Flight to the ice

I’m sitting on the plane, on my way to the ice, so this will be posted once we arrive. No extra days in CHC for us, too bad. Oh well, I can look forward to spending time there when we get done. Right now, I am sitting in a canvas fold down seat, I put my down vest on the seat and my ginormous red jacket behind me. Not too bad as far as plane rides go. It is quite loud in here though, I have an earplug in one ear and my earbud in the other. I just got to go up to the cockpit and was chatting with one the guys up there. He is from Lacey, which was cool. I could just start to see the ice through the clouds; you can see where it has not quite frozen over yet, so there are blue and white patches. I guess we have about two and a half hours left until we get there, from what he said.
It was raining pretty heavily this morning when we got up, at 4am L, I guess all the bad weather decided to settle in CHC. The shuttle took us to the CDC where we put on our ECW, and got our bags ready to check in. With all the added gear and uniforms that I got yesterday, my total weight came to 140 something lbs. Yep, that’s right, slid in right under that 150 lb limit. After we weighed our bags we had to grab our carry on and jump on the scale as well, and I can tell you that with all the gear I’m wearing, plus what my carry on weighs, that number was appalling. Lol. With my jacket on, I feel like a big red marshmellow. It was funny, yesterday when I was trying on my jacket, I had to have the lady that gave it to me start the zipper because the coat is so long, plus its kind o f stiff because its new, that I could not get it zipped. Go, go gadget arm extenders please!
After checking the bags and ourselves in, everyone headed over to the Antarctic center(kind of like a science center) to get some breakfast and chill before it was time to leave. We ate, visited with people, and then headed back to the CDC to our pre-flight briefing, which basically told us not to be stupid while on the ice, and to not mess with the wild life. I guess if we are lucky enough to see any penguins, we won’t be petting them J.
So now it’s just a waiting game, trying to hydrate without drinking too much water, so that I don’t constantly have to use the one lavatory that is one the plane, which there is always a line for.
Just a few more hours and my Antarctic adventure will begin.
12:30 PM