Hello World! It’s Constantine (Con) Tsang here! – ANSMET, The Antarctic Search for Meteorites

Hello World! It’s Constantine (Con) Tsang here! This will be our first team blog for the 2015-2015 season, reporting from a cloudy Christchurch, NZ. Most of the team members are together now, except for Johnny and Brian, our hardy mountaineers who are already on the ice getting our logistics squared away for us.

We spent the morning receiving our cold weather gear at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC). A shuttle picked us up from the hotel at a very civilized time of 08:15. As soon as we stepped off shuttle at the CDC, I paused for a moment. Nina Lanza and I looked at each other, and we just burst out laughing! We (and the rest of the team, and our supportive family and friends) are so overjoyed at this great adventure we’ve all started.

Our visit to the CDC wasn’t solely about gear though. We had to get our computers vetted for viruses and have our flu jabs administered for those of us (like me) who forgot to get them stateside. We were then ushered into the briefing room, and if you’ve watched documentaries about Antarctic you’ll no doubt have seen (I highly recommend one called Antarctica: Year on Ice. It’s totally brilliant). The briefing consisted of safety tips, clothing requirements and a general overview of the US Antarctic Program, and some highlights of the science being done this season. We couldn’t wait!

Finally, it came to try out our gear. We had already sent in our sizes in the summer, so our individual red duffles were prepped and ready. We tried out our gear (the famous “Big Red” parkers plus the white bunny boots), swapped stuff out that didn’t fit, and check listed all the items to be sure we had everything. It was a slick operation. Our flight to the ice would be tomorrow morning, but we were already done by 10:30 in the morning!

What to do with the rest of the day… Well someone had the bright idea to go biking across Christchurch. My initial thought was ok, cool, but should anything happen (most likely me falling of my bike!), then our journey would have ended before it had even begun. But what a great idea it turned out to be! We cycled to an amazing brunch place at this old, converted post office, which still had pneumatic tubes that delivered frenchfries to the table! We then proceeded to bike around town to see some of the damage still evident from the devastating 2010 earthquake.

On a serious note. Hats off to the leadership of the ANSMET team (Ralph and Jim), because this seemingly innocuous afternoon off has already strengthened and bonded our team for the mission ahead in such a big way, it seems to me. It didn’t take a week, or some drama to make that happen. It’s a testament to the team selection ability of the leadership that they have formed such an amazing team, as all previous (and future) teams can attest to about their own teams. Good crew selection is vital.

Right, off to get some dinner, then a repack of bags and an early night. We’re off to the ice tomorrow! So say we all!