NEWS UPDATE October 9th 8 am NZT
TIME: + 2 days 1 hour
The ONH team has arrived in Christchurch
We have all arreived in Christchurch from the US although a number of adventures getting here. While the first group of the ONH team (Howie, Andrea, and Steve) arrived to Christchurch during the late morning of October 8th, the rest of the group were delayed getting out of LAX, resulting in missing their connection in Sydney to Christchurch (ChC). The result was an arrival to Christchurch after 2 am October 9th. My estimate is that it took some Shakira and Joanna over 35 hours to go from NYC to ChC. But this morning they have were all waking up with cheerful smiles and animated stories of the ordeal.
Latest update on getting to Antarctica
Only one flight has made it to McMurdo Station so far (out of four). All of the others have either been rescheduled or in some cases were boomeranged, which means they were already in flight when they were turned around owing to poor weather conditions. One of the boomeranged flights was over four hours into the flight before they boomeranged for a total of nearly nine hours of sitting in the noisy C-17 military transport plane. There are a lot of anxious people right now waiting around here in Christchurch, hoping to get out soon. People for the second flight just left for the airport and we will hope that they make it. Luci and Luke are scheduled to leave on Friday, if all goes well. I am estimating that the rest of the team could leave as early as this Sunday, October 12 (we were originally scheduled to have left on the 10th). This is not a problem as Marv and I have scheduled extra time for situations like this.
We are planning to go to the CDC to try on our ECW gear (Antarctica issued clothing). I will provide an update later this afternoon.
