September 29, 2012 - Finishing Up

Hi all - we're in the last days of finishing up here, and this will likely be my last blog post from here.  

The last few days have been filled with catching up with work, getting cargo together, laundry, and things of that nature, but yesterday John and I did get out with some scientists from the New Zealand base down the road.  They have a few measurement stations on the sea ice where they measure changes in ozone in the layer nearest to the surface (the boundary layer).  They wanted some atmospheric measurements to go along with their chemistry measurements, so we went out to fly the SUMOs there.  

I'd not been out on the sea ice that much, and it was a bit unnerving, to be honest.  It shouldn't be, since they will be landing a C-17 on it in a few days, but I've always been a bit uneasy about driving on ice.  When I was younger, my dad would always drive out on the lake to go ice fishing or sometimes to get from point A to B quickly, and I was always uneasy about it.  However, the Hagaland, which we rode in, floats, and the sea ice is a few feet thick now, so all was good.

The Hagaland.

At any rate, the ride was interesting.  We had to cross one crack, which occurs in the same spot every year and has been named the "Big John Crack".  It's been pretty active lately, but we were able to cross it without problems.

Tim, Caro, and Denis, our NZ guides, checking out the Big John Crack.

We went out for about a 45 minute ride, until we arrived at our destination.  We were to launch one SUMO flight, and be done.  However, the SUMOs seem to hate me this trip - every time I'm with one, it does something we weren't expecting.  This time, when John launched it, it flew for about 2 seconds, then went into a nosedive and crashed into the ground, breaking.  We still don't know what happened, but it looks like it lost air speed for some reason, and tried to get some by going into a nose dive.  This generally doesn't end well when you're only a couple of feet off the ground.  At any rate, the plane is easily fixable, and John and I just had to shake our heads.  What else can you do?

John launching the SUMO (Picture by Caro).

We bag drag tomorrow (take our bags to be put on a pallet to go on the plane), and head out Monday.  We are flying out on an AirBus, which will be my first time flying on a regular plane from Antarctica.  Typically I've flown out on military planes.  I hear they have stewardesses and everything.  Should be interesting.  There's only ~30 people heading north, so the plane will not be very full.  I am looking forward to getting to New Zealand, and then getting home.  

As I think about this trip, I think it's been my favorite trip to Antarctica.  I've made no secret about how frustrated I get with coming here sometimes, and despite the fact that I enjoy doing field work, I've always been a bit out of sorts down here.  This time I didn't really feel that way, despite all the changes that I detailed in my life that have occurred since my last trip.  I had a lot of fun on this trip.  I very much enjoyed spending time with the five people I came down here with - John, Paul, Peter, Nick, and Cam - and I really enjoyed flying the planes.  John really made me feel very involved in the project here, and I got a good sense of how to manage a field project like this, should I become a fancy scientist someday who continues on with this line of work.  Of course, I miss my family at home, and on this particular trip, I've missed my dad quite a bit.  Grief is a troubling thing, I've found.  

I hope that you don't hear another blog post from me from here, since that means I'm just stuck here, but  I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it.