Time Travel and the days after

Departure: San Francisco, CA 9:00pm September 4, 2010
Arrive: Auckland, NZ 5:15am September 6, 2010
Travel Time: 13hrs 15min
Time Travel:  What happened to September 5, 2010? 
 

International date line/2010
The seats on New Zealand Air recline almost all the way down.  On a long flights it seems like a posture perfectly conducive to sleep. Except when the person in front of you reclines to the maximum degree, they are basically in your lap, and your face, and your brain.  Snores and sniffles fill in the gaps of impending claustrophobia. I shuffled my antsy body to the back of the plane to stand with slightly less discomfort. Standing up is the new sitting down. I have my stop watch counting the hours, minutes, and seconds we've been in the air. 09:03:42.04. Long flight. 
 


9/6/2010
I'M IN NEW ZEALAND and I'm really very tired. Auckland reminds me a lot of the Pacific Northwest. It's grey, windy, rainy-ish, hilly, and has this tall touristy attraction called the Space Needle, I mean, Sky Tower. With bags under our eyes and hoods over our heads, Denise and I walked along the piers and wandered through central Auckland. The whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing is just ... wrong. And the water in the toilet bowl, the light switches, the escalators ...

I wanted to access the Internet about 50,000 times today and my phone is misbehaving. I guess it could be my fault but probably not. The public library has computers and I waited 45min for 20min of time. Who can get anything done in 20 minutes? Not me. After taking that typing class in middle school, I think my wpm is pretty darn high. I blame the Internet for being slow and the clock obviously being tampered with for my inability to compose a single email in my reserved time. (update: phone + Internet fixed, thanks international ATT helpline for fixing the problem you created)

There are puddles of water on the jacket of the guy next to me. The weather appears to have settled on rain. I now realize it's getting dark outside -- it's only 5pm. 
 

9/7/10
Auckland Fireman are really good looking. Just saying. 
 
Early this morning, Denise and I were sitting in our hotel room talking about how awesome this place is.  Mid-conversation, the fire alarm goes off. There is a big red button on the wall that says: "Smoke Alarm. Press to acknowledge." Denise runs over and pushes the button but the alarm continues. We then hear a recorded voice telling us to evacuate the building. Oh. Oh ok. Denise is yelling at me to grab my important papers and I am yelling at her to put her sneakers on. Funny scene. 

Important what? Sneakers? 

I grab my backpack, she gets dressed and we are off ... Running down 20 flights of stairs! There was an older woman racing down behind us, holding onto Denise for support, and a man in front of me lighting the dark stairwell with his cell phone.
Someone on the second floor was reheating their pizza in the oven ...in the pizza box  ...  and forgot ... FIRE! Don't worry, everything is a-okay.

We climbed a volcano today. I think. I don't really know if I believe it though because there was green grass and trees and flowers and birds everywhere. But I swear, they said it was a volcano. Auckland is built on 50 volcanoes and there is a reservoir of magma 100km below ground. 
The beauty of danger.