My New Discovery

I have made an incredible discovery.

Today was one of those days when you stayed up too late working the night before and had to get up too early. One of those days when you struggled to get up with the alarm, yet sill just missed breakfast. The steaming pits in the buffet line where treys of food had been moments before, taunting your empty stomach with each exhaled breath of steam. One of those days when you spent six hours editing two paragraphs, and when you were done the original author tells you he liked it better the way it was before you started. One of those days when you have been sitting long enough that you feel restless and tired at the same time.

Volleyball didn't start for another hour, and I needed a change of scenery. Nobody wanted to go outside and play frisbee. What do you mean you don't want to dress up it 5 layers and clumsily throw a disc in -25 windchill? So I decided to take my frisbee for a walk to the "end of the world."

The "end of the world" is the outer edge of the berms area of the South Pole station. It is where they move all of the snow that builds up around the station from winds rolling across the Antarctic ice cap. I walked out that direction, throwing the frisbee, watching its white spinning form blend into the white sky and the white snow. Funny thing, when the frisbee lands on the snow, it doesn't stop spinning right away, because there isn't much friction. The temporal continuity of the frisbee's motion blended in smoothly with the spatial continuity of the whiteness surrounding me.

I meandered out to some old human-sized tunnels of corrugated metal that were half buried, about 10 minutes walk from the station. I tossed the frisbee into the opening of the tunnel, and jogged after it. A small sign at knee height broke suddenly forced my wandering thoughts to focus. The sign had a "6" printed on it, and an arrow with the words "basket by yellow flag, par 3." Par 3? I looked up and noticed a metal post with chains hanging off of the top and a cylindrical metal basked affixed to the post at waist height. Suddenly it clicked. I had taken my frisbee for a walk and had inadvertently stumbled onto a folf course!

The moment of discovery.

For those of you who don't know, folf means frisbee-golf. It is usually played on an 18-"hole" course. Each "hole" consists of exactly what I had just found: a metal post standing head heigh with a cylindrical metal basket at waist height and metal chains running from the top of the post into the basket. You try to throw your frisbee into the basket. Just like golf a par-3 means that you get three throws to get from one post to the next in order to be on-par for the course.

Post #9. The tunnels can be seen in the background.

Can you get the frisbee through the ring of fire?

Now throw from on top of an industrial sized spool of hose!

I was very excited, and started playing the course from 9 on. The course was quite interesting, with some home-made posts that were hoops you had to throw the frisbee through, ladders to get up on top of industrial-sized spools of hose, and the tunnel I had stumbled upon originally. I ended up playing the course 1.5 times, and found most of the posts. By the time I quit, I was late for volleyball and above par by 5 throws at the 13th hole. But that was fine with me. It was a great way to finish one of those days.

James Brown BINGO!

The South Pole Station.

Saturday night was a Pole tradition: James Brown Bingo! James Brown is the head cook and has apparently been coming down here for a decade now. By 8pm a crowd gathered in the Galley (dining room). There was a feeling of expectation in the air. Each person gathered a few bingo boards, and the official ball roller set himself in a chair. At 8:04 a roar came up from the back of the room, and in strode James Brown! He was dressed like someone from Bravehart, with knee-high moccasins, a kilt, a sword, a crazy black wig that was sticking up everywhere, and facepaint to boot. Growling and sputtering and muttering, he sauntered through the crowd, waving to his adoring fans.

Playing pool in the station. Sorry, no photos of BINGO.

As the ball roller spun out balls from the golden cage, Brown would read each with a dramatic pause after each letter. "B…." "Six!" "Fifteen!" "Two!" the contestants would should with high hopes. "YES! B-two!" Brown would shout to a cacophony of cheers and groans. Specific numbers had specific catch-phrases that we were supposed to shout out when we heard them. "I-18" lead to a "That's what she said!" followed by a maniacal wide-eyed grin and a "Yeaaaaaahhhhh Baby!" from Brown. "B-2" "Bomber!" "B-1" "with the universe!" "B-4" "and after!" and the crowd favorite "O-69" which usually saw Brown sneaking up behind an unsuspecting victim and shouting the number in their ear to make them jump out of their seat!

There were eight rounds, with winning cards being everything from the classic row-or-column to a T, H, Z, Outside square, and the black-out finale. Prizes were quite good, being gift certificates to restaurants and bars in Christ-church, NZ. Whenever a contestant won, they would shout out "BINGO!" and walk up to the front of the galley. Brown would scowl at them, and check over the card. He would invariably say, "Oh-oh" pause, then say "Winner!" Twice however, people came up who had not actually won, and they were returned to their chairs with a loud booing from the crowd.

My friend Ross had stayed up far too late the previous night drinking, and looked like a drowned rat for most of the day. He went to take a nap at 6:30pm, and Tijmen and I made a bet as to whether or not he would show up for Bingo. I said yes, and Tijmen said no. The stakes were that if the looser of the bet won a card, he would give the prize to the other person. At 8:00pm, no Ross. at 8:01, no Ross. Tick, tock, tick, tock. At 8:03, Ross shows up! I am the winner of the bet! But the chances of Tijmen winning a card were so low, I forgot about the bet quickly. Then on round 3, Tijmen won! So guess what, I indirectly won a $30 gift certificate to a restaurant in Christ church!!

The peak excitement of the whole evening was the final round when O-69 came up. Brown took hold of a large wooden spoon - I am talking about a 3-foot paddle - and looked around menacingly. He strode across the Gally, and smashed to pieces the large ginger-bread house which had been there since Christmas! Howls from the crowd encouraged him as he raised the spoon in triumph.

The final blackout round ended with two contestants both clutching winning cards. Under the threat of a "dance your pants off" competition, the ultimate winner was decided by rolling out numbers until one showed up on one person's card and not the other's. A fireman ended up walking away with the grand prize, a $100 gift certificate.

searching for clusters of galaxies

Contrary to my expectations, things have been pleasantly busy down south. It all started when the Planck Telescope collaboration published a suite of 25 papers two weeks ago. And it looks like it is going to end with me writing a paper.

The SPT, scanning the sky for clusters of galaxies.

The Planck Telescope is designed to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB - look it up on Wikipedia). Their main objective is to measure the large scale primary anisotropies of the CMB to the fundamental accuracy limit set my nature. The primary anisotropies in the CMB are those fluctuations that arise from small differences is the density of matter at the time when the CMB was emitted, 370,000 years after the big bang. The CMB is the focus of my graduate research.

The Planck team recently released a paper with a catalog of clusters of galaxies that they have found through the Sunyaev Zel'dovich Effect (SZE). One of the main science objectives of the South Pole Telescope SPT (my graduate research project) is to use the SZE to count the number of clusters of galaxies in the universe. Scientists are interested in counting clusters of galaxies, because the number and mass of the clusters that we see is strongly dependent on how much dark energy is in the universe. Dark energy is the name for the fact that we observe the universe to be expanding at an accelerating rate, and we don't know why. Clusters of galaxies are pushed away from each other by dark energy, so (roughly) more dark energy means that we see fewer clusters of galaxies.

Using the SZE to detect clusters of galaxies has proven to be very effective. The basic idea is that gas in clusters of galaxies scatter light from the CMB in a predictable way. Because of this, clusters of galaxies show up as holes in the background pattern of the CMB. We call these holes "decrements" in a sky map, and we characterize how robust the detection of a cluster is by its "signal-to-noise" ratio, i.e. the ratio of the signal (the decrement caused by the potential cluster) to the noise from the instrument, the CMB, and other astrophysical sources.

In any case, the Planck paper reported 20 previously undiscovered clusters of galaxies, 9 of which had not been confirmed by other methods of observation (X-ray, optical telescopes, etc). Five of these unconfirmed clusters are in the southern hemisphere of the sky, and are thus visible to the SPT. We had just included one of these clusters in a publication from 3 weeks ago which reported 23 new cluster discoveries made by the SPT. The SPT group decided that it would be a good idea to point our telescope at the locations of these unconfirmed clusters to see what we could find.

We observed a 2 degree-by-2 degree patch of sky around each location for 4 to 10 hours, depending on the patch. In this amount of observation time, we clearly saw each cluster. Sweet! Done with observations. Next we need to figure out exactly where each detector is pointing on the sky. We do this by looking at stars whose location we know very accurately, and adjust our data accordingly. After this we need to make maps from the raw observational data. This involves filtering the data to remove noise from the atmosphere , then dividing the data into pixels on the sky (think of a digital picture - if you zoom in a lot, you start seeing squares of color. Those are individual pixels).

Once we have maps we run a "cluster finding algorithm" to check if there actually is a cluster there. In technical terms, this is done by multiplying the maps with a filter that passes regions with the a range of sizes that we expect to correspond to the size of clusters, and maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio over filter size and location on the map. In the end, this procedure allows us to calculate the signal-to-noise ratio for each cluster.

Finally, we need to calculate the chance that what we see are false detections. In order for these to be false detections, there would have to be a CMB fluctuation that aligned with a decrement from a point source, such as a star. We simulated a sky including the CMB, point sources, and other effects, then looked for fluctuations that were larger than our smallest potential cluster detection. We found that there was one "false detection" in about one trillion degrees. Therefore, we are confident that what we see corresponds to real galaxy clusters.

I have spent the past week taking the observations and working on the analysis with the other post docs here at Pole. I put together a draft of the paper within 1 week of the idea even being floated, and it looks like we will be able to publish this paper on the time scale of a couple of weeks. I'm pretty excited about it, and it has given all of us down here at the Pole plenty to do!

Spoiler Alert! [pub trivia answers]

*** DON'T READ THIS UNTIL AFTER YOU READ THE PUB TRIVIA QUESTIONS POST. ***

Answers

A1) New Zealand
A2) Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 meters (16,000 ft).
A3) Mt Vinson, 4,892 meters (16,050 ft)
A4) 1957
A5) New Zealand
A6) Wyoming
A7) large teat, large breast
A8) Pakistan, India, Tibet
A9) 2010, 12 years ols
A10) Yosemite Decimal System
A11) Chamonix, Zermatt

A_b1) Cervin
A_b2) Aconcagua

Pub Trivia: Mountain Round!

This is Pub Trivia coming to you less-than-live from the South Pole! Brought to you by your friendly SPT staff.

Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, the questions to only one of four rounds survived last night's mad brawl down at the South Pole Pub, otherwise know as the Galley. The four teams were closely matched, with 3 out of 4 teams winning individual rounds.

No looking up the answers until you have finished the round - cheaters never prosper! And remember, you are not trying to get the right answer, you are trying to get the answer that matches my Answer Key! So, with no further adue, I bring you the round written by yours truly, the Mountain Round!


1) Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb Mt Everist. What country was he from?

2) What country has the highest average elevation?

3) Highest peak in Antarctica? Elevation? +- 200m = 660ft

4) El Capitain is the center-piece of Yosemite National Park. The first ascent of this 2,900 ft wall climbed the central buttress called the Nose. When was this climb completed? +- 5 years

5) The beautiful Southern Alps have trained generations of mountaineers for the climbing in the biggest ranges of the world. What country are they located in?

6) The Wind River range is a beautiful high country mountain range that contains Gannett Peak, the highest in the state. What state are they in?

7) The Grand Teton National Park is a spectacular playground for climbers and outdoor enthusiasts. According to legend, what does "Grand Teton" mean?

8) The Karakoram range spans what three countries?

9) Matt Moniz is the youngest person to climb to the highest point in all 50 states. What year did he complete this project, and what was his age?

10) What is the name of the most widely used rockclimbing rating system? For example, 5.12a.

11) The famous Haute Route is arguably the most popular ski traverse in the European Alps. Name the two towns that this route connects.

---
Bonus:
B1) The Matterhorn is described by many as the most beautiful mountain in the world. What is its French name?

B2) What is the highest peak in South America?

Answers are in the next blog post.

Work, work, work

As pointed out by Boyan, my blog posts so far this year have mostly consisted of stories about being stalked by red-heads and making up routes at the climbing gym. "Ahh, so you poke the telescope once a day and mostly sit around drinking tea and schmoozing!" is what you might be thinking. As entertaining as yarns of volleyball and pub trivia are, that is certainly not the reason I was sent down here. Thus I will take the next few moments to describe what I have been doing on a daily basis down here at the Pole.

Tijmen walking through the hall in the Dark Sector Lab

I am here for my graduate research, which is in the branch of astrophysics known as cosmology. Cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole. I do this 'studying' by working on the South Pole Telescope (SPT). In one jargon-filled sentence, we are using the SPT to study dark energy (among other things) in two ways: finding and observing clusters of galaxies, and measuring the secondary anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background. That should give you enough words to waste at least half a day on Wikipedia.

The lion's share of our observations are taken during the Antarctic winter. This leaves the summer season (i.e. now) open for maintenance of the telescope. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the main item on the agenda this summer was replacing the azimuth bearing. I was supposed to come down after the bearing had been replaced and help put the telescope back together for the next season. For better or worse - well for better - the bearing replacement went extremely well and the new bearing was in place 10 days early. For worse, this means that there isn't as much for us to do.

Tijmen and Ross controlling the telescope.

None the less, we have been keeping busy, and I have actually been working every day I have been here so far. We have been steadily working through a check-list of maintenance projects to prepare the telescope for the next season. Here are a few examples. One of the four elevation motors was making a lot of noise, which is usually a bad sign. The elevation motors move the telescope in elevation (up and down on relative to the horizon). We went up into the telescope and found that the motor was not giving any torque - to such a degree that you could stop it from rotating by grabbing it with your bare hand. So we took the motor out and replaced it with our spare motor. We have spares of just about everything - you can't just walk down to the store and buy a new part if something breaks! Another project involved me glueing thermometers into holders with stycast. The thermometers will be used in a calibration source, which is used to measure how well our detectors are responding to a known signal. In a third small project I have been writing new scan files which tell the telescope how to observe. I also fixed a heater in the receiver cabin by changing out a Solid State Relay.

Docking the telescope.

Climbing up into the receiver cabin.

Crazy British! Ross describing something, we're not sure what.

Me posing by the readout electronics.

A relatively major ongoing project involves the regenerator batteries. When the telescope slews (rotates) in azimuth, it is accelerated by power from the main station power (through a load-leveler). When it decelerates, some of that power is pushed into regenerator batteries, which store the power temporarily until the next time the telescope moves. In this manner we can be as efficient as possible with our energy use. However, there has been a miss-match in timing between the power source and the regenerator batteries. This means that if the telescope is accelerating to the left, it is pulling power from the main station. If it is suddenly commanded to move to the right, it decelerates, dumping power into the regenerator batteries, then tries to pull power to accelerate to the right. The problem comes if there is a timing miss-match between the regenerator batteries and the station power; the station power might be expecting the regenerator batteries to supply power when they can't, and the telescope receives no power. The result is that the telescope does not move when the software expects it to move, and all hell breaks lose.

We have spent the past two days working on diagnosing and fixing this problem. This involves checking voltage phases between the two regenerators, and the phases relative to the load-leveler (station power). We are talking about ~500 Volts. We do this while swinging the telescope back and forth in azimuth. We also found that one of the two regenerators was giving faults too easily, and switched it out for a spare. The spare works well. It is pretty exciting swinging the telescope back and forth as fast as possible. The whole building shakes, and when the power dumps into the regenerators the lights flicker. Sometimes the large breaker switches on the telescope flip with a loud 'snap!'

-- Update --
Today we looked at the voltage readout of the regenerator batteries as we moved the telescope. The voltage changes on the regenerator when moving were *backwards* from what we expected. It seemed that the load-leveler was over-compensating, and actually putting power *onto* the regenerator when the telescope accelerated, and *removing* power from the regenerator when the telescope was decelerating. We switched to direct station power, and the voltage changes on the regenerator were as expected. So we will now stay on station power until we can talk to Extreme Power, the company that makes and maintains the load-leveler.
---

I think tomorrow I will be looking at some Python code which we use to tune the pulse tubes. The pulse tubes are mechanical cooling devices which keep our detectors at 350 miliKelvin, or 0.3 degrees above absolute zero. They use a very complicated thermodynamical process which is not thoroughly understood theoretically, but works quite well! Tuning them means adjusting the pumping frequency to get optimal cooling power. An additional bonus is that I get to learn a bit more Python.

Well, hopefully that gives you an idea of what I am doing on a daily basis down here at the Pole. It is fun to do hands-on work as a change from my usual job of primarily programming and data analysis on the computer back in Chicago. So far, the telescope looks to be in great shape for the up-coming season!

This story deserves a special post of its own because it is hilarious.

Random Picture of the day: looking up the runway at Pole.

So there I was. Eating lunch in the Galley on Saturday with the rest of the SPT folks. This red-head girl walks up to the table and taps me on the shoulder. "Are you Kyle Story?" "Um, yes…?" and she just turns her head and walks away! About 4 seconds later I turn to the exit where she just left and throw out a, "And you are…?" We were all sitting around the table saying, "what just happened?" After discussing various conspiracy theories about how she would know who I was, we decided that the best course of action would be for me to figure out her name by asking around, and the next time I saw her in the hall, walk up to her and say, "Hey, are you Alexis?" (name changed for anonymity) and walk away.

Fast forward 5 hours. I'm now stuffing my face with pizza at dinner after a quick workout at the climbing gym. This guy Jason who I know from the Cornell Outing club goes past and I flag him down. I had just met him 2 hours previous on my way out to the wall and found out he was working as a GA (General Assistant). So I ask him if he knows a red-head GA, and tell him about how she knew who I was at lunch. He says, "huh, you must be famous!" and walks away.

Fast forward 2 more hours. I am now hanging out in the Science room, at a Wine and Cheese party thrown by the Metrology folks. Us SPT people are standing in a circle talking, when we notice the red-head is across the room. The guys start goading me, telling me I should go over there and talk to her. We find out her name is Alexis. So 10 minutes late I wander over to her group. I budge into the circle next to her, but she is talking to an older gentleman. So I stand awkwardly for several minutes, trying to listen to the gentleman. The SPT folks are obviously watching and laughing at me (I'd be doing the same in their place, for sure!). Finally the conversation dies down, and I ask the gentleman about an awesome silver ice-axe and goldline pin on his lapel. I find out that he is from Silverton CO and has done a fair bit of climbing and skiing. In any case, he decides to go get a glass of wine, and I turn to Alexis, who just starts cracking up. Turns out that Jason, my friend from Cornell, is indeed responsible! He dared Alexis to ask talk to me at lunch. She meant to say more at that time, but started cracking up and high-tailed it for the exit. Jason was watching the whole thing, and apparently the reaction of our table was priceless! Well played!

Jacking, Trivia, and Banff

I have now been at Pole for a full 3 days. Man, feels like I never left. The station is the same, and I already know my way around. Important things like dinner times and how to clean the bathroom, are old-hat. But it is good to be back.

Flying over the Antarctic Ice Cap

Inside the C-17

Thursday after arriving, I headed out to the telescope to have a quick look around. It is the summer season here, and we do most of our observing during the winter. Thus the summer season is mostly used for maintenance of the telescope. The main piece of maintenance this year was fixing the azimuth bearing. "Fixing a bearing? No problem!" you might say. Well, let's review the situation. This bearing is about 12 feet in diameter, and the ENTIRE 700,000 lb telescope sits on top of it. Add to that the fact that the whole castle is build on ice - no solid ground for over 3 kilometers straight down.

The plan was to jack the entire telescope up, pull the bearing out, pop in a new one, and set the telescope back down. Sound simple? Well, we hired a Dutch company, Mammoet, which specializes in heavy lifting, to do the job. By heaving lifting I mean things like bridge trusses and entire buildings. A 700,000 lb telescope would be no problem, they said. The jacking was supposed to begin on December 25 (Yes, people work on Christmas down here. Seriously, what else are you going to do?) Well, they had that bearing out by Dec 15, no sweat! By the time I got here, the telescope was completely back together and we had already fired the detectors back up! So ol' madam SPT was looking in tip-top shape.

Tijmen and Ross verifying that the STP is in tip-top shape.

After so much travel and being at 9300 feet above sea level, I was feeling wired and ready to rumble by dinner time (for Caswell, that was SARCASM), but my friends from the KECK experiment convinced me to sit in my chair long enough to play pub trivia. Three rounds consisting of something important that I don't remember, Wold Languages, pictures of people who you had to identify and say how they died, and random facts. My favorite answer to the person identification round was "Richard Nixon, shot by Viet-Cong." Needless to say, we got destroyed.

Friday night, I went out to the climbing gym. That's right they have a CLIMBING GYM at the south pole! It is a small wooden wall that is *very* steep, but well constructed given the small space. Lots of good holds too! Someone had changed out most of the holds from last year, which was great. I put up a new problem that is quite hard, didn't get it Friday or Saturday, but hopefully I'll get it tomorrow.

After climbing, they had a showing of the Banff Mountain Film festival in the gym. It was a pretty sweet setup - projector throwing images of people and mountains up on a huge white sheet hung on the wall - full on big screen. The films were entertaining. A crazy film about Alex Hanold free-soloing Moonlight buttress (8? pitches, 5.12d) and the Regular NW face of halfdome (23 pitches, 12b) followed by some quality heli-skiing followed by some other films? The last film was the longest and best. It captured the adventures of a British chap who decided that it would be a good idea to take a tandem bike to the arctic circle, and bike to the Torres del Fuego at the southern-most tip of Chile. By himself. The idea was that he would pick up random people to ride with him wherever he could. What a cool idea! In the end it took him over 2 years to make the voyage, and he picked up 220+ random passengers. He entered Mexico not speaking a word of Spanish, and exited as a fluent speaker. Very cool film.

Bed time for Kyle. Till next time, live life to the fullest!

Back to the Pole!

Woahhhh. I'm stuffed. Hungry stuffed. Mmmm, curry and steak for breakfast. Too much curry, wayyyy to much curry! I want to go to sleep. Wow that clock is huge! They really flew that thing in here!? What time is it? 7:30pm. But I just woke up...

Not sure what time it is in McMurdo. Notice awesome $5 hat.

So there I was. This would be yesterday evening, Wednesday January 5. I had just slept from 10:30am to 4:30pm in a room with 5 other beds in the McMurdo Station. My sleep schedule is so messed up my body has no idea what time it is. But let me start from the beginning.

Welcome back to my Antarctic blog! This year, I am going to try to write entertaining and informative stories for all of you to enjoy. I'll also try to post accompanying pictures, but this is always satellite-dependent. Hopefully you can all get a sense for life on the ice, and keep up with what I am doing. So enjoy! And feel free to comment!

I started traveling last Saturday. Wow, Saturday!? That's 6 days ago! I check in to O'hare with 3 large bags, and the baggage person tells me I'm going to have to pay for the 3rd bag. $100. Ouch - but I expected that. THen he finds out that one bag is 65 lbs (I blame the fan that I am bringing for the backup power supply), and slaps on another $60. Double ouch! Fastforward to my arrival at McMurdo, I'm sitting in the NSF office,

NSF building in McMurdo.

and the travel coordinator Liz hands out pieces of paper informing us that our baggage limits are 2 70lb bags. After the briefing, I go talk to Liz, and tell her about my fees. "So they charged you 60 dollars for the 65lb bag, then another 100 for the extra 50lb bag? That wasn't very nice of them." She is working on the case as we speak.

Ok, that flight got me to LA. I immediately start seeing United States Antarctic Program (USAP) tags on every third bag. Guess I am in the right place! The intercom comes on and tells us that carry-on bags will be limited to 15 lbs. What! My backpack probably weighs 35. And I already have a "personal item," my camera. But they don't count the coat! So I stuffed my coat pockets with my books, toiletries, computer power cord, and small camera. Pack comes in at 12 lbs. After weighing the pack, I pack it right back to its 35 lb state of glory.

This flight goes from LA to Aukland, NZ. 13 hours. Fortunately it is overnight, and as you know I sleep like a rock. Anywhere. At night, on the bus, at parties, in class, um, well, you get the point. My plan was to watch The Godfather, which I started high above the Pacific ocean last year but never finished, then ponder the back of my eyelids for most of the flight. Fatal flaw to the plan - they don't have the Godfather! Well, I cried myself to sleep and still slept like a rock.

The lady next to me works as a secretary in a chicken-packing plant in Atlanta. Apparently if the company does well, the owner sends about a dozen of the best employees on a cruise in random parts of the globe. This lady had been to Africa and South America, and they were doing a 12 day New Zealand - Australia cruise. She was nice enough, but an amusing strain between her and the flight attendant arose. At breakfast, the lady's blanket prevented her tray table from coming out. So the flight attendant grabbed the blanket and stuffed into the overhead compartment. The lady was cold, and as soon as the flight attendant went past, she stood up and got the blanket back down, spilling her breakfast in the process. Then when the plane was getting ready to land, the lady wanted to keep her bags and purse under her feet. The flight attendant said, "no," and put the bags up. When the lady tried to keep a pillow down, the flight attendant grabbed it and glared at the lady. Fortunately, the flight was soon over and lady told the flight attendant she had had a good flight, so no harm done.

We now get to Aukland, and get all of our bags to go through customs. They are EXTREMELY strict about people bringing in biological pests (seeds, grass, dirt, etc) into New Zealand, and they inspect any tents and boots that you have. Fortunately, I knew this from last time and my gear was all clean. I walked my bags over to the Jetstar terminal to check into my last flight to Christchurch. Here I was met by the most impressive display of incompetence I have yet seen at an airport checkin. First, the entrance was poorly designed, with no room for a line. The entrance quickly turned into a mob. There were self-checkin kiosks, but 1 out of 4 seemed to be working, and it was not clear if I need to use them or not. There were 10 checkin posts, but only 3 had attendants: One for pre-checked passengers who only needed to check bags, and another for the passengers whose flight to Queenstown was supposed to leave in 20 minutes. After waiting for 1:20 in a 15 person line, one lady got the impression that 6 of us were together in a group because we all had USAP tags. She took our passports, then figured out we were not together and gave them all back. Fortunately we were early enough that time solved the incompetence problem and we all made the flight.

I arrived in Christchurch in the early afternoon, and checked into the Windsor Bed and breakfast. What a great, homey place! After the fancy and impersonal Crowne Plaza hotel from last year, the Windsor was a nice change. A lady shaped like a large pear checked us in. She sang loudly, presumably to herself, as she took me to my tiny room. They serve breakfast from 6-7:45am, and the menu is simple enough to be painted on a sign on the wall: eggs with your choice of meat, baked beans, pasta, creamed corn, and tomatoes. Mmmmm, yummy. They had these small containers the size of individual jam-packets labeled "tomato sauce." I couldn't figure out the purpose of the funny little ridge in the middle - until I squeezed the package and the ridge broke and squirted ketchup all over my face.

At a Restaurant in Christchurch.

Random People in Christchruch.

The landing strip at the McMurdo station in Antarctica is on the Ross Ice shelf. It has been warm enough that the landing strip was in bad shape. As a result, we flew in Tuesday night. We got all of our warm clothes from the Antarctic Center at 6:30pm, and were on board by 9pm. Guess what - I slept the whole 5 hour flight - and woke up as the plane landed at 4:30am.

Getting off the plane at the Pegasis Airstrip, Ross Iceshelf, McMurdo Station.

On the drive to the McMurdo Station.

Keith and Tijmen from McGill were on the flight with me; they had been traveling continuously and hadn't had a good night's sleep since Sunday. After getting to the McMurdo Station, we decided to stay on a reversed sleep schedule and go straight to bed. So I slept from 10:30am to 4:30pm.

This brings me back to the introduction of this blog. Having just woke up from 6 hours of sleep I stuffed myself silly with curry and steak for breakfast.

My Bed at McMurdo.

My body is thoroughly confused as to what time it is - 7:30pm, just woke up but still dazed. We have two papers that are supposed to get published by the SPT collaboration on Wednesday by 4pm CST. And there is still plenty of heated discussion about the papers. So Keith, Tijmen and I head up to the Creary library and settle in to work for the night. I'm editing, Keith is exploding about various emails, and Tijmen is trying to run IDL job through an SSH connection half-way around the world in Montreal. My mind gives starts fizzling and poping at 1:30am, and I crash on the couch. "I'll sleep for 1 hour, the wake up and edit the rest of the paper."

BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT! (Huh?) BZZZZZT! (Alarm?) BZZZ-slam! zzzzz… (groan, stretch) "oh, its 4:30am" So much for the 1 hour of sleep. Tijmen is jacked on caffeine and hasn't slept yet. Keith passed out at the same time I did. A quick breakfast and we are headed off for the plane to Pole at 6:45am. I have written this blog while sitting on a C-17 flying over the Trans-Antarctic mountains. I'll finally be at Pole, 6 days after starting, in about an hour!

On the C-17, flying to Pole.