April 24th - April 25th

My oh My what a wonderful Day...

Let's chronicle the last 36 hours.  How and where did it start and how and where did it finish, those are the questions.

I woke up on Thursday morning at the Holiday Inn Express in Clifton Park New York at around 7:00 AM Eastern Time.  Ryan and I had shared a room the last two nights due to uncertainty in plans and uncertainty of available rooms at the hotel.  We had an 11 am check out on the room and we were reluctant to check out since we might need to stay another night.  So we had breakfast and hung around the room waiting for phone calls and some guidance on what we should do.  One suggestion was to check out of the hotel and head to the airport and wait there.  So around noon we checked out of the hotel and headed to the airport, arriving around 12:30 pm.  We sat and talked while waiting for news from NSF and from our travel agent.  Then it happened, we got the phone call, we were going to Greenland after all, but via Copenhagen Denmark.  This happened around 1:30 pm Eastern time, thus the race started.

We ran to the National Car Rental counter and got a car for a one way race to Newark New Jersey to catch a 5:20 flight to Copenhagen.  We jumped in the car (I was driving) and headed south towards New York City and then Newark.  Ryan spent the two and a half hours checking on reservations, confirmations and directing me to the Newark Airport.  I can honestly say I have now driven New York from West to East and mostly North to South.  We arrived at the airport a few minutes after 4 pm, we had time to drop the car and head to the SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) counter to check in and get through security.  As we stood in the TSA line we realized that we had made it with a few minutes to spare.  We checked in and got our seats and had enough time for a breather.  We made it to the gate with 20 minutes to spare.  We were heading to Copenhagen.

8 hours later we landed in Copenhagen at 7:20 am local time.  Time to grab our things and run through the airport again.  This time we were trying to catch an Air Greenland flight at 9:00 to Kangerlussauq Greenland, halfway back across the route we had just taken.  We ran through the airport arriving at the passport check station, had our passports stamped and we ran to our gate to check in and get our seats.  This time we got there and had 30 minutes to spare before the plane started boarding, our luck was holding.  Now a 4 hour flight to Kanger and we were keeping to our schedule.

The fun thing about flying from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq is that you leave at 9:00 am and you arrive 4 hours later at 9:45 am.  This time we were congratulating ourselves for a good race and making it to every flight.  On this flight were several people that were also going to Kanger for their work.  Ryan and I were the only two trying to make it to Summit in 24 hours though.  The rest were using Kanger as their base.  It was a good flight and I might have dozed off for a few minutes during it.  Up till then I had not slept at all.

The last leg of the trip, Kangerlussaq to Summit Camp.  We arrived at Kanger and were met by Audrey, one of the Polar Field employee's stationed in Kanger.  We find out that the plan is for us to go to the main building (the KISS facility) and have a bathroom break and then head to the Cold Weather Gear depot and get suited up for our trip to Summit.  We are going fairly quickly through all of this since the Twin Otter plane is scheduled to take off at 11 am local to take us to Summit.  We through on some gear, sign it out and we rush over to the airport.  There it is, the final plane in our 24 hour race to Summit.  The Air Greenland Twin Otter.  You can see it in the picture above.  There isn't much space on it, but it is a heck of a lot of fun to ride in.  We board the plane and we are off, off on the last leg of our race.

The twin otter today was carrying three of us, one person who was spending 30 minutes at Summit to check on the profess of his project and Ryan and me.    We had cargo crammed around us, but we were having fun.  We took off on the 3 hour flight to Summit.  We spent out time looking through the windows and taking photos.  Finally, at 2:15 pm we arrived at Summit.  Our race was done and we had made it.  Albany to Summit had taken us just 22 hours and 45 minutes.  We had driven, flown on three different planes, gone to two different countries and arrived at our destination safely and in one piece.

This has been a My oh My What a Wonderful Day.