So close...

Clothes I must wear on the plane

I have been corrected (and humbled) to find that there are indeed more than my mom and sister reading this blog (and in fact already have over 550 hits).  Thanks!  Thus, you can all share in the excitement that tomorrow's the day (hopefully) that we head down south.  We are getting up in a few hours in order to check-in at the Antarctic departure center by 5 am sharp, but I have been unable to sleep at all. Rachel and I already have a strike against us in terms of timeliness as we were late for gear issue.  Apparently today was the start of daylight savings, but we somehow never received that memo.  Personally, I didn't think you should be allowed to spring forward twice without one fall back in between.  But alas, my body clock is so dysfunctional by now that I wouldn't know the difference anyways.  We arrived just in time to get our computers checked, receive a flu vaccine, and watch the information video.  We then proceeded to gear issue where we had two bags full of clothes labeled with our names.  Basically, I could have showed up with no clothes for this trip as the ECW (extreme cold weather gear) provides everything from long johns to fleece layers to ridiculously warm outer wear (not to mention 5 different sets of gloves/mittens).  Props go out to Giff, whose name tag is displayed prominently on the example clothing near the entrance of the building.  

My personalized parka

Rachel and I will be taking the airbus rather than the C-17 plane.  This means that we will have windows and not all of the cargo, more like a regular commercial plane (minus the flight attendants).  This also means that since our plane can't land in the nastier conditions, we have a higher probability of boomeranging.  Boomeranging refers to the unfortunate circumstance where after the 5 hour flight to McMurdo, they determine the weather is too severe to land and you must return back to Christchurch.... 10 hours completely wasted.  Of the 55 people on the flight, there are only a couple of scientists with the majority being those hardy folk that run McMurdo station.  They rarely allow scientists on the first flight of the year, but we were given the exception due to the time-sensitive nature of our work.  I just realized that I have yet to give a proper explanation of my project and I promise that blog entry will be forthcoming.   

After our gear pickup, we had a pretty relaxing day.  I checked out the Antarctic IceFest that fortuitously is going on in Christchurch these weeks.  They have quite a bit of historical information on the adventures of Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton.  There was supposed to be an outdoor movie about the Ross Sea that I tried to attend this evening, but did not show due to technical difficulties.  The guy next to me at the screening found out I was actually going to the Ross Sea tomorrow, and before I knew it, there was a crowd around me looking to hear stories.  Since I'm a newbie myself, I didn't have much to share (except make them all jealous I think).  However, I have been having a blast already sharing my science with so many interested people.  If only politicians also believed in science...

Picking up our ECW

Right now I need to go pack.  We are allowed a strict allotment of 150 pounds each.  Since the IceKid weighs 110 pounds and my ECW weighs 27 pounds, I'm running pretty low on space.  Hopefully Rachel will share some of her allotment.  We need to divide our items into a) checked luggage b) carry-on c) boomerang bag.  If our flight does indeed boomerang, we are only allowed access to our boomerang bag while we wait in Christchurch.  Thankfully they also allow us to leave some items here in Christchurch so I don't need to carry all of our backpacking gear for Australia with us.  I found it interesting that the only questions the other guys asked during gear issue was in what bag should they put their alcohol.  These guys are clearly much more experienced than me.

My next post will hopefully be from McMurdo Station!