5 January, 2001

PREPARING FOR YOUR OWN ANTARCTICA ADVENTURE.

The Flight:

A month in advance, buy a 24 inch TV set. Once home, remove the set from the box, and hook it up. Place the cardboard box in the middle of the living room floor in front of the TV set. For the next month, climb into the box each evening after a hard day at whatever you do. Have a couple of your favorite things to eat, drink and read alongside the box. Make sure the hot drinks are cold and the cold drinks are warm, and the magazines are at least one year old and all of the coupons have been torn out of them.

Once your legs go to sleep curled up in the TV box, have your significant other serve you a cold, five-day old plastic dinner. Make sure the knives and forks are from a Barbie Doll kitchen. After you spill your favorite drink in your lap, watch three and a half hours of network TV rejects. No remote channel changers allowed and make sure sound is either to low or to high and only coming out of one speaker.

As your body falls asleep almost up to your armpits, pretend the fasten seat belt sign is on due to turbulence, and all of the bathrooms are occupied. When you can handle 11 hours of this, you are ready for the flight from Los Angeles to Christchurch New Zealand.

Packing:

Plan on packing the same stuff twice since you can plan on losing your luggage1 out of 5 times while travelling commercial airliners. This trip was my fifth time.

All of this is worth it when you step off the plane in New Zealand one step closer to Antarctica!!!