The longest journey VF

On February 22nd I left Detroit for an early surprise visit to Auckland (I wasn't expected until March 1st by anyone, but it was to be Mother's birthday on 24th) I had calulated that I would be there by 6am on 24th Feb and then turn up to the parent's new house as a surprise for breakfast. Jamie dropped me at DTW airport a couple of hours before my flight as I wanted to see if the people at the international part would check my suitcase all the way to Auckland. And a good thing I did as they told me that they could and that I did not have to re-check them in Los Angeles (which is always such a pain). So off I went to the gate but alas the aeroplane had a mechanical problem and was delayed two hours. Not too much of a problem as it is not a good idea to fly on an aeroplane with issues and I had allowed for almost 4 hours extra time built in in LA. So eventually they got us a new plane and on we all got and we started taxing towards the de-icing area when the pilot came on and said "sorry folks, we have been informed that we are overweight and we will need to unload bags and probably some passengers". I wondered how they were going to manage to choose who was too fat to stay. It took us 30 minutes to find a new gate and then huge conveyor belts drove up and lots of random bags started being off-loaded. How we were to know whose was on and whose was off I wasn't too sure... Next our pilot's voice came on again to say that because of the delay they now had to have a crew change because by the time they would have been part-way into our 5-hour flight to Los Angeles, they would be in overtime. So instead they were all being sent to Boston and we would get a new crew soon. With that, he was off and out the door, followed by the co-pilot. By this time several people were so fed up with things they grabbed their cabin bags and left as well. The head steward got on the PA system next and announced that they would be leaving one by one once new crew arrived for their shift. And so over the next hour or so, as new people came to work one by one they would leave. In the meantime a rather large proportion of the other passengers had left because it was now getting on for 8pm, almost 5 hours later than our initial scheduled departure time. The girl behind me phoned her travel agent in Brisbane and I heard that she had been supposed to be on the same flight as me to Auckland and on to Brisbane from LA (which my now it was obvious that we were going to miss by several hours) and was told that there were later flights to Australia but she would have to pay about A$1600, so she booked for the same as our originally planned one but the next day as that would not incur a cost. Finally, just over 5 hours late, we left the gate and headed for the de-icing area where huge machines spray the plane with fluid to melt and ice and prevent build-up on take off (it was snowing lightly). And so it was a rather long journey to LAX. On arrival I leaned over the seat to the girl behind and said that I though we should run to Qantas and see what they could do for us. So off across the carpark we raced at 11pm at night. I knew that there was an 11.45pm flight to Sydney and I hoped that I could get to Auckland from there within a few hours. There was no point waiting for our bags as they had been tagged to Auckland and would be impossible to find (and for all I knew could have been off-loaded in Detroit and caught an earlier LAX flight than me and even may have made to to the original LAX-AKL flight!). I think that the combination of lots of prayer and my silver/ruby frequent flyer card, my new companion's Qantas Club card and the fact that we now only had cabin baggage meant that we were ahead of what seemed to be about 30 stand-by passengers. We ran up the stairs and made it through security relatively quickly and soon were on-board. I managed a quick phone call and text messages to Dad and to Bec & Jeremy (who were also secretly en route from Sydney to Auckland) to let them know the update and said that I was really hoping to be in Auckland before Mother's birthday was over. I was not impressed about the 14+ hour flight to Sydney rather than the planned 12 hours to NZ but there was not too much I could do unless I had wanted a night in LA. Finally we arrived and it was nice that my new friend got me into the Qantas Club so that I could have a shower before she left for Brisbane. Thankfully I only had a couple of hours before the flight to Auckland which seemed almost as long as the one from Detroit. And what a nice surprise that the father was waiting to zoom me off to see the birthday one. We arrived 'home' to the new house and had a plan that Dad would go in as per his normal after work routine and then 3-4 minutes later I would appear. But soon he reappeared in the garage laughing that the joke was on us because Mother had gone for a walk with Bec & Jeremy!! So I had a tour of the new house and then assembled myself on the new sofa for when they all arrived back home. Mother was completely surprised and so despite being 11 hours late, it was all worthwhile! We had a lovely dinner at Mikano overlooking the harbour and the rescue/police helicopter heli-pad and soon it was finally time to bed.

This weekend we went to Chicago for the christening of the baby of a friend Jamie did his internship with. Here we are at the church - we took this photo so you could see us all dressed up and my new pink coat!!! (Hair is continuing to grow rather quickly!) 

More on the weather!

I sometimes feel like all that I write about is the weather or food! But lots of people ask about the weather here so I think this is the best place to write about it rather than lots of individual e-mails. It has been raining here the last few days. So practically all our lovely snow has gone. Vanished into yukky muddy puddles (some of them icy). Our back garden looks quite nasty and one would need some good gumboots to get around it if one needed to. I had hoped that the apres-snow mudiness would happen whilst I was in NZ, but alas, I guess not. But I just saw the weather report this evening and apparently there will be between 3 and 5 inches of snow overnight! So depending on how cold the temperatures are over the next week or two, I may well be spared the mud as we'll soon be in the homeland for a while, enjoying the Summer sun!

When I went to pick up Jamie from work to go to dinner on Monday night, I was talking to Pat on the phone as I was waiting. She said that she sould be interested to see what 'Michigan Food' is like.... so here you are! Hopefully you can double-click on it and enlarge the menu to see exactly what we had! I had the morel treasure chest with about 8 different kinds of mushrooms for the entree/starter (appetizer) and then the northern michigan whitefish for the main course (entree). Jamie had the wild mushroom strudel and the grilled beef tenderloin. We both had a salad so after all of that neither of us had room for dessert (no, not even the white chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries!). But we did manage to find room/time to stop at a 24hr Starbucks on the way home for hot drinks - a caramel hot apple cider for me (cider here is non-alcoholic) and a hot chocolate for Jamie. A VERY nice evening I must say. 

Last week someone had asked Jamie to swap their shift with him "on Monday" without saying that it was Feb 14th. But it worked out quite well as he was previously on a 7am - 4pm shift and the change meant working 11am-7pm ie a sleep in and then out to dinner at 7.30pm - perfect timing! When we got up I made Jamie a NZ-style coffee in our cool cafe-style cups that Rochelle & Malcolm gave us for our wedding. The decoration is with 'Jarrah' fat-free chocoalte drink mix - yum!  

Valentines Day

Today is Valentines Day. Quite a big deal here in the US of A.
A huge deal in fact.... the New Year and other "holiday" decorations were only partly down when the red decorations started going up. I note some people changed their white Christmas garden lights to red ones too..... I said to Jamie that I thought we should not go too overboard and buy presents etc for each other like the shops seem to imply that everyone does, that we should maybe just go out for dinner or something.
So as of today, we are liking our first Valentines Day in each other's company (last year we had to make do with web-cam!). Our house is filled with flowers as I had bought some blue irises for Jamie on Friday (his favourite), and he had bought me a dozen red roses and a dozen pink roses and then Craig and Cheryl who came for dinner last night brought us some lovely yellow and red tulips. We are feeling like we are at the Four Seasons again! Tonight we are going for dinner at Morels restaurant. It serves "Michigan Food" so that should be rather nice..... There is a menu on their web-site but it looks like it is an old one, although I doubt that Michigan food changes hugely over time!

On Sunday we took a 4 hour detour home and went to Traverse City up at the northern end of the southern section of Michigan (the most northern part is across the lake - the upper peninsula). We drove up a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan to see a lighthouse on the 45th paralell - half way beteween the north pole and the equator. Here I am standing on Lake Michigan as part of it was frozen. I can't imagine how cold it must be to live in Canada!!! I have now seen two of the five Great Lakes.  

On Saturday afternoon we walked around the lake (a couple of people walked over it as most of it expect this part was frozen). The lake is part of the property which I understand is about 900 acres. There was also a 'nature center' which reminded me of parts of the Canterbury museum with stones in drawers and previously-alive stuffed animals, shell collections etc. On Sunday Jamie drove me to see another part which is a horse corral with about 20 horses for kids to ride and a fort where he remembers staying in for an overnight adventure when he was a child 

Here are the friends we spent the weekend with. About 6 of them came to our wedding. Adarianna (2nd from right at front) was the 4th person who was on the tour of NZ in Oct 2003 when Jamie & I first met. Rami (2nd from left at front) and I are having a competition to see who can grow our hair the fastest!! You can see what the cabin was like (check out the moose at the top of the fireplace!)... 

We spent the evenings and Saturday in a big cabin with lots of chairs and tables, a huge fireplace and a kitchen. Here is the view off the balcony 

Here is a very happy husband sitting outside the little log cabin that was our home for two nights. I think he is smiling because his wife was not completely adverse to the camping thing.... Those who know me well know that depsite my professed disdain for living without a shower at close proximity, communal cooking and BYO hairdryer arrangements, I do actually get into it! Between the annual church camp with Mother, Jac & Bec, ski week when I was a teenager, I have had a few other expeditions including South New South Wales and Blackhealth with my nursing class in the late 1980s and Waitara church camps and some rather hilarious weekend stays at 'Cedarvale' as Rochelle recently reminded me of. I will download some more pics from Jamie's camera when he gets home this evening. 

This was the view from the door of our cabin when we woke up on Saturday morning. 

White coffee - thanks: or maybe not....... in NZ I had Calci-Trim in my coffee etc which was just fat-free milk with added calcium. Here in the US, it is unusual to have milk in one's coffee. The main means of 'whitening' it is by adding "creamer". Now why one does not add milk I am not sure when one looks at what 'creamer' is made of.... (double-click on the photo and read the back of the sachet). Mind you, when reading the back of the milk carton, I'm not so sure about the pureness of milk either! I always used to think that all the talk about 'food additives' was a little excessive, but now I can see that it is certainly a big deal here in the US. I don't know that we have much of an issue in kiwiland and I think most people get their information from US-based web-sites. I'm looking forward to making a vege-garden sometime in Spring/Summer so we can have nice, fresh veges, but I'm not sure that I'm quite up to milking cows though.... 

Camping soon - VF

This weekend I get to go camping.... well sort of, we are staying in a cabin, but camping enough seeing as we have to take sleeping bags, pillows and warm clothing (after all it is mid-Winter in Michigan AND it is 4 hours north of here so I guess that is 4 hours colder!) and share in communal cooking duties. I am imagining the experience to be similar to when I was a teenager and used to go to the church ski-week to Lake Lyndon Lodge. Although my idea of camping is a 3-star hotel and this is about 1/2 a star, I did used to enjoy the ski weeks and we had a lot of fun. Thankfully this is not a full week (we have elected to drive up on Friday after Jamie finishes work although some are going on Thursday) and we are only staying two nights so I am being broken in gently to older-age camping. Liz (who did a reading at our wedding) has organised it and the 'usual suspects' (the group that came from Michigan to our wedding) and another 30 or so friends are all going. Apparently there is skiing but I think it is more the cross-country than the downhill type and I am a little dubious as when I asked about skiing the first question people said was 'have you skiied before?" and when I said yes, they laughed and said 'you wont really count this as skiing then'. Jamie is quite excited as he has been to this place (also owned by the church) practically every year since he was 8. He is also a little more into camping than I am and most anxious that I get into the camping scene. I have faithfully promised to go camping, depsite my professed disdain for camping and told Jamie last year that we did not need to write it into our wedding vows as I know that it is a significant thing for him. All of this came about from a conversation we had in September 2003 (not knowing that a year later we would be discussing wedding vows!) which apparently cemented our at the time fledgling relationship.... More to come after the weekend!!!

Tue, 23 Sep 2003

hello there my friend! i have a question (hypothetical though it may be) for you....

i've heard it mentioned in casual conversation that camping for you is perhaps like enduring accomodations at a 3*** hotel. what if (hypothetically of course) your significant other were somewhat fond of it, if not only to have a perfectly valid excuse to buy what would otherwise be ridiculously expensive but unnecessary outdoor gear, both electronic and otherwise. and what if, this significant other were willing to be sure that this (hypothetical) camping experience were made for you as comfortable as humanly possible. so much so that you were to be rendered incapable of doing anything but smiling during such aforementioned (hypothetical) outdoor excursions.
would it then be considered, a possibility for you and this (hypothetical) significant other?

i was just wondering...

jamie

My reply....
Well... seeing as you asked such a thought-provoking question regarding the potential matter of accommodation en-vacance, .... I have, essentially only once, however; been known to undertake such an enduring adventure; finding it, in somewhat of a bizarre way, kind of exciting and if nothing else, mentally, physically and spiritually invigorating. The said excursion entailed such strenuous exercise, covering extraordinarily mountainous terrain, however it did involve viewing such incredible natural wonders, that it was indeed practically enjoyable (if only the point of knowing it was so extraordinarily good for ones body, mind and soul). I recall one particular period, resulting in absolute exhaustion, whilst providing an almost euphoric exhilaration; of some 9 hours duration that involved pushing my body to limits previously unknown (even surpassing my previous marathon performance which lasted only 50% of that time, yet covered 26 miles in distance). Despite such primitive conditions; and, being permitted to carry only a meager allowance of provisions, apparel and feminine beauty-associated paraphernalia, my performance was that of a true Amazon woman and I did survive, and, possibly to the chagrin of my companion, an ex-Olympic competition athlete no less; better than that accomplished sportsperson! Given such triumphant previous experience in matters of outdoor excursions, I can only conclude, that an excursion such as you describe, (whilst it might not be one’s preferred style of voyage) would be palatable on account of the availability of extravagant home comforts, the presence of hypothetical significant other (assuming primary raison d'être for said hypothetical significant other is, as mentioned in previous correspondence, to ensure my incapability of rendering anything other than continual smiling by whatever means deemed appropriate); and of course, the pure challenge of rising to such a provocation. I trust this e-mail finds you rising bright and early for your 7am start, and hopefully rasies as much of a chuckle in you as yours did in me.....