22nd January 1995

From Michael Ashley.....

With a day to kill before being kitted out with clothing, we hire some bikes and ride up to the ridge of hills to the south-east of Christchurch for some magnificent views. We discover that the roads are cunningly designed so that you can ride a 30 km loop returning to your starting point, and yet always be going up hill. The counter-rotating winds also ensure that you always have a headwind. We convince ourselves that our difficulties were due to various technological deficiencies in the bicycles, but the truth is that we just weren't fit enough...

Much exhausted, we spend the afternoon exploring the excellent Christchurch Museum, which has a particularly good Antarctic section. Later, we view our vide-taping efforts, and do more work on the IRPS software.

Alas, patient reader, these ``South Pole'' diaries have so far read more like a holiday in Christchurch. Hopefully there will be some interesting things to report during the next week.

STOP PRESS: it is now Monday 23 Jan, and we have just found out that we are on the 4am flight to McMurdo. Check in time is 12:45pm. The next message you receive will be from Antarctica (hopefully).