October 4th

Started off the day with a hotel breakfast and an engaging conversation on the joys and challenges of croquet. Morning orientation was mostly safety briefings and don't bring any plants or animals to Antarctica. My most memorable quote from the training "It's Antarctica, it's slippery." I scored a few penguin cartoon stickers. Learned the proper way to install earplugs, what asbestos is, not to enter tight places that say do not enter, and things along those lines. The final training was rushed so we could get to the airport in time to wait 5 hours for the flight to LA. The flight from Denver to LA was uneventful.

The LA flight to New Zealand left about 9:20 p.m.. Another round of free red wine with the meal served on the plane. We had are own television on the plane. I watched two episodes of Little Britain, a movie about a modern day guy who has to build and Ark, played a Tetris wannabe video game and slept.