SK11 mission P004

Yup, skier one-one mission papa zero-zero-four is headed this way after a 3-hour delay (mechanical) in McMurdo.  The weather is gorgeous here at Pole, so barring any further deterrents, it will make it here about 2pm.  This has been a busy morning with room cleaning and packing, laundering bedclothes, checking in on the projects at work, serving as an observer for the emergency response drill (SO glad to be at the end, not the beginning, of that experiential arc), assisting with moving more food into the station (food pull), and the last few miscellaneous errands before heading to the flight line.  Getting rid of my radio will be the last, but certainly will be a pleasant one after being on-call for over a year.

This all seems pretty routine.  It's funny how anticlimactic it is after such long labors.  The transitions are abrupt and come with little fanfare.  One morning you're at Pole and a couple hours you're back in the land of rock and soil and liquid water.  After a couple days of sleeping and trying not to get sick in McMurdo, you're thrust back into the green world in New Zealand and whole chapters of planetary options open up once you step out of your big noisy metal tube that carried you there.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
~Frank Zappa