Update

A few pictures from the last week in Antarctica:

Transportation is a challenge.

Under the sea ice - the glow is kelp.

A Weddell Seal - yet to see a penguin.

 

They have spent their time getting trained on safety and snowmobile repair, packing up equipment, labeling sample containers, sorting food, and having a blast. Tomorrow (Thursday for them), if the weather holds, they will be flying out on a C-130 plane to the WAIS divide camp, where they will begin collecting samples and cataloging the research  that Landon will spend the next 18 months studying and analyzing. Luckily, he'll do that part at home.

27 days.

McMurdo

Landon has landed in Antarctica! I'm relieved and really excited for him. It's been about 6 days since he left, and his adventure is finally properly getting started. Since I've never been there, I'll let him tell you about it:

Its been a crazy day and I'm pretty bushed. Clement and I both woke up around ten to six this morning . The shuttle to take us to the airport got there at six-thirty, and about eight of us from the Devon Bed and Breakfast all piled in and headed to the airport. Once we got into the CDC (that's the acronym for the USAP travel offices) we had to arrange our bags quick (I had two checked bags, one carry-on bag and one "boomerang bag" in case we had to turn back to Christchurch).

I pulled on my gigantic FDX boots and my sweet Carrhart snow pants, and then got in line to be checked in for the flight. After the New Zealand folks had cleared us, we wandered over to the Antarctic Centre for a bit of breakfast, and then went back to the CDC briefing room for a quick safety meeting before we took off.


The plane was AWESOME. It was a huge C-17, which is, I believe, the second largest cargo transport the U.S. Air Force has. 

Two thirds of the plane were filled with palettes of cargo bound for Antarctica, and the other third of it was filled with people. I think there were about fifty of us total. There were fold down seats along the side of the aircraft, and then they had two . . . basically large metal palettes clamped onto the floor, with twenty airliner seats on each palette.

 It was really cool to hear the huge engines thrum to life . . . they were incredibly loud, and I was grateful for the ear plugs they'd handed out when we were checked through. There were only two tiny windows in the whole plane, which made for an interesting flight. I read and slept the whole time, and the flight went really quick. It was interesting because without any windows, it was impossible to judge from my seat how high we were, so the actual landing process seemed to take forever. 

Roughly an hour before we landed I got up and peeked through one of the windows and saw nothing but flat sea ice in all directions. Then, about a half hour later, I looked again, and there were huge mountains covered in ice and snow, surrounded by flat, ice-covered sea. Very impressive and very desolate.

 Right after that they let anyone who wanted to climb up into the flight cabin. So of course I did. And that was really, really cool. The Air National Guard guys were all really cool, and they answered a bunch of my nerdy questions. The cockpit had quite a few windows and it gave this amazing view of Antarctica on all sides.

We landed around 3 or 4, I think (I didn't have my watch out), out on the sea ice. I guess the ice is getting pretty thin and in a few weeks they'll close down the sea runway and have an icebreaker come through and smash a path into the docks, so I felt pretty lucky that we got the whole sea-landing experience. Coming straight off the plane we could see Mt. Erebus in the distance, its top letting off a trail of smoke and steam, and to our right we could see McMurdo station. 

They had a big bus called "Ivan the Terra-bus" with huge tires almost taller than I am waiting for us, so we all squeezed into it and drove up to McMurdo Station, which is built on a long slope that runs down from some basalt hills to the sea. I was surprised at how large the station is . . . easily as big looking as St. Anthony, it seems like. Maybe not, but anyways, it caught me off guard how large it is.

The central building in McMurdo is a big blue metal building called the MCC or something like that. Its a cafeteria, library, computer lab (I'm sitting there right now), laundry-mat, convenience store and post office all rolled into one. Dinner was delicious.

But I digress. The first thing we did was have another briefing. This time by the NSF. Then we were all handed our room keys and sent to get our bags and our clean sheets and blankets and stuff. I was kind of bummed cause I'm in a separate dorm building from everyone else, but my room is nice, so I was mollified. I have a roommate, but I haven't met him yet, so hopefully we'll get along. We all met back here in the MCC for dinner at 6:30. The food is great . . . I had pork and some kind of soup and lots of steamed vegetables.

After dinner Clement and I hiked down to Hut Point, where the hut built by R.F. Scott back in 1902 for his expedition still stands. Apparently its been freeze dried by the cold or something, cause its in perfect condition. Its locked, but apparently you can go on a tour to see inside it, so hopefully I'll get to do that later.

As for wildlife, no penguins yet, but I did see some huge seals lazing about on the ice.

And as for temperature . . . it varies. Its a beautiful day (and yeah, its 9 pm but still full day outside) with no clouds in the sky. Its about 21 degrees F, and doesn't feel all that cold, until the wind picks up, and then it feels about as cold as I've ever felt in Rexburg. They've given us so much gear though, I don't think it'll matter...

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It's super exciting to see where he is. Only about 5,000 people are on the continent of Antarctica in the summertime, and Landon said that about 80% of those people have been there multiple times, so the actual number of people who have been to Antarctica in the world is much less than that. It really is a rare and awesome opportunity for him to study there. This is the 5th continent Landon has set foot on. He'll spend the next couple of weeks preparing for the field work they will be doing -- luckily, he'll have constant internet access during that time. We're hoping that soon Landon will be able to get a calling card that works from Antarctica, but in the meantime the emails he sends go far in saving my sanity. It's amazing the effect that simply knowing he's safe has on my day. 

35 days.

And We're Off!

 There he goes, ready for adventure. Here I sit, on one of my own.

Six weeks separated from your best friend is a hard concept to swallow. Harder in concept than in reality, I think. And when I look at the examples of brave and remarkable women like Haley, Kayla, and my own sister, I am ashamed for the tears I have shed and resolve that this is really not a big deal. And there are compensations...

Like heading to the midnight showing of Harry Potter with two of my favorite cousins tomorrow night.

And finding out that this guy (who I'm kinda-sorta fond of), is moving to Layton in a few weeks!!

And the look on Landon's face when he talks about working with NASA on this project.

Plus all the time I will now get to spend with my sister and cute nieces without feeling guilty that I should be home making dinner.

Or getting to spend an "extra" holiday with my family, since they always spend Thanksgiving with my aunt in West Jordan. (Can't wait for caramel apple pie and The Rockettes!)

Or the 4 extra days I am taking off of work after Christmas because my boss feels bad for me and wants me to spend time with my husband when he gets home. :)

So in the end, we're really very excited. I may be posting more than usual - I'll be really bored interested family demands Antarctica updates, after all.

40 more days.

One Week

I think the worst part of a field expedition is waiting for it to happen. (In case you're confused, Landon is heading to Antarctica for 6 weeks of hard-core thesis research. It's a great opportunity for him!) We've been busily preparing, buying things, packing, and gearing up for Landon's departure for months. When it came down to only a few days left to spend together, we decided to put them to good use. House cleaning, church responsibilities and friends were neglected shamefully. Instead we spent the time together. Here's what we did with our last week together for awhile:

Monday & Tuesday
These days were spent purchasing wood and Landon spending a whole lot of time building this spectacular masterpiece:

It's custom built to hold everything in our kitchen that previously did not have a place. It makes our kitchen look so much less ghetto, and gives me a lot more space to move around in. It's also about 1,000 times easier to keep clean. It will make my life that much easier while Landon is away. I can't wait until we get it painted (sometime in the spring when we can go outside with it again), it will look even better!

Wednesday
Was dinner at a favorite restaurant, "Craigo's" AKA: The Pizza Pie Cafe. Landon had really been wanting to go here before he took off (I guess he thinks he'll be eating freeze-dried meals for the next 6 weeks or something?) Also, this little baby arrived on Wednesday:

I see more blogging in our future! We finally bought a new camera after my old one was damaged (I won't say by who, he feels sheepish enough). I had been putting it off because I really loved the old one, but I just couldn't send Landon off on the adventure of a lifetime without a decent camera. We're excited because it handles video a lot better than the old one (Epic penguin films may be in our future), and has a large optical zoom, which my old camera did not. So far we like it. Our upstairs neighbors are starting to wonder if we're in some kind of drug ring, since we've been getting TONS of packages lately. What can I say? It's hard to resist free 2-day shipping from Amazon when you're in need of a lot of equipment and are short on time.

Thursday
This was our day off. We stayed home and tried to get the sawdust from the previous days out of the carpet. I'm happy to report that we were mostly successful.

Friday
We both took 1/2 day off work/school to get a few last-minute things done and to spend a little extra time together before the big day. We ran errands to Wal-Mart, 2 libraries, a used bookstore, and DI -- cleaned up the house and watched 3 episodes of Dr. Who. We also made a little detour to "La Carreta" for this tasty morsel:

Chicha Morada - a favorite drink of Landon's from his mission to Peru. I think this is the first time he's had it since he got back.

Saturday
This day was spent mostly loading movies onto Landon's iPod so he won't go crazy over the next 6 weeks. We slept late, then started transferring video files, made breakfast burritos, and in the afternoon treated ourselves to a little outing:

        

Cute movie. Gotta love the dollar theater. Then I made Landon one of his favorite dinners, we glanced at our Sunday school lesson and went to bed.

Sunday
After church and a lengthy nap, we had the culminating event of our farewell week: Thanksgiving!

Landon will miss the real thing, so we had our own delicious Thanksgiving feast complete with turkey, stuffing, and green bean casserole. It was delicious and we had a blast preparing it together. Not to mention I'm set for dinner for the next 2 weeks...leftovers rock!

We also had a mini Christmas celebration that spilled over to Monday. I bought Landon "How to Train Your Dragon" and gave it to him early so he could put it on his iPod. We spent the rest of the time making this:

Love it! Gotta have our little Christmas time cheer, since the month of December will be a bit of a blur, for both of us, I think.

Tomorrow is the big day. I think we're ready. Landon's got all the gear he could ever possibly need, we are both armed with calling cards and lots of contact information, and we started the countdown long ago (41 days!). Bring it on!