Changes in Latitudes

From Greymouth we drove south along the west coast of New Zealand. This was the only day we had bad weather. The rain poured pretty hard, and I was a little bummed because Mount Aspiring National Park was what I was really excited to see and get in some nice hiking, but we still stopped along the way through the park for short (30 min) walks in the rain. The road that goes through the park is called the Haast Highway ...our stops included Fantail Falls, Blue Pools (not pictured), and Makaroa before we called it a day. [Rain on the GoPro ...looking at Franz Josef glacier] [cairns in front of Fantail Falls] [Marius adding his cairn] [We are big fans of picnic lunches when we're on a road trip] [soup, bread, cheese, rice crackers, hummus and coffee] [Entering Mount Aspiring National Park] [We were supposed to see Aoraki/Mount Cook really well from this side, but the clouds did not let us] [Cell phone service is really spotty and often nonexist...

New Zealand is known for nature, and the Department of Conservation (DOC) has found a great way to get people to see the best of the best. Thus, the 9 Great Walks of New Zealand: Abel Tasman, Milford,  Lake Waikaremoana, Tongariro Northern Circuit, Whanganui Journey, Heaphy, Routeburn, Kepler, and Rakiura. So far I can say I have done three of these: Milford, Tongariro and Abel Tasman. We walked the Abel Tasman with our good friend, Divya. They recommend using 3-5 days to do the trek, and we did it in three...but we like to brag that we rather did it in 48 hours. We flew to Nelson on Monday morning with Divya in tow, and a shuttle picked us up at the airport and drove us to Marahau, the start of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. The weather was predicted to be perfect for the whole week and we were excited to experience this unique part of New Zealand. At 12:30 we began walking and we had to walk 24 kms to make it to our accommodation. We managed to get to the hut at Bark Bay...

I finally got around to editing my footage from when we went to Iceland last September. We rented a car and drove the Golden Circle, and the next day we visited the Blue Lagoon.  I'm not too happy with the quality of it, but maybe it means my GoPro is outdated. GoPro even has a new editor to make a sort of 30-second teaser. Pretty cool! Iceland 2016 teaser from Justine Diaz on Vimeo . The Golden Circle and Blue Lagoon from Justine Diaz on Vimeo .

The most sun we saw in San Sebastian - lasted for about 10 minutes. This beach is called Playa de la Concha. This week I was invited by my new employer to join the research group on a trip to San Sebastian, Spain. The aim was to have a meeting to discuss priorities and a mini-symposium with some Spanish collaborators. Only some of us managed to make it to San Sebastian on Monday. The plane we were supposed to take to Amsterdam had engine issues, so our boss did his best to figure out a solution. He went alphabetically, so I was lucky to be in the first group out (after sitting in the Bergen airport for 6 hours). Twelve of us managed to make it to Spain by midnight on Monday (Bergen - Copenhagen - Brussels - Bilbao - San Sebastian (bus)). The rest would eventually make it by Tuesday afternoon and late Tuesday night. Tuesday was meant to be a meeting about plans for the  new employees (3 of us in total) and discussing the upcoming surveys. However, since the others had...

Last weekend (the first weekend of September), Marius and I were invited to join REN (Marius' old employer) on their annual trip. Previous trips that we were both included in were St. Petersburg, Paris, and Rome. This year was Budapest, and it happened about a week after the refugees and migrants made their way into Hungary. It was definitely adding a different perspective to the trip while we stayed in a 5-star hotel and ate a 5-course dinner. Pancho spent the weekend with one of my colleagues who also has a dog. It isn't too hard to find puppy-sitters right now since I work with animal lovers. And who doesn't love puppies? So Marius and I got in on Friday night and took a cab to the hotel with another couple on the trip. The European Cup soccer qualifier was that night, so our driver tried to go around the soccer hooligans and the possible chaos at the train station, but it was pretty quiet. We ended up driving by the train station a couple of times, but it wasn...

This year I have happily logged nearly 450 miles in preparation for my fourth half-marathon, which will be in Madrid on March 29th. I have put in 15 solid weeks of dedicated training in hopes of setting a new personal best. To date, my best time for 21 km (13.1 miles) is 1:47, but I'm aiming for a sub-1:45! A couple of weeks ago I set a personal best in the 10k.. 45 minutes and 25 seconds. I bet if it had been a race then I could have shaved off more time. I've been running 6 days a week. Occasionally this is twice a day, but only in the last couple of weeks when the sun has been shining and the days have gotten longer. Being in Bergen has made my training really enjoyable since we haven't had many days below freezing to create ice obstacles for me. I don't mind cold temps, but ice is not fun. I haven't signed up for a marathon yet, but I will have to choose between Amsterdam and Oslo if I want to reach my goal of at least 5 full marathons before I'm 30. An...

It meant a lot to me that Marius came with me to Michigan for Christmas this year! Our bags were stuffed with presents when we departed Bergen/Oslo on the 13th at 6am bound for Detroit. When we arrived Marius greeted everyone working at the airport with a Merry Christmas, which spread a lot of smiles. Unfortunately, some of our gifts were confiscated...apparently all meat is prohibited from entering the US unless it has been boiled and sealed in a metal container. Sounded a lot like spam. So our gift of Norwegian smoked ham and lam sausage was given in spirit. At least the other gifts made it through! [Upon arrival at DTW] [Marius cutting down the tree] Mom and Dad picked us up on time and we were tired. We had a hard time adjusting to the time zone since our flight just made us awake for the day, but after three days we were adjusted. We picked out our tree the day after arriving and Marius was given the task to cut it down after a fair amount of time of comparing several...