February 3, 2007 Saturday

Jenny gets to Queenstown

You may be thinking that I missed a day of writing – “Shame on you, Jenny!”. But, that is not the case. I skipped over Feb. 2 to arrive in New Zealand on Feb. 3rd. the crazy thing is that it’s only 3 hours behind California, only a day ahead – really it’s 21 hours ahead. It messes with your head. So far, I’ve only seen the Aukland airport, so no cool NZ stuff to report yet

This is the plane that flew us into Queenstown - and see that mountain behind us? We flew so close to it on the landing that we thought we could touch it. It was awesome and a bit scary!

Later in Queenstown – I’ve met my first 2 teammates today. It’s cool to start seeing our team shape up. Torsten is a German who works and lives in Bray Ireland. I think he’ll be able to pull his weight – and maybe someone else’s, too. We walked around Queenstown with another Seagater – Angela and spent some time talking in the airport. He’s a nice guy.

Shariff is from Singapore. He’s also very nice. He’ll do just fine, too on the trail. He seems like he can handle himself well. I spent time with him and two other guys this evening. Torsten was supposed to go, too but I think he had konked out. His flight was much more arduous than ours and he was beat.

Queenstown is just beautiful. Big mountains surrounding gorgeous lake Wakatipu, lovely trees and a quaint little town of shops and restaurants. There was an art festival/market in the square. I think they have it every weekend. So, it’s been a great first day and now I’m ready to crash, myself.

Seagate gave us lots of cool stuff – 2 different backpacks, one with a built in water bottle (a camel-pack), a jacket, 3 very nice shirts for the race, a couple of pairs of gloves, a hat and a bunch of other necessities we’ll need for the week.

The Race!

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