August 24, 2012 - Bikes and Bags

Last night, I headed out to dinner with John and the Aerosonde guys I'm here with (Paul, Peter, Nick, and Cameron), and upon my return to the hotel I found this:

My bag was finally here!  No more living on the couple of clothes I'd packed in my carry on!  What a glorious end to an evening this was.

Since I had more than just one option for clothes, and since our flight to Antarctica has been delayed until at least Friday (Thursday US time), I decided it was a good time to rent a bike.  John and I spent the day riding around Christchurch (about 30 miles in all).  We visited the university, the downtown area, and went out the coast.  In February and September 2010, two earthquakes rocked the Christchurch area, and the town is still reeling from the impacts on the infrastructure.  In fact, part of the hotel I'm staying in is being renovated to fix the damage from the quake.

The front of my hotel.

The downtown area felt the worst effects from the September 2010 earthquake (which was the stronger of the two).  John and I went downtown to see some of the impacts, and it was very sad.  Every other time I've been to Antarctica, I've stayed in downtown Christchurch, but the whole area is blocked off.  I guess at least 1/3 of the buildings in the "red zone", which is cordoned off to people, need to be torn down.  Here's the former spot of the Windsor Bed and Breakfast, which is where I usually stayed when we went down.

The empty lot is where the Windsor used to be.

Below are some pictures of the earthquake damage in the red zone, but the pictures don't do it justice.  I had a really hard time orienting myself to where I was because everything is just so unrecognizable.

This street used to be filled with buildings and restaurants.

The red zone map.

I think this was the edge of the Cathedral Square.

After the depressing tour, we headed to the coast to the view of the Pacific.  Much happier down here!

Me and the beach!

Tomorrow our flight to Antarctica is scheduled for 12 noon (or 6 pm on Thursday for my CO people).  The flight today is on its way and supposed to land in about an hour, but the word on the street is that winds are pretty bad so another boomerang for them is a possibility.  A boomerang flight is basically when you leave from Christchurch and head to McMurdo, and end up having to turn around to return to Christchurch, usually because the weather is bad.  On Monday, this same group had a boomerang flight where they made it all the way to McMurdo but just couldn't land.  For their sake, I hope that doesn't happen, since that means you're just spending about 11-12 hours on a plane just to return to where you started from.

Have fun!