McMurdo for Two Days

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The next morning I got to the CDC, put on my ECWs and headed over to the terminal to have our flight briefing. The place was packed with Navchaps and it took us a while to get through security and to find all of our seats. The C-17 really is a big step up from flying on C-130s or C-141s. The plane is massive and has pallets of forward facing seats that even recline. There is so much legroom that you wouldn’t want to take commercial air flights ever again. We touched down after just 5 hours in the air, landing out at the Pegasus Runway. Ivan the Terra Bus was waiting there for us, but I made my way over to one of the smaller, quicker shuttles in order to get into town quickly. I spent the next 45 minutes bumping around in the back of the shuttle van which eventually dropped the 15 of us off at building 155 which houses dorm rooms and the galley. We had our inbrief in the galley which was painful - I just needed to get some sleep.After the talking ended, the 6 of us that were NSF grantees made our way to the back room to fillout our redeployment travel forms for our future departure from the ice. I also received Diamox, which is an altitude sickness prevention drug, for my trip to pole. The South Pole is at 11,000 feet equivalent and we were informed that there were 10 medivacs this season due to altitude sickness, and that they are encouraging people to take Diamox for prevention.

I left the galley and walked up to building 140 to get my luggage and cargo. My Pelican cases and orange bags went into the back of a bright red Ford pickup truck which carried me and all of my stuff back to 155. I was able to unload and get all of my cargo up to the second floor in 2 trips. I checked the Sony HD camera into the housing office to have it locked up and then went to dinner. I found a number of friends there in the galley. Sandwich, Susan, Jesse, Richard, Kris Light and others were all there and it was really nice to catch up. We went back to Richard’s room to watch Show girls with the David Schmader commentary, which helps to highlight all the reasons that this is such a bad movie. This seems to have become a tradition, because I remember being in the same room with the same people and the same movie a little over a year ago.

The next day I met my friend Jesse Christiansen at lunch and he took me onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the NSF Research Ship, which was docked at the McMurdo Ice Pier. Jesse gave me an awesome tour of the ship and it was a really nice way to spend my day. I saw Craige at the IT shop and wandered a little around station. Around 1700 I packed up and got my luggage ready for Bag-Drag at 1900.
I was a little surprised at how good the food has been the past two days. After Dinner I socred I ride with one of the taxi shuttles and got all of my cargo up to 140 to get it checked in for the morning flight. These flight check ins require you to be in full ECW gear so they can confirm that you haven’t packed it as checked luggage (ECW gear is required for all fixed wing and helo flights in Antarctica.

I spent last night with Sandwich and Jesse and a few others playing some games, snacking and talking, and then went to bed around 11pm.

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