Oliver & Lasswell Travel Blog: April 2026

I guess I'd better get serious about this right off the bat. Even if I don't have a lot of anything interesting to say (yet i will probably say way too much about it).

As I write this we're taking a bit of a break after arrving in Christchurch around 10:30am local time. After arriving we checked into the hotel and the group of us headed out to the nearby downtown area to eat lunch, look around a little, and go to get some supplies at the ol' grocery store.

Cool thing here? They speak English! Except we've been greeted by several people that say something that clearly means "hello" but we can't figure out what it is they're saying. Probably something in Maori. We'll have to ask Brian Farrant, the tour company operator, what it is that they are saying.

All-in-all. . . feel pretty darn good after flying all night and somehow missing out entirely on April 5th. We left SFO at 10:45pm 4/4 (probably took to the air about 30 mins after that) and flew all night to arrive at 6:58am on Monday morning, 4/6. I haven't bothered to try to time out how that happens with flight duration, the time zones and the International Date Line, etc.

Linda and I left a good bit later than we originally intended. We thought we'd leave about 10:00am, ended up leaving at 1:00pm. We arranged to meet with Linda's cousin Barbara Maske in South San Francisco for an early dinner. Actually Barbara is Linda's mom's cousin. . . so whatever that makes Barbara to Linda. In any event, we had a good time with Barbara and had some excellent Chinese. Barbara lives just 1.5 miles from my Aunt Helen's house (I still refer to it as Aunt Helen's house despite Aunt Helen having died several years ago now). My lovely cousin Marisa lives in the house now.

I lost track of time and planned on being at the airport to return the car we'd rented and get situated at 6:30, three hours before the flight's departure. The only problem with that was by being there at 6:30 we were FOUR hours early, not three.

Given there was absolutely no problem with the rental return, no problem with checking in at United, no problem with the security checkpoint/TSA, we were three hours and 45 minutes early. I think that wiped me out because by the time the flight was boarding I was already feeling exhausted. My eyes hurt, my head ached. It wasn't a good sign.

Somehow, though, once on the aircraft, I settled in ok. Total flight time was about 13 hours 20 mins. I actually slept. On an airplane. According to my fitness tracker, I slept 5 hours, including almost 3 1/2 of that in deep and REM sleep--better than at home. Which only raises in my mind the believability of what this fitness tracker's showing. So, actually, I was rather pleased with myself. . . it wasn't as bad as I'd feared going in.

Movies? 28 Years Later and Becoming Led Zeppelin. And I finished the rest of ep. 13 of season 2 of The Pitt.

Got to Christchurch, Brian Farrant met us to courier us all over to this hotel--Rydges. It's an ok hotel. Nothing special, but super clean. Very nice. Tomorrow is the official start date of the tour. Brian will be over here around noon to get all the bicycles set up.

Weather's supposed to be poor tomorrow. Probably a good bit of rain and it's supposed to be quite windy on top of that. Brian's good about tailoring riding to conditions so we won't be doing anything stupid. Brian is a lovely, even-keeled man. We'll be looking foward to the next nearly three weeks.

Photos? I need my good friend Ray Aguilar's eyes--I should have just brought him with me. I struggle with photo composition.