flight to Antarctica: Take 2

Fri 8 Jan 2010

I am about 1 hour into the 5 hour flight now, and I am stoked on my seat. I really wanted to make sure I got a cool side seat, and not the more traditional middle seats that face forward. The potential problem was that we have 30 more people on our flight now who arrived into Christchurch this past week when we have been waiting/trying to fly out. I was in get-a-sweet-seat mode when I got off the bus that took me from the CDC screening area out to the jet way where the giant C-17 was waiting to take us to the Antarctic. I also wanted to get close to an electrical outlet in case I needed power during the flight.

I am also pretty happy about the people sitting around me. My new friend, Tara, a post doc with Dr. George Church at the Harvard Medical School who re-engineers organisms (microbes) to do what she says, is on my left, and Nishad (mentioned and pictured in a previous post) is on my right. Flying to Antarctica is tough....haha.

Dr. Mark Denny is beside Nishad, and I am hoping that increasing my time in Mark’s general vicinity might make some of his genius brain energy accidentally trickle through my ears and into my brain. Except I just realized that we are all wearing earplugs, so hopefully foam does not block brain energy waves.

Across from me is a row of sideways seats that face me, and one of the CBS reporters is directly across from me. His name is Josh, he lives in New York City, and reports for CBS and has traveled all over the world for his job. He’s rad too, and he is getting to fly directly to the South Pole station after we land (which I am confident we will do) in McMurdo.

The cargo on this plane is pretty funny. There are all of our bags palletized, which is pretty normal, but then there are several pallets of food, and some of it is pretty disturbing….why is there a giant pallet of mayonnaise going to McMurdo?