Starting the blog

I am going to McMurdo Base in Antarctica as part of my participation in the CREAM experiment, which will be sent by balloon to the top of the atmosphere from the NASA National Scientific Balloon Facility launch site there. I should be there for a couple weeks. I will keep up entries as time and connections permit, along with a few photos.

I have my plane tickets now. I depart Dec 5 (Monday), at two in the afternoon. I am allowed about 70 pounds of stuff. After talking to others who have been there I will not be taking more than a few token winter clothing items (certainly my own long underwear). Apparently, the facility provides a vast amount of clothing, about 30 pounds worth, all of which I am required to take to the Ice.

My tickets take me from Cincinnati through Chicago and LA to Auckland, NZ, then to Christchurch, NZ, which is the staging area for McMurdo base. It is hard to tell exactly how many hours it will take to get there, but just adding up flight times gives 19.5 hours. From what I can tell by looking at time between flights, I will spend a total of 5.5 hours on layovers, so that makes… a 25 hour journey, not counting the couple of hours of waiting for the original flight out of Cincinnati. Once in Christchurch, I will get my gear requisitioned, then load up on a C130 transport (apparently in cargo net seating) for eight more hours of travel to Antarctica. I am promised a night’s sleep in between.

Preparations:
I have been buying DVDs, long underwear, hiking boots, and updating my ancient laptop. I have been getting all the software I can possibly imagine I will want installed and running on the laptop. This includes some of the more difficult development code using the CERN GEANT4 particle physics simulation software to try to profile the x-ray component of cosmic ray atmospheric showers. Windows is such a pain for that kind of thing, and I don’t have a spare laptop to run Linux on.

I hope to spend a little time in NZ on the return half. We’ll see. Who knows if I’ll ever be through there again?

What do I expect? I’ll list them and see what happens.
1. I’ll grow a beard.
2. I will spend all my time schmoozing while down on the Ice instead of all the work I am hoping to accomplish.
3. I will have far more cold weather gear than I need.
4. I will have far more entertainment items (books, DVDs, music) than I need.
5. I will wish I had more time in NZ.
6. I will not meet Peter Jackson.
7. I will gain 10 pounds. Apparently there is a full hot breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I can hardly wait!