Getting from New Zealand to Antarctica

I'm still in New Zealand waiting for my flight to Antarctica.  We are currently on a weather delay which means a storm is brewing, so we have to wait it out in Christchurch until it's safe to land in McMurdo. 

This is a good opportunity to tell you about how we actually get to Antarctica.  We will be flying on an Air Force jet called a C-17.  Below is a picture of the inside of the C-17.  We will land on what is called an airfield.  There are actually a couple of different airfields in McMurdo, the biggest station on the continent and also my new home for the next six months.  I thought as long as I'm waiting I'd send you a link to the live webcam in McMurdo:  The USAP Portal: Science and Support in Antarctica - McMurdo Station Webcam

It looks pretty good to me but I'm sure if we could fly safely, we would be on the C17 aircraft right now!  When we land today, we will use the airfield called Pegasus on the permanent ice shelf.  What, you may be wondering, is the permanent ice shelf?  Funny you should ask, I will tell you all about that when I get to McMurdo, whenever that is, it is up to nature so we just have to be patient and wait.

Any questions so far about New Zealand or the C-17?

Time travel? Not really, but we are about to miss an entire day

So here I am at Denver International Airport waiting for my first of 4 flights that will eventually get me to Antarctica. There are about 100 of people from all over the United States deploying at the same time. Our journeys may start all over the U.S., but we all end up in Los Angeles and take the same flight to Auckland, New Zealand together. It will be a long, long, long, long flight, and I'll tell you exactly how long shortly. But first, I used the word deploying a few sentences ago, does anyone have a parent or family member in the military? If you do, you may have heard that word before and maybe you can help your classmates learn what it means!

OK, so as far as this time travel (not really) thing goes, today is August 23rd, and I will arrive in New Zealand on August 25th. I leave Denver at 4:20 PM Mountain Time (GMT -6) on August 23rd, 2011, and I will arrive in Auckland, New Zealand (GMT +12) at approximately 8:00 AM on August 25th. My flights will go as follows:

8/23/2011 - 4:20 PM Denver to Los Angeles (L.A.), CA - 2 hour flight then a 6 hour layover in L.A. - Yowza! I am very thankful to whoever invented the Tablet PC!

8/23/2011 - 11:40 PM L.A. to Auckland, NZ - 13 hour flight -that sure is a lot of time to sleep, read, and watch movies, then sleep, then read, then watch more movies, hijole!

8/25/2011 - 8:10 AM Arrive Auckland, NZ then I have another short flight to Christchurch, where I will get ready to go to Antarctica for real! But that will be a blog entry for a different day.

So what in the heck will happen to August 24th?

I'll tell you what, it won't exist for any of us on that flight! Earlier I said "GMT - 6 and GMT +12", remember? GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Some of you may be wondering, can time be mean? Some say time is cruel, but that's really something entirely different. Do you think mean might mean something else? Oh no! How many things can that word mean? But I digress...you can learn all about GMT and the Prime Meridian and the International Date Line here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time and I'll let you send me your thoughts on the subject of August 24th and what missing it could mean for me. If someone's birthday is on August 24th, will they still be a year older?

OK, time to board my first flight to Los Angeles, next time I blog, I'll be a day ahead of you and in a very, very, very beautiful place, New Zealand!

Woo hoo!

Welcome to my Antarctic Blog - Just for kids!

This blog is a kid-friendly, educationally focused chronicle of my adventures in Antarctica for children aged 3ish to 10ish. I encourage you to comment, ask questions, make corrections if you find the need, and above all, enjoy and have fun!

I'm embarking upon my fourth (4th) trip to Antarctica this month, but I'm a little nervous because I haven't been there since October 4, 2004! If you want, you can try to figure out how may years, months, weeks, and/or days there are between October 4th, 2004 and August 27th, 2011. How might you even begin figuring that out?

I will leave Denver at 4:20 PM Mountain Time (also know as GMT -6) on August 23rd, 2011, and I will arrive in Auckland, New Zealand (also known as GMT +12) at approximately 11:00 AM on August 25th. It sure does seem to me like a day is missing! If you want to help me sleuth this out, check back on August 23rd and I'll let you know my flight schedule. If you want to learn more about New Zealand, here is a link to a world map that helps you find tiny little New Zealand (NZ) http://www.mapsofworld.com/newzealand/newzealand-location-map.html and at the very bottom of that map is a white continent, guess what that is!

I look forward to keeping you posted on my adventures, and since going to the Ice, as it's sometimes called, requires a pretty good deal of preparation, I probably won't blog again until August 23rd. Any ideas on what I might need to take with me? Feel free to comment.

Enjoy the heat, until next time!