WAIS Divide: November 9th to December 3rd




My tent on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with a sun dog in the background.

Trying to schedule and fly in Antarctica is often an epic failure of grand proportions; so much so that veterans on the Ice wear their failures like medals of honor.  Our crew, destined for WAIS Divide, became the special forces of failure, a grand and shinning example of the power the Antarctic factor has over life on the outlying continent.



The LC-130 Hercules.

Leaving McMurdo turned out to be a comic tragedy of compounding issues: busted planes and ridiculous planning and the ever violent weather of West Antarctica. Three of the eleven carpenters destined for WAIS left McMurdo on time without a single hiccup. The remaining eight, including myself, were scheduled to depart three days later to join our comrades. It took us nearly two weeks to reach WAIS, all the while the first three inserts were working like stolen mules.  My confidence in the LC-130 Hercules has since been restored, but try taking off not 1,2,3, or 4 times...but 9 failed attempts spread across three different planes. Most of these planes have seen action in Vietnam, they come here to retire and also fly people across Antarctica. Feels like going to a nursing home, picking the feeblest senior, getting them drunk and then road tripping in a Pinto across the Sahara: confidence low, surprises eminent. We would shuttle out to the airport on the sea ice and board a plane, wondering if this would be the one. Strapped in and donning ear plugs we would cautiously listen to the old machine lumber to life, Air Force personnel scouring the inside flipping levers and pushing buttons. The lumber would wind up to a high pitch and then...boozzzzshhhh...the sound of a dying engine. Groans and knowing glances meet each other from faces all too familiar with that sound. Back on the shuttle, back to town. Often we spent several hours at the air strip, once forgotten in a holding pin disguised as a terminal for the entire afternoon. Ouch. However, the airstrip is full of machines busying themselves at our bidding, except for the Hercules, and there's a great view of the mountains. Not the worst place in the world to be stuck and I've always had a fondness for airports and the promise of adventure that airplanes bring.  

McMurdo's airport.

From my seat in the cockpit for take-off.

From the cockpit.

So, we danced this dance for 12 days, a waltz of broken planes and dodgy weather and finally took to the air on November 9th. I finagled my way into the cockpit for take off and got to properly see my way out of McMurdo en route to WAIS Divide.  



The LC-130 that actually took off looking badass!

So much of Antarctica is a featureless plateau of ice and snow, miles deep and growing. Flying over the continent is the only way to appreciate the vastness of this frontier. Although completely void of anything except frozen water, the endless white world holds a shocking and mysterious beauty. Antarctica is a testament to the dynamic planet we live on, proof of the inevitability of change and the awesome power of nature. A land once like any other continent happened to be on the tectonic plate that shifted south, ever south over eons until the continent that was seething with life is now silent and white; yet pockets of curious humans attempting to understand this enigma break the silence scratching at the surface and plying the skies with our noisy minds and machines. This landscape always defines an appreciation and admiration I hold for what we are trying to understand, and what we fail to, about the nature of a planet that builds and destroys organisms and entire continents, shoving them about like lily pads in a pond while life clings to their violent surfaces, evolving with them or destined to be partners in demise. For me, Antarctica is easy to love and will forever be intriguing and haunting.

Ice core samples.

 WAIS Divide exists so tubes of ice a meter long and about the circumference of a CD can be pulled from miles below the surface and examined. WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) Divide is the barrier where the ice sheet moves away from itself, one side towards the Amundsen Sea, the other towards the Ross Ice Shelf. Movement, although imperceptible, is constant with ice sheets. Ice sheets move much like pancake batter on a hot skillet, spreading out in a slow steady march from their thickest point. The nature of the land they slide across is unknown; we simply lack the technology to understand it. What we do know is that under the enormous pressure of miles of ice the continent is far below sea level, pinned down into the crust like a raisin in a muffin. WAIS Divide station is at 1833 meters, yet the drillers have reached 3400 meters and are still shy of bedrock! Near bedrock, due to pressure and proximity to the warmer rock surface, the ice becomes slushy and viscous; drilling into or past this barrier is currently unexplored. What makes the divide a target for ice core drilling is the nature of the divide itself; as the sides spread the middle changes very little. The ice at depth here has been there a while, about 70,000 years. Ice cores hold gas deposits as well as ash layers from global volcanic events. By studying them, scientists are attempting to gain some insight into the nature of the world in the past and how it has changed over the millennia.



Rac-Tents in blue, Jamesway in green.

All that being said, I found myself staring across the wasteland of West Antarctica wielding a toolbag, 4 cases of beer, a bottle of vodka, a duffel bag of clothes and books, two pee bottles, a sleeping bag and a tent. We arrived at midnight and were told we could sleep in a Rac-Tent (heated Quonset hut) and put up our tents in the morning. Nonsense says I, if Rocky were here, he'd sleep in a fuckin tent with a smile on his lumpy face! Crunching across the snow with my goods (not my beer, it would freeze) I walked as far away from station as was allowed and put up my home for the next 24 nights. Securing a tiny tent against the expected, and received, ferocious winds of the West Antarctic is not a task to be taken lightly; my first night in West Antarctica was a lesson that won't need repeating. After erecting my tent and rain fly and putting a berm of snow about a quarter of the way up the tent around the perimeter I opted to not "dead man" my fly into the snow. A "dead man" is how we secure all structures big and small against high winds. Basically, a peice of wood, usually a 2 x 4 or length of bamboo, is buried about a foot deep paralell to the structure. The wood has a piece of strong rope through it and the looped end sticks out of the snow and is used to tie off the structure using specific knots that we learn in survival school. Confident in my prowess as an amateur meteorologist I gaze up at the deep powder blue sky, face directed at a gentle 5 knot wind from the south and think,"aw, it'll be fine."

Thunderous vibrations had me bolt upright in my tent at 3am, a worried "what the fuck?" shouted at no one. Thirty knot winds were ripping across the open plateau pelting the fragile surface of my shelter with snow, threatening to send my tent into the stratosphere like a bright yellow domed rocket trailing bits of white rope that should be a foot under the snow. I scramble into some clothes, my hurried breath forming thick clouds of vapor that rise like smoke in a tee-pee to the crest of my tent. Poking my head out I quickly realize there is no fuckin way I'm going outside to dig holes and play Boy Scout for the next hour in a blizzard. So my first night at WAIS was spent wondering how I would explain myself for the disappearance of my tent and loving the sleepless night listening to the wind howl like a helo blade over my new home. I "dead manned" the shit out of my tent the next day.

Carpenters at WAIS are tasked with building a "town" for the scientist and support group to live and work in, including Rac-Tents for the galley, recreation, medical and communications. We also set up power for the town via two generators and thirty or so power poles. Building Rac-Tents is fun work; they are pulled off of the winter storage berms in boxes and assempled like giant Lego sets, and of course they are secured using several "dead-man." Getting paid to listen to tunes and build shit with your friends is always a blessing. Readying The Arch is also our responsibility, more on that later. In addition, every person at WAIS is required to shovel several barrels of snow daily for melting into fresh water used for cooking and drinking. House Mousing is also a weekly requirement that involves kitchen and general clean up. For Thanksgiving we had a grand feast, those that volunteered to make desserts the day before got free box wine. I don't know shit about baking but I'm an expert at drinking free wine and bullshitting my way through practically anything. One of the most legendary tasks at WAIS is "slaying the poonicorn." We don't have indoor bathrooms so we use outhouses. Avoiding excessive detail...frozen poop piles up from the bottom of the ice hole and forms a distinct stalagmite of stank that rises up towards the surface and must be "slain" before it breaches. Knight and squire always return from battle with victorious tales of valor and perseverance after facing the "poonicorn." 

Town (these giant halos are common in West Antarctica).



More Town, including two "Poonicorn," lairs.





Tent City



The Arch



Working in The Arch

Buried under several meters of ice lies the sole purpose for every person at WAIS Divide: The Arch. In 2006 when these two adjoining buildings were built (by carpenters), they sat atop the surface. Now, after enduring 6 years of West Antarctica, they are entombed in ice. It rarely snows here but the sleepless winds push snow around effortlessly all over the continent, enough to completely conceal a 50 foot building after two winters. The pressure of the snow on The Arch has caused the floor to buckle and the doors to blow out; something the carpenters have to fix every season. I spent the last week at WAIS in The Arch, rebuilding the floor and talking to drillers about the seemingly impossible task of pulling cores out of ice over 2 miles deep. Living in Antarctica I feel I will never tire of being continuously amazed by human ingenuity: thousands of moving parts, thousands of miles from anywhere, buried under ice at the bottom of the world. All busy exposing ancient chunks of ice that were deposited 70,000 years ago during a time Homo Sapiens faced extinction after the Mount Toba eruption plunged the earth into its harshest thousand years supporting complex life on record. An event that most geneticists believe is partly responsible for our lack of genetic diversity; a species brought to its knees with merely 15,000 or so remaining individuals created our current gene pool, compliments of a single violent act 70,000 years ago. All these cores harbor stories; stories of eons past and assumptions of the future. Nothing has, or is able to, disturb these cylindrical recorders of history buried in darkness away from the toils of our restless planet. When they are removed they are handled like fragile precious jewels, carefully packaged and sent to America under controlled conditions where are they are finally analyzed. It was an amazing project to be a part of and also the last year they will be drilling in this location.



Me standing on top of The Arch, checking out the view.

The Chief

When we weren't working, eating or sleeping, we played games, read, and of course told lies over bottles. The Chief is the arctic wigwam that the Carps call home away from home.  Seated on lawn chairs and crates we passed bottles of scotch and bourbon around bullshitting about traveling and our place in this world, and tying knots. Rock climbers, hikers, sailors, and general misfits seem to know about knots; so huddled around the stove, pilling slivers of cedar chips on its surface to curb the smell of unwashed people, we drank in merriment tying knots and getting to know each other. Shenanigans were more than common place and I'll never forget my time spent in The Chief in West Antarctica.

I've found myself over the years running in some very memorable locations, but I haven't found many as thought provoking as the runway at WAIS Divide. I found that the utter nothingness of a place is just as profound as an overwhelming abundance of sensations. When I was a couple miles from town I not only felt like the only person on Earth, but the only life form. An alien in a place that holds no resemblance to the green and busy place we all live out our busy lives. Something about running there made me just so damn glad to be alive and grateful to be where I was, where I've been and where I am.

The runway.



Leaving WAIS Divide



AMERICA!

I'll also be posting a few videos of WAIS Divide soon.



  

October 15th and 20th, 2012. Sea Ice

Me next to Main Body Crack, wishing the Royal Society Mountains were closer

The first few weeks at McMurdo for people that will deploy to field camps and work on the sea ice is constant training, a lot of which are informative and down right exciting; like becoming a ninja. Sea Ice training was one of my personal favorites, I'll get to that after a more recent incident on sea ice patrol. 

The Tucker!

A lot of science and therefore work is conducted  out on the sea ice in Mcmurdo sound during the first 2-3 months of the season depending on conditions. We place and service "fish huts," that are scattered around the sound anywhere between one to fifteen miles from station. Typically we use Pisten Bully's as transport vehicles but ours is being worked on and we're short on mechanics this year. So, we've been using Tuckers. A Tucker is made in Medford, Oregon of all places and can go anywhere pulling just about anything. It travels at the speed of smell however and is not ideal for getting anywhere in a timely manner. Driving out onto the sea ice is always thrilling, knowing that a meter or so of ice is between you, a 12,000 lb Tucker and a 27 F ocean.

Fish Hut, Erebus in the background

 A few days ago I was out in a Tucker on "Sea Ice Patrol," a pretty rad gig for around station work, and was lucky enough to have a close encounter with a Weddell seal. 

After loading up with provisions (we often miss lunch on patrol) including frozen burritos to be cooked on the Tucker engine block, two way radios, and a GPS unit, we hooked up to the Diesel Weasel which holds fuel for the heaters inside the fish huts and Tuckered out onto the ice. The inside of a fish hut is similar to the shanty huts used for ice fishing in Minnesota, but instead of grumpy old men drinking moonshine we have Phd's drinking tea, the London gentlemen of ice fishing. Inside hut number 3 was a team of divers, a photographer and a lab assistant. Looking down into the hole in the ice I could see two divers as clearly as if they were in the room with me. Two beams of light illuminated the ocean floor as they scanned their flashlights over beds of starfish and giant sponges flourishing in their ethereal world . The visibility in the ocean in Antarctica is better than anywhere else in the world when the sea is covered with ice. The lack of photosynthetic organisms in the water and the undisturbed surface allows for the conditions to be flawlessly clear. That day the divers were at 120 feet with visibility of around 200-250 feet; which I was told was below average for Antarctic standards where 1500 feet is par. I have always felt like a strange visitor when diving, a peasant gazing upon the antiquities of liquid kingdom, someone who is welcome to look around but doesn't belong. We're the only species on earth that is able to transcend mediums by bringing oxygen giving life with it no matter where it chooses to go. How remarkable that we are able to breath underwater and on land, in oceans covered in ice and on the desolate surface of the moon. Watching those divers investigate that beautifully mysterious world made me proud to be human, something we're all to often taught to feel shame for. 

Typical Weddell seal (not my photo)

Cranking on the hurdy-gurdy like a giant jack-in-the-box I topped off the fuel tank and was onto the next hut. Hut number 15 was vacant, just a large hole through the ice into the frigid ocean. As I turned my back to leave I heard an unmistakable sound; the gasping inhalation of air. I turned around and was face to face with an adult Weddell seal who had come up through the hole inside the fish hut for a breather. Adult Weddell's can reach lengths in excess of 10 ft and weigh over 1300 lbs, they are massively fat and can hardly move on land yet effortlessly graceful underwater. We stared at each other for about a minute; the seal was clearly unafraid and taking the opportunity to be in a heated building with a harmless animal, catching its breath and watching me inquisitively. After the seal disappeared back into the still water I walked to the edge of the hole to see of I could catch another glimpse. Down in the shadows another seal must have seen me peering and came up to investigate. Two oily spheres trained on me as it lumbered upwards, bubbles caressing whiskers flowing gently out of its snout, eyes open and blinking slowly. As it broke the surface, ocean beaded off its furry face like water in a greased pan. Nostrils working rapidly in cadence, pulling air into starved lungs, a curiosity so common among mammals filled the warm hut as we stared at each other in silence. It was gone in no hurry, not scared away or threatened, just gone. I could have stayed there all day staring into the sea beyond the frozen surface but the Tucker was outside idling and there was work to be done.

Sea Ice School

A windy day for Sea Ice School

Our Hagglund

Loomy was our instructor last year for Happy Camper snow survival school at South Pole. He's part of a medically qualified helicopter and land based extraction team for Denali National Park in Alaska, teaches survival techniques in Antarctica in his spare time and is a shameless quilter. When Loomy isn't instructing on V-anchors and igloo construction, or rescuing hypothermic hikers, he's quilting. It was like finding out that Rambo loves knitting and plays the jazz flute; the personality dichotomies here never cease to amaze me. We were lucky enough to have Loomy as our instructor on sea ice navigation and safety this year at McMurdo. After 2 hours of classroom logistics involving sea ice cracks we boarded a Hagglund, sort of a double lunch box on tracks, and started an hour long drive out to Main Body Crack (they could have just called it Ass Crack and saved a syllable); a dynamic crack running several miles long about 12 miles outside of station. 

Upon arriving at the crack under investigation the wind out on the "open ocean" was absolutely ripping.  We worked in the wind shadow created by the Hagglund in relative comfort, venturing out of its protective shield to feel the wrath of the wind and take photos.

Investigation Main Body Crack

Snow is constantly blowing around and rarely precipitating, so there is actually less than a foot of snow in most places out on the sea ice. After uncovering the gun metal blue ice we practiced setting V-anchors.  V-anchors are used in ice because they are incredibly strong and easy to set up. Basically two holes are drilled about 8 inches apart at 60 degree angles toward each other, connecting under the ice in a V. Cordage is then thread through and tied to whatever you don't want blowing away in the wind, like the tent I'll be sleeping in soon. So we huddled around like frozen strawberries practicing this anchoring technique that some of us would need in a big way unless we wanted to wake up with a sunburn and a tent rolling across the plateau like a giant neon tumbleweed.

Jenna practicing V-anchoring

Sea ice separates, twists, grinds, and reforms; changing constantly and therefore requiring our attention when driving giant heavy equipment on it. When a crack is spotted we stop short of it, pile out like Eskimo clowns in a Volkswagen and  get to work assessing it in the following steps: Uncover ice completely across the crack, drill down until water is reached, check depth with measuring tape and weight, drill again until a minimum and maximum depth have been found across the crack in question. Then we cross reference the information with whatever standard the NSF (National Science Foundation) has set for that vehicle. If we're within the specifications for that vehicle we are free to proceed across the crack.

Me measuring ice thickness

Because I am not always graceful and always paying attention to my surroundings and often gazing off at mountains daydreaming, I take my share of spills and "oh shit," moments no matter where I am. The following pictures compliments of Jenna were taken of me posing with an 8 foot drill bit and then falling over holding it:

Looking good!

Not so much now

I've been out on the sea ice several times now for various tasks and always find it thrilling. If only we had class like this growing up.

I'm leaving for WAIS Divide soon (was supposed to leave Monday, Friday at time of writing; multiple day delays are common) so I won't be blogging for a 3-4 weeks.

October 25th, 2012. Life at 77.8500° S‏



McMurdo and Observation Hill

Early this week our foreman announced after morning yoga in construction outfits that they would be selecting crews for deep field camps. One of the biggest perks about being in the McMurdo carpentry shop is deployment to field camps around the continent. Our deep field camps are scattered around West Antarctica; truly the most inaccessible, unforgiving part of the entire world. The camps are erected, supported, maintained, and disassembled by the carpentry crew (carp shop) at McMurdo Station. So if someone where sick enough to want to spend a month in a tent without a shower on a frozen plateau of ice two miles thick thousands of miles from a resemblance of society working 70 hours a week in mind numbing cold and debilitating wind…the McMurdo carp shop is definitely your jam. 

The Carp Shop at McMurdo

Main street

Coastal areas here are busy with life, seals lie on the frozen sea like furry sacks of blubber around holes and cracks that lead into the frigid water. I’m told they’re alive but have yet to see one move. Whales will come to McMurdo Sound in January after the sea ice breaks up and several penguin rookeries are within miles of station. Fearless giant ugly seagulls called skuas are plague the skies and are considered station pests; they have been known to dive-bomb people carrying food from the galley, robbing them of contents and maybe gifting them with a giant ugly seagull turd. Our local Goodwill is also called “skua,” as is any unwanted item. I’ve been able to completely outfit myself with work clothes, Carhart pants, Red Wing boots, T-shirts, even a fake Christmas tree for the room, all complements of skua items. I must have looked interesting crunching across station in track pants and steel-toed boots with a pile of shitty clothes and a plastic tree. McMurdo Station is the largest establishment on the continent of Antarctica. Right now there are 690 people busying themselves with all things human; we engineer and build, experiment and investigate, play and puzzle, argue and romance, exercise and party.  It is truly remarkable to take society away from people, something we’ve endeavored to create for thousands of years, and ask them to build it in an isolated microcosm in a place where most other animals would perish. It’s a beautiful comedy to witness and be a part of.

McMurdo during "condition 2" storm

Antarctica is the size of America and Mexico, yet the largest human presence is just over a thousand individuals during the height of the Austral summer.  For all our differences and conflicts that threaten to shatter our fragile society, somehow we were able to agree in the most agreeable way on how to manage this massive place at the bottom of our world. There are no wars, genocide, deforestation, pollution, or any other nasty that has become a human trademark across the globe.  In a beautifully rare exception to our typical behavior, we set aside this place, exempting it from our chaotic obsession with destruction. Signing the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 (50 nations currently) we agreed this place would be the chapel for science only. We study life, the elements, the ancient earth, the atmosphere, the universe. Antarctica is a preserved blueprint of the origins of the planet, a continent twice the size of Australia with rivers, lakes and mountains, frozen along with their inhabitants of a warmer time eons ago, buried under miles of ice.  

Once you leave the relative comforts of the coast, life ceases to flourish. No other animals are able to survive there and none care to. What makes us different is our insistent, unrelenting desire to push ourselves; a curiosity that is unmatched and an ability to bring our curiosities into fruition no matter the cost. Whatever the motivation to travel to the interior of Antarctica is, it has long been a sought after place. We wanted to go because we couldn’t, people died getting there, people died getting back. Scientists go there in an attempt to understand certain complexities about our world or the universe beyond, carpenters (or people pretending to be carpenters) go there to live in a tent in the snow and build some crap to support scientists’ curiosities. I want to go because I haven’t been there, because I want to live in a tent, because the science fascinates me and because it’s somewhere I know I don’t belong. People aren’t supposed to be there, it’s the only place on earth without people for a reason. For 3 months of the year a dozen camps are set up, containing 10-50 people that leave as soon as summer ends and a dark sunless sky persists for half of the year.

WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Shelf)

I’ll be going to WAIS Divide camp next Tuesday for 3-4 weeks. We’ll pack into C-130’s and Baslers and fly 5 hours into the middle of absolute nowhere with tool bags, tents, and beer; a blue collar version of The Right Stuff. One year someone was dicking with their two-way radio on the flight and it killed the auto-pilot, sending the plane into a sudden lurching decent, throwing people against their seat belts. Oops. At camp the scientist and other important types sleep in heated Rac-Tents, which we assemble. We sleep in tents; I mean actual fucking tents that you camp in at home in the summer on fucking grass or dirt. My issued tent has patches in it like an old bicycle tire, should be cozy at 30 below zero. Last year after a storm, of which this area of Antarctica is prone to, the crew noticed at breakfast someone was late/missing. After passing by “tent city” they saw a tent bursting at the seams with snow like a giant nylon cream filled donut, mumbled cries for help emanating from its bowels. They had unzipped their tent in haste, no doubt en route to the outhouse, and were buried in a snow drift that came crashing through the opening. Probably didn’t need coffee to wake up that morning after getting leveled by a 10 foot wall of snow in his PJ’s. He was fine; cold as shit and a little scared but I’m guessing he opened his tent slowly from the top from that point on; I know I will. The last several days have been full of useful information on how to manage yourself in the situation I’m about to embark on. “Bring stuff to do in your tent because you will get trapped in there for possibly 2 days during inclement weather,” was my favorite little tidbit. Bring stuff to do? Like food and water to fucking survive!? A book to eat after I read it? I feel like an astronaut prepping for deep space exploration in a biplane, but I think they get heated accommodation and a toilet. I couldn’t be more excited though; sounds like shenanigans are a virtual guarantee.

Basler

C-130 Hercules

Work the last week has been training and making Rac-Tent end wall batons with a buffed version of ZZ Top named Lyons. Hours on a router cutting wood shapes and rocking out with Lyons has us covered in sawdust by closing whistle; I’ve picked saw dusted boogs that I’m shocked actually fit in my nose to begin with. Last night I made a wooden beer holder after work for our BBQ that’s shaped like a hammer; it’s like I’ve embodied Homer Simpson and Jesus.

My custom made beer coozy holder

We've been watching the sunsets the last few weeks, knowing they would be over soon. As the sun approaches the horizon (pictured) it will linger there and shift laterally for hours before it falls behind the horizon entirely. The sun is now up 24 hours a day and will stay that way for the duration of the season.



Beautiful Antarctica!

October 5th, 2012. En Route

My backpack smells awesome. This old soldier started cruising with me 14 years ago in June, when Drew and I set out for a summer in Europe, a decision that forever branded me and shaped my future outlook and motivations for a life I have been blessed to embrace.  Scars and scratches cover my pack, some with stories, some casualties of a night forgotten making awesomely poor choices in the company of friends and fellow travelers. Putting Ziploc bags full of travel trinkets, clothes and carefully packaged toiletries (more on that to follow) in my backpack is a ritual I will never tire of, a symbol of freedom and irresponsibility that makes me feel like me.

After shenanigans in San Diego with some quality individuals, bags packed, morale in the clouds and a final embrace from the Southern California sun, we board the first of four flights in route to Antarctica.

Crossing the Pacific is always in experience in itself. It is a marvel how many people, for a myriad of reasons, find themselves in a position to do so on a random Monday in early October. People from all walks of life seem to find common ground packed into a flying torpedo, eating “food” that we probably feed to Gitmo detainees, and mouth breathing for 15 hours. Sleep for me has always been more of a full contact sport than a natural part of human life, and the gloves come off every time I cross the Pacific. I think my brain delights in the challenge of making my body allergic to sleeping on airplanes of duration exceeding 4 hours. Don’t get me wrong, with the exception of Thanksgiving in San Diego, which amounted to a week long bender with Cresto and Devin (no lightweights mind you) and the subsequent flight to Taiwan, I have enjoyed and embraced the quarrel. So, San Francisco to Sydney was to be the newest title match. Victory, brain.

Halfway through the 15 hour jaunt I think I was literally the only dumbass awake, staring bleary eyed at the Sky Mall catalogue trying to find the most expensive item in the magazine. Who buys this crap? Probable the guy next to me wearing one of those eye masks with built in retinal humidifiers, sound asleep since take off, fucking jerk. You know that overwhelming feeling of committing inappropriate acts during a sophisticated dinner party, farting proud and loud at church, or pushing an old lady into a swimming pool? Yet you chuckle at your indecent thoughts and go about your day, behaving as you should, wondering why we want to jump when we approach an edge. That’s how I feel when someone sleeps next to me on a plane for 10 hours, in an impossibly uncomfortable situation surrounded by strangers, in a chair designed specifically to piss you off. My mind races with possibilities: Oops I spilled my scalding coffee in your lap, sorry I farted so loud; how embarrassing! Elbow to the ribs, fake coughing. I behave. I do nod off, but the sky waitresses have radar to this nature and an uncanny knack for giving me the knee and or elbow bump with the little metal cart full of shitola as soon as I close my eyes. Jostled out of “sleep,” tongue plastered to my palate like wet Velcro the only sign of neglecting to close my yaw for the last 15 minutes as I had temporarily joined the mouth-breathers.  However, I sit behaving, eyes increasingly loosing moisture like a puddle on a hot driveway, smiling at my situation; as bitter as I sound there is no place I’d rather be then uncomfortable on a plane going somewhere far away.

After transferring planes in Sydney, we board Air New Zealand for Christchurch. The Kiwis have a sense of humor that is part Aussie, part London gentleman. They seem to care about nothing and everything at the same time and are the most informal people on this green Earth. Check out this inflight safety video:

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2012/6/20/183531/304/travel/The+Newest+In-Flight+Safety+Video+from+Air+New+Zealand

They used to have one with Richard Simmons, which was a real jewel; nothing says aircraft safety like bikini shorts and a big blonde Jew-fro sweating to the oldies.



The entire top is soaked in goo!

The nerve!

A backpack rounds the corner on the nifty luggage belt, a design unchallenged in the last 50 years of aviation; the crocodilian of modern luggage transport. Encased in a large plastic bag that used to be clear is the redesigned interior of the backpack that used to not be completely covered in what used to be my carefully packaged toiletries. In there ultimate wisdom the TSA decided to “inspect” my shampoo, lotions and other such potions by removing them from their Ziploc home and placing them atop my clothes, no doubt soon after hurtling them both through time and space off the fingertips of a linebacker baggage handler.  Sitting neatly amongst the mess is a kick in the groin: A nearly perfect, unblemished piece of parchment reading, “Inspected by the TSA.” Thanks ass hats. I relieved a nearby garbage can of its empty plastic sack and re-packaged my goods, later to shower with them in an effort to rid said goods of 32 ounces of Head and Shoulders. Jenna’s bag faired better than mine; they chose to merely scatter her clothes around, leaving her toiletries intact.

So, after 10,000 miles of travel, $30 of New Zealand lamb and 5 beers it’s time to embrace the Sandman at the Pavilions Hotel in Christchurch.

The bastard language of military, a congress backed science foundation, and a defense contractor is spoken almost entirely in acronyms and cheesy catch phrases. So, before departing for The Ice, we need to clear CDC with appropriate ECW for either MCO or SPL aboard our MILCRAFT. No shit? In English: go to the clothes building, find your orange bad full of cold weather shit, and get on the right plane dummy.



All our ECW

Carhart overalls, gloves and long underwear, knee-high socks and fleece pants, goggles, mittens and kittens; these are a few of my favorite things. Nothing beats Big Red, the obnoxiously huge and almost unbearable warm parka decorated with the National Science Foundation and United States Antarctic Program patches and, of course, your name. Pride swelling, I don my Big Red for the second time and pose for photo op. Gear checked and situated. Flight manifest shows I leave at 07:30 the following morning. More lamb, more beer, more sleep.

POW!

Jenna is one happy passenger!

Flying on a C-17 is an awesome experience. They’re huge, loud, amazing engineering achievements. We shuffle on, all grins, picking up our sack lunch along as we board. Rumbling down the runway the plane takes flight to the sound of cheers and high-fives. After about 4 hours we’re over continent and the Seattle based USAF flight crew, each wearing a small Seahawks patch (got a picture of course) lets us visit the cockpit for one of the most awe inspiring sights a traveler can hope for: the unspoiled beauty of Antarctica. The Trans-Antarctic mountains spine the lower third of the continent and sprawling masses of sea ice skirt the continental shelf like a bridal train, everywhere an impossibly white and blue symphony; the vastness and stark beauty of this place is nearly indescribable and something I wish all my loved ones could gaze upon.

Inside the cockpit of the C-17

Seahawks! America!



Beautiful Antarctica



Feet wiggling in boots, Antarctica under foot again, we are transported in Deltas to McMurdo from the sea ice runway.

Our C-17 at the Ice Runway

A Delta, transport to and from the runway