Oct 20th – Day 15 of “The Commute”

Day 10 of 14 in NZ managed isolation/quarantine. In 2 days we get our 3rd (and hopefully final) COVID test here in NZ before then 2 days later moving out to a USAP managed isolation in a different hotel. Pretty exciting! Then we just have the usual weather and mechanical delays to look forward to (though we’re scheduled to take the NZ ANG 757 which is just your normal everyday jet plane and is probably less likely to have mechanical delays).

Today was fairly eventful, in terms of differentiating it from every other day of quarantine. I had a lovely 0530 zoom call with a CWRU class that is about Polar regions and their use historically and today , climate impacts on these regions, etc. etc. So it was neat to be able to speak to the students in this class as someone who is currently using these natural resources for their work. And I got to show lots of pretty pictures, so who doesn’t love that?

After that I decided to do some laundry. Actually the MIQ offers 2 loads of laundry during our stay, and I never realized that there are these small paper bags in our closets which we use for laundry (and we’re only allowed 10 items of clothing per wash…and the bags like I said can only fit about that much). So I decided to send some stuff to get washed properly and then to hand wash some easier things like socks, and light-weight T-shirts, in my sink. They provide us with cleaning supplies including dish soap for our dishes that we have for eating meals – though I have yet to use any except the bowls for making ramen in, and the silverware.

So those were the two big exciting things.

Oh, and I also considered what a “climb Everest” challenge might look like – thanks to my brother Sean’s suggestion – (I can’t use the stairwell because it’s a common space and there is no exercising allowed in there)… So I thought, hmm. I’ve got some chairs in my room. What if I just step up onto the chair and back down. Could I climb Everest in some reasonable amount of time??

Well – Everest is ~8,850 m which is 29,035ft

My chairs are ~18 inches tall so 29,035 ft * 12 in/ft / 18 in/step ~ 19,400 steps

Which didn’t seem like much! But then I tested it out by timing myself for a moderate effort of 100 steps and it took me slightly less than 5 minutes (I’m stepping up, getting both feet on the chair, and then stepping down; certainly there are faster ways but this seems the most “rigorous”, or “official” way).

I would have to do 194 sets of 100, which would mean 5min , 194 times … which is about 16 hours. And I just don’t know if I want to step up and down on a chair for 16 hours straight… and I only have 3 chairs in my room, I’m not sure they could hold up to that :’D. I also did this for only 25 minutes today and was sweating pretty heavily. So I think this one’s out.

But there’s always the Observation Hill challenge in McMurdo, and I’ll be there for at least a week, so that one is totally doable but will still take at least 16 hours I think. It’s a ~750 ft “hill” , which means you have to ascend the hill 38 times (make it 40 for good measure) and if I recall from previous years, it takes me something like 30 minutes to ascend and descend at a moderate pace – and it’s quite steep. So lookin at 20 hours yikes.

Anyway – pipe dreams for now. Back to hotel life.