Brett's Southern Crossing

My trip has begun, starting with a day and a half of company orientation in Denver.  It was about 50% typical stuff (benefits, expense reporting, etc), and 50% specific to Antarctica (safety, travel logistics).  We also opened with an amazingly demoralizing pep talk from one of the bigwigs here…I almost wonder if he was seeing if anyone would quit on the spot.  But our spirits couldn’t be broken, and we’re all ready to go!

There are at least 50 people in our group, and we were told that the population of McMurdo Station this year should be around 1500.  This is unusually high and bed shortages are expected (due more to a higher than normal population of scientists, rather than support staff).  Right now quite a few people who will be continuing on to the South Pole station are also headed to McMurdo.  It’s still too cold to land at South Pole, so they’ll be staying temporarily at McMurdo for the first opportunity to head to their station.

Personally, I’m excited to see what everyone is up to so I don’t mind the crowds at all.  Having met a bunch of people during orientation everyone seems to be friendly and people have interesting backgrounds.  I think we’re all going to get along really well and the slight pang of regret I had leaving Austin after such a short time back has disappeared…I’m expecting the next few months to be a lot of fun!

So far the group I’ve met people who are cargo loaders and unloaders, materials workers (which sounds like tracking/managing/distributing from the warehouses), fire technicians, power plant operators, plumbers, maintenance workers, hazmat workers, communications operators, drivers, and electricians.  It gives an idea of how broad the range of jobs is.  There will also be hairdressers, postal clerks, dishwashers, and all kinds of other weird jobs I’m looking forward to hearing about!

We left the office in Denver today at noon for our trip to Christchurch.  I expect it to take 36-37 hours to get from the office in Denver to the hotel in Christchurch, and I’ll want to stay awake at least another 7-8 hours to get on the correct time schedule.  So my top priority now is to get a decent amount of sleep on the long flight from LA to Auckland.

It’s probably obvious by now that my blog updates are 1-2 months behind.  I’m working to catch up, and doing the blog posts is a great motivator for me to sort through my photos.  I returned to Austin the first week of September, and during my last week in Colombia I got an interesting call from Raytheon Polar Services, who I had submitted an application to a few months earlier.

They had a contract employee back out at the last minute due to a medical problem and offered me a job working from October to February at McMurdo Station.  I’ve only barely spoken with the manager who hired me about the job, but it sounds like what I’ll be doing is field work for the on-ice portion of a research project an Army lab is working on.  The base has 3 airfields they’re trying to combine into one, but there are a number of engineering problems due to  varying ice conditions throughout the .  The Army lab is collecting and analyzing data to see if they can engineer one airfield that will work for all types of aircraft, during all times of the year.

At this point I’ve filled out and submitted mountains of paperwork and had tons of medical and dental tests. I’m amazed there’s any blood left in my veins after all the tubes they collected for tests, and I discovered there is a definite limit to how many cups I can pee in before running dry.  My doctor also carefully noted all my unusual traits, like a slight pectus excavatum, which looks completely normal to me and nothing at all like the photo on wikipedia.  The EKG machine decided I had Pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart lining…the doctor walked into the room, grabbed the printout from the machine and said “That can’t be right.  You’re not experiencing extreme chest pain are you?” Since the only pain I had experienced was when the nurse ripped the EKG contact pads off my legs (taking a patch of hair with it) he consulted a cardiologist and they decided I have a variation in my heart’s electrical pattern called early repolarization.  About 5% of the population have this kind of heart, especially young people, males, african americans, and athletes.

Despite my numerous deformities and birth defects, the medical department at Raytheon Polar Services has signed off on me.  I’m leaving tomorrow morning for 2 days of company orientation in Denver, followed by 2 days of travel to Christchurch New Zealand, a day there to get my extreme cold weather gear, and my ice flight is scheduled for October 8th.

The title of this post is how my friend Leslie reacted when I mentioned all of this on Facebook.  Thanks for the support Leslie!  I’ll have you know I checked the weather the other day and the windchill was only –68F, if I just take the absolute value it’s practically shorts and t-shirt weather!