Weather cancel again

Despite what I thought was good weather this morning, we have been cancelled for today. There is supposed to be 4-6 inches of snow at some point this afternoon or evening. It has been coming for two days now, so I am puzzled why the great concern all of a sudden. You would think they would give us what time we could get on the instrument. We could return as soon as the snow started to fly. I almost feel as if they give us primary to shut us up knowing that they can call a weather cancel the next morning and run the backup missions, which they really want. But that is frustration talking, not reality.

The last two weeks have been really emotionally draining. I have been riding this roller coaster of hope and despair. It is impossible to plan to be part of the community when I never know what will come of each day. Each day I get up early, eat a big breakfast in preparation for working all day, then wait for my pager to buzz me. At that point I get the news: go or no go. I am not sleeping well at night because I am replaying every possible scenario in my head regarding instrument disassembly.

There is one funny story to all this. Way back towards the beginning of my long wait I was being sent text pages. I finally got one that said GO. I got my gear and headed off to the rendezvous point. Strangely, my McMurdo representative was not there. I found him in his office. He looked at me standing there in full gear unbelievingly. I told him the message said GO. He said the rest of the message was BACK TO BED. We now do not use the text feature. I get a phone number to call instead. No mistakes.

We are going to treat the next flight we get as the last. We will bring all tools and gear back. That is 400 lbs less of instrument we could carry instead, but that is how it goes. Some parts of the instrument may sit on the ice until next winter. While the arrival delay of the cargo vessel this year by two weeks has given us (for better or for worse) an extra two weeks to try to get the instrument back, we are running short of that windfall. If the instrument is not on the dock in a week, it will not go back to the US this year anyway.