This story was reported for San Diego Magazine in April 2020. It’s the recipient of a Press Club award for magazine feature writing.
It’s December 16, 2019. While friends and family back home in San Diego are surrounding themselves with loved ones and dreaming of a White Christmas, Robert DeLaurentis is alone. He’s 10,000 feet above the most frigid destination on Earth, where even now, at the beginning of its summer, the average daily temperature is minus 22 degrees. He’s in the pilot’s seat of the Citizen of the World, a highly modified twin-engine 1983 Gulfstream Turbine Commander 900. Today he’s been in his cockpit for 18 hours straight, and it feels appropriate that his first human interaction since takeoff comes in the form of a joke.
Read the full story at SanDiegoMagazine.com.