Touch and Go

It's been an exciting couple of days!

The flight from Christchurch to Antarctica was totally unremarkable. The excitement began once we reached McMurdo (the base on the coast of Antarctica, gateway to the South Pole).

When we landed, we were informed that we needed to "bag drag" (check in our bags and get weighed with all our carry-on luggage) that evening. At check-in, they said we were a backup flight, so we'd only fly if weather was bad at the main location. That meant that even though we were unlikely to go, we still had to walk up the hill to the departure building at 6:45AM.

McMurdo isn't a BAD place to be. There are hikes, wildlife (seals, skua, and occasional penguins), 24-hour internet (the South Pole only has Internet a few hours each day). The downside is that it's a transition point so it's difficult to settle down, and there are a lot of people there so rooms are shared. Since I got to my room last, I was left with the top bunk.

This morning, we showed up and as predicted, the main flight went instead of ours. However, there was another flight at 8:45AM, so we still had another chance to go -- but again it was unlikely.

At 8:45AM, all the Pole-bound people were heckling the other flight's passengers in a friendly way as we waited for news of the flight's destination. When the coordinator finally came out and told the main flight's passengers to get ready to go, all the Pole people moaned and groaned our way out of the building, resigned to spend another weekend in McMurdo.

Jacob (another IceCuber making his first trip to the Pole) and I dropped our gear off in our rooms and headed over to Crary. This building has wireless internet access, but is only open during business hours so we needed to get keycards. While they were getting our cards ready we went downstairs to the "touch tank" where there are a bunch of native marine animals in a tank which (duh!) you can touch! (Here's a blog post from someone who visited the touch tank just last month.)

Jacob and I were just getting ready to take some pictures when the keycard guy found us and told us that the main flight was cancelled after all and that we needed to get back to the departure building as quickly as possible because the plane was now headed to the South Pole!

After a mad dash, we all assembled at the plane and, wonder of wonders, the plane took off!

At this point I started to get a LITTLE optimistic. However, in the last week at least two planes flying to the South Pole were forced to turn back due to weather or mechanical issues, so it wasn't a sure thing that we'd make it. This time, however, things worked out perfectly, and I'm typing this a hundred feet or so from the South Pole!

(It's been a big day so I didn't have a chance to unload my camera. I'll have pictures tomorrow!)

Book ends

After about 35 hours of travel, I made it back to Christchurch! The trip started out with a slight delay on Monday. President Obama did a quick campaign stop in Madison on Monday and happened to finish just as I was on my way to the airport. As I was getting ticketed, the runways were locked down as the President (and, almost as important, Bruce Springsteen :-)) arrived. I made it to my gate just as the stairs were being moved away from the plane and got to watch Air Force One take off!

The only really stressful part of the trip happened while I was squeezed into the middle seat on the L.A. to Sydney flight. A couple of hours after they'd turned off the lights I managed to drop my glasses on the floor. Because of the seat in front of me and the people on either side of me, I couldn't reach the floor. I spent about an hour intermittently trying different methods to reach my glasses and finally managed to extend one of the earpieces and grab it with the tips of my fingers. It probably seems mundane, but the thought of spending a month squinting at a screen made the effort seem like something out of an action movie. Today I need to go try on my extreme weather gear and get ready for (I hope) tomorrow's flight. P.S. As for the bookend, I got to my hotel room yesterday evening, turned on my WiFi, and within ~10 minutes my daughter Skyped me that Obama had won. So the trip almost literally began and ended with Obama!

Once more with feeling

Less than 10 months after I left, I'm heading back to the South Pole! On my first trip in 2006, I left on the last plane before the station closed. This trip I'll arrive a couple of weeks after the first plane of the season so I'll get to see another side of life there. This season my main tasks are to debrief the current winter-overs (Carlos Pobes and Sven Lidstrom) who have been at the South Pole since February, help out the new winter overs who will be beginning their year, and run the flashers (which I'll explain in a later post.) I'm scheduled to be on-ice between Nov. 10 and Dec 4, so I'll get to experience my first South Pole holiday on Thanksgiving. I've got a 5 hour layover in Los Angeles while waiting for the flight to Sydney, Australia so perhaps I'll write more while I'm stuck there.

Today's schedule

They're planning on flying us back to New Zealand today. The CHC->MCM (christchurch to McMurdo) plane is supposed to leave at 9PM and since it's a 5 hour flight it'll likely touch down here at around 2AM. If all goes well, we'll be in Christchurch by 8AM tomorrow.

I had to "bag drag" at 4PM, so my suitcase and extra gear are probably already on a pallet headed out to Pegasus field. It's about 5:30PM and I've got little to do except eat dinner and wait until 9PM to make sure that the flight has left.

Once I'm ABSOLUTELY sure the flight's on its way, I'll head back to my room, strip my bed, and then haul my stuff over to the Crary science building and get back on the Internet until it's time to report for transport out to Pegasus. After the quick van ride yesterday, it'll be tough to go back to chugging out there on Ivan!

Old Pole pics

The South Pole computer network has a common drive which people use for actual work, but which also has a sizable collection of photos which people have shared. I found a section with photos from 1960-1961

Back then the entire operation was run by the Navy, and the camp was much more spartan than the cozy station we work in today.

These days EVERYTHING is recycled and hauled back to New Zealand. Spills are cleaned up. The ideal is to leave everything as pristine as possible. I've heard that management of the continent back in the Navy days was a lot, ummm, looser.

I certainly haven't seen any pinups anywhere on station. Of course, I'm sure they never saw any women with blue and pink streaks in their hair. At least not when they were awake.

The ceremonial Pole marker these days is a lot less specifically American, but it still has a similar mirror ball on top.

And people back then also posed for wacky "right-side-up" hero shots!

Antarctic Marathon

Torsten and I got up early this morning to walk out past Scott Base onto the Ross Ice Shelf to watch Carlos, who staying at the South Pole all winter for IceCube, run in the marathon.

We didn't have much information, only that the race started at 9AM at mile marker 1. Pegasus airfield is a bit more than 14 miles from the edge of the ice shelf, so the marathon runners went from mile 1 to mile 14, then turned around and ran back.

There weren't any shuttles and we didn't want to miss the start of the race, so we left at around 8:20AM to walk the 2.5 miles to the start of the race. When we arrived, nobody else was around.

Eventually, the race coordinator and volunteers showed up and set up a table with drinks and snacks for the racers.

We watched Ivan make its way slowly down the mountain and over the ice, until it eventually stopped nearby and let out all the marathon runners -- the half marathoners stayed on Ivan to go to the halfway mark at Pegasus airfield.

After milling about for a while, the race coordinator yelled for everyone to line up and then about 15 seconds later, shouted "Ready, set, go" and the marathon started! Carlos is the runner in the front wearing yellow.

There were also skate-skiers competing, along with a four person team of New Zealanders pulling a sled.

A few people were getting a van ride to the halfway point, and they let us ride along. On the way, we spotted Carlos a minute or two behind the front runner.

The van travels MUCH faster than Ivan, so even with a couple of stops along the way we arrived at Pegasus just as Ivan was pulling up to let out the half-marathoners. Note the planes in the background.

This time the start of the race was a bit less abrupt, so I was able to get a picture of everyone lined up waiting to start.

The scenery for the run was pretty awesome, even though it's probably a bit monotonous when you stare at it for 3-4 hours.

A few people had set up a grill at the halfway point. They were cooking burgers and brats, and had beer, fruit, chips, and cheese available. While I was there, the Kiwi sled team was taking a break, enjoying the couch.

When the van stopped back at Mile 1, I walked back to McMurdo and had brunch. Torsten stayed until the end and said that Carlos came in second. The runners all got to enjoy a dip in the Scott Base ice pool, and then headed back to McMurdo for massages.

Bait and Switch

Yesterday we rushed out of the South Pole a day early, in order to be sure we'd make our Monday flights. Of course, when we got here there was an email message informing us that the Monday flight had been cancelled so we'd be flying out on Tuesday.

So I get to log more time in Mactown. I'll try to take pictures later today, but the overall feel of the place is a mining town with a fantastic view. I'm staying with two other guys in a dorm room. This trip I'm on the bottom bunk, so it's not TOO annoying. However, it's a small room so my main hope for sanity is to spend as little time there as possible.

Right now, I'm headed over to the chalet because I still don't have my airline tickets home...

Quick departure

I was notified today that the Saturday flight has been cancelled (and they never fly on Sunday), so if I want to make my Monday flight to Christchurch, I need to leave tomorrow (a day early). So I'm rushing around today trying to finish everything!

Here are a couple of shots from the visitors' center outreach event. You can see that we had a nice turnout, filling the (kind of small) building.

And just to prove that I did actually talk to people, here's a shot of me explaining IceCube.

And here's a shot of me flying from McMurdo to the Pole. In case you can't tell, I'm the first person on the far wall, probably attempting to sleep. I'll be making the reverse journey in about 22 hours!

This year's Hero shot

I tried something different for this year's Hero shot.

Centennial of Scott's Arrival

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Robert Falcon Scott's arrival at the South Pole.

In case you don't know the story, Scott and Amundsen arrived on Antarctica at about the same time. Amundsen's main goal was to claim the South Pole for Norway, while Scott's expedition also had a scientific component.

Amundsen's expedition was better planned, with men on skis and provisions hauled on dogsleds supplemented by several supply caches which Amundsen's team had laid the previous season.

Scott was relying on a combination of dogsleds, Siberian ponies, and mechanical tractors. The tractors quickly broke down, the ponies couldn't handle the deep snow, and none of his teams were experienced enough with dogs to make the single dogsled work, so they ended up hauling the sleds by hand.

Amundsen made it to the Pole weeks before Scott, and Scott's team ended up dying on the journey back to the coast.

The story of Scott's journey is really interesting, displaying (or maybe cementing) the British mindset of the time.


Because of the centennial celebration, yesterday was busy. At around 4:15PM we headed out to the visitors' center, halfway between the station and the visitors' camp with a DOM and lots of IceCube brochures. There are several groups who skied in various distances, including a couple of British Army groups which retraced the Amundsen and Scott routes. Many of those visitors came through the center and were remarkably interested in getting explanations of exactly what we're doing here at the South Pole. I spoke with a guide from Montana, a businessman from England, an engineer from England, and a woman who had flown in to meet her husband who was partially paralyzed last year and was skiing to the Pole by using his arms to push himself on a sled.

After the visitors' center, we walked to the Pole for a half hour ceremony honoring Scott's party. We then went back to the station, dumped our gear in our rooms, and ate dinner. I had started a 24 hour on the detector the previous day, so after dinner I switched the detector back to the normal software and then rushed back to the galley in order to meet the rest of the IceCubers for another session of Pub Trivia! Unfortunately, we did MUCH worse that last week's fourth place finish. This week we were seventh out of eight teams, but we had a lot of fun while losing.

By the time we'd finished it was 10:30PM, but my colleague and I headed back to B2 in order to finish up the last of her work. She's leaving tomorrow, so she wanted to make sure she at least attempted to run everything yesterday. That way, if she encountered problems, she'd have time today to work around them.

Fortunately, everything went smoothly and we finished before midnight.

Work and play

I've been making good progress on my work, I've even started a new project, fixing something in the DAQ that's been bothering me for YEARS.

Last night there was an interesting talk by a cosmologist whose team is installing a Cosmic Microwave Background telescope in order to learn about the first 400,000 years of the universe.

After that, we adjourned to the B1 Lounge to engage in a South Pole ritual I had not yet experienced: watching the 1982 version of The Thing ... in Betamax!!! The South Pole has one of the few remaining Betamax players in the world, and for a long time it was a tradition to watch The Thing after all the non-winterovers had left and the station had closed.

If you haven't seen it, Kurt Russell plays a helicopter pilot stationed at an Antarctic station which is invaded by an alien being. It's quite an experience to watch a decades-old tape on a modern flat-screen T.V. When the movie finished, we actually had to REWIND it. It's probably been a decade since I've had to do that!

Tonight there'll be another lecture by Lt Col Henry Worsley of the Royal British Legion on British Antarctic history.

My office at the South Pole

Here are some pictures of my "office" in room B2 on the station.

This is most of the IceCube group, missing only Torsten Schmidt and Carlos Pobes. On the left you can see Volker and Andreas to the left (Torsten sits on the other side of Andreas). Naoko is hidden behind Walter in the middle. Sven (in the hat) is sitting at the desk he'll be using all winter long and Heath is next to him.

Behind Sven you can see a partition walling our section off from the Meteorology desks.

Another angle on the IceCube space. You can actually see Naoko in this picture, and Carlos' unattended desk behind her. You can see my unattended chair and computer in the center of the picture. Note also the nifty IceCube poster on the wall!

One last shot. Beyond that file cabinet one the left is South Pole Telescope territory (and you can see one of the SPT folk sitting at the desk on the right of the photo), and there are two more sections beyond that. Despite the warehouse-like nature of the space, it's actually kind of quiet and conducive to work!

Indoor pictures

There are several webpages which dominate my life right now.

Most important is the satellite schedule, which indicates when we can connect to the Internet. Every day there are several small windows of an hour or so when we can talk to computers back in the States, followed by a long drought between around 6PM and 2:30AM.

The current weather is always displayed (along with the satellite times and a few other pages) in on several screens in the galley. It's been cloudy out, but it's supposed to clear up tomorrow!

Finally, there's the outgoing passengers manifest, which tells a little story about the end of the season for IceCubers.

Naoko is the first of our group to leave on Thursday the 19th.

Carlos Pobes is one of the two people who will be down here all winter taking care of the IceCube computers and equipment. He won the South Pole marathon, so he'll fly to McMurdo on the 20th in order to run in the Antarctic marathon on the 22nd.

I'll fly out with Torsten on the 21st. It is a Saturday flight and there are no flights on Sunday so we'll weekend in McMurdo and fly out on Monday. So I'll be able to cheer on Carlos while he's running!

The other four IceCubers leave on the 24th. A group of people who work with IceCube will begin to arrive on the 19th, but they're coming down to work on a non-IceCube physics project.

Just another day

It's been pretty cloudy around here for the last few days. This is kind of bad because when it's cloudy, it's difficult for planes to land. The word going around the station is that they're way behind schedule on fuel flights, which means that there might not be enough fuel to heat the station through the winter. It also means that as soon as the weather turns, they'll probably start running as many flights as they possibly can.

Because it's so dingy, I've spent most of my time working. The room where I sleep, the galley where I eat, and the space where I work are in the same building, so I haven't put on my gear in DAYS. Looking out my window this morning, I can see blue sky and even some sunshine so maybe I'll venture out today.

I'll definitely make it out on Tuesday for the centennial anniversary of Captain Scott's arrival at the South Pole. There was a big celebration of Admunsen's centennial last month but this will be more subdued, partly because, well, Scott was second and partly because his entire party perished on the return trip.

At around 4PM we'll do a bit of outreach at the visitor's center, explaining a bit about IceCube while a computer displays some flashy IceCube graphics and then at around 6PM there will be a brief ceremony.

Since I haven't taken any pictures of the dingy outdoors, here's I sight I'll be experiencing again in just 6 days. This was taken while we were waiting for our plane in McMurdo. That's my heavily laden colleague Andreas in the foreground.

Madison to South Pole in pictures

I left from Madison at around 12:30PM December 31

I hung out in Chicago for an hour and a half.

I had a 6 hour layover in Los Angeles and left at around 11:30PM PST December 31 (but since it was already New Year's Day in Madison, I got to wish my wife and daughter a Happy New Year)

I blearily made my way through the Auckland, NZ airport. It took quite a while to get boarding passes for the connecting flight and I would have missed the flight if there hadn't been aftershocks in Christchurch the previous night.

I forgot to take a picture of the "departure lounge" in Christchurch, but here's an old photo.

This was the "departure lounge" in McMurdo when they thought we were going to get right on the plane, but the plane had mechanical problems...

So we hung out here for about an hour before we finally boarded the plane and flew to...

The South Pole! This is actually a shot from my first trip. I've been out to the Pole to help hold up flags made by several schools at the Pole marker, but I haven't yet taken this year's "hero shot".

Hannah McKeand

One or two evenings a week there's a lecture of some sort in the galley. Last night's lecture was given by Hannah McKeand who told us how she got there. About a decade ago, her godfather died and left her a "pot of money" which wasn't enough to make her rich but, as she said, was way more than she could spend on shoes and handbags. She wasn't sure what to do with the money so it sat in the bank for a couple of years. When her boyfriend of seven years broke up with her, she did the "normal" things -- cutting off her hair, buying lots of shoes and handbags -- but wasn't quite over the break up. At a party, someone mentioned the movie the English Patient and said the cave in that movie was a real place. Hannah decided that she was going to go to that place, even though she'd never done any hiking or adventure vacationing. She kept referring to herself as a marketing manager from London. She did a bit of research and found out that it was in the middle of a huge, uninhabited desert, the second largest wasteland in the world. She found a couple or archaeologists who studied cave paintings and badgered them until they let her come on an expedition with them. After she finished that, she decided that she wanted to travel on Antarctica, so she found someone who led groups, assuming that he'd tell her she was crazy, but within 10 minutes he was telling her she should try to do a solo trip to the South Pole. She wasn't quite ready for that, so she joined a group and a few months later wound up in Antarctica, even though she'd never done any skiing in her life. That group made it to the South Pole in a month and a half, and she fell in love with the continent. She came back the next year and set the record for the fastest unsupported trip to the Pole, which means that she towed a sled containing 45 days of food, plus her tent and other essentials, travelling 15 or more nautical miles a day across 700 miles of snow and ice. She made it in 39 days and set the record. She's had lots of adventures since then and now makes her living as a guide. This year she led a group of three people from the coast the the Pole, one of whom was blind! It was an amazing lecture and I recommend attending it the next time you're at the South Pole.

Spoolhenge

Each of the 86 IceCube holes contains a string of beachball-sized sensors attached to a couple miles of cable. Back when we were drilling holes, we shipped dozens of big spools of cables down every year. When it was time to feed a string of sensors into a newly drilled hole, one of those huge spools was mounted onto a big machine and the cable was slowly fed into the hole while people worked furiously to attach each sensor to the cable.

Some of those cast-off spools were turned into an art project at the edge of the berms (the warehouse district of the South Pole.) This is fondly referred to as Spoolhenge. I snapped a couple of picture while we were visiting the South Pole Traverse.

Since every vertical object eventually accumulates and is overwhelmed by the snow which blows in from the edges of the continent, and since Spoolhenge hasn't yet been buried, I can only assume that it's either officially or unofficially sanctioned as something which should be maintained year after year.

I hope it stays around for a while, because it makes me happy to see some cast-off utilitarian objects being turned into a fun piece of art at the bottom of the world!

Hey, you got meat in my salad!

One of the nice things about being at the South Pole is that you can focus solely on work, undistracted by normal things like bills, cooking, or even daily showering. I've started working on a new feature several times over the past couple of months only to be distracted by other problems, but after less than a week here, I'm making good progress and should have it finished before I leave next week! Speaking of cooking, the food at South Pole is always good and sometimes it's fantastic. This year the chefs seem to be producing a more meat-centric menu, where the main course is roast beef or pork chops or sirloin ... pure unadulterated MEAT. At home I'm the cook and I try to make vegetarian meals at least 5 nights a week, not because of any philosophical stance but purely for health reasons. The cooks here always provide a non-meat alternative, but where in past years it was equally as good as the meat entree (and sometimes better), this year it seems to be more of a begrudging after-thought. There are usually two or three salads to go along with the meal, so if the veggie entree is lame, I usually just get the hot vegetable side dish and pad out my meal with salads -- and desserts Yesterday the entree was pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy. I was happy to see that the gravy was vegetarian, because the none-meat offering was a bland, dry veggie loaf. I loaded up my plate with mashed potatoes and a slab of veggie loaf, dumped gravy all over it, and moved down the line to the salads. There I saw coleslaw, a pasta salad, and an avocado/pepper/beef salad. BEEF SALAD!!! And they wonder why people in isolated places go insane :-)

Pictures of the day

My lovely wife asked me to add more picture, so I'm trying to publish at least one or two a day. These are from the McMurdo to South Pole flight. I was in the middle of the passenger's section, so you can see just about the entire passenger compartment. The back half of the plane is full of cargo.

Passengers need to walk carefully because there are metal rollers in the middle of the "aisles". Of course, we're all wearing our big South Pole boots, so we'd need to step carefully even without the rollers.

You can also see one of the passengers looking out a rear window. Throughout the flight, there at least one or two passengers looking out the windows or taking pictures.

The red jackets are covering up the passengers' "overhead bin" baggage, which is strapped down just like the green bags in the upper photo.

Busy day

I spent most of yesterday working on software, so nothing exciting to report.

Just before supper I ran on an elliptical machine for 20 minutes and didn't notice any problems due to the high altitude, so I think I'm safely acclimated. I heard there was an amazing halo around the sun while I was working out.

After supper five IceCubers played pub trivia in the galley. As you might guess, the South Pole has a high concentration of science types, so the questions tended less toward sports and more toward science and science fiction. I had to almost force one of the Germans to be part of our team because he was convinced that he wouldn't know anything. Out of the four rounds, he probably ended up contributing answers in at least three rounds, including the third round which was made up entirely of math questions.

My two favorite questions (that most teams got wrong) were:

1. What is the 10th digit in the Fibonacci sequence?
   
   I think every team got this wrong because they thought the sequence was 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 so the answer was 10. The quizmaster asserted that the answer was 34, because the sequence actually starts with a 0.
   
   In case you've forgotten how the Fibonacci sequence works, you add the last number and the one before it together to create a new last number. Thus 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, etc.
   
   And just so you know how geeky I am, in my teens and twenties, I used compute the Fibonacci sequence and powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc.) in my head to lull myself to sleep.
   
   
2. How many U.S. presidents are buried in Washington D.C. (the city, not the greater metropolitan area).
   
   Most people guessed that there are no presidents buried in the city, because they're buried at Arlington cemetery in Virginia. The correct answer was one -- Woodrow Wilson is buried at the National Cathedral.

Oh, and a bonus question:

What is pogonophobia?

Fear of beards

Since most of the IceCubers are PhD students and postdocs, I mostly helped out with questions about stuff from the 60's, 70's and 80's (Who is Gordon Sumner? Sting. Which T.V. show contained a spaceship named Yamato? Star Blazers.)

Mount Erebus

Most people don't realize that there are active volcanoes on Antarctica. There's one visible from McMurdo station. While waiting for the plane to the South Pole, I took this picture of Mount Erebus. That line of cloud is actually the hot vapor coming out of the volcano.

A Lovely Day for a Walk

The airdrop was rescheduled for today. Last night they moved the arrival time from 6AM to 8AM, so I was able to sleep in! We'd agreed to meet at Destination Zulu (one of the two main entrances) at 7:45AM, so I got up at around 7:15, brushed my teeth, put on my gear, and headed up to the galley for a quick breakfast, where I discovered that the drop was postponed until 8:55. Fortunately, the satellite is up until 9:45, so I got in some Internet time. (In case you don't know, we connect to the Internet via a few different satellites, and those satellites are only visible to the South Pole for a few hours a at a time. The current window runs from 2:42AM to 9:42AM, then there are a couple of hours starting at 11:30, and then nothing until 2:39AM tomorrow morning.) We met up at 8:40AM and trudged out about half a mile to the edge of the station grounds (an area which is normally off limits, but the station granted us special dispensation for this event.) It was fun seeing the clumps of two or three people all walking to the same location. It's the largest group of people I've seen outside here! We'd only been there a few minutes when the communications person announced over the radio that it was too cloudy and the drop had been cancelled. Oh well, it was a nice walk -- the most exercise I've gotten since I arrived here! That's not because I'm lazy -- I've been taking it easy because one of the other IceCubers has been suffering from the high altitude, which has made me paranoid. I am planning on working out for about 20 minutes tomorrow. I'll let you know how that goes. Right now, I get to take the first of my twice a week 2-minute showers! I'm so excited!

South Pole Traverse

Yesterday we got a tour of the South Pole Traverse vehicles. This is a group of 8 vehicles pulling sleds of fuel on the Antarctic "highway" from McMurdo base to the South Pole station. The "highway" is a snow road constructed over several years by filling in crevasses and leveling the snow as much as possible. It's marked by flags and needs to be maintained every year.

That sounds like a lot of work, but it turns out to be very cost effective. The traverse vehicles end up using about 1 gallon of fuel for every gallon delivered to the Pole, while it takes two gallons of fuel for a C-17 plane to fly each gallon of fuel. Each traverse ends up saving about 40 flights per year.

It takes the team about 3 weeks to drive from McMurdo to the South Pole. Along the way, they picked up all the scientific gear from a camp which was at high altitude and thus would have taken many more flights to remove. There's less air at high altitudes, so the planes have less air to "grab", and therefore can't carry very much for each trip. The traverse vehicles just loaded everything onto a couple of sleds and carried it along with everything else.

The red buildings in the background are part of the traverse. One of tractors tows the living quarters (kitchen, bunks, etc.) and a module with a generator and a toilet, and a second tractor tows a module containing all the food needed for many weeks along with a toolshed module.

The driver who gave us the tour said that the tractor engines generate enough heat that he's actually hot. There were times when he was driving along, shirt off, with the door open to try to keep the cab comfortable!

Happy Birthday Elvis

Today the galley celebrated Elvis Presley's 77th birthday by playing Elvis songs over the P.A., then taking over the video feed to play an "Elvis in Vegas" concert DVD and, best of all, by serving grilled peanut butter and banana french toast as part of brunch. The french toast was surprisingly good!

Made it back!

We got up at 5:15AM on Thursday, grabbed some breakfast, donned our ECW gear and took the hour plus ride to Pegasus Field. It's only ~14 miles away, but the Terra Bus can only travel at a maximum of 25 m.p.h. to avoid tearing up the snow and ice roads and the route to the airfield is rather circuitous.

We were on the plane by 9:30AM, but it had mechanical problems so there was about an hour's delay while they switched all the cargo to a new plane. When we got on the second plane, I was able to find a good seat on the end of a row and four relatively painless hours later I was back at the South Pole.

Because I'm a veteran, I got to skip the orientation talk and go directly to my room. This year I've got a room with a view (of the next wing of rooms). This isn't necessarily a good thing -- the sun is out 24 hours, so a LOT of light sneaks in through the window shade. Fortunately, a previous inhabitant left a thick piece of cardboard I can jam into the window well and block out 99% of the light.

I didn't want to go to sleep too early, so I trudged through the rest of the day and collapsed at around 9:30PM. I didn't want to stay up much later because I knew I was getting up early again today.

An airdrop was scheduled for 6AM. Planes can't land at South Pole in the winter (because it's so cold here), but if there's an emergency they might need supplies delivered, so the National Guard unit does a practice drop once a year.

I woke up this morning at 5:20AM, met with some other IceCubers and we all started to walk out past the Summer Camp to watch the airdrop. When we were about halfway out, I asked one of the nearby "natives" if we were going the right way, and she told us the airdrop had been postponed until Monday. At least I know I'll be able to sleep in tomorrow.

So far my work time has largely been spent setting up my laptop for the South Pole (getting access to various servers, adding my local email account to my mail reader and forwarding my IceCube mail to the South Pole account, etc.)

In Antarctica

Well, I made it back to Antarctica!

We went to the Clothing Distribution Center yesterday and 5PM and got all our gear. At 7:30PM we checked in our baggage and then got weighed with our carry-ons and extreme weather gear, then filed onto a couple of buses and were driven out to the airfield. We got onto the plane and by 9PM we were flying to Antarctica.

I managed to get a couple of hours sleep, which shortened the four and a half hour trip somewhat. We landed at the Pegasus airfield on the Ross Ice Shelf, and then got on another bus to get to the base
The airfield is far enough away, and Ivan the Terra Bus must drive slowly enough that we didn't get the McMurdo until after 2:30AM, so we didn't have time or energy to do much except get our bedding then go to our dorm rooms, make up our beds, and fall asleep.

This morning I got up and took a shower(!), then walked over to Crary Labs where the IT guys configured my computer so it would work on the computer network here and at the Pole. I worked for a couple of hours, walked to the galley for lunch and then to another building for the "Welcome to Antarctica" briefing, which gives new arrivals some guidelines for living and working at McMurdo.

At the briefing we learned that we needed to "bag drag" today so at 5PM we carried all our worldly possessions a few blocks up the hill to the cargo building, where we were again weighed and waved goodbye to our checked baggage. We're supposed to report back there at 7:30AM, and the plane will probably take off sometime after noon.

Maybe today?

As I was heading downstairs at 4:55PM yesterday, I met a couple of fellow travelers who told me the day's flight had been delayed until 11PM. I grabbed some food and went to sleep at around 8PM in case I was up late waiting for a plane. That flight was also cancelled. Today we're supposed to be ready again at 5PM. We'll see what happens!

Christchurch

I'm in Christchurch! The trip here went off with only a minor hitch. The flight from Auckland to Christchurch was delayed about an hour and a half due to earthquake!

I heard there were several "minor" quakes overnight (in the 4.0-6.0 range), which somehow caused our flight to be delayed. While I certainly wasn't happy to hear about the quakes, the situation worked out well for me and two other Antarctic-bound passengers I had met because we couldn't get boarding passes for our Auckland-> Christchurch flight until after we cleared customs, and the huge line at the connecting airline's counter meant that didn't happen until after the original flight would have left.

Once we got to Christchurch, we met with a USAP (U.S. Antarctic Program) representative who briefed us on the situation, told us to pack a light bag and keep it and our shoes by the bed in case there were more quakes, and put us on a shuttle to our hotels.

After checking in I took a nice long shower (something which will be impossible at the South Pole), walked to a nearby mall to get my glasses fixed (boring story) and then wandered around the area, which is a typical suburban neighborhood with a New Zealand spin. It's a bit cool here, so there was a nice mix of people in shorts and sandals and those wearing jeans and puffy jackets.

I *think* there was a mild aftershock at around 8PM, but it could have been a large truck going by...

After 9 hours' sleep, I got up and ran to the city center. The place where the Devon stood is now several piles of rubble, and most of the remaining businesses downtown are fenced off and shored up, waiting to be destroyed or rebuilt.

Now I'm repacking and waiting until 5PM when a shuttle will take me to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) where I'll get my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear and, weather permitting, be back at McMurdo base in Antartica by around 2AM tomorrow!

Travel tip

If you travel with an electronic device and think you'll want to charge it during a layover, make sure to pack a 3-way plug. People frequently grab the available outlets, but you can usually talk them into sharing their outlet.

I feel like I'm performing a public service because I've got my iPod plugged into my laptop, which is plugged into the 3-way plug along with two other people's phones!

Heading back

I'm heading back to the Pole for my fourth trip, and will again be updating this blog every day or two. I'm writing this from the Los Angeles airport, 9 hours into the 30 hour journey to Christchurch. I'm currently scheduled to leave Christchurch for McMurdo (on the coast of Antarctica) roughly 30 hours after that, so this could be a very quick trip to the Pole!

The first part of this trip will be a bit different than previous trips. Before this year, I've stayed in downtown Christchurch, which is a beautiful town centered around a gorgeous church. However, due to the huge earthquakes in early 2011, most of the downtown businesses are closed, including my favorite B&B and a really excellent vegetarian restaurant and brewpub with outdoor seating.

I'll be staying in Papanui, which is a suburb of Christchurch near the airport. Instead of eclectic shops and restaurants, there's a mall a couple of blocks away. One place I'll be sure to visit is right across the street -- Burger Wisconsin, a New Zealand "gourmet burger" chain.

Short time

I'm leaving the South Pole in about 30 hours, so I haven't done much except work since I'm tying up a few loose ends.

I think Sabrina's able to finish her work, though while I'm in Christchurch I'll be checking my email and chat to see if she needs any help.

I was able to make one big improvement in my data acquisition software and I'm hoping to finish off another big feature before I get on the plane tomorrow.

I also did my House Mouse duties today. Everyone takes turns cleaning their shared bathroom, and the IceCube people also have responsibility for cleaning up B2, the big science area where most of the scientists work as well as B1, the lounge across the hall which has a foosball table, a pool table, bookshelves full of books and a sitting area where a group of IceCubers generally gathers each night to sit and talk (and drink). Those cleaning duties are referred to as house-mousing.

Once I leave here, I'll spend another night in McMurdo before I'm finally off the continent.

Work and play

Today I helped my co-worker Sabrina read data from the three new strings which have been frozen in ... it can take up to a month for the water surrounding some of the strings to completely freeze. Also, because it's warmer a kilometer below the ice than at the surface, the strings freeze from the top down. We found a couple of minor problems with my software, but everything else looks good and we should be ready to take data tomorrow from the old IC59 strings as well as the 13 new strings which are ready.

The South Pole International Film Festival was fun. None of the entries would be mistaken for professionally made films, but they were mostly entertaining. The IceCube party was also a good time. I even managed to make it back to the station by 5AM and get in a few hours' work!

Busy night

I'm still working the night shift. Today I'll probably work until 10AM then get to sleep because "tomorrow" is busy. At 5PM there's an IceCube barbeque. At 7PM, the South Pole International Film Festival (SPIFF) will be held in the galley, showing films made by people here at the South Pole. After SPIFF, the IceCube party will be held in a building at summer camp, a short walk north of the station (because almost EVERY direction is North from the station!)

I'll let you know if I get any work done after the party!

Done with drilling

I finished at drill camp yesterday, so I'll be working in the station for the rest of my time. The 20th hole was finished a couple of days ago, so the drillers are now tearing everything down and packing it away for winter.making sure it's all ready for a quick start next season when they drill the final 7 holes.

While I was at drill camp, I got to drive a 287 (a little forklift machine) out to the drill site where one of the drillers hitched the 287 to a fuel tank. I then followed him as he towed the drill building back to the main camp (that's me in the rear view mirror, and the red box is the building):


Here's the 287 parked in front of the TOS. The white tank in front of the building is the fuel tank (after it was reattached):


When everything is packed up and ready to be stored, they'll hook together all the buildings in drill camp and tow them to the berms, an area of land dedicated to long-term storage. The buildings will sit there (along with all the other equipment which isn't needed during the winter) all winter long. The snow piles up against them all winter, so one of the first jobs when people start arriving in October/November will be to uncover the buildings and haul them back to the new drill camp site

Correction to my last post

The woman who was supposed to arrive today at noon apparently missed her bag-drag last night so she could not get on the plane today. Instead, all IceCube people have been invited to sign the last DOM to go into the ice this season, so I'll walk back out to drill camp at around 9AM and get my name buried in the ice!

Working, copying, greeting

The last hole of the season is being drilled today, so the final string should be deployed by tomorrow morning. 20 strings were added this season, for a total of 79 strings in the detector. There will only be 7 new strings next season, so the IceCube detector will likely be complete before the end of the year.

Today I started work at drill camp, copying all the drilling and deployment data to a portable disk drive which I'll carry back to Madison and save to an archive. It'll be used to diagnose problems and possibly aid in analysis of future scientific data.

At around 3AM, I headed over to the IceCube Lab building to take down parts of the detector in order for one of the I.T. people to upgrade the network cards on all our machines. Fortunately, the ICL is only 500 yards from drill camp ... in past years it's been far away.

The data acquisition software (a.k.a the DAQ) runs on over 70 machines -- and growing, because each string requires a separate server. We'll need over 100 machines when the detector is complete.

I don't have much else to report, because I practically slept the day away yesterday! I was going to try and stay up until noon, but I hit a wall at 10:30 and managed to stay asleep (aside from a couple of half-hour stretches of lying awake) until 6PM. As I've written before, everyone has sleep problems here, primarily because of the low-oxygen environment. Getting 7+ hours of sleep was a pleasant surprise!

I wanted to stay up until noon yesterday because I'm going to need to be awake at noon today to greet a passenger on an incoming plane. The passenger is a postdoc who will be checking out all the new strings and making sure they're ready to
be included in the data acquisition runs, and I'll be standing by to help with any DAQ-related problems.

Tomorrow should be my last day at drill camp. It'll also begin my last week at the South Pole.

Earning my pay

I'm working two jobs at the South Pole. My first job is to support the software which controls the drill that makes the holes for the strings of sensors. Once drilling ends (in a day or two), I go back to doing the job for which I'm normally paid, working on the data acquisition software (which pulls the data out of the sensors, throws out as much garbage as possible, then packages up the remainder for uploading via satellite to computers in Madison)

Since I'm on the night shift, I went to sleep a bit after noon yesterday, then woke up at around 4:30PM. I was still in my room at 5PM when someone from drill camp called my room to tell me that when they tried to start up the drill software to drill the final hole of the season, it didn't work! I quickly dressed, grabbed an IceCube snowmobile and drove out to the drill camp. (Fortunately, I had gotten certified to drive a snowmobile about 6 hours earlier.)

It took about 3 hours, but we eventually fixed the problems with the drill software and by 9PM I was back in the station eating a couple of bowls of cereal. I went back out with the night shift drill crew at 10:30PM (which is the usual time I start work), then came back for midrats (the midnight meal for the night shift) and stayed at the station to finish working.

In a way, it was fortunate that I was able to work the rest of the day at the station, because I needed to do laundry. There are washers and driers on the first floor of the station, along with detergent, all available for free -- though we're only allowed one load per week. These machines can be busy during the day, but they're usually wide open at 3AM.

One bonus of doing laundry is that I hang my jeans in my room rather than running them through the drier. As I've written before, there's almost no humidity here (because the moisture freezes out of the air), so the drying jeans act like a humidifier!

Frozen treats and other sweets

One of the most treasured machines at the South Pole is the Frosty Boy, a soft-serve ice cream machine. Unfortunately, Frosty Boy spends a lot of time either broken down or out of ice cream.

As a stopgap measure, the head cook had a bunch of ice cream treats delivered from New Zealand ... I've seen popsicles, Drumstick-like ice cream cones, and chocolate coated ice cream bars. He also sent out a warning that if everyone has a frozen treat with every meal, we've only got enough to last for a couple of weeks, but if people only have one a day, we'll make it to the end of the season.

Fortunately, the ever-present (and legendary) cookie cart keeps my sweet tooth satisfied! So far I've come back with one new cookie recipe each year

The first year, they had some incredible s'mores bars which I've since made a few times -- when I brought Christmas cookies down to my parents' house for the holiday, one of my nieces asked if I'd brought s'mores bars as well

The second year, they had some really good cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies which are a big hit with my family.

I haven't found the "must have" recipe this year, but I've been here less than a week!

Sleepy

I'm still adjusting my sleep schedule from days to nights. It's made easier because the sun is up 24 hours a day, but I'm still not quite there. Also the idea of a day gets a little fluid ... I arrived Monday at noon and it's now Friday morning, but I've only had 3 "days", each about 28 hours long.

Yesterday (which started Wednesday at noon) I had my first day of work, starting at 10:30PM. Unfortunately, there was a minor disaster with my normal IceCube job, and I ended up staying up until 10AM to get the problem fixed. I got a bit of sleep, but woke up at 11:30AM to meet the incoming plane, because an IceCuber who was arriving had been nice enough to carry a few items I had forgotten. After that, I was agitated enough that I only got a few more hours of sleep, so I spent the last half of my work day today fighting to stay awake.

There is a low, dense layer of clouds here right now, which makes it hard to walk (because the dimness hides any details in the all-white landscape. The clouds extend to the horizon, so when you look out at the distance, you see nothing but dim whiteness everywhere!

I just got off work, and rather than go to breakfast, I'm writing this entry and then going to SLEEP! Good night (or day) all!

Adjusting

I'm on night shift, so I've got to quickly switch my sleep schedule over. This first day I was here, I managed to stay up until midnight before I crashed, and last night I made it to 4AM.

Yesterday I walked out to the IceCube Lab (maybe a mile from the main station) to deal with a software emergency, then popped next door (about 200 ft) to drill camp to say hi, then over to themost recently drilled hole, where they were deploying a string of DOMs.

Tonight I'll report for work at 10:30PM and see if I can make it until 7:30AM!

I'm going through the usual adjustments:

- I'm taking diamox to avoid altitude sickness (the South Pole is effectively at around 12000 feet above sea level) which gives me prickly fingers and toes (like they've just fallen asleep. That'll stop after I finish my last day of pills tomorrow.

- Walking the half-mile or so from the station to the drill camp leaves me winded (again because of the low oxygen due to the effective altitude.) That'll get better in a week or so, especially after I resume running on an elliptical machine. Unfortunately, a month of running on the elliptical last year DIDN'T give me the stamina of a Kenyan runner when I got back!

- The bloody boogers have started! The South Pole is one of the driest places on Earth because all moisture freezes out of the air. I assume that lack of humidity causes a bit of trauma to my (and virtually everyone else's) sinus cavities, enough to cause a slight discoloration of one's "nasal discharge." It's a little disconcerting the first time it happens, but it's a totally normal part of the South Pole experience.

I'll get my first 2-minute shower in a day or two!

I'm at the South Pole!

We took off from McMurdo today at 9AM. On the 45 minute ride out to the Pegasus airfield, we saw 5 Emperor penguins, which we took as a positive omen!

The plane ride took 3 hours, after which we FINALLY landed at the South Pole airfield. Lots of IceCubers came out to greet us, and after we dumped our stuff off (I got a room in the station instead of staying in one of the Quansit huts in "summer camp"), we went and had lunch (and saw more IceCube people)

I get a day or so to settle in, then I'll find out which drill shift I'm working. In the mean time, I'll try to acclimate to the low oxygen, 0% humidity environment!

Penguins!

I FINALLY saw some penguins at McMurdo!

First, some background. Hut Point is a steep hill on the outskirts of McMurdo, about a 10 minute hike from the main building. The hill itself stands above McMurdo Sound, which is largely covered with ice (though the icebreaker ship is making its way in and will probably be here in a few days) with some open water right at the base of the hill, though the hill is too steep to get close to the water.

As I wrote earlier, there was a rumor that penguins were sighted near Hut Point. A group of us went out after lunch and didn't see any penguins, but someone out there said he'd seen the penguins that morning, so we concluded that maybe they came around to feed in the morning.

This morning, I got up at 8AM and walked out to Hut Point, but again didn't see any penguins.

We're (ideally) leaving for the South Pole tomorrow, so after supper a group of us walked out to Hut Point for one last attempt to see penguins. There were already a few people out there, and they said that there was a penguin swimming in the water at the bottom of the hill and a larger group maybe a quarter mile away. Within a minute, the nearby penguin popped out of the water onto the ice, and in a few more minutes the group started moving toward us.

After about 10 minutes, they made it down to the water near us and, after a bit of shuffling around, they all jumped into the water and were swimming around for quite a while.

I got quite a bit of video, but since I forgot my camera cable, I can't upload it for a few days, and depending on the size I MAY not be able to upload it until I get back from the Pole (because there's only a limited Internet connection being shared by everyone down there)

Lots of choices

They only added 5 guys to the bunkhouse and none of them were loud snorers, so the sleeping situation is still not too bad.

Last night was spent hanging out with some other IceCubers, playing pool and drinking a couple of beers.

Today there are a wide array of choices of activities!

The big event is a Kiwi vs. Yank rugby game over at Scott Base (the New Zealand base about 3 miles away). The Americans generally lose this game, but it's supposed to be a good time.

The shuttle busses leave here at around 2:15PM and return at around 6PM. Another event is the "penguin tour", where a limited number of people are driven out to an area with a bunch of Emperor penguins in couple of Deltas (big trucks with a box on the back which holds 14 passengers relatively comfortably, so they usually squeeze in at least 16 people.) Unfortunately, I learned about the tour when I went into dinner last night, and by the time I got out, the sign-up sheet was full.

The option that I'm leaning toward is a climb up Observation Hill, a 750 ft hill next to McMurdo topped by a cross memorializing the demise of Scott's party, followed by a nap, and capped off with a shower!

Later today we'll find out if there's a flight to the South Pole tomorrow.

More on the Hotel California

I forgot to explain the title of the last post. I'm staying in a dorm called "Hotel California", right next to the "Mammoth Mountain Lodge" dorm. I'm in the "bunkhouse", which is a fairly large room with twelve 2-person bunk beds. This could be a bad situation, but so far has been pretty nice because there are only three of us in there, while other IceCube people are staying in the main building with 6 people in a much smaller room!

There is a plane due in today, so given my luck this trip, it'll likely be full by tonight!

Welcome to the Hotel California

The flight today was cancelled -- rumor is that a plane broke down at one of the field sites, so our flight crew had to fly out there with a repair team. There are no flights tomorrow (because it's Sunday here), so I'm stuck in McMurdo for at least two days.

I did some work this morning, then a group of us walked out to Scott Hut, one of the huts used by Robert Scott on his expedition to the South Pole, where a seal carcass killed by that group is still visible. The rumor mill reported that penguins had been sighted, and while someone out there confirmed that he had seen penguins there this morning, there weren't any at that time.

The next entry or two will probably be boring ... check back in a couple of days for exciting South Pole action!

Back in Antarctica

I finally made it to McMurdo. We did the usual routine -- up at 5:30AM, get to the Clothing Distribution Center, put on our gear, check in, wait for a couple of hours, go through the metal detector and get on a bus, out to the airplane where I always make sure to grab a side seat -- more legroom, then a 5 hour flight followed, most importantly, by a landing!

Among the crowd waiting to get on our plane and go back to Christchurch were a couple of IceCube people so I chatted with them for a bit, then got on one of the waiting transport vehicles for the 30 minute(/) ride into the actual base -- the plane lands out on the ice field, far from the "town", just like most airports.

We filed off the busses and into the galley where we sat for another half hour while they gave use the standard briefing, then got our room assignments -- I'm in a dorm bunkhouse in "Hotel California" which sleeps 24, I'm hoping there aren't TOO many other people staying there!

I picked up some linens, went out to the dorm, and made my bed then got back to the main building just in time for dinner (a so-so steak, mashed potatoes, carrots and bread) and finally went to the computer area to get online and assure my wife that I was still alive.

In another half hour I'll do a "bag drag", where I'll haul my carry-on and winter gear out to the departure building. I'll be reunited with my checked luggage (which I haven't seen in a couple of days), pull out a couple of changes of clothes (in case we get stuck in McMurdo for a while), then get weighed with all my stuff and re-check my non-carry-on bags.

I'm not sure when I fly out tomorrow, but the weather report seems promising, so my next post will likely be from the South Pole!

Tomorrow for SURE!!!!

The B&B manager woke me up this morning top let me know that the flight was cancelled, so I was able to sleep in until 8AM. After breakfast, I went out seaching for a coffee shop to do some work. I couldn't find any with either available power or free WiFi, but there was a nice one with outdoor tables where I set up shop -- until it began to sprinkle after 40 minutes or so.

I came back to the B&B for a bit, then went to a different coffee shop (indoors this time, WITH a power outlet) and worked for ~5 hours, then ate some Thai food and headed back to my room.

I'm supposed to be out front again tomorrow at 5:45AM, so I'm optimistically going to bed at 9:30PM!!!

Made it to McMurdo (sort of)

I got up this morning at about 4:30AM (I wanted to "sleep in" until 4:45 but I guess I was too nervous) and was outside by 5:05AM to wait for the shuttle to take us to the CDC by 6AM. When no shuttle showed up by 5:35, one of the other people called a few taxis and we made it there exactly at 6AM. Once at the CDC, we all put on our extreme weather gear, checked our bags and got weighed wearing our gear and holding our carry-on bags and boomerang bags, if any.

A "boomerang bag" contains any gear you don't want in your carry-on, but you will want if the flight boomerangs (i.e. returns without making it to McMurdo.) If the flight boomerangs, your checked bag stays at the CDC (all the checked bags are actually piled onto a pallet and wrapped in plastic for the flight, so it's not easy to return them) I stuffed a change of clothes into my computer backpack, so I just had a carry-on.

Once everyone was checked in, we waited around until 9AM, watched a video on what to expect in Antarctica, then piled onto busses and were driven about half a mile to the C-17 military jet. Eventually we took off and settled in for the 5 hour flight to McMurdo. One nice thing about military flights is that they allow the passengers to get up and wander around (as long as there's no turbulence)

We got to McMurdo and the pilot announced that there was nasty weather at the moment so we went into a holding pattern. After about 15 minutes, the pilot said we weren't going to be able to land at McMurdo, so we were returning to Christchurch.

So I'm back in Christchurch for another night! Fortunately, since we don't need to check in bags or sit through the video, we don't need to be outside for the shuttle until 6:15AM!

Here's hoping that we make it tomorrow!

Failure to Launch

I woke up at around 3AM because I was nervous about the flight today. Turns out I didn't need to be, because the flight was delayed until tomorrow. Nobody knows why yet.

So I have a semi-free day!

I'm going to use part of it going back to the CDC with my computer, to get it certified for the Antarctic network. (The IT person verifies that it's running an anti-virus program, that it's not infected with anything right now, and that you don't have any filesharing programs)

Boomeranging

One thing I hope to avoid tomorrow is the dreaded boomerang.

It's about a 5 hour flight from Christchurch to McMurdo on the coast of Antarctica. Because the weather can always change in Antarctica, it's possible for us to leave Christchurch and have a bad storm blow in before we arrive. There's a point in each flight where the pilots decide whether they need to turn back. If they do that, it's called a boomerang flight.

I've never had that happen, though one of the other IceCube people I'll be flying with tomorrow was on a flight which boomeranged, and then the next three flights were cancelled, so he didn't get to McMurdo until 5 days after he was scheduled to arrive there. I'm hoping I'll never experience a boomerang flight, though I have had one cancelled flight ... a horrible hardship when you're forced to spend another summer day roaming around Christchurch rather than pulling on all your winter gear and going to work at the South Pole!

The CDC in CHC

Today I went to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) and got my extreme weather gear. I've done this enough that I'm almost (but not totally) an expert.

I was the first person waiting for the shuttle and got mildly worried when the second person showed up carrying their large backpack, because I was pretty sure we didn't need to bring anything. I was happy to find out that he had been backpacking around New Zealand and was just storing his gear at the CDC while he was working in Antarctica.

I spent the morning shopping for new cosmetics stuff (toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, etc.) and got almost everything I need. I'll head back out in a few minutes to get the remaining items and a bit more money -- I've got about NZ$15, and I need NZ$10 for the shuttle to the airport tomorrow and another NZ$10 for the shuttle ride back in a month and a half.

The nice thing about shopping is that it's ~75 degrees out right now!

I'm heading back

I've commenced my third trip to the South Pole!

I left Madison on January 1 at 2:20PM CST and four flights (and 31 hours) later I was in my room in New Zealand! That includes a 3 hour layover in LAX and a 10 minute "layover" in Sydney, Australia. Nothing gets your blood pumping after a 14.5 hour flight like having to sprint to the next gate!

This year I tried two different techniques for adjusting to the time change (New Zealand is 19 hours ahead of Madison). I took some melatonin right when I got on the plane at LAX, and I ate supper as soon as I got to LAX and then didn't eat anything for 14 hours after that until they served breakfast on the plane -- the extended fast supposedly resets your internal clock and tells your body that the first meal is "breakfast". Either way, I didn't sleep any more than normal (maybe 6 hours) but felt great all day, got in a 20 minute run, and will easily be awake until 10PM or so!

The long Quantas flight has an in-seat entertainment system (which, by the way, was rebooted a couple of times at the start of the flight, so I know it's a hacked up version of Red Hat Linux running on top of X.) I watched two movies, "The Hurt Locker" set in modern-day Iraq, and "The English Patient" set in pre-WWII Egypt and Arabia. Coincidentally, both movies had a major character who disarmed bombs, and both movies featured an actor from the T.V. show "Lost"!

I forgot my cosmetics bag at home, so tomorrow morning I'll go out and buy shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc. and then at 1PM I'll go back out to the USAP facility by the airport, get all my gear and find out when the Antarctic flight leaves. If all goes well, I'll arrive in Antarctica in two days and be at the South Pole in three!

Hero shot

The obligatory picture at the Pole is called a "hero shot". Here's mine:





















Here's the entire IceCube night shift at the ceremonial South Pole. Tilo referred to this as our "Kenny shot".

Up all day, up all day, up all day...

This website shows, among other things, sunrise and sunset times for locations all around the Earth. The March listing for the South Pole is fun.

Two milestones today

Before this season started, we had 40 active strings. The drillers added 19 new strings over the austral summer, but not all of them have frozen into place so that we can use them (ice is a really good insulator!) Today we were able to take data from 13 new strings along with the 40 existing strings, which is a good sign that we shouldn't have any problem when we add the last 6 strings and start taking data from all 59 strings. And that means they won't make me stay here all winter!

The other milestone is that I only have one week left before I leave!

Question 19: Can you see the stars and constellations? What is your favorite star you saw so far? Do you set lots of planets?

The South Pole only has one sunrise and one sunset every year. The sunrise happens in September and the sunset happens in March. That means that the sun has been up the entire time I've been here. I have noticed that the shadows have gotten longer, so the sun is definitely going down, but I'll be gone long before the 2-day-long sunset or the two-week-long dusk before all light disappears from the sky.

Because it's light out, I can only see one star and one planet right now. Can you guess what they are?

Question 18: Does the South Pole have a telescope to view the stars and planets?

There are at least a couple, although neither one uses the kind of light we can see with our eyes.

The South Pole Telescope is almost an entire building. It uses microwaves to build a picture of the stars or galaxy it's looking at.

Of course, I'm down here working on the IceCube Neutrino Telescope, which is using muons to build pictures of supernovae and other sources of neutrinos.

McMurdo Station has a regular telescope people can use to look for seals, killer whales, and the Norwegian icebreaker

Question 17: Do you like it at the South Pole? What is your favorite part about the South Pole?

Yes I like it here, although I've been away from home for over a month so I'll be ready to see my family and my home when I leave here in a week.

My favorite part is the free stuff -- free DVDs from the store, free meals, free COOKIES! It's not uncommon for people to leave here and go back to the "real world", where they'll go to a restaurant, order and eat their food, and then get up and walk out because they forget that they need to pay for things!

There are also days when it's fun to look outside and see the scenery, but today isn't one of those days. It's kind of foggy, so we look out the window and see nothing but white snow and white clouds. Kind of a boring view!