At the end of the earth...

I awoke at 4:30 am for my 5:30 am shuttle out to the CDC for the flight to the Ice. We were to be at the CDC at 6am to get dressed in all our ECW and check in our checked baggage. About 5 minutes out from the CDC the shuttle driver tells us that the flight is delayed and we'll just have to wait there. We offload our bags and go to get a bite to eat. After waiting till they opened we ate, then began the big bundle-up. You have to wear all of your ECW on the plane down.

I lined up to go through the baggage weigh-in and check and then into a big lecture room to wait for boarding. After watching a brief safety video I joined the cattle line to board the US Air Force C-17 for the flight from CHCH to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The inside of the plane was enormous with passenger pallets of rows of five seats in the forward half with seating along both sides and cargo pallets in th rear. We picked up paper sack lunch on the way into the plane for the trip. It was a huge lunch, really enough for two. My guess is that they do that so that if you have to boomerang back to NZ because of weather conditions on the Ice you have something to eat. Also lots of water on the plane to ward of dehydration.

After getting all settled in the plane took off and I napped, talked with other passengers, wrote in my journal and snacked for the 5.5 hour flight down. Since it's a military plane there are no windows other than the portholes in the doors that you can peek out of. There were lines throughout the flight of people peeking out. For a long while there was just open blue water, then suddenly there began to be
broken up sea ice with big crackes and crevasses. After about another 45 minutes to an hour we saw the first bit of landmass and then a while after that mountains and ice covered terrain. The views were really cool, unlike anything I've ever seen.


After about five hours we were instructed to donn all of our ECW and prepare for landing. I was thrilled that we were going to be able to land. The plane touched down and then just kept going and going. I wasn't sure it was ever going to stop! Of course it did and the first thing off the plane was the cargo. As the tail of the plane was opened out the sunlight was really bright and I could see a bit of mountains in the background far across the sea ice. Once the forklifts offloaded the paletts the tail was closed up and we thought we'd be offloading at the front.

Then they reopened the rear and we all walked off onto the sea ice and quickly over to the shuttles that were there waiting for us. It was very cool and still seemed quite surreal that I was at the bottom of the earth.
The weather was pretty clear and a little windy with the wind chill factor of -29F. A while after our landing we heard that the ice under the plane on the runway was only 6ft thick, yikes! Luckily, there's only something like 12,000 miles of sea below that. ;-)

Then into town to the main building #155 for a short debrief and room assignments and keys. After I found my dorm and room I walked up to another building for my bag pickup. After cleaning the surfaces and unpacking what I had I surveyed my tiny little bedroom wondering what in the world I'd gotten myself into. Actually, I'm in a pretty nice building with new furniture and no roommate yet. I'm pretty fortunate that way. It's a small room, but a quiet building and clean and all. It'll do just fine for the next five months I'm sure.
After unpacking I walked over to #155 with another firefighter, Brian Spigel, to the galley to meet the rest of the FD gang for dinner and then I went over to the coffee shop for a pre-bedtime warmup drink.

Came back to the dorm, had a hot shower to clean up and warm up and then off to sleep. I'm beat and ready to not travel for a while. It's exhausting!