all photos
[1/15(Su) Icebreaker Krasin]
[1/16(Mo) Acquarium, Scott Base :]
[1/17(Tu) Castle Rock, flying out]
6:00 Woke up.
4:30pm Finally onboard the plane. There were 30 airline-style seats
this time, and the back half of the aircraft was empty. Then some cargos
came in. There were some problems, so the whole aircraft system got shut
down and restarted a few times. I was sleeping so didn't know what was
going on.
7pm After what felt like a long time waiting, the plane took off and
I woke up. C-17 takes only 5 hours between McMurdo and Christchurch
(C-130 takes 7 hours), but the downside is that it has only 4 windows at
the front and back, so I can't watch outside all the time. As soon as
the seatbelt sign came off, I went to a window to look outside. We had
just reached the edge of the Ross Island and into the ocean. I saw lots
of broken ice pieces. Then we started seeing land with mountain ranges
again. A flight crew invited me to go up to the cockpit. One of the
pilots showed me a map of where we are, and I understood why we're over
land again. The pilot was nice and showed us all the computerized
instruments. It's funny that the computer displays are made to look like
traditional instruments. We're at 35000 ft above sea level. He said the
delay in takeoff was partly due to one of the computers not starting up.
He said C-17's are flown all over the world in combat zones. It had a
missle detector that automatically shoots flares to misguide the missles.
11pm I fell asleep again and now it's dark already! At 9pm the Sun
still looked pretty high, so I didn't even think about sunset. I
missed my 1st sunset in 2 months! But I saw my first nearly full Moon.
Q(Kathleen). What are the biggest challenges?
=)
[1/18(We) Chrarlotte]
