Nowhere To Go But Up

After two and a half months of travel around places like New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand, I should be ready to get back into blogger mode. As it turns out, I'm not going to be returning to the South Pole this coming winter. Since this blog is all about my time at the South Pole, I can't really keep adding to it if I'm not there. So, I have made a new blog (can you believe somebody already used just about every variant of my name already?). I'll leave this one around just in case somebody wants to go read about my south pole antics.

Just checking in from sunny Australia. I'm still very much alive, just on the road an no time to blog. Besides, this is a blog about Antarctica and I'm not there anyway. Check out Ethan or Jeff's blogs (see links on left) if you want to know what's going at pole this summer. If you're interested in where I am on any particular day, just check out my map.

I'll be in Australia until the new year, then Thailand, then back in the states for awhile. After that maybe I'll be a bit more on it with the blog.

After the morning flights were dropped, it didn't look like we would get out again today. Just after lunch time it became apparent that the weather in McMurdo AND at pole was going to cooperate enough to get some flights in. We got out at around 8pm with little fanfare. It was a pretty smooth flight, I got to try the horrible box lunches that I've heard so much about (not that bad in my opinion), there was some turbulence on landing, one polie blew cookies (I won't name names), and our transport from the plane got stuck in a snow drift. It feels good to breath moister, warmer air, but we're not off the continent yet. I somehow avoided sleeping in man-camp for tonight. Here's to hoping that we get a C-17 flight north tomorrow.

Cheers for now....

I appreciate all of the warm words of encouragement for my travels, but unfortunately they have not yet begun. I am at the south pole. Still. Flight delays descended upon the south pole like an evil shroud and have endured for the past week. For the people who were scheduled to leave on the second Herc flight out of pole, the wait is up to a full seven days. Delays from the first group spilled over into the time in which my flight was scheduled to leave. Day after day, no flights. Each time I think that there’s a flight, I have to clean my room, wash my sheets, pack everything up in anticipation of leaving, and wait for a plane to land that has no intention of doing so. Then I go back to my room, remake my bed, pull out the things I need to exist for an evening, and repeat the process the next day. This is a state of purgatory.

Being weather delayed alone is frustrating for everyone involved, but the nature of these delays really make it hard to swallow. There have been high winds at the take-off point in McMurdo. There has been poor visibility here at pole. There have been mechanical problems. There have been windows of opportunity that were missed. There have been weather predictions that indicated poor weather, which prevent flights from being planned, but the weather never came. There have been scheduling issues, such as no flights on a Sunday when the weather was fine.

Particularly crushing was Tuesday, when the planes took off toward clear skies at Pole only to get here and, literally minutes before landing, the visibility went to next to nothing. The planes made approaches towards the invisible-to-them runway, just a stone’s throw away. They couldn’t land and boomeranged back towards McMurdo. There were three planes in the air, but the weather in McMurdo had changed dramatically as well. Two of the planes were diverted to the Italian station because they wouldn’t have enough fuel to circle McMurdo to wait for a clearing. The plane that was closest made three attempts at landing in the high winds that had overtaken Mactown. With each attempt and the approach being so bumpy, people began to lose their lunch. Each successive approach yielded more digestive victims, but they landed with no casualties other than a few splattered barf bags. We now have the south pole version of the Vomit Comet.

The several strange events of the week (we even had a piece of tracked heavy equipment fall through the roof of an under snow building) have caused those of us who are stuck to wonder what we have done to tempt the fates. Does somebody here have bad karma? We thought maybe it was Derek, who had never been to the pole marker after a full winter at the south pole. We sent him out twice to touch it, but our plight remains unresolved. What if one of us is being punished by the heavens? We have two men of the cloth on station, sent just for an overnight stay originally, who are supposed to be flying out with us. One would think that they would offset any evil that existed in our midst. Maybe it’s because Ann Curry wants to come here and see the pole. We’re not being stopped from leaving, but possibly she’s being stopped from coming. No flights out = no flights in. I think what it really comes down to is that this is the south pole. Things can and do go wrong. There’s nothing you can do to change it, you just deal with it.

Dealing with “it” has consisted of a group of winterovers gathering in the galley or one of the lounges each day to wait for the flight announcements. Some people are packed and ready to go, others are more pragmatic and wait for a plane to actually take off. Each day this week the flights have been pushed back, boomeranged, and/or cancelled. Each day as it becomes apparent that we will remain one day longer, polies start checking off travel plans that need to be changed or scrapped, bemoaning their fate, then huddling together in a group that resembled a wake. With each passing day, the look on everyone’s face becomes more bleak, the spirit in their voices fades, and their minds begin to spiral towards a hopeless feeling of the nightmarish futility of it all. Some of us have ‘only’ been here nine months, some for a full year. We’ve endured round after round of what the south pole brings during the winter and we’re walking back toward our corner after the bell only to be sucker punched from behind.

Everyone is handling things differently. Some are in denial, some openly frustrated, some just roll with it. I’m doing what I didn’t do at the end of my last winter, which is trying to be social with the summer folk who have made it down. A lot of people who are going to be wintering with me next year are already here, so I have been trying to establish some connection with them. There’s also the familiar faces who return summer after summer. Having my sore ankle has kept me away from athletics, but conversation fills in the gaps. It’s not so bad for me. This is just the longest I have ever been stuck in an airport in my life.

The plane is in the air. There will be no straight through flight, so our group will spend the night in McMurdo and head for Christchurch tomorrow. My blog is basically going to go dormant for the next three months. I might update it once or twice, but really while I travel I'm going to focus on the non-virtual world. So, I'll see ya back on here in late January........

Due to weather delays, I'm still at the south pole. There is a group that has been delayed for four days now, I've only been pushed back two so far. There are no Sunday flights so we'll try again on Monday. Rumor is that there might be a straight-thru flight on Monday, meaning that we would not spend the night in McMurdo but simply get off one plane on the runway and board another. Waking up at the south pole and going to bed the same night in Christchurch sounds good to me.

If everything goes as planned, tonight will be my last night on the ice. I just need to pack up my room, throw some stuff into storage, do bag drag* later tonight, and wait for some good weather to allow the planes to fly. Yesterday's flights never happened because of high winds here, so we never got a visit from the Today Show folks and the winter overs who were supposed to leave ended up here for another night. Weather doesn't look good for today either, so my guess is that the people supposed to leave yesterday will go out with us tomorrow instead.

We did a little group photo of the science support winter over crew for 2008:


You will notice that I'm in the photo. Yes, I'm coming back for a third straight winter. I wish I could offer the world a logical explanation for it, but all I can muster is the old Antarctic addage: you come the first time for the experience, the second time for the money, and the third time because you don't fit in anywhere else. I'm going to travel for the next three months, then return hopefully with a renewed energy (and a healthy foot). Speaking of my foot, at the request of my mother I had it X-rayed and it's not broken. It displays a new array of color each day, but I've posted enough wookie foot pictures on here.



*If you're wondering what bag drag is, I'll explain. When it's time to go away from the south pole, you have to have all of the things you are taking with you weighed before boarding the plane. Typically this will take place the day before departure. All of your luggage, your full ECW gear, and your passport are brought out to be weighed and palletized (at pole this is done at the cargo building). The next day you show up with just a carry-on for your flight and the pallet of luggage is loaded into the back of a Herc.