Antarctica!

The End!

2009-12-05T07:20:00.002+13:00

I've been home for almost a month now and I'm back into the groove. It is hard to believe I was actually in Antarctica, seems like a dream. Now that I'm home and my adventure is over, that means my blog is complete so this is the last entry. I hope you all enjoyed following me on my trip and learned a little something too. I really liked writing the blog, it was a great way to tell you stories and show you pictures. Maybe I'll end up going back and I can add more to the blog... you never know! We'll see where life takes me next. Cheers everyone!
Picture taken by Leslie

Auckland

2009-12-03T10:52:00.008+13:00

November 7
Mom and I were up before the crack of dawn waiting for our shuttle to take us to the airport. The flight was short but pretty.
Crazy Mountains
Last view of the south island
First view of the North Island, it was cloudy but you could see that mountain poking out.
After landing, we took a shuttle to our hotel. Turns out the nice hotel we found online was actually in the ghetto suburb of Auckland and not all that great of a hotel. Or maybe we were spoiled after staying at the Windsor, either way, not my favorite. I'm pretty sure we napped for awhile, the whole 4:00 am thing caught up with us. Afterwards, we decided to try out the bus system and go to the inner city Auckland. First we hiked a ways to the bus station, even more in the ghetto. Now I don't mind looking like an idiot, it doesn't bother me but we stuck out real bad. I felt a little nervous because it was like we were wearing signs that said we are tourists, come rob us. We didn't know what bus to ride and jumped on the first one that looked good. Thankfully we ended up in Auckland. Now I like Christchurch, it was easy to get around and felt nice. Auckland was not, it was huge, full of people, I felt exposed and out of place.

We stopped for some lunch at a little cafe and wandered over to the sky tower. It was a huge tourist spot but I was not feeling any of this that day. We decided to wander to the docks and walk around for awhile. Somewhere in there, we found the major bus station and finally got ourselves some maps. Now I could sort of figure out how to get places by bus. Here are a couple pictures of what we saw by the docks and such.
Ferry building
Ferry and the huge Hilton on the pier
The local wildlife
The Hilton pier, I walked all the way to the end and was amazed at all the expensive resturants along the way.
The sky tower thing from far away
kick ass boat
The restaurant I found in between all the super expensive one where we ate. We had the best seafood fettuccine I have ever eaten. yum!
The entire meal, I was listening to these two people next to us. It was the weirdest thing... all I know was that she was from another country and he was telling her things to do and stuff... but it wasn't like friends talking, it was like she was a mail-order bride and they just met. Weird.

We decided to head back to the hotel and somehow made to the bus stop. The bus ride back to the hotel, like the way to Auckland was about 20 minutes. It felt like forever. There are interesting people on the bus though and it makes for good people watching. Back in the hotel, we had a TV in our room so we crashed and were lazy the rest of the night. We did decide that we were going to the botanic gardens the next day and I mapped us out a bus route to get there. I thought about the beach but to be honest, I was not liking the bus and the less I had to be on it the better so we ended up just doing the gardens. Yeah I know, more flowers but it was way better than fighting people in a dirty city. Besides, Mom and I like flowers/gardens.

November 8 - Last full day in NZ
We took our time the next morning getting ready, hiked to the bus stop again and got on the right bus. We missed our connecting bus and had to wait around an hour for the next bus to the gardens. Finally we made it and it was a joyous moment. We were starving by this time and hit the cafe right away. De-lish!

Then it was time for the gardens and they were huge. I'm assuming you are tired of looking at flower pictures so I'll capture the highlights.
Bird sculpture
More art
Me and the big fern, ask mom, I was obsessed with these for some reason
Artichokes! I had never seen them growing before, it was neat
We walked all the way to the back of the gardens and then the best thing ever... we saw wild parrots!! I was so excited and it was so cool!
I tried to get more pictures but they didn't want to stay in one spot too long. They were flying around us in the trees. I totally didn't want to leave but we moved on to the rose gardens. Though I did see the birds some more. It was so fun to see them flying and hear them calling to each other :)

Rose gardens- these gardens were in full bloom, I have never seen so many roses at once. They were beautiful.
I caught Mom smelling some
me and some orange ones, my favorite :)
After that we wandered through more gardens.
Luckily for all of you, my camera died after this and I didn't have any spare batteries. I was mad at myself for not having extras. Oh well, we saw more flowers, trees and spent another couple hours there.

Then it was back to the bus and hotel. This time we had better timing on the buses and didn't have to wait forever anywhere. We ate at the hotel resturant that night and had a lively conversation with our waiter. I was going to swim in the pool but it was right on the porch outside the resturant... I didn't want an audience and it was cold water. We relaxed the rest of the evening and packed for our trip home the next day.

November 9 - Heading home
I was excited to be finally heading home. The vacation was great and I had a blast but I was ready to go home. We had great weather the entire trip so it was fitting that it was raining on our last day, sort of like NZ was sad we were leaving.
Looking out the window
Woo I'm going home!
My flight was in the afternoon so Mom and I went to breakfast and watched TV all morning until our shuttle came to take us to the airport. Our shuttle driver smelled so bad... and then we were trapped in the van with him... it was terrible. I couldn't breath... trust me, it was bad.

Mom and I killed some time in the airport, people watching and book shopping. Then I had to leave her for my flight, we were not on the same flight home which kind of sucked. The trip to LAX was long, I watched 4 movies and tried to sleep. It didn't really happen.

November 9 again
After we landed I had to pick up my luggage, drop it off somewhere else, then wait in line for security. I was so tired after that, I found a corner of gate and sleep on the floor. After a 5 hour layover, I was on my way to Denver. I was supposed to have a 4 hour layover in Denver but by the luck of the gods, the flight to Laramie in the afternoon was delayed and I was able to get on that flight. Woo home 2 hours before I was supposed to be! and there was Damian!! The best part about getting home. :) I mean who wouldn't want to come home to this...
Sorry Damian, I had to put this picture up... too funny!

So my adventure was over. I had been to the end of the world and back... and now I was home!

Last Day in Christchurch

2009-11-25T09:36:00.007+13:00

November 6
Our last day in Christchurch was very relaxed. Both of us were tired of traveling around and pooped in general. We started off the morning by spending a bunch of money at the Art Center, always a good time. I got myself a wooden spoon, I'm very happy about my spoon. I have a thing for wooden spoon right now and I can't tell you why, I just like them. Anyway, after emptying the bank, we walked back to the botanical gardens. We wanted to see if the roses were blooming some more and hit the buildings because they were closed last time. Besides, what is better than spending time outside looking at flowers. Again, I took way too many pictures of flowers. I'll show a couple of my favorites.
I've got a thing for ducks too.
We ate at the cafe in the center of the gardens for lunch and continued looking at flowers. We wandered through several buildings, starting with this one.
There was some really cool things inside.
Bananas! It was love at first sight!
Then it was back outside to check out the roses. There were a few more blooming but still not a bunch.

My bird friend.
We liked the spiky plant.
Cool tree
After looking at thousands of flowers, we went into the Canterbury Museum. Very cool. I have no idea how long we spent in there, it was awhile. We headed to dinner then and ended up getting a free meal because the waitress forgot about us. Not too bad. The next morning we were flying to Auckland at the butt crack of dawn so we headed back to the hotel to pack. We had some tea, packed up and passed out early.

I'm going to pack all of Auckland into the next entry. I didn't like Auckland all that much. It was too big and we had some bus adventures but I'll get to that in the next one. Cheers!

Lyttleton

2009-11-24T05:39:00.008+13:00

November 5
This was our last day with the car so we decided to drive toward Lyttleton and see what we could find. We were driving along the coast and through little towns when we came across a beach. Of course we stopped. It was fantastic. Not quite warm enough to go swimming but walking along the beach was just fine for us. Mom right away began collecting shells and I was just enjoying the sun, sand and water.
I was teasing Mom about collecting too many shells, by this time she already had a handful. It was fun. We stayed here for over an hour before we decided it was time to move on. We continued on the same road and we were going to drive all the way to the point by Lyttleton. We turned onto the road that would take us there and I decided I was going to have none of this. This little road was tiny and up ahead there was this turn right along the side of a cliff with barely any room and no guard rails. We would be hanging off cliffs the entire time and I didn't want to do that. So we turned around and headed into the town of Lyttleton.

We stopped at the time station ball, every day at noon the ball drops according to Greenwich time so that sailors would know the time. It was neat, but we didn't want to pay to go inside.
Here is looking down towards the harbor.
We drove through Lyttleton and took a tunnel back towards Christchurch where we could ride the Gondala. It brings you to this awesome spot where you can look out at Christchurch and Lyttleton and basically see the whole pennisula.

Riding up and looking back
looking up towards the top
Mom wasn't quite as impressed with the heights as I was since we were swinging in this little box above the ground. We saw some sheep though.
Coming in for a landing
At the top, there is a gift store, cafe and an observation deck where you can really see everything. It was really really cool.
Me
Lyttleton
Christchurch, you can see the tall buildings where central city is and cathedral square.
The beach where we were earlier.
While Mom looked through the gift store, I took a hike around the building. There were some trails if you wanted to walk along the ridge but I just took the circle around the building.
After riding down, we were going to check out this park where there was supposed to be Maori village. Turns out it was pretty fake so we moved on. To where you ask... back to the beach of course! My shoes came off and I headed for the water. It was fabulous.
Show me your shells Mom!
Me
Crab shell, look he is smiling!
Oh my god what is that glowing thing, it is too bright to look at! oh its just my legs...
Mom is hunting...for the perfect shell.
It was an excellent walk. I got my feet wet, wandered through the sand. It was the best. Afterward, Mom and I ate some dinner, seafood sampler that was no where enough food. We then went shopping in Cathedral Square, last minutes souvenirs. We stopped again for a snack and went back to relax in the hotel. It was a great day, I love the beach.

Cheers!

Hanmer Springs

2009-11-23T05:49:00.005+13:00

November 4
On our second day with the car, we decided to drive north to Hanmer Springs and sit in the hot springs all day. The drive was gorgeous, we went by vineyards, mountains and cool rivers. I was driving but I decided that I was going to take pictures anyway. Here are a few from the road.
Hanmer Springs was a cute little town with everything based around the hot springs. Here is our sweet ride.
We walked around for a bit, got the lay of the land and decided to walk over to a quilt shop. It turned out to be a little more than a short walk, more like a trek but we made it. It was a very pretty walk though.
Of course I found some horses.
We ate lunch at a cafe next to the quilt shop. We decided it was time to hit the hot springs. It was fun. They had some really hot sulfer ones, they were pretty stinky but of course I had to get in. Mom and I stayed in there for more than 2 hours. It was very nice.

Afterwards, I decided to take a hike on one of the several walking trails. It was really peaceful nice hike, along a stream.
As I was walking I found this old house in the woods. I explored around it for awhile, there were flowers in the clearing right next to the house. It was pretty cool, made me wish Lindsey was there to ramble with me.
After my hike, we headed back to Christchurch. It was about a 2 hour drive back but just as pretty on the way back. We had to stop for gas on the way home. I jumped out of the car thinking how hard is it to fill a gas tank. I try to open the gas cover and it doesn't open. I tried pulling, prying and wedging something in there. I could not get the damn thing open. I ended up having to ask someone else who stopped how to open this gas thing. Turns out there is a little switch under the driver's seat that lets the gas cover open. I was so embarrassed. She was laughing and was like "how dumb do you feel right now?" oh pretty dumb. I finally filled the tank and we were on our way. I felt so stupid but it was pretty funny.

We finally got back to the hotel. I was always very relieved when we made it to where we needed to be and always very happy to get out of the car. I think I would rather walk in strange cities. Anyways, we went to find some dinner and since we were both tired, we went to the Dux which was close. I was starving and wolfed down my food. Then we both relaxed in the hotel lounge, drinking tea and watching some TV. I think we went to bed early that night, it was a busy day.

Cheers!

Akoroa

2009-11-21T15:41:00.008+13:00

November 3
The first thing we did after breakfast was head downtown to pick up our car. After all the paperwork and insurance stuff, we were given the key and our adventure began.

The girl walked us out to the street and pointed down the road at our car. It was this tiny pink car. Yes pink. The steering wheel was on the right and it was so little. I've never driven such a tiny looking car but I was ready to conquer. We got in, I was driving, I adjusted the mirrors and such and then I pulled out into traffic, on the left side of the road of course.

I bet you are expecting some crazy crash story but no... I managed fairly well. I kept up a little mantra in my head and most times out loud "Turn into the left, turn into the left..." We worked our way out of town, only having to circle one block and then suddenly we were out of the city and on the highway. The speed limit was 100km/hour but I got no where near there all morning. The road to Akoroa was winding and up a mountain then down. It was so weird driving on the other side of the car and road, that I was not going fast for awhile.

We stopped at Hilltop to look at the view. It was beautiful.
There were some sheep in the field in front of us. Cute little lambs
Mom
and me
We continued on to Akoroa. It was a cute town right on the harbor. I had some tiny problems driving, missed parking spots, driving really slow... possibely drove the wrong way down a one way... I'm still not sure.

Finally I parked and we got some lunch. Here are some random pics.
We had scheduled a harbor cruise for the afternoon. They were going to take us around Akoroa harbor, hopefully we would see some dolphins and seals. Here was the boat we went out in.
Like usual I took tons of pictures but I'm only going to put a couple.
Some birds
Neat cave
End of the harbor
The great Pacific Ocean going on for miles and miles until you reach Antarctica.
Looking back at the harbor.
They took us out a little bit to look for Hector dolphins. They are the smallest dolphins in the world and are a little hard to spot in the big ocean. It took a little while but we got to see some!
There were some blue penguins too. It is hard to tell they are there but they are. They were even littler than the dolphins. I finally got to see a penguin :)
We even got to see a baby dolphin, not a new born but probably a year old or less.
My customary self portrait.
After awhile we had to head back to town. On the way we stopped to see some seals.
A salmon nursery
It was the best trip ever. It was the funnest thing we did on the whole trip. I loved it. After the tour, we walked around the little shops and stopped for icecream. This little guy wanted some too. Look how red his beak and feet are. He was really pretty.
The town closed down at 5 pm so we headed back to Christchurch. I decided that I had to at least go the speed limit once so on a straight stretch, I floored it to a whole 100km/hour. Woo! Crazy wild! :) Hehe, I was finally catching on to this driving business.

We ate dinner at Le Cafe near the art center and relaxed for the rest of the evening. It was a great day, the tour was awesome. Mom had a lot of fun too. Everything was so great.

Cheers everyone!

More Christchurch

2009-11-19T10:40:00.011+13:00

November 2
After breakfast, Mom really wanted to get her hair cut and Leslie had given me her gift certificate to get a massage that she had won at Crary bingo but didn't have time to go to. We wandered over to a salon that one of the ladies at the hotel recommended. We made an appointment for her then wandered over to the massage place and made me an appointment. The appointments were in the afternoon so we decided to head to cathedral square to do some shopping. This is the cathedral and a couple other pictures in the square.
There was this little cart in the square selling fried rice and noodles, I had this sudden craving for chinese food and had to have some noodles. We ate lunch in the square and I scared seagulls away just for fun.

After I had my massage and Mom had her hair did, we wandered through the a little park on the way back to the hotel.
Mom's new super cute hair
For the evening, we had tickets to see a Maori show and a tour of Willowbank Reserve. I was finally going to see some kiwi birds! I was pumped.

First was the show. It was a little cheesy and staged but fun none the less. We learned some history from our guide then took a little walk through the woods. This is our guide.
Then all of a sudden some native Maori jumped out of the bushes and challenged our chief! (poor kid was the only man in our group and thus automatically the chief of our group)
So our chief did the peaceful thing and picked up the greenery offering. Then met and shook hands with their chief.
We learned some more about the people, their houses, games they played and some fighting techniques.
Then it was time to gather and have a show. They danced and sang for us. In respect to the performers there was no picture taking. The women did this dance with these ball thingys and then we got to go up and perform the dance.
I sucked royally at this and could not catch the damn swinging ball. It was a good laugh though.
Then the men did a haka or a kind of war call. Of course our chief had to learn it and he did a fantastic job by himself.
It was a good time, lots of singing and chanting and dancing.

Afterwards, it was time to go on our animal tour to the kiwi house. The first thing the guy did was feed some eels. I'm sorry but these are just nasty and creepy. This picture is for Damian. Yuck!
Then we walked into a little enclosure where there were these little cuties living.
We fed them too. I wanted to take one home with me, they were so cute and friendly.
There were tons of other birds but I wasn't really able to get any good pictures. They were too far away or behind fences. Here are some pigs.
Or rather one pig, the other one never lifted his head out of his dish which was right up against the fence.

And then... we got to the kiwi house. There was a little display before we walked in. Here is a kiwi egg in comparision to other eggs.
A little stuffed adolescent kiwi.
and a kiwi skeleton.
The anticipation was intense, we were about to see a real live kiwi. We walked into the kiwi house... we could hear them moving... and making cute little noises... and then suddenly there was a kiwi!
Pretty cool huh... I forgot to tell you, they are nocturnal animals and live in a little dark hut. We could take pictures but no flash, no disrupting or scaring the kiwis. We watched them for awhile and trust me, they are some of the coolest birds. They were super cute and funny to watch.

Here are some other birds we saw on the tour. This is not a kiwi but a bird that looks similar and they live in the daylight.
Mom and I had some time after the tour to wander around the rest of the reserve. More pictures of animals.
This duck looked messed up but I think this is how they looked normally...
Pre-teen ducks in the bushes
Look at the baby...
This little guy was leading the way
And of course, more birds. They were my favorite.
This little guy talked and whistled with me. I wanted to take him home too. :)
And then lastly a lemur, just because.
So ends the tour of NZ animals. We rode back in the free shuttle with a bunch of the performers. The shuttle driver recommended a buffet... not so good. I made sure I ate about 10 dollars worth of dessert to make up for the lack of good dinner food.

Time for bed. Next day was a big one. I was going to try my hand at driving. Sounds easy until you realize that they drive on the opposite side of the road and the steering wheel is on the other side of the car. But I will leave that tale for the next entry. Cheers!

New Zealand

2009-11-15T13:51:00.006+13:00

October 31
As I mentioned in the last entry, my vacation started with a fantastic breakfast. My mom was going to arrive around noon so Leslie and I went downtown to do some shopping. We then headed over to the arts center where there was a big outside market being held. It is only on the weekends and we were lucky to be able to go. It is like a big outside craft sale, each vendor has a booth of stuff and it took awhile to wander around. We were basically enjoying being outside in the sun without having to be bundled up to our eyes. I felt naked with only a t-shirt and jeans on.

By then it was a little after noon so we headed back to the hotel to see if mom had gotten there yet. We found her in our room, pooped from the flight. We went back to the art center where there is a nice little cafe for lunch. I had a fantastic panini sandwich. All three of us walked around the market again. Since we were all tired from traveling, we decided to go back to the hotel and take a nap. I think we just hung out until it was time for dinner.

We met Mahesh in the lounge and all walked over to this little Italian resturant. Leslie and I ate there once before with Terry and we knew it was really good. It was a great dinner, I had pumpkin ricotta ravioli... sorry I was really excited about all the good food we ate. It was nice to have fresh food. After dinner, we all headed back to the hotel. Mahesh had a super early flight and went to bed. Mom was tired so she went to bed. Leslie and I watched a murder mystery on TV in the lounge. It was a nice relaxing day. Happy Halloween!

November 1
Leslie, Mom and I had another excellent breakfast. One of the owners of the hotel has a really neat old car and offered to take us for a ride around Christchurch. Here I am pretending to drive. I look pretty cool :)
Riding Dirty
Yeah I'm a dork but it was fun. We were able to see a bunch of sites and side streets that we wouldn't normally see. Afterwards, we headed downtown. We had lunch and then Leslie had to leave to catch her flight for Sydney. Mom and I headed to the visitor center. We checked out some things, booked a couple tours and rented a car for three days. We headed to a couple of towns outside Christchurch but I'll save that for the next couple entries. We went back to the hotel, Mom took a nap and I laid around the lounge and on the porch in the sun.

After relaxing, Mom and I headed to the botanic gardens. It was so beautiful. It is their spring so flowers were blooming everywhere. We walked along the Avon river and there were bunches of ducks. And baby duckies!
We went to the rose gardens but it was just a little early for all the roses to be blooming. There were a couple early ones. I took a bunch of pictures, here are a couple.
There were native gardens with some kick ass ferns...
huge trees...
and tons of flowers. I took about a hundred pictures of different flowers but I'm only going to put a couple up here. Wouldn't want to give anyone a flower overdose.
Mom was in flower heaven :) It was a fantastic afternoon. After that we walked across the street to the art center. The buildings are really neat and old.
We had plans to meet up with David from the seal group who was passing through after backpacking around the south island. We ate at the Dux de Lux which is a good little vegetarian and seafood restaurant. I had the fresh fish with this super good lime breading. Sorry food again. It was nice to see someone I knew and we had a great chat. We all walked back to the hotel together. The rest of the night, Mom and I relaxed. Mom read a book and I watched TV in the lounge for awhile. It was nice to have some normal tv again.

I'll continue our adventures in the next entry. Cheers!

Back in the States

2009-11-14T10:34:00.005+13:00

Officially I have been back since Monday but I was so tired when I got home, I took a couple of days to sleep. Also to spend some time with Damian before he left for the next job. It is Friday and I'm still tired, the time change is killing me.

I last left you on Oct. 30, my last day on the ice and the day we flew out. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny, almost made you want to stick around for awhile longer but NZ and home were calling. I answered and got on the plane.

We flew back on a C-17 again.
They are loading our luggage into the tail of the plane. We rode out to the airstrip in a Delta, very classy.
These things are huge. I'm barely taller than the tires...
We were flying out on the ice runway, it is closer to McMurdo and was built in the time we were here. They use it until the ice becomes too soft to land airplanes on it but for now it works great. Here is a Herk, it has skis instead of tires. They fly these planes to remote field camps and to the South Pole. I thought it was pretty cool.
So into the plane we go for our 5 hour flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. There were a lot less people leaving than when we arrived. The plane was almost empty and we had lots of room to walk around and look out the two tiny windows in the back.
I spent as much time as possible looking out the windows while we were still over the ice. It was really cool.
I saw glaciers and snow covered mountains...
and broken sea ice.
Two very happy girls heading to warmer places...
And here was my last view of the ice before we were out in the Pacific Ocean. There are some clouds along the shore but you can still see some mountains.
It was a pretty uneventful flight. We arrived in Christchurch about 10 pm I think. When I stepped out of the plane, the air smelled wonderful... there was water in the air, I could smell flowers and grass. And it was green everywhere and there were trees and it was dark and green... It was great.

We then loaded onto a bus to head to customs. We got our baggage, went through customs and walked over to the CDC to return our gear. It was sad to say goodbye to big red but I kept my name tag and left all my gear in the changing room. By this time it was 11 pm and we took a shuttle to our hotel, the Windsor. Mahesh, Leslie and I went to bed right away, it was a long flight but we were all happy to be off the ice.

The next morning we met for breakfast... there was fresh fruit and bunches of good things. It was great. It was a really nice way to start off vacation. I'll continue with that in the next entry.
Cheers!

I'm on Vacation

2009-11-04T09:06:00.001+13:00

I do plan on writing some more here for everyone but it will be after I get home most likely. I'm on vacation!! I have a bunch more pictures to show everyone and a lot from NZ. Check back next week for a bunch of postings.
Cheers!

Last Day on the Ice

2009-10-30T08:52:00.004+13:00

It is a beautiful, sunny day and the winds are not super crazy. What a great day to fly out. I'm excited and sad all at once. Everybody has been so nice and some are sad to see us go. I can't believe the adventure on the ice is almost over. It is going to be a like a dream and never happened after I leave.

Wed night we watched Blazing Saddles and then I did some laundry. Thursday was a crazy busy day. We were up early. Finished packing up the lab. Then we had to pack and clean our rooms for room inspection. Then back to the lab to pack our cargo and clean the lab. We were checked out and it was off to finish packing our room. We had to clean our offices and then dropped our bags off at bag drag.

After the craziness and being super busy. Leslie and I met up with Rich at the coffee house and have drinks. Several drinks in fact and we stayed out past 11 pm. More people met up with us there and it was a grand ol' time. We went for a late night Frosty Boy (ice cream) run and took showers. I was up past midnight, yeah I know, getting wild and crazy. :) Leslie and I were laughing because we were out so late for us.

Today has still been busy, we had to get our cargo to where it needed to be, papers needed to be signed and now I can sit for a bit because I think we are finally ready to go. I still need to turn in all my keys.

I took some random pictures again.
This is taking our last load up to Cosray yesterday morning. Turns out it was condition 2 weather.
Looking off the road to where the ice shelf is
Remember Ob hill? This is it in nice weather...
Ob Hill, same spot, next day, Condition 2 weather...
Crazy Antarctic Weather.

Later that night, it was beautiful. Here is a couple pictures taken at 11:30 pm after we got out of the coffee house. Remember it is night, it is time for sleeping...
Holy brightness
The moon
This is how it looks all night now. Nice and bright.

I think we've come to the end of my Antarctic journey. We'll eat lunch and then get ready to head off in the C-17 this afternoon. Fly 5 hours and land in Christchurch where my New Zealand adventure can begin with my mom. It has been a great trip and I'm glad I could share it with you. Next time you hear from me, I'll be in a warmer and wetter place. Good bye from Antarctica!!! See you in New Zealand!!

Cheers!!!

Packing

2009-10-28T15:34:00.006+13:00

Things are winding down here on the ice. We have been packing up things in the lab and putting everything away in storage. We took two van loads to Cosray to put in storage. We were returning things, gathering millions of empty boxes that we have somehow collected over two months, taking inventory and lots of lifting. Busy, busy. We got a lot done today. I was taking some pictures as we went through the day. Here is a bunch of randoms.

I've titled this one "F**king with the antenna", it is a bit of an inside joke.
The van
Science support center
After stopping at Cosray, we took a little detour so I could get a picture by the Scott base sign. Scott Base is in the background.
Looking out from the building 70 road
Ob hill, but I'm going to call it a small mountain. Ob mountain.
Looking down at the Cosray building from the road
The orange and white ball on the hill.
Ob mountain again
Coming back down into town.
And a really good rule to live by. I found this in Cosray. It made me smile.
In case you can't read it, it says "First Rule of the Arctic, Shut the Door!" :)

Tonight I think it is a Blazing Saddles night and enjoying some time with friends. Speaking of friends, these are guys are ready to head home. These are the looks I get while trying to get work done in the office. Impatient little guys.
Otis and Milo.

Cheers!

Last Balloon Launch

2009-10-27T14:40:00.003+13:00

Only a couple days left on the ice. We were not able to launch a balloon on Sunday but we decided to go for it on Monday morning. It was another rubber balloon. These are a little different than our big plastic ones. We are able to fill these inside and then just walk the balloon out and let go. These really sucked at first but I think we have it down now. I took a couple pictures so you could see the difference.

Leslie is holding the balloon as it fills with helium.
After we fill the balloon, we tie it off and add the ozonesonde. Mahesh is holding it while we finish getting it ready.
Then we open the door and take it to the launch site.
Here we are just before we let it go. We waited for a Delta to pass by but he decided to stop and take a few pictures himself. It was a nice photo shoot then we let it go.
This one was named Sirius (Black) Sonde and he did very well. We filled it perfectly again and he made it to 8 millibars, which is just what we want. I went up to Building 70 and finished my book. It was a very successful launch. The data wasn't great because we were on the edge of the vortex, which isn't what we want but oh well.

Didn't do anything cool the rest of the day. Leslie and I watched a movie, The Hunting Party, it was an excellent movie. Crazy but really good. Today, we started off the day by packing up a bunch of stuff in the lab. We have to sort it out whether it is going home or being stored here and where. Takes some time. Our lab looks pretty sad now, boxes and packing stuff everywhere. Guess the adventure has to end sometime. Other than that, I'm trying to write and thinking about my vacation in New Zealand.

I will leave you with a little artwork of Leslie's. Something I rather enjoy. Cheers!

Observation Hill

2009-10-25T12:00:00.008+13:00

It is my last Sunday in McMurdo and so far, it has been pretty good. We slept in and relaxed this morning, then had our last Sunday brunch. Fantastic as usual and I ate what I shouldn't as usual. We are supposed to try and launch a balloon today but so far we are waiting because of vortex issues again. Maybe later this afternoon if the stars in the universe align in just the right way and everything is perfect in the atmosphere...

After the Scott's hut tour on Friday, nothing else big happened. We went to the coffee house where Leslie whooped Mark's butt in Othello. We played some other games and then those two played battleship. I was suppose to be helping but I was too busy playing with Leslie's sunk ships.

Saturday was a day. The morning was alright. Then I took a fantastic nap to get up to a not so great email. So I was crabby for awhile and ready to go home. After dinner we decided to climb ob hill since it was one of the last things on my list of things to do before we leave the ice list. It was a nice night for it, little wind, it was sunny until we started walking. Overall very nice. This is how nice ob looks from town, innocent and inviting.
Everything was joyful and happy as we started out. We walked out of town and up the street to the road leading to that green building in the middle of the last pic. We start trekking up this nice level road to the trailhead and I'm already tired. But alas, we make it to the start of the major uphill journey and we are officially one third of the way up.

So we start climbing, Mahesh is like a mountain goat and just cruises up the trail like he is walking on a cloud. Meanwhile, Leslie and I are struggling up the slippery rock trail, carefully treading over the snowy places because one slip and we are goners down the side of this "hill". Many breathing breaks later we make it to the two thirds way post. I had a good picture but for some reason this stupid blogger will not load this one picture and only this one. I'm amazed I got this far and I look up to see the steepest part of the trail ahead. I take a deep breath and continue up, slipping on rocks, picking out the best way up. Of course, Mahesh is already up there waiting. Some of the trail is steep enough that I put my hands out just a little and I'm grabbing rocks on the trail above me. After a few harrowing spots and some minor rock climbing, I make it to the top. Of course I yelled out a cry of triumph and happiness. This is the fantastic view I had.
Scott's BaseMcMurdo and Hut point
Across the sea ice to Mount Discovery
It was pretty awesome. I was proud of myself for making it up there. I made it all the way without hurting myself or falling to my death, just to slip off a rock at the top. Luckily, I just jarred my knee and didn't fall over the edge. Little scary for both Mahesh and I, but I was ok. Of course there is a cross up here, like a lot of places in Antarctica. This one is for Scott and his men who died on the way to the South Pole.
Mahesh took my picture above McMurdo
And then the famous picture of myself by myself. Now I'm not sure why I had this face. I'm just a dork.
Yay I made it to the top and it was cool...

Then I had to go down the mountain. Coming up sucked and going back down sucked more. I ended up just sliding down the majority of the way on my butt, over snow and rocks. Didn't matter, I wasn't risking my life by walking. And yes it was that steep, I'm not making this up because I'm a whimp. Ask Mahesh and Leslie, they slid on their butts too. Finally I made it back down the to the road. I was exhausted and my legs didn't want to work anymore. We went and had a strong drink after that.

Whoever told me that it was an easy hike that will take you about 45 minutes if you go slow... lied. Maybe for super in shape people who climb mountains for fun but this lovely trip took me about 2 hours. It was one of those things that I'm glad I did but will never do again.

Have a great weekend everyone! Cheers!

Scott's Hut

2009-10-23T14:30:00.005+13:00

Happy Friday! I've got a couple things for you all today. First, we were finally able to launch a balloon yesterday. It was super windy all morning and then we just decided to do it, wind or not. The temperatures were warm enough in the stratosphere to launch a rubber balloon which I think we all handled very well. We had to wait for the C-17 to land after we had filled the balloon but over all it was a good launch. We were able to get really good data and it went nice and high. So long Sophie!

It was also Leslie's birthday yesterday. We attached a note to the balloon and made it her birthday balloon. There was even cake at lunch and some super good banana chocolate cake at dinner. All of us went to the coffee house after dinner and Rich bought a bottle of wine to share. There were good games, good people and good drinks. It was fun and I think Leslie had a good time.

Today, we took a tour of Scott's Discovery Hut. It's that hut I took pictures of before, the one with the dead seal. It was pretty neat inside. There were lots of old tools, cooking supplies, food cartons, clothes and random dead things.
The main room. I say main room but it was really one big room with blankets hung up to make rooms. Kitchen area
Some typical clothing
Shelves of random things
Some really really old biscuits Everything was labeled special. These are special dog biscuits
Oh my god it's a ghost!! Haha just kidding. That is what happens when you breath while taking pictures. Took awhile to get used to holding my breath to get good pictures.
Now for some really, really old dead carcasses. Mmmm ready for dinner, it's seal tonight! :)
Cool box label
Here is the ceiling, they built the entire place with no insulation. They used an Australian design and it was a bad idea. The design was supposed to keep the place cool in the summer and I have no idea why they thought it would keep it warmer in the winter. Didn't work that way. Since it was so cold inside all the time, they never really used it as a living hut. It was used for storage mostly but they did have to live in it once for about 5 months when they were stuck there for a winter.
the hut
I am amazed and impressed with the old explorers. They lived off little food, ate their dogs and somehow stayed warm and alive through all their adventures. Well most of them. They were all crazy I think.

So that was my morning, I've just been analyzing ozone data and transfering it to Terry for the rest of the day. Tonight I think we are going to the coffee house to hang out again. We only have a week left so we are trying to see some people before we leave. Cheers!

Hehe this is the troll that lives under the bridge between Crary and 155. :)

Weather Update

2009-10-21T08:58:00.003+13:00

The weather has decided to remind us that we are in Antarctica. The last couple of weeks have been super nice with temperatures hovering around 0F. We've had windy days but nothing extreme. Today, the cold is back. It is -18F with winds of around 15 knots with some nice gusts making wind chills of -40F or lower. Brr!

I can hear the wind whipping around the building and carrying snow and dust with it. This is how lovely it looks outside.
Ob hill is almost completely gone.
Looking out the other side of the building, you cannot see the mountains across the ice or even the ice for that matter.
Looking at a snow drift below the window. Lots of snow moving around.
Oh Antarctica, yes I remember you are a cold, windy, dry, lonely place.

Enjoy your warmth everyone!

Quick update

2009-10-20T09:22:00.004+13:00

I'm just going to give you a quick update of the last couple days.

Sat night - movie night, we watched Wimbledon, very cute movie.

Sun- I had a fabulous day but for reasons of my own, I'm not going to post any pictures. I'll show you when I get home if you are interested because I did get some awesome pictures. It was the one day where I didn't do any work at all, I was in the office briefly but didn't do any work. It was nice to take a whole day of break. Later we went to the Sunday Science lecture. It was given by a cameraman from the BBC on their new production of Frozen Planet which is like Planet Earth. It looks like its going to be a fabulous series and I can't wait to see it.

Mon - Again we couldn't launch, the vortex is not working out for us. So we cleaned up half of our lab since we only have 10 days left. Packed up a bunch of stuff. All our friends left on the flight that went out, now it is just our group left from Winfly. Kind of sad.

Tues - So far the day has sucked. We still can't launch, it's windy, I can't get this ozone data analyzed because I don't know what I'm doing and still missing some sort of program or something. I don't know cuz I don't know what I'm doing. That and I really don't want to write on my thesis. I don't know what I'm doing for that either. So I hit the chocolate early this morning and am now taking a break.

Here are some random photos.
Our victory wine :)
Ready to start the day.
Having myself a blasty blast.
Coming to the end of my journey, 10 days left or less if we can't launch a balloon soon. I'm happy but sad all at once. I really like it here but I think I'm ready to come home.
Cheers!

Little Science

2009-10-17T13:59:00.004+13:00

I don't really have anything new to write about. Thursday night we went to the coffee house to meet the seal group but they had some last minute things to take care of so we hung out with a bunch of people from Crary. It was quite entertaining and fun.

Friday, we were supposed to launch another sonde but we are not in the vortex. This means there is no ozone hole above us and we just have to wait. I finished untangling the parachute and we cleaned up some more instruments. Did everyone hear about the balloon boy? This was the big subject of the day because it was so ridiculous. First off that balloon would never carry a small boy, way too small. Second, what the hell is wrong with those parents... I have no words for the stupidity that went on yesterday.

Friday night we met the seal group at the coffee house to claim our reward. It was a very nice night of visiting and drinking wine, well I had hot chocolate with Amaretto but very good. So that was two nights in a row I was out past 9:30 pm. Crazy! I know... Didn't quite make it to 10 either night but give me a break, I'm up at 6:30 am and I'm tired. I like sleeping.

Today we couldn't launch a balloon again, we are still waiting, hopefully soon... I did some random data analysis, little bit of writing, made some batteries, small things.

Since I have nothing new to tell you, I decided to go back to a subject I talked a little bit about at the beginning of the season, the LIDAR. Give you a little science. The Lidar is a laser that shoots a beam of green light into the stratosphere. The laser light gets scattered on the particles within the atmosphere and some of that light is collected by a large telescope then recorded. We are most interested in PSCs or polar stratospheric clouds and the Lidar can tell us if there are any clouds, how big they are and what they are made of. We all learned to run it and it was kinda cool. This is the sign you see as you walk into the lab.
It is my favorite sign in all of McMurdo. Because of the power of the laser, we are required to wear these kick ass goggles. This is me late one night when I was running it by myself, I was staying entertained at least. God I look so cool. ;)
We asked what would happen if we didn't wear the goggles and Jason, who was teaching us to run it, told us our eyeballs would explode like an egg in the microwave. Needless to say, I always wore the goggles.

Here is the actual set up.
The really big cylinder is the telescope and that thing sticking up next to it, is the laser. The box underneath is called a chopper and it "chops" out bad data from other light sources, like the sun. Hence why we had to run it when it was dark and no longer run it because its light all the time. Next pic is a close up of the laser and telescope.
I think I was bored in the next one. I look really dumb but I think we can all have a giggle over it. (Lindsey, this one is mostly for you. Smile! :)
The next photo is one of Leslie's. Here camera has a longer exposure setting. This is what the laser looks like as it shoots into the sky.
It is pretty neat to watch and everyone always tended to notice when we were running it. Someone said we were trying to shoot down airplanes. Another said we were signaling to aliens. Everyone had their own version of what we were doing. I just liked the goggles.

Have a great weekend everyone! Congratulations to Deanna and Ian who are getting married, today for me and tomorrow for all of you. Cheers!

The Beat Goes On

2009-10-15T13:01:00.004+13:00

Hello everyone,
I have a bunch of random things to cover in this entry since it has been a couple days since the last. First off, congrats to my parents and happy anniversary! Together 30 years on the 13th :) Sorry I called a day early for you but it was tuesday for me... just not you yet.

Tuesday was a busy day. Leslie and Mahesh went out in the helo to recover the last instrument. I almost was able to go with but they could only take two. Everything went well and they found it with no problem. They had to dig it out of the snow but everything is back safe and sound. Terry left that day for the states so it was busy making sure we had things covered before he left. He taught me to analyze our ozone data and now it's my job to do it. I also have to fill in the flight book with after each flight. After he left and we organized ourselves, we decided to launch a balloon that night. So after dinner, we launched Stanley sonde. I was able to use the helium gun and fill the balloon for the first time. It was kind of fun to blast helium with this huge gun. It was my turn to sit in Building 70 so I spent the next three hours up the hill. I had my own little dance party and called Lindsey. Her buddy was making fun of me because I was calling her at 1 am but it was only 7 pm for me. It was also very odd to walk out of the building at 9:30 pm and have it look like this...
I mean, its beautiful but really bright for 9:30 at night. Here is another view.
Wed. was pretty mellow. I caught up my lab notebook and wrote some more on my thesis chapter. Nothing too major. Took a couple pictures of the chalet now that they put up all the flags.
Later that night, we watched Zodiac at the coffee house. Long but good movie. Kinda creepy. But we walked out of there at 10:15 pm and it was a shock to come out into bright sunshine again. It looked like 3:00 in the afternoon. I don't think I'll ever get used to having it light all the time. I like it when it gets dark at night.

Today we cleaned in the lab, packed up our big instruments and I spent an hour trying to untangle the parachute from the last launch. It is a mess. We are meeting with the seal group tonight to get our reward for the bet we had with them. We were betting who would get all their instruments back first. They had 5 seals worth and we had 3 in the field. They had 4 seals back before we even had one instrument. Then Terry and I caught us up last Friday with the two we recovered. It was quite the race until the end, very completive spirits and lots of jesting. But we won! Leslie and Mahesh brought us the win on Tues. Turns out the seal group got their seal the next day, a close second. Now we get a bottle of wine and we are going to celebrate tonight. Some of their group is leaving tomorrow and we want to say goodbye. The rest leave on Monday with the albedo group and then we are all that is left from Winfly. All are friends are leaving us... oh well, we leave in 2 weeks. We have about 5 balloon flights left and then packing. The adventure is winding down.

That is all for now. Mom and I are planning our vacation in New Zealand and I'm going to keep working on my stuff. Cheers!

Mondays

2009-10-12T15:52:00.003+13:00

I have decided that no matter where you are, no matter what you are doing, Mondays always drag on forever. I thought I would write a short entry just to waste some time, update on you what I've been doing since my helo flight. I was pretty tired afterwards, all that excitement and outdoorness just wore me out. We had to clean all the snow out of the instruments and dry them out. Then we tore apart the masts and packed away the pieces.

Later we tried to go to the coffee house for a drink but it was packed in there. It was open mike night and it was crazy busy. I ended up staying for a little while but it was getting so hot and loud that I ended up bailing early. I went to bed after that, lame I know. It was like 9:30 on a Friday night and I was in bed. Oh well...

Sat. morning we launched an ozonesonde. It was the one named after me, Stephanie. We decided to try a rubber balloon too since it is warmer in the stratosphere. It was interesting, we suck at rubber balloon because we never use them. We were so awkard, it was terrible. But we got the balloon off the ground. Turns out we under inflated it and then the stupid thing broke early. Bad launch.

It was super windy that day too, we were supposed to get a huge storm. Didn't happen but Leslie and I were prepared with movies and snacks. We watch Phonebooth that night, terrible movie. The only thing that saved that movie was that it was only 81 minutes long.

Sunday, I told you about brunch already and then the rest of the day was boring. Cleaning the lab and packing up the bigger the instruments. There was also a science lecture that night. It was about microbes on the bottom of lakes in the dry valleys here in Antarctica. It was interesting but it got sort of long in the end for me. The lectures are at 8:15 pm and by the time it gets to 9:30, I sort of zone out.

Monday has been boring. It was windy and cold all day. So the second helo flight was cancelled and I've been wasting time. Twins lost, boo. Though I am glad to say, I have officially started my thesis. It's a whole sentence long then I ran into a problem. I have to read a paper and get some shit straight. But it is started... officially. I opened a new document, titled it and wrote a sentence. That is started.

Ok I wasted enough time, I should try to do something productive. Maybe I'll go to the gym, it is not the office. Happy Monday everyone!

Instrument Recovery in the Helo!

2009-10-11T13:48:00.008+13:00

First off, we didn't get the crazy storm we were supposed to. It's super windy but not condition 1. I'm kind of disappointed. On the other hand, we had a fantastic brunch today. There was so much fresh fruit, it was great. All I had was a waffle and fruit, fabulous. Now I'm craving a large glass of real milk. We have milk but it is made from powder and it not the same as good ol' cow milk. Yum!

I won't keep you in suspense any longer. Part 2 of my fantastic couple days was on Friday morning when I was able to go in the helicopter to recover two of our instruments we had flown. Super cool! I love flying and it was exciting to be in a helo. Our flight was to leave at 8:15 am, Terry and I were ready at 7:30 waiting in Pax Helo terminal. We were briefed, weighed and introduced to our pilot, Marko. I sat in the back on the way out to our first instrument which was about 75 miles to the east of McMurdo. Here is a couple pictures from the flight out, starting with a picture of myself taken by myself. :)
Terry
Terry and Marko
Take off!
Mount ErebusLooking down
Mount Terror
Then it was time to start searching for our instrument. Attached to the mast is an Argos unit which sends out a signal to a receiver so we can track the instrument. This is the receiver I used to pick up the signal or I called them chirps.
Woo we found one! It's that tiny little orange dot at the front of the helo shadow. Luckily our pilot has great eyes cuz it's a small instrument in a vast sheet of ice.
We landed close to it, Marko shut down the helo and we went out to collect all the pieces.
Here is how we found the instrument and mast, the parachute was flapping in the wind a little ways off.
Marko and Terry with the helo.
Me!
It was pretty cold, -35F with a couple knots of wind. I was glad I was bundled up. Then it was back up in the air to find the second instrument. We found the next one fairly easily, of course Marko was the one to spot it. Me again with the second instrument.
We were able to pack up everything and head back to McMurdo. Terry let me ride in the front on the way back. I should totally be a helicopter pilot, look how awesome I look in the helmet.
Hot!
The real pilot, Marko.
Terry looking cool in his helmet.
Out the front of the helo.
Marko and Mount Erebus
Getting close to home. Ob hill and Scott base in the middle right.
And finally, McMurdo from the air.
It was one of the coolest things I have ever done, too much fun.
I'm ready for the next adventure. Leslie and Mahesh are going out to find the last instrument. If I fit, I get to go along. So far I'm on the schedule (fingers crossed). Hopefully tomorrow is nice weather!

Only 3 weeks left on the ice and I've still got a couple things I need to see yet before I go. It's been great so far and I'm excited for the rest. It has been going really fast but I'm excited to go home too. Enjoy the pics and I'll try to take some more to show you. Cheers!

Tent Island

2009-10-10T13:57:00.006+13:00

I have had a fantastic last couple of days. I think I wrote an entry on Thursday morning and was just going to have a pretty boring day. Nothing exciting when da da da daaa.... opportunity arrived! In the form of an invite to ride out to tent island with the albedo science group to help them collect their instruments and basically get out of town for an afternoon. It was fantastic! I took so many pictures that there is no way they are all going up here. I'll give you an overview of the afternoon.

At 1:00 pm, Mahesh and I met Rich, Regina and another Rich to head out to their tent island instrument site. We rode in a Piston Bully, I got to ride in the front. :) This is a really fun little machine and I would have loved to take it offroading but they didn't let me.
The site was a ways out of town but it was a fun and beautiful drive. Here is our destination, Tent Island.
When we got to the site, Regina and I drilled an ice core. An ice core is a sampling of the ice and the drill cores out a cylinder shaped chunk as deep as we want to go. Here I am going to town! Beast!
This is Regina taking temperature measurements from the ice core.
Rich and Mahesh went out to collect all the flags that were put out for location markers. Here is one of the many nice shots of them and Mount Erebus.
This is Mahesh, Rich and Rich, he let us come out with them.
We finished early with all of us working at gathering the samples and instruments so we had some time to play and take pictures. The next couple of pictures are of me being silly. I was excited. This one is titled "Antarctica!"
Then I rolled on the ice.
And of course the shot of myself taken by myself.
Mahesh and the piston bully. Rich is on top and Regina is loading gear.
When we were driving out to the island, we saw some seals by the shore. Rich drove us closer to see them when we finished. Seals!
They look like big slugs.
We walked around a bit, looking at the seals, checking out some cracks and just enjoying the day.
Rich then took us around around the island the other way to see some new scenery on the way back.
Mount Erebus.
It was awesome. We had a great day too, the weather was beautiful, wind wasn't strong and it was just fantastic. Like I said I took tons of pictures and this is just a fraction but I'll show everyone more when I get home.

Dinner that night was super good too. They had lettuce!! and broccoli! and corned beef! and purple cabbage! and best of all, strawberries!! Even chocolate covered strawberries!! It was so yummy! Love it! When I get home, I'm eating a bunch of bananas and a box of strawberries.

Friday was just as awesome as Thursday but I'm going to save that for an entry tomorrow. Keep you all in suspense of the awesomeness that Friday was. Weather update - super windy and getting windier. It's -4F and there is supposed to be a beast of a storm coming this way. I'm really hoping for a Condition 1 since there hasn't been one since I've gotten here. Woo big storms!! We are supposed to get gusts of 70 knots too. That's tropical storm speeds! :)

Another tidbit before I leave... it is light out most of the day now. I think there is still some dark at 1 to 3 am but even then there is some light on the horizon. The sun just moves in a circle above the horizon. Oct. 22 is the last sun set until autumn. We are going to watch it if the weather is nice.

Enjoy the pictures and come back tomorrow for another exciting adventure! Cheers!

Banana!

2009-10-08T08:18:00.008+13:00

I got a banana!! Wooo! Some freshies came in on the last flight and I got a banana! And I ate an orange last night! It's so exciting! Yum!

Also, GO TWINS!!! Woo!! I was trying to watch the game online but could only get mlb.com so I was watching the red squares move on the bases and when outs occurred. I'm happy that they beat the tigers! Woo! I'm rooting for them tonight! I'll be keeping an eye on the score all afternoon.

And, my drugs are working! I already am starting to feel better from my antibiotics. I still try to cough up a lung every morning and I am amazed at the amount of boogers I'm still producing but I'm feeling better. Hopefully this trend will continue in the next couple days.

I was going to have something exciting to write about today but it didn't happen so maybe later. But now I'm going to introduce you to the exciting world of making batteries!! Woo! This is my new thing, Terry taught me how to make the battery packs we use to power the ozonesondes and radiosondes that we send up into the atmosphere. I even took pictures for you. :) (yes i'm a dork and I know) and no whining that this is boring, you wanted to know what I'm doing and its making batteries.

First here is my work station with my soldering gun and solder.
I'm a beast with this thing. I can melt shit like nothing else and find this highly entertaining. Next you tape together the number of single batteries needed to make a battery pack and arrange them positive to negative ends.
Then its time to melt stuff. Making sure everything is perfect, I solder the tabs on top and bottom of the batteries in a circuit. That's me about to work my magic. I told you this was exciting.
After checking the voltage to make sure I didn't short any of them, I attach wires for the connector to the instruments.
Again, I check the voltage and now I get to shrink wrap some stuff around them. I put this black plastic tube around them and shrink it with a heat gun. This is fairly entertaining as well. Then... taa daa! Finished battery pack!
These are what power our instruments. I realize that was really thrilling so I'm going to give you a chance to catch your breath.

We took a little field trip to Cosray yesterday to clean up our storage area. Along the way, we stopped at the big orange and white NASA ball.
This receives data from the satellite circling in space. I can't tell you anything more about it. We could see where I happy camped last week from where we were.
Those tiny little dots are the buildings at the Happy Camper site, Mount Terror is the background. Yes I know the picture sucks but you come and take pictures of white and have them turn out fabulous all the time.

Lastly, I saw some seals out on the ice. They were a long ways off but they were seals. Look and see if you can find them. They are in this picture. :)
Well thats it for exciting news here on the ice. Its cold and windy today. Temp is -8F with 21 knots of wind, for a wind chill of -34F. It was pretty cloudy yesterday and still a little bit this morning but it is clearing up. We also were able to launch an ozonesonde yesterday. Sitting Bull Sonde was his name. Next up is the sonde named after me, Stephanie Sonde. Hopefully she performs well seeing as she has a super name. :)

Cheers! and Go Twins!!

Oh the joys of being sick

2009-10-06T09:01:00.002+13:00

Lindsey told me that I need to blog some more but I've been sick so I didn't think you wanted to hear about it. She told to me blog anyway so I guess you get to hear all about the wonderful world of crud. Lots of green boogers and coughing.

I haven't been getting any better over the last week so I caved and went back to the doctor today. I have a sinus infection along with my crud. Joy. The bright side is, I can take antibiotics for the infection. Now I have some real drugs and I'm going to kick this crap in the butt. Hopefully. Leslie will be happy too, no more waking up in the middle of the night coughing up a lung, blowing my nose constantly and the germ level in our room can finally go down. I cleaned in there the other day but I'm going to have to go at it again.

Sciencewise, we haven't been able to do anything. The atmosphere above McMurdo shifted out of the polar vortex which means that there would be no point to send an instrument up there. We are outside the ozone hole currently and wouldn't get good measurements. So we wait until it shifts back. That means no balloon launches since Friday. I've been working on my own stuff and finally got some sort of result. About time, now and I figure out what it means and move on.
Mainbody started on Sat. A plane came in bringing lots of people for the main season. We watched it land from the library in the lab. It was pretty neat. It was the first plane since the beginning of Sept and was delayed 5 days. It was supposed to get here last Tues when I was at Happy Camper. Another plane came in the next day but yesterdays was delayed again. The weather has screwed up the plane schedule which are supposed to come every 3 days. We were hoping for some freshies but I haven't seen any yet. I want a banana real bad. Some salad would be great too. And sour cream. mmmmm

That means the station is way busier with lots of people to meet and be friendly to. I've been sick so I've lacked friendliness. I just cough on people instead. Just kidding but I do feel like snotting some people. Hopefully things will settle a bit and the galley won't be quite so packed all the time.

Lindsey also mentioned that I have been slacking on the weather updates lately. So for you Lindsey, here are the weather conditions. Its currently -7F with winds at 11 knots and wind chills of -27F. Its cloudy out today. Pretty much the same as any other day. We have been varying between -20 and about 10F above for the last week. It was pretty windy for a couple days which makes it not so nice. But I haven't really been outside at all with the being sick and stuff. I just cruise from one building to the next with no unnecessary travel between my bed and the galley. Eat, sleep, movies and work have been about it for me.

Well that about all I can squeeze out my brain right now. My face hurts so I'm going to take some more drugs and close my eyes for a bit. Good day all!

Long Week

2009-10-03T10:53:00.006+13:00

It has been a very long and weird week for me. Monday and Tuesday I was Happy Camping which was a blast, a lot of work but a lot of fun. A few clarifications about happy camper, I slept in the Scott tent (bright yellow) and there was no heat. Just what I made myself and was able to hold into the sleeping bag. That is why I was in layers and took precautions to make sure I didn't freeze to death. It was training on how to survive if trapped out in the elements. We did get a few comforts, two sleeping pads of foam rather than one, an outhouse was provided for us to pee in otherwise it would have been bottles and all the gear we needed to survive like food, tents and shovels. We melted our own water, dug our own shelters/walls and slept in the cold.

When I got back from Happy Camping, I guess I was worn out because I got the crud. The crud is what they call the sickness going around like the flu or in my case, a virus. I'm sure the virus was just waiting around inside my body for me to weaken so it could attack. Happy camper was that weak point, it took a lot of energy to stay warm and I was tired when we finished. In super good spirits but exhausted. Wed I tried to get up and enter the world but ended up back in bed by 8 in the morning for a long nap. I went back to work and ate lunch but was back in my room by 4 pm. I stayed in the room for dinner which Leslie brought back for me (thank god for good friends :) We watched a movie and then went to bed early.

Thursday morning, I was no better and my throat hurt so bad that I went to medical to see if I could get some meds. That is where I found out that I had what everybody else had, sore throat, major congestion, and coughing. Great. It was sort of funny, well not funny but yes funny, because I saw 2 other guys from my happy camper group in there cuz they were sick too. That is 4 to 5 confirmed cases of people sick from just our happy camper group of 16. It is hard to escape getting sick when you are stuck on station with everyone living and eating in close quarters and sharing all our germs.

Anyway, I spent Thursday in bed. Leslie was the best and brought me lunch, hot water for tea and my computer so I could watch movies. She had me set up with drugs and everything else I needed. I think I would have died without her. I snuck out that night to get some dinner with her and then we watched another movie.

Friday, I attempted work again. I didn't do much. We launched a balloon but I was stuck inside watching the computers, not out with the action. The group was able to get two other balloons launched while I was happy camping. A big balloon and Steven sonde. It was Samantha sonde yesterday.

So yeah, nothing exciting. Just lots of boogers and phlegm and general miserableness. Good news though - Congrats to Leslie for finishing another chapter of her thesis and almost being done!! Love ya dear!

Stay warm everyone and watch out for the crud!

Happy Camper!

2009-09-30T10:35:00.007+13:00

The title says it all, my big adventure I was hinting at was a training course where you go and camp out on the ice shelf for night. It was a blast!

We started out in a classroom to learn some key components before heading out to our camp site. Things like the survival bag, risks and important points to remember. Then we jumped in a Delta and left for the evening.
The camp site is on the south side of Ross Island, past Scott base in a really snowy area right by Mt. Erebus. You can also see Mt. Terror as well. Tidbit of trivia, the two mountains were named for the first two ships to sail down here. This is Mt. Erebus, it was smoking pretty good Monday. Mt. Terror would be to the right of it, but I couldn't fit in the picture. The little building was our outhouse. (Dad I know how to make the most kick ass outhouse and solved the cold seat issue during ice fishing. I will tell you all about when I get home. No more cold butts from peeing!)
This first thing we learned was how to light our camp stoves and then set up a Scott tent. Here is what a Scott tent looks like folded up.
And then set up. It has four poles to make a square tent with a circle opening that feels like coming out of the womb everytime you get in and out. It is staked it down using dead man's posts and fancy knots.
After setting up the Scott tents, we moved on to making a quinsey. It is a shelter made out of snow that you can sleep in. First, we piled all our sleeping gear up.
Then you cover it in snow and pack it down nice and tight.
After enough snow was piled up and packed down, we left it settle and harden. While waiting, we built a snow wall to protect the mountain tents we were going to set up. This involved quarrying blocks of snow and carrying them to the wall site. Due to my perfectionism, I was one of the builders. I'm really good at piling and packing snow. I owe all that to the many snow forts we made as kids. Here is the completed wall.
This whole time we have been setting up, a storm was moving in on us. We were watching landmarks disappear in snow all afternoon and by this time, it was falling all around us. All you could see was white and more white. Luckily, the winds stayed down for the most part and it wasn't a hard snow. After this all my pictures become a lot of white so you will see what I saw all night.

After finishing the snow wall, we set up the mountain tents.
Then moved back to the quinsey to help dig out all the packs we buried in snow. Its that mound of snow you can hardly see.
A couple guys dug an entrance.
Here is the completed project. This is the door and the quinsey is the mound you can't see. It was pretty neat inside. Like a snow cave.
Here is a picture of our camp after all the tents where up, quinsey finished and we could start to boil water for dinner. Dinner was a dehydrated meal that you pour boiling water into and let sit for 15 minutes. It wasn't too bad, not great but edible. Besides I was so hungry, I would have eaten my arm if you said I had to. It took forever to melt snow and boil the water so we had dinner around 8:30 pm.

We cooked inside the Scott tent which is where I ended up sleeping. They gave us some really nice fleece liners and sleeping bags. Leslie and Mahesh gave me all sort of hints to stay warm and I took them all. I changed clothes, laid out my wool blanket from my bed, put my boots in my sleeping bag, had a hot water bottle and buried myself in all the fleece and sleeping bag. I was one of the only ones to stay warm all night. I was even told that I snored all night long. :) It was cold but I stayed warm. Here was our tent in the morning.
The next morning we boiled more water for hot drinks and oatmeal and then tore down the camp. A couple guys stayed in the quinsey and two even decided that they wanted to build and sleep in trenches.
Everyone was calling them the graves because it looked like an under ground tomb. But I guess they slept pretty well and were able to stay warm.

After tearing down the camp, we learned how to use HF radios and tried to call the South Pole but nobody answered us. I guess they don't monitor the radios until summer season. The last activity on the list was a survival game. We simulated a white out by putting buckets on our heads.
We were given a rope and told to go find the person who was stranded in the white out on her way to another building. Trying to work together as a team with buckets on is hard. We split into two groups and I was able to watch the first group go. It was funny.

They ended up not finding the person in the snow but our group sort of did. After watching the first group we thought we had a plan. She ended up having to scoot in front of us because we passed right over her with our rope.

Then it was time to head back. I was so tired and sore that all I did was shower and take a nap. I went to dinner with Leslie and we tried to watch a movie but I was too tired so we went to bed early. This morning I woke up with a little bit of the crud (a cold). So now I'm not only sore and tired, but have a nose that wont stop dripping and a sore throat. I did have a blast though. It was the craziest thing I have ever done but it really was a lot of fun. Just had to get past the fact that it was really cold and all was good. I guess we lucked out on weather too, the snow helped keep it warmer and the winds really didn't get bad until the morning. What a crazy experience!

Life Lessons

2009-09-27T12:13:00.003+13:00

Well hello there! I had another couple of interesting days since my last entry. I don't have any new pictures but several good stories to share. I think I left you Friday morning to go prep a sonde for our next flight. I did prep the sonde but then we decided to try for a big balloon flight that night and we didn't need it. Since we wanted to run the Lidar while we had one of our big instruments up, we needed to launch at night. It needs to be dark to run the Lidar so we decided to launch at 11pm. Leslie and I took a nap to prepare, ate dinner and went back to the lab to wait. We made the official 'we are going to do it' call at around 10pm. Then it was time to prepare all the instruments and get everything ready. Ok done, head down to the launch site at 11pm. Now remember, this is a big balloon so it takes more preparation and hands to launch it, not like the ozonesondes where you really only need three people and I can hold the balloon by myself.

I'll try to set the mood of the evening for you all. It's dark but a really nice night. Hardly any wind but cold. Launching a big balloon is stressful because everything has to be perfect to get it off the ground so the tension in our group is insane. Well more like one person who was getting us all worked up but we won't say names. We had some extra help to hold the balloon and lay out the canvases. We start to fill this thing, everything was going fine until a really nice gust of wind comes along. Bad news bears. It twisted the balloon all up and we have to pause to get the balloon back under control. So we decide to move to the other side of the building where we have a little wind blockage. Pick of the whole operation and move it. We continue to fill the balloon and lay it all out with our load line, mast and instruments attached. Its like watching chickens run around with their heads cut off with yelling and minor chaos. Woo balloon launches.

Finally we are ready, it is almost midnight and shit hits the fan. Well not the fan but almost in somebody's pants. We set up our balloon launches next to the waste water treatment plant which is right along the main road between McMurdo and the ice. For the big balloons we have to spread out onto the road. Well it was the night shift worker's lunch (called mid rats, short for midnight rations) so they were starting to head in to eat. We stopped the first van and were going to launch quick but then some challengers rolled up. Challengers are big bulldosers that plow snow and they were just going to go around the stopped van. There was a lot of yelling, freaking out for 3 seconds, and then bam, time to launch. "ONE, TWO, THREE" and the balloon is up and away. Then more craziness as we rush to pack up and get to the lab to start the receiving equipment. General chaos.

After that, we just wait for the balloon to do its thing and send us data. It feels like it takes a lot longer than it actually does but we were tired. I think we were in bed by 3 am. Leslie and I slept in and went to lunch when we finally got out of bed. This brings us to life lesson number one: bulldosers and balloons don't mix so keep them separate or you will have poopy pants.

Saturday was actually pretty boring until dinner. Mainbody starts next week so the station has a party to celebrate the end of Winfly. It's called the Carp Shop Party because it takes place in the carp shop which is short for carpenters. Party of the year I tell you. Backing up a little, we ate dinner first and it was Italian night, so good food. We can have wine with dinner and it was a lot of laughs. You learn a lot about the people you work with when being around them so much. I can't say on here but it was hilarious. So then it was off to the party.

Now I'm not much of a partier but this was a blast. They had live bands (people from around station) and they were fantastic. Hands down fantastic. They have dancing, crappy beer and bands in one room. It had the atmosphere of a college party but older... They also set up games in the another room. They had a mini golf course, hammer games and this hook and ring game. Leslie and I hung out and watched the bands for awhile. I reverted to my undergrad days and danced the night away. It was super fun. And then like any college party, the point comes where people are too drunk and the fun level drops. Drama starts and people are stupid. Leslie and I escaped to play games and hang out with the seal group. That was fun. I got a hole in one on the last mini golf hole. Leslie conquered the ring and hook game. General good times. But again, people are dumb and you can't escape that for long. It was time to go. I had a ton of fun though dancing to the live bands. Excellent musicians.

This brings us to the second and most important life lesson: do not party with your co-workers. I'm not going to elaborate, I'm sure some of you have experienced this and know full well what I'm talking about. Not good.

Again we slept in this morning. Went to brunch to find out that we had a time change nobody told us about. So I guess it is an hour later. I'm tired and sore but still living up my fun night of dancing. Wish I could forget some of the other stuff but that will come with time. I'm preparing for my next adventure which starts tomorrow. Should be fun and I'll tell you all about it later. Sorry if this entry was too long and random. Stay warm everyone!

Hello

2009-09-25T08:58:00.005+12:00

I don't really have a whole lot to say but everyone is at a refresher course so I thought I would write something, since I'm procrastinating. Yesterday I was working on an outline for my thesis, so I can officially start writing the actual thesis soon. I won't get far but I can at least say I started writing. Sort of exciting except for the fact that I hate writing and this is going to be painful.

Last night we went to Scott Base. It's the Kiwi base real close to us, about 2 miles away...maybe. The base is bright green, sea cucumber green I believe is the color. I liked the fact that all the buildings are connected by walkways and you never have to go outside. We didn't stay long, just enough to check out their little store and peek in the bar. I didn't take any pictures yet because it was low lighting and they wouldn't have turned out. Next time I'll get some.

After that, we had a drink at the coffee house and played a game with Terry, Mahesh and Rich. I had the weirdest dreams last night too. That seems to be a common occurrence here, everyone has weird dreams. I swear I have one every night, must be something in the water.

Today the plan is to prep a sonde while everyone is gone and then we will launch it this afternoon. Maybe we'll find something fun to do tonight. Cause some trouble or something. I'll get a better entry for the next time too. Stay warm!

For some reason I like to show you stupid pictures of myself doing strange things so here ya go! This is the sexy hat they gave us in our gear. Hot damn!

Requests or Suggestions

2009-09-24T10:23:00.002+12:00

I've been writing to you all for awhile now about things that I think are cool or fun. What do you think of everything? Is there anything that you want to see or hear about? Any requests for topics? Let me know what you all are thinking.

By the way, I fixed what I was doing wrong the other day and still nothing works. Science is mean. Mitten hands...

Sea Ice!

2009-09-23T18:46:00.007+12:00

We've been without power and internet all day so I wasn't able to get this up before you all went to bed today. The last couple days have been busy but super fun! I was out on the sea ice and saw a seal... but let me start back on Sunday. Get ready, this is a long entry.

I told you about the morning in the last entry and then I had a fantastic 2 hour nap in the afternoon. It was Terry's turn to give the Sunday Science Lecture and we were his assistants. He had a great talk and some fun demonstrations that we helped with. The talk was about optical phenomenon and certain features that show up in Antarctica. Everyone really seemed to like the talk and we've had tons of compliments.

Monday wasn't too interesting, I was cranky all day and then was really crabby when I found out all the work I've done in the last couple days I did wrong. So we chilled out and watched a movie that night so I didn't have to talk to anyone.

Tuesday morning we launched another balloon early in the morning (Stacy Sonde I think). We did something wrong on the inflation and had a bit of a rough launch. The balloon didn't go up when we let it go like it was supposed to but floated horizontal for awhile. We didn't think it was going to go anyway but eventually it headed upwards. It was slow moving though and took forever to get to its ceiling. Then it was a floater and took its time doing it's thing. Stupid balloon.

Tuesday afternoon we had sea ice training. It was pretty cool. First we had a classroom type lecture and I learned a bunch about how the ice moves differently from lake ice. We also learned about the different types of cracks that form on the ice as it moves and how to find and profile a crack. Then we headed out to the ice to look at some real cracks in the sea ice. We rode in a Hagglund out there, which is a neat little machine. Slow moving but efficient.

We looked at some tidal cracks then found a crack near hut point we could play with. This is hut point where we were looking for cracks.
We practiced profiling the crack which is checking to see if you can drive over it safely. We just had a little crack about 5 inches wide, enough to stick your boot in. We shoveled out a little area and then drilled down to see how thick the ice was.

It turns out that the ice we were drilling was 175 cm thick, which is about 6 feet. That’s some thick ice. We drove to another area and drilled again.
The views were incredible and I got some really nice pictures. But I'm not putting them up here cuz I think they are that good and don't want anybody snagging them. I'll show you when I get home.

While we were stopped, one of the science groups (diving guys) stopped to invite us to their hut to look down their diving hole. So we cruised over there. More amazing scenery and hole drilled in the ice. This is the other side of hut point with a bunch of tidal cracks in the ice.

This is where they send down cameras and divers.

This instrument is called “Skinny” and it has a camera on it that looks at the bottom of the sea.

I believe it’s a robot and they can drive it around?? Or they have a robot that they sent out and drive around?? Not sure but we were able to see down the hole some 85 feet and look at the bottom. There were sponges, starfish and other fishes. It was so cool. I can’t even describe how cool it was to be looking at the bottom of the ocean from 80 feet up, through 6 feet of ice, in a little hut out on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound, in Antarctica. So cool.

Later, after we had gotten back and had dinner, the Crary lab (where I work) had a Bingo night in the bar on station. So Leslie and I headed over there to play and have some fun. I didn’t win but Leslie won twice. She got some nice prizes and it was a nice night. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun. I slept like a rock last night and really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. I didn’t even brush my hair, I was pretty proud that I had at least gotten dressed and put deodorant on.

So this morning, Wednesday, we had the opportunity to go back to the ice with the seal group and watch them release a seal. They are studying the hunting habits of seals by attaching instruments to them and measuring a bunch of stuff. They had outfitted one and were ready to release it and they let us watch. Unfortunately, due to permit laws, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the actual seal because it had instruments on it . Hopefully I’ll be able to get some from the group and can show you when I get home. But here is a picture of the huts they work in and the Jamesway where they keep the seals while instrumenting them. The little vehicle is called a Piston Bully.

This is Ian sawing out the seal hole. This was pretty neat, made me want to try my hand at chain sawing ice.

Boe is pulling the ice out of the hole with David.

After everything was ready, it was time to release the seal. What a beautiful animal. So sleek and big! It was huge! And so cute and sweet looking. She waddled to the ice hole and slipped into the water but checking to see if the coast was clear first of course. She came back up for air a couple times, so I was able to see it bobbing in the water. Super cute. Then poof, it was gone and that was that. Here are a couple pictures I found online of Weddell seals so you can at least see the type of seal I saw, since I wasn't able to take any.

And yes, she was that cute. She made me want to cuddle with her but she would have crushed me. She was about 400 kg or 900 pounds.

While we were out there, we saw some optical things. Mirages and sun dogs. I also was able to get some nice picture of Mt. Erebus. You can see the puff of smoke coming out the top if you look closely. Its the huge mountain behind the little hills.

It was an awesome couple of days. I’m preparing for another big adventure next week that I will tell you about later but I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing. I’m going to leave you in suspense. Enjoy the pictures!!

Lazy Sunday

2009-09-20T13:05:00.005+12:00

Another week has come and gone here on the ice. Nothing super cool has happened to report on. We launched another ozonesonde on Wed. Sonja was her name this time, Leslie and I sat up in Building 70 entertaining ourselves with song and dance. We have been watching movies almost every night. I'm pretty sure we killed Patrick Swayze. We watched Dirty Dancing one night and the next day, he died. Pretty creepy. We also watched Yes Man which was hilarious. Then the seal guys wanted to watch Day of the Dead but I only made it through maybe a half hour of that.

Wed, Thurs and Friday were just work. I honestly cannot remember what happened on those days... We watched movies I think. Sat we launched another balloon, Stewert Sonde. It was International Talk like a Pirate day. Lots of Yarrs and even Terry joined in. It was fun. We had some grog with dinner and Leslie gave a beautiful toast in pirate. It was great. There was also a craft fair last night where I did a little damage to the checking account. Leslie and I then went to the coffee shop and played games. It was nice and relaxing. I was able to stop and appreciate where I was. I'm in Antarctica, I just had to stop and remember. It really is cool.

So I thought I would give some cool things I have discovered here. Warning: These are super random.
1. The whole island is volcanic rock since it was formed by volcanoes. Mount Erebus is the only active volcano on the contienent of Antarctica and its right next door.
2. Sea ice really is blue. So cool. One of the fleet ops guys brought in a huge chunk of ice from the airstrip. It is a really pretty color blue.
3. There is never enough lotion. It is so dry here. I use tons of lotion and vasaline is my new best friend. It creates a very shocking environment. As in static electricity. I have never been shocked so much in my life, be careful of metal objects.
4. There is a very unique language here as well. Like we are here on the ice. Freshies are fresh fruits and veggies which we haven't had in a couple weeks. I am also considered a fng and a beeker. I've seen Fng spelled fingy and is pronounced fin-gee. It comes from the military and means f**king new guy. Can you guess what beeker stands for?
5. You come up with ways to entertain yourself. Like the marker board in my office.

There are more disturbing images as well, made by yours truely. Don't ask, we laughed a lot over this one.
6. Stuffed animals take on a life of their own.
7. We dance and sing a lot. Leslie and I can be found almost anywhere singing songs and having dance parties. We do a lot of Micheal Jackson and almost have the beat it dance perfected. Its funniest to do it when dressed up in all our outside gear. Here is the I'm Cold dance performed by Leslie.
8. You also find yourself taking random pictures of yourself. Like me in my sexy long underwear.
9. The smallest things are super entertaining. Like song and dance. Drawing on marker boards. Stringing pieces of strings through holes. Playing with tape. Naming ozonesondes. Cat's cradle. Shower day is exciting. Playing with pieces of metal. Talking like a pirate. Kicking a piece of ice up a hill. It all has a fun factor.
10. And my personal favorite. There are many strange qualities you discover about yourself. For example, I smell... bad. All the time. My feet now have an odor I can't get rid of from wearing thick socks. Its terrible. I'm also very tired of clothes and wish I could be naked more often. My new experiment is to see how long the hair on my legs will grow. This is the longest I've gone without shaving and I'm fascinated by the length of my hair. I know, it is gross.

Antarctica is a beautiful and fascinating place. I really am glad that I'm here to see it and do some things. Experience this strange and wonderful world. There are two things that I cannot seem to get used to though. The smell, myself and others. That and one ply toilet paper.

Simon Says

2009-09-15T15:36:00.008+12:00

Hello from the Antarctic Circle :)
Everything here is normal, nothing too spectacular going on. Sunday we launched Simon Sonde, he did well and we have more data. I went to Building 70 where I took a couple pictures.
Woo hotstuff! Hehe, I'm not wearing my coat :P, yes it was warm enough. It was 13F that day!

There was a Sunday Science Lecture again, this time on Wendell Seals and their hunting patterns in the dark. It was very interesting with neat video and sound. Seals make the coolest sounds I have ever heard and they are super good hunters, fish don't stand a chance. Hopefully I'll be able to go out and see one when the seal group has one caught. Or see one anywhere would be fun.

Leslie and I also went for a walk on Sunday since we were having a heat wave of 13F, yes thats right, above zero. We walked to Scott's hut which is pretty close to McMurdo.
This is the hut where Robert Scott and his men stayed on their Discovery Expedition. It was supposed to be a temporary camp but they ended up getting stuck and having to stay for about 2 months. Can you imagine being stuck in that little building for 2 months with 15 other guys trying to stay warm. You can see McMurdo from the hut.
The front door.
And a dead seal that has been there for over 100 years. Yeah crazy.
Don't ask me how or why but it is still there from when Scott and his men were there.

The trail we took around the little bay.
Next we walked up the another hill that overlooks the bay and Scott's hut.
There is a lovely cross up there for some guy named Vince who died when he fell off the cliff.
An inland view from the point, desolate looking isn't it. I'm amazed that people trekked over this way back in the day. Better men than me.
And here is the whale that greets you when you arrive at McMurdo.
Antarctica is absolutely beautiful. This was the sunset and some polar stratospheric clouds.
Sunday was a good day. I'm glad we were able to get outside for awhile. We are going to try to get a key to get into the hut next time we go. I've got a couple exciting things coming up in the next two weeks so stay tuned for more adventures to come.

PS for those of you who haven't figured it out yet or didn't know, you can click on the pictures for a full screen view. Enjoy!

Movie, work, lab

2009-09-12T14:45:00.008+12:00

Couple updates from yesterday that you may not care about but I do, so I'm telling you about them. The first thing has nothing to do with Antarctica. Leslie and I had a movie night last night and we watched Hitchcock's "The Birds". This is the first time I've seen this movie and it was quite interesting. The more I think about it the more I'm appreciating it but it did make me laugh quite a bit. My favorite seen is the birds attacking at the playground and the telephone booth scene. Those birds were crazy :) Chili better not get any ideas.

Secondly, I've been working on program code for a couple days now with no real progress. So I asked Terry for help and we spent an hour and a half trying to get 5 lines of code working this morning. I'm happy to report that it now works, is totally cool and I am able to make some kick ass graphs. Woo, nerd alert! but I don't care, it works.

Then I thought I would show you the lab I work in. First though, here is my little office where I spend most of my time, including the occasional nap on the floor.
Super interesting huh... Ok, moving on. Here is the lab where we prep all the instruments we launch, get everything ready and one of the places we record the incoming data. The other place is Building 70 (The Love Shack) that I showed you before.
I mostly prep ozonesondes and help with the data. Here is the equipment needed to get a sonde ready for flight. The box instrument is an ozone generator and with it, we can make sure the sonde is measuring different levels of ozone and test the sonde in general.
Next is the much talked about ozonesonde. It is a small instrument that sucks in the air around it and measures the ozone. The incoming ozone goes into a cell, has a chemical reaction and gives off electrons. The electrons are then measured as an electrical charge and we get back a voltage that can be converted to an amount of ozone.
We then stick that little guy into a styrofoam box, add a battery and little heater.
We add a radiosonde to the outside of the box, tape it up real good (we use lots of tape) and tie a dropper to the top and its ready to fly! The radiosonde sends the data to us as it flies and the dropper makes sure the instrument is far enough from the actual balloon.
After we launch the balloon and it is rising in the atmosphere, we record the incoming data on this setup. An antenna picks up the signal and sends it to the computer where a program converts the data to something we can read and record. Building 70 has a similar set-up.
So thats the lab. We spend a good amount of time here getting things ready for flights.
We also want to launch some bigger instruments that measure the size of particals in the atmosphere. These are quite a bit bigger and more complicated. I'm not going to explain them because I don't know exactly what they do, I just make sure they get in the air. This one is called Jupiter and we also have some CN counters and OPCs.
These also get there own special box and set up, looks something like this when its done. The spikes are for when it falls and hits the ice, it will get stuck and hopefully stay there until we can recover it.
We also attach a "mast" and load line to this instrument with tracking instruments, chute cut-offs, timers, dropper and parachute so it will float gently back to Earth and not plummet from the sky. Makes it easier to use the instrument again without too much reconstruction. Here is a mast Leslie and I made. They are a pain in the butt and we were happy to be finished with a one.
So there is a bunch of science for you to think about. Before I leave, we have a lab mascot.
Lou stuck him in my boot when we shipped a bunch of our stuff down here. It was a lovely surprise to find when I stuck my hand in there to pull out some socks. We all know how much I love spiders. :/ Now he sits in the lab and watches us work.

Oh, I almost forgot my weather update for Lindsey. The temp is currently over zero (second time that has happened since I've gotten here and in the last week) at 5F and the winds are starting to pick up again. Wind chill of -11F. Clear skies and some thin, little, happy clouds.
Enjoy!

The Little Piece of the World Called McMurdo

2009-09-11T15:54:00.006+12:00

Not much new to tell you all about... we launched another ozonesonde (Sally Sonde) but no big ones yet. We are still waiting for the conditions to be right. Just doing my thing, I guess. There hasn't been anything fun in the weather lately either, just cold and windy.

Many of you have been wondering about McMurdo and how it is to live here so I'm going to take you to where I spend my days. It was finally nice enough that I could go outside for a walk around town. We stay in a dorm, just like college with tiny beds, a place to put our clothes and a desk. Thats about it in there... Here is where I sleep, my little piece of bliss:
The gang is all there, they keep me company at night. Our dorm is building 203c, it has a place to wash clothes and a lounge where we can watch TV, movies and play ping pong. This is what the outside looks like:
Another very important place is building 155 because that is where the galley is located. It is just like any other cafeteria. The building also has some dorms, the store and a hallway called Hwy 1 because its the most important building and everyone travels that hall. I'll get some pictures of the inside but this is the building.
This is Crary Lab, its the other building where I spend most of my time. It has three "phases" that are attached together. Our lab is in Phase 2 and I'll show you the inside later.
Next is the Chalet, this is the National Science Foundation building.
They have a medical center and the firehouse is right behind it.
Another place that I visit a fair amount is the "Gerbil Gym", its a little gym with treadmills and bikes. Its a great place to burn some energy.
Leslie introduced me to the coffee house the other day, it is a great place to go. It has wine, coffee of course and lots of board games to play. They also have a movie screen where they show different movies. Great atmosphere to read, visit and just relax.
There is even a little chapel on station. They hold services on Sunday, yoga during the week and other meetings too. Its cute.
There is also a beautiful piece of stained glass and it has its own Antarctic flair.
So that is a little tour of the station. I'll leave you with a picture of me by the McMurdo sign. Enjoy!

Oh and Lindsey here is a special picture for you from Mango. He said to "lick it!" :)

Heat wave!

2009-09-08T11:04:00.003+12:00

Weather update for Lindsey :) The last couple days have warmed up considerably, -3F today and yesterday is was -teens. The blowing wind has been a bit of a bummer though. Last night, we got some snow too which was very pretty. It is weird though to look across the ice and not see anything because of the snow, just white everywhere.

Of course, we've been busy doing stuff. :) Sat night, the coffee shop opened. Leslie and I met up with some of the seal group and hung out for awhile, had some laughs and were just being silly. It was a great break. And we got to sleep in on Sunday! :) Later Sunday, we attempted another big balloon launch and everything was going great, the winds were low, the lidar was showing PSCs, the temperature was warmer. On Sunday evenings, they have a science lecture given by random scientists on station at the time. So we went and were going to launch after. (The lecture was great by the way, it was about "Snowball Earth" and is a very interesting subject.) But by the time the lecture was over, the winds had picked up considerably and we could no longer do it. We were all pumped about the launch and it was disappointing to have to put it off again.

Monday, we were able to launch an ozonesonde (Sergio sonde). Leslie and I went to Building 70 on the hill to run the computer up there. We decided to nickname it the love shack for S&Gs. We watched the snow come down and listened to the wind, worrying about getting stuck there. Sergio went the distance and climbed up to 5 mb. (Not like Suzie sonde last week). He was a floater too. We call the balloons that pop along the bottom "floaters" because they don't leak the helium out and just stay up there, hanging out for hours sometimes. Thats when you call it quits and leave them to do their thing.

Today, it is windy so we are all inside working on our own things. I'm finally starting to get somewhere but I'll save that for later.

Here is a picture of Building 70 where we get to spend hours watching data pop up onto a computer screen. It is located up the hill behind McMurdo Station. (The Love Shack)
Stay warm everyone!

Another week down

2009-09-05T09:57:00.002+12:00

Well it is Saturday again which means I made it through another week and oo was it a week... We had super winds the first part of the week which means no launches and long days. Finally Tues we got an ozonesonde launched and then it was condition 2 weather. Cold, cold, cold, cold. Wed it was -50F and we were pretty sure that no launches were going to happen that day. We laughed about how crazy it would be to launch in -50F with wind chills in the -80s. Oh funny, haha. Then I went to go run the LIDAR (which I was planning on telling you about right away but this is a better story). So I'm rocking out to music in my office, its after dinner (7ish), I have the laser running, I'm looking forward to my shower and getting to bed. I finish with the laser and am shutting everything down when... I'm ambushed in the lab. I never saw it coming, it was like a gazelle in the Sahara minding its own business when the lion attacks...

Terry came in to see how I was doing... "oh I'm just finishing up" "Good," he says, "lets bring the data to have Mahesh look at it...the winds are dying down..." That's when it hits me... he is thinking about a possible launch tonight... its -50F and its cold, no not just cold, f**king cold. Ok, I'm thinking, this is bad. Just go with it for now, he's not going to find anything and its way too cold. Wrong. Things just continue to go downhill from there, next thing I know, I'm in the lab preparing an ozonesonde and they are getting one of the big instruments ready. So it was a big launch, not a small ozonesonde balloon but a huge balloon that is hard to hold and manage as it is. Then Leslie walks in the lab because she was in the room showering since we were supposed to be snuggling into our beds. She tries convincing him that it is cold. Nothing, we still are preparing for a launch. So its about 10 pm, everything is ready (after several things went wrong and had to be fixed) and it is time to decide if the winds are low enough and if we are crazy enough to do this. Of course the gods being against us, its starting to warm up and the winds are fairly low (warm as in -40F now). Damn... it was a little tense for awhile... then Leslie and I state our concerns about the weather and wind chill (-65F). This can't happen we say, its just not safe... Finally... finally we convince Terry this is a bad idea... crisis averted for now. So instead, we are going to get up early and decide see if we can launch it in the morning... oh warm bed how I love thee and don't want to leave in the morning...

6 am the next morning (Fri), Leslie and I up, ready and heading to breakfast, then the lab. We are going to launch this morning, we have some help today and the weather is warmer (-20s), winds are calm. Fine lets do this. I'm pooped. Ok, jam to Micheal Jackson, get pumped, dance a little, beat it, get the van, load up and head to the launch site. Thankfully, everything went well on the ground. We filled the balloon, which is heavy (and I'm super sore from holding it today), spread out everything, turn on all the instruments and "up, up and away". No we are not done, time to run to the van, drive up the hill and make sure the data is coming in. Ok, moving antennas, fixing wires and watching data for the next 2 hours. Great... until the balloon is not following the right trajectory and going too far north. Since this is a big instrument, it is one that we go recover eventually but if it falls in the ocean, its gone forever. So it falls, we don't know where it is but we have hope. We have to wait until morning to get an email from the instrument with its location, if we get one 'Yay its not in the ocean', if we don't, damn. Lets go get some lunch.

By this time, its like walking zombies around here and Leslie and I decide that its nap time. We nap, I take a shower since it has been 2.5 days by now and I smell really bad. Back to the lab, get some more ozonesondes ready. Ok finally dinner time and after one moment of panic that we might try to launch again tonight, its off to bed. Thank heaven!!

So here I am Friday morning, I'm super tired, sore and cold. By the way, we did get an email with the location of the instrument so it is not in the ocean and we can go get it later. Woo two weeks down!

Temp update cuz I want to

2009-09-03T17:23:00.005+12:00

It is -48F. That's all I wanted to tell you. Still condition 2.

(About 5 minutes later)... I stand corrected, it dropped some more -51F. I'm not sure if the temp is really dropping that fast but it is Antarctica... Lets just go with butt cold.

Random Evil Thought of the Day

2009-09-03T11:40:00.001+12:00

I was pondering... I wonder what would happen if you stuck your tongue to a metal pole in -45F weather??.... I need somebody dumb...

Still butt cold

2009-09-03T08:15:00.003+12:00

It is still condition 2 weather and still very very cold. Last night the temperature was down to around -50F with wind chills of -95F. Right now it is -39F and wind chills of -72F. Just trying to stay warm...

My First Condition 2 Weather!

2009-09-02T16:01:00.004+12:00

It is officially really cold. Temperature is -42 degrees F with wind at 28 knots and wind chills below -85 degrees F. Turns out the weather station on our building is calculating the wind chill wrong so the -104 degree wind chill before was probably wrong considering is was telling us the wind chill right now is -114. The -85 wind chill is correct.
It is normally condition 3 and if it were condition 1, we would be stuck in whatever building we were in and no travel to any building is allowed. Of course I had to go outside to feel it, so I did. I saw the signal lights (white for condition 2 and red for condition 1 (if you can see them)) and felt the cold and then went right back inside. BRRR!!

Another cold day

2009-09-02T09:38:00.002+12:00

It's frigid outside again. The temperature is -32 degrees F with winds at 26 knots making a nice wind chill of -95 degrees F. The winds are blowing up so much snow, its hard to see other buildings right now. Antarctica is crazy cold...

Another launch

2009-09-01T16:40:00.006+12:00

Well we were able to get another balloon off the ground. We have been waiting for 2 days since its been super cold and super windy. The wind finally died down enough for us to do it today. Though it has been a trying day to say the least but thankfully I have way too much patience for one person and am able to hold my tongue when I need to. Smile and nod! I've been holding the balloon the last couple of launches which I like, it makes me feel important. I like letting it go and watching it float up and drag the instruments with it.

I suppose I should explain a balloon launch a little more since that's the primary reason I'm here. Most of the balloons we send up are carrying an ozonesonde with it. This sonde measures the ozone as it floats up as well as the temperature, pressure and relative humidity. The balloons usually go up to about 30 km into the atmosphere and we get a nice profile of the ozone. We are then able to tell where the ozone hole is starting, how deep it is, etc. I'll get into the science of everything later but here are some pictures of a normal launch.
First we spread out the inlet tube and Leslie gets into position to fill the balloon with helium. Mahesh helps her while Terry and I are at the other end with the balloon.
Next Mahesh turns on the helium and Leslie fills the balloon with enough helium to lift the "weigh off" (its a big hook with weights on it) up off the ground. This is just enough helium to lift the instrument and balloon up into the sky.
After it has enough helium, Terry ties off the inlet tube. I have the all important job of holding the balloon. Yep that's me...pretty beastly I know.
Then Leslie and Terry tie on the ozonesonde to the balloon and we spread out the rest of it in a line...
Then "Let go!" and the balloon is off...
and it floats up...
and away. All these pictures are courtesy of Willem Buitendyk who was watching our August 27th launch and was kind of enough to give us copies of his pictures. (Thanks!)

The balloons are so long because as it floats higher, the gas inside expands with the decreasing pressure. This allows enough room for expansion to get the balloon up into the stratosphere. Once it goes up to where the gas expands to fill the entire balloon, it pops and comes plummeting back to earth where it crashes and burns in a huge fire ball of flame... hehe just kidding, it just falls to the ground and stays there. Then we just wait for it to go up and back down and collect the data it sends back to us on the trip. These are small balloons compared to the ones we send up with the larger instruments. We have 5 large instruments to launch this year but it hasn't been calm enough to do those yet. I will let you know when we get one off the ground. Stay tuned for more exciting balloon launching stories!!

Cold Alert!

2009-08-30T16:35:00.001+12:00

The day keeps getting colder. Its the coldest it has been since I arrived. The temperature is -35 degrees F with 30 knots of wind. The wind chill is -104 degrees F. Brrr...Enough said.

Cold and Tired

2009-08-30T09:12:00.009+12:00

Its -28 degrees F with 37 mph winds today... cold. Just walking from the galley to the lab, about 150 feet maybe, it was enough to freeze my face off. I'm completely pooped today too, I just finished taking a nap on my office floor for the last hour. Thats right, my nap was at 8:00 this morning, I just couldn't wake up. But I've been here a week, made it through week number one on the ice. We have accomplished a lot in the lab, 2 successful balloon launches and we are ready to launch one of our big instruments. Leslie and I have been building masts and preparing ozonesondes. Mahesh has built our big instruments. We can all run the big scary laser. My favorite thing so far is driving our big van around, its fun.
I earned my beastly badge yesterday in van driving, it was amazing, I backed all the way around a corner and up a ramp to a building. It was pretty hot.

The views are amazing here too, I always like to just look around and wonder, its just crazy that I'm actually here in Antarctica... I amaze myself sometimes. For those who don't know where I am exactly, its McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Here is a map and the red circle is McMurdo:
McMurdo is located on Ross Island in the McMurdo sound by the Ross Ice Shelf. We can see Mt Erebus, Mt Terror, Black Island, White Island and the mountains across the sound from different places on the station. I'll get more pictures of them later.

Here is a better map of Ross Island for anyone interested. So now that we've all had our geography lesson for the day, here are a couple of things I can see from the door by our lab. This is Mount Discovery across the ice shelf. This mountain is attached to the Trans-Antarctic mountain range which runs along the edge of the continent.

Here are some of the Trans-Antarctic mountains. This is one of the most amazing mountain ranges I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful. That is the permanent ice shelf you are looking at as well, the mountains are across the shelf.
I'll get some more pictures and keep putting them up. I have to be able to stand being outside for more than 2 minutes. :)

By the way, Leslie just told me it is -30 degrees F right now, thats just the temperature, not wind chill. Stay warm everyone!!

Hey Leave Some Comments

2009-08-29T11:39:00.002+12:00

Please, I would love to read comments from you about the blog and pictures and things. Its nice to hear from you all.

Getting gear and arriving on the ice

2009-08-28T16:15:00.006+12:00

Christchurch is where the Antarctic Center is located. People going to McMurdo check in here and get their gear and everything else we needed to know.
This is an example wall of all the gear we are issued and have to wear on the plane down to the station and while out an about on the ice. They call the big red coats "Big Red" and the boots are called "bunny boots". It all keeps you nice and warm.
Here is 3:00 in the morning on the day we left and we just picked up all the gear and were going through security to get on the C-17 we were taking to the ice.
Packed in like sardines in a tin can. :)
View from my seat.
I'm ready!
My first view of the ice and Antarctica. Brr!
The first polar stratospheric clouds I'd ever seen! This is exciting for me because my thesis is all about these clouds and you can only see them in arctic environments. I'll explain more about these later.
Heading to McMurdo Station from Pegasus (the airstrip). The big mountain is Mt. Erebus, an active volcano and the little pointy one on its left is where the station is. We are driving on the permanent ice shelf right now. I'm on the ocean!
McMurdo! My new home! The vehicle in front of us is "Ivan the Terra Bus" and I'll take a picture of him later.

I'll get some more picture up later of some the scenery from around the station and other interesting things I found! Woo I'm in Antarctica!! The bottom of the earth!!

Pictures of New Zealand

2009-08-28T08:16:00.007+12:00

OK I'm trying to get some pictures on here but this blogger thing is not acting like its supposed to and I'm having trouble with them.

Here is a park right by our hotel near the river in Christchurch.

This is the Windsor B&B where we stayed while in NZ. It was a really cute hotel and the people were so nice and friendly. The breakfast was fantastic as well, my favorite was the creamed corn and grilled tomatoes.

When we left for the day, whoever cleaned our room would tuck Mango in bed every day. It was so cute!

The middle of downtown Christchurch has a local square where there is a huge cathedral shown above. They also have a tram running through town that gives a nice tour and some history of Christchurch, shown below.

Leslie and I went to a historical museum one day. There were great displays of Maui culture, when settlers came and early Antarctic explorers. Below, we were in the early transportation room and I just had to ride in the carriage and try out the crazy bike. It was the stairs getting up to the bike that I fell down and twisted my ankle, that's what you get for goofing around I guess.

I will try to get some Antarctic pictures up soon for you all to see.

By the way, we had another successful balloon launch yesterday (Sammy Sonde). Leslie and I decided we are going to name every ozonesonde we send up now. So Sammy was a really smooth launch and it wasn't even that cold out, only -11 degrees F and very little wind.

Hmm

2009-08-25T17:42:00.002+12:00

So another long day getting things done. Last night we were able to get launch a balloon and it was a successful flight. Learned some things... here is a list of things I learned
1. I'm a great "go for" girl.
2. I can shovel snow like a super star.
3. I follow instructions very well.
4. I can wire things together.
5. I am an excellent data watcher.
6. Sometimes you just have to drink the kool-aid and bottle the egg...

Woo I made it!

2009-08-23T18:52:00.003+12:00

We arrived in Antarctica yesterday and have been busy ever since setting up the lab, gathering supplies and getting settled. We flew out yesterday on a C-17 and when we landed it was -26 degrees F... yes, it was that cold. But it is amazing here, beautiful, cold and amazing! When we arrived there were a bunch of people to greet us, they haven't seen new people in 6 months and they were so excited.... for freshies or fresh fruit and veggies... I think they were happy to see us too ;) We had our arrival briefing and then right away, our group was off to start training and setting stuff up. Later, we were able to get our luggage and have a meal. The food is pretty good here, I have no complaints. Leslie and I then went to our room and pretty much went to bed.

Both of us were up early and headed to the office to start getting things ready. The whole day has been busy setting up. There were some amazing polar stratospheric clouds out today, which by the way is what my thesis is about so it was fun to see them in person since they only hang out in arctic regions during winter and you can only see them in the spring when there is sunlight in the atmosphere. Which we don't have much of. I believe the day we arrived, yesterday was the first day the sun was actually completely above the horizon for a bit. We had about 7 hours of light yesterday but I'm not sure on that so I will check and get back to you. We are gaining light really fast though and but never really see the sun. Its below the horizon most of the time. Pretty soon though, Leslie told me we will have 24 hours of daylight which will be new for me.

Antarctic is awesome, really awesome... and yes its cold, take your breath away cold but the gear we have is great. I will have some pictures soon, we finally got our computers checked and can log onto the internet now so I wanted to put a brief up date here. I'm freezing though so I'm going to go to the dorms now and climb into my warm bed. More to come later!!

New Zealand

2009-08-21T08:39:00.002+12:00

Sorry no pictures yet but I'll try for soon.

We arrived in NZ on tuesday and have been hanging out here ever since. The day we arrived, we basically just found some food and went to bed. I was really tired from being in a plane for 20 hours and in airports for 10 hours. Long day. That night I slept for 12 hours straight and it was fantastic. The next morning, Wed, Leslie and I went out to explore Christchurch... did some shopping and walked around for the morning. In the afternoon, we went to the Antarctic Center to get our winter gear. We have two bags full of gear. I have a picture of all the gear we have. so we tried on all the clothes and boots, got a flu shot and we ready to go. That afternoon we had tea with Terry in the botanical gardens and went out for dinner later.

We were supposed to leave on Thurs morning but the weather in McMurdo was not good so we were delayed a day. It gave us more time for exploring, which Leslie and I did. We found a cute place to have coffee and took the tram ride. We then went to the arts center and looked around, had lunch and then went to the muesum. It was really nice. Until I fell off the stairs by a bicycle and twisted my ankle. Yes, I am already injured but hey, what are you going to do. I have a great picture of this bike so you will see what i'm talking about later. Then it was nap time, wandered some more, have dinner at this fantastic italian resurant and went back to the hotel. I had to ice my ankle and take it easy but it was nice to be in bed early.

We were again delayed this morning, so hopefully third time is the charm and we can get to the ice tomorrow. I just want to get there so we can get moving on our project. I will try to add pictures soon but this is a little update for you all. Love ya!!

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

2009-08-16T10:22:00.002+12:00

Well I'm all packed and I think I'm ready to go. Damian and I are spending some time together, he is making me dinner tonight. Then I'm off to the airport tomorrow morning to start the journey to the ice!

Wooooooooo!

2009-08-15T01:44:00.001+12:00

I'm going to Antarctica!! Holy buckets of balls! Almost adventure time... we leave in two days!! Crazy!

Holy Cow!! One week!

2009-08-10T03:46:00.002+12:00

Holy buckets, in one week I'm going to be a plane heading for the other side of the world! I did a practice pack today and I'm pretty sure I can fit everything I need in. I'm a little worried about weight, I've got a lot of chocolate and it weighs more than you would think. I suppose I could leave some of that behind if I need to but I don't really want to. I also think I have the house ready to leave, I believe I have taken care of everything I have to... parking permits, online accounts, plants, Chili is ready and things put away. I'm glad Damian will be home to keep things in order.

I thought I would put up my flight times too.
Sun., Aug 16th - I leave Laramie at 11:25am to Denver, get there around 12:10pm and sit there until 4:30pm, when we head for LA, California. We will land around 5:50pm, LAX time, and sit there for another 3 hours. Then is the long flight to Sidney, Australia from 10:30pm LAX time and get there at 6:15am, Sidney time on Aug. 18th. I totally miss the 17th, somewhere in the all the time changes and crossing the date line, its gone. No 17th for me.
Tues., Aug 18th - After we land in Sidney, we have about an hour to get on the plane to Christchurch, New Zealand. One hour might not be enough time... I guess we'll see. So then we get on a plane to NZ at 7:15am and land around 12:15pm and woo I'm in New Zealand! Then we get a day for break.
Wed., Aug 19th - We get all our gear from the Antarctic Center for the ice and maybe get some training, I don't know, just going with the flow on all this. :) Leslie and I are going to do some shopping and looking around if there is time. Eat some food, good stuff.
Thurs., Aug 20th - Another plane ride. This time to the ice! Leslie tells me its about a 5-6 hour flight and then we'll land in McMurdo, Antarctica!! After that, I have no idea what we need to do or where we go but we'll be there at least.

Lots of traveling in store and I will try to keep you all updated on whats going on, if there is any good stories. Eeek! One week!

2 weeks

2009-08-04T02:49:00.004+12:00

I'm starting to get really nervous now... I've been compulsively packing for weeks now and suddenly feel I need to have my bag packed. I still have time but I find myself running to Wal-mart for a couple items, writing lists and putting things in the suitcase and taking them back out to reorganize and check if I still have it. I've also been dreaming about Antarctica, but mostly the trip there and just about everything that can go wrong on the way. Leslie calls them "the" Antarctica dreams, she gets them too so I don't feel so bad. I'm excited but nervous, its getting so close!

This has nothing to do with Antarctica but I thought I would put a picture of pig wrestling up here because it was so much fun.

Holy crap its starting to hit me...

2009-07-25T03:29:00.004+12:00

Well the countdown is 22 days until I leave... I started packing weeks ago but its time to really start pulling things together. I bought a bunch of random things last night but I just realized I still have a bunch of things left to get... planning to be gone for 3 months on a sheet of ice is harder than it seems. Its hard to get in the mind set that its going to be winter again really quick.

Here is random picture of me in a winter atmosphere... too bad I can't ice fish in Antarctica :)

4 weeks until I leave!

2009-07-21T05:32:00.000+12:00

Woo this trip to Antarctica is coming up quick, still have lots of packing to do and things to get ready. Hope you all enjoy my blog, this is the first one I have ever kept.