This letter is all about pre-deployment logistics, and my next will be from Antarctica itself. I got my tickets south. I’ll be flying LA-Sydney (7,497 miles), have a long layover, then Sydney to Christchurch (1,328 miles) where I will be spending 2 nights undergoing training and being issued my official winter gear. Then I board a special plane, a C-130 military transport plane, and fly Christchurch to McMurdo (2,415 miles), which is my “ice flight” in the lingo. I have to hope my flight doesn’t “boomerang”, (meaning be unable to land in Antarctica and have to turn around to New Zealand and try again after refueling). After a night at McMurdo, I fly to to Pole (Just Pole in the lingo, I’m told) which is another 850 miles. Altogether my journey will take at least 6 days, 4 flights, and involve over 12,000 miles of travel. I don’t think I get frequent flyer miles on those military planes however.
This past month, I flew to Berkeley for a few days to start training. Part of the south pole telescope group is there. I got up to speed on the design of the detector, the software, the cryogenics, and got to know members of the group. It was an intense 48 hours of brain dump:
You can read more about the telescope I will be helping to manage over the long winter here. Since then I’ve been doing more reading and practicing with the software setup I’ll need to best do my duties.
I also spent a lot of time canceling services, simplifying my financial setup, and filing all the necessary forms to go on leave for one year from Caltech and my Caltech fellowship. I set up forwarding of my mail to Earth Class Mail, which will take care of scanning my mail from a variety of addresses in one place. I set up power of attorney, so that my fiancé (Speaking of which! I got engaged!) or my mom could handle some of my affairs while I was away.
Putting my T-Mobile subscription on hold was interesting, I had been warned some operators might think it was a prank or swindle when they hear that a customer is in/moving to Antarctica but I wasn’t quite expecting people not to know where it was.
I found out it still might be possible to send me mail and to have it arrive before the last plane leaves. Even better, the address is a US address so if you send from the US you will pay no more than US rates to send, whether package or postcard. I sent about 70 lbs of stuff in 2 boxes for a few hundred dollars. I will see what arrives.
Feel free to send me a note:
South Pole Station
Get me your address and I will mail you something from the South Pole!
As for things to pack, I bought an 8TB hard drive and have a few more TBs floating around with friends, filling it up with MP3s, PDFs, E-books and videos to take in a world where the net speed and regulation makes Spotify, Netflix, and arXiv hard to use. If you have some media you want to loan me, let me know and I’ll arrange a transport protocol =0. I’m especially interested in getting a window into what makes my friends tick by listening to their curations.
My outer winter gear is provided, but I still have to go to REI to stock up on inner winter gear. At the same time, I have a bunch of logistics to finish up and I’m trying to finish a project at Caltech all while working from home in Ohio. I have a few days in LA at the end of the month left to pack up my office and gym locker, get rid of the last of my furniture, and do my final packing.
Have a happy holiday!
Christine
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