Mother Nature ...

... certainly has a "sense of humour."  All winter long, Boston has felt pretty much like early Spring, with hardly any snow and weirdly mild temperatures.  Until today, that is.

Today is the long-awaited start of our Big Adventure.  This morning when we woke up, we were greeted with dark gray skies and snow.  We were scheduled to take a flight from Boston to New York, and then hop on a plane from there to Santiago, Chile.  Upon arrival at Logan Airport, we were informed that the New York flight had been cancelled due to the weather. 

It took us over an hour to figure out just how to get to Chile in time to hop on our expedition ship which is scheduled to depart Puerto Williams bound for the Antarctic on Saturday afternoon.  Not an easy task, it quickly became clear.  All the flights to New York for today were full.  None of the available flights to New York tomorrow would arrive in time for us to make the connection to the flights to Santiago in time to catch a further charter flight from there to Puerto Williams.  Obviously if we miss the ship's departure, we miss out on all of Antarctica!

The only reasonable option left was for us to fly to Atlanta, Georgia today (where we are spending the night in a dreary airport hotel ... not quite the Mandarin Oriental in Santiago which was the original plan!), and then fly on to Chile tomorrow evening with about (God Willing) a four-hour window to catch the ongoing charter on Saturday morning.

Here's the only picture I took today, as we sat on the tarmac at Logan Airport, waiting for an hour to be de-iced prior to takeoff.

Things surely have to get better from here on out!