October 18, 2003
Arrival!
We made it down south! Hallelujah!
We even made it in on the first try. Like last year, shuttles were scheduled to pick up ice folks from the hotels to head to the airport at 5:30 AM. Check-in time: 6 AM. We arrived at the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center), did some final sorting of our gear—ECW (Extreme Cold Weather issue) on, street clothes in carry-on, bags tagged according to whether they’d be staying in Christchurch, getting checked to ship with us to the ice, or coming with us as carry-ons—and weighed in. The checked luggage weighed, and the carry-on luggage weighed with us. Then, to breakfast at the Antarctic Center café. At 7:15, we all met back at the passenger terminal for our safety video, briefing us not on the flight but on what to expect in McMurdo, sent our bags through x-ray, got on a bus to take us to the plane, and, eventually, boarded the plane. Take off: 9 AM.
Last year, we flew down in a C-130 (Hercules), which is fine but takes 7-9 hours and is cramped. This year, the C-17. Ah-yeah. A huge military plane, with plenty of leg room—both Chuck and I, sitting across from each other, could stretch out our legs and not kick each other—high ceilings, actual seats rather than the red webbing of the C-130s and C-141s, and a flight time to the ice of approximately 5 hours. Deluxe.
[Jill and Christine caught in the act.]
[Chuck.]
The flight deck was up stairs, the plane was so tall. The flight deck looked interesting. Maybe I’d like to check out the flight deck. Is that someone else I see coming down from the flight deck? Perhaps. It doesn’t hurt to ask. So, about a half an hour into the flight, I approached the loadmaster at the base of the stairs up and asked if I could head up to get a picture. He put up a finger, asking me to wait, and called up to the flight deck on his radio. Are you taking visitors? he asked. He motioned me up. On the flight deck, an officer immediately vacated his seat and handed me his headphones. Ah, now this is nice. I don’t just have to take a picture and run. In fact, I was up there for about an hour, chatting with pilots Paul and Phil, who were a riot, and another officer whose name I never caught. I even bullied Paul into flying the plane. I noticed when I arrived that both pilots had their hands free, and that the airplane was flying itself. Paul handed me some postcards to mail for a friend, and showed me his own pile of blank postcards. Oh, no problem, I said. You’ll have plenty of time to write on those things. He took this to be a challenge, me making fun of the whole hands-free airplane flying, so he took the controls and took the plane off autopilot and turned it gently from side to side a few times to show that he knew how. I didn’t ask if he knew how to roll the plane.
[Pilot Paul and Myrna, another visitor.]
[Me with Phil and Paul.]
[View from plane. This one's actually from the little bitty side window, not the cockpit.]
Even more exciting than hanging out in the flight deck, though, is the fact that we made it down to Antarctica. I grew more excited as we grew closer. A season of friends, fun, interesting work, on an extraordinary continent. I was stoked. The weather when we arrived was absolutely beautiful. Relatively calm, sunny and very clear. The mountains were bolder than I had ever seen them during the daytime last year—they stood out against the sky in detail, the TransAntarctics and Mt. Discovery. Welcome home.
[Inside the Terra Bus.]
But we were still moving as a herd. Loaded onto Ivan the Terra Bus, off to McMurdo across the sea ice, and channeled into the galley for an orientation. We were given our room keys and network account information, and were free to settle in. I dropped my stuff in my new home—glorious closet of a dorm room—and headed off to Crary, the science lab, to meet up with Chuck.
It’s cold here. It’s frickin’ cold here! I wore a tee-shirt, a fleece jacket, and the red windbreaker, leaving puffy big red behind, because I was in McMurdo now, the low, warm town where we can get away with those things. But I couldn’t get away with it. It was frickin’ cold! I wondered seriously if I would get frostbite on my nose just walking across town. It was cold. Is this place supposed to be that cold?
We went to dinner in the galley, where we ran into friends from last year, and already caught wind of a little word-of-mouth only concert at the BFC (Byrd Field Center, the group that issues the field supplies). Night one was already shaping up. This is what we get for arriving on a Saturday.
The rest of the night went something like: run into Jenn, go with her to Craig’s room for drinks poured over 2,000-year-old ice from a glacier which he had visited that morning, go to the concert at the BFC (three brothers, one of which wintered over and one of which is down for his first time and the other of which will be wintering this year), go for a glass of wine at the Coffee House, go back to the BFC, swing by disco night at Gallagher’s, the non-smoking bar, go back to my room to change into slightly more festive attire, go back to Gallagher’s and join in the mayhem. Not so bad for our first night.
Did I mention that it was cold? The wind started picking up again in the evening, with gusts strong enough to make me grab onto nearby railing every once in a while. The best was when Jill and I ran into each other on the way to the BFC. Cold, bundled, braced against the wind, tunnel vision out of our circle of hood-fur, me assuming she was on a similar trajectory beside me and then—bam. We run into each other. And laugh hysterically.
It’s cold out, and windy, and already I’m wearing my balaclava. Snow snakes wind through town, clouds obscure the once-brilliant mountains. Jenn debates about whether to get dressed up for the disco party, since it’s so cold, her motivation waning, but when I see her later she is wearing a purple wig, an obnoxious knee-length dress, and pink house slippers. I’m Mrs. Roper! she exclaims. That’s Jenn.
