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.