Dec 30th : On Ice!

It’s been a whirlwind the past couple of days, and I apologize for not writing more often.

I am now in McMurdo, Antarctica, and will be here until at least Jan 2nd because of the New Years holiday.

I will update this post with more information and pictures once I get settled and can connect my phone’s photos to my computer.

Update:

Whew! Where to begin… I think I left off before even arriving in Christchurch (yikes!). Here’s a compressed version of the past 4 days, traveling from Maryland to Antarctica.

Dec 26th: I left my house in Maryland the day after the Christmas, 9am. My travel plans had me leaving from IAD (outside of DC) to Houston, TX as my first stop. I left DC around noon and arrived in Houston around 4pm. This gave me about 4 hours to get settled before my long-haul flight to Auckland (a 15 hour flight!). I met up with Brad Benson, faculty at UChicago working on SPT, after about an hour and he showed me the beauty of card-holder lounges at airports! They have free food/drinks and even showers — who knew?!

Since our long-haul flight was leaving at 8pm, and flying west – following the sun – that meant it was going to be dark for the entire flight. Good thing I had an aisle seat! The first ~ 5 hours of the flight were great! I was super productive, even getting some work done locally on my computer (which I haven’t done in years, considering everything I do these days is remote — on a computer in Chicago, and makes heavy use of the internet).

At this point I had been up for almost 20 hours, and decided to give up on work and start watching movies. The man next to me on the flight literally, and I’m not being hyperbolic here, got up to use the bathroom every 20 minutes – at least! This was fine for me because I didn’t mind getting up to stretch my legs but sheesh and I can’t sleep on flights anyway… but sheesh it was ridiculous.

Dec 28th: Sunlight began to appear over the horizon as we approached New Zealand. We touched down in Auckland just before 6am. Now having been awake for about 30 hours, we had another 4 hour layover before our flight to Christchurch on the South Island. In Auckland you have to go from the international terminal to a separate building in which the domestic terminal is located. You also have to get your luggage and schlep it from one building to the other (fun!)… luckily the weather has always been nice so I don’t mind the 10 minute walk. Once we got situated in the domestic terminal I promptly decided to lay on the floor and take a nap!

An hour later, I awoke from my power nap and we got some breakfast before our next leg to Christchurch. I had an awesome window seat with spectacular views of the mountains on the western side of the South Island. Unfortunately I was so tired I kept falling asleep. It’s a quick 1.5 hour flight from Auckland to Christchurch, and we arrived around lunch time.

We’re greeted by a USAP (United States Antarctic Program) rep at baggage claim who gives us our hotel information, and information about picking up our ECW the next day, then walks us to a shuttle which takes us to our hotel. Brad and I are at different hotels, but decide on a plan for lunch and exploring CHC for the rest of the day.

I tried to get in as much sunshine and greenery while I could, so we explored the botanical gardens. We stopped and smelled roses, played with ducklings, and even saw a … rock garden? … not sure what that was about.

Dec 29th: 8am clothing pickup at the CDC. I got some fancy ECW (including a very new-looking coat, lovingly known as Big Red), and a full set of Carharts. I guess it’s cold or something during the winter at Pole. We got done by noon, so we decided to go to C1 (a Poley staple in CHC) for breakfast, where we actually ran into someone that Brad knew coming off the ice.

After chatting a bit, Brad and I decided to get some hiking in. Victoria Park is a nearby park with walking/ mountain biking trails , and great views of CHC and Lyttleton (a shipping port on the other side of the hill). I think the hills on the southern side of CHC are an old caldera… but someone should fact-check me on that :P.

Probably got too much sun, but hey, it’s gotta last 10 months, right? The hiking was great, no IT-band problems (surprising!) and weather was absolutely beautiful. Couldn’t have been happier. Unfortunately, right after hiking I noticed my stomach felt bloated and started cramping. I didn’t have much of an appetite for dinner that night, and could barely eat a few bites of my pad-thai… something I had been craving for a while.

Not sure what was causing the painful bloating, I decided to call it an early night – after all we had a 5:45am shuttle pickup for a 9am flight the next day. I went back to my hotel around 8:30pm, packed and got ready for the ice-flight the next day. I figured I could just sleep off the stomach problem… there was no such luck.

I will spare you the details, but just imagine lying in bed, curled in the fetal position, painful bloating, running back and forth to the bathroom multiple times over the night, and stuff coming out of both ends… and nothing making my stomach feel better.

Dec 30th: Eventually my alarm went off as I was lying in bed, staring at the wall… it was 5am. Time to get up, time to go fly 8 hours in the back of a cargo plane. It just didn’t seem possible. I sipped water, but could barely stomach the packet of instant coffee I had made. Polly probably thought I was dying because I called her before I left, in a half-conscious state.

I made it to the CDC for boarding and my flu shot (since I hadn’t gotten this year’s yet). I told the nurse about my terrible night, and she seemed confused as well about what might have caused it. I had her take my temperature and it was normal. I felt better as the day went on, but then when I tried to get a coffee before the flight (at about 7:00am) the coffee shop near the CDC was closed!! I was going to have to rough it – no coffee and very little food until I get to McMurdo.

I’m not used to flying on schedule, so I was a bit surprised when we loaded up and bused out to the LC-130. I have also boomeranged a few times, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up just yet! 9am came around and we taxied out to the runway… and then circled back. “Had we been canceled?” I wondered. Nope, as they began taxiing back out to the main runway. I later heard that they were having some RPM problems with a prop??… not very comforting, but who knows. As they say, don’t trust the rumor mill.

We took off smoothly. On our way! I figured since I hadn’t had any coffee or breakfast, that I would just sleep the whole way… ha! I’m funny. It was a very painful experience. My head hurt so badly I could barely open my eyes, but also couldn’t sleep. It was like a living hell that dragged on for what seemed like an eternity. Though as the hours passed, my hopes that we would make McMurdo today increased. After 5 hours is the “point of no return” where the plane doesn’t have enough fuel to return to Christchurch. We would be landing in McMurdo no matter what! Yay… but I still had about 3 hours of painful headache to get through before we landed… then an hour of a bumpy taxi ride in Ivan, the Terrabus back to McMurdo.

We landed around 5pm, and barely made it to the end of dinner at 7:30pm (everyone who goes through McMurdo has to sit through a 30 minute lecture, every time, no matter how many times they’ve been through). It is a 2-day holiday so things are a bit weird around here, and we’re stuck until Jan 2nd.

Brad and I are in the same dorm room with an Ice Cube guy bound for Pole as well.

New rules are in place that you can’t do any outdoor hikes without first taking the outdoor safety training class, and checking in/out with dispatch… so… there’s nothing to do except go to the bars I guess. So we do. We meet up with some of the ballooning folks playing foosball and hang out for a while. As midnight rolls around, I decide it’s time for bed. The bright midnight sun is a bit disorienting, but our dorm room has no windows, so we don’t have to worry about that. Sweet sweet sleep. That’s all I could think about.