The Rumour Mill. it should be the name of a bar in mcmurdo or something. for the past few days or so, the citizens of mcmurdo station have been entertained with the most recent twisted tidbits of (mis)information. but everyone has a friend in the National Guard here who knows the REAL story, or has a friend who's a mechanic, or a friend who works at the airfield, etc....basically, it's a 1,000+ person game of Telephone.

• there's only one C141 to shuttle 800 mcmurdoans and 175 poleys to christchurch, not to mention the winter crew and cargo that need to get to the ice.
• originally there were 2 141's dedicated to the antarctic mission. now there is one. this plane is 40 years old, and there is a part on it that needs to be replaced. the part is in mcmurdo. the plane is in christchurch.
• the above statements are true.

• the second plane we were promised went to iraq since one of the 141's there was shot down and like all these soldiers died and stuff.
• so there's this power booster or something that's in mcmurdo and there's like this winterover poley in christchurch and he's the last winterover poley and needs to get to pole by the 15th cause like that's when pole closes and stuff.... so they're gonna fly him down on a twin otter (small plane, expensive trip) cause they need to get him there like asap and when they get to mcmurdo, the 130 will take him to pole and the twin otter will get the part and bring it back to cheech and they'll fix the plane there and commence the shuttling.
• the air force got a waiver to get a jump start in cheech and will fly the plane down to the ice with no passengers and will get the part and blah blah commence shuttling blah blah.
• the part in mcmurdo isn't the right one and they have to go back to port hueneme california to get it and don't even think abour redeploying this week cause they're not shutting mcmurdo down till 01 march anyway.
• the weather sucks and the icebound planes are boomeranging.
• they're going to fly an air new zealand commercial flight to the ice. ha ha!!
• they're going to fly us all home in c130's. (small AF planes....about 1/2 the pax capacity of a 141 and takes twice as long)

stay tuned to see how sandwich gets of the ice. or maybe she won't. maybe she'll get to see the sunset in antarctica. maybe she'll get off the ice in august.

love, sandwich

Sandwichgirl.com