Last Day in New Zealand

Begonia at the Botanical Gardens.
When I went to the Ice this year, I wanted to travel big when I left. However, I ended up staying in Christchurch, New Zealand to train for ultimate instead. I have no regrets. I trained to play in my first worlds (this coming July in Prague) and New Zealand was brilliant. I've even entertained the idea of moving there. I'm not sure why, but it feels like home in many ways now. When I returned to the USA, I had trouble driving on the right side of the road, but never had that trouble when I started living in New Zealand.


Begonia variety at the Botanical Gardens.


Mova Vale.
I spent my last day in New Zealand trying to get everything packed up. I was trying to find boxes, and deciding just how much stuff I'd need. It is amazing how much stuff I had down there. On the other hand, it is amazing how little stuff I lived with for over six months. I have a hunch that I have another purge coming when I finally unpack all of my stuff in Colorado again. I'm not sure when that will be, probably the fall.

I think my favorite part of my last day was probably biking around town returning stuff. I could have taken the car. I could have had my roommates take care of it, but I biked. I loved it. It let me wander through my favorite areas. It let me head through the Botanical Gardens and Mona Vale one last time. I can't wait to be home to get on my bike again. It brings me so much joy to transport myself from atop a bicycle seat instead of a driver's seat. It is going to have to be part of my daily life. I even have a bike trailer to start seeing if Sabah will ride in there alright. However, I'm still hoping to get her balanced in a breadbox over the back tire.

I don't think this blog is about leaving New Zealand at all now that I'm about to publish it. It is about returning home. While I was enjoying my time back in New Zealand, when the last week came I was eager to get back to see Sabah, watch En Sabah Nur play, and answer a question or two waiting for me in Colorado. It was difficult to focus on the coming adventures because I had such a glow about getting home. I think I had perma-smile for over a week on my way home. I'll still miss New Zealand though. I'm not sure when I'll be back yet.


Rose at Mona Vale.

The First Step Home, Wellington, NZ

Part of the Bridge to the Sea in Wellington.
As most of you know, I'm back in the USA now. However, I'd have had a great set of adventures getting back here. New friends. New places. A ton of fun!!! A lot of me can't wait to have more. A lot of me is hurting for downtime. As I sit writing this in Massachusetts, a lot of me wishes I had a place like where I am sitting. Trees through the window. Personal stuff spread out. Sabah on the dog bed. Comfortable. Essentially, a home.


The view from Mt. Victoria.

A view looking the other way from Mt. Victoria.
My final weekend in New Zealand combined a little bit of exploring with a little bit of team training.  I was in Wellington, NZ for a team training weekend, but took an early morning flight up a day early so I would have some time to look around on my own. I got off the bus at the northeast side of the harbor and spend the day walking to the other side and back again.  I could not have picked a better day. The weather was blue bird gorgeous and not too hot.  My first stop was Mt. Victoria. I heard it was a nice hike up to the summit and a great view of harbor. The trail signs were confusing and I would have probably been better off if there weren't any, but if I just kept going up the hill everything worked out.  When I reached the top, I was rewarded with great views over Wellington Harbor and of the mountains on the South Island.  On the way up and down, I gained a new appreciation for city hill living. I've seen a lot of it in Pittsburgh, but the contraptions they had to keep their cars in place or to maximize space for their house were fantastic. 

Te Papa museum.


Giant squid.
After visiting Mt. Victoria, I headed for Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. Everyone I had talked to said it was the best part of Wellington and I had told Celeen that I'd visit the giant squid for her. I was a little reluctant to use up a blue bird day on the museum, but I decided to trust my recommendations. It turned out to be great. They had a little bit of everything from history to nature to pop culture to Antarctica. I just can't get away from that stuff, nor do I want to.  I love seeing how information on the places that I have visited is presented. For anyone from the Ice, you need to go to the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch to see their Antarctic exhibit. It is surreal to see clothing that we wore behind a glass display case.


A new definition of boy in the bubble on Wellington Harbor.
After spending a few hours at the museum, it was time to head out again. I wanted a nap and so I headed for the green grass of the Botanical Gardens. The easiest way to get there was to take a cable car from downtown. Wellington was the first downtown I had visited since leaving the ice that was business driven. Everything moved so fast. Everyone was fancied up. People were in a hurry. There weren't too many tourists. Power suits. Cell phones. People on the move. It was quite a blur. It reminded me why I love the slower pace of Christchurch so much.


 A great use of an old stump.


Water lilies at the Botanical Gardens.


More water lilies at the Botanical Gardens.
The cable car trip was great. It was a fun way to gain some elevation quickly to overlook the city and it wasn't a tourist trap, or at least was not priced like one. I think it was $2 which was the same price as the bus. It dropped me off at the entrance to the gardens and away I went to explore the 25 hectares of green goodness. The gardens are built on a hillside right in the middle of the city. Admission is free. A road goes through them. Other people commute through them to work.  I love how integrated they were into everyday life. I spent an hour walking across part of the gardens with a girl who had just picked up her new kitten. The kitten wanted to be out in the sunshine, but she kept carrying it in the box because she didn't have enough hands. Oh man, I was pet starved at this point and happy to help carry the box in exchange for some petting time. So cute. When we parted ways, she pointed me towards the water lily garden which was my favorite part of the Wellington gardens.


Sunrise from where I stayed.
After the gardens, I finally got my nap and then wound down the day tracking down some falafel to eat. When I did, I found myself in the neighborhood that B-Nelson, Raja, Katie and I were in before we went on our canoe trip. It was a little surreal because we had arrived at 10pm and left early the next morning. I wasn't sure I'd remember any of it, but my deja vu was coming from somewhere.

The next day I got to business for my frustrating team training weekend. The team did pretty well, going 3-1, but I had just torn (grade 2) my hamstring and could not play. I was able to make the best of it by filming the team and a little coaching. It was a bit of a bummer to have stayed a few extra weeks for the weekend when I couldn't play, but it definitely made me hungrier to play.  Two more months.

Sabah

Thank you to Betty for finding this picture.
If everything works out, I should be seeing Sabah today. It is going to be a great day.

Thanks to my mom for taking care of her so well for so long. Though, it sounds like some of that thanks should go to her dogs, Princess and Nanook, for entertaining Sabah day in and day out.


Sabah.

Mueller Hut

The clouded in the valley that I drove into at Aoraki National Park
My journey to Mueller Hut was spawned by a recommendation from Talie over two years ago. I just hadn't been able to make it happen until the very end of my stay in New Zealand. Even then, I had to squeeze it in between practice, visiting with Kish and Deneen, and bad weather. There is never enough time to do everything.


Hooker Lake.
Mueller Hut is an alpine hut in Mt. Aoraki National Park that overlooks Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. The views are supposed to be stunning, but the weather was cloudy and cloudier for the days I was planning to go. I pushed everything back a day, which let me hang out with Ice friends and do a team fundraiser. Unfortunately, when I drove off on Sunday morning at 3am from Christchurch, it was raining. When I pulled into the national park, it wasn't rainy, but it was still cloudy. You couldn't see much of anything, but I was still hopeful something would show up that afternoon. I delayed my hike up into the fog by exploring the Hooker Valley. While the hike was great, the weather didn't clear. I just hoped for the best and headed up the mountain. It didn't. It got worse.


360 degree videos taken through out my visit to Aoraki National Park.
When I arrived at the hut at 3pm, you could not see more than 100 meters from the hut, maybe 50. Not being able to see anything didn't give me much of a reason to explore so I hung out in the hut with my fellow trampers. One was a self employed contractor from Belfast, ME (near where I spent my summers growing up) named Bruce. It is a small world. At bed time, there was no improvement in the weather. The weather forecast had been downgraded from partially cloudy to cloudy for the next day. I wasn't hopeful, but I had planned on two nights at the hut for just that reason.


Sunrise


The golden hour sunlight illuminates the Mt. Sefton.


Mt. Sefton illuminated by the great morning light.
Luckily, when I woke up the higher clouds had mostly cleared. The hut warden recommended that we try and catch sunrise from Mt. Ollivier, the first peak that Sir Edmund Hillary of Antarctic and Mt. Everest fame climbed. That sounded lovely, especially since most of the hut was still sleeping. Off, I went. As I climbed, the golden colors of sunrise poured over the surrounding mountain peaks. It was amazing. I can't believe I was sitting in the middle of so much goodness the day and night before and had no idea. It was such a drastic change.


Mt. Cook at sunrise.


Sunrise!


Did I mention I love sunrise?
After a couple hours on the summit, I got cold. The way down, as always, was harder, but still just as nice. The clouds were threatening to come back in but mostly stayed clear. When I got back to the hut, only five of the twenty something were still there. I was the only one booked to stay two nights. Even the hut warden left. Apparently, Easter is the last busy weekend of the year so they stop staffing the hut.


There are people on that ridge below, honest.


Me on Mt. Ollivier


Mini avalanche!


Fata morgana
One of the funniest parts about this trip for me is that I would have thought that after my time in Antarctica, I would not be running around to see more glaciers and penguins in New Zealand. However, a couple of my trips did just that. I even saw what might have been a fata morgana from the Mueller Hut, but I suspect it was an inferior mirage instead of superior. Even though, I was visiting some stuff similar to Antarctica, the experience was completely different. For instance, while at the Mueller Hut I heard mini slides, slips, and avalanches through out my entire stay. I was only able to see a few though. By the time the sound reached you, many of the slides had stopped because they were so small.


Cloud cover.


Hooker Lake.


Mount Sefton towering over the Mueller Hut.


The Mueller Hut.
After a couple hours hanging around and enjoying the views, the weather started to cloud up. I had seven great, mostly clear hours, at the hut so I decided to head down too. I figured there were other treats to explore, especially Lake Tekapo and its observatory that would be better than just looking at thick clouds. The hike down was pretty nice because the lower cloud cover was clearing which yielded some great views I had not seen the day before. Unfortunately, the weather pattern followed me out of the park and over to Lake Tekapo.


The Sealy Downs above the Hooker Valley.


Hooker Lake.


Hooker and Mueller valleys.


Lake Tekapo

15 Seconds of Fame (in New Zealand)!

Two Fridays before I left New Zealand, a serendipitous thing happened. I went to town to meet Kish and Deneen. I didn't know they were still in New Zealand and I was super excited to see them. I was supposed to meet them at Dmitri's and found Rose and Tyler on the way. We all met up and hummed and hawed about what to do since Dmitri's was closed. I offered my place up for cooking because Ice people seem to enjoy it and I figured Kish and Deneen would need a place to stay.

Rose and Tyler went their own way. Kish and Deneen joined me. Deneen even cut a car off to make a light, which was surprising. She doesn't drive like that normally. When we pulled into the driveway, I ambled out of the car. When I opened the door, Hannan lazily waved me over but said nothing. After slowly setting my stuff down, I turned the corner to see me and my royal blue hoodie getting out of the orange giant that is Ivan the Terra Bus on TV. Soon after that, we saw Kish leading a Kiwi runner on the course. Channel 1 News was showing a 2 minute clip of the Antarctic Marathon three months after the event! I have no idea why they showed it, but if we had gotten home any sooner we might have been watching a movie. Any later, and it would have been gone.

Here is the clip (Reference: -5C is 23F):


Thanks to my brother for acquiring the clip.

New Zealand Ultimate Nationals

Our captain, Mike.


My roommate, Hannan.
A couple weeks ago, New Zealand held their men's and women's nationals in Christchurch. There were 6-7 men's teams. Auckland was the perennial giant. They are also New Zealand's men's team at Worlds. My team, Christchurch, and Wellington were hoping to knock them off. We didn't. They were the best team, but we were close. We beat Wellington in a close semifinal to advance to the finals. We were keeping it close in the first half, but in the second they pulled away to win it 14-11. We finished second, which I think was an improvement from last year.

It was great to play with my male world's teammates. I wish I was getting to play with the women more, but that is what the practices are for. Now that nationals is done though, it is time to really focus on Worlds. I'm super excited. Unfortunately, I'm also super broken. My thumb ligament damage will take two months to heal and my hamstring should take about a month. I'm not a fan but it is also a traveling month so better now than later. So it goes. I wonder how many activities can I figure out to do that don't use my hamstring (calf raises, toe jumps, sit ups).


Our intensity, Goose.


How to get the D and break a hamstring, me.
All photos are by Neal.

Antarctica in the News: Shrimp and a new base

Shrimp found under Ross Ice Shelf
Just over a month ago, NASA found something in Antarctica that no one ever expected to find, two three inch shrimp under 600 feet of ice, 12.5 miles from open water. Scientists have always assumed that only microbial life could live under such harsh conditions. This calls that assumption into question and forces us to ask about what other complex life could exist in similar conditions throughout our solar system. One of the cooler parts about the discovery and article for me is that they feature quotes from a scientist that I've worked with in Antarctica. " Stacy Kim—one of the biologists in NASA's ice science team—says that they don't really have a clue about what is happening down there, but that it is highly improbable that these animals swam all the way from open water."


Terra Nova Bay (photo by C. Poirot)
A few weeks ago, South Korea announced that it will be building their second Antarctica research station at Terra Nova Bay. Their first, King Sejong Base, holds 17 researchers. The new station will hold 60 researchers and their support staff. Terra Nova Bay is located a few hundred miles from McMurdo and the existing Italian base there, Zucchelli Station, has sometimes served as a back up air field for the United States Antarctic Program. The new base will take a year to build, cost $88.4 million, and should be completed by 2014. Once complete, Korea will be only the ninth country to operate more than one base in Antarctica. Currently, they are twenty countries with stations on the continent.

Finally, a friend showed me this clip of Antarctica research to be . . .


Chinstrap penguin ping pong

TranzAlpine Train from Westport to Christchurch

The first of many river crossings on the TranzAlpine.
After leaving our hostel, Celeen and I were headed for Greymouth. We dropped our rental car in Westport and then were able to hitch all the way down to Greymouth with one ride. A Dutch couple picked us up in the sunshine, took a rainy rest stop at the Pancake Rocks, and then dropped us off right at the train station. They were doing a whirlwind tour of New Zealand. Despite the photo above, Greymouth was named for a politician, not for the states of the sky.


Farmland and beech forests.
From Greymouth, we were hoping to catch the TranzAlpine train to Christchurch. The 223.8km journey takes just a little over four hours and would get me home just in time for ultimate practice. The journey starts on the west coasts, crosses the Southern Alps, and then descends to the east coast. It is supposed to be pretty spectacular and we thought it would be a fun way to travel instead of the bus that whips around every corner.


The Southern Alps.


A mostly empty river valley in the Southern Alps.
We started out our journey by taking advantage of traveling by train instead of bus. We used our table to comfortably make a lunch of mozzarella tomato basil baguette sandwiches at our seats. We were so hungry. They were so good. After we got moving, we found a set of seats that were empty so we spread out. The start of the journey was rainy so we didn't go out to the open air car. I might have even napped.


Fun cloud formations.


Whipping by the scenery.
As the journey progressed, the scenery and weather improved. Typically, the west coast is rainy and the Southern Alps create a rain shadow for the drier east coast. On our journey, the sun came out and was shining. When it did, Celeen and I moved to the tiny open air car for the rest of the journey. On the TranzCoastal trip, they had a full sized open air car. For this one, they had three times as many people but only two small open air cars. It was great to be out smelling everything whip past and not looking through a window.


Arthur's Pass looking west.


Celeen at Arthur's Pass looking southeast.
We took a quick stop at Arthur's Pass to let more people on the train. It was beautiful. The sun was blazing and it might have even been hot. Celeen and I had both hiked up there before, but it was neat to travel through by train instead of car. It took us into new areas. On the way out of Arthur's Pass, we saw all these trees with bright white blossoms and a new river gorge.


Mountains.


Our ride.
After the gorge, we slowly descended out of the mountains to the farms on the Canterbury plains. They are so green and remind me a lot of Pennsylvania. The train was great. I guess you could see a lot of the same scenery by car, but then the driver doesn't get to enjoy it as much. After bicycle, I think the train is my favorite way to travel. Ride the rails to trails!


The Canterbury plains.