Antarctica Blog

The weather got better before it got worse. The flight made it in a half hour early and gave us 1150 gallons of AN-8. AN-8 is a cold temperature jet fuel that we use in our heavy machinery and in all the heaters. That amount is exactly what we use in a week. I have been building a spreadsheet to track our fuel use and supply. I have determined that up to now we have been using 1149 gallons of AN-8 a week making it 164.1 gallons a day.

Along with a decent amount of fuel we also received a new fuel tank. The original idea was to plumb it together with the tank in the generator shack. But we discovered that the new tank doesn’t have a drain plug from which we can run a fuel line from one tank to the other. We now have four steel tanks in the camp and we needed to figure out the best way to put them to use. Two of them are 250 gallon tanks, one is a 200 gallon and the one in the generator shack is a 150 gallon. The only one with a drain plug is the 150 so I discarded immediately the possibility of joining two tanks together. The 200 was on the tank sled that I drag around camp to fuel buildings. The configuration I finally decided on was this: I would take the 200 from the sled and put it in the gen-shack; I would take the 150 from the gen-shack and put it on the sled alongside the new 250. The old 250 would stay out at the arch to be used with the big drill whenever it comes in. To get these tanks in and out of the gen-shack we had to take out a wall and maneuver them gently with the Tucker’s forklift. Now my fueling sled has doubled its capacity giving me more time between fueling runs.
Two reporters from the Antarctic Sun arrived in camp with the last flight as well. They have been pretty low-key. They have been spending most of their time on the other side of camp at the Arch. But they brought nice weather with them from McMurdo. It was sunny and warm most of the week. We have been outside throwing Frisbee on most afternoons. Luci has been skiing around after work. She has been skiing out to the arch to watch the drilling or I take her out to the 1 mile marker and she skis back into camp.

The other day I found a dime sitting on the floor of one of the tents. It was a weird sensation because my first reaction was to pick it up. But, after thinking about it, I realized I don’t really have any use for it so I just left it there. We don’t have any use for money out here. In fact, I came out with a dollar and I still have it. Hours before we were scheduled to fly out to camp from McMurdo I realized I didn’t have any money. But, the bank machine at McMurdo wasn’t giving me any money. I called my bank and they said they were changing processors and about half their cards weren’t working at the moment. Nice timing. So, ever since I have been almost entirely without cash. Apparently no one else does either because the dime is still sitting there almost a week later.
Today is overcast but still. I think we are all hoping that the sun wins out over the clouds and wind for next week.

Our numbers did indeed double. At the beginning of the week two comms-guys and a GPS tech from UNAVCO arrived in camp. One of the comms-guys was an antenna rigger who is a friend of ours from town, Zim. He has taken up our laundry torch in the absence of my brother Jesse. From what I understand, Jesse is going to be at Pole a little longer than we all expected. Apparently polies have been dropping like flies with pulmonary edema from the effects of altitude and latitude. Luci and I think it is partially psychosomaticaly induced since the Company begins terrorizing people about the altitude at pole from very early in the hiring process.

This week has been tortuous. When our Meteorologist Technician called our observation in on Monday the weather forecasters were nice enough to tell us that we had some nasty weather coming our way. Just like last year, the small camp in the Fosdick mountains were getting pounded by gale force wind and there was rumor about them pulling their camp out. The storm hit hard on Tuesday and we were effectively holed up indoors while the worst of it blew over. The new arrivals tried their best to do the work they came out to do since they were scheduled for only a short visit. On Wednesday morning (the day of their flight out) it was still storming. Everyone assumed we wouldn’t be getting a plane. The morning was slow around camp with everyone kind of languidly sipping tea and coffee. The met-tech kept doing hourly observation in the off-chance that the plane might depart. The plane’s departure from McMurdo (with 7 construction workers) was delayed from 1700 to 1900 and we all expected the flight to soon be canceled outright.

Then, suddenly, right before dinner the sun came out. The wind kept up but not as strong and with the break in the white-out we could see all the drifting around camp. There were drifts six to eight feet high all over camp. In an attempt to mitigate drifting on our fuel bladders, I put up a snow fence to direct the drifting away from it. My plan failed miserably and we wound up with a massive drift right on the top of it.

After dinner we received work that the plane had taken off from McMurdo and would be arriving in three-and-a-half hours. Once everyone found out there was a lot of scrambling around getting ready for the unexpected plane. I worked on digging out the fuel pump and lines while other dug out heavy equipment and heater units to warm them up. Zim and the UNAVCO guy had a bunch of work to get done before they could leave. Zim had an antenna that was being hand carried by one of the arriving passengers that he would have to put up before he could get on the plane.

When the plane finally arrived overhead the weather had gone sour again. My prediction at breakfast was that the plane would either cancel outright in the morning or they would fly all the way out here and boomerang without landing. Neither scenario came true. By some miracle they landed after about an hour of circling. This meant that they had used all the fuel they were bringing us and my digging was in vain. So I helped Zim set up the HF antenna. It was tight. The plane was sitting on the taxiway burning an already limited amount of fuel, all the cargo and passengers were unloaded. The UNAVCO guy was already on board and Zim was still on the tower. I carry an air-ground radio when I’m working around the plane and I heard the captain give a ten minute ultimatum. But, we got Zim off the tower and I zipped him out to the plane on a ski-doo and they were off.

The seven arriving passengers are part of the Arch construction team. Last year they built the external structure and this year they are going to be excavating a trench inside where the ice-core drill will be assembled. By the time they finally arrived, disembarked and the plane took off it was well past 1am and the camp was a wreck. The next day was dedicated entirely to digging out. Because the carpenters who set up camp are still here finishing projects we are now 29 people total so there were a lot of shovels flying. Thank god, because it was going to be a monumental task.

By the end of the day Thursday most of the yard was leveled but the fuel pits were still under many feet of snow. Because we can’t operate machinery to excavate the snow over the bladders it all has to be done by hand. I prepped the fueling station to be moved by out track loader so we could level the surface with a groomer but I couldn’t find the energy to start digging on the bladder. Good thing because the wind picked up again Thursday night.

I spent a good part of the day tuning furnaces. Our drip feed burners act strange in winds over 20 knots so the draft has to be monitored and adjusted so they don’t soot up. And, since we now have a dozen of them it is a chore to keep up with them. We also had a generator failure. It turned out to be rather minor. The air filter clogged solid with blowing snow. We just pulled it off and thawed it out. Since we don’t have any dirt here it actually runs better. The little bit of moisture getting sucked into the system actually helps it burn more efficiently.

Yesterday the electricians got our big 40K generator hooked up this week and now all of the main buildings have power. We also got out GOES satellite dish up and now have a little network with decent internet for about 6 hours a day. Since we have more electricity we were able to put the two snow-melter units on-line which means we now have hot showers and running water. Seven volunteers spent the day digging out the bladders while I fueled vehicles, buildings and set up a new heater in one of the new buildings. Unfortunately, It blew all night again and has most likely filled up again. It reminds of a chapter from some cruel Greek myth like Tantalus, Sisyphus or Prometheus.

The wind is supposed to keep up for a few more days but the carpentry crew is building their palettes of supplies to go on the plane tomorrow according to schedule. We’ll see what the week brings.

Now that our put-in is nearly over and we have slid into the standard Antarctic work schedule (six days of work; Sunday off) I can keep updated more regularly. The Carps are still here but have finished putting up structures. We now have twelve structures in the camp. Most of them are RAC tents. They are arched tents that replace the Korean War surplus Jamesway that we used at Siple Dome. Both styles are made up of standard size sections of frame covered by insulated blankets. Thus, the size of a tent is determined by its length an amount of “sections”.

Going down the line: there is the generator building that houses our 40K generator which at the moment is not operational because of a faulty injector maladjusted valve. Next is the Mechanic shop where Dave, our mechanic not only works but lives. Both are hard-walled structures. These are followed by the “science tent” which is an eight-section RAC where the grantees will set up their work stations when they get here. In the meantime one of our equipment operators and a carpenter are squatting there because they can’t handle the sub-zero temps in their tents. The carpenters have their own meeting tent set up in the middle of camp which with come down when they leave in a couple of weeks. It is a Polarchief (or simply “the Chief” which is essentially a type of Yurt.

At the moment I am writing in the communications tent; a little five-section RAC where my little office shelf is. My informal role as the hazardous cargo handler (I got a US military certification back at McMurdo) demands a certain amount of paperwork from me and gives me the perfect excuse to have a sort of office of my own.

The massive eighteen-section RAC tent and hard-walled module hybrid that constituted the dining room/galley building is next. This is where Luci and John spend most of their day. John, the other cook, is also from Downeast Maine and works at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia NP. Put-in for the cooks can be a daunting task. In the first couple of days they have to improvise a kitchen from racks of frozen goods and equipment. Most of their time is occupied by gathering and melting snow for water. They have spent the week organizing all our foodstuffs and putting up shelving inside and out to house it. Next to the Galley is the washroom/recreation tent. With a similar setup as the galley, this hybrid’s RAC tent extension has only eight sections. These two buildings will be equipped with snow-melting devices once the 40K generator gets put on-line. In the meantime, the Rec RAC is still a work in progress. One of the Carps has recently reconnected the shower outfalls and we put a big pot on the heater to melt snow for showers from a solar-shower bag (just like at Rifugio Boccalatte).

The five-section Medical RAC tent is next. Our “Medic” is a former Texas republican spin-doctor turn Wilderness Medicine Instructor. Considering the current size of the camp, a dedicated medic seems a bit of overkill to me but “safety first”, you know. In theory, when there aren’t people bleeding profusely or suffering a cardiac arrest he is supposed to do weather observations. But we also have a person whose sole responsibility is to do weather obs so the medic’s job becomes doubly redundant.

The last three tents in the row are berthing tents (not to be confused with birthing tents which would be a violation of USAP policy). The first is a Weatherhaven. Very similar to the Polarhaven we had at Siple (only twice the size) and serves the same purpose; to house the Twin Otter crews when they are working out of WAIS. The other two are grantee berthing and are both eight section Jamesways, identical to the one at Siple right down to the year of manufacture, 1951.

The last structure is the most important and the sole reason for the existence of this camp, the Arch. This is where the gigantic ice-core drilling apparatus will be housed. Architecturally, this structure is very similar to the tents but their walls are made of steel and therefore rigid. Next week, a crew of construction workers are coming out to finish work on the Arch. Since the drill is being put on the re-supply vessel that won’t make it to McMurdo until January, the drill won’t be installed and put into operation until next year some time.

All but three of these buildings (the generator shack, the shop, and the Arches) are heated but semi-archaic drip-fuel stoves that we run on the same jet fuel that runs the heavy equipment and all the aircraft: AN-8. My primary role is to keep all these buildings and the equipment fueled. We have two 10K bladders with a central pumping station that can either fuel or take fuel from a variety of aircraft. Because the pump has to be warmed ahead of time, I organize the heavy equipment operators so that I can fuel all of them once every-other-day. At the same time I fill up out “day-tank” which is an 170-gallon tank on a sled which I tow around to all the buildings to fuel them on a regular basis. In addition to the AN-8 fueling infrastructure we also have little hand pump (hurdy-gurdy) stations to fuel Herman Nelsons (aerospace heaters) and snowmobiles from drums of gasoline and pre-mix.

Next week our numbers are slated to double with the arrival of electricians (to set up the power to the buildings) an antenna rigger (to set up our sat-coms) and the Arch construction crew who will be excavating a hole under the Arch to make room for the drill. Things are changing everyday out here.

…is very, cold. The average temperature has been around -30C with a dip to -45C one day. Celsius and Fahrenheit meet at -40 so the temperatures are about the same down here.

The Bassler flight was interesting. We sucked oxygen through nasal canulas because it flew at 20,000 feet and the cabin is not compressed. It has some serious power and can take off with almost as little runway as a Twin Otter but with around twice the payload. Kind of weird with the dingly little wheel in the back and skis in the front, but it works. We had to stop at Siple Dome for fuel on the way out to WAIS so we got a final look at our old home before putting-in at our new camp.

There was a lot of snow when we first got here. There were three small boxy buildings on skis waiting for us; the kitchen, the bathhouse and the mechanic shop. The big arches where the ice-core drill will go was still intact as well but nearly the entire two stories were buried in a snow drift. We didn’t have to start from scratch like they did last year but at times if certainly felt like it. The penetrating cold really takes the energy out of the body. We spend days shoveling snow but with the added bonus that we have a track-loader here to help move it around.

Since I am responsible for fuels I spent a bit of time setting up the system. This year, the company that manufactures the fuel filters we use decided that the ones that we use are not good enough anymore and have recalled all their old ones. The replacement stands a good ten feet off the ground and weights clearly over two-hundred pounds. On top of its unmanageable size, it doesn’t seem to work. The 5 foot long filters that go in the chamber don’t seat correctly and we don’t register any differential pressure on the pressure gauge. The company’s engineers assure us that that shouldn’t make any difference. What could we do? Air Operations were breathing down our neck to get our fueling system up and running so they could start sending us flights. So we spent a day building this rocket-looking thing and getting it properly supported and contained but we ran into a plumbing problem.

Everything suffers at temperatures around -40. Almost all of our heavy machinery has suffered some sort of cold-related malfunction. Our primary fuel pump was not immune. Despite thorough heating with our aerospace heaters we still managed to blow the main pump seal, spraying fuel everywhere. In the morning we had to hunt down the backup pump and get it ready to use. Once we found it buried in the Arches with the bulk of the camp equipment, we dragged it over to the fuel pit with the new filter. To put the new rocket-filter on-line we needed some fittings from the old filter. The valve we needed was threaded so tightly that everything we tried would not free it. We tried a blow torch to heat up the metal but propane doesn’t even evaporate at that temperature. We finally freed the fitting but realized that an elbow that was useless to us was still attached to the piece we needed. We were getting cold, it was getting late and we had been working since dawn (ha, ha. There hasn’t really been dawn since August.).

We had been told by Air Ops that the Kenn Borek Twin Otter bound for the Italian base at Terra Nova Bay was going to be leaving the British base Rothera on the Palmer Peninsula that same day but we were told that they would be taking fuel at Siple dome because our system was down. We were sitting in one of the heated buildings after dinner playing Bao (my favorite board-game from Africa) when some of our crew decided it was time to go to bed. As soon as they walked out the door, the generator started making a funny noise. Kind of a high-pitched buzzing. Then Elizabeth, who had just stepped out the door on her way to her tent walked back in and said, “you’re not going to believe this but there is a Twin Otter outside headed for the fuel pits”.

Now, Twin Otters always carry their own little Honda Fuel pumps so they are pretty self-sufficient. Ben, the camp manager, went out to show them which fuel bladder to pump from and lend assistance if necessary. Apparently the weather at Siple Dome went down so they turned around and headed toward our camp. When they are ferrying the planes from Canada to Antarctica, the Kenn Borek pilots are allowed much longer flight hours. When they landed at WAIS, they were many hours into a very long day. Luci brought them coffee at their request. When she returned a half-hour later she told of a scene of mass confusion. The little Honda pumps don’t do well and any temperature below -20C and it was currently -45. The pumps won’t keep a prime and when it will take a prime, the fuel leaks from all the hoses. Luci said she saw one of the pilots get splashed in the face with a drop of fuel and get instantly frostbitten in the spot where it hit.

For the next half hour, those of us gathered around the stove debated whether or not to go offer some help. Then we got a call from Ben on the radio asking if it would be possible to start our pump. Trevor, they guy who came out with us from McMurdo to help set up the new filter and I got suited up. In order to get the pump working we would have to put the piece of the old filter back together, attach it to the pump and prime the system. On top of it all we hadn’t even tried starting the backup pump. Oh, and did I mention that it was -45C and blowing 10 knots?

When I got to the fuel pit the heater was on the pump and Trevor had put together the old filter. Now we just needed to prime the line and wait until the pump body warmed before we tried starting the pump. We kept our fingers crossed because if this pump blew a seal we would be in serious trouble. The pump started fine. Beautifully, in fact. Surprising, considering how long it had sat in storage. The pump motor started but the pump wasn’t pumping so we stopped the motor and re-primed the line fuel lines with the last of the jet fuel we had in jerry cans. On the second try the pump still wasn’t pressurizing the fuel hose. So we turned up the revs on the motor and waited. Just as I was about the shut the motor off again for fear of burning up the pump, a jet of fuel shot up from the top of the filter housing. I hadn’t told Trevor I had opened the vent to drain the old filter in preparation for its disposal. So, obviously, he hadn’t closed it. But, in fact, this was good news because it meant that the pump was doing its job. The bad news was that Ben had accidentally grabbed Luci’s red parka and it was now covered in a shower of AN8 jet fuel.

So the Twin Otter got fueled and back on course to McMurdo before taking a couple of days off and continuing on to the Italian base. We have since had about five C-130 missions come through to bring cargo and fuel to our little (at present) camp. One of the flights brought out eight carpenters from McMurdo to begin re-building the camp. As I alluded to before, at the end of last season the camp was, for the most part, torn down and stored in the drill Arch. All except for the three buildings. But, these needed to be moved from their winter storage spot on the other side of camp to the spots where they would be secured for summer use. With the exception of the mechanic shop, all the permanent structures have a long RAC tent attached to them to increase their capacity. The Carps have been occupying themselves with constructing these large ten kits while we move the permanent buildings from the old camp to the summer one by dragging them on their skis with the loader.

Since we haven’t had a flight to fuel since the caps came in, I have been zooming around the camp on an Alpine I snowmobile doing little odd jobs to get the buildings up and running. I have fixed four furnaces in the past three days, for example. Luci has been busy getting the kitchen running smoothly and making the newly attached RAC tent into a dining room. Joel got stuck at McMurdo for almost a week after Luci and I left awaiting warmer temperatures at the South Pole Station. The planes won’t land at pole unless it is above -50F. After they finally managed to land, bringing an end to a very long winter for the people who had been keeping the station open over the past ten months, two of his kitchen crew began to suffer from symptoms of pulmonary edema caused by the high altitude of the polar plateau. They were sent immediately back to McMurdo for treatment and the kitchen supervisors went looking for someone to take their place. Because there is only one cook at McMurdo fit to take the place of two cooks, no other than my other brother Jesse was called to the rescue. He was told he would be going to Pole at the end of his shift Monday and was in the cockpit of a Herc on a cargo-only flight at five on Tuesday morning. As it turns out, the navigator is our good friend Keith. Apparently Keith showed Jesse all the tricks to navigating an LC-130 Hercules.

We are back to using our old Iridium satellite phone data connection. OOOOHHH SOOOO SlOOOOW. But, from what I understand, when we get the camp fully functional we will be using the same satellite that South Pole uses for their internet connection. I am looking forward to it because ANYTHING is better than the Iridium. I’ll do my best to keep my posts updated.

We got our bags dragged and our flight is on the schedule for tomorrow morning at nine. It loooks like we will be going on the Bassler DC-3. We are currently sitting at the cofeehouse discussing put-in over a glass of wine. It is looking good and we are optimistic that things will go as planned.

If we make, it I might not be able to post of a couple of days while we get our satellite system up. We we don’t make it in, you’ll hear from me tomorrow.

Temperatures at South Pole are still too cold so Joel hasn’t been able to
get out of town. Luci and I, for one reason or another, have been delayed
as well. In fact, we are not yet behind schedule. Our projected put-in date
is Thursday but we have been a back-up mission for days. Normally what
happens is that manifested passengers have to bring their bags up to the
movement control center the day before their flight. This is affectionately
known as “bag-drag”. We have had our bag-drag scheduled and cancelled three
times. These have all been for back-up missions. Tomorrow we should be a
primary and if it is canceled it means we will be offically behind schedule.
Joel has already bag-dragged and is still living out of his carry-on. At
least we still have most of our stuff.
Seeing as today was one of the first nice days with little wind, I decide to
organize a hike out to Castle Rock, one of the farthest hikes away from the
base that people at McMurdo are allowed to undertake. It is long and flat
for the most part but at the end is the extinct cinder cone that is Castle
Rock. It was the first time in her four seasons on the ice that Luci allowed
herself to be convinced to go out there. Obviously, it ws joels first time
as well. It was long and cold but we had a good time.
If we keep getting canceled I am going to start working over at the UT shop
where I worked the last season I spent in town.

Luke, Luci, Joel, Jesse: For those of you who don’t know us. Joel was
supposed to be on the opening flight to South Pole this morning but the
forecast for McMurdo was bad. Pole was holding steady at the -50F; the
minimum for an LC-130 Hercules to land there. The concern for the flight
were not the conditions at Pole but that the conditions at McMurdo would go
down before they could get back.
But the polies did get some relief with the arrival of Kenn Boreck Air from
Canada. KBA operates the smaller Twin Otter aircraft that we do a lot of
work in the Deep Field with. They fly down between six and eight aircraft
every year to work with various different programs including, the Italian,
French, and Patriot Hills. They actually depart from Calgary and fly down
through the Americas to the British base at Rothera where they swap their
wheels for skis. Then they cross the Antarctic via the South Pole where they
are often the first plane they have seen since February.
This year KBA added a re-modeled Bassler DC-3 to their fleet. It stopped to
refuel at Pole yesterday before continuing on to McMurdo. Coincidently, it
is very similar to the first planes use the open the first US base there
back in the 50s. A couple of hours later the first Twin Otter, BBV, arrived
at South Pole Station and is currently on weather hold like all the other
aircraft down here at the moment.
Since the planes are on hold, it obviously means the passengers are also on
hold. This includes my brother Joel who is quickly losing patients with his
accommodations here at McMurdo. He is crammed in a transient room with
about 30 other polies and has “pillow like a piece of cardboard”. We are
all concerned about how he is going to take living at pole. Now that I have
finished with my obligatory training I am going to take him around McMurdo
and show him some of the highlights.
Since Luci and I are scheduled to put in by Bassler, the South Pole flight
delays haven’t started to affect us too much yet. But, if bad weather here
keeps up the delays just keep backing up the whole flight calendar.

Here is a photo I took of what I think are the Victory Mtns from the C-17 on
the way in from Christchurch. I have spend the past couple of days in
various redundant training sessions. Yesterday I did hazardous cargo
handling certification all day long. Today I did safety training, snowmobile
training, and went to talk to the fuels department about the fueling system
at WAIS. It seems like the longer I stay in town the more I have to do. We
are scheduled to leave McMurdo for WAIS on the 25th but really anything can
happen between now and then. We could go earlier or we could go later.

Joel made it into town on schedule. He is in a big bunkroom for transients
in the dorm they call Hotel California. He seems pretty eager to get settled
in a routine at South Pole. The first flight to Pole for the season is
scheduled to go out on the 21st . But, if the temperature is below -50F
they won’t fly. The weather hasn’t been great since he arrived so I don’t
think he has a very good impression of what it is like here. Hopefully we
can get up to Ob Hill before he has to leave. Both he and Jesse are on the
morning shift and don’t seem too thrilled about it. I hope we can all get
together for a nice family portrait before we all part ways.

Since we bought our own tickets we were able to come to NZ to play a little before deployment.  When we finally got our deployment date it turns out that we really didn’t have that much time. Luci only had one day extra and I had three but we tried to make the best of it.  The flight from Denver to LA to Auckland went surprisingly well.  A lot of people suffer from the long trans-pacific flight but it has never really bothered me for some reason.  When we got to our gate in Auckland to fly down to Christchurch they soon announced that the flight had been canceled due to “technical requirements” which, Luci believes, means that they didn’t have enough people on the flight.  The next flight to Christchurch left about 45 minutes later.  After we had all boarded and the plane left the gate we had a mechanical problem and returned to the gate and disembarked.  After another two hours we got on the third attempt of a flight and finally made it Christchurch.  This didn’t give us much time to do anything so we just went to a pub across the street from our hotel to find friends coming off the Ice after wintering.
 
The next day we got a car and drove all around the banks peninsula; to Akaroa and Lyttelton.  On Monday, our day was kind of split in half because at one o’clock Luci had to get her cold weather gear in Christchurch.  We met up with friends that were to be on her flight and spent the afternoon with them.  Since I still had the car and was free the next day I went up to Mt Hutt ski area for the day after dropping Luci off at the airport for her flight down to McMurdo.  I had an amazing day.  The weather was perfect albeit a bit windy.  They have received record snowfall here in Canterbury this winter so Mt Hutt is staying open later than usual this season.  I was expecting spring-like conditions but I found was four to six inches of fresh powder on the mountain.  It turned out to be much more like full-winter snowboarding that spring.  I met a Kiwi snowboarder from the nearby town of Methven.  He used to work down at McMurdo back when the kitchen was staffed by a NZ company.  He showed me all around the mountain and then around the town.  He offered to let me stay at his place but then I got a call from Luci.

Her flight had turned around (boomeranged) about three hours into the flight
and she was back in Christchurch. Since they were going to try again early
Wednesday and brother Jesse was scheduled to arrive from Denver a couple
hours later, it made more sense to stay back in Christchurch that night. We
ate at a Korean barbecue in town. At a Korean barbecue they bring a
charcoal brazier and raw meat and vegetables to your table and you cook it
yourself. Fun. At four the next morning we got notice that Luci’s flight
had been postponed until 10:00 about the same time Jesse’s flight was
scheduled to arrive. I dropped Luci off and went to pick up Jesse. Her
flight was successful and she arrived safely at McMurdo in the afternoon.
Jesse and I roomed together and went out to meet friends. We met up with a
couple of my crew that I will be working with out in the field at WAIS
Divide.

On Thursday we had our clothing issue and I returned the car. I took Jesse
and a friend to the Korean barbecue. Early in the morning on Friday we got a
24hr delay notice. No one is quite sure what the delay was for. Some say
mechanical problems, others say it was weather related. But, Luci had
written and told me that the weather at McMurdo was as fine as it was in
Christchurch. My personal theory is that it was out of superstition;
Friday was also the 13th. But who’s complaining? Friday is always a big
night in Christchurch.

In the morning there was no notice and everyone reported to the terminal at
six. Many of us had a strong feeling that we would boomerang. The flight
crew seemed pretty eager to get us loaded onto the C-17 and get on our way.
In fact, halfway through the silly video they show us every time we fly
(“.you will remember the next 48hrs for the rest of your life.”) we got a
call from the flight crew asking us to board immediately. The 70-so of us
got loaded quickly and were read to take off. But not before they loaded a
few hundred extra pound of fuel which made me nervous because it meant they
were preparing for a holding pattern over McMurdo. The C-17 “Globemaster”
has enough range to fly the five hours to McMurdo, circle over the base for
a while, and turn around if the ground conditions are not optimal. This is
a worst case scenario and one that we did not want to find ourselves in.

We lifted off at about ten (roughly the same time brother Joel was scheduled
to arrive in Christchurch) and we got lucky. We landed at the Ice Runway
exactly five hours after our departure. I was surprised that this year no
one boarded the plane to tell us not to turn around and take pictures of the
aircraft “or your bonus would be affected”. I even managed to stay awake in
the arrival brief in the Chalet and by 4 o’clock we were free to go. Being
a Saturday night, there was a big theme party but Luci and I passed it up
for a quite evening with friends. Today is Sunday and, as is my habit, I am
in the coffeehouse tapping away. A lot of new faces but it feels like I
never left.

This is the first entry in a new category.  BootsnAll have been making all kinds of changes to their blog interface and I have been playing around with it.  I have moved a bunch of old entries into new categories and created a few new ones.  This should make it a little easier to browse old entries.
Even though I am not in Antarctica yet I decide to start this new category now since we are theoretically on our way there.  We had originally planned to go to Denver for our training with everyone else.  We had to book our tickets from Italy before they had begun to schedule training sessions.  We took a shot in the dark and planned to be in Denver during the week.  After arriving in the States we found out that training session were going to be on the weekends.  We were going to be in Denver right between two sessions.  Instead of changing our tickets,  our employer told us that we should be able to doing our training on the Ice.
This left us five days in the Denver area with nothing to do.  We called up our wonderful and ever-helpful friends in Boulder (Amy and Eric) to see if we could stay with them.  They were great hosts as always and took time out of their schedule to spend with us. 

We had a great time together.  Eric and I did some kite-flying while Luci and Amy went shopping for god-knows-what.  They borrowed a friends condo in Winterpark and Eric and I went mountain biking while Amy and Luci went to the spa at Sulphur Springs. 

I even got Luci to get on a bike to cruise around Boulder-town and, believe-it-or-not, she actually enjoyed it.  I even have pictures to prove it.