Home|Glossary|Links|Journal|Maps
Destination McMurdo Station
| By the time we had arrived in Auckland on New Zealand’s north island and then taken an hour long flight to Christchurch on the south island, Monday had pretty much disappeared entirely. We had jumped ahead to Tuesday. The weather was warm and humid. We were in the southern not northern hemisphere, and it was late spring instead of late fall. The northern and southern hemispheres have opposite seasons. Seasons result from a combination of the earth’s axis of rotation and the earth’s location within its orbit. The “finger” on which the basketball that represents the earth spins doesn’t actually point straight up and down but rather tilts at an angle of around 23.5° from vertical. And the earth not only spins but revolves around the sun, as Ray puts it, like a basketball around the rim of the hoop or a car around a racetrack. During summer, a hemisphere is at a point in its orbit in which it tilts towards the sun while during winter, the hemisphere is at a point in its orbit in which it tilts away from the sun. Since the two hemispheres tilt in opposite directions, the seasons are opposite. And so it was that after the cold start to our travels we were enjoying the New Zealand spring. |
|
| On Wednesday, we met our New Zealand Stream Team counterparts, and on Thursday we got our extreme cold weather (ECW) gear. The plan was to fly to Antarctica on Friday. But mood on the street was not optimistic. Three flights for the week had been scheduled, one each for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Apparently the Monday passengers had experienced Antarctica flight scenario 1 – being told their flight is canceled entirely, don’t even bother showing up at the airport, hang tight in Christchurch until the next flight. But Wednesday was a repeat of Monday, and Friday’s weather was looking bad. When Ben Bussey, who collects meteorites on the polar plateau, arrived at the Christchurch airport on Wednesday, he was asked to go to the ice immediately on a non-originally scheduled Thursday flight. The air crew was going to try and beat the weather. |
Kirk and Ray hang out with New Zealand Stream Team veterans Pete Mason and Clive Howard-Williams |
Ray gets his Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear at the Clothing Distribution Center |
|
|
|
On Thursday at 5 AM, Ben got a call saying that his flight was delayed until 11 AM. Ben then proceeded to experience Antarctica flight scenario 2. At 11, he went to the airport, put on all his ECW gear, sat around for several hours, got exceedingly hot wearing his ECW in the warm spring temperatures, got told that his flight was canceled, and was then asked to come back the next day to attempt the flight all over again. We ran into Ben because we were all staying at the Windsor Bed and Breakfast. “Do you think we’re going to make it out tomorrow?” we asked him. He shook his head, “You know McMurdo weather.” We did know... |
Next>>
|
