"we'll be approaching mcmurdo station in about 35 minutes so you might want
to change into your cold weather gear now if you haven't already. please
pass all trash and finished lunches to the rear of the aircraft. wind chill at
mcmurdo is 35 below. enjoy the rest of your flight"

warning
-this might get boring and i'm sorry. it's late at night now and finally the
internet is working up to speed. if you're tired, don't read this now. it will
probably put you to sleep. everybody's been emailing me with questions so
here's how it goes. this is what my first week in antarctica is like-

i arrived in christchurch, new zealand thursday 02 oct after a couple weeks
with my family in new england and 2 weeks in hawaii. now i reside in the
coldest, windiest, driest, most isolated place on earth. this is how it goes:

thursday, arrive auckland 7:30am. after customs checked my gear (i had just
spent a few days on my brother's farm in ct and nz seems to be more concerned
with trodding in cow dung than it is with weapons or terrorism),  we were
stopped before we checked in to the domestic flight to christchurch by a wild
band of maori men and women performing traditional dance. then i walkd outside
and was greeted by a massive double rainbow. i like it here.

got into christchurch around 10:30am, were handed an unexpected $450nzd and
sent to our hotels. i met up with my buddy aaron (dr. friendly known to
most) from sf who is hanging out in nz for a month or two, and ran around
town spending as much of raytheon's money as possible.
friday was all day orientation, 'safety and you', and clothing issue. i have
government underwear. the big red parka. the balaclava. the whole nine. i'm a
total freshman here. the first years are pretty much involuntarily seregated. i
met 3guys: johnny the crane operator from wisconsin, andrew the 'fake british
accent guy' from newcastle uk, but living in colorado springs, and phil the
supply inventory guy from minnesota. they call me doris the lunchlady. we became
fast friends and took over christchurch. we are the fab four. johnny's on his
way to the south pole in a few weeks, and will put in a good word for me there,
so if i'm lucky i might get a chance to go there and work. andrew will be
wintering here in mactown so kudos to him. he's on the ice for 13 months.
ice people call christchurch 'chch' or 'cheech' but we like to call
it 'jesuschristchurch' or 'cheeseandricechurch'.

the following day, saturday, we were suposed to fly out to the ice, but the
weather at mcmurdo was condition 1 (REALLY bad) so they delayed us and gave us
each $150nzd for our trouble. we continued to get rid of raytheon's free money
in fun ways. our salary had kicked in the day we arrived in nz. flights to the
ice work like this: the weather is so unpredictable that sometimes the flights
just go (usually at 5:30am), never knowing if they will land at mcmurdo.
sometimes they get as far as mcmurdo (5hrs), circle around a bit, then turn
around and go back to chch if it's too sketchy to land. it's called a
boomerang. it happens often. the only time they cancel flights completely is if
it's condition 1 at mcmurdo which means that nobody is allowed to go outside,
and visibility is zero. so every day we were in cheeseandricechurch, we called
into the antarctic travel centre at 7pm to find out if were scheduled to leave
the following day. 4 or 5 waves of antarcticans were backed up @ 150 people per
wave. one wave went out on sunday and were boomeanged. sunday we were delayed
and monday as well.  more free money so we rented a car and cruised around a
neighboring port town called lyttleton and hustled pool tables, drove out to
beautiful akaroa, and a mysterious hill called taylor's mistake. yes. new
zealand is really that beautiful. and it's more fun when raytheon pays for all
of it. i can justfy working for the u.s. government now.

monday morning they sent out 2 flights. one at 6am, one at 11.  conditions
still unpredictable.  i was scheduled for the one at 11am.  we didn't get in
the air till after 2pm, we basically just had to go, with a total
possibility of boomeranging. we went to the antarctic centre, which is next
to chch airport, suited up in the gear we had to wear on the flight,
including these weird pressurized rubber boots calld 'bunny boots' (for
real) that we had to close and release for the flight. the 'check in'
process is definately different than a commercial flight. we were going on a
us air force plane c141 which is a big, massive, loud piece of metal that
travels through stupid conditions at amazing speeds. it was the auschwitz
train of moving bodies to the ice. earplugs are mandatory (if anyone wants
to purchase my used ones, they can do a search on ebay.) but you can't
really hold conversations on the craft anyway since its as loud as a train
engine compartment inside the plane. there were 137 people on my flight, of
them, 32 were female. we were gender segregated on the flight, our seats,
basically cargo netting with seat belts and oxy masks. there were 2 long
paralell rows that ran down the center of the plane. your knees met the
knees of the person across from you, your back against the back of the
person behind you, your shoulders against the shoulders of the person next to
you. moving is not really an option with huge boots and 20
pounds of cold wether gear. my knees hurt so much. if you could maneuver it,
you could stand on your seat, but something on your lap ended up falling on
the lap of the person next to you. comfortable, it was not. exciting..... i
enjoyed every minute of that flight. except the part when it felt like my
eardums were bein sucked out of my head. i didn't like that feeling. there
were no windows on the craft except one porthole in the middle which i was
lucky enough to be in the vicity of, but could not see out of,due to the
whole not being able to move thing. bathroom travel was not prohibited, but
the latrine was nasty. howver, when you gotta go.....
so i went. and i am so glad. the latrine was next to the flight deck, and
the usaf crew wre hanging out by the door. i talked my way into the cockpit
an hour before landing. we had just started to fly over the continent and that's
where i saw my first glimpse of antarctica. i can't explain it. the
trans-antarctic range peaked below us, and i had a driver side view. i sat
in the co-pilot's seat, and was like a little girl in a candy store, fogging
the window. there were deep cracks in the otherwise flawless ice floes which
denotes glacier movement like when you stick a spoon in chowder that has
cooled and formed a skin over the top.  i saw ranges that rose to 14,000
(our altitude was 35,000) that were all prefect white with hints of blue.
they looked like what clouds would look like if they wre sharp and pointy. i saw
places completely untouched, where man has never walked. some of it was like
the moon, but sanded over smooth like fiberlass and freshly painted.
it was about 6:30pm when i was on the flight deck, and the sun was still way
high in the sky. the pilot told me it goes down around midnight and comes
back up at 3am, but antarctica is gaining 20minutes of daylight a day, so by
next week there will be no sunset at all.

the last 20 minutes of the flight was very interesting. nobody spoke, or
attempted to have converations, or hand gestures, or looked at each other.
everybody leaned back on the nets, closed their eyes, felling sick or prayin
for their lives. i finally realized that i was doing something dangerous.
now i realized why the physicals were so strict. now i realized why they
need all my dental history paperwork. i was too excited. the plane circled
around mcmurdo about a dozen times and kept doing that sharp fast descent
that drags down you stomach and if you were on a scale you'd be 20 pounds heavier.
then it would float back up, circle around, and back down again. please don't
boomerang.  we finally hit the ice runway and everybody cheered like it was a U2 concert.
when they opened the hatch and let us all out, the air was different. really
dry. when i inhaled through my nose it made all my nosehairs stick together.
i liked doing that. the air is sweet. like when you're skiing. that kind of air.
but colder. like a lot freaking colder. HOLY CRAP IT'S COLD. i love it.

they offloaded cargo, packed us into vans, sent us immediately to the galley 
for more orientation and room assignments. food is pretty good here. 
www.mcmurdo.gov for today's menu. 
i live in the ghetto called mammoth mountain inn (or MMI - raytheon loves 
their acronyms.) MMi is next to hotel california which is equally as dumpy, 
but a larger dump. my dorm is stupidly small, like 8x11 and i share it with 
a lady named maryann. she's very nice, and when i asked her what she did 
or a living, she told me she was a hooker. she's really a preschool teacher, 
taking the year off to be a janitor in antarctica. i like her already. 
i have a great view of the trans antarctic mountain range from my building, 
and the adjacent helipad serves as a nice alarm clock. 
i watched the our plane take off back to nz, just as as the sun lingered 
behind the range. a view of mt. erebus, the world's southern most active 
volcano is nearby, and it blows a long plume of smoke from the top. 
mcmurdo station stands between discovery hut, built in 1902 by robert scott 
(famous antarctic explorer) and ob hill, a big big hill adjacent to town 
which i plan on hiking tomorrow. there's a big cross on the top that 
serves as another reminder that YOU CAN DIE HERE. 

population as of 07 october at mcmurdo is 732.

not all of the keys work on this keyboard and internet access is slow. i
hate being a grammar nazi.


15 hours after we landed i had a little tour of town and went straight to work.
where i'm from, most people who do my job don't speak english, so it's kinda
cool in a way. i keep trying to come up with ways to like my job, but in
reality, i do have the shittiest job on the continent. everyone agrees. i would
really rather mop toilets. i am a DA, or dining attendant, which is a glorified
way of saying 'dishwasher' or 'pan-scrubber' or 'refill the ice cream toppings
3 more centimeters person' or 'wipe down everything over and over person' or 'i
wear safety goggles when i pour tabasco sauce into fresh bottles person' etc. i
work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.  i make $377.42 a week with no possibility
of overtime. i don't mind the work or the pay because i knew what it was when i
signed up for it and i'm having fun. at least i'm here.

there's tons of stuff to do here. i thought i was going to be bored. there's a
store that's only open during mealtimes, there's a coffee shop, 2 bars:
gallaghers (good pool table and warped shuffleboard) and southern exposure
(smokey as all get out), there's a weight room, rock climbing wall, bowling
alley (it rocks - i went there last night with the boys), chapel, tv stations,
radio station (it never works cause the satellite isn't working or something)
movie theater, video reantal place, library, ceramics kiln, greenhouse,
craft room, fire dept., hospital, everything is here.

the drag is, that the '9-5' shift here is 7:30-5:30 and 90% of the base has
sundays off. i work 11am-9pm with fridays off, so by the time i get off work, i
have 2 hours before the bars close and my friends go to bed. all the
activities, sports teams, bowling league, bingo nights, aerobic classes,
science lectures, everything everything everything starts at 7pm and is over by
the time i get off work which is a big bummer. however i did get to a science
lecture on sunday on polar ozone loss which was interesting.

after bowling last night around midnight i went to discovery hut. we can only
check out the keys to go inside in the daytime, but we went for the walk over
there cause there;s not much else you can do 'out of town'. it;'s a 30 minute walk.
this place is 101 years old, with a blackened seal carcass preserved outside of
it. it was awesome. to look back at mcmurdo from there is interesting; it looks
like a bunch of little factory buildings. and it was pretty much daylight
outside, even though it was midnight. vince's cross is above the hut, which
marks a spot where a member of scott's crew drowned. there's also a
Mary in a welding cage nearby, as well a pregnant seal. tonight after work i
caught a taxi to scott base, which is a kiwi base 15minutes away. thursday is
american night, where they invite us over for drinks and pool. it's very
beautiful over there, since today was clear, you could see the trans antarctic
range and the pressure ridges in the ice were all outlined in bright blue.
scott base is really small, population 42. but their bar is great and drinks
are cheap. good folks. tomorrow is my day off, and i volunteered to help the
deep sea divers gether data and carry equipment. i'll be out on the sea ice for
6 hours tomorrow, where if i'm lucky, i get to see a seal or dissect a fish.

i really like it here. i realized that in my first 24 hours. i really like the
thing that i came here to discover: the community. it's very intersting.  people
with phd's mopping floors. drunk blondes with shit for brains as taxi drivers.
i've signed up to be the pinsetter at the bowling alley. i get paid $15/week by
raytheon to do it.

about the photos. i've been taking them, but i can't hook my laptop up to
the network until i register it with the IT department here. IT is open only
when i work, except saturday at 7am. it will take 2 days. so hopefully i can
get some photos up this weekend. in the meantime, here are some websites of
other people's stuff:
discovery hut:
discovery hut
Scotts photos
old pics of mcmurdo from ob hill
great pic of mactown from the hut. 
ob hill is the big freaking hill
and 
this is a site that was made by a legendary DA named phil. his entire
website is funny and i hope to be like him someday. he did 14 months here

please send me stuff. i'll send you stuff. anything that you can possibly
imagine with the word 'antarctica' stamped on it is here. pens, pencils, a
plethora of different styles of t-shirts/sweatshrits/fleeces, stickers,
hats, water bottles, etc.

Note: It's too late.  Don't send anything now.  This is no longer a live broadcast.
allie barden RPSC
McMurdo Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP 96599-1035

again, no illegal stuff, no styro packing peanuts, please. i would like
things that would make my room more interesting. i only have a rubber
lobster. i have no music at all, which is a bummer since my roommate has a
cd player. i also have no cd's to burn photos on (i'm learning!) and of
course i will send you copies of them if you so desire. i could use a funny
hat, since i have to wear one as a lunchlady, and this doo rag is depressing.
i'm sure there's more, but i'm really tired now and this sun is messing me
up. it's 3am. which means nothing here.

ok class, any questions?

off to bed. good night.

icewichgirl....

"that's a bunch of baloney.
and baloney doesn't belong in a peanut butter sandwich."