Today was just like yesterday. Actually it was nicer weather; pretty sunny all day today and we had a great sunset yesterday, a nice sunrise today and a half-way decent sunset this evening.

I set up a stand-up desk! I’m not super enthused by the work-spaces in this room ; nothing is really a good height for typing nor for eating at, etc.

I’ve been trying to work and read papers and figure out how to organize my thesis. Concentrating is hard.

But the good news is that a paper just came out that I was looking forward to. It helps outline some of the predicted astrophysical transient signals expected in current and future CMB experiments. And just briefly looking at it makes me think we (SPT-3G) might have some interesting limits we can set by looking at our data and perhaps constrain some of the models they’re using and assumptions they’re assuming when estimating the energetics of these events.

Here’s a timelapse of the end of the sunset today.

Now I remember why it’s so hard to write these things when nothing changes day-to-day 😛

Yesterday was a “fun” day here in quarantine. I decided to run a marathon. Problem is, there is no running or exercising allowed during the scheduled outdoor time. So. I decided to do it entirely within my room.

I started by measuring the length of the room – about 28 feet (assuming my phone charging cable is 3ft long). Then calculated how many “laps” I would have to run —

26.2mi * 5280 ft / mile / (56 ft / lap ) = 2470 laps

I decided to add in some for measurement error and just to make sure I did enough so decided on a nice even 3000 laps.

Here I thought “oh it’s just a marathon, should only take 5 hours at most” … boy was I wrong.. and I should have known; based on my 100 lap practice run the day before where I realized I was spending about 70% of each lap’s time in the ‘turnaround’ zone ; which means decelerating and then turning around and accelerating.

In the end it took me 8h45m to complete the 3000 “laps” , which is 31.8 miles… and my watch thought I went 53.86 miles because it didn’t quite understand how turnarounds worked.

You can find an awfully boring and poorly edited collage video of my run here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/131gLbR53kxwaUZT8DCP3nu6xtAuRyXBX/view?usp=sharing

There’s a point in there right after 5 minutes into the video (which was like my 1500 lap mark; so the half-way point) where I just look into the camera and go “this is stupid” . Let’s just say I was hurting by the end! And I’m pretty sore today … and sitting in a hotel room isn’t great for stretching / recovery

And on top of being a generally terrible experience, I also blew out my shoe … and I haven’t even gotten to Pole yet 😦

Other than that, everything is going great. I’ve been getting my 3 meals delivered every day. I’ve been sitting in a lot of zoom meetings (USAP trainings, SPT calls, WO trainings, etc). Weather has been weird. Super windy and rainy. Sun peeks out every so often which is nice.

Yes that’s right. From October 9th I time-traveled straight through October 10th right into October 11th!

Another great sunrise over the South Pacific (though I didn’t get any good photos, the colors were really nice and separated and I got the full rainbow ROYGBIV)! We landed in Christchurch around 7am, and boy do these Kiwis take COVID protocol seriously! Everyone dealing with us or our luggage were wearing full gown PPE with masks and eye/hair coverings.

I got 25 mins of sleep (according to my watch – which was probably just confused by the time change, etc) on a lovely 13 hr flight. Hopefully I can stay up past dinner tonight and then get onto a normal sleep schedule. That’s generally how I attempt long-haul flights since I can’t sleep well (or at all) on planes – just stay up for ~36 hours and then get a nice nights sleep the following night.

I watched the movie Tenet on the plane and was sorely disappointed…

After arriving in the terminal we were ushered to buses which would then take us to our MIQ hotel. I had presumed that the hotel was just a normal hotel, operating with some extra precautions, but I was very mistaken. The NZ Defense Force is operating this place and it is a serious managed isolation operation. They’ve got things really down-pat and even have chefs who contact each person and make sure of all their dietary restrictions! Pretty neat.

Our bus was also a quarantine bus – complete with bubble-boy enclosures for us “dirty” passengers.

They even have (large) welcome packets and info sheets for us in the rooms (along with plenty of extra masks, and cleaning supplies — for doing our own dishes).

My room is certainly spacious… and is a nice long almost 30 feet from door to window (measured with my iPhone charger, so I know it’s accurate ha). Here’s why that’s cool – I’ve done the math , if I assume 28 feet long, that’s 56 feet round trip — or one “lap”. That means 1 mile (5280 ft) is 94.3 laps… which also means that a marathon is only ~2470 laps. Now the problem is that my watch’s GPS doesn’t register inside (and probably wouldn’t be accurate enough on this small of a scale back and forth anyway). I’ve tested it out without GPS by running a small 100 lap test — which should be 100 * 56ft ~ 1 mile. My watch thought that it was 1.7 miles (and basically uses my past data to estimate based on cadence, HR, etc), and it took me 15 minutes. So here’s the dilemma: my pace felt fast enough that 1.7 miles is a reasonable distance, but my measurement of the room can’t be off by that much, so 100 laps can’t be that far. I don’t know what to do. Obviously the correct answer is to run the length and not listen to my watch at all… but a 15 minute mile is basically a fast walk and I was running way faster than that!

I am staying on the top floor – the 10th floor – and have a semi-nice view of the mountain range towards the northwest. I say “semi” because of the big abandoned building that obscures some of my view.

Besides staring out my window and failing to understand how speed, time and distance are correlated , I had my required first day COVID test – We’re not allowed out of the room until testing negative ( not even allowed to set your trash outside the room for pickup). Once you test negative, you get a wrist band which allows you to do things like have your trash taken , have your laundry done, and go out to the “outdoor area” during yard time. We will then get tested twice more, during days 6 and 12 of our 2 week quarantine. God forbid someone test negative on day 12… but apparently it’s happened. Somehow.

Tomorrow we have a full day of training and informational zoom meetings (from 8am to 5pm) ugh. Most of the stuff I can probably work through since I’ve been down before, but it’s always hard to work and listen to people talking and try to listen for pertinent new information…

Short entry here; testing my automatic posting to Facebook, and just confirming I’m a go for travel (Negative COVID test results).

This is the 2nd leg of the trip and I will be transporting to the airport around 1830 for a 2200 flight; should be about 14 hours to Christchurch, arriving at 7AM on Monday morning NZ time. Then whisked right off to the managed isolation / quarantine (MIQ) hotel.

Beautiful sunrise here to start the day! See you in ~20 hours.

I can’t believe it’s Friday already! Time flies when you’re having fun.

We took our PCR COVID test on Thursday, hoping to hear back from the company about results late tonight/ tomorrow morning. We will be getting ready for departure to NZ tomorrow evening; with staggered checkouts from the hotel and staggered transport to the airport for our charter flight (it’s a charter meaning only the USAP folks are on it, but it’s still operated by Air NZ). I believe our flight departs at 10pm Pacific time and arrives direct to Christchurch around 7AM local, but I’m still waiting for final a scheduling email.

Outdoor ‘yard time’ has been pretty nice. We’ve been getting two 30 minute slots to go out and WALK (no running) around the building. I have been doing about 2 miles in each of those… which is hard for me because I’m not a fast walker! but 4 miles a day isn’t too bad. I’ve also supplemented my lack-of-exercise with some random body-weight exercises; like push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, box jumps, etc. Also using my heavy-ass bag as kind of a sand-bag weight. All in all, not as bad as I thought it would be… though I would love to get out and run — guess I’ll have to save that for McMurdo, since the protocol in NZ will be similar.

Work has been going great too — when I’m not busy staring out the window in awe of the efficiency of the SFO logistics. Cool to watch all the international flights come in and just imagine that people are arriving from all over the world just a few hours before.

Today I begin another journey South. This one is not for a full winter-over, but I figured I would keep the blog going and give a little insight to the current COVID-era operations.

First thing to note about this year is the restricted summer crew at South Pole. Because of COVID precautions, the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) is being extremely cautious to avoid contamination on the continent (and in countries we have to travel through to get there!). They’re also limiting the amount of personnel who will be deployed — essential people only! I happen to have volunteered to go down and represent the South Pole Telescope (SPT) collaboration by training this year’s winterovers (WOs) and making sure there is a smooth transition as the current SPT WOs head home after a long year.

Another thing to note about this year is that I will be the only “experienced” SPT person at Pole during the summer (once the current WOs leave, of course). In a usual year there are handfuls of SPT folks that come down during one part of the summer or another to do yearly maintenance tasks and operate the telescope during the summer. I also happened to have a lot of difficulties getting physically qualified (PQ’d) for various reasons – not the least of which being the extremely overworked medical staff who I had to constantly bother to tweak this , or sign that, or check this box , and to whom I have a great deal of gratitude for ( especially the poor people working for the Antarctic program who have to deal with getting people through quarantine and down to the Ice while also telling me I missed a check mark here, or need to tweak that there, or sign somewhere I missed..). Anyway- all that is to say that I finally PQ’d the evening before my flight to San Francisco (which was leaving at 7am the next day) and so had to scramble to find someone to drive me to a hotel near the airport late at night. But I made it! And now I’m living the dream holed up in the Grand Hyatt SFO for the next 4 days — 3 meals a day, a little espresso machine, view of the airport and arriving planes coming in over the South Bay — what more could I ask for?!

So as part of the COVID mitigation strategy (and in compliance with New Zealand protocols, etc), the USAP is requiring 4 days of quarantine in SFO before departing for NZ. We are required to remain isolated within our rooms except for our COVID tests spread over the few days to ensure no positive cases reach NZ. We do have scheduled outdoor times as well but I’ve yet to experience that so I’ll have to report back tomorrow — there is no running allowed, sadly.

After SFO we fly a contracted flight (containing only Antarctica-bound folks) to Christchurch, NZ where we begin a 2 week long Government mandated and operated quarantine. Again this will be in a hotel room with daily(?) scheduled outdoor times — and again, no running.

After our required isolation in NZ, we fly to the Ice (weather permitting, of course), though this year it is claimed that we will fly either in a C17 or an NZ Air National Guard 757 which means that the flight will only be about 5 hours instead of the 8 required by the prop-driven C130s. Once in McMurdo, we’re required to wait at least 7 days before leaving the station (i.e. no McM-Pole flights), and then after that I’m on (I think) the ~3rd Basler flight to South Pole around Nov 5th – just about 1 month from now. That is, if the weather at both Pole and McMurdo cooperate for the longer time window required for Baslers to make the round trip… and we all know how that goes!

One month of travel… That’s one hell of a commute.

I think I might just veg out and watch some TV… or you know, start writing my thesis, or doing some thesis-related analysis. Who knows. The world hotel room is my oyster.

Maybe if I didn’t write these damned blog posts, I could put more effort into thesis writing . Hm.

Weather: No idea. Who cares… Warmish. 60s maybe. Cloudy

Landed in LAX today. Tonight I fly Santa Air back to IAD where I will arrive at 6am. Just in time for festivities back home in MD.

It’s certainly weird being thrown back into COVID world when I have had literally zero exposure to it before. Besides a few days of practice level yellow and a few days of real level yellow at Pole I haven’t even worn a mask before! Christchurch was a nice way to ease into it because there aren’t any cases currently in NZ but the folks at the airports still tend to wear PPE.

Here in the good ol’ USofA, it’s a bit different. Hopefully with my sanitizer usage and winterover anti-social glares, I should be pretty safe on my return journey.

Can’t wait to be back at home and relax on the couch. and sleep. like for a whole day. 🙂

I kind of botched my adjustment to East Coast time today by napping in the middle of the day. Hopefully I can also get some sleep on the flight tonight and start a normal sleep cycle tomorrow.

Weather: Balmy, 30F positive! Calm winds and overcast.

Living the dream in McMurdo… been here for 12 days now. Weather delays, runway delays and crew turnover delays are the story of our escape from McM. As conditions warm for the summer here, the runway has deteriorated into a skiway, and so the US Antarctic Program needed to spin-up the US Air National Guard, which has LC-130s (C-130s equipped with skis).

I’ve been mostly running around, eating and sleeping. I’ve also gotten to play volleyball a few times here which was fun, and now constitutes the 2nd most I’ve ever played volleyball (next to at Pole). There have been some recreational activities that I’ve participated in too, such as the “Scott Hut 10k” run (which I placed 2nd in, of course) and the “Ob Hill Uphill” challenge (which I also placed 2nd in… not surprisingly).

Both races I was blown away by some very nice person who happens to also be very fast! Beating my time of 7m48s in the uphill challenge (he got 6m36s!) and beating me in the 10k by about 4 minutes! Needless to say the only chance I have of beating him is in a distance race (which I will hopefully not be here for!! – the marathon is scheduled for Jan 10th).

It’s nice to be able to run around outside but I’m about ready to be home now. With the 2 flights per week from NZ to the US, the earliest I can hope for now is to arrive back in DC at 6am on Christmas morning! So long as I don’t get delayed bast Wednesday, I should make that timing.

Fingers crossed that Santa and I cross paths on my way home, and I can make it back to spend the holiday with my family. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen my fiance, and needless to say it’s time to get back!

On the bright side, the person who left Pole on my original Nov 30th flight is still stuck in McMurdo… so ya know… at least I’m not that person!

Weather: Warm, variable skies. Temps got up to -5F yesterday! That’s damn warm! But windy, with winds around 20knts. Skies cleared up today.

Well. Later today I am expected to do my ‘Bag Drag’ – where anyone leaving on a flight has to bring their bags to be weighed before the flight. This makes the prospect of going home all the more real. After bags are weighed, any checked bags are stored for loading on the plane. I actually checked a bag for yesterday’s flight because our flight is full and may be nearing it’s weight capacity. So most of my stuff is sitting in McMurdo already!

After bag drag at 9am, I have a weekly update telecon and then lots of telescope greasing to do before my flight arrives (hopefully) tomorrow Dec 9th to take me North to McMurdo. I’m not sure what the weather forecasts are, but there is only going to be one more northbound C-130 going from McM to CHC before mid-late January. I believe it’s supposed to arrive in McM on Dec 14th, so I’d be heading North on the 15th… but we’ll see – seems to be an extra-ordinarily “play-it-by-ear” sort of year.

Last weekend we got to celebrate Thanksgiving (we pushed it back so we could be in level green; i.e. no social distancing necessary) and the Galley crew once again knocked it out of the park… One of my favorite things about the South Pole!

As exciting as the prospect of being home is, I’m also a little sad to be leaving South Pole. It’s been my home for the last 11 months (almost to the day — I arrived on Jan 4th), and it’s been a trying and difficult winter at times. I made some new friends, shared lots of laughter, and lots of tears. Went through some dark times (both literally and mentally/emotionally) but also have a lot more fond memories. I don’t know what survival mechanism it is that allows you to forget the bad and remember the good memories, but I’m definitely going to miss our winter here. It’s very different from any summer at Pole. Much calmer, much more intimate and much more relaxed in many ways. You build habits and do the same thing every day; one might say you become institutionalized… But it’s an experience not many people get to experience (though with COVID I’d bet a lot of people felt pretty isolated this year). I think I’m somewhere around the 1600th person to ever have wintered over at Pole… It’s a pretty small club formed here at the end of the Earth.

As much as I would love to stay, there is someone I’ve left behind and I can’t bear to be without any longer! I can’t wait to reconnect with my fiance and hear what life was like during a worldwide pandemic, unfortunately being at home alone… though I expect I will learn very quickly since the US is in the midst of the worst outbreak yet. It was hard to be here, away from everything and knowing I had left her for this year which turned out to be very isolating to people at home who had not signed up for a year-long isolation, as I did.

Anyway, I can’t wait to be back in warmer weather (any temperature above zero will suffice!), and to be back with Polly in our house and to describe our year apart and to regain some normalcy. I think I’ve grown a lot as a person and I’m ready to tackle life’s challenges… or maybe just start writing a thesis… who knows. Maybe I’ll just take some time and go running or biking around. Even the short time I’ll get in NZ before the flight back to the US will be well spent exploring the outdoors, probably getting really sunburnt. The world is my oyster :). Whatever that means.

All for now. Let’s hope a plane comes on Wednesday!

Weather: Clear and calm up until yesterday. Now windy with plenty of blowing snow. Temperatures are warm, around -20F.

Summer turnover is wrapping up at SPT, and we’ve completed most of our critical summer maintenance. Soon we will be fully beginning uninterrupted Summer observations (and by we, I mean the new winterovers, not me!). We have to change our observing field during summer because the sun begins to enter our field and cause contamination in our CMB maps (so we basically just shift over to avoid it).

The first of three South Pole overland Traverses (SPoT) arrived a few days ago, bringing with it more than 100k gallons of fuel (and quite a few new faces!). The galley now seems overwhelmingly full, especially after a week of level yellow (socially distanced seating in the galley).

Flight schedules are always being updated, rearranged, delayed and moved around here at the South Pole due to various things. There is a possibility that I will be flying North starting next week (Wednesday the 9th). From there I’ll likely be in McMurdo until the last C130 of the year arrives on the 14th, taking passengers northbound to Christchurch on the 15th.

We shall see if that plan holds up! 🙂