Will Cross has discovered quickly one of the truths of expeditions into the Antarctic: Things don't always go your way. "It's South America, as they say," Cross says with a sigh as he talks over the phone from Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world. It is Sunday, and he had hoped to be on Antarctica, but, well, even at the biggest airports in the world, sometimes you have to wait. Cross, an adventurous diabetic from Morningside, and Jerry Petersen of Jefferson Hills have just begun the NovoLog Ultimate Walk to Cure Diabetes, a trek to raise funds for research into the disease as well as providing a source for medical research. They had planned to be at the Patriot Hills base-camp area of Antarctica by Saturday to begin their 730-mile trip to the South Pole. But representatives of Adventure Network International were unwilling to risk flying its planes in high winds on the icy continent after losing one to mechanical difficulty down there earlier in the year. The Florida-headquartered company had to abandon a DC-8 on the ice, and didn't want to endanger another one. Trips that were to have left last week were delayed, pushing everything back. Cross and Petersen are the next scheduled trip and hope to be at Patriot Hills today — or Wednesday at the latest. The delay hasn't endangered the trip at all, Cross says, but it has changed some things. One thing Antarctic travelers learn quickly is to be flexible. The original plan was for Cross and Petersen to meet Cross' father, Mike, from England, and Dr. Bret Goodpaster, a researcher from the University of Pittsburgh, just after Christmas. Now, the rendezvous has been pushed off until just after the New Year. A resupply plan also has changed. Originally, Cross and Petersen were going to resupply in about six weeks. But Cross discovered when they got to the world's southernmost city that the resupply was going to cost about $50,000 — far more than he had anticipated. "Welcome to Antarctica," he says with a grim chuckle. The new plan is to have supplies flown in to Antarctica with his father and Goodpaster — and for him and Petersen to add more food to their 150-pound sleds. But Cross says he feels confident in the current plans. He admits they still have to finish by Jan. 20, when there is no more daylight in Antarctica, but he thinks that can be done. "Once you get on the ice, things can go really well, or they can go really badly," he says, "But I think we're OK." In the meantime, he says, he has enjoyed his time at a hostel in Punta Arenas, a town he compares to the Crawford County college town of Meadville. He says the weather is springlike there, in the 50s during the day and the 40s at night — quite a change from the cold he will be encountering soon. "It's a quiet, cool town," Cross says. "Good restaurants and good people."

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