A day of chickens

Day One, was intense. I woke up at 4:30 am, UK time, and by the time I got to bed, it was 4:00am UK time. Ouch.

4 hours later, this morning at 8:00 UK time (3:00 am USA time), I was up again.

It's perhaps little wonder then, that right now I'm sitting here writing this and feeling beyond shattered. I no longer have any concept of time. None. My computer tells me it should be 5:13p.m., but I think it's lying to me. Perhaps lying is too strong a word. In any case, it's a dubious claim to tell me it's only 5p.m.

New Jersey is... cold. And spacious. In fact, my two oberservations so far on this part of America are that it's spacious. And cold.

Oh, and did I mention the cold? It's freezing. The kind of cold you get when you go to the Alps skiing - although without a ski in sight. It reached -3 last night, and tonight is supposed to reach -6. We may get snow tomorrow (which would be awesome), although that may prevent us flying (which would suck).

Chickens have played a major part of my day. Well, two have to be precise. The first, is actually a GPS machine called a "Red Hen". This machine cunningly attached geo-spatial co-ordinated to video footage, allowing people to see what we've shot in a Google Earth style interface. The second "chicken", was actually red hen. The nastiest, fattiest, battery-farmed chicken I have ever tasted, cooked in grease and red chilli sauce. It was foul. Sorry, that's a poor pun. In all honesty though, I think I'd have been better off eating the Red Hen, than the red hen...

I still feel a bit blurry, as I sit here and try and work out where I am and what I'm doing. I've not really stopped for a minute in the last week, and today, suddenly, it dawned on me: I'm in America. I'm going to be filming things here from the sky. That's superb.

Tomorrow is going to be our first flight. As it happens, we're only flying in order to test the Red Hen - not to film - although I'm certainly going to jump on the chance to practice. And hey, I might as well record what I get up to.

Hmm. My head is nodding a bit. Time for a coffee. The night is young.

Oh yeah. Highlight of the day. Ken's house:



Ken, the person who has been looking after our helicopter for the last couple of weeks, has built his house INSIDE A HANGAR. Oh yes. It is THAT awesome. That's not his office, that's his house. Last night we were fiddling around dismantling the filming equipment, whilst across the hangar, his family were tucking into their evening meal.

Words fail me. Which is a good thing, I guess, as that's the end of my post.

Ben