{"id":1844,"date":"2015-01-01T18:04:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T23:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/?p=1844"},"modified":"2015-01-01T18:04:32","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T23:04:32","slug":"new-old-friends-and-adjusting-to-the-civilized-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/2015\/01\/01\/new-old-friends-and-adjusting-to-the-civilized-world\/","title":{"rendered":"New Old Friends and adjusting to the civilized world"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"homeatlast\"<\/a>

in front of the fire with Apple.<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

My long trek from the field\u00a0finally ended when I made it home late on the eve of the 30th. Since then I’ve been trying to adjust to the time change and the busy life of my household, swarming with kids and pets and visitors. \u00a0Antarctic cold here in Cleveland, so no big climate adaptation, but I miss my beard (removed in McMurdo so my wife and daughter would take me back). \u00a0And luckily there’s abundant sunshine (not the most common thing in Cleveland in early January) that should help me adapt to a day-night cycle, something that’s been mostly missing for me for a month.<\/p>\n

I thought I’d quickly mention an aspect of Antarctic travel that’s pretty special to me given I’ve been doing this for over 25 years- meeting old friends. \u00a0There’s the folks I see every deployment, \u00a0of course, folks who have worked in McMurdo or Christchurch for a long time that I interact with almost yearly. \u00a0More exciting is seeing people that I’ve missed for many years or people I’ve known through third parties and never met before, and both of these things happened on my travels home. \u00a0First it was Ralph (Andy) Young, a talented mechanic and mountaineer\/guide who I first met in McMurdo more than a decade ago. \u00a0We bonded over snowmobiles and our mutual old-school first name, but like a lot of contract workers he\u00a0got bored with\u00a0life in\u00a0McMurdo after a few seasons and left for stints at Palmer, as a hand at large field camps, \u00a0etc. \u00a0 I hadn’t seen him in a very long time, but we ended up on the same flight from McMurdo to Christchurch, so it was a very very pleasant time catching up while travelling that leg.<\/p>\n

A different kind of surprise on the flight from Sydney to Dallas. \u00a0That flight was very full, unfortunately, and I was in the very back of the aircraft. \u00a0shortly after reaching cruising altitude I stood up and stretched a bunch when a distinguished red-haired gentleman approached me and said with a smile, “Would you be Dr. Ralph Harvey?” \u00a0 I said I was, and he said “Does the name Andy Thomas mean anything to you?” \u00a0 I wracked my brain and disassembled, because it didn’t immediately- \u00a0and then he told me he was Shannon’s husband, and it all clicked. \u00a0I had known that her husband had been in Australia during our deployment and I had a vague memory of his face from seeing his picture when he was an astronaut. we spent the next half hour gossiping about the astronaut corp, NASA, the meteorite work, \u00a0all the common ground. \u00a0It was an awesome way to start a long flight for me- \u00a0instead of feeling like an anonymous little critter in a cage, \u00a0it was suddenly a plane full of people with stories and places to go and friends to make.<\/p>\n

So it was a decent trip home- \u00a0too long of course, but no delays at any stage and the long layovers between flights was a blessing in some ways (no fears of missing connections, time to eat and move around and reorganize and send some messages home and elsewhere). \u00a0Now I’ve got a 75 lb. puppy in my lap, \u00a0a fire in the woodstove and a fuzzy brain, and I’m home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-posted by rph from Novelty, Ohio<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My long trek from the field\u00a0finally ended when I made it home late on the eve of the 30th. Since then I’ve been trying to adjust to the time change and the busy life of my household, swarming with kids and pets and visitors. \u00a0Antarctic cold here in Cleveland, so no big climate adaptation, but I miss my beard (removed in McMurdo so my wife and daughter would take me back). \u00a0And luckily there’s abundant sunshine (not the most common thing in Cleveland in early January) that should help me adapt to a day-night cycle, something that’s been mostly missing for me for a month.<\/p>\n

Continue reading… New Old Friends and adjusting to the civilized world<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1850,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1844\/revisions\/1850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}