I woke up this morning sad that I didn’t get to spend as much time in New Zealand as I would have liked but excited beyond words that in only a few hours I would be in a place that some people only dream about. It was a pretty laid back day. I got up, got dressed, had breakfast, walked around town…really nothing to write home about, just enjoying the time I had left in Christchurch. We had to be at the CDC by noon to get dressed, check our bags, “weigh in”, and be ready to fly by 3pm (I realize that this task sounds easy, but rest assured its not) I spent about 35 minutes getting dressed …
(right now, the people who know me the best are wondering what set today apart from any other day…I would like to let you know that this 35 minutes did NOT include showering, doing my hair, putting on make-up, etc. It was really just 35 minutes of putting on layer after layer of heavy clothing [for those of you who need a visual, I refer you to the movie A Christmas Story…just look for the kid who’s bundled up and you will instantly understand the task I was faced with]),
Once dressed we had to move all of our bags through a long line to get them weighed and checked, get our boarding passes, and then we ourselves had to be weighed holding all of our carry on bags and wearing all of our ECW (again this may sound like a simple task, and for most it was, but as we all know I prefer to do things the hard way...looking like an idiot makes me feel like I get more out of the experience.) I proceeded to carry, drag, push, pull, and roll all 300 lbs of myself, my luggage, my carry on, and excess clothing out of the building and to the end of a 120 person line, only to discover upon arrival that the majority of my fellow “ice” peers were all rolling their luggage on very convenient little carts…I’m sure you are all wondering where those carts must have been because that’s exactly what I was wondering at that moment…Well, it turns out that they were so conveniently stored inside the entrance of the building from whence I just came. I have tried to convince myself that they were, in fact, NOT there but had been completely used up by the time I passed his particular part of the building (at least that makes me feel a little better about myself). Luckily, someone turned over their cart to me once they were finished using it (again, to boost my self-esteem, I have convinced myself that this person just did it out of the kindness of their heart and not because I looked so pitiful that they felt bad for me…either way, the cart made the next 100 feet far more bearable)
Here I was 2 hours since my time of arrival at the CDC and 6 hours from my first steps in Antarctica and I was already exhausted…but all of the hard work was for a good cause…………..or so I thought.
We sit down to listen to a lecture from one of the flight crew who gave us the run down of how the next 6 hours should have worked out. We then watched a short video on weather and safety in Antarctica, which was then followed up again by the same gentleman who started us off. However, instead of pointing us in the direction of the busses that would take us to the C17, he informed us that we would not be flying today, and very casually informed us that the plane was “broken” but would be fixed by tomorrow (BROKEN??? I personally felt that this was a very risqué choice of wording but everyone reassured me that it was common…WAIT! COMMON??? Since when is a “broken” plane common? What have I gotten myself into?..............)
So now in order to know the rest of my day you would then read this entire narrative backwards (minus carrying all of the bags which at this time had been permanently checked…all I had to worry about was my carry on and my boomerang bag). I gave my boarding pass back, I carried the bags I had, back into the other building, I undressed and headed back to Christchurch. The downside? No Antarctica today. The upside? The dress rehearsal (as everyone has been so fondly referring to it) was just enough practice for me to smooth out the kinks and tomorrow I’ll look like a pro (and maybe everyone will get so drunk at the Rugby game tonight that no one will remember tomorrow, how ridiculous I’m sure I looked today) Oh, and one more upside? I’m still in Christchurch ☺ Love it!
P.S. One more upside that just occurred to me? I didn’t have to fly into one of the world’s most desolate and weather tormented continents on Friday the 13th
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