At the Pole, at last

Our flight on the Basler went off without a hitch. We did end up flying through some clouds over the mountains (sometimes not very much above those mountains...), so views were obscured for a fair portion of the flight before we hit the Flat White of the plateau.

Upon arrival, it really was nice to have been here before. I didn't have to ask where to go or try to digest this new environment all at once. Pretty quickly I was intercepted by the current science techs, and we hung out in the lab catching up and talking with our supervisor, Al. Jason, the tech I'm taking over for, gave me a quick introduction to the daily checks of the equipment we have in the elevated station.

Part of the reason we flew in early was to give the new people on station some time to get up to speed without pushing themselves too hard. With no chance of medevac, that's even more important. I felt pretty tired yesterday, and had a fairly gnarly headache by the time I went to bed at 1900. But, I'd slept very poorly the night before, and figured this was probably the culprit. I managed to sleep about 12 hours, with trips to the bathroom about every 90 minutes. The altitude medicine I'm taking has the unfortunate side-effect of making you have to urinate quite copiously and frequently. I woke up this morning feeling much better, still a bit tired, but very much more comfortable.

Training will continue today, and I'm looking forward to getting up to speed on my new job/identity as a science tech.