Friday, November 29, 2019

Antarctica - Day 1

This trip has been on the calendar for so long, that at times if felt like it would never get here, and as I would read up on Antarctica and watch videos and see photos from there, my excitement to get the trip underway would spike over and over again.... the waiting was killing me so I tried hard to put it out of my mind for months on end.  Then the day of my flight out of Seattle got down to the single digits, it almost didn't feel real anymore.

I don't think it really sunk in that it was time to go, until the night I packed my bags, which I did two days before the trip... and which is 2 days sooner than I pack for most of my trips.  I'm a last minute kind of packer when I travel.

I think I was at the airport close to 4 hours early on Thanksgiving... wanting to be absolutely sure nothing happened to make me miss that flight... not traffic, security lines, some snag while checking my bag, etc.  I have to actually admit I was nervous for the first time in a very long time about a trip.  Turns out there was nothing to be nervous about though, as I checked my bag and was through security in record time!  I think it might have seriously taken 7 minutes and 4 of those were talking from checking my bag to the security checkpoint.   Why can't flying always be that smooth?

I spent a few hours just wandering around the airport,  caught a little bit of the first Thanksgiving Day football game (but can't tell you a single thing that happened)... and then watched a movie about Apollo 11 to take my mind off things.

The flight was mostly smooth and the first leg of the trip was over.  Now it was just a matter of waiting another 4 hours to get on the flight to Buenos Aires.  I got my first taste of hanging out in the United Lounge which made the wait so much nicer... (Thanks Randy!).

Boarding for the next leg started at 9:30 pm... so I was already 12 hours into the trip, with a 10 hour flight ahead of me now.  Nothing too exciting really happened in all that downtime, so I'll just sign off for now.  It's a huge plane, not nearly as full as I feared... and so far so good!

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