Weather: Generally cloudy, with about an hour of clear blue sky in the afternoon.
Temperatures: -10F with a windchill of around -30F
Today was a busy day that started with snowmobile training (well, a refresher since I had been trained before)… The basic gist is that it’s cold here, engines don’t much like the cold, and that one should drive safely and be conscious of the many other large vehicles driving around. I then spent the next few hours zipping around behind the station looking for a certain box containing some SPT material. The area behind the station is called the berms because there are long rows of boxes and crates, and palatalized whatevers, which build up these berms of snow over the years.
There are small stickers on the boxes which indicate which project each one belongs to (SPT is project A379, for example), so we were looking for our number among the rows and rows of crates. I was driving the snowmobile with a passenger sled carrying a few other SPT folks, and we covered a pretty good area, but weren’t able to find the specific crate we were looking for…. exciting, I know. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the berms, but I’m sure the exist somewhere; they’re just not all that exciting.
After lunch, we went back out to the telescope and I learned a few more tricks of the trade; how to command the telescope using the ACU (antenna control unit), enter the receiver cabin, how to climb under the base of the telescope to get to the elevation gears for greasing, and even how to power cycle a crate of readout electronics because a board wasn’t communicating. yay!
The weather has more-or-less been overcast since I’ve arrived, with the exception of a few hours during the marathon, and an hour or so today when it was bright and sunny! We observe even when the sun is up, but the cloudy weather does show up as low-frequency noise in our maps especially at the higher frequency bands. Also, since our detectors are so finely tuned to see the faint CMB signal, they don’t have much wiggle room in terms of extra loading from clouds. So sometimes if the weather is really bad, the clouds can actually saturate the detectors.
My internet browser was being fussy today, so I had to swap to firefox… hopefully I don’t run into the situation where my browsers are borked and I can’t get to certain sites (like Gmail and Facebook… for some reason Edge was throwing security exceptions).
Today is the annual South Pole marathon. Each year, a running enthusiast volunteers to put on the event, usually the first Sunday in January when the weather is warmest, and there are no scheduled flights. This year, one of the winter-overs, Zach, took charge. Through the efforts of him and then many, many volunteers, this marathon stood out as a really wonderful and well put-together event!
Marathon course map. Basically just a few out-and-backs around the station, which make one long 13.1 mile loop. There is a fuels barn which we use as the warming hut/ aid station, and where I thawed my goggles quite a few times.
In some sense, the South Pole marathon being low-key and kludgey fits really nicely into the spirit of the station… but I don’t think anything is lost with a bit more planning and throughput. We were even given stickers and all runners get a medal made right here at the station (pics to come).
Disclaimer: *There were people on snowmobiles zipping around and taking pictures, so I don’t have any to share here, but once they are uploaded to the common drive, I will try to get some to share.*
I woke up at 06:30 to eat some breakfast and relax before the race sign-in. 8am was the sign-in… Since I had only been at Pole for 1 full day, I hadn’t signed up yet, and was unsure about how I would fare, or whether I would even run it. But I signed up for the Half Marathon, thinking that at the very least I could walk that in a reasonable time.
I donned my outdoor running gear; not really that much as it turns out, since the weather is so warm (-9F, with a slight windchill of -25F), just a wool long sleeve shirt and my puffer jacket, balaclava, hat, gloves, and goggles. My warm running pants are super warm, then I just have wool socks and trail shoes. In fact my pants are a little too warm for this weather!
As 09:00 approached, we made our way out to the ceremonial pole which acts as all race starts and ends at the South Pole. The field of runners was quite large, almost 20 people, with maybe 8 registered for the full marathon. Perhaps I’m a little jaded, but I was disappointed to not be running the full — not that there would have been a chance in hell I could’ve ran the entire thing.
09:00 sharp we lined up at the starting line. I sought a place in the back of the pack since I figured I would be running slow compared to everyone who was already acclimated… “3-2-1-GO!”. The race was underway! The early parts of the race went through some pretty thick snow but once we got the more well groomed sections, I began to pick up speed.
Trying not to overdo it, I ran what I thought was extremely slow… I found myself at the front of the pack within a few minutes of the start. Unfortunately I wasn’t very familiar with the course, so I had to keep turning back and asking the group where to go. After a while, some of the marathoners formed a group and I decided to stick with them. I was surprised by how well my cardio was holding up with only 1 day of acclimation and no training.
The first out and back returning to the aid station was at about mile 4. By this time I was really hot and sweaty, so my goggles had gotten sweaty and then frozen up. I could hardly see so I decided to stop in and thaw them out and try to dry them off. The next leg was down and back the ski-way; about 5 or 6 miles round trip. I had lost a few places but was still in the lead of the half marathon runners.
Running down the runway (away from the station) is the easy part. The wind generally blows down the runway, so on the way down it’s at your back. I stripped off my jacket in hopes that I wouldn’t sweat too much before turning around. I passed a few people going down the runway, but there was a marathoner ahead that I would never be able to catch – and she would go on to win the marathon outright with a time of 4:33.
On the way back the wind is in your face. I had sweat into my goggles again while running with the wind, and this immediately froze up on the way back. Again I was basically running blind. I put my coat back on, zipped it up and kept trucking. The balaclava was also frozen solid quickly, which actually provides a nice wind-break for your neck. My warm pants had also caused me to sweat quite a bit, so my pants started to freeze on the way back as well. Luckily they didn’t freeze solid, and I could still run back to the aid station to clear my goggles and get some water.
It was now around mile 9, and I was in 3rd place overall. Still would never catch the first place runner, but wasn’t sure how much time there was between me and the next half marathoner. Most of the next 4 miles was a pretty rough slog. I kept assuming people would blow by me because I felt like I was barely moving and my IT band starting hurting pretty badly… I knew I had to win, though… I would never hear the end of it if I got 2nd place again! (I always get 2nd place…. and I guess in some ways 1st place in the half is equivalent to 2nd place in the full… but whatever).
By the time I came into the finish, I was so happy to be done. I think I had the same feeling when I ran the full 2 years ago… but at least I really was done! 2:20 minutes and first place in the half marathon! I was pretty happy about that, given my 1 day at Pole, and I could even still make brunch!
Post Race Day:
After the race, and after brunch (obvi), I went out to the telescope and got a really thorough rundown of the drive system. Basically an explanation of how we control the movements of the telescope, from the motors, to the bearings and gears, to the amplifiers and motor controllers. I learned how to replace a motor amplifier, in case one blows up on us during the winter… an all too common occurrence for SPT.
There was also a nice awards ceremony in the Galley after dinner and we were awarded medals for running. A really nice, unexpected touch!
I arrived last night on my 2nd-attempt flight. Smooth sailing, and good thing we made it because the weather was turning for the worse and looks like it might be crappy for the next couple of days (plus tomorrow is Sunday, and there are no flights on Sunday).
The LC-130 was decked out with a cool South Pole dragon logo… you knew it was going to be a good flight!
The flight from McMurdo to pole is about 3 hours as I’ve said before, and covers a lot of different terrain… ok, well really 2 types, flat white ice and mountains covered in ice.
The Antarctic Plateau. Vast. White. Frozen. Windy.
Inside the cargo bay of the plane. We had a pretty spacious ride, with only 15 passengers.
I started to feel some excitement as the loadmasters prepared for landing. There were low-hanging clouds as we descended, so I couldn’t really tell how far into the descent we were (and it’s hard to tell against a featureless landscape). But eventually I saw a red flag marking the edge of the runway and knew we were there!
The fanning of the rotors sound our every move, from the right turn into the terminal, to the full-stop, marking our arrival. I had expected it to be much colder, but in the height of summer with overcast, it was nearly single digits (negative of course). It was nice to be greeted by the current SPT crew, and to see recognizable faces of other people on station!
Home sweet home for the next 10 months! This is the view as you step off the plane. My room is a little crowded at the moment… might take a while to get things situated.
By the time we arrived, and watched the station video, it was about 11:30pm. So we hung out in the galley for a few minutes and then went to bed.
Jan 4th
Today I didn’t do too much as I’m still getting acclimated, and setup on all the computers/email accounts/ etc. I got to schedule some observations this morning which should last the rest of the evening. I’m learning how to check on the telescope’s scheduler program and look at emails from the pager which indicate potential problems.
It’s Saturday night, which is generally the ‘party’ night on station since Sunday is the one day off for many people. There’s apparently a dance party in the galley and a movie night in the gym (there’s a big projector screen in there). Tomorrow is the South Pole Marathon… a little bit sooner than I had hoped for, but maybe I’ll go out to cheer on and help out. Or maybe I’ll run it. Who knows.
Update:
I was able to upload some short videos I took during the flight. Check them out:
The primary flight for today (to WAIS Divide) was activated, so we were delayed to a 3:30pm transport. So basically I just went back to sleep at 6am after I found out, and slept until lunch at 11 😛
If all goes well we’ll likely be flying out around 5pm, for arrival at Pole around 8pm… If you don’t hear from me for a while, assume that happened (not sure what the internet schedule is at Pole).
Today was the Fabled Day. The Pole flight was scheduled, bags were dragged, weather was clear and transport was set for 7:30am. I woke up at 6:30am, packed up my remaining items, took the sheets off of my bed, and ate a quick breakfast before making my way up to the loading dock where we were loaded into a 1970’s era Delta transport vehicle.
The 1970’s era Delta transport vehicle that USAP uses to transport passengers to/from McMurdo when we don’t have enough pax to fill Ivan.
These Delta’s are particularly un-enjoyable to ride in, since you’re pretty much cantilevered over the gigantic back wheel in a stiff steel shell. It’s like riding in the back of a rollercoaster, except it doesn’t go very fast. Apparently someone who wasn’t wearing their seatbelts was catapulted out of their seat and hit their head on the ceiling, causing some serious damage… not sure why you wouldn’t wear a seatbelt in one of these bad boys… anyway, the Delta schlepped us the 7 miles out to the airfield (which takes about an hour), where we were taxied up to the LC-130 for boarding.
Everything was going smooth… too smooth. We took off even slightly before our 9:00am flight time and were on our way to Pole! This had been the smoothest flight situation I’ve ever had on my way to/from Pole. Everyone was feeling confident that we would make it to Pole by lunch.
One nice thing about the LC-130 flights is that we can get up and stand around the cargo bay. There are portholes along the bay that you can stand next to and look out. I like to stand there and look out as we cross the trans-Antarctic mountains. The flight path basically takes us up the Ross Ice Shelf for the first hour, then across the TA mountains for the next hour, and finally across the Antarctic Plateau for the final hour – which ain’t much to look at.
We had crossed the TA mountains and were flying over the Plateau (i.e. nothing but white, flatness to look at) so I had decided to just stand in the cargo area. At this point we were definitely less than an hour out from Pole, so I was just waiting for the loadmaster to tell me to sit down for landing… unfortunately, I noticed the two loadmasters talking back and forth for a couple minutes, and going up into the flight deck.
I then felt the all-too-familiar feeling of a wide U-turn. The sun’s illumination path arcing across the cargo bay confirmed my suspicions… We had boomeranged. One of the loadmasters then told me that we had turned around because there was a crack in the windshield. I wasn’t too surprised because I had heard about windshield cracks at least a few times in the past, but I was really upset that we were so close to Pole, and had to turn around.
The culprit of our boomerang… the cracked windshield (left) is a small window down by the pilot’s foot. Photo cred: Brad Benson
Whenever mechanical problems occur during flight, the default is to return to the place of most-availability. Meaning that there is a maintenance crew, and supplies in McMurdo which don’t exist at Pole, so risking a full-on break of the windshield during landing at Pole would mean that another flight would have to fly in supplies and mechanics, and that would be too risky and costly. I also heard a story that last year a C17 arriving at McMurdo to early in the season had boomeranged DURING IT’S DECENT INTO MCMURDO!!! -also because of a cracked windshield. That means that everyone on the ground waiting to get out (like the winterovers who thought this was their flight out) had to watch this plane come into the airspace, and turn around right over their heads. At least the C17s are faster than the C-130s so it only takes 5 hours to go CHC-MCM, but still… that’s just brutal.
On the bright side, I got to see the TA mountains again, and I took some nice videos of us flying over top of some mountain ranges and glaciers… I don’t know if I’ll be able to upload them anytime soon, but keep an eye out. Really, a boomerang going to Pole isn’t that bad since it’s only 3 hours, and you get to see the mountains and glaciers, but the thing that sucks is that that usually means a 24 hour delay, which means transporting an hour back to MCM in the Delta, and then doing it all over again the next morning.
Edge of the Ross Ice Shelf as it meets the continent. The grey thing at the top of the image is the LC-130s fuel tank.
A large glacial flow between two ranges. It’s hard to capture an image of these large glaciers because they’re larger than my camera’s field of view (and hard to get a good angle from the porthole).
Now we just sit around until tomorrow morning. Flight time is basically the same as today, so a 24hr delay. I’d assume we’re not using the same plane, since there are multiple LC-130s on continent, but I don’t really know the turnaround time on that specific windshield (or any mechanical fix for that matter).
At least it’s Yankee Night over at Scott Base (the Kiwi base 3miles from McMurdo). It’s the one night a week where the Americans are allowed at the Kiwi base, and are invited to hang out at their bar.
Update:
Our flight tomorrow (ZSP040) has been set as a backup to the WAIS Divide flight. WAIS stands for Western Antarctic Ice Shelf. So basically if the weather is nice at WAIS Divide, they will fly those folks there, otherwise if weather is nice at Pole they’ll fly us. So we have to wake up for a 6:30am transport to check which case is happening.
Antarctica is the last unfucked-up place on Earth… at least according to the late Anothony Bordain. He visits McMurdo and the South Pole in one of his episodes of Parts Unknown (Season 9, Episode 5, if you’re interested — some of the filming in that episode are really neat, and I would recommend that episode, and that show in general, for a glimpse into the scenery around MacTown and Pole).
Somehow, though, I don’t quite know if we haven’t fucked up Antarctica yet. I guess the population density is just low enough that we haven’t made an impact. The Antarctic Treaty helps by imposing strict regulations on pollution and interaction with the environment, and I know that stations in Antarctica do really well at recycling, trash collection, water treatment, etc., but there is still this twinge of disappointment I get when I see the MacTown. I’m sure it’s much cleaner than any Podunk rural town in the US, but something about it’s industrial nature makes it seem dirty and less charming.
Even the Science-only vibe of AQ is a bit tarnished by the flocks of tourists that fly into Pole on a weekly basis. It makes me a bit nervous and reminds me of how Mt. Everest has been so crowded that people are waiting in a line to summit, like some kind of deadly amusement park attraction.
Still, with all my negative Nacy-ism, as I here writing this post I can look out the window of the Crary Library and see the edge of West Antarctica across the Ross Ice Shelf. It’s an unbelievably beautiful and pristine sight. Weddell seals are sprawled out, sunbathing on top of the ice. A large crack in the ice has provided an easy path for them to reach the surface. It’s amazing knowing that all of this ice will flow out to sea in less than two months, and that that process is a naturally occurring seasonal change… of course the amount of melting that occurs is a different story.
Flight Plans
As of right now, I am scheduled to leave for Pole at 8 am tomorrow morning (Jan 2nd). This means that we have a ‘bag drag’ scheduled for 7pm tonight. The bag drag is so named because you schlep your bags up to the cargo staging building, and all of your checked bags get palletized for the flight. Fortunately I just left my big heavy bags up there since I knew there wouldn’t be any flights in/out before mine because of the holiday.
Current weather and flight plans on the McMurdo Intranet. A nice balmy 32 degree summer day, and condition 3 weather all around! The flight info can be found here, as well as on tv scrolls around the station. Sometimes you need to keep a keen eye on the scrolls to avoid missing your transport!
Transport time is TBD, but I’d imagine is something like 1.5 hours before the flight (since it takes 1 hour to drive out to the air field). If weather at pole is looking good for tomorrow as well, then we may be in business and fly out on time! I sure will miss this warm weather, though. Even in the hot midst of the summer, its still only -15 F at Pole.
Update:
Flight time updated to 9am, with a 7:30am transport. That’s about as good as one could hope for. Enough time to make breakfast, but not too late.
I went for a walk after dinner since the weather was so nice. Very little wind, and some slight cloud coverage, temperature right around 32F. I even stopped to observe some seals sunbathing and got to hear them making their cool noises. If you’ve never seen the Werner Herzog film where he goes to Antarctica and records the sounds of the seals I highly recommend Googling that, it’s pretty unbelievable.
Took a stop along the trail to hang out with the seals. Every few seconds you’d hear them making some noise if the wind was low enough.
The Obs Hill trail looks like the surface of Mars or something, it’s made up of this dusty volcanic rock which changes from black, to red and even some hints of yellow.
Mandatory selfie. The trail leads back to McMurdo, just over the ridge.
I’ve decided that I should blog when I get the chance, and not wait until the end of the day… let’s see how that goes.
SLEEP! Sleep was great! I think I probably got 10 hours of sleep! Since it’s a holiday the galley had brunch starting at 10am, so I didn’t have to get up for the usual 5-7:30am breakfast. I leisurely got up and went to brunch, then did laundry and went to the gym.
Ice Stock starts today, and goes from 2:30pm to 1am! The weather is beautiful, a sweltering 34 degrees and sunny! Couldn’t ask for a better day. More photos of the event to come!
The set list for this year’s IceStock… should be… interesting.
Update:
Ice Stock was pretty awesome. Apparently Ice Stock 2020 is the 31st year of this event. I think I stood outside for about 6 hours (luckily it was warm for Antarctica standards; about 30 degrees and the sun was out most of the time). The wind took its toll, though. But being cold meant I had to dance to stay warm! I stopped by early on, around 4pm to check out how it was going. The lead singer looked like Will Farrell (at least I thought so), see for yourself:
Early Ice Stock band takes the stage and a Will Farrell doppelganger sings.
After dinner I went back for the rest of the event, from about 7pm-1:00am I was out there listening to music, dancing, and enjoying the festivities along with the other well-dressed folks of McMurdo. As the night went on, the population of the dance floor increased. The LC-130s really kicked some ass, and got some moshing started up front. Naturally, I kept my distance… there will be no NPQing now!
Observation Hill looms in the backdrop, overlooking McMurdo. One might wonder what this event looks like from up there. From the top of the hill McMurdo looks like a dusty mining town, the summer sun has melted all of the snow on the black volcanic rock beneath. There is plenty of dust and mud here, and although the sea ice is still here as far as the eye can see, in a month and a half it will be gone!
McMurdo station from the top of Observation Hill. The venue for Ice Stock is hardly visible up here, but is just to the left of the large blue building near the center of town.
There are much prettier sights from up Obs Hill, including Castle Rock which is hikeable in good weather, though you need yearly outdoor safety training to do it.
Castle Rock in the mid-ground. It doesn’t look like much but it’s actually a pretty nice scramble up to the top. Erebus looms in the background on a particularly clear day.
Back in town, and of course there was a countdown to the new year, and champagne showers and cheers of “Happy New Years”! Work hard, play hard is definitely in effect here!
Ice Stock just after midnight. After the countdown A DJ played us into the new year. I have a video of some serious dancing.. but I will have to wait until Pole to try and upload it.
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.
A chemex coffee for the table please! C1 coffee has good coffee AND a pneumatic tube system to deliver you curly fries at your seat! There are tons of coffee shops in Christchurch, but this one in particular is a staple for folks coming to/from Pole.
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.
Land Ho! The trans-Antarctic mountains appear out the right side of the plane as we approach the continent.
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.
Today marks my departure from civilization… Well it marks my departure to Christchurch, where I will spend at least 2 days getting my “extreme cold weather gear” -or ECW- and some vanilla extract (because Pole is apparently out, and someone has to be the hero the station needs)!
tldr; I will be traveling for the next two days, from DC to Houston, Houston to Auckland, and then finally Auckland to Christchurch. I am scheduled to fly to the Ice on Dec 30th, which means McMurdo on Dec 30th, and hopefully (albeit unlikely) to Pole on the 31st.
The Feels
– because people apparently like to hear about feelings, and not just facts ;P –
This week has been a whirlwind of crazy family activity, nostalgic reminiscence and long goodbyes.
This year has been particularly difficult on my family, starting from the day I last returned from Pole. Polly’s aunt had passed away unexpectedly while I was returning from the summer at Pole. A few weeks later, I received one of the worst phone calls of my life while driving to an SPT collaboration meeting in Chicago. It was Polly, crying, barely able to get the words out:
” Allen, they found a tumor.”
That call will haunt me forever. Her father had been taken to the hospital for an unknown reason and, after an MRI, they found a Glioblastoma the size of a plum in his brain. No one in our family could have expected that. The absolute helplessness I felt was devastating. I nearly drove off the road, not sure whether I should turn around and go back, or keep going to Chicago. They would perform the first of 3 surgeries that weekend, and I would drive down from Chicago just as the surgery finished.
Since then, her father, Jim, has undergone 2 more surgeries and has a miraculous job recovering from them. Unfortunately cancer is a horrible beast, and the chemo, treatments, and repeated surgeries are taking their toll.
Meanwhile her grandfather was in and out of the hospital for the past several months. We unfortunately lost Baboo this past week, just before Christmas.
My own side of the family also had it rough in 2019. The recurrence of cancer in both my grandfather, and grandmother was a full time job for my parents. At this point it seems like cancer is an inevitable part of the life-cycle. My Grammy passed away a few weeks ago after her cancer spread. As I write this, I can’t help but hear her last words to me. She told me the story of when she and my grandma Martha rushed to the hospital to try and watch my birth. “I’ve loved you since the first minute I saw you”. A grandparent’s love is truly something special. An undeserved, unconditional love.
All this is to say that next year will be difficult for both myself, my family, and mostly, Polly. I know that she has endured a lot of pressure and stress recently, and that she is more than capable of thriving on her own! It will be hard not being there in her times of need, and at some times not even reachable by phone (not that I am even a good phone conversationalist…). I don’t understand why she loves me sometimes… 🙂 It may be the hardest year of our lives, but I know that the independence and strength we will gain from this experience will bolster our relationship, and we can look back on it for the rest of our lives.
A lot of good came in 2019 as well, we added a member to the family! My nephew, baby Finnian has helped everyone embrace the joys that life brings. And he is goddamn adorable! My engagement hopefully brought some happiness and enjoyment. With a wedding in the future, and planning underway, it sure keeps Polly and I busy (even though it’s two years away). Friends and family have been wonderful backbones to our lives, and I love being able to get together after so many months apart, and feel like we never left – wrestling, witty retorts, and back rubs included!
I think for myself this experience will provide an escape from real life. A chance to get work done, and to hit a “reset button”.
Here’s to 2020, and better days. Here’s to Grammy and Baboo and Linde, and everyone else lost in 2019. And here’s to more good times, better times, and the best of times. Cheers!
Allen's South Pole Winter-Over 2020 (+) 