McMurdo Season #6 Day 1
Current weather -11F Wind Chill -35F Mostly Cloudy.
So I am playing catch up on writing. Today is Sunday the 9th, and we arrived on Monday the 3rd.
Monday morning we had a pickup time of 05:30 from the Ramada Inn in Christchurch. From there we were off to the CDC to don our cold weather clothing, check in our luggage and then wait for an in briefing before our flight.
After a few videos and some remaining information for the flight, we boarded a bus to take us across the street to the tarmac. Between the bus and the C-17 (did I mention how nice the C-17 is??) we pick up our bag lunch and a liter of drinking water. Oh, and shown by the guy on the left, you have to get your hero photo before you board as well.
Now after a smooth 5 hour flight to McMurdo, everyone is bundled up and headed for the exit. You can see by this photo how amazingly large the inside of a C-17 is. Also, I am standing on a pallet with aircraft seats mounted to it. You can see in front of me the row of seats on the centerline of the aircraft, and then there are two more pallets of aircraft seats in the front as well. The aircraft seats have about 2-1/2 feet of space between one row and the next. We have to have the extra room just to be able to carry our extra ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. And it is great for my legroom compared to all of the American Airlines flights that I suffered through.
And welcome back to Antarctica. You can see that the engine cowling is open on the aircraft. They performed an ERO (engine running offload) which speeds up the process and gets them back in the air quicker.
And lastly we jumped on the VOUS (vehicle of unusual size) for our slow ride into town. But at least we were much more comfortable than if we got stuck riding in Ivan the Terra Bus.
So I am playing catch up on writing. Today is Sunday the 9th, and we arrived on Monday the 3rd.
Monday morning we had a pickup time of 05:30 from the Ramada Inn in Christchurch. From there we were off to the CDC to don our cold weather clothing, check in our luggage and then wait for an in briefing before our flight.
After a few videos and some remaining information for the flight, we boarded a bus to take us across the street to the tarmac. Between the bus and the C-17 (did I mention how nice the C-17 is??) we pick up our bag lunch and a liter of drinking water. Oh, and shown by the guy on the left, you have to get your hero photo before you board as well.
Now after a smooth 5 hour flight to McMurdo, everyone is bundled up and headed for the exit. You can see by this photo how amazingly large the inside of a C-17 is. Also, I am standing on a pallet with aircraft seats mounted to it. You can see in front of me the row of seats on the centerline of the aircraft, and then there are two more pallets of aircraft seats in the front as well. The aircraft seats have about 2-1/2 feet of space between one row and the next. We have to have the extra room just to be able to carry our extra ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. And it is great for my legroom compared to all of the American Airlines flights that I suffered through.
And welcome back to Antarctica. You can see that the engine cowling is open on the aircraft. They performed an ERO (engine running offload) which speeds up the process and gets them back in the air quicker.
And lastly we jumped on the VOUS (vehicle of unusual size) for our slow ride into town. But at least we were much more comfortable than if we got stuck riding in Ivan the Terra Bus.
So, that is all I have for photos from this week. After we got into town we have been very busy at work. I have been sorting through everything in my office and reviewing my computer programs, and paperwork to get myself up to speed. Other than that, I have started teaching General Fire Safety to all of the new arrivals on station as well. This season I will teach that class to everyone that arrives, so I will be well practiced at it. I had a class of 100 people for my first one. Tomorrow, I will have another class of 100.
The weather has been cool, mostly -15 to 0 range, but the wind chill has been brutal.
That is all for now. I will have more time to keep up going forward. Tomorrow night, I hope to attend the photography club meeting.
R.J.
posted by R.J. at 5:26 PM
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