muffins. The muffins were good. This 757 was much nicer than the first. I talked to the lady in the seat next to me for a bit, she was from Holland. She’d just retired and her and her husband were traveling to celebrate. They plan to do a big trip every year now that they’re both retired. They’d just spent three days in San Francisco and now had two weeks in New Zealand. I can’t remember where their third destination was, somewhere in China I think, before they head back to Holland. She was nice. She was reading a book that was written in Dutch. When she asked where I was from and I sheepishly responded America, she asked whether I supported Hillary or Obama. I thought it funny that she made no mention of McCain or Huckabee. I told her that I voted for Obama. We talked about my going to school and where I worked, and so on – she had a lot of questions about where I worked. I told her that we test every baby in Wisconsin for diseases and she asked something to the effect of if we abort the diseased ones. I said no, we test after they’re already born. She seemed relieved.
Getting through customs was really easy, actually. I’d been prepared for strip searches, lie detectors, and blood screenings, but it was just a dude that looked at some cards we filled out on the plane and asked if we had anything to declare. Then we went through Security in Christchurch and they were even more lax than Auckland: we didn’t have to remove anything from our bags and when I asked if they wanted my sweater they said no, no worries.
It took us a while to get the rental car because Amanda misunderstood where the guy said he’d pick us up, but eventually he did find us. They drove us back to their office from the airport, where we got the car. But instead of the small car that we paid for, because we picked the cheapest possible vehicle, they gave us a van. It has a sunroof in the back and a moonroof in the front. There are actually two full benches in the back. The furthest back ones fold up so that we’ve got a bigger cargo area. They didn’t say why, but since the keys say "Auckland" on them, we think it’s just because their Auckland branch needs this vehicle back and this was the easiest way to get it to them. The dude said this van usually rents for $119 a day. We’re paying $25 for it. Yeah. We’re that cool.
We spent most of the day, March 3rd by us, driving around Christchurch aimlessly on the left side of the road. The hostel that we stopped at was full, and rather than check the other hostels we decided that, for the first night, we’d just find a nice cozy motel, and the one we ended up in was bigger than most efficiency apartments that I’ve seen. It had a separate bedroom and living room, with a big flatscreen TV and another bed in it. It had its own mini fridge, microwave, and sink. The toilet flushed vigorously. Since then, I’ve discovered that all toilets around here flush vigorously. I made a video.
So then we walked around Christchurch a bit. Christchurch is pretty much New Zealand’s equivalent of the Wisconsin Dells: a huge tourist trap with ridiculous price tags on everything. We ate at a restaurant, something On Avon, I can’t remember the beginning of the name. They give you pretty big portions for a reasonable price, and I ate something that tasted pretty good but I couldn’t identify, Amanda and Alyssa said it looked like a colon but I swear it was a bread product. Amanda had a bite too so if I ate butt, then so did she. We visited the actual Christchurch Cathedral that the city’s named after and paid five dollars to climb their stairs. I made a video of the entire climb. We hit up an art gallery. We walked around the botanic gardens. I drank more L&P (slogan: "World Famous in New Zealand!" Really.) I picked up a copy of Kerrang! Magazine at a grocery store, it came with a free CD ("Kerrang!’s Best of 2007). After some more sightseeing, we returned to the motel, where Alyssa took a poop, and then I was going to take a poop and shower, since I hadn’t committed an act of personal hygiene in over three days, and then we were going to head back out on the town and get some dinner. While Alyssa shat I took off my shoes and promptly produced the greatest foul stench ever in the history of ever. Seriously, my feet smelled like rotting corpse. I hadn’t taken my socks off in something like 72 hours. It was bad. So then when I got my turn in the bathroom I shat and then took a shower, and when I came back out both Amanda and Alyssa were asleep. I was ridiculously tired myself so I just flopped over on the bed and that was all she wrote. Amanda woke me up around 2am to plug in the camera (the battery was dead) and then we properly crawled into bed.
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