The Kiwi Has Landed!

Heeeeeey!
Just a quick post to let y'all know that i have arrived safely and am enjoying Auckland thus far. It's just another city, but it's clean, friendly and is beautifully flanked by the Tasman Sea on the west and the South Pacific Ocean on the east. Auckland is dubbed "The city of Sails" due to the many marinas. Weather has been pleasant; in the 60's and mild at night (and spring is well on it's way!) It is a very international city with a high Asian population, possibly due to the University of Auckland? With it comes a plethora of food options...and the competition is fierce (a huge plate of noodles or rice dishes cost about $4-5).
Tomorrow, I hope to head North to the "Bay of Islands" (how bad can that be?), then to the very tip-top of the North Island to an rugged, gnarled desolate tendril of earth called the Aupouri Peninsula. The west coast of this point is dominated and flanked by 90 mile beach (although it's only 64 miles long) which boasts huge sand dunes that you can slid down.
Will keep ya posted...

Ubie Bloggin'

Well, I finally got the "blog thing" up and runnin'. It will be an ongoing learning process, but I am pleased to have gotten this far. At least there is now a forum for me to keep a running diary of my experiences and whereabouts.

My blog's rules (so far):
Spelling and grammer do not count. The same goes for punctuation. This is intended to be a stream of consciousness diary of thoughts, memories, photos, etc. It will be created from various internet access points from all over the world when I can find them(which charge by the minute).

The top link on the right will take you to my Flickr blog site http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubinger/
Which is primarily used for posting photos. So, I intend on posting mostly verbage on this blog and linking the photos to the other. We'll see how that works...

Feel free to shoot me an email or post a comment. The miles between us can easily disappear with a click of the "Send" button.

Mount Saint Helen's - Oregon

This pix was taken 3-4 miles from the volcano. Everything in every direction for miles around was destroyed from the blast in 1980 (26 years ago), and short growth is just starting to emerge from the ashy soil. They estimate the wind speed from the explosion to have been 600 MPH!
It is an eerie landscape.