Christchurch NZ - August 21, 2012 (I'm pretty sure, anyway)

I've made it to Christchurch, New Zealand, after about 32 hours of traveling, door to door.  I left my house at 5 pm Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) on Sunday, August 19, and arrived at my hotel at 1:30 am MDT on Tuesday, August 21.  In Christchurch, it was about 7:30 pm on Tuesday, August 21.  I actually never experienced Monday, August 20.  So I'm 18 hours ahead of Denver time, 19 hours ahead of Wisconsin.  Now that we've got all that squared away...

The trip itself was uneventful, but ended up being a bit stressful.  I flew from Denver to Los Angeles in about 2.5 hours or so, and then from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Australia, in 15.5 hours, and then Melbourne to Christchurch in about 3 hours.  It was a long day.  I've never been to Australia, although I wouldn't necessarily say I've been there now either since I never left the airport.

Most of the stress of my trip was the loss of my bag.  Mine and the other 10 Antarctic people on my flights are without our bags.  We are told that they are in Melbourne and will arrive later today.  I was told various things about this, but my favorite was that it couldn't make our connection in Melbourne.  I was there for four hours.

We are scheduled to be the third Winfly flight to Antarctica, but since the weather there is bad the first two flights haven't gone yet.  They've combined them and are trying to fly today, but since it's Condition 1 at the runway they're landing at my guess is they won't go, and so my flight will get delayed because not only do I need the weather to be good, but I need the first flight to go so I have a way to get there!  By the way, Condition 1 is a classification used by the weather forecasters down there to basically make it easy to tell people - "Hey!  The weather sucks here!".  Condition 3 is great weather, no problems.  Condition 2 is when winds are between 55 and 63 mph OR visibility is less than 1/4 mile OR the wind chill is below -75F.  There are some limitations on where you can walk around in McMurdo and for some of the flights as well in Condition 2.  In Condition 1, well, it's the apocalypse.  You're in Condition 1 when winds are over 60 mph, visibility is less than 100 feet, and the wind chill is below -100F.  Basically, when it goes to Condition 1, you have to stay in whatever building you're in and can't go outside.

Anyway, that's it from here.  It sounds like Aiden's taken me leaving a bit hard, but hopefully I can talk with him soon and remind him I'm still here!  Talk to you all later!