In a holding pattern...

The weather gods haven't allowed us to land at McMurdo yet so I'm still in Christ Church enjoying an unexpected week of vacation. There is some of this... Some of this....

And some of this...

And to top it all off I got to use a bike with a kickstand. I haven't used one since I was 10 so it was all good. Everyone knows the inevitable fun that comes with a bike with the fixings. Except when I chained it up to go have lunch I came back to the tide having come in and almost swallowing little Red. When I left it the water was just to where the water turns to glass in the picture. Oops, forgot my tide tables. By the time I got it unchained the water was ankle deep.

The kickstand worked as well as it did when I was 10.

Just a glory picture here.

The cathedral is gorgeous and the sunsets from here are amazing. We got some hiking in but the fog rolled in just in time to ruin our view. Lots of time has been spent having morning coffee while watching people enjoy the market, listening to musicians and catching up on my reading.

The Avon River weaving through the Botanical Gardens. The last river I'll see for a while.

I'm enjoying fine cuisine and great wine from local wineries. Of course I'm studying about hip dysplasia and lumbar pathology in most of my spare time. I swear! I'm on the manifest for tomorrow's flight to McMurdo so I hope the next update will be from the ice!

Christ Church

I made it to Christ Church, New Zealand despite a touchdown in the windy sandstorm of Sydney to change planes. It looks like the flight to the ice is delayed due to stormy weather in Antarctica. But CC is definitely not a bad place to be while waiting it out. We had more orientation with the recommendation that we take four 8-min showers per week while at McMurdo. This is actually quite liberal compared to the mandatory restriction of two 2-min showers per week for the folks at the South Pole station.

Today we went to the US Antarctic Center to get our issue of Extreme Cold Weather gear. My sister and I were here four years ago. It was then that I decided I was going to find a way to work on the ice so it was fun to return under these circumstances. The clothes for our work were distributed. I'm getting adjusted to the time change and getting some runs in around the beautiful botanical gardens. I'm currently reading The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford and next up is a re-read of Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

Good news on the budget front. The program was given quite a bit more money to go toward fresh vegetables while on the ice so the veterans are really happy about that as am I. We are hoping our flight doesn't "boomerang" tomorrow. Slang for an ice flight that takes off for McMurdo but has to return due to inclement weather. The record for boomerangs is 7! So if all goes well I will get to the ice this week without having to turn around. More time in NZ isn't too shabby though!