Hello from Sunny Argentina

Hello Friends,

I’m writing to you today from sunny and warm Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Our NF Extreme Team is all here, healthy, and having a great time.   I think we are all a little sleep deprived at this point.  There is so much to do and see and not an abundance of time.  Yesterday, after flying all night, we arrived here at the hotel around 2:00 p.m. local time (we are two time changes east of the Eastern Time Zone).  Our flight out of Miami was delayed by about seven hours and the other half of the team flying from Atlanta beat us by several hours…not that there is anyone competitive enough on this trip to keep track of such things. We all went for a nice “leg stretcher” run in the 85 degree, 90 plus percent humidity at 4:00 p.m.,  before splitting up into smaller groups for various events in the evening.

Some quick introductions:
Dr. Jose Dominguez – a surgeon from Battlefield, Mo., who runs for his son Eric.  He is the informal head of the now infamous and international “Run for Eric” team.
Dr. Carl Price –Run for Eric Team; from Springfield, Mo., a plastic surgeon and a friend of Jose’s.
Kathy Price – Run for Eric Team; from Springfield, Mo., and by far, Carl’s better half; a pharmacist, motorcycle racer, and by all accounts awesome mom.
Dr. John Steinberg – Run for Eric Team from Springfield, Mo., a cardiothoracic surgeon.  Also a friend of Jose’s.  As you can see, we are in good hands medically on this trip.
Dr. Tim Billharz – Run for Eric Team; An OBGYN from Liberty, Mo., he is, like Jose, a human plumber, working in the same general region, but from a slightly different angle.
Coach George Haddad – Running for Gigi Kast. NF Endurance volunteer team coach, NASA Engineer, from Melbourne, Fla. – yup, a real live rocket scientist.
John McCarthy – Director Standard and Poors, from Holmdale, N.J.  John runs for his daughter and also serves on the Children Tumor Foundation’s Board of Directors.
George Franke – from the Holmdale, N.J. area and John’s father-in-law, and our team support person for the trip.
Chad Leathers – our 25-year-old mascot. Chad runs for his brother, Drew, and Chad is doing a wonderful job of documenting this excursion. Chad is presently from New York, N.Y., and he is a development officer for the Children’s Tumor Foundation.
Bill Hardy – from Harleysville, Pa.   Bill is the owner and president of Hardy Machine Company, two time Race Across America teammate, and part of the Ari’s Angels Team.
Bill Edmonds – from Erwinna, Pa.  Bill is the co-owner/president of B&G Manufacturing, two time Race Across America teammate and also part of the Ari’s Angel Team.
Steve Kendra – that’s me, from the bustling metropolis of Sellersville, Pa.  Running for my daughter Arianna.  I’m the director of the NF Endurance Team for the Children’s Tumor Foundation.
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Welcome to Miami

by:  Steve Kendra

Our flight to Buenos Aires has been delayed and we won’t be leaving until 1:00 in the morning Sunday.  I am sitting here with John McCarthy, Chad Leathers, and George Franke – George Haddad is on his way down from Melbourne, Fla.  As you probably know there was a large 8.8 magnitude earthquake this morning in Chile.  We don’t know if this is the cause of the latest delay or not at this point.  Buenos Aires is on the other side of the continent, but, the continent isn’t all that wide down there.

It’s humid here in Miami and has been raining.  Chad got here at 9:30 a.m. and has already been down to South Beach to check out the local flavor.  He met a beautiful blond in a tight black mini-skirt, whose name was Antonio.  We’ll have to keep an eye on him.

There’s no snow on the ground here in Miami – I almost forgot what that looked like.   We are all excited to get on our way to South America, talking about what we might see or expect, and how the waves might be on the Drake Passage.  I just got a text from Jose Dominguez who is waiting with the other half of our team in Atlanta.  He is already talking about our next trip. . . he wants to go to Kenya in the summer of 2012.  Stay tuned for more on that soon.

Bring on the Blizzard!

We are bracing for up to 24″ of snow in the Philadelphia area. The NF Endurance office is closed and the staff is working from home. So ditch the cars and bring out the sleds and snow boots.

It’s the second snow storm to hit the Northeast in less than a week, creating some challenging, but realistic, training runs for the Endurance Antarctica Marathon team. Steve, Chad, John, Bill and Bill are all training in the snow in the Northeast, and John, Jose, Tim and the Price’s have gotten some training runs in snowy Missouri. Check out some of our favorite photos from the snow so far. Have you been training in the snow in Endurance neon? Send your pictures to (Enable Javascript to see the email address).