I'm not in Kansas anymore...

Greetings from Argentina! I knew right away that I was no longer in the United States when all of the blogging instructions on this site appeared in Spanish rather than English! After a six hour delay in Miami, our flight took off at 1am for Buenos Aires. We were on one of those big wide planes that have 2 seats on each side and four seats in the middle. Guess where my seat was? Correct-in the middle. The good news is that I was seated next to a lovely Argentinian woman named Laura. As soon as we reached a comfortable cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, we enjoyed a nice dinner at 1:30am of chicken and red wine and talked about her recent visit to America and where I should visit in Argentina. Thank goodness she spoke English!

It was an 8 hour flight and I was lucky enough to get about 6 hours of good sleep, sort of. My tailbone was a bit sore when I woke up and got up to use the restroom. It turned out that I had been sitting all night on the complimentary headphones for both me and Laura. Other than that, it was a decent night's sleep in the cramped middle seat of economy class. :)

Now I am in the Marriott Plaza in Buenos Aires, relaxing after a nice 4 1/2 mile training run with a caiprhana, watching the US-Canada hockey game in spanish, and typing this blog. I am rooming with Sarah from Washington, DC--a great gal who is celebrating her 40th birthday with this trip to Antarctica. (She is the one in the picture from my last posting). We travel far to meet our neighbors. Our training run was lots of fun--about 40 of us running the streets of Buenos Aires around a park near the hotel. There were lots of people enjoying the 77 degree weather around the park--laying on the grass, watching street performers, eating snacks from the local vendor carts, and even a few people cheering us on. I think we ran through some sort of performance and the announcer made a joke about us running a race through the park. Everyone started clapping so we started waving at the crowds. Hopefully we got the translation correct!

Tonight we are off to a tango dinner. I think that means we eat dinner and watch professional dancers demonstrate how to do the tango. Again, it is hard to know what people are saying if you don't speak the language...

Going Nowhere Fast

I have now had a chance to experience a significant travel delay and how an airline responds accordingly. I arrived in Miami at about 3:45pm and made my way to the Argentina Airlines desk to check in. I knew I was in the right place when I saw a line of people with the same Antarctica Marathon backpack --it is blue and has penguins and icebergs embroidered on it and the words: Antarctica--The Last Marathon. I joined the line behind a couple from, where else, but Washington, DC! They let me know that our flight had been delayed from 7pm to 1am. We have no idea why the flight is delayed. I was not looking forward to spending the next 9 hours in the airport but then I got the good news--the airline was giving us each a room at the local Doubletree Hotel and a dinner voucher. Pretty cool! At least a quarter of the 100 runners going on the trip were in the line, providing an opportunity for us to start to get know each other. One guy flew in from Paris just to do the race. I also met a couple from Denver, two guys from Chicago, a guy from Minnesota, and a gal from Boston. It looks like it will be a great group to travel with.



If all goes well, my next posting should be from Buenos Aires.

Time to Go!

After being on a waiting list since the summer of 2008, I am finally on my way to Antarctica! I am traveling there to compete in my own sort of winter olympic event--the Antarctica Half-Marathon. There is a full marathon for those that prefer that type of pain but for me, 13.1 miles is just enough.

I'm traveling with Marathon Tours, a tour operator who specializes in adventure travel for runners. I'll be flying from Washington DC to Buenos Aires, spend three days exploring the country and perhaps enjoying an excursion into the jungles of Uruguay, then flying to Ushuaia (at the southern tip of Argentina) where we then board our ship. The ship then crosses the notoriously fierce Drake Passage to Antarctica (about a 2 day journey). We'll spend a day exploring while the race support team marks the course, then race day is March 7th. After the race we spend another 5 days cruising along the coast of Antarctica, with zodiak landings twice a day to explore penguin colonies, scientific research stations, and icebergs. Then it is time to go home--cross the Drake Passage, reach Ushuaia, flight to BA, then to Miami, and back to DC.

There was a little scare earlier this week that another winter storm might derail flights but the storm bypassed DC and now all things are a GO! I'm on the plane for the first leg of my trip. This will be a grueling 48 hours to go from Washington, DC to Atlanta to Miami, and then to Buenos Aires. I heard this morning that folks in Buenos Aires felt the effects of the 8.8 magnitue earthquake earlier today in Chile. I wonder whether I'll feel any of those aftershocks when I reach the city?