The Eagle has landed

Day 1 Thursday February 16 The day is finally here! I got up at 9:30 and repacked my suitcase. I always over pack so I unpacked a few things. My new Swiss Army luggage is sweet! I called Rainbow Cab at 12:00 and had them pick me up and bring me to the light rail. It was cold waiting for the train. It's an overcast day, about 15 deg F. I was glad I was out of the wind, and we had the heat lamp on which helped a little. A $1.5 0 fare to the airport is a great deal and you almost get there just as fast. I just saved Seagate $30 on cab fare and $150 on parking, cha ching! : ) On the way to the airport on the light rail a woman across from me sneezed 14 times. I started to wonder what would happen if you couldn't stop sneezing, pass out?

I got to the airport at 12:52, perfect timing. I stopped at Subway at the airport and picked up some lunch. As I was walking to the gate I ran into a coworker, Brian Pollock (there's a pic of Brian and I standing behind a table below) and we sat down to wait. Brian and I play hockey together on the Seagate Hockey League. It's Monday and Friday mornings at 6:30 Am at the Shakopee ice rink. Yeah, I know, it's early and yes it does suck getting up at 5:15 AM. As we were sitting there I could tell there were a lot of Seagate folks and I recognized a few. I'm looking forward to meeting the ones I recognize but don't know yet. A little while later Brendan Moore showed up in his shorts and running shoes. I guess he's ready huh?(there's a pic of Brendan and I sitting next to each other waiting to get on the plane in Christchurch) He sat down with Brian and I. Bren plays hockey with us too. We boarded the plane at 1:45 and we were airborne at 2:25.

I've spent my time on the flight to L.A. learning all the functions of my new Highgear Summit watch. It's really cool. It has a compass, barometer, altimeter, temperature, chronograph, and time zone settings. I need to set the altimeter. It says were only at 8471 ft which is just a little off since we're at 30,000ft. As you can see (picture below) I'm writing this on my Toshiba e330 pocket PC. I'm listening to Kenny Chesney's new Cd. Good stuff! The flight from LA to Chrsitchurch wasn't too bad. We were on an really old 747. It felt like a time warp back to the 70's. I had an exit row so it wasn't too bad. I was able to stretch my legs at least. The plane was so old that when they played new movies they looked 15 years old because the projector must have been wearing out. Kind of funny. Thank God for ear plugs. I had a screaming 3 month old baby behind me.

After landing in Christchurch we went through customs and waited to get on our plane to Queenstown. It was a small 2x2 20 seat plane. It was cool tho. As we were coming into Queenstown the plane was flying between mountains (see pic below). That was cool. We finally landed in Quuenstown and they bussed us over to the Hotel. Queesntown is breathtaking. You're surrounded my mountains and they're a clear blue lake in the middle. When we checked into the room they had all kinds of sweet gear waiting for us. Two meroni wool t shirts, a performance pull over, a water proof wind breaker, a pair of biking gloves, a head band thing, full on macpac backpac and macpac water back pac. Everything had the Eco Seagate logo on it. This is some high quality stuff. I wish I would have know it would have saved me $300 on the same stuff I bought for the trip!

The weather is just perfect. I put all my stuff away and jumped in the shower. After 22 hours of traveling I needed one. It felt great. Water pressure! Whoa, they must have the water at the top of the mountain because it comes out hard and fast, perfect. After we all showered we met up to grab some lunch. The rest of the day was spent walking through town and getting a feel for the place. We're all really excited to be here and can't wait to get started. I'm going to stay up a little later to get myself used to the time difference by tomorrow. I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to be walking on the right or the left side of the sidewalk, I think it's left...or right...

All packed and ready to go!

A picture of the traveling suitcase on the light rail to the Airport.