Quote:
Originally Posted by Russ Noble  Thanks Mike
I took your advice and spent all night consuming copious quantities of the Brown 
BTW Mike, how do you know about NZ's best kept secret? |
Well done mate!
I used to fly the Ice Mission, flying out of Christchurch down to the ice runway at McMurto Sound, Antarctica. I first discovered Christchurch in the early 90s, and quickly concluded that it was the single nicest place I'd ever been (and I've been everywhere!). I had some of the best fun of my life abusing the rental car I had, as the roads were beautiful, empty, and not a cop to be seen anywhere. I was also fortunate in that the weather was perfect the whole time!
Lion Brown was another wonderful treasure, and in fact we would load up the airplane with cases of the stuff to bring home. We would also buy huge quantaties of butter, and place it in the landing gear well, where it would freeze at altitude. A few bucks thrown to the guys running the chow hall in Hawaii would net us refrigerated overnight storage for the butter (no way we were trusting them with the beer though!), and the next day we'd reload it for the flight back home to California.
Nowadays, the only place I fly to is Iraq. Not much recreation or alcohol purchasing going on there though.
Although on my last trip, on the way home I got to stop by the Nurburgring and beat on an Alfa Romeo 156 rental car for a couple of hours.