Sunday, December 14, 2008

Home Stretch

Well, its Monday here in New Zealand, and back to work I go. I had to learn how the Christchurch Metro system works, so I could get transportation from the city center to the Antarctic Center at the airport. Its not to bad, and they have handy little RFID based "MetroCards" you can buy, and deposit cash on them as needed. The bus fares here are pretty cheap, at least with the exchange rate. It cost me a little over US$1 to take the bus here, which is probably about a 15 mile ride.
The flight back from McMurdo was pretty low key. The way the flight schedule got all jumbled up resulted in me getting bumped from my original flight on an LC-130, and I ended up catching the next flight out on a C-17, along with 17 others. It was kind of weird to be in this monstrous cargo plane with so few people on it. For cargo, we had a good sized drilling rig tied down to the floor, but that's about it. The flight was also 3.5 hours shorter this way too.
I've been enjoying the darkness that comes with the night time sky too. I never thought that 24 hours of sunshine would mess with me as much as it did, but I'm pretty certain it messed with my sleep while on the ice, simply because my body is responding so much better back in New Zealand again. I'm sure a nice big bed with no snoring roommates helps a lot too though.
So other than the news that I'm back in New Zealand, finishing up my work, I don't have a whole lot to report. Nothing plan
Publish Post
ned as far as sight seeing goes here. Mostly I'm just looking forward to getting home and not working. A lot of the tasking I have that provides a business justification for this trip, I don't really enjoy to much, and it wears on me, so it will be nice to wrap it up. I also have had some comments made to me that stating something along the lines of it seeming like I enjoyed my trip to the Antarctic peninsula more than I have to the South Pole... Truth be told, I probably did. I've sat and thought about my past 2 trips pretty seriously over the last few days and have tried to analyze the differences, some of them are subtle, some of them are not. There's a quote from a guy named Chris McCandless that has had some real meaning to me on this trip: "Happiness isn't real, unless it's shared." Despite being surrounded be people for most of the trip, sharing the experiences has been difficult at times. I'll just leave it at that.

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