Welcome to the Land of the Midnight Sun

Greetings from Antarctica!

After five days of weather delays, we finally made it to Antarctica. Typically you take a C-17 down to the ice, but because of all the delays we ended up taking a Kiwi 757. At first I thought it was going to be a real nightmare of a trip sitting three abreast in all our polar gear, but our group ended up sitting in business class section for no reason other than the fact that we were the last ones to get on the place. The thought of taking business class to Antarctica is quite humorous and probably only the second time in my life I've flown business class--ever.

Riding business class to McMurdo. You can see the poor saps crammed in the back.

The arrival this time wasn't as surreal for me as the first time, but none-the-less it was an experience I will remember for the rest of my life. Below is a pic of our team fresh off the plane. Four of us are from KU, one from University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and our project manager is from NASA. All together, we have a really great team, and I'm looking forward to working with them for the next six weeks (or at least as much as one can given the fact that we are in a remote location and away from family for the holidays).

From left to right: Jordan Sprick (KU), Carl Leuschen (KU), me, Jim Rood (KU), Chris Larsen (UAF), John Woods (NASA)

Since arriving we've pretty much been working non-stop trying to get the aircraft and instruments ready, and when not working we've been taking care of our mandatory training. This afternoon was our first time we had some time to catch up on life/work back home (Happy Thanksgiving back home by the way). We will hopefully have the install complete by tomorrow and be ready for flights on Monday. 

Our antenna array installed between the landing gear of the aircraft. Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world.

We work out at the airfield which is about 3 miles outside of McMurdo base. We have our own hangar and there is a galley and head out there...though both are about a quarter mile from our RAC tent. Luckily Chris brought his fat tire bike which has turned a 30 minute walk to and from the the bathroom to a 10 minute round trip bike ride.

McMurdo basically shuts down this weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to finish the install before our big dinner tomorrow night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we have good weather Sunday so we can enjoy some recreational activities on our day off.

Hurry Up and Wait

We've been in a bit of a holding pattern since arriving in Christchurch as no flights have left for the ice in over a week. Luckily our flight has only been delayed one day, and things are looking good for a noon takeoff today (but I would have said the same thing yesterday) This weekend is apparently some sort of horse holiday in New Zealand called Cup and Show. Due to the holiday and our delay, our hotel is full and some of my colleagues had to double up in rooms (yay for being the only girl in my group).

We're using our extra time in Christchurch to do a little exploring. Our first full day here we drove to Arthur's Pass National Park, and hiked up to the Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall. The entire drive was incredibly beautiful, and it was nice to get out and walk around after 30 hours of flights the previous day.

Devil's Punchbowl in the Distance

We've also doing some exploring in Christchurch. When I was here in 2011, Christchurch was recovering from a massive earthquake that occurred just a few month prior to our arrival. The whole place was a construction zone at the time. Then about two months after we left, yet another massive earthquake struck. That was 6 years ago, and walking around Christchurch today there are still large areas that have not been repaired. Pretty much every church is braced as shown in the picture below. While there is a lot of construction going on, it's been quite surprising to me how much just seems to been left as it is.

National Cathedral

Speaking of earthquakes, I experienced my first ever yesterday. I was hanging out in my hotel room when the ground started shaking. I texted Cooper and said that I thought I just felt an earthquake. He responded with "Twitter confirms." Incredible how news travels these days. Apparently it was a 4.2 magnitude earthquake, and while the event wasn't very violent, it's hard not to think about this country's history with earthquakes and wonder if something bigger is coming.

Well, I'm off to the airport with fingers crossed that we'll make it to the ice today.

Miles to Go before We Sleep

Is this thing still on?

Well here we go again. Same continent, different mission. I'm currently in the Denver airport after the first leg of a marathon of flights. I left Kansas at 11 am CST, and I won't arrive in Christchurch, New Zealand until 6:30pm (Kansas time) on Tuesday. Yes, that is indeed over a day straight of non-stop travel.

I guess NSF couldn't find me a direct ticket to LAX, so I get to enjoy a two hour layover in Denver.

I'll be gone roughly two months, and currently I am not scheduled to get home until early/mid January. There's a total of four of us from KU travelling, three faculty and staff and one student. We also have several colleagues from NASA and other organizations on our team, so all told there will be about a dozen of us. This year I'll be stationed at McMurdo Station until early/mid December at which point we will be going down to South Pole Station for two weeks. We'll then return to McMurdo for another two weeks. This time around we will only be flying on manned aircraft with our radar systems. Admittedly in 2011 I felt like a real bad ass telling people we were flying an 1,100 UAV around Antarctica; however, I am excited to fly on the Basler so I can see more of the continent. That said, I'm sure many vomit inducing flights lie ahead.

For anyone in NE Kansas, go hang out with Cooper and Bowie. I miss them both dearly, and our goats are a bunch of assholes so they'll need some friendly faces. Our neighbor promised to have chicken noodle soup with him every Thursday night (😉), but other than that they should be free.

Hopefully next post will come from somewhere much farther south.