Christchurch

After just shy of 50 hours in transit from home, I arrived at my Christchurch hotel. Despite my best intentions of having a series of calm days prior to my departure, 15 minutes before leaving home, I found myself doing some last minute wiring adjustments to the system I finished building at midnight the night before – an alert system so when a mousetrap is tripped in my van parked in my parents shed, it’ll trigger a flashing red light on the outside of the shed so they know to reset the trap. Only 2.5 hours of sleep but they were darn good hours!

A highlight of the transit was a long layover in Sydney where I was able to meet up with my cousin Jamie who I hadn’t seen in a decade – since I was last in these parts. We had a wonderful day together and just before we drove back to the airport, I got to see three of his four kids perform with their sting instrument in a wonderful orchestral concert. What a day! I also had a great transpacific flight next to a guy who’d always been an Antarctica fan and also had a mandolin with him. We hit it off and it made the 15 hour flight more enjoyable.

I spent my first day in Christchurch, which was a full day off, mostly wandering around the botanical gardens. Such amazing colors and smells even in early spring. I did my best to soak them up and even took a sunny nap in the soft, green grass. I also visited my favorite tree there, which has a long horizontal limb. I remember first coming across it years ago and getting a sense that the tree was alive more than the usual sense. Now, each time I go to the gardens I go to see the tree, a Field Elm. Later after a run and a burrito, I went to sleep at 8pm only to be woken up at 3am by a drunk rugby team. The team amazingly continued to be loud and proud until about 5:30 am.  Despite my speaking with them as well as the man at the front desk, they were too inebriated to maintain any sense of quiet. Thankfully I had gone to sleep early. The beneficial part of the early morning was that the front desk man felt so bad that he’s putting all my breakfasts on the house. He said I was very forgiving.  Apparently he had been watching them drunkenly run naked up and down the hallways and was nicely very apologetic. 

Today we had some zoom briefings, in person orientations and then were issued our gear.  The whole time in Christchurch has felt surreal. It’s like going back in time in many ways. It was ten years ago when I was last here.  Memories of the first time I was here go back sixteen years.  So as I walk around the city, I am filled with memories of being about to go to the Ice, and having just returned from the Ice – two states of being that have intense feelings associated with them.  I am also filled with the memories of the people I have spent time with here.  Even after so many years, it still feels like they should be with me here again.  And of course, there are memories of the earthquake…of wondering if I was about to die or become trapped or have a defining event in my life.  It was not a defining event but wondering such things leaves an impression, as do the intensity of all these things.  

So now I am here again, with all the anticipation, the curiosity, the nervous feelings along with the excitement, I prepare for returning to the Ice tomorrow.  I am the new guy again, which despite the frequency that I find myself in this position, is not easy for me, though it is certainly familiar.  I do it to myself though, and it has always been worth it.  Antarctica is a wild place and I’ve had every emotion there.  The lows can be lower but the highs can be higher, and that sort of richness is what I’m after – though I’ll do my best to stack the cards in the direction of the highs!

To the Ice tomorrow.  Hoping the good weather holds and we don’t have to “boomerang” back to Christchurch after too many hours in the air.  (It should take around 5.5 hours to get to McMurdo.)  We fly in a NZ air force 737 tomorrow, which is good in that there should be a lot of windows to look out of, but bad in that I love flying in the military cargo planes, the C-17s.  

It’s a crazy world we live in!  The forecast showed it to be around around -10 degrees F tomorrow.  The first time I arrived, I felt like I was arriving on the moon.  To infinity and beyond!