A night at the museum and the Roxx

Nov 30: We were at the Canterbury Museum just poking around and hoping the rain would stop. When we went, I didn't know what kind of museum it was and I thought it was the local Christchurch history museum. Little did I know that it was was the Canterbury Museum of Natural History and Human Heritage. There were dinosaurs, local NZ history, petrified wood, an Asian exhibit, a British history exhibit and a plethora of other exhibits. There was a really old school bicycle that you could climb up and pedal on. A nice museum worker came up and asked if we wanted him to take our picture so obviously we couldn't refuse. Unfortunately, these bikes don't lend themselves to tandem riding. I did have bit of fun emulating the dinosaur. Since I thought this museum was just local culture, I was a bit surprised to find a dino, but I recovered well. We also looked at costumes of the first female pilot in NZ. If the mannequin is relatively sized to her then she had ridiculously tiny feet. Though the silliest and scariest moment in the museum came during a photo-op.

I asked Gord to take a picture of me posing as the dinosaur. Neither of us knew that he was going to unwittingly back into an exhibit of a piece of petrified wood, but he did. He set it rocking precariously forward and backwards. Had he not been able to steady the stand, he would have smashed a "Log of Late Cretaceous petrified wood (80 million years old)." The exhibit would have been glued back together with a new sign. "Was a Log of Late Cretaceous petrified wood (80 million years old). Unfortunately, unable to withstand the Gordon period." After that incident, it was definitely time to leave, rain or no rain.

We headed to the indoor climbing gym at the edge of the city called the Roxx. We met up with another flatmate, John. It was a lot of fun. I did a few climbs and belayed a few times. At the end, we did some speed climbing, which has to do with going up a fairly easy route over and over until you can no longer stay on the wall. I went up 3 times before my hands stopped being able to close.