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.
Hello everyone! I figured it was time to give you all an update on the happenings of me over in Saudi Arabia. As you likely pieced together from the last couple posts, we had a very smooth arrival in the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the Internet connection from here is rather slow, making it difficult to fire off too many emails or do other things. In spite of this, I’ve still managed to post quite a few pictures on our flickr page, so feel free to head over to our sets page and check out the latest while we’re over here. I will also attempt to give a little insight into our first few days over here in Riyadh and the Diplomatic Quarter. I’ve decided that although these are the same physical place, life is much different in the DQ than in Riyadh. Namely, I am on ‘Canadian soil’ when I’m at the embassy and in the house here, so we have a lot more breathing room in terms of what we can do while here compared to traveling around the city. I’ll try to keep this post on the short side, as we are leaving shortly for the camel souq and the horse races, and I’ve only got a little time to sort out my thoughts. Read on for the details.
27/12/07
Hi all. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and Boxing Day. I don’t know about anyone else, but as for me, the day after Boxing day it was basically back to work. I left the comfort of Auckland and hit the high road. My goal was to get up and basically leave as soon as I could, since I had mapped out a fairly long day of biking, clocking in at around 90km including some rather large hills along the way. However, as with the best laid plans, things don’t always go as planned. I was fairly effective the night before in sorting my gear out, but I hadn’t fully packed it, leading to a bit of a delay in getting out the door. Read on for the rest of the day, and check out the map.
08/01/08
Hi folks! Well, this should probably count as the shortest post thus far, as it was a very uneventful day for me. I woke up, it was raining, I got on my bike, it was raining. I pedalled for 3 hours, it was raining. Got to the hostel, it was raining. Yup. Rain city over here for the day. As a result, my little map has a grand total of 3 pictures, one of which you see here, and 2 of which were taken at pretty much the same time. There just wasn’t anything to photograph for you! Sorry! In spite of that, I’m now in Taurangi, and feverishly planning out my next several days, in which I will truly be out of contact completely with the outer world. Yup, I’m planning to (along with Ralph) take a stab at the Tongariro Northern Circuit, as well as summitting both Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Nguarahoe. You might know this area more as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. Read on for a little bit more.
14/02/08
Wow, look at that kids, it’s St. Valentine’s Day! Well, I can’t say I’m doing anything romantic at all to mark the day, but rather, chose to hurtle myself over a canyon and fly through the same said canyon in a jet boat. Later on tonight, I believe my hosts and I will be doing somewhat of a pub crawl around Queenstown. Lucky for me, they don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, so I’m not really intruding. Otherwise, I would’ve just found my own entertainment for the night elsewhere. Today is another pseudo-rest day, with the most I’m doing physically is walking to town and back to get shuttle buses. The legs are recovering nicely, and I think I’ll be back on track with another day like this. Lucky for me, that’s exactly how I planned it out! Hee hee. Anyway, for today, I put together a map showing where I did things, but they are not my typical biking maps. Read on, and check out the pics too.
