McMurdo Town

After getting to Ivan, I was able to turn around and take some pictures of my new home for the nxt few months. These are the flight line buildings for the existing ice runway that will only be operational until December. After that it will not have enough solid ice to land on for several months. Strange to think that the runway is going to melt away.

Taking pictures the other direction are more of the flight line vehicles and mountains. The flat area is all frozen Ross Sea ice.

This view is from town, looking back at the ice runway. All roads on the ice are well marked with flags, and checked frequently for condition.

This beautiful mountain is Mt. Erebus, it is an active volcano and frequently spews out "bombs"or volcanic rock that have some very rare "crystals" in them. People collect them and make jewelry with them. They are very rare and the only other place that has some with the same chemical make up is in Africa. We can frequently see steam coming out the top.

If you go over to Crary Lab where the scientists are, you can look at a screen that has a live webcam of the crater, very interesting to watch.

From my room, this is one of the views that I have. The golden colored building, the brown door is the station laundry, to the right is the library door, and the remainder of the building is the galley and dorm rooms. The library is very well stocked, and a pleasant place to read, and rest.

Meet Dr. Penguin, he is the mascot for the medical facility, McMurdo General Hospital

During our first Mass Casualty Exercise, I caught the lead physician, Dr. Harry Owens, and the Flight Nurse Tara discussing the set up. We were practicing in the firehouse. We train lots of volunteers in town to help if there is a disaster of some kind. Thank heavens we have extra nurses on station that work in cargo, or as janitors or wherever.

The flight to Antarctica

Adding to the adventure.

Well, here we are on the C-17, on our way to the "ice". All our ECW is weighing us down. Many are wondering what is going to happen next, we are the FNGies, or F---New Guys. The more experienced are just resting, reading, listening to music or whatever on the 5 hour flight. Meals, yes, we get them, they are the new up and coming box meals. Some are outdated, some have mold, the canned pasta salad and tuna is disgusting.

The flight crew invited us up to the cockpit. Got to get some awesome pictures of the ice in the very South Pacific Ocean. We were still several hours away from landing on the ice. The pictures do not do the scenery justice.

The view was spectacular from the cockpit, our co-pilot was a very petite female, she could even see over the instrument panel.

Now, we have landed, of course we are not sure where, there are no windows. Everyone is getting their gear on, grabbing the carry on bag, and ready to exit to the ice runway.

We are off the airplane, and the first thing I see besides the bright sun and white runway, is Ivan the terra bus. Our driver was Shuttle Bill, he was awesome.

After walking out near Ivan, I turned to photograph our airplane. Just a tiny plane, but we are all relieved that we have landed. Beautiful day, sunny and crisp. OK, now load us all up, and take us to the galley for orientation and get our room keys. Lots more sitting and listening. The C-17's are very sensative and do not like the cold, so they are only on the ground about 1 hour. They are reloaded, and take back off for Christchurch.

Blogging 101

OK, everyone; I am in progress of trying to learn how to use this blog site. I have never blogged before so there is a learning curve. I wanted to get some pictures out and some explanations of where and what I have been doing.

I have been trying for weeks to get this down, my friend Brodie (IT) came and showed me how to do this again. I was having problems uploading pictures to the blog. Yeah, I finally got it. Part of the problem here, is that we do not have alot of band width so downloading pictures can be an issue.

So now on to the story of my travels here to Antarctica. This first picture is me, at the terminal in Christchurch, New Zealand; getting ready to board the airplane for Antarctica. I am in my ECW (extreme cold weather gear), the red parka, also known as "Big Red" is your friend.

There are lots of people getting ready to go, the room was full of anticipation.

Then we boarded the aircraft. An Air Force C-17, cargo and passengers on board. As you can see we even had an aiplane engine with us. There was a C-130 on the "ice" as we call it here, that was broke down. I sat next to one of the Kiwi (that is a New Zealander) pilots from that airplane. We chatted up a bit. Have to learn the terms to survive.

Inside the aircraft, looking up at the cockpit.

A new friend I met, she is an ER nurse as well, but came to the ice as a cargo handler. There are people with various degrees that come here to work just for the experience. What an amazing place.