miscellaneous flight/trip advice, unrelated to race:
sign up for sale emails from Air New Zealand's US site; if you hit it right (and given that it's not a super busy time of year), you can do closer to 1000-1200USD r/t between SFO/LAX/IAH/ORD and AKL. but you can safely budget 2000 r/t and know that you won't exceed it even if you totally miss sales. but sales that apply to that time period won't happen until early to mid next year.
also, you can choose your class of travel for each leg, so if you're arriving close to race and want to be fresher or are leaving right after race and think you'll be shattered you can pick and choose as you see fit.
I can't sleep for shit in the premium economy seats; either suffer in economy or splurge for business. a better use of spare dollars is to book an economy skycouch row as it's more like "business lite" than premium economy is.
AA occasionally has ultra deals between LAX and AKL (friend got <500 r/t earlier this year...!)
exchange rate is pretty good right now, so paying for stuff now (can houses and rental cars be booked this far out?) with your rich american dollars may save you a bit and give you some free pocket money while you're here.
a 2:1 south:north island ratio is probably about right if you're able to be here for a good chunk of time.
Eliot
blog thing -
strava thing