On the Way and Arrival

Time to go to the ice! I packed my bags on Monday night and went to bed early as I had to catch the shuttle at 5:30 in the morning. When we got to the airport we had to get dressed into our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear to be allowed to get on the plane! Then we could get a bit of breakfast before they herded us onto the C17 Transport. It is a huge plane that you can move
tanks with but they had it filled with seats in the front and cargo in the back. We got off in good time and we landed on an ice runway close to McMurdo after about 5 1/2 hours of flying. Notice how big the plane is - that is a large loader taking palettes out the back of it on a ramp that lowers down.







The picture is of me with my colleague Dr. Thomas Wonik - he is a scientist from Germany. We will be carrying out a lot of wellbore measurements together with two other colleagues who you will get to meet later. We will all be taking 'Happy Camper' safety school together where we have to sleep in a tent or a snow trench so there will be lots of good pictures from that in a couple of days.




Here is another picture, on the left is the labs where my office is to share with my 3 colleagues in what is called Crary Labs. Can you see the mountain - it is a long ways away and is called Mount Discovery.













Here is another picture, this is of my small 'dormitory' room that I share with Dave from Salt Lake City - he is working on the well logging too - I will tell you about that in a few days. Grade 1's - why do I need to have such a thick cover on my window??? (Hint - it is spring in the Southern Hemisphere and I am south of the 'Antarctic Circle').

Oh - that is right - Flat Stanley also shares this room but he is messy and snores. Look, he left both beds unmade!





Finally - here is some of the exciting stuff - this is a picture of rock samples that the drill rig has brought up. There are many flags to show where different scientists are making many different measurements from the rock. The reason we are drilling here is to try to find out about what the earth's climate was over the last few millions of years. The rocks can tell you if the place we are drilling was open water (and the whole earth had to be warmer than today) or whether it was ice covered like today. So, it is very important to know how old the rocks are. Some scientists try to do this by looking at the tiny tiny fossils in the microscope, other do it by looking at the tiny magnets in the rock and how they line up can tell us something about the age of the rock, and others will do fancy chemical analyzes to see how old the rock might be. We are also going to get some of these samples (are my graduate students reading this :)) after they first go to Germany. We will measure how much of the samples are just open space - that is, we will look for how much pore space is in the rock. We will also measure how fast sound waves go through the rock - this is very important to try to better understand seismic measurements that have been made here.

Do you see the big stone that is in the rock at the left side of the picture??? How do you think it got there?? Let me know what you think (this is intended for the grade 1's but anyone is free to answer)

A few hours in Christ Church

By the way, one of my posts did not make it and many of you will think that I have gone crazy (or maybe crazier) with the little figure Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley has hitched a ride with me - he really belongs at Milk River elementary school but he made an escape in my backpack. I will ship him back to Mrs. Schmitt's class from McMurdo after he has seen some things.

Today we got into Auckland where we got some kiwi (New Zealand) money then we flew to Christ Church. We were in the line in customs and I met some lady who was going also to Antartica and she said she was a journalist - so I asked her if she worked for PBS - she looked at me funny and said, no - I work for NBC and then a bunch of people in line said 'We watch your show all the time etc. etc.' I do not think she was too impressed with me as I had no clue who she was (I guess I do not watch the NBC 'Today' morning show very much - really never - but then she did not know who I was either so we were even). Anyways, the film crew is going down to Antartica for her (her name is Ann Curry) and apparently this is a big deal - see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21487380/. They are all on our flight in the morning down to McMurdo - so check out the Today show for the next few days to see what I am also going through.

I was getting my EWG (Extreme Weather Gear) so you may see me on MSNBC in my underwear as they were filming while we were all testing out stuff out. Good news is that they let me dump the 'Bunny Boots' as I have my own Canadian Sorels!

I was really hungry and thirsty so had to get a big cappachino - yes Cheryl, this is as good or better than in Australia :)

After that I came back to the hotel and Flat Stanley and I went for a walk here in ChristChurch both downtown near the Cathedral and into the Botanical Gardens. It is just well into spring now so everything is really green and a lot of flowers are out. I went out for supper at Dux de Lux with a colleague I will be working with - lime/pepper fish + kiwi SavBlanc - yum!

A question for Mrs. Schmitt's elementary class - what is wrong with this street scene (well not wrong, just different from Canada) (hint - what are the cars doing?)

Next post from the ice!!!

Here we are - Flat Stanley and I made it to LA no problem then we took a bus out to the San Fernando Valley to have Mexican food with my Aunt and Uncle in Reseda. Then back to LAX. Here we are - all checked in with our boarding passes to Christ Church! Getting ready to go - we are leaving on the 27th but we get there on the 29th - go figure! How can that happen??? if the flight is only 12 hours long? I guess that means that the next post is two days away or ??? is it???

Getting Ready

Hi All - testing out my blog site. I am panicking about trying to get things ready to go for Saturday!