On my way to the ice...

Well, I left home in Athens at about noon on Monday Nov 3. Had to get a ride to Dallas, then fly to Los Angeles, then to Sydney Australia then to Christchurch New Zealand then to Antarctica. It makes me tired thinking about all of that now. All in all, it took me 80 hours to make the journey.The trip was actually pretty uneventful, fortunately.

The only kink was my trip from Los Angeles to Sydney. I was only scheduled a 1 hour layover in Sydney, and my flight was delayed out of LAX for about 50 minutes. They couldn't pull the skybridge away from the airplane due to an electronic malfunction so they couldn't pull the plane away from the gate. When we finally took off, I had already told myself that I would not make my flight in Sydney. The next scheduled flight from Sydney to Christchurch was nearly 6 hours after I was to get there. I had already planned in my head that I was going to take the subway from the airport to Sydney Harbor and do a short tour on my layover. We pulled up to the gate in Sydney about 3 minutes before my flight to Christchurch was to leave. I thought I had missed my flight at that point (which I was hoping for at that point because I wanted to see Sydney), but as it turns out there were about 15 others on my flight making the same connection, so they were holding the plane. We were wisked from one gate to the other, and when all was said and done, my tour of Sydney ended up being a 5 minute walk through the International Terminal at the airport. I did have time to grab a travel brochure of Sydney to prove that I had actually been there.

I ended up getting to Christchurch at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I was so tired by that point that I just layed in my room for a while, ate dinner and went to bed. The next morning I had to go to the Antarctic Center in Christchurch for my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing fitting. This is the clothing that the government supplies you (and that you have to carry at all times in Antarctica) in case you get stranded out in the open. Also, you have to wear it on the plane ride to Antarctica in case your plane crashes. After that, I finally got to see the sights in Christchurch. The city is absolutely amazing - very pretty and extremely clean. I was able to take the bus (also VERY clean) downtown and also to the beach. It was very cold that day (in fact it set a record for the coldest day ever in Novemeber for the city, about 40 degrees) and it was raining off and on, so that made it slightly less enjoyable, but it was still a lot of fun. I probably walked about 10 miles that day so I was very tired.

The next morning I had to report to the Antarctic Center at 6AM for my flight to McMurdo Station Antarctica. The flight was scheduled to leave at 9AM. I changed into my ECW clothing, got breakfast, then we were bussed to our plane. The plane was a US Air Force C-17 transport plane. It was very big, but was surprisingly comfortable. The flight was 5 and a half hours long, but didn't seem long at all. They let us walk around the plane, go up to the cockpit and go throught the cargo area. Before long we could see the ocean start to ice up, and about 3 hours into the flight you could begin to see the continent. The ice and mountans were amazing from the air.

Finally landed in McMurdo at about 3PM, then had to take a 30 minute shuttle ride into town. Had several orientation type meeting, got my room keys, ate dinner and finally got to bed at about 10PM (still very much daylight at this time). It was a very long day, and a very long trip, and I was exhausted by the time I got here.

I will update more later, and will add more pictures.

P.S. Saw a penguin today!!!