We’ve all experienced the “hurry up and wait” mode of travel, and that’s an apt description for where ANSMET stands right now.  All of our cargo is properly labelled and listed and ready to go on airplanes, so now we wait for our turn to fly.   Scheduling aircraft is obviously challenging down here;  limited numbers of aircraft that must be meticulously maintained, weather that has to be taken very seriously, overworked schedulers and crews, and of course we’re only a small part of the many, many scientists waiting to get into the field.  We got our stuff together ahead of schedule, but now…..   if we’re lucky our first group may fly out to CTAM (an intermediate airport of sorts, a very good place for big planes to land about 100 miles from our final target Davis-Ward) on Saturday. Everything after that is even less clear;  we might get two flights into CTAM on Saturday or the second flight may have to wait until Monday (since Sunday is typically a rest day).  Meanwhile the flights using the smaller Twin Otter aircraft we need to get from CTAM to Davis Ward have to fit in there too…..    after decades of doing this we’ve learned to be both patient and persistent, not griping too much about changes to the flight schedule but making sure the schedulers remember we’re ready to roll.

Selfie on a stick in the Crary Lab. From left to right, Ryan, Ralph, Shannon and Devon.

So here we sit, about 10:30 in the morning here in McMurdo, trying to catch up on about a dozen tasks that got dropped in the rush to get ready for field work.  We have a little office in McMurdo’s Crary Lab, and tackling my mountain of email is one priority;  but bandwidth is low so if someone sends me a critical document to edit,  hitting “download” means waiting or doing something else for 20 minutes.  I am making progress and frankly am a little thankful to have so much to do, and it’s really nice to have other people cooking for us, that sort of thing.  But I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d rather be in the field.  Had dreams of dancing with an elegant Emperor Penguin last night-   and I’m just superstitious enough to think it means something good.

-posted by RPH in McMurdo,  11 Dec 2014

UPDATE:  As of 2:45 pm our time,  we’re back on the schedule for tomorrow and the next day.  Two flights tomorrow;  first a flight mostly full of fuel for aircraft and snowmobiles, then a flight with half our group, then the other half follows the next day (saturday for us).   So good news!

-updated by RPH in McMurdo, 11 Dec 2014