Back from the Edge

I'm writing this from Auckland on my way back home!

I spent my last day at the Pole helping haul UPS batteries up and down the stairs of the building housing all the IceCube computers, including the servers which run my software. The power plant at the South Pole isn't perfect so we have Uninterruptible Power Supplies to get us through those few bad times. Those UPSes use batteries which must be replaced every 3 years and this is one of those years. 5-7 of us worked for over an hour to carry the new batteries upstairs and the old batteries downstairs. It was good to get out there since the only other time I'd been outside was when I walked from the plane into the station two days before.

The plane ride back to McMurdo was uneventful. We landed at about 8PM, bag-dragged at 10PM, then had to report for transport at 7:15AM.

The 7.5 hour flight from McMurdo to Christchurch was more cramped than I'm used to. I made sure to stand up every hour or so, just to keep the blood flowing to my legs :-)

I spent an extra day in Christchurch to try and catch up on sleep before the 27 hour journey back home. Only 24 hours to go before I'm back in Madison!