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.