Freefallin'

The past several days have been quite productive, and now I am pretty much set to, as Tom Petty sang, “leave this world for a while”. I managed to get my packages containing the bulk of my gear mailed off, which was nice because I could then stop second-guessing my packing plan. Out of sight, out of mind. I also got to go talk to a couple classes of kids at the elementary school here in Marion, and will be corresponding with them starting sometime in January when their studies about Antarctica begin.

My trip down to New Zealand will have stops in Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Auckland (where we will go through New Zealand’s very strict customs), and on to Christchurch. All told those flights cover about 8,800 miles in 20 hours, layovers excluded. Unlike last year I’m going to be seeing familiar faces along the way, so it should be fun to get to catch up with those folks.

Today I’ll be putting El Civ, my car, into storage in my grandmother’s garage. Below you can see us both a couple years ago with a bit less mileage: