So, just to tie up some loose ends…. The balloon came down on January 13, 2006, only 250 miles from where it was launched. It made two complete revolutions around Antarctica, and stayed up for about 32 days. CREAM is the luckiest experiment I have ever been on. Recovery was easy and total. Absolutely everything was recovered, and very quickly, in a couple days and a few flights.
As for the beard: I shaved it off on Monday, January 16. I was tired of wringing out my face every time it got wet. The beard never really got soft, so always itched, and my wife never really stopped laughing. I shaved it off in stages, intending to stop for a while at various places, but as soon as I shaved off the first part, I could not stop, because it looked ridiculous. A goatee and/or sideburns are not my style.
So, thanks for tuning in. My journey and this blog were featured in a local newspaper article in the Cincinnati Enquirer (Northern Kentucky edition). My 15 minutes of fame have come and gone.
I did decide that I want to make this once in a lifetime opportunity into a twice in a lifetime opportunity, and I think I have that chance. In fact, I think I have two chances. Once again with the CREAM experiment in 2007/08, and again the following year with CREST. All this, of course, depends on various schedules happening as planned. My fingers are crossed!!
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Monday, January 02, 2006
Last Post... Vote Now!
I made several predictions when I made my first post on this blog. Let’s see how those turned out:
Alright, I need your help. What’s the word on the beard? Compare this picture to the one in the sidebar to the right. Does it fit me, or should I go back to being clean shaven? Vote in the comments.
To answer a few of the more interesting questions posted as responses to previous blogs:
The official time zone of McMurdo is New Zealand time, which makes sense since McMurdo is nearly due south of NZ.
The toilet seats for the outdoor pit toilets are Styrofoam. The toilet doors don’t always lock, so there is a red flag that says “STOP” in the room which you place outside the door when you are inside.
The CREAM detector is currently floating between 125,000 and 130,000 feet, a perfect altitude.
- I’ll grow a beard. Yup. Check out the four weeks growth. I think I’ll keep it for another month or so just to see what happens. The downside is that my wife isn’t really a fan. She says she wonders who this stranger is that she picked up at the airport. Fortunately for me, she still agrees to kiss the stranger, but usually breaks out in laughter in the middle. She calls herself “long-suffering….”
- I will spend all my time schmoozing while down on the Ice instead of all the work I am hoping to accomplish. So true. I got very little of the work done that I took with me, but I did revisit my pool game skills (there are two pool tables in McMurdo).
- I will have far more cold weather gear than I need. Oh yeah. I hauled around a bunch of junk. Staying at Mcmurdo did not strain my wardrobe like going out in the field would have.
- I will have far more entertainment items (books, DVDs, music) than I need. Yes, but not by much. I finished off three of the four books and watched two of the three movies I took.
- I will wish I had more time in NZ. Yes, yes, yes!!!
- I will not meet Peter Jackson. Nope. Not a sight. But I probably wouldn’t recognize him anyway because he lost a lot of weight. He could have been on the same sea kayaking trip I was on and I wouldn’t have known.
- I will gain 10 pounds. Yes, there was a full hot breakfast every morning, and staying at B&Bs did not help. Actual weight gain: 7 pounds.
Alright, I need your help. What’s the word on the beard? Compare this picture to the one in the sidebar to the right. Does it fit me, or should I go back to being clean shaven? Vote in the comments.
To answer a few of the more interesting questions posted as responses to previous blogs:
The official time zone of McMurdo is New Zealand time, which makes sense since McMurdo is nearly due south of NZ.
The toilet seats for the outdoor pit toilets are Styrofoam. The toilet doors don’t always lock, so there is a red flag that says “STOP” in the room which you place outside the door when you are inside.
The CREAM detector is currently floating between 125,000 and 130,000 feet, a perfect altitude.
Exploring New Zealand
What an incredible place New Zealand is! There is a little bit of paradise there. The country consists of two large islands, called the North and South Islands by natives, though they must have real names. Auckland, the capital, is on the North Island, and contains fully half the country’s population of about 4 million. As a result the rest of the country is pretty empty, especially the South Island. I only toured the north end of the South Island.
Before I get into the details of my NZ trip, I though I should give a few travel tips for the next time you go down there. First of all, if you get a car, be prepared to drive on the left side of the road. (My mantra for right turns was “Go right, stay left.”) Car travel times are much longer for a particular distance than you would expect in the States. There are no four lane roads (at least where I was), and although there is no traffic to speak of even during this busy holiday period, the roads are quite twisty and turny so travel is slow. Similarly, on the trails, signs posted to help the hiker time his day give times for walks that are ridiculously short. I am no slacker, but I would have had to practically jog to match the suggested times!
All over the island, except in Christchurch, two lane bridges are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time there is a little sign and paint to tell you which direction has the right of way, but I found determining who went first was mostly a game of chicken. One of my favorite bridges is this trestle bridge that also carries train tracks. (Note this bridge has a signal – the only bridge I ran across with one.) As you go across the bridge you can see the tracks above. Looking up the ties are visible. Crazy. My favorite bridge, near Greymouth, had the tracks on the same level as the cars. The signs indicating that the train tracks were ahead really are evocative. Note the background sign. That’s a guy falling off his bike as he hits the railroad tracks imbedded in the bridge ahead. However, my favorite sign was a reminder that the road could get slippery when “frosty.” Note that the skid marks cross on this sign. Rough place.
New Zealanders are an incredibly friendly and gregarious lot. I never had difficulty with asking questions about something or otherwise getting help or advice. But let me caution you that directions given by a New Zealander are often next to useless. For example, to find a certain store, I was told to “follow the main street until you get to the bank. It should be right there.” Which main street? “The one up there.” (We were on one main street, and there are several in a city.) Which bank? There is more than one!
I have changed my mind about the effectiveness of tipping in the States. There is no tipping in New Zealand, and service at restaurants is nearly nonexistent.
In towns, finding accommodations and food were not a problem. There are different levels, and a list from most primitive to most luxurious is youth hostel, backpackers, motel, B&B, and hotel. Plenty of choices. In Greymouth I stayed in a Noah’s Ark themed backpacker’s in the tiger room.
A final note of caution: The New Zealand possum is considered a pest, and its fur is used to make a variety of items, such as socks, gloves and hats. (Sorry the picture of this stuffed possum is a little out of focus.) This misuse makes them really mad, and at night you must be careful not to get attacked by killer possums coming out of the trees. I barely escaped this encounter with my life.
There are so many things to tell before launching into the travelogue, but I’ll just mention one more thing. I saw the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, as well as the infamous Southern Cross constellation. All of these are only visible from the southern hemisphere. Seeing these has been a lifelong desire of mine. BTW – Did you know that the moon looks upside down from the southern hemisphere?
You can follow along on the trip by going to some web sites with New Zealand maps, such as http://www.aatravel.co.nz/map/search-bymap.shtml?locationId=1. Click on the region of interest. I’ll give names.
I had found a friend to share a rental car with, and on the first day in Christchurch we made all our plans and reservations. Since New Zealanders use the Christmas holidays as their primary summer vacation, I was concerned that no housing would be available. But in the end there were no problems, since NZ’s don’t start their fun until after Christmas, and our trip would start Christmas Eve.
Here’s where you can start following the map: Starting in Christchurch, we took highway 1 up the coast towards Kaikoura, cutting in on a loop that took us to see more of the inner part of the island. The land is very mountainous, and sticking the camera out the window and snapping pictures gave us shots like this one. Kaikoura is a small town that advertises itself to be a starting place for a lot of water entertainment, such as swimming with dolphins or watching whales, but what I found was the seal colony. They look like so many giant slugs, except when they get in the water. The mountains touch the sea around the bay in Kaikoura, so the setting was quite beautiful. From there, we traveled to Picton, a small town in the Marlborough region at the north end of the South Island. In Picton, there were hiking trails through the forest, and we did some sea kayaking. The water was clear enough to see sting rays scoot across the bottom. Several species of cormorants, which they call shags, were very common.
From Picton we drove west on 63 to the west coast region, and stopped at Punakaiki. There are very nice stone formations which form blowholes as the waves come in. Unfortunately I had forgotten to charge my camera, so that part of the trip will forever be lost to photography. We stopped in Greymouth for the night, where I stayed in the backpackers mentioned above, and moved on across the north end of the Southern Alps in the morning through Arthur’s Pass, taking 73 back into the Christchurch/Canterbury region.
In Arthur’s Pass we took this incredible hike. It started off with nice boardwalk through beech forests, and after a while put us in a river bed. If you look carefully at this picture you can find the small orange trail marker up on the left side of the river bed. From here on out it was a mad scramble, past signs which did not deter me, up to a waterfall and false glacier, which was unmelted snow that the river had undercut. Lovely day. I got a pretty good sunburn during my after-lunch nap.
Pictures don’t do this justice. What made the trip so nice were the constant surprises. I ran into one nice place after another. I really MUST go back someday.
Before I get into the details of my NZ trip, I though I should give a few travel tips for the next time you go down there. First of all, if you get a car, be prepared to drive on the left side of the road. (My mantra for right turns was “Go right, stay left.”) Car travel times are much longer for a particular distance than you would expect in the States. There are no four lane roads (at least where I was), and although there is no traffic to speak of even during this busy holiday period, the roads are quite twisty and turny so travel is slow. Similarly, on the trails, signs posted to help the hiker time his day give times for walks that are ridiculously short. I am no slacker, but I would have had to practically jog to match the suggested times!
All over the island, except in Christchurch, two lane bridges are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time there is a little sign and paint to tell you which direction has the right of way, but I found determining who went first was mostly a game of chicken. One of my favorite bridges is this trestle bridge that also carries train tracks. (Note this bridge has a signal – the only bridge I ran across with one.) As you go across the bridge you can see the tracks above. Looking up the ties are visible. Crazy. My favorite bridge, near Greymouth, had the tracks on the same level as the cars. The signs indicating that the train tracks were ahead really are evocative. Note the background sign. That’s a guy falling off his bike as he hits the railroad tracks imbedded in the bridge ahead. However, my favorite sign was a reminder that the road could get slippery when “frosty.” Note that the skid marks cross on this sign. Rough place.
New Zealanders are an incredibly friendly and gregarious lot. I never had difficulty with asking questions about something or otherwise getting help or advice. But let me caution you that directions given by a New Zealander are often next to useless. For example, to find a certain store, I was told to “follow the main street until you get to the bank. It should be right there.” Which main street? “The one up there.” (We were on one main street, and there are several in a city.) Which bank? There is more than one!
I have changed my mind about the effectiveness of tipping in the States. There is no tipping in New Zealand, and service at restaurants is nearly nonexistent.
In towns, finding accommodations and food were not a problem. There are different levels, and a list from most primitive to most luxurious is youth hostel, backpackers, motel, B&B, and hotel. Plenty of choices. In Greymouth I stayed in a Noah’s Ark themed backpacker’s in the tiger room.
A final note of caution: The New Zealand possum is considered a pest, and its fur is used to make a variety of items, such as socks, gloves and hats. (Sorry the picture of this stuffed possum is a little out of focus.) This misuse makes them really mad, and at night you must be careful not to get attacked by killer possums coming out of the trees. I barely escaped this encounter with my life.
There are so many things to tell before launching into the travelogue, but I’ll just mention one more thing. I saw the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, as well as the infamous Southern Cross constellation. All of these are only visible from the southern hemisphere. Seeing these has been a lifelong desire of mine. BTW – Did you know that the moon looks upside down from the southern hemisphere?
You can follow along on the trip by going to some web sites with New Zealand maps, such as http://www.aatravel.co.nz/map/search-bymap.shtml?locationId=1. Click on the region of interest. I’ll give names.
I had found a friend to share a rental car with, and on the first day in Christchurch we made all our plans and reservations. Since New Zealanders use the Christmas holidays as their primary summer vacation, I was concerned that no housing would be available. But in the end there were no problems, since NZ’s don’t start their fun until after Christmas, and our trip would start Christmas Eve.
Here’s where you can start following the map: Starting in Christchurch, we took highway 1 up the coast towards Kaikoura, cutting in on a loop that took us to see more of the inner part of the island. The land is very mountainous, and sticking the camera out the window and snapping pictures gave us shots like this one. Kaikoura is a small town that advertises itself to be a starting place for a lot of water entertainment, such as swimming with dolphins or watching whales, but what I found was the seal colony. They look like so many giant slugs, except when they get in the water. The mountains touch the sea around the bay in Kaikoura, so the setting was quite beautiful. From there, we traveled to Picton, a small town in the Marlborough region at the north end of the South Island. In Picton, there were hiking trails through the forest, and we did some sea kayaking. The water was clear enough to see sting rays scoot across the bottom. Several species of cormorants, which they call shags, were very common.
From Picton we drove west on 63 to the west coast region, and stopped at Punakaiki. There are very nice stone formations which form blowholes as the waves come in. Unfortunately I had forgotten to charge my camera, so that part of the trip will forever be lost to photography. We stopped in Greymouth for the night, where I stayed in the backpackers mentioned above, and moved on across the north end of the Southern Alps in the morning through Arthur’s Pass, taking 73 back into the Christchurch/Canterbury region.
In Arthur’s Pass we took this incredible hike. It started off with nice boardwalk through beech forests, and after a while put us in a river bed. If you look carefully at this picture you can find the small orange trail marker up on the left side of the river bed. From here on out it was a mad scramble, past signs which did not deter me, up to a waterfall and false glacier, which was unmelted snow that the river had undercut. Lovely day. I got a pretty good sunburn during my after-lunch nap.
Pictures don’t do this justice. What made the trip so nice were the constant surprises. I ran into one nice place after another. I really MUST go back someday.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Leaving McMurdo
Well, I’m back in the US. I arrived just before midnight on Thursday, Dec 29, a day that started the previous midnight 42 hours before. I was up for a good many of those hours. Overall the trip was a great success. Our instrument, CREAM, is still up in the air as of this writing (New Year’s Day). You can follow its position at http://www.wff.nasa.gov/BPO/creamweb/edrs/viewimage.php?image=GPS_fig11.jpg
(It was the other science group, ATIC, that had the bad balloon.)
I wanted to share with you my last few adventures, including flying out of McMurdo in a C17 cargo jet and exploring New Zealand. First, in this installment, the trip out of McMurdo:
I was supposed to leave on Dec 21, but, as I mentioned previously, the flight was cancelled that day and moved to the 22nd. The plane for the return trip is very different than the one I took down. Recall that the flight down was on a C130 propeller-driven cargo plane (shown earlier) and took seven hours in cramped conditions. However, the C130 planes landed conveniently just outside McMurdo on the Ice Runway. Sadly, the ice that it landed on melts in the summer, and it is too late in the season now to use it, so a runway on the permanent ice shelf, about 10 miles out from McMurdo, called Pegasus, was used for the return trip. That runway can have C17 Globemaster jets land on it. These jets can fly down from Christchurch and return in one day. The trip is only about 4 hours, and the planes are newer, so more mechanically reliable. (Several times C130 flights were cancelled due to mechanical difficulties.)
On the day we were to depart the weather was poor. It was snowing hard, but at least the wind was not very strong. The journey out to the runway was in Ivan the Terrabus. Finally, I got to ride it! However, poor old Ivan got stuck in blowing snow, despite its huge tires. We had to be rescued by two caterpillar tractors, which then accompanied us the rest of the way out to the runway. After a long wait we boarded the plane. What relative luxury! The interior was much roomier. There were even some REAL SEATS! Even one real bathroom this time, as opposed to the wall mounted receptacles in the C130. While many people slept, I took pictures of sea ice and continental ice below. In this last photo you can see the wing of the plane above, and some crevasses in the lower right. There is also fog or windblown snow over a large region of the lower right as well. Mountains stick up above the ice. My last sight of Antarctica.
Four hours after takeoff, at about 10 PM, I was in Christchurch. Civilization! And darkness!! When the airplane door was opened it was dark out. All of us were quite surprised, since we were used to the constant light of Antarctic summer. It was rather surreal for a while. After all, McMurdo is at about 78 degrees south latitude – only 12 degrees from the Pole, and well within the Antarctic Circle.
I was ready for the next part of my adventure, which was to explore as much of New Zealand as I could in 5 days.
(It was the other science group, ATIC, that had the bad balloon.)
I wanted to share with you my last few adventures, including flying out of McMurdo in a C17 cargo jet and exploring New Zealand. First, in this installment, the trip out of McMurdo:
I was supposed to leave on Dec 21, but, as I mentioned previously, the flight was cancelled that day and moved to the 22nd. The plane for the return trip is very different than the one I took down. Recall that the flight down was on a C130 propeller-driven cargo plane (shown earlier) and took seven hours in cramped conditions. However, the C130 planes landed conveniently just outside McMurdo on the Ice Runway. Sadly, the ice that it landed on melts in the summer, and it is too late in the season now to use it, so a runway on the permanent ice shelf, about 10 miles out from McMurdo, called Pegasus, was used for the return trip. That runway can have C17 Globemaster jets land on it. These jets can fly down from Christchurch and return in one day. The trip is only about 4 hours, and the planes are newer, so more mechanically reliable. (Several times C130 flights were cancelled due to mechanical difficulties.)
On the day we were to depart the weather was poor. It was snowing hard, but at least the wind was not very strong. The journey out to the runway was in Ivan the Terrabus. Finally, I got to ride it! However, poor old Ivan got stuck in blowing snow, despite its huge tires. We had to be rescued by two caterpillar tractors, which then accompanied us the rest of the way out to the runway. After a long wait we boarded the plane. What relative luxury! The interior was much roomier. There were even some REAL SEATS! Even one real bathroom this time, as opposed to the wall mounted receptacles in the C130. While many people slept, I took pictures of sea ice and continental ice below. In this last photo you can see the wing of the plane above, and some crevasses in the lower right. There is also fog or windblown snow over a large region of the lower right as well. Mountains stick up above the ice. My last sight of Antarctica.
Four hours after takeoff, at about 10 PM, I was in Christchurch. Civilization! And darkness!! When the airplane door was opened it was dark out. All of us were quite surprised, since we were used to the constant light of Antarctic summer. It was rather surreal for a while. After all, McMurdo is at about 78 degrees south latitude – only 12 degrees from the Pole, and well within the Antarctic Circle.
I was ready for the next part of my adventure, which was to explore as much of New Zealand as I could in 5 days.
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