JW in NZ

I flew in to I should possibly have been worried when having had a great day in Cambridge seeing hills road friends, we missed the last train home. That's a first for me. Thankfully we somehow bribed Rob's dad into coming to collect us.
Spent most of the rest of the night (morning) at my brothers party and even managed to get slightly over an hours sleep before waking up to do laundry that I'd forgotten about. I think I can truly call it last minute since within 60 seconds of taking the last jumper out of the dryer, I was in the car, Heathrow bound.

I should say that I knew my bags were heavy before I got to Heathrow, but having sighted some random scales before the check-in desk, I decided to find out what I was in for. Wasn't too bad as it turns out; only 11kg over the limit! I was wearing warm clothing but had definitely not started sweating until this point. Having crammed my rucksack with as much heavy, non-liquid, non-sharp, non-..., (thank you New Labor) stuff as I could find, I was vaguely re-assured to find out I was now only 3kg over. I feel that after Henley I was on good form to deal with this problem without paying, and true to style: the check-in assistant didn't notice my foot supporting my ski bag when it hung over the end of the scales! JW: 1, Virgin Atlantic: 0.
Surely me being only 63kg should count for something anyway. Bring on the airline that charges fat (err, surely heavier or horizontally challenged etc, ed.) people more for their seat.

My route out was quite simple, a long flight to Tokyo, half a day in Japan, then a long flight to Christchurch. Again, in keeping with my style, I managed to see quite a bit of Tokyo; my trip included both the mandatory earthquake (6.8 Richter scale!) and a trip up the government towers where at around 50 floors up, sat at the bar with beer in hand, I took this:



I did have a brief look in all directions - saw Mt. Fiji - but the bar was pretty immobile so spent most of the day with that view.

Not too much more to say really. Had a slight issue at CHC airport since I hadn't printed off my "e"-visa. Got into a light hearted debate with the lady in the "dollar shop" when she insisted that the travel plug I wanted was not in fact one dollar but two. (Figured that the one that I had was possibly insufficient for my laptop, speakers, camera, phone and shaver!). And, of course, having no accommodation booked in advance was not in the slightest problematic. Am now sat down over dinner with my 'free' crockery (JW: 2, Virgin Atlantic: 0). Nice.

A bit ahead of myself maybe, but thought that some of you might be interested in my itinerary for the afternoon:
Drive down to Queenstown in my 2.2l 4WD Subaru, put the bindings on my new skis, get a lift pass, and hit the slopes. Can't wait!