August 30, 2012 - Life Around Town

Me in front of the McMurdo sign.

Well, in case you need proof that I've arrived, here it is.  It's been four days since we got to McMurdo, and it feels like I never left!  The last few days have been riddled with trainings, getting ourselves set up on station, and other odds and ends.  We've had a handful of trainings so far for things such as where we can recreationally travel outside, how to operate the light vehicles on station, and getting our radios.  We have several more set up over the coming days also.  I've finally got my office and my dorm room set up the way I want it.  My roommate and I moved our room around so that we can each have some privacy, and I've hung up a few blankets and got myself a nice, cozy cave that works for me.

The dorms.  Mine is the one in the middle.

Right now, we're kind of waiting to get things together for flights - our cargo finally arrived, but there are a few days of prep before we can do any actual flying.  We also have to wait for the last C-17 flight from Christchurch to arrive and leave before we have clearance to fly.  This should happen tonight.  So far I have been spending a lot of time working and trying to get some things finished up that I hadn't had time to when I was in the US.  As we start prepping the planes to fly, I will try to also help with that, but since I'm probably the least qualified person here to put the planes together I'm not sure how useful I will be.  For fun, I watch movies and, of course the old Antarctic staple - "Arrested Development".  John and I are doing some spinning (indoor cycling) as well.  We all manage to keep busy, although that doesn't mean I don't miss my boys and Mom at home!

Yesterday it was pretty windy, but today it's much more calm and mild.  The temperature right now is -4F, with a wind chill of -15F.

Here's some pictures I've taken over the last few days.

Afternoon light over Hut Point Peninsula.

Dusk over McMurdo Sound.

Ob Hill in the morning (taken with a long exposure, so it's much darker than it looks).

Me on the dock of the science building I work in.  I was a little cold.

Cream puffs for dinner (not as good as the WI State Fair, but not too terrible either)!

August 28, 2012 - In Antarctica

Lights and passengers upon arrival at Pegasus Runway.

Well, we've finally arrived!  We left Christchurch yesterday around 3 pm, and landed around 8.  After sitting out on the runway in our transport vehicles for about a half hour, we made the hour long trek from the airfield to McMurdo Station.  By the time I got here, it was around 10 pm.  After getting my bags, putting my bed sheets on my bed, and unpacking a bit, I was in bed at 12:30 am, just to get up at 6:30 am to go to the first of two inbriefings today.  I didn't sleep very well last night, so I'm a bit tired today.

Me and John on the flight down.

The weather was -30C (-24F) when we landed, and winds were 8 knots (~9 mph).  It hasn't changed much since then.  I honestly wasn't sure what to expect when I arrived, but I found it wasn't as cold as I was expecting.  I've felt nights that cold growing up in northern WI, and when I was out camping in West Antarctica three years ago.

What I was, and still am, most impressed with is the dark.  As I said, every other time I've been here, the sun has been up 24 hours a day.  Right now, the sun rises at 9:58 am and sets at 3:51 pm, which is almost 3 hours longer than a week ago.  Being here in the darkness is pretty neat.  It makes me look at the station differently.  I don't have a lot of pictures yet of the dark and dawn/dusk, but here's one from yesterday, and I'll get some more today.

The C-17 plane I rode in on.

Today the moon was up over McMurdo Sound, and looked pretty neat!

Moon over McMurdo Sound.

Right now we're sort of in wait mode.  Our cargo won't arrive until the last flight (which is two flights from now), but we aren't allowed to fly the remote control planes we're here to fly (called UAVs, which stands for unmanned aerial vehicles) until the last flight leaves anyway.  Once the last flight for a month leaves, we will begin our flights.  Right now, we're doing all the training that we're required to do when we get here, which keeps us plenty busy.

Stay warm!

August 25, 2012 - Still in New Zealand

Hi all - still in Kiwi-land!  Our flight south was supposed to leave on Thursday the 23rd, but here it is, Saturday the 25th and we are still in New Zealand!  It's not surprising to be delayed on any trip to Antarctica (and particularly those going during Winfly), so this hasn't been too much of a shock.  The weather has been the hold up so far, but tomorrow things look ok to fly so hopefully we will go then.  We are scheduled to leave around 5 pm our time (11 pm CO time), and as it's approximately a 6 hour flight we won't arrive in McMurdo until 11 pm our time (5 am CO time).  Right now, it looks to be around -25C (-8F) in the hours before we land, with the winds dropping to around 10-15 knots (11-17 mph).  That's not bad by Antarctica's standards.  By the time we land, the temperature will likely have dropped even more as the winds die down.  Keep your fingers crossed that we make it!

In the meantime, since we had another couple of days in Christchurch, I've been taking advantage of the good weather and speedy internet to do some biking and Skype with the family.  I was missing home yesterday quite a bit, and was happy to get to Skype with Paul, Mom, and Aiden.  Aiden seemed pretty excited to see me.  I did that and a bit of work yesterday, and then headed north of town for a bike ride.  It was probably around 15 miles or so, but must have been one of the most frustrating rides I've been on.  Due to the earthquakes a few years ago, lots of roads are closed or are damaged, and I was constantly having to turn around and find new routes.  I spent a lot of my time following my nose to try to get where I needed to.  I was out much longer than I intended because of this.  I also ended up inadvertently spraying myself with geese poo.  By the end of my ride, I was ready to throw out my bike and never look at it again.  Fortunately, today's ride though was better.  John and I took a 35 mile ride out to Sumner, and the ride there was much easier and less depressing than the one I went on the day before.  There was still earthquake damage to be had, such as in this cemetery we rode through.

Lots of damaged and toppled over headstones in the cemetery.

The beach out there was really nice, and I enjoyed looking at the Pacific.  I think though that 35 miles was a bit on my outer end of riding though, and I was pretty dead to the world when I got back.

The Pacific Ocean.

Hopefully the next pictures I have are cold and dark!  Talk to you soon!

August 24, 2012 - Bikes and Bags

Last night, I headed out to dinner with John and the Aerosonde guys I'm here with (Paul, Peter, Nick, and Cameron), and upon my return to the hotel I found this:

My bag was finally here!  No more living on the couple of clothes I'd packed in my carry on!  What a glorious end to an evening this was.

Since I had more than just one option for clothes, and since our flight to Antarctica has been delayed until at least Friday (Thursday US time), I decided it was a good time to rent a bike.  John and I spent the day riding around Christchurch (about 30 miles in all).  We visited the university, the downtown area, and went out the coast.  In February and September 2010, two earthquakes rocked the Christchurch area, and the town is still reeling from the impacts on the infrastructure.  In fact, part of the hotel I'm staying in is being renovated to fix the damage from the quake.

The front of my hotel.

The downtown area felt the worst effects from the September 2010 earthquake (which was the stronger of the two).  John and I went downtown to see some of the impacts, and it was very sad.  Every other time I've been to Antarctica, I've stayed in downtown Christchurch, but the whole area is blocked off.  I guess at least 1/3 of the buildings in the "red zone", which is cordoned off to people, need to be torn down.  Here's the former spot of the Windsor Bed and Breakfast, which is where I usually stayed when we went down.

The empty lot is where the Windsor used to be.

Below are some pictures of the earthquake damage in the red zone, but the pictures don't do it justice.  I had a really hard time orienting myself to where I was because everything is just so unrecognizable.

This street used to be filled with buildings and restaurants.

The red zone map.

I think this was the edge of the Cathedral Square.

After the depressing tour, we headed to the coast to the view of the Pacific.  Much happier down here!

Me and the beach!

Tomorrow our flight to Antarctica is scheduled for 12 noon (or 6 pm on Thursday for my CO people).  The flight today is on its way and supposed to land in about an hour, but the word on the street is that winds are pretty bad so another boomerang for them is a possibility.  A boomerang flight is basically when you leave from Christchurch and head to McMurdo, and end up having to turn around to return to Christchurch, usually because the weather is bad.  On Monday, this same group had a boomerang flight where they made it all the way to McMurdo but just couldn't land.  For their sake, I hope that doesn't happen, since that means you're just spending about 11-12 hours on a plane just to return to where you started from.

Have fun!

Christchurch NZ - August 21, 2012 (I'm pretty sure, anyway)

I've made it to Christchurch, New Zealand, after about 32 hours of traveling, door to door.  I left my house at 5 pm Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) on Sunday, August 19, and arrived at my hotel at 1:30 am MDT on Tuesday, August 21.  In Christchurch, it was about 7:30 pm on Tuesday, August 21.  I actually never experienced Monday, August 20.  So I'm 18 hours ahead of Denver time, 19 hours ahead of Wisconsin.  Now that we've got all that squared away...

The trip itself was uneventful, but ended up being a bit stressful.  I flew from Denver to Los Angeles in about 2.5 hours or so, and then from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Australia, in 15.5 hours, and then Melbourne to Christchurch in about 3 hours.  It was a long day.  I've never been to Australia, although I wouldn't necessarily say I've been there now either since I never left the airport.

Most of the stress of my trip was the loss of my bag.  Mine and the other 10 Antarctic people on my flights are without our bags.  We are told that they are in Melbourne and will arrive later today.  I was told various things about this, but my favorite was that it couldn't make our connection in Melbourne.  I was there for four hours.

We are scheduled to be the third Winfly flight to Antarctica, but since the weather there is bad the first two flights haven't gone yet.  They've combined them and are trying to fly today, but since it's Condition 1 at the runway they're landing at my guess is they won't go, and so my flight will get delayed because not only do I need the weather to be good, but I need the first flight to go so I have a way to get there!  By the way, Condition 1 is a classification used by the weather forecasters down there to basically make it easy to tell people - "Hey!  The weather sucks here!".  Condition 3 is great weather, no problems.  Condition 2 is when winds are between 55 and 63 mph OR visibility is less than 1/4 mile OR the wind chill is below -75F.  There are some limitations on where you can walk around in McMurdo and for some of the flights as well in Condition 2.  In Condition 1, well, it's the apocalypse.  You're in Condition 1 when winds are over 60 mph, visibility is less than 100 feet, and the wind chill is below -100F.  Basically, when it goes to Condition 1, you have to stay in whatever building you're in and can't go outside.

Anyway, that's it from here.  It sounds like Aiden's taken me leaving a bit hard, but hopefully I can talk with him soon and remind him I'm still here!  Talk to you all later!

August 13, 2012 - Leaving Soon!

Back to Antarctica!  On Sunday, I'm making my fifth trip to "the ice" to explore the OTHER frozen tundra.  It's my first trip since February 2009, which seemed like a lifetime ago!  Since then, I've changed jobs, moved to a new state, and had some pretty major life changes.  This season, instead of visiting weather stations such as in years past, I'll be working on a team that will fly remote controlled planes that will collect weather data to study how the atmosphere behaves in the interesting Antarctic environment.  I will be deploying with five other people - four people from the company that builds the planes and will be in charge of flying them, and the fifth being my advisor.  This trip will be interesting not only for the work we are doing, but because I will be in Antarctica during "Winfly" (Winter fly-in).  For one week in late August, several flights go to McMurdo to begin to bring in the support staff that will start to get the station ready for "Mainbody", which is when most of the scientists come to Antarctica to do their work.  I'm typically used to temperatures in McMurdo being 20F, but this time I'll see temperatures more like -30F!  I'm also excited to see darkness in Antarctica for the first time.  When I arrive, there will be approximately 4 hours of sunlight per day (much different than the 24 hours I'd seen in years past), but by the time I leave the sun will be up for more like 14 hours, so things will change pretty quickly.  I'll hopefully get to see some really great clouds and the Southern Lights too.

Since my last trip, I've had two big changes in my life, and all in the last year.  In January, my father passed away very unexpectedly.  He was always very dad-like about my trips - worried, but proud.  He would always introduce me to people as "my daughter who goes to Antarctica".  I'll be thinking about him a lot on this trip as I do more things I know he would be proud of me for.  In February of this same year I gave birth to my son, Aiden.  It will be hard to leave my six month baby to return to a seven and a half month old, but I hope he looks back on this someday and is as proud of me as my dad always was.  I'm lucky to have people like Paul, my mom, and my in-laws to help out with him while I'm away.

Next stop - New Zealand!  Be talking to you soon!