Location
Our adventure is just about to start: The G-439 team will meet today around 10 pm in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for their Quantas flight to Auckland, NZ. There will be another 45 USAP travelers on this first major “Ice Flight” to McMurdo for the 2010/11 field season. Our actual final flight to the ice is planned for October 25, but that is never certain. You believe it when you actually land on the ice. In some cases planes make it all the way to McMurdo to find out that they cannot land because of bad weather and they have to bounce back to Christchurch for another try on the next day. This can take up to a week if the weather in McMurdo is really bad. You are likely not to hear from us until we finally get to McMurdo Station and get back on the internet down in Antarctica.
Our flight will be leavin
g Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 11:30 pm on Oct 21st for a 14 hr flight to Auckland NZ, arriving at 8:30 on October 23. October 23rd ? Yes and here is why. New Zealand is just four time zones away from California, and our departure time of 11:30 pm in LAX is only 7:30 pm in Auckland. Flying for 14 hours puts us in the next day at 8:30 am, except that we are crossing the dateline which steals a whole day away from us and we end up coming in on Oct 23rd.
Once we get to Auckland, there will be a short hop to Christchurch where we will stay for two nights and a little over a day to do some final errands, to collect our ECW gear and catch a US Air Force transport plane to McMurdo. As soon as we hit the ice, we will bring out our “da Microbe” expedition flag and send you some photos of our trip down south.
Greetings from Hubert Staudigel (Hotel Sierra)
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