Best Day Ever - Part One

Hello everybody following this blog. It is DONE and wow what a day. I feel so lucky to have done two New York marathons, the 2nd November was amazing. It has been rather frantic ever since then, hence the delay in this post. Let's do a recap.

The day we left NZ started with us leaving the Lake Clearwater bach. We did a final pack and then stuffed it all into Harry's car (my old Suby Outback). We had wrapped the racing chair ourselves with bubble wrap and sellotape. We then went down to Ashburton to drop off my car to 95 Walker St and see how things were going with the new roof. Fingers crossed lots of work gets done while we are away.

We then headed up to Christchurch and we picked up Kate to help us get to the airport. Kate was on sick leave because she had a mild dose of Shingles. On the way to Christchurch we found out our flight to Auckland was delayed. The time to get to from the domestic to the international terminal in Auckland was always going to be tight but this would make it impossible. Luckily we got some help at check-in and they put us on an earlier flight. Our attempt to Oneup our seats from cattle class to Premium Economy was unfortunately not successful. The flight was therefore not very comfortable but we were surrounded by other people doing the marathon and their supporters which was good. I did not manage any meaningful sleep, I did though have a helpful flight steward that got me some single malt whisky from Business Class in a real glass!! 

New York Nights

As we approached North America, we had an announcement from flight deck telling us that we needed to refuel in Houston to have spare fuel for possible delays due to storms in New York city. This meant we were delayed by about 90 minutes. While we were waiting on the plane to be refueled it was a great opportunity to talk with our neighbouring cattle class victims. We had a good chance to appreciate how many folks on the plane where heading to the big run. The rest of the flight went well with only minor delays getting into JFK. Once landed and off the plane us people who were last off soon whizzed by our other kiwi friends since we were given priority. Bags were easy to collect and before we knew it we were out off the terminal and Harry was there to pick us up a few moments latter.

Some how with my racing chair and wheelchair on top of Harry's car our bags and us managed to get in his rather small car (the boot was full of Harry's gear). Harry then took on the New York traffic which was pretty slow but eventually freed up and we were in Manhattan and at our hotel at about 1130. I needed some cleaning up after some bowel issues and then at 1230am we were sitting down for dinner. Our rather big day ended at 0200am New York time.