Log 1 - Travel "time" (November 26th 2010)

It’s about 9:25AM ET. Matt, Jake and Me are on our way! I’m sitting on a plane in the middle row of four seats with only one other gentleman. Both of us were opportunistic in snatching some empty seats once the passengers originally in that row got upgraded (lucky them and coincidentally, luck us.) Matt also found a spot to move and spread out, leaving Jake with the best set-up of all, with three seats side-by-side to sprawl out. Thankfully he will get his beauty sleep!
Time is kind of a bazaar phenomenon when traveling such distances in one trip. My simple finite mind has trouble keeping track of what time it is where and then translating that into my biological needs (i.e. SLEEP!) We arrived at Boston Logan airport around 3pm Thanksgiving Day and it was a virtual ghost town. We didn’t wait for a single person to check-in or get through security. We finally left Boston at 5:30pm vs our scheduled departure of 5:05pm due to a mechanical problem with the plane we were supposed to take. This required the crew to move all luggage, food, etc. to the new plane a few gates away and for all passengers to switch gates. It has now been 18 hours that we have been either in airports or on a plane. The itinerary is from Boston to San Francisco (6 hrs) From San Francisco to Sydney (14 hrs) Sydny to Port Moresby (3.5hrs) and Port Moresby to Goroka (1hr)… Tack on a few hours of lay-overs and you get a big number of hours to be traveling! So from awaking yesterday at 6am at the Hart’s house, to sitting on this plane at 9:40AM I just realized I haven’t slept but maybe an hour total in the last 24 hrs. Funny thing is, I’m on my second or third wind, another bazaar phenomenon since at home I can rarely engage in any mental activity after 9:30pm and yet here I sit, awake and typing about our adventure (at least I think I’m awake?)
Shelby and I had flown with Ashton and Alexis from Milwaukee to Boston last Saturday so we had pretty much adjusted to the one hour difference in CT and ET. But I’m not sure you can “get used to” the 15 hour time difference from Boston to PNG very quickly. Probably should be good to go just about the time we are ready to fly back.