So after a hectic few days of travel, I finally arrived at the pole. We got in around 10:00pm. Since I'd been here before, and it was late, I was spared the obligatory briefing. It really boils down to a couple of basic things: recycling and health. Since the pole is at an elevation of ~10,000 feet, they want you to pay careful attention to your health for a few days. It takes some time for your body to adapt to the elevation and altitude sickness is a risk. Usually the effects are mild and treatable with oxygen if they get too bad. Every once in a while, though, they MedEvac someone who gets a more severe variety.
This time around I got assigned a room in a different part of the station. It's actually bigger than my room on the last trip - I can't touch opposite walls at the same time. In the spring of 2012, I was at a work meeting in Berkely, but had a chance to swing down and tour Alcatraz. I did a quick check of the solitary confinement cells and they are pretty much exactly the same size as the room I had on the last trip. Of course, we can turn the lights on and off, and leave when we want to.
The station is really different this time around. In 2009, the IceCube project was in the full swing of drilling operations. Once the drill was started, it needed to run 24x7, so there were enough 'cubers on station to keep the drill running and a host of others testing instruments and other sciency stuff. That was a solid 50 people throughout the whole season. The support contractor also kept a fair number of people available to help out when and where needed, which was necessary since we were usually moving a lot things in and out. The total station population would fluctuate between 250-290 people going pretty much 24x7.
This time, the population fluctuates between 150-170. There's no night shift and it's just generally quiet.
Now that I'm finally here, I actually have useful work to do, so I can get settled into a routine. Most of the routine revolves around meal time. At this time of the year, in terms of daylight, it is always 2:00 in the afternoon. The Sun basically just circles around the station. So you don't have a lot of the typical visual cues to tell you what time of day it might be. The fixed meal times tend to keep you on some sort of regular schedule. Probably the hardest thing to keep track of is what day it is. Given our location, we can pick our favorite time zone to operate in. The station runs on New Zealand time since all of our cargo flights originate from there. That means we're on the other side of the international date line. Time of day runs five hours behind central standard time. Since you're basically working every day, they all sort of blur together and you're shifted a day ahead of the North which adds to the mix.
So far this trip it's been pretty good. The IceCube team on station is very cohesive and hard working. We have had some great talks. It turns out that the director of University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a former astronouat. He was on station and talked about some of his experiences in space with the shuttle and the ISS. For a geek like me, it doesn't get much cooler than that. There is also a science group working on a telescope at a location called Ridge A. Ridge A is at about 13,000 feet elevation and colder than the pole. They want the thing to run year round, so they have done a lot of work to reduce power usage. They also have to keep things small since they need to fit through the door of a small aircraft. It was a pretty interesting talk.
At this point, it's hard to believe that in nine days I'll be starting the return trip home!
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
On to the pole - eventually
The last time I went to pole, the travel was way easy. Everything went just the way it was written on the plan. Christchurch, McMurdo for one night, pole the next day. Reverse it on the way out. Not too bad. The second time around it's been a little more entertaining.
On the plus side, I got a four person bunk room all to myself, which is more than you have any right to expect. So I was pretty happy about that as you can imagine. Our flight to pole was scheduled to go out at 7:00pm (catch the bus at 4:15 for the ride to the air strip). It's a three hour flight, so you'll get in around 10:00pm. When we showed up for transport to the airfield, they told us the flight was cancelled. That's always a bit of a bummer, and even more so when all of your luggage is already packed up and on a pallet. So, back to the room, make the bed again and grab something to eat. Jot down some notes, try to write it up for the blog. Chat with some friends and call it a night. Around midnight or so, I got some new roommates in from a field camp. That sort of thing happens quite a bit since McMurdo is basically a big logistics and support hub for field projects all over the continent.
I woke up early (5:30am) to check the boards for any flights headed to pole. That's not as early as it sounds because we're operating on NZ time which is essentially 5 hours behind Central time in the US, so it still worked out OK with my jumbled up body clock. This turned out to backfire rather badly. It turns out that the flight was rescheduled, but was not posted on the boards. They called my room instead - twice. Once at 6:00, and again at 6:15 for a 6:15 departure to the airfield. I found that out because they woke up my new roommates. I found this out around 8:30 when I returned to my room. At least my luggage was on the way to the pole!
So then I start the ritual rebooking of the flight. This is a lot like it is with normal airlines except the people are more friendly and you don't have to worry about change fees or where you're going to eat/sleep while you wait for the next flight. With that taken care of, I ran into a new acquaintence from the flight over. She does outreach for some of the drilling projects in Antarctica and was waiting to get the survival training required to go out into the field. It's called Happy Camper and you get to sleep in a snow cave overnight. I wanted to do that on the last trip, but there were people who actually needed the training so there wasn't really room for a tourist. We went wandering out to Scott hut to see if we could find any wildlife (penguins, seals), but the only critters were too far away to be anything more than dots on the ice.
The delay wasn't fun, but it gave me a chance to catch up on some administrative details. I got my laptop checked and approved by the IT folks - no evil viruses or other nasty e-germs were present, so at least I could plug my laptop into the station network and get some work done. I had a few work issues to deal with in the north, so this was a good time to take care of that sort of thing.
For me, one of the coolest parts of coming here is that there are a lot of science projects going on. My new roommates were drilling holes through the ice shelf and placing sensors in the ocean water under the shelf. They are trying to measure temperature and salinity over time to try to understand how this affects the ice shelves in more detail. This is important in modelling how the shelves will collapse.
I also went to a science talk by the SuperTIGER guys who I hung out with in Christchurch. It's a pretty cool project. They have a detector that is trying to measure ultra-heavy cosmic rays. They put this instrument on a ballon which reaches an elevation of around 128,000 feet and then circles around the continent for weeks. Essentially, the information they are getting is related to the life cycle of stars and the abundance of various elements present in the cosmic soup. They actually did a very nice job of presenting the topic at a level that was understandable for people not specialized in the fields. Most of the time, after the third slide they break out graphs with very strange units and crazy math which is about as clear as mud unless you happen to have a PhD in the field. After that, I turned in hoping that there would be a flight the next day.
Happily, there was a flight scheduled at 5:00 the next evening and even more happily, I was on the manifest. Departure time of 2:45 so I had time to wrap up a few odds and ends, make a couple phone calls (how cool is that?) and generally get ready to fly. Of course, nothing has been simple on this trip, and this was no exception. At about 2:15 I updated my facebook status with a joyous announcement that I was on my way. I went to my room stripped the linens off my bed grabbed my laptop bag (the only luggage I had), geared up (you are required to fly in your ECW gear) and headed for the door. Flight cancelled due to weather. So after another quick cycle through the stages of grief,
I headed back to my room, remade my bed, pulled my laptop out of my backpack and five minutes later I was sitting in the galley getting ready to type. I pulled up the flight schedule to see if there were any flights the next day and discovered that my flight had been reactivated. Same departure time which was only eight minutes away. Love the lead times here. So, make a quick call to let them know I'm on my way, back to the room to strip the linens and get geared up, run to the transport building, and we're on the way.
Of course, the road hadn't gotten any better, so it took about two hours to make the trip to the airfield. I found out that the condition of the road was due to two things. The primary cause was a large and nasty storm that blew a lot of dirt off of black island onto the ice shelf. This makes the snow less reflective (lower albedo) and so the snow melts faster. Of course, the 40 degree temps the week before only made matters worse. We got towed for the last three miles to the airstrip. Our shuttle driver was nice enough to arm twist the galley staff into feeding us while we waited for the cargo to load and the flight crew to get the plane ready, and by 7:00pm were were in the air.
On the plus side, I got a four person bunk room all to myself, which is more than you have any right to expect. So I was pretty happy about that as you can imagine. Our flight to pole was scheduled to go out at 7:00pm (catch the bus at 4:15 for the ride to the air strip). It's a three hour flight, so you'll get in around 10:00pm. When we showed up for transport to the airfield, they told us the flight was cancelled. That's always a bit of a bummer, and even more so when all of your luggage is already packed up and on a pallet. So, back to the room, make the bed again and grab something to eat. Jot down some notes, try to write it up for the blog. Chat with some friends and call it a night. Around midnight or so, I got some new roommates in from a field camp. That sort of thing happens quite a bit since McMurdo is basically a big logistics and support hub for field projects all over the continent.
I woke up early (5:30am) to check the boards for any flights headed to pole. That's not as early as it sounds because we're operating on NZ time which is essentially 5 hours behind Central time in the US, so it still worked out OK with my jumbled up body clock. This turned out to backfire rather badly. It turns out that the flight was rescheduled, but was not posted on the boards. They called my room instead - twice. Once at 6:00, and again at 6:15 for a 6:15 departure to the airfield. I found that out because they woke up my new roommates. I found this out around 8:30 when I returned to my room. At least my luggage was on the way to the pole!
So then I start the ritual rebooking of the flight. This is a lot like it is with normal airlines except the people are more friendly and you don't have to worry about change fees or where you're going to eat/sleep while you wait for the next flight. With that taken care of, I ran into a new acquaintence from the flight over. She does outreach for some of the drilling projects in Antarctica and was waiting to get the survival training required to go out into the field. It's called Happy Camper and you get to sleep in a snow cave overnight. I wanted to do that on the last trip, but there were people who actually needed the training so there wasn't really room for a tourist. We went wandering out to Scott hut to see if we could find any wildlife (penguins, seals), but the only critters were too far away to be anything more than dots on the ice.
The delay wasn't fun, but it gave me a chance to catch up on some administrative details. I got my laptop checked and approved by the IT folks - no evil viruses or other nasty e-germs were present, so at least I could plug my laptop into the station network and get some work done. I had a few work issues to deal with in the north, so this was a good time to take care of that sort of thing.
For me, one of the coolest parts of coming here is that there are a lot of science projects going on. My new roommates were drilling holes through the ice shelf and placing sensors in the ocean water under the shelf. They are trying to measure temperature and salinity over time to try to understand how this affects the ice shelves in more detail. This is important in modelling how the shelves will collapse.
I also went to a science talk by the SuperTIGER guys who I hung out with in Christchurch. It's a pretty cool project. They have a detector that is trying to measure ultra-heavy cosmic rays. They put this instrument on a ballon which reaches an elevation of around 128,000 feet and then circles around the continent for weeks. Essentially, the information they are getting is related to the life cycle of stars and the abundance of various elements present in the cosmic soup. They actually did a very nice job of presenting the topic at a level that was understandable for people not specialized in the fields. Most of the time, after the third slide they break out graphs with very strange units and crazy math which is about as clear as mud unless you happen to have a PhD in the field. After that, I turned in hoping that there would be a flight the next day.
Happily, there was a flight scheduled at 5:00 the next evening and even more happily, I was on the manifest. Departure time of 2:45 so I had time to wrap up a few odds and ends, make a couple phone calls (how cool is that?) and generally get ready to fly. Of course, nothing has been simple on this trip, and this was no exception. At about 2:15 I updated my facebook status with a joyous announcement that I was on my way. I went to my room stripped the linens off my bed grabbed my laptop bag (the only luggage I had), geared up (you are required to fly in your ECW gear) and headed for the door. Flight cancelled due to weather. So after another quick cycle through the stages of grief,
I headed back to my room, remade my bed, pulled my laptop out of my backpack and five minutes later I was sitting in the galley getting ready to type. I pulled up the flight schedule to see if there were any flights the next day and discovered that my flight had been reactivated. Same departure time which was only eight minutes away. Love the lead times here. So, make a quick call to let them know I'm on my way, back to the room to strip the linens and get geared up, run to the transport building, and we're on the way.
Of course, the road hadn't gotten any better, so it took about two hours to make the trip to the airfield. I found out that the condition of the road was due to two things. The primary cause was a large and nasty storm that blew a lot of dirt off of black island onto the ice shelf. This makes the snow less reflective (lower albedo) and so the snow melts faster. Of course, the 40 degree temps the week before only made matters worse. We got towed for the last three miles to the airstrip. Our shuttle driver was nice enough to arm twist the galley staff into feeding us while we waited for the cargo to load and the flight crew to get the plane ready, and by 7:00pm were were in the air.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
On to MacTown
After a day of getting geared up and tooling around New Zealand, it's finally time to head out. This part is pretty easy: 7:30 shuttle to the CDC to pick up bags and gear and wait for the plane to leave. The USAP travel folks delivered, and my checked bag arrived at the CDC over night, so I am now at 100%. Repack a bit and then take the bags over to security and drop them off. Grab a bite to eat and on to the plane. This time we're flying out on an LC-130 (Herc). It's a military cargo plane operated by the New York Air National Guard. Prop plane, so not as fast as the C-17s I rode last time. Instead of a 5 hour flight, it's 8-8.5 hours. It's here that you really appreciate the amenities of commercial aircraft. They have little things like insulation and isolation to reduce noise and bathrooms with doors. The flight is comfortable enough, but it's so loud you have to wear ear plugs so there's not a lot of conversation. You get a pretty nice bag lunch for the flight (better than many commercial flights to be sure).
The part you watch for at this point is what happens at or before the point of safe return (PSR). It's not uncommon to take off, fly for a while and then turn around because the weather went south. That's called a boomerang and can just ruin your whole day. For our flight, PSR is five hours. We were delayed about half an hour because of weather in McMurdo, but ultimately got in the air. There was one little worry when the plane turned, but it was just a course correction and we flew on through PSR and eventually landed in McMurdo.
Now when you hear weather issues in McMurdo, the first thing that comes to mind (or at least my mind) is nasty winds and/or low visibility. Well, add the slushie to the list of things to consider. For the previous week, temperatures in McMurdo had been in the 40s. That's quite comfy for the humans (t-shirt weather), but the planes land on runways of packed snow. The main skiway is called Willie and is a mile or less from the station. They operate there until early December. At that point the ice shelf gets too thin to use safely, so they move further up the sheet to a skiway called Pegasus. Our packed skiways are not in very good condition. In the couple times I've done it, landing on skis is pretty smooth. This time, not so much. The skiways are pretty torn up and it got a little bumpy on the landing.
The Pegasus air strip is about 15 miles drive from the station. It turns out that the snow road is even worse than the skiway. I was introduced to the "Magic Carpet." I could hear them chattering about it on the driver's radio, but had no idea what they were talking about. It turns out that the road from the skiway is simply impassable by wheeled vehicles. So they have a giant sheet of some sort of material (not sure what) that they pull behind a tracked vehicle. Wheeled vehicles ride on that sheet until the road is passable. The sheet is big enough to hold Ivan the TerraBus which is a bus that holds 30-ish people; it has enourmous wheels. The Magic Carpet is big enough to hold Ivan. So we are towed to mile marker fourteen and then we're on our own. The trip takes 1.5-2 hours. It gets a little hot and stuffy. On the plus side, I saw a lone emperor penguin (which is pretty rare in this area) and met Tracy from Black River Falls. You need to keep a few Wisconsin kids around when you need to get stuff done!
We finally arrived in McMurdo at around 9:30pm. Briefing time. The briefing is a couple videos covering wildlife protection (stay clear of the seals, penguins, and aliens) and waste management. If you thought recycling at home was a drag, you should see it here. There are a minimum of a dozen different bins you sort your trash into, and a team of people to keep track of it all. Everything has to come off the continent, so they're a little fanatical about it. Then they go over housing, IT, administration, and you stumble off to try to find your room. Those of us going to pole get a drug called Diamox which is supposed to help you acclimate to the altitude at pole (10,000 feet) more quickly. It's a diuretic, so you also drink a lot and make many trips to the bathroom. We also head to the building where they pack up our bags and we get re-weighed for the flight to pole the next day. So by 11:30pm you're pretty well wrapped up and can make your way to the galley for a midnight snack (they saved some food for us and dinner for the night shift starts at midnight).
I ran into some people I knew from last time, and finally made it to be around 1:30am.
The part you watch for at this point is what happens at or before the point of safe return (PSR). It's not uncommon to take off, fly for a while and then turn around because the weather went south. That's called a boomerang and can just ruin your whole day. For our flight, PSR is five hours. We were delayed about half an hour because of weather in McMurdo, but ultimately got in the air. There was one little worry when the plane turned, but it was just a course correction and we flew on through PSR and eventually landed in McMurdo.
Now when you hear weather issues in McMurdo, the first thing that comes to mind (or at least my mind) is nasty winds and/or low visibility. Well, add the slushie to the list of things to consider. For the previous week, temperatures in McMurdo had been in the 40s. That's quite comfy for the humans (t-shirt weather), but the planes land on runways of packed snow. The main skiway is called Willie and is a mile or less from the station. They operate there until early December. At that point the ice shelf gets too thin to use safely, so they move further up the sheet to a skiway called Pegasus. Our packed skiways are not in very good condition. In the couple times I've done it, landing on skis is pretty smooth. This time, not so much. The skiways are pretty torn up and it got a little bumpy on the landing.
The Pegasus air strip is about 15 miles drive from the station. It turns out that the snow road is even worse than the skiway. I was introduced to the "Magic Carpet." I could hear them chattering about it on the driver's radio, but had no idea what they were talking about. It turns out that the road from the skiway is simply impassable by wheeled vehicles. So they have a giant sheet of some sort of material (not sure what) that they pull behind a tracked vehicle. Wheeled vehicles ride on that sheet until the road is passable. The sheet is big enough to hold Ivan the TerraBus which is a bus that holds 30-ish people; it has enourmous wheels. The Magic Carpet is big enough to hold Ivan. So we are towed to mile marker fourteen and then we're on our own. The trip takes 1.5-2 hours. It gets a little hot and stuffy. On the plus side, I saw a lone emperor penguin (which is pretty rare in this area) and met Tracy from Black River Falls. You need to keep a few Wisconsin kids around when you need to get stuff done!
We finally arrived in McMurdo at around 9:30pm. Briefing time. The briefing is a couple videos covering wildlife protection (stay clear of the seals, penguins, and aliens) and waste management. If you thought recycling at home was a drag, you should see it here. There are a minimum of a dozen different bins you sort your trash into, and a team of people to keep track of it all. Everything has to come off the continent, so they're a little fanatical about it. Then they go over housing, IT, administration, and you stumble off to try to find your room. Those of us going to pole get a drug called Diamox which is supposed to help you acclimate to the altitude at pole (10,000 feet) more quickly. It's a diuretic, so you also drink a lot and make many trips to the bathroom. We also head to the building where they pack up our bags and we get re-weighed for the flight to pole the next day. So by 11:30pm you're pretty well wrapped up and can make your way to the galley for a midnight snack (they saved some food for us and dinner for the night shift starts at midnight).
I ran into some people I knew from last time, and finally made it to be around 1:30am.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Christchurch, CHC, Cheech!
The Christchurch leg of the trip has been very enjoyable both times. The Kiwis have always been very friendly and the weather pleasant. It's a nice place to catch your breath and get ready for the next legs of the trip.
The primary focus is to pick up your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear. This happens at the CDC (clothing distribution center) which is in the Antarctic Center right by the airport. The gear you get depends on where on the continent you'll be going and what you're planning to do. I'm a computer geek, so they expect me to spend most of my time inside typing; I don't get Carharts or other heavy duty work gear. You still get pleny of thermal underwear, wool socks, and "Big Red" which is the Canada Goose jacket you haul all over the place. If you've seen any antarctic documentaries, odds are you've seen this coat.
The day before your flight, you head to the CDC and try out all your gear to make sure it fits. They've got it packaged up into two bags that have everything you'll need. You just need to try it on to make sure the sizes are right and that it's all there (they give you a check list). Really pretty easy, so I'm in and out.
The USAP travel folks are right around the corner, so those of us who had some bags wandering around the world stopped over to check on their status. The travel folks are great. You give them your name, they tap a few keys and give you what is currently known about the status of your bag. Since nothing was really known about my bag at this point, they started hounding the airlines and sent me on my way. It's nice having someone who knows the system on a professional basis do the hunting. They do this for a couple thousand people a year, so by now, they are probably on a first name basis with every airline worker on the island.
So by about 10:00am, I was free and clear for the rest of the day. I ran into a couple of airport buddies at the CDC who were also hunting their bags. One of the nice things about the travel is that you are issued two very distinctive luggage tags. It makes it very easy to find others who are headed in the same direction. That's how I met Thomas and Sean. They work on a project called SuperTIGER which is a (very) distant cousin to IceCube. They are studying cosmic ray composition using long duration balloon flights. Basically, take your detector, tie it to a balloon, elevate to about 128,000 feet and let it circle around the continent for a month or so. That is about as cool as it gets!
They had rented a car, so we took off for some touristing. This is always good, because I am a terrible tourist. Cities don't usually interest me much, so going some place to work is fun, but when the work is done I usually dont feel compelled to seek out local attractions. So I usually end up tagging along with people who *do* like being tourists. So our first stop was the Royal New Zealand Airforce museum. They are busy working on restoring every plane that ever flew for the RNZAF. If you are ever in Christchurch and tour the museum, pay the $10 to take the tour. Our tour guide was a retired pilot who actually works on their restoration efforts when he's not giving the tours. They have a lot of cool stuff.
After the museum, we headed to Cathedral square. This was at my request. My last trip was in 2009 which was the year before the big earthquakes that hit New Zealand. I knew things had been badly damaged, so I wanted to see how things looked. It was pretty bad. Large sections of the area are too dangerous for pedestrians and are fenced off. The cathedral in Cathedral Square was almost completely destroyed. Even a couple years on, there are buildings that have not been demolished. They are working hard on saving the buildings that can be saved but it is a monumental task.
In the meantime, they have turned modified cargo containers into a sort of open air walking mall. When I first heard this, I was a bit skeptical, but it is really quite nice. Still, it is quite different from the first trip and it has devastated or outright destroyed a lot of the businesses in the area.
After that, we headed out to Lyttleton which is basically a suburb of Christchurch. That's where the harbor is. After a bit of dinner, we drove up to the summit of some of the small mountains that surround the city. It was an awesome view.
All in all, a good day and a nice chance to catch a breath before the flight the next day.
The primary focus is to pick up your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear. This happens at the CDC (clothing distribution center) which is in the Antarctic Center right by the airport. The gear you get depends on where on the continent you'll be going and what you're planning to do. I'm a computer geek, so they expect me to spend most of my time inside typing; I don't get Carharts or other heavy duty work gear. You still get pleny of thermal underwear, wool socks, and "Big Red" which is the Canada Goose jacket you haul all over the place. If you've seen any antarctic documentaries, odds are you've seen this coat.
The day before your flight, you head to the CDC and try out all your gear to make sure it fits. They've got it packaged up into two bags that have everything you'll need. You just need to try it on to make sure the sizes are right and that it's all there (they give you a check list). Really pretty easy, so I'm in and out.
The USAP travel folks are right around the corner, so those of us who had some bags wandering around the world stopped over to check on their status. The travel folks are great. You give them your name, they tap a few keys and give you what is currently known about the status of your bag. Since nothing was really known about my bag at this point, they started hounding the airlines and sent me on my way. It's nice having someone who knows the system on a professional basis do the hunting. They do this for a couple thousand people a year, so by now, they are probably on a first name basis with every airline worker on the island.
So by about 10:00am, I was free and clear for the rest of the day. I ran into a couple of airport buddies at the CDC who were also hunting their bags. One of the nice things about the travel is that you are issued two very distinctive luggage tags. It makes it very easy to find others who are headed in the same direction. That's how I met Thomas and Sean. They work on a project called SuperTIGER which is a (very) distant cousin to IceCube. They are studying cosmic ray composition using long duration balloon flights. Basically, take your detector, tie it to a balloon, elevate to about 128,000 feet and let it circle around the continent for a month or so. That is about as cool as it gets!
They had rented a car, so we took off for some touristing. This is always good, because I am a terrible tourist. Cities don't usually interest me much, so going some place to work is fun, but when the work is done I usually dont feel compelled to seek out local attractions. So I usually end up tagging along with people who *do* like being tourists. So our first stop was the Royal New Zealand Airforce museum. They are busy working on restoring every plane that ever flew for the RNZAF. If you are ever in Christchurch and tour the museum, pay the $10 to take the tour. Our tour guide was a retired pilot who actually works on their restoration efforts when he's not giving the tours. They have a lot of cool stuff.
After the museum, we headed to Cathedral square. This was at my request. My last trip was in 2009 which was the year before the big earthquakes that hit New Zealand. I knew things had been badly damaged, so I wanted to see how things looked. It was pretty bad. Large sections of the area are too dangerous for pedestrians and are fenced off. The cathedral in Cathedral Square was almost completely destroyed. Even a couple years on, there are buildings that have not been demolished. They are working hard on saving the buildings that can be saved but it is a monumental task.
In the meantime, they have turned modified cargo containers into a sort of open air walking mall. When I first heard this, I was a bit skeptical, but it is really quite nice. Still, it is quite different from the first trip and it has devastated or outright destroyed a lot of the businesses in the area.
After that, we headed out to Lyttleton which is basically a suburb of Christchurch. That's where the harbor is. After a bit of dinner, we drove up to the summit of some of the small mountains that surround the city. It was an awesome view.
All in all, a good day and a nice chance to catch a breath before the flight the next day.
In the air again
Well, it's been three years and here we go again: back to the pole. This trip will be shorter than the last (~ 3 weeks instead of 6), and more importantly, will not be in November so I miss my daughter's birthday. Much more manageable.
There was a chance that this trip would not happen for me. In March, my boss left IceCube and I became my boss (interim) while a search was conducted for his replacement. For now, I am responsible for the IceCube project's computing facilities. We have several of them, and one of them is located a kilometer from the South Pole.
The skill set they are looking for in my boss is rather unique, so I knew it could well be a while before his replacement was found. With that in mind, when I made the schedule for the pole season (we hash this out in the April-May time frame), I put myself on the schedule for January. If a replacement was hired by the end of October or November, that person could take my slot and get familiar with how things operate at the pole. They have hired my replacement, but he will
start on March 1st 2013, so away we go.
The trip starts pretty much the same way all the time. First you have to physically qualify (PQ). Standard physical, with a side of extra blood work. Apparently, I'm TB clear, which is always good to know. And they can only pull your wisdom teeth once, which is even better to know.
A few weeks before you go, they book your airline tickets and you're on your way. For McMurdo and South Pole stations, the point of departure is Christchurch NZ. The long flight (15 hours) is LA to Sydney. There are a couple shorter (four hour) legs from Chicago to LA and from Sydney to Christchurch. It's a long day and half of flying. There are worse; one guy on our flight came from Italy (something like 47 hours of travel).
The time shift is a little weird, but not too bad. New Zealand time is five hours behind Central time, but you cross the date line, so you're a day ahead. So I left on the 4th of January and arrived at Christchurch on the 6th. My baggage was not so lucky. Some of the layovers can be pretty tight. In particular, the Sydney change is problematic. It's at best two hours, and the Airbus 380 is a large plane which takes a while to unload. Here experience pays: I anticipated that problem and had enough stuff for a few days in my carry on.
So after too much time in either planes or airports, I finally ended up in my hotel in Christchurch.
First things first: get some food. Less than a block from my hotel is Burger Wisconsin. The kiwis have apparently go to great lengths to make me feel at home. Of course, with a name like that, there is no choice, it's burgers tonight!
There was a chance that this trip would not happen for me. In March, my boss left IceCube and I became my boss (interim) while a search was conducted for his replacement. For now, I am responsible for the IceCube project's computing facilities. We have several of them, and one of them is located a kilometer from the South Pole.
The skill set they are looking for in my boss is rather unique, so I knew it could well be a while before his replacement was found. With that in mind, when I made the schedule for the pole season (we hash this out in the April-May time frame), I put myself on the schedule for January. If a replacement was hired by the end of October or November, that person could take my slot and get familiar with how things operate at the pole. They have hired my replacement, but he will
start on March 1st 2013, so away we go.
The trip starts pretty much the same way all the time. First you have to physically qualify (PQ). Standard physical, with a side of extra blood work. Apparently, I'm TB clear, which is always good to know. And they can only pull your wisdom teeth once, which is even better to know.
A few weeks before you go, they book your airline tickets and you're on your way. For McMurdo and South Pole stations, the point of departure is Christchurch NZ. The long flight (15 hours) is LA to Sydney. There are a couple shorter (four hour) legs from Chicago to LA and from Sydney to Christchurch. It's a long day and half of flying. There are worse; one guy on our flight came from Italy (something like 47 hours of travel).
The time shift is a little weird, but not too bad. New Zealand time is five hours behind Central time, but you cross the date line, so you're a day ahead. So I left on the 4th of January and arrived at Christchurch on the 6th. My baggage was not so lucky. Some of the layovers can be pretty tight. In particular, the Sydney change is problematic. It's at best two hours, and the Airbus 380 is a large plane which takes a while to unload. Here experience pays: I anticipated that problem and had enough stuff for a few days in my carry on.
So after too much time in either planes or airports, I finally ended up in my hotel in Christchurch.
First things first: get some food. Less than a block from my hotel is Burger Wisconsin. The kiwis have apparently go to great lengths to make me feel at home. Of course, with a name like that, there is no choice, it's burgers tonight!
Friday, January 4, 2013
South Pole - Take Two
The trip begins today. It's going to be a long trip. In 2009, we got a day or two of time in Christchurch, New Zealand to recover from the flights and adjust to the new time zone. But in 2010, there were massive earth quakes which devastated the downtown area. So it sounds like this time around, you're in and out as fast as possible.
If all goes according to plan:
MSN to ORD to LAX to SYD to CHC to NZPG to NPX
in 72 hours. Half of the time will be spent in the air.
If all goes according to plan:
MSN to ORD to LAX to SYD to CHC to NZPG to NPX
in 72 hours. Half of the time will be spent in the air.
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