On-the-Road Tales

So…I turned 35 this morning, Nov 25, 1974.  Made it this far in life relatively unscathed which is reason for celebration.  How is it I am headed to the aeroport to travel or the next 22 hours approx…well…due to work commitments, I missed out on a great trip in August to Nairobi and I had all sorts of use-or-lose vacation time so I decided to do a big birthday trip somewhere fun.  Morocco? Nah, can do that in a weekend.  Transiberian railway? Not a great November option so I decided on Bhutan.  Happiest place on Earth – how could one go wrong.  Started looking at flights…Well you have to go through Nepal to get there & to go through Nepal you have to go through India.  I could not possibly just change planes in these awesome countries – I would naturally have to go explore and there was no time to do that kind of planning so i started poking around.  Antarctica would be my last continent.  Did not make it there on my round the world trip because I could not fit the cold weather gear.  Plus, it might melt by next year so why not, people will still be happy in Bhutan in 2010 I hope, that could wait.

I spent about 20 minutes searching for Antarctica ships that did not charge a single supplement and left it for the night.  The next morning, I had an email in my inbox with the subject line “Antarctica”.  Huh – virus?  I opened the email and a local hiking group had a trip arranged in a few wks and someone had just dropped out.  I dropped an email, interested but needed some details.  Did these people ask for ice in their pop while overseas? That was a no’go. 

The contact and I played phone tag amd I headed to a training class. The women sitting beside me was a powerplants engineer from Edwards AFB.  We started chatting and her aircraft was the C130.  Did nto realize they had them there and she said no, my aircraft is in Scotia, NY.  Huh – the only one I knew there was the Antarctic C-130 specially outfitted with skis.  She replied, Yeah thats the one I work one.  Weird I thought, what are the chances. So I left class and called the conatact again about the trip and got through.  She said a bunch of people had been climbing Mt. Kilaminjaro in Africa last year and decided to make Antarctica this years trip.  10 people booked in by March but someone had to bow out last minute which was the open slot. I was intrigued.  I told her I would sleep on it.  The next morning I get an emails that there was someone else interested so whomever paid first was in.  I wired the duckets right over.  Not sure thwat I was in for but I was in. 

The next few weeks consisted of lots of trips to reioutlet.com to gear up and thus here I am weighing bags to squeak in under the metro…

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