Auckland....Again

I landed back in Auckland around 0530 in the morning only to realize a major problem with my itinerary: the travel agent I bought my tickets through sorta neglected the time zone difference between Rarotonga and Auckland (-10 GMT and +12 GMT...a big difference). What does that mean, you ask? To make a long story short, my flight to L.A. from Auckland left Auckland International 5 hours before I left Rarotonga. Dealing with rescheduling the flight was as simple as calling Raytheon, explaining what happened, and waiting for them to find another flight for me (a process that took 30 minute). Unfortunately, because of a winter storm on the Atlantic Coast, I wouldn't be able to get a flight until the following day which meant I had to find a hotel and something to do for 30 hours. So I gathered my bags, found a hotel near the airport and decided to catch up on all of the sleep I had missed out on over the past week or so. I'm not going to lie when I say I say the night was very uneventful. I ordered a pizza, listened to music, and took care of some things job wise for the summer. I went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 1000. I decided to go to the airport considerably early...4 hours before my flight early. With a new book (A House In Fez by Suzanna Clarke - A story about an Australian Ex-Pat couple who by a house in the ancient Medina of the city of Fez, Morocco and go through the arduous task(s) of repairing it to it's original state), plenty of magazines, and my normal monk-like patience, I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait at my boarding gate for a few hours. For once, out of most of the things I've done over the past couple weeks, checking in and getting through customs went incredibly smooth. I spent less than 10 minutes checking my bags and getting my tickets. It took me about 15 minutes to make it through the departure side of customs. I found my gate, and decided to walk around for a bight to eat.

While walking around, I ran into a really good friend of mine, Kelly Jacques, with whom I started to converse about the past week or so. Considering we hadn't seen each other since probably the first Saturday after we got off the ice, we spent a lot of time filling each other in on our adventures. Apparently, she had a worse bout of bad luck than I had. Her rental car had been broken in and she had a lot of stuff stolen from her. It was great to see her smile through it but I still felt bad for her. I can't imagine having all of my stuff stolen out of my car...especially my climbing equipment...I'd probably cry! While talking to her, it did dawn on my how lucky I was to have missed my original flight otherwise I wouldn't be flying with her. At the gate, we noticed about 16 other people from Antarctica scattered about the crowds. We talked with one woman from the fuels department and reminisced of an interesting season. After a couple hours at the gate and one last look across the land past the airport, we boarded our plane, we grabbed our seats, and we said good-bye to New Zealand.