Well I am officially home, and I have been for a few weeks now. Sorry I'm just getting this posted now. I guess I've been a little distracted with being at home. :)
This will be my last post on this blog since it's my "Antarctic Adventure Blog" and I'm no longer in Antarctica then I guess it's natural that it should come to and end. I'm still really excited to be home. I suppose I may miss it one day but right now I'm just glad I don't need a parka to go outside! I've been asked a lot if I'm going to go back and I think I've just been there, done that, so I think I'm done. I may look for some other fun adventure places to go work. There is always Kwajalein, I know someone working there who could get me in. Maybe try working at the top of the world since I've been to the bottom. I'm also very seriously looking into starting school because I'm kind of tired of the computer nerd gig. So I've got a whole bunch of maybes right now, but nothing for sure yet.
I wanted to thank you all for taking the time to read my blog. I've heard from a number of people that they've really enjoyed it, it's nice knowing someone was actually reading this.
I took a bunch of pics and videos on my 12,000 mile trek home so I thought I'd put them all here. This post is a little long but since it's the last one I had to squeeze it all in there, so enjoy.
Here is my room put back pretty much the way I found it and ready for inspection. I passed. Bye bye winter room, we had many special nights together, if you know what I'm say;) Hahaha....
My work center was right across the street from where you have to go to check in and hop on the bus to get outta there. So I hung out with my co-workers for the last couple of hours. I couldn't remember if I had taken any pics of the place or not so I thought I would...
That was my desk on the left barely in the picture. Thats my parka on the couch just ready and raring to go...
I wasn't going to take a picture of every row but here is one row of shelves out in the warehouse just off to the side from our work area. That's where pretty much all the replacement parts for everything IT is kept. Toner, radio parts, fiber optic cables, tools, hard drives, network equipment all sorts of stuff...
`I didn't really think to take any pics from the bus or the drive out to the airfield but I know I had posted pics from inside the bus before so no big deal. Plus I was more than a little excited to get on the plane and just get the journey home started. Fuel tanks in the back ground, obviously a wing in the foreground, me behind the camera, snow and ice strewn carelessly about, hahah...
I didn't even notice when I took the pic but here is a "Fata Morgana Mirage" ***
Oh snap, and, we be rollin...
There were only 31 people leaving so everyone pretty much got their own row. I love not having anyone next to me on a plane. It's like a little present gift wrapped in an empty seat!
In-flight safety briefing. This girl is all different kinds of gorgeous, plus she was really nice, and had a cute little Aussie accent. I fell in love. I'm pretty sure the feelings where mutual but I didn't want to embarrass her by letting her know that I knew she was clearly smitten with me, so I just let it be...
That's all the buildings at the airfield. Obviously there is a control tower, there is also a small galley, bathrooms, firefighting equipment, and, I don't remember everything else, maybe some marshmallows somewhere...
AIRBORNE! I made a little video of the take off you'll find below...
There is the runway in the center of the pic. Also it looks like that shiny icy looking area(seasonal) vs. the more matte looking area at the bottom(permanent) is the difference between the permanent ice shelf that's hundreds of feet thick, and the seasonal ice which was 5.5 feet this year. The ice was 8 feet thick when I first landed last year and I thought that seemed too thin to land a plane on. Apparently NOT since it's 5.5 this year and we didn't break through and sink 3,000 feet to the most horrible death I could fathom!
McMurdo is right there at the left edge of the photo. So you can see why they use the "ice" runway every year. It's only about 10 minutes drive down that ice road to the airfield. It's a little over an hour to get to Pegasus Field which is out on the permanent ice shelf and is used after early December when the ice starts to get too thin to land on safely. 1 or 2 flights might not be a big deal but it's a massive time saver when landing multiple flights a week and moving lots of truck loads of cargo in the summer...
That's a pretty nasty crack. Made me think about the fact that we just took off in this giant heavy plane from a sheeeeeeet of iceeeeeeee just a few minutes before...
Lots of cool stuff I had never seen from the air before...
More cool stuff...
The ice is really thinning out...
Looky looky! Open ocean...
The first vestige of unfrozen land in 8 months!
I'm back Christchurch, didja miss me?
Christchurch, or "cheech" as all the ice folks refer to it as, is really pretty from the sky. Well it's really pretty from the ground too, but since this picture is from the sky we'll say it's really pretty from the sky...
All lined up and coming in for the landing...
USAP...
More USAP!
This is out in front of the CDC, clothing distribution center where you get all your cold weather gear...
I went to the hotel, got up the next morning, went to the airport, and flew from Christchurch to Melbourne Australia. I didn't really think about taking pics that whole time. I was so concerned with just getting the hell home that I didn't even think of taking my camera out of the bag. Sorry about that. Here is our Airbus A380 waiting for us to board for the longggg ass flight home. So this is the only pic you get from Melbourne. This plane is a freakin beast. You've got the whole double decker thing going on which is kinda cool. They have the same inflight tracking thing on the seat back video deal that the other Qantas plane I flew on had, which is sweet. This one also had a "sky cam" thing. There is a camera in the tail pointing forward. So from your seat back monitor you can watch the camera. So you see a view of the plane from the tail which is so damn cool! It was really cool for the take off and landing. Although it was a little unsettling on the take off because the pilot used every last inch of that damn runway before he pulled that baby into the air, crap! Super cool bonus points to Qantas for that thing...
Finally after 14.5 stinking hours flying I made it to LAX. Luckily, somehow I ended up not having someone next to me on this flight too, thank God! I would have sat with a spike up my turd cutter on every other flight if only I had an empty seat next to me on this flight and it happened, the empty seat, not the spike thing. I got to LA at 6:55am and my flight to PHX wasn't until NOON! So close, but still so far away. So I sat in the terminal for 2 weeks waiting for that 5 hours to go by so I could get on that last plane.
There we a couple of these in LAX, never seen them anywhere else. You can buy, iPads, iPods, Bose headphones, and all sorts of other things...
Home sweeeeeet homeeeee. My long journey is mere moments from its conclusion and I can hardly sit still...
With my brother 2 seconds after loading my bags in the car. I'm hommmmeeee...
Heading out to the plane. I'm so excited I can hardly stand myself!
Thank you to the Aussies for coming to get us...
Just a moment before I started zooming in she was waving at me, hahaha. She's helping to load our baggage under that big beautiful plane...
We rollin, they hatin, patrollin they tryin to catch me ridin dirty....
As you can tell, I'm very excited to be leaving...
Time to flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...
Look, unfrozen ocean, a shore line, crashing waves even.
Landing on unfrozen ground. I let it go a little while, sorry its a little long. I was just so mezmerized by being somewhere new. From the air I had already seen grass, trees, cars, animals, it was almost overwhelming so I wasn't thinking of turning the camera off I guess, hahaha.
Rolling past a big USAP building...
Getting on the bus for the ride over to Customs...
***
A Fata Morgana is most commonly seen in polar regions, especially over large sheets of ice which have a uniform low temperature. It can however be observed in almost any area. In polar regions the Fata Morgana phenomenon is observed on relatively cold days, however in deserts, over oceans, and over lakes, a Fata Morgana can be observed on hot days.
To generate the Fata Morgana phenomenon, the thermal inversion has to be strong enough that the curvature of the light rays within the inversion layer is stronger than the curvature of the Earth. Under these conditions, the rays bend and create arcs. An observer needs to be within or below an atmospheric duct in order to be able to see a Fata Morgana.
This is me, signing off, bitches!
