Arrival in McMurdo

We arrived at the CDC at about 0615, got suited up in our ECW gear, checked our bags and headed over to the International Antarctic Center for some breakfast. At 7:30, we watched an orientation video and headed out to the runway to board the C-17 Globelifter. On the way out, we were each handed a bag lunch unlike I have ever seen before. This was a grocery bag full of goodies. The reason for this is that we could literally fly the 5+ hours to McMurdo, circle around for a few hours while waiting for the weather to clear and possibly fly all the way back to Christchurch just do try again the next day. After 12 hours on an extremely loud flight, the grocery bag would seem a miniscule comfort.


After arriving in Mcmurdo and sitting through what seemed like endless hours of orientation in the Chalet (The Chalet is the nicest structure in McMurdo and looks like an old ski hut), I was finally able to drop my stuff off at my room and get out of the ECW gear and into jeans. I then found that my checked bags would not be available for pickup until 5PM AND I had to do what is called “Bag Drag” at 7PM in preparation for an early morning flight. Bag drag is the USAP term for checking your luggage for an upcoming flight, they take your bags, weigh them and load them onto pallets. They also weigh your carry on and yourself wearing all your ECW gear. Think of it like checking in at the airport and then they ask you to step up onto the scale holding all your carry on bags. If you are ever in Mcmurdo and you see a bunch of people walking towards building 140, all decked out in their ECW gear and hauling all their orange ECW and personal bags, well… it is pretty obvious what they are doing.

The funny thing is that “bag drag” is one of those terms that is so instilled into USAP lingo, people forget that new folks have no clue what they are talking about. For example, we all just arrive in Mcmurdo and sitting in orientation, the lady giving the orientation says, “who is on their way to pole”? About half the group’s hands go up. So she says, “your flight leaves at 0800 tomorrow and you have Bag Drag at 1900”. Needless to say, there were quite few blank stares.

Oh, here is another good one... We are all on board the airporter on our way to board the C-130 for our flight to South Pole from Mcmurdo. An airporter, by the way, is a bus used in Mcmurdo to taxi people around, it looks like buses used at airports to take you to the rental car company, you know, the ones with the seats in two long rows lengthwise down the bus. Anyway, a guy jumps on board and says, “good morning I’m going to be the Loadmaster on your flight this morning”. I’m thinking, Huh? Is that some kind of stewardess? He goes on to show us how to pull an oxygen mask over our head and says it will provide about 5 minutes of air, you will know when it is out of oxygen when you take a breath and the plastic sticks to your mouth but not to worry because 5 minutes is plenty of time to get the plane down below 10,000 feet. Then he says, there are no “comfort facilities” on the C-130 but there is a U-Bucket up front. The funny thing is that I know exactly what he is talking about. U stands for Urine. I’m thinking he is wrong; there are comfort facilities on board because after 3 hours of holding it, that U-Bucket is going to be a huge comfort.




So anyway, I couldn’t pickup my bags immediately after arriving in Mcmurdo, and even if I could, I would just have to haul them right back to check them back in for Bag Drag. So I decided to stop by the new Network Operations Center and say hi to all the folks I work with on a daily basis but only via email and phone. Its nice to be able to put a name to a face. I finally went to Bag Drag, labeled all my bags and decided to ask the woman weighing our luggage, what are the chances of this flight getting cancelled? Pretty good she said, they have been cancelled nearly every time this past week. So I asked for my bags back and retrieved a couple pairs of underwear and socks, just in case and then she had to weigh them again.