Delayed

CHAPTER 3

The phone rang at 4:30am. A rolling Kiwi accent on the other end curtly said “Your flight has been delayed 24 hours. Someone will be at your hotel at 8:30 to sort out more travel funds.” and then hung up.

Bummer!  I told Kacey the bad news over the noise of her shower and then crawled back under the covers.  We had been planning on a 5:30am departure to the airport for our flight to Antarctica, but now we would be delayed at least a day, if not two.  Luckily this would be a military flight, and was only held up due to bad weather at the McMurdo Station, our first stop in Antarctica.  Of all places to be stuck, Christchurch is pretty pleasant, and another day in the Southern Hemisphere spring weather would certainly do us good before heading off to the frozen expanses of the South Pole.

The fact that we made it this far was actually a miracle in and of its self- the day after our flight from LA to New Zealand, indeed probably while we were in the air, Quantas Airlines canceled all its flights over a labor dispute, leaving some 70,000 travelers stranded worldwide.  We would probably still be sitting in the cramped LAX Terminal 4, eating chips and salsa and drinking overpriced beers at Chili’s- but luckily we we’re here, with a nice big suite for a hotel room, a bunch of funny colored New Zealand spending money in our pockets, and nothing to do except wander around town while we waited for word of our next departure time.

Christchurch is a modest size town by US standards, about 375,000 residents, with a university and even a slew of professional sports teams, but in New Zealand, it is a veritable metropolis- the largest town on New Zealand’s South Island, and the second largest in the country.  All that being said, there is not actually that much to do in Christchurch tourist wise, maybe a couple of days worth if you really spread things out, but it is still a charming town with a laid back atmosphere, just right for a couple of soon to be frozen travelers.  We spent a lot of time at the beautiful Hagley Park, jogging there each morning, boating on the Avon River that winds through the grounds one sunny afternoon, and walking through the botanical gardens encompassed by the park every time the weather was nice.

We also took a trip out to the beach.  Imagine something similar to Northern California, or some places along the Oregon Coast, and you will get a pretty good idea of the scenery and climate.  The water was freezing and the air was brisk, even though it is the middle of spring here.  The neighborhoods around this area of Christchurch were a little run down, or maybe neglected would be a better word, and the beach was fairly deserted.  There was a long concrete pier jutting prominently out into the ocean, built in the 90’s to replace an earlier wooden pier that was demolished in the 60’s. At a cost of $4 million NZ dollars, half of which was raised by the local residents, you would think that this attraction would be the pride of Christchurch, but sadly it is seemingly only frequented by a half dozen crab fishermen- at least that is how it was during our visit.

The reason, or at least some of the reason, for the lack of local activities and the general feeling of malaise at the beach, could probably be attributed to the catastrophic earthquake that utterly devastated the city at the end of February this year.   The entire downtown area, several dozen square blocks, was laid low by the 6.3 tremor.  6.3 isn’t particularly high on the seismic scale, the quakes that hit Chile and Japan  recently were  more than a 100 times stronger, but this earthquake’s epicenter was only a mere 5km below the surface, which caused an incredible amount of ground motion.  A good number of buildings, mostly ones constructed with brick, collapsed into huge piles of rubble at the onset of the initial quake,  and the majority that still stand, even after the countless aftershocks that continue to occur, have had irreparably damage done to their structural integrity, making them uninhabitable and unusable.  It is said that over 90% of the downtown, which was the very heart and soul of the city, will need to be raised to the ground.  Eight months into the reconstruction process and only 20% of the buildings have been removed.  It is going to be years, if not decades, before Christchurch is built back to even a semblance of its former glory.

The ruined city center is definitely not a tourist attraction, but being a structural engineer, I have some morbid fascination with seeing destroyed buildings, and trying to imagine the forces at work that brought about their demise.  Thus, we made a point of walking to the former downtown to take a look at what was left.  The entire area is cordoned off by high fences and guard posts to restrict access to all but the demolition crews.  Around the periphery though, there were still plenty of buildings that had been condemned, but which we were able to look into through their dusty storefront windows.  Some were in utter chaos, others cleaned out, but some were left untouched, almost frozen in the instant that the earthquake struck- a men’s clothing store with the manikins knocked over still sporting their clothes, and stacks of crisp new dress shirts thrown to the floor off the shelves, laying right where they fell, but now covered with a thick layer of dust; a classy bistro restaurant, the tables still set with dishes, a half empty bottle of wine, and even a check left unpaid by the fleeing customer.

It was a sobering sight.  I can only imagine the terror felt by the people that where there to experience the quake, and the heartache of the residence whose homes and businesses lay in ruins.  On the positive side, the city seems pretty resilient, and there are already some enterprising opportunists that have set up temporary shops and restaurants in cleared lots using modified shipping containers stacked on top of each other like huge colorful Legos.

Besides being a charming New Zealand town, Christchurch is conveniently located relatively close to Antarctica, which is why the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) chose to establish their staging base here.  Before we could catch our flight south we had to make a visit to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) to pick up and try on our extreme cold weather gear (ECW).   We are quickly learning that this being a government program, they will slap on an acronym whenever possible, and then string them all together when they talk.  A mild example would be “Go get your ECW at the USAP CDC”.  This nomenclature is particularly frustrating for first timers like us who don’t know most of the acronyms, more often than not leading to embarrassment when we ask for an explanation and are looked down on like ignorant children.  But I digress.

Back to the CDC…  As a newbie, trying on your ECW is a rather stressful experience- we were shown into a huge warehouse, with hundreds of big orange duffle bags lining the walls.  Your first task is to hunt through the mayhem looking for two bags with your name on them.  Then you strip down to your skivvies, pull an article of clothing from one of your bags and see if it fits.  Chances are it doesn’t, or it is damaged in some way, and you need to go up to the counter to ask for a replacement.  In addition to this, you are given the option to return anything you don’t want or think you won’t need.  This sounds simple, but with no clue as to what you will actually need, a nagging sense that you are already terribly over the baggage weight allowance, 30 other sweaty half naked men hurriedly putting on and ripping off their own mountain of clothes all around you, with the clock steadily ticking away towards the departure time of the hotel shuttle, and the whole situation can become a little overwhelming.  As you see other people start to finish and leave the room you become frantic with the idea that you are going too slow, holding everyone up, and in the end you just shove everything back in your bags, place them against the wall, and walk out of the room trying to look as nonchalant as possible, though inside you are racked with dread that you forgot some crucial piece of gear.   I’m not saying that this exact scenario happened to me, but it is easy to imagine that it could…

Finally, after a second day with an early morning call informing us of another 24 hour flight delay, the phone was weirdly silent on the third morning.  We packed our bags and headed down to the lobby at 5am hoping to see our shuttle to the CDC for our flight to Antarctica.  To our surprise the shuttle was there, though I still felt a little incredulous for some reason.  Sure enough, as I was loading my bags on to the bus, the lobby phone rang, followed quickly by the hotel attendant running outside to tell us that there was another delay, but this time it was only four hours.   We lugged all our bags back to our room and crawled into bed, fully expecting another call in a few hours.  It never came…