I'm a Happy Camper!

If you are going to be heading out to the deep field in Antarctica you need to particpate in Survival School, otherwise known as Happy Camper. Happy Camper is a two day field course on extreme cold weather camping. So, we packed up and headed out to camp on the sea ice. The flags you see everywhere tell you where you can and can't walk so you don't fall into a crevasse and die.

All in all, Happy Camper was beautiful and fun. If you wanna see the pics click THIS

Pics of NZ and flying to The Ice

You can see em' and read about em' here:

And remember, you don't need to join spaceface!

Blogging sucks here!

Can PS stand for Pre-Scriptum?
PS. Sister Beth, read to the end!

Well, McMurdo Station has about the bandwidth of one cable modem for 1000 people and that makes Blogger's photo upload system extremely unhappy. Therefore, we're moving to posting photos on spaceface with detailed comments, sorta like a photo journal. For some reason spaceface doesn't time out like blogger.

Because, what's a blog without pics? Poo. That's what it is. So for those of you who don't have spaceface, I will paste a link to the photo's and comments that does not require a spaceface account on this blog with a little info about what I'm up to.

Hope everyone is well.
PS. Big Rig, Phillie looked insane! Just downloaded it.

A thing or two about Christ Church, NZ.

Christ Church feels like a tiny town even though it's several hundred thousand people. It may be the quaint buildings, or the fact that everywhere you turn you run into people heading to Antarctica. I even ran into my friend Ben who I had class with in Maine a few years ago. I had absolutely no idea this would happen.

For the most part, I spent my time wandering around the amazing public parks (with really bizarre tree species) and drinking beer with Ben and my new colleagues at Dux Lux Brewery.

We were also issued our Extreme Cold Weather Gear (ECW Gear) in Christ Church. You have to wear it when you travel to Antarctica and carry it with you anywhere you go outside of town, once you are on the ice.









So, the internet connection is terrible here right now... I can't upload more photos! Crap. Stay tuned for pics of NZ....

Getting there.

It takes a looong time to get to Antarctica:
Denver --> L.A.= 2 hours
LA --> Sydney= 15 hours
Sydney --> Christ Church, NZ= 2.5 hours
Waiting for good weather to fly to Antarctica and getting gear= 3 days
Christ Church --> Antarctica= 6 hours

Fortunately, it's fun!