Leaving Dubai for Larnaca, we flew over the coast and the Burj al Arab hotel, that famous hotel that looks like a sail. The atmosphere was so hazy we lost sight of it not long after I took this photo.

Emirates airline was better than I expected, although not quite as good as Air NZ; the IFE has hundreds of movies and games you can play between passengers (Cam beat the pants off me at Pong) but the constant interruptions for announcements drove me nuts. Not just the usual safety stuff pre flight but also a good twenty minutes on how cool Emirates was, how much duty free stuff you could buy on the plane, and so on. Really spoilt the fun.

But we made it through the 22 hours in the air without killing each other and now we're in Larnaca, drinking iced cofffee and waiting for Mike to finish his cycle race.

Busting my CO2 limit, and then some

At the end of last year I set myself a target of 3,000kg net CO2 emissions.

As of today, 24 March, I'm up to 2,490kg. Half of that is the 1200kg I "depreciate" the apartment by every year, but two trips to Wellington for work, and another eleven hours in the pilot seat of a Cessna 152, have been responsible for most of the rest.

And on Friday I'm going to embark on a wee trip* that will bump me up to over 9,000kg. Bang goes my original hope to get to my target without offsetting.

The flight emissions calculator at CarbonPlanet has been incredibly useful. It generated this list of emissions in about thirty seconds - they get ten out of ten for usability:


I'm going to have to look seriously into offsetting. Right after I get back from the three weeks away.

* The blog's going to turn back into a travelogue for a bit.