The 14+ hour flight...

Our direct flight from Vancouver to Auckland with Air New Zealand was excellent!

We boarded well in time for our 6:30pm departure.   No rush - well organized.

We chose Economy Plus given the length of the flight and the length of Garry's legs!!    We had ample room.

The services and food on our flight were excellent.  We even had real plates and cutlery!  We had heard that Air New Zealand was a very good airline - and it's true!   We had heard that some airlines are cutting back on things like pillows and blankets.  Not the case for our journey.   I think Air New Zealand has thought of a brilliant way to prevent the theft of blankets.  They make them so big that you couldn't take them off without it being very obvious to the flight crew.

Regarding the time change - we left at 6:30 pm, had dinner, watched a movie, slept as much as we could (Garry not so much), woke up, had breakfast and deplaned at 5am Auckland time.   Very civil!!

It took a bit of determination to stay awake for our first day - but it's such fun to be in a new country/city.

We were asleep by 7pm Auckland time... and up early this morning.

Feeling great!!!

Trip preparations - technology

As most of the readers of this blog know, Garry and I are into technology (;-)) and we chose to be well connected as we travel.   Also, before we left, at the suggestion of son Paul, we put in place a small telephone (VOIP) solution that would help Garry's Mom.

As some of you are aware, Garry's Mom has vascular dementia.  She is on the phone to us at least 50 times per day and on a few days, more than 100 calls - always to Garry's cell phone. She calls her sister often.  We also knew she was calling many other numbers in her attempts to reach us.  A few months ago, we purchased a phone set for her that has 10 programmable buttons to try to improve the situation however, she continued to dial.

We decided to explore all options rather than take the phone away. Before leaving, we received some help from Paul to select a VOIP provider (http://www.anveo.com) to control her voice communications.   We purchased a local number from Anveo, created a call flow and configured various custom messages for different times of the day.  For example, during the lunch hours at her assisted living residence, our phone message reminds her that we are away, tells her we love her and that it's time for lunch.  Same for breakfast and dinner.  

Garry then reprogrammed the buttons on her phone to remove his cell phone and add the new VOIP number.  Next, he screwed an electrical box plate over the buttons that allowed her to dial 'freehand'.   This was far from popular with his Mom - but something we had to do.

Through Anveo's website, we can receive her messages and track the number of calls she is making to the VOIP number.  Should we see that she is spending her days calling us, we can take steps to help her.    We have already received a message from her thanking us for reminding us it's lunch time and she has already eaten.  It's working!!

For our own calls, we forwarded our cell phones to our Shaw land line.  Through the Shaw phone portal, we can receive and manage any messages that are left for us.

When we arrived, we purchased a $5 SIM card and a $20 phone plan for a month.  That gives us free calling between my brother's phone and ours.  Also, we have 60 minutes, free texting and 500MB of data.   I didn't realize that Telus offered a service to unlock older iPhones.  I did this to my iPhone 3GS about a week before we left.

We also brought Garry's cell phone, a Nook eReader and an iPad.  

We're connected!!

Preparing for the trip

Carol and Garry are off on another retirement adventure!   This time, we are traveling to visit with Carol's brother Art Schmidt and his partner Margaret Busson.

We have just under a week to get our packing act together.  At this point, we have stuff all over our bedroom floor waiting to be sorted and packed ... or not.  The kitchen sink will go in last when Garry's not looking.

We are leaving on February 9th in the evening.  Good idea or bad, we're flying direct from Vancouver to Auckland.  The Air New Zealand flight is scheduled to take just 14 hours and 15 minutes.

So far for the flight I've purchased compression socks, low dose aspirin, sleepeze, melatonin and WetOnes - all based on the advice from experienced travellers. (You know who you are.)  I hope they don't weigh our carry-on!

We arrive in Auckland on February 11th @ 5am-ish with the plan that we'll walk about until we can get into our hotel and crash.   Art and Marg arrive the next day.

New Zealand (North Island), Australia (South Australia), Tasmania and Australia (Queensland) are on our itinerary - weather, fires and floods permitting.

That's all for my first post!   Time to think about packing and maybe even do some!