October 8th – Day 4 of “The Commute”

I can’t believe it’s Friday already! Time flies when you’re having fun.

We took our PCR COVID test on Thursday, hoping to hear back from the company about results late tonight/ tomorrow morning. We will be getting ready for departure to NZ tomorrow evening; with staggered checkouts from the hotel and staggered transport to the airport for our charter flight (it’s a charter meaning only the USAP folks are on it, but it’s still operated by Air NZ). I believe our flight departs at 10pm Pacific time and arrives direct to Christchurch around 7AM local, but I’m still waiting for final a scheduling email.

Outdoor ‘yard time’ has been pretty nice. We’ve been getting two 30 minute slots to go out and WALK (no running) around the building. I have been doing about 2 miles in each of those… which is hard for me because I’m not a fast walker! but 4 miles a day isn’t too bad. I’ve also supplemented my lack-of-exercise with some random body-weight exercises; like push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, box jumps, etc. Also using my heavy-ass bag as kind of a sand-bag weight. All in all, not as bad as I thought it would be… though I would love to get out and run — guess I’ll have to save that for McMurdo, since the protocol in NZ will be similar.

Work has been going great too — when I’m not busy staring out the window in awe of the efficiency of the SFO logistics. Cool to watch all the international flights come in and just imagine that people are arriving from all over the world just a few hours before.