Travel update

We've been in motion since 4am California time and even though we are supposed to have touched down in Manaus by about now, we are strangely still sitting around on the floor of the Miami airport. We switched gates three times, switched crews three times (so far) and now hope to get there in time for our flight to Santarém tomorrow afternoon. Our chance to sleep in hotel rooms for a few glorious hours has probably slipped away.

But, as with all things DIRT, there are a number of silver linings to be seen. First, we are all together, we are happy, and we are feeling fine. We busted out Uno cards and started playing rounds to seventh, eighth, and ninth place because we had loads of time. Also, nothing has really gone wrong. That is, we all had tickets, no one lost a bag or passport, and no one is in a terrible state. As a side note, we almost caught a view of the Space X launch out of Cape Canaveral, but we just missed it. We all got more time than usual to say goodbye to folks by phone from Miami. And this is a weird one, but there are much better food options in this airport than we’ve experienced here on past trips.

The airline fed us horrible sandwiches and potato chips but it’s enough to tide us over until we can sleep on the plane. We had plans to watch movies and sleep only a bit on this flight to help us reset our internal clocks but we’ll have to rethink that plan now. We hope to still hit the hotel for a meal and a shower but if that doesn’t happen, we’ll be fine.

So far we are doing a great job of keeping track of our stuff, being on time, taking care of each other, and maintaining good spirits. We even decided that this little hitch in our plan is good for us because everything has been going so perfectly. We have every intention to “embrace the chaos” so this is good practice for all that is before us.

Don’t worry. We’re fine. And we’ll stay that way!