The bags are packed

The bags are packed.  Two carry-ons and one checked bag [49.6 lbs out of the 50lb limit] will need to last us five full months on the road, air, and seas.

Our booking list has over 30 items to book - flights, hotels, transfers, cars etc etc.  Meds for five months.  The house is all battened down.

Our neighbors Brian and Donna will take us the 72 miles to the airport hotel, stopping for a nice steak dinner.  Our first flight leaves at 8:00 am Saturday morning, and the total journey time is 31 hours, arriving in Sydney at 7:00am Monday with a 17-hour time difference [ahead].  Because we are crossing the international dateline, we will not have a Sunday, February 18.  Let us know if we miss anything.

The people of Kiribati decided it was inconvenient to have their country divided by the International Date Line, so they changed their eastern timezone from GMT-10 to GMT+14, which also had the effect of making them the first country to see the new day.