Travel Rabble: winter flight

The first official "winter flight" came and left last week. It was a big event. It's remarkable for any plane to arrive on it's scheduled day so for a plane to be only 3 hours late on it's inaugural winter flight is pretty remarkable.

For the flight to land, we turn out all the lights on the runway because they use night vision to land the plane and the lighting will ruin their ability to see. To help them use the night vision more effectively, we put out the incredibly reflective cones all up and down the runway. INCREDIBLY reflective. According to the pilot, they could see the cones 250 miles out. I was lucky and got to go out to help with them. It was kinda fun to be out there during all this prep for the plane and to see who all is involved. The Fleet Operations guys had been out there daily for 6 days prior and then constantly for 30 hours prior to the flight. They groom the runway so that a plane can land on it and considering that the runway had been unused for 6 weeks, they had quite a task cut out for them. This was not made any easier by the bad weather and wind bringing in snow drifts and uneven ground. They were all exhausted. Also, in the days leading up to the flight, there's around 4 mechanics that just hang out incase a vehicle breaks down. To add to the excitement on the Pegasus Runway, a seal had made it's way onto the runway. The firefighters had to use their expert skills at Wildlife Management to move it. Unfortunately, they aren't allowed to touch the seal, so "expert skills" amounted to them waving their arms and yelling "shoo" from about 3 feet away. The seal could have cared less. It was kind of hilarious and kind of sad because it's quite possible the seal was out there in the first place because it was sick and dying. As a side note, I often think about how if the seals talk to each other, I imagine they experience us as a kind of "alien adduction". Especially if it's scientists that are coming upon them they get treated to spinal taps, anal probes, flying vehicles (aka helicopter or airplanes) all that craziness. Not so far off from our "alien" stories. OK back to the flight.

For loading and unloading the plane, the supply crew gets brought out to become the "cargo" crew to help get all the pallets of food, equipment and luggage off the plane. The fuelies are standing by in case the plane needs fuel (unlikely for a C17) and then people like me get brought out to do the little tasks and fill in where needed. The plane lands, does not shutdown, unloads and reloads and then heads off again-all in less than an hour. It's a pretty remarkable system.

In other news, May is over and done! June is here. We are moving so quickly through this season. May brought with it the end of "Civil Twilight" so we are in darkness all day long. I've included a picture of May 1st and then May 31st (both taken at 1pm). I'm surprised at how easily I've transitioned into living in constant darkness. I thought it would be much more difficult. I took me quite some time to get comfortable with constant daylight so I expected a similar thing going in the other direction but it hasn't been so bad. My guess is it's because I was here for the transition. It's not like I stepped off the plane and it is was dark constantly and I had to adjust immediately. Experiencing the change has been very helpful. It was a mildly difficult sleeping when I could still see lighter colors in the sky. I think my body was waiting for the sun to come up each day because the sky would be somewhat light in the morning but then when it never did it just meant I was tired all day long and then couldn't sleep at night. When that was happening it felt like it took forever to wake up. As it is, it still feels like I'm not fully awake until around 10am, but I can sense that this is slowly lifting and I'm settling in as there is less variety to the light. I've also made some dedicated life choices and I think those have helped stabilize my mood and transition. I do a "bootcamp" class twice a week and try to walk/run two other times. I've also been drinking a lot less and trying to sleep 8 hours every night. Who knew doing healthy for your body would lead to healthy things for your mind! Gosh! Can't believe I'd never tried it before!

Enjoy the pictures. I started us off with pictures from the Top Gun party to show off my awesome makeup and crimped hair.

The supply department put on a Top Gun Themed party and as I didn't have flight suit, we just went for a general 80s look.

Aren't we adorable? The party itself was incredibly fun. They decorated the cargo bay with Cargo netting and airplane props, we had a beanbag toss (called Corn Hole in the Midwest-who knew!) and they had a Tom Cruise Scientology Center. The Scientology center was great because the Scientologists had, earlier, in the season sent us a LOT of literature on Scientology, bizarre, but we finally found a use for it.

On that C17 flight we got mountains of mail! More mail for 142 people in June than we got for over 700 people in December for Christmas. The flight came in on Wednesday. The mail lady and 12 volunteers started sorting Thursday Morning at 9am so that everyone could get their mail by Thursday afternoon. What service! And thank heavens too as we had planned Christmas for the Saturday following the flight. Santa comes in JUNE!

Not only did we get mail on that flight but we got fresh vegetables! 3700 lbs of it! Nothing better than fresh lettuce in Antarctica! And Coconuts and Papaya! And Feijoa! What's a Feijoa you ask? It's a fruit that looks a bit like a kiwi but is bright green and has a sweet/tart flavor. As I was eating this Feijoa (in Antarctica), I was marveling at how rare it is to try a truly new food. I can't remember the last time I've had something that I had never had before. It was a delight.

And here's the plane! Landing in the dark. Four people were scheduled to leave on that plane however by the time the plane left, it has 8 people on it. It brought us 7 in so our winter population is down to 141.

May 1st 13:00

May 31st 13:00. Admittedly, it's not this ridiculously dark when I'm taking this photo. My sad camera has begun to die and doesn't do a great job anymore. we have gotten a new one. HOWEVER, my point is clear. the sky is black and at 1 pm it's nighttime outside.

For the residents of McMurdo Station, Winter is not marked by a set day, but rather by the last flight of summer. On March 5th, we had a Champagne Toast as we watched the final flight of summer leave the continent. On April 24th the sun will set and won’t rise again for four months. It will start snowing, the stars will come out and hopefully we’ll see some Auroras. Both Jamie and I are excited about this coming season. This winter at McMurdo will be an entirely different experience from previous. This winter the USAP program will flying flights all season. There will be three before the usual “winter fly-in” flight in August: April, June, and July. This is the first year the program has done this and many people are sad about the loss of an isolated winter. Jamie and I, however, are indifferent as this will be the first and only winter we can compare it too. The station population right now is 168 and will go down to the 150s after April. I’m already beginning to recognize close to every person that comes into the Galley at mealtimes. Aside from a decrease in population the station is also moving into winter mode. Many dorms and buildings are being winterized and departments have started the long process of inventory and repair. Most Science has stopped for the winter. There is one scientist on station at this point in the year and a research assistant that will monitor the science experiments that don’t need a constant attendant. We can still go hiking in the winter but now we need to formally check out with the firehouse, carry a radio and go in pairs.

Right now the sun is setting and rising like a normal day. We can leave our shades open at night and in the morning the natural light wakes us up. It's not 100% dark when the sun "sets", it is more of a dark twilight time, but it certainly feels like a solar rotation. For awhile, I didn't' even realize the sun had been setting because I go to bed around 10pm and it's still light out so when I was up until 11:30 one night, my mind was blown because it had gotten darkish. Now, by 10 it's a dark twilight and around midnight it's almost truly dark out. Very exciting to see nighttime come creeping in!

If you have any specific questions about life here, post them in the comments and I'll work on answering them. I'm never really sure what people want to know about!