Graham S., Main South Rd, Riccarton, via airbnb
Wednesday, March 27: Cloudy at first, with fog in the hills, clearing during the afternoon
Not much left for breakfast this morning, so zipped across to the 4square and cornered a lukewarm egg & bacon pie to eat with the fruit juice and the coffee (pie could at least be subject to the microwave). Guy at the backpackers suggested taking the high road to Little River, which I did, as I had quite a bit of time on my hands.
On the way into Christchurch.
Very foggy on the way up, but the road did eventually rise above the clouds, only there was very little to see once on top. Continued driving all the way into Christchurch, including taking the unusual right-left-left diversion and was soon at church corner. Spotted a hairdresser who did a neat and quick job for $12, then made a closer inspection of the nearby restaurants and shopping centre before settling on a small souvlaki (lamb) with a can of drink for $7.9. Then had a bit of a tour of the district and landed at Graham’s just after 2:00. He himself turned up a short time later. Brief introduction to the house (very neat as well) and to the other boarder, Joe (Balliol), then had messages from both Michaels about the remainder of the programme. Washed out the rucksack in the garden via the garden hose and left it on the deck to dry. Couldn’t get the metro website to give me sensible bus connections to the polytech (however spelt) and so left just after 4:00 to get to the institute at the 5:00 Michael Edmonds had suggested.
Got to the lecture theatre and was almost immediately met by him; had a coffee; then held the talk for about a dozen skeptics; and then it was the pub for a beer and a pizza, and further discussion.
Michael brought me back to my digs and it was only here that I could give him the BBC DVD that I had envisaged as a present for him. Long discussion with Graham followed, with Joe making lunch in the meantime. Will now see about processing the 50 pictures.
Fifty pictures were completed at about 3:00 in the morning and uploaded to Facebook with all of their captions. Then it was really time to go to bed after a couple of unfortunately warm beers (and note the Kiwi almost non-distinction between the vowels in beer and bear).
