New Zealand New Zealand

Christmas Day 2008.

We get up at 5 in the morning. Marcin trips the first crisis by pretending not to have the keys to get back into the house after the first load (I really don't have any). I narrowly avoid killing him in the staircase while he smirks down at me in glee.

Even the taxi driver is stunned into silence at the obscenity of the hour. At the airport it transpires that our luggage is overweight. This is mainly because I have decided to pack all my warm clothes and my sleeping bag in my hand baggage in the event that we crash land in the mountains, survive, and need to keep warm while waiting for rescue. This means I can't use the usual packing technique of compressing all the heavy things into a leaden but innocuous-looking carry-on bag, leaving the checked baggage within the weight limit. Marcin's smirk (from this angle it must look charming rather than invite a homicide) convinces the woman at the check-in to give us a discount.

Now we have to wait because in my overcaution we have arrived 2 1/2 hours before the flight actually departs. There is a lego display of a wind farm and propellor-driven boats which you can activate by blowing into a hole in the glass case that contains them, and we spend a long time examining them- the model builder has gone into great detail and included a lego diver being approached by a lego shark, some lego sunbathers on deck being watched by a voyeur through lego binoculars, some lego barnyard animals grazing around the base of the lego wind turbines. Then we buy a copy of The New Yorker which is so dense that it lasts us almost the entire trip. Such profligacy with words is unheard-of, even in the weekend magazine. There is an article about what makes a good teacher that rests on an intricate analogy with choosing a quarterback (apparently it's as impossible to predict when promise will fulfil itself on the gridiron field as it is in the classroom); the first thousand words are about football, and only then is the real point of the article introduced.

On board the plane, we forget all about The New Yorker , because we have been upgraded to business class! That means real cutlery, remote-controlled seats, a personal conversation with the hostess. I spend most of the flight with my feet sticking out in front of me, marvelling that they don't even come close to the next seat back. Marcin listens to a voice recording of a book about building your wealth. By the time we land it feels like we have already lived several extra unexpected lifetimes, as early risers, business class travellers and readers of the New Yorker.

In Christchurch airport there is a bike assembly area. It is located right next to the smokers area so we assemble our bikes in a cloud of carcinogenic smoke. We go into the city and eat something and meet 2 cyclists who have just finished their trip. In the evening we go and drink beer with them and they give us their cycling guide and their address in Singapore. By the end of the day we have spoken to more strangers in 24 hours than in the past 6 months combined.