Sitting in Nate’s in the Ottawa airport waiting for flight.
Last Canadian meal before beef time!
Dreary weather is looking in on us from the outside world. Overcast and the like.
I’m peering out at a robin’s-egg blue Air Canada plane at gate 17. Ours is next to it.
C-GJWO is our equipment. Airbus 319. Looks air-worthy. We’ve got about 1:15 till lift-off 0:45 till we board.
Update: there was a gate change, we were actually at Gate 15. Don’t know what the tail ID was. Sorry kev.
01/01/08
Well, I’d better get used to starting to type out 08 instead of 07, since the new year is now upon us. As I write this, I’ve already spent an entire day in 2008, and am indeed looking forward to getting to bed and resting, as tomorrow it’s back on the bike for a tough slog up a very long hill up to 500m to get to Rotorua. Luckily, I don’t have to stress too much about it, as I’ve already booked accommodations, as well as deciding to spend 3 nights in Rotorua, since it is basically one of the major tourist locations, and a center of sorts for Maori culture, which I’d like to learn a bit more about. However, this post isn’t about tomorrow, even though it comes to you from the future 🙂 Read on about my day off in Tauranga, as well as my New Years experience in this charming city.
18/03/08
Greetings from high in New Zealand at Arthur’s Pass village. I’m in the cafe/store at the moment just killing some time before my train gets here to whisk me back to Christchurch. I’ve taken advantage of the time to book all my remaining rail travel, and just made the realization that this is Easter Weekend coming up. Looks like I might end my trip in the tent, as hostels are booked pretty solid for that weekend already. Oops. Hadn’t counted on that at all! However, that’s the future, you’re probably much more interested in the recent past and present, n’est-ce pas? Today was an absolute stunner of a day up in the mountains. I must have a tramping weather horseshoe up my butt, because yet again when I tramped hard and fast up into the mountains, I was rewarded with clear blue skies and some of the most magnificent 360 degree views I’ve had in my entire trip. I’ve looked at my pictures, and sadly, they can not do justice to what I actually saw. In spite of that, please check them out, and the map showing you just where I went hiking.
Alright, so they said that I was a little out of my mind. They said that I had a high risk of getting seriously injured. They said that most people really don’t do what I wanted to. But as you have no doubt asked yourself many times, who exactly are “they”? Of course, I’m talking about the fact that I had decided to do some cycling while I was in the Dominican Republic. After all, I had gone to all the trouble of packing my bike in an airline flight box, dragged it to the resort (literally) and re-built it there the first day. I was staying at a place called Playa Dorado, which is not exactly in Puerto Plata, and just up the road from two places called Sosua and Cabarete. These are two places quite well known as being surf towns, and having great beaches. I didn’t feel like paying the $60+ USD that the organized excursions wanted to charge for going there. Plus, you were stuck on their schedule. Taxis were another option, and would have cost about a quarter that, but really, I was determined to experience at least a little of the Dominican on two wheels. And so I formulated my plan.
Greetings sports fans. This post is definitely well overdue, but as you can guess by the title, I was really more focused […]
