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Fri­day, 22^nd April, 2005

Christ­ch­urch Crowne Plaza Hotel. Their sys­tem says I have stayed here before. For the life of me, I just can­not remem­ber every being in this hotel. Air­travel and Hotels are an occu­pa­tional haz­ard. Someone has to invent a word for the feel­ing of not known­ing where you are upon wak­ing up in a hotel in a strange city.

Nick’s rules for stay­ing in Hotels:

1. Write the room num­ber you are stay­ing in on your hand
2. Steal the spare soap to take home
3. If there is chocol­ate on the pil­low, store it for fam­ily gifts when you get home

The first meet­ing in the morn­ing passes, with a recom­mend­a­tion to visit Vic­toria Lookout. Obvi­ously, all these places were named in the Queen Vic­toria era where people fawned over royalty.

My life and Allan’s are in his hands as we wind our way up to above 332 meters above Christ­ch­urch and look down on the city-on-the-Cantebury plain.

Allan, the Christchurch’s num­ber 78 taxi driver, is an inter­est­ing codger. Secondly, he’s 78 years old. He’d rather be out driv­ing a taxi than sit­ting at home. He’s been a car mech­anic and insur­ance assessor; and one gets the opin­ion he’s had some sad turns of events in his life.

After the last meet­ing of the week, Allan and I head out to the Royal New Zea­l­and Air Force Museum. Allan, in his younger days wanted to be a pilot. These earlier days coin­cided with World War 2; and his mum didn’t want to sign the papers per­mit­ting him to join.

Prob­ably that’s why Allan is with us today. At the museum, it com­mem­or­ates the 4149 New Zea­l­and air force crew who lost their life in World War 2. Like the museum in Dux­ford, the names over­wealm you — like Canada and to a lesser extent Aus­tralia — air­crews were trained over­seas and faught for the Home Coun­try and sadly died in their droves.

A Douglas Dakota, in RNZAF liv­ery for the 1953 Queen Eliza­beth Tour of New Zea­l­and, is in the middle of the hanger sur­roun­ded by a Spit­fire, donated RAAF Can­berra, Avro Anson and other older and later model aircraft.

We wander down through the “Danger: Mil­it­ary Area” gate (chain-link fence gate, not locked!) to the other hangers to see air­craft res­tor­a­tion: an alu­minium P40 and wooden Air­speed Oxford — the lat­ter rep­res­ent­ing one of 299 of these used by the NZ air force and even­tu­ally sold to farm­ers as chicken sheds in the 1950s for 10 pounds.

In the main museum there is a Spit­fire (Mark V?) from late in the war — in fact too late to see action — apart from star­ing in Reach For the Sky. Ori­gin­ally, this expens­ive and rare Spit­fire was moun­ted in the open on just near the Christ­ch­urch air­port entrance until the mid 1980s. The moun­ted Spit­fire is now a cheaper fibre­glass replica.

Time to leave Allan, and Christ­ch­urch. A spe­cial after­noon for us both. I won­der if Allan did take the rest of the day off. I hope he did.

Thursday, 21^st April, 2005

I think I hear rain out­side the win­dow of my hotel room. Rain in Wel­ling­ton defies all New­to­nian phys­ics by rain­ing sidewides.

As the umbrella decides to have struc­tural fail­ure on the way to the first meet­ing, I an soaked when I arrive.

This job has its dis­tinct down­sides. A major down­side is miss­ing birth­days, anniversar­ies and hol­i­days. This trip is Avril’s Birth­day I miss. Thank­fully, the present arrives on time, under­budget at home this morning.

The after­noon clears, and I have fin­ished my last meet­ing early. There is no early flight to Christ­ch­urch via Qantas — so I decide to go to Mount Vic­toria and take some photos.

Sam, the taxi driver, shares stor­ies from the Wel­ling­ton side from my last attempt at vis­it­ing this city. In Feb­ru­ary, I and some of my fel­low Adobe team mem­bers flew to within 50m of Wel­ling­ton, turned around, and landed back in Auck­land. In Wel­ling­ton, the city was full of people not going any­where. Sam also says that on the full-tide, with no wind, the har­bour becomes becalmed — and the sea is enchant­ing. I’d love to see that.

From Mount Vic­toria lookout, there is a chinook (heli­copter) lift­ing build­ing sup­plies to a hill­side behind the city; and planes fly under­neath where we are stand­ing to land at the ultra-exposed air­port. Its such a bright, cloud­less day that belies the true windy and change­able weather of this city.

To the air­port; sleep on the short flight to Christ­ch­urch, leave my book on the plane as I am abso­lutely knackered after a very full week.