Auckland airport pleasures

looking at the flight schedule board always tells me i'm in a new country:

Considering that both Kiwis and Americans come from the same culinarily dreadful background, why is it that while the food at LAX consists of the usual terrible chain "restaurant" offerings -- Chili's and MacDonald's -- while the Auckland airport offers real food?

While waiting the six hours at LAX for my international flight, i opted to get food at a place called something like "le croissant doree" because i saw baguettes with ham or turkey and brie and slices of fresh apples , as well as what appeared to be real baked cookies...

very pleased with myself, i took a few bites of my turkey and brie and quickly discovered that once again, appearances can be deceiving...  it truly was a baguette; more baguette than meat or cheese.........

However, in Auckland airport's transit lounge, i found a large, open bright space with a real cafe,  comfortable individual modern chairs actually designed for humans to sit in -- that is,  not secured to each other -- and gloriously real food.  The selection was beyond anything i've seen in any American airport, and certainly fresher:  sausage rolls, meat pies, salads, pasta salads, pastries that looked as good as anything in Whole Foods, and a Thai staff that was sweet and funny.

My first real meal off the plane:


Arugula salad with red onion, cherry tomatoes and flaked
parmesan... even the vinagrette pack was delicious; smoked fish pie, vegetarian samosa, and a fine cappucino

then another fine cappucino, and great dense carrot cake.  try finding that in an American airport.........

and of course there HAD to be one crapburger; people

were lined up to pay for this industrial junk exactly what i

paid for the lunch above.



i like the direct approach to cigarette warnings, especially the"Smoking Causes Foul and Offensive Breath" one on Port Royal cigarettes

Watched my road bike being loaded on the plane:

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

LAX to Auckland

Our 777 stood parallel to the active runway and I could look across the 100-meter space to the preceding plane, waiting to take off, when suddenly i was hit by what felt like a wall of sound and power that shook our fuselage.  The enormous, ungainly white planebegan to roll past my window, and as we rotated onto the runway, i could see that earlier plane already  disappearing west through the last bit of dusk and out over the blueblack Pacific night.

As we began our rollout and our lumpish mass of metal, electronics and humans moved faster and faster, lights on the buildings along the runaway seemingly began to move past us, transforming them from pragmatically squat airport service facilities into  into beautiful streaking patterns of abstract light.  The tires released the runway and we were out over the deep black Pacific night. Only the dull unchanging roar of the engines and the flickering wingtip lights indicated something out there beyond my darkened window.

In those moments between releasing the brakes and at last lifting off, are the pilots at all conscious of their enormous burden of
responsibility -- the lives and webs of relationships of hundreds on the plane, not to mention of those on the ground -- just behind the cockpit door?

Very early in the morning there's brief time when the rising sun, following us west from yesterday, illuminates the engine cowling and lights up the small red Qantas kangroo logo........

                                        

 

                                                     Pacific dawn two hours east of Auckland  NZ

The sheer immensity and mystery of the Pacific........hours and hours of enormous emptiness, with only the transient clouds to mark passage across that deep blue edge of the world.  As many times as i've made this long flight, i love the sense of being seemingly timelessly suspended above this great void.  Floating on the edge of space, I think can see the curvature of the earth:

These Pacific clouds look like they've been pulled up from the surface of the water, stretching away to the horizon...

                                                               A tasty and welcome brekkie courtesy of Qantas

And we're approaching my beloved New Zealand.........feet dry and soft rolling hills pass under us.  I feel home even though I still have 12 hours to go.....

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

CATCHING UP

Taken me longer to verticalize than i anticipated -- went for first road bicycle ride and managed to fall over trying to go uphill since i was in too high a gear, bruising my hip and tearing the thumbnail on my right hand, so the space bar is painful to tap  -- but posts
are brewing.



If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Local flavor

For me, local newspapers say it all:

                                                                                                           Sounds like they were accidentally electrocuted................
                                                                                                               


If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Denver -- LAX

the usual hassles with overweight luggage at the Denver airport: 6.5 lbs over on 50 lbs on the bicycle case and 8 (!!!) on the suitcase, most of which latter was culinary goodies for Tim and Anna.

when i suggested to the agent

"how about i pay the overage on one and we forget the other?"

she very indignantly responded, "Sir, we don't negotiate here!"

well, that put me in my place....

after 10 minutes of waiting for a supervisor to approve letting the bike case go w/o additional payment, she finally arrived and the case was allowed on. only $50 for the overage on the suitcase...

and so on to LA

here's the only view of LA i like -- temporary arrival, with a rainbow following the wing.......




and the sunset ahead of the wing..
























I'm in Auckland right now, and will fill in later. Food first.

only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Packing, part 1: clothes

There are two schools of packing: one i call the take-it-just-in-case-and-i'll-find-somewhere-to-stuff-it school. My friend below, passing thru Boulder on his way home after a cross country ride to the BMW Nationals last year, is of that school. He's so prepared that he even carries TWO rolls of electrical tape -- the extra one in his jacket pocket just in case (of something). I think i counted 12 different carrying cases on his motorcycle......

Corrrection from my generous friend, below:

You missed 2 of the cases

One is the Camera case strapped to the outside of the tank bag.

 

The other is the bag on the other passenger footpeg.

 

So 14 in all if you do not count the bags in the bags, the BMW tool kit, 5 jacket pockets and 4 pants pockets.

 

click photos to enlarge

The other school, to which i proudly subscribe, is take less and if you really need it, you can buy it -- somewhere. The advantage of motorcycle travel is that people EXPECT you to be pungent and grungy, and you are sweaty much of time anyway in your riding gear, so any bit of tasteful attire once out of the shower and on the street seems tres elegant to the surprised locals.

this is my complete clothing allowance for a month-long trip:

and it all fits into this compressible drybag; the secret is the vent valve. Like a thermarest, squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag and tighten down the valve. Voila! It is geshrunken. Unfortunately, this trick does not reduce the weight..........


Oh, almost forgot a subset of the first school, above. Not sure what to call it, but i photographed this bizarrely packed vehicle at the Sturgis Motorcycle (read: Harley-Davidson) rally,

YOUR CHANCE TO HAVE YOUR NAME RIGHT HERE ON THIS PAGE!

enter the sort-of-official
NAME THE PACKING STYLE
COMPETITION.

YOUR COMMENTS WILL BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED BY OUR PANEL OF LINGUISTICALLY AND HUMORACIOUSLY EXPERT
"EXPERTS" AND THEIR SELECTION WILL BE PLACED RIGHT BELOW THE PHOTOGRAPHY ABOVE.

ENTER AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT! NO RISK!
TRY IT ABSOLUTELY FREE IN THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN COMPUTER!
DID I SAY "ABSOLUTELY FREE!" ? YES, NO ENTRY FEE!

FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE PRESENT TO WIN!!!

tomorrow: motorcycle clothes, gizmos, accessories, connectors, cute storage boxes, and other items from my cabinet of curiosities (probably won't be as interesting as this post -- but you never know).






If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Weather

According to my Tassie friend Tim,

there is a joke here that a "West Coast shower" takes about 3 days to pass over.

Looks like a visit to fabled and beautiful Strahan might be wet, but..............

I admit that I do love it when tourists in their house-sized SUVs ask me, in a very concerned tone,

what do you do when it rains????

well, i respond, either i stop, or -- i keep riding.

they always seem very disappointed with that response; not sure what answer would match their expectations: I melt?

Once, riding back from the Big Bend across Texas, it was raining so hard and for so long across that vast flatness that i took my own advice and stopped under an overpass; after 20 minutes i got tired of being splashed by the trucks roaring by and so rode into the nearest town... i pulled my motorcycle under the porch overhang of a restaurant and entered, squishing my way to a booth.... and then the owner came over and asked if he could put my soaked gloves into his oven to dry..............ah, Texas: your generosity always touches me.

it's only water, and through the past 20 years, my Aerostich riding gear has kept me completely dry in a lot of profoundly rainy and potentially miserable situations:

1997: on the Autobahn at 85mph thru a full day of solid walls of water on the way to muddy training at BMW's Hechlingen Enduro School

what seemed like endless days of rain in Alaska, 2000:

toward the Candian Rockies in 2006:

Thomas, does your red GS seem....ah.... tired?



photo by Thomas Feddersen

2006: Near Jasper, BC -- had these beasts charged, i figured the armor in my Aerostich would protect me, but i wasn't too sure if BMW warranties the GS against assault by horned ruminants:


photo by Thomas Feddersen

somewhere in the West, 2006, do these make me look like Mickey Mouse on acid?


photo by Thomas Feddersen


Heading to the Hyderseek rally in Alaska; David MacKenzie during a day of wet riding thru British Columbia's deep forests to Port Hardy -- up the length of Vancouver Island: May, 2008.


Snow in Idaho: June (!) 2008
photo by Danielle Sarandon

and in 2009 charming some very surprised ladies in Lake Superior on the way back from our Lake Superior Tour
( http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=498475 ) :

photo by Dan Cohen


While Tim lives on the north side of the island, there will be rain. I've been so used to living in Colorado's glorious dry climate (14% average humidity in the winter) that i have to keep in mind that there are places where wet is normal. Hmmmm.

You can see the weather here:

http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/tas/

it doesn't just SEEM i ride in the rain a lot -- i do.

back to packing.




If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton