Being Away

The first time I had to head up to Auckland for work involving an overnight stay was last year. Since then I've had a few day trips where I knew how long a job would take and could easily make it back the same day. Friday last week wasn't going to be one of those predictable days.

On Thursday afternoon about 4.30pm I identified a few issues with one of our other offices, I knew instantly that it would need someone up there to investigate on site. The potential nature of the problem was such that an actual fix couldn't be done during the day as all the systems I maintain are in use. It was a case of: turn up on the morning and do what it takes to get the job done. With that in mind, it was easier to book a hotel and a return flight for the following day. The last thing I wanted to do was get finished early and spend the next 4 hours at the airport waiting for a seat on a flight (on a Friday) to Wellington.

Now you'd think that if I can wave goodbye to all my family and friends in the UK and move 12,000+ miles away for the rest of my life, I'd be able to fly a few hundred miles north for 1 night without my wife and daughter. Well no, it wasn't easy. The bottom line is, the job has to be done, so I had to be a brave boy and get on with it.

I arrived at the airport in good time, checked in at the automated kiosk and after breakfast went through security. Sat at the gate waiting for the boarding call I noticed that boarding time had slipped from 20 minutes away to about half an hour after we were supposed to leave. Shortly after that we were ushered from one gate to another, then back to the original gate about 20 minutes later. About an hour after the scheduled time, we left.

As we came in to land over the bay, the local roads were blocked with cars parked or parking up on all grass verges, laybys and everyone was looking up. At this point I'm beginning to wonder if we're missing our landing gear and everyone is waiting to see us skid down the runway. Nothing so dramatic, it was the new Qantas Airbus A380 coming for its first landing at Auckland shortly behind us.

After heading out to grab the taxi, we took a few detours to get around the backlog of traffic caused by plane-spotters (almost as nerdy as train spotters). I made it to the office about an hour late, met up with an electrician and we began diagnosing the problems.

At around lunch time I got a call from Marrisa. I'm thinking that I'm going to be told that they miss me so much and want to me to come home. Yeah right! They have in fact taken Denver to the kennels, booked a suite in a Wellington city hotel and are having a girls night out! That was actually better for me, as I realised then that they weren't sat around waiting for me to come home, and I could concentrate on the task in hand.

After a couple of hours we found a potential cause of the problems and scheduled a systems outage. 5.30pm came along and we started to pull cables, switch stuff off and the risk of getting electrocuted brought back memories of being up step ladders with pliers and pulling the wrong cable about 15 years ago!

After a couple of hours we had stuff as we thought it should be and I headed off to the hotel. I stayed at the same place last time I was up there alone and it was OK, pretty basic but all I needed was a bed, some food and a couple of beers.


I sat eating dinner alone, watching TV alone and went to sleep alone. That was all easier knowing the girls were actually having fun and not sat around wondering what I was up to.

The following morning I headed down to breakfast and overdosed on a cooked feast.


After that it was a cab back to the airport for a coffee and the return flight home. Fortunately Air New Zealand were running to schedule and I made it back just in time. When I say just in time, I mean just in time to get a call out from a vendor about some more faults, and to be picked up by 2 relaxed and chilled out girls!