New Florida phone numbers

Ralph's new number is 352-561-6820 and mine is 352-561-6821. All old numbers that started with 865 area code are obsolete. In fact, all old numbers are obsolete!

Florida!

Made it to Orlando safely, all flights on time, no lost luggage. Just the usual miseries of traveling for 30 hours. We spent 2 nights with my parents, then a night with friends in SC, a night with my brother in NC, then picked up Charlie in Knoxville and headed back to Florida. Our tenants moved out yesterday morning (Friday) and we moved in a few hours later. They took excellent care of our house, which was a blessing. Been busy ever since emptying out our storage unit and getting stuff unpacked. It is so good to be back in the USA!

Shiftless, smiling, initial summarizing

Yesterday morning, after a night of sleeping with my cell phone at bedside (on call), having worked from noon til 10:30 pm; I awoke with no more shifts to work. The contract completed. Medicine a bit different from my training, learned and experienced. This was goal one.

The adventure, the new territory to explore - been here, done that. Amazing. And awesome.

New peoples met - conversed with; friendships made. So many stories about unique characters - Kiwi uniqueness: (Example - An eleven year old boy, knocked off his bicycle (here called a "push bike") and run over by a car. When asked what is your biggest problem; responds in no panic, with no tears but with a true Kiwi/British accent, "I can't breathe quite proper." - Both lungs were punctured and bruised as well as a bruise to his brain. His phraseology, demeanor, uniqueness - just memorable. He did well, I'm told - was flown to another trauma center after stabilization.)

Having experienced the different, somewhat exotic now we return; anxious to resume the familiar.

From a book just read, "Everything You Need to Know About Retirement" (paraphrasing): "The adventure can be listening and hearing, finding the rhythm in each new day - the adventure that waits there; it can be more than enough." These are to be our next adventures.

And they begin.

Winding Down

Just sent Ralph off to work his last shift here. This is an historic day for us as it's also his last shift before retirement. And he's got call tonight.

We have 48 more hours before we leave for the airport to start our long trip home. We arrive at the Orlando airport in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the 27th, then will spend the rest of the night in an airport hotel. Raymond and Faith will pick us up late morning and take us to Brooksville where we will stay with my parents for a couple of nights. Our house is rented in The Villages until April 1st. We will head north on Tuesday the 29th, stopping to visit some friends and family along the way, before arriving in Knoxville Thursday. The plan is to get our sweet Charlie (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel for those who don't know him) back from friends who've been keeping him since September. Back to Florida on April 1st, and getting our belongings out of storage. Then we will fly out to California 6 days later for David's wedding. Not sure that we will feel like we've gotten "home" until mid-April!

Really going to miss NZ and the people we have met and the friends we have made. We'll be trading the threat of earthquakes for the threat of hurricanes (at least hurricanes come with plenty of warning!), and open screenless windows for central heat and air. We've just finished with summer here, but get to experience it again in the US.

I've been treated to lunch twice this week by some very special friends. Yesterday two of my friends from church took me out to a cafe. The picture was taken by a waitress.

Continuing travels - National Park

Traveling in New Zealand, North Island, must include Tongariro National Park. Only about 2 and half hours drive, we have been trying to find that difficult moment when weather, time and absence of other priorities converge to make it optimal - (possible would be too easy, we go for optimal). And so it was yesterday. I drove up, northwest. Mary drove back. We did it in a single day.

Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe were awesome, majestic, huge and all those other words that describe individual mountains. Ruapehu is the tallest with multiple peaks at about 2900 metres (note the British spelling - we're Kiwi's now). Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom) is a classical volvanic cone. Though there was a fairly magnificent eruption of Ruapehu in 1995, these mountains behaved themselves while we were there.

We tramped (the Kiwi word for hiking) about 6 miles (kilometre is just too hard to spell, to get better views and go by Taranaki and Tawhai Falls. Taranaki Falls is the taller seeming to come right out of the rocks to fall as a wide curtain in front of a cave like area into a green pool. Tawhai Falls is shorter and is more like a stream coming over a classic pastoral falls. Tawhai reminded me very much of Abrams Falls in Great Smoky Mountain National Park back home (home - yeah thinking more and more about home - 2weeks and we'll be there). But this park is not comparable to anything back home. The mountains, the falls, the green rolling hills and mountains on the drive.

Privileged to be here, now.

Two Minutes of Silence Across New Zealand at 12:51PM

Today was the one week anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake. All across NZ people gathered to mourn and show support for the people of Canterbury at exactly 12:51 pm, time of the devastating quake. I joined hundreds of people in front of All Saints Church on the town square in Palmerston North.

The other picture I took last week while walking a downtown street. Heard a statistic on our travels that sheep out number people here, 10 to 1, and I believe it.

The Earthquake Adventures of Marji and Freddie Barron

End of the story first---They made it safely back to Knoxville yesterday, thank God!

They arrived at their Christchurch boutique hotel, the Charlotte Jane, around noon on Tuesday. The Charlotte Jane is a two story, wood structure building. After checking into their 2nd floor room, they were preparing to leave it and walk the mile into the CBD (Central Business District) when the earth started shaking. Marji says it was very loud, very powerful and seemed like it lasted a long time though probably wasn't more than 20 seconds. They could not have walked if they wanted to and were thrown to the floor. Everything in their room was also thrown to the floor---the TV, lamps, end tables, etc---and they were rolling around trying to dodge them. When it stopped, they heard their hostess downstairs yelling for everyone to get out of the building. They rushed outside with the other guests and found their hotel's chimneys swaying, but otherwise looking okay structurally. The place was a mess inside with broken dishes, bottles, etc. They remained outside for the next 8 or 9 hours, returning to their room only for quick bathroom visits and flushing the toilet with pond water. There was no water or power, and a constant flow of stunned people moving up and down the streets. Initial impressions from the locals were that it had to have been a quake greater than 8.0 since it was so much worse than the 7.3 quake in September. (This one turned out to have caused greater damage because it was shallower and almost a bulls eye on Christchurch CBD). They also began to get reports from people who had been in the CBD as to the devastation there. Hotel staff couldn't get home and they couldn't reach loved ones on the phone either, so they took care of the guests. The Barrons and the others were fed a delicious meal of lamb shanks and some vegetables. Amazing.

They debated sleeping in their rental car for the night but decided to sleep in their room instead since the hotel looked pretty solid structurally. The power came on about 9:30 pm and the TV worked despite its fall to the floor. They slept fully dressed, with shoes on and the TV on. Actually didn't sleep very well as the aftershocks continued all night long and they were prepared to run for their lives again if necessary.

Marji and I were texting throughout that day and I was updating her on the news as it was reported on TV. We weren't sure of the conditions of the roads for them to drive out of Christchurch. I began trying to get them a flight on Air New Zealand out of Christchurch to anywhere, but the Air NZ website was overwhelmed and I couldn't get through on the phone lines either. Kept trying right up until bedtime. The next morning I had to be at the thrift shop to work (only one there that day so had to go) and Ralph had to be at work. The Barrons were getting ready to go camp at the airport early to try and get on a flight when their hostess was able to get onto the Air NZ site and find 2 seats left to Wellington at 10 am. She asked them if they wanted them and they did! They had to drive about 5 miles to the airport and found the road to have "moguls" in it that were not there the day before when they came in, but it was driveable. By the time I finished work at the thrift shop at noon and reached Marji by text, they were in a rental car from Wellington and driving to our house.