After a long two months, I am home. I arrived home late on Thursday night after spending approximately 18 hours traveling from Kangerlussuaq to Golden. I will write more as soon as I have a few minutes to sit down and organize my thoughts and all of my gear. Thanks again for all of the support.
Cheers,
Mike O
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Heading Home
I'm on my way home. Today I caught the LC-130 flight from Summit back to Kangerlussuaq. I am spending the next day and a half out at Kellyville resting and getting cleaned up prior to heading back to CONUS and home. In the 4 hours since we have been back, I have showered, done a load of laundry and eaten supper. I can't tell you how good it feels to be clean and have clean clothes. Tomorrow looks like a day full of repacking and organizing all of my ECW and gear back into a manageable pile of clothing. We need to be back down in kangerlussuaq by 2 pm for our pre flight bag drag. Then, from what I can gather from the folks down at the KISS building, we are on for a 7:15 am bag drag on Thursday. After that, it is Goose Bay, Albany, Chicago and home. I am planning on spending the next couple of weeks getting photos from all of the guy's on the ICECAPS team and putting together an album over at picasa showing all of the work we did. It has been an experience to say the least.
That is all for tonight, I will be writing at least one more post before I am home. Thanks again to everybody who has read this blog and has supported me over the past couple of months.
Cheers,
Mike O
That is all for tonight, I will be writing at least one more post before I am home. Thanks again to everybody who has read this blog and has supported me over the past couple of months.
Cheers,
Mike O
Monday, June 7, 2010
Last Day at Summit
Here it is. It is my last day at Summit Camp. With the new flight period we had our second flight today. It was a Kanger-Summit-Thule-Kanger flight. The flight was designated a cargo flight which was supposed to take out a T-4 pallet. What is a T-4 pallet? It is four regular pallets attached together into one. This T-4 weighed in at 19,600 lbs.
Today's Load Master for the LC-130 was undergoing a qual test, so she was being asked to do lots of good stuff today. To start off, she had to do a Combat Drop of the 3 pallets they brought to us. A Combat Drop is where they shove the pallets out the back of the plane while it is still moving. After this fun, they had to load this monster 19,600 lbs load onto the plane and then take off. This was a lot of fun to watch. Even the regular crew on station have not seen anything like this. When the LC-130 was ready to leave, they goosed it all the way down to the end of the runway to turn around. Nobody could understand why they did it. When they came back on their take off run, they used every single inch of the skiway. The skiway is 2 miles long and they just got the main skis off of the snow surface as they crossed the end of the skiway flags. The photos are spectacular to see. I will try and get hold of them.
Where do I go from here? I will be in Kellyville for two nights and one day. This will allow me to take a shower and wash my clothes before heading back to CONUS on Thursday (CONtinental United States) . Then according to the plans, I should fly out on the rotator ANG flight on Thursday morning, catch a United flight at 5:30 pm back to Denver via Chicago. If all goes as planned, I should be home around 11 pm Thursday night, and the end of my adventure.
I want to thank everybody for their support and their emails. I am looking forward to seeing everybody in the coming weeks.
Cheers,
Mike O
Today's Load Master for the LC-130 was undergoing a qual test, so she was being asked to do lots of good stuff today. To start off, she had to do a Combat Drop of the 3 pallets they brought to us. A Combat Drop is where they shove the pallets out the back of the plane while it is still moving. After this fun, they had to load this monster 19,600 lbs load onto the plane and then take off. This was a lot of fun to watch. Even the regular crew on station have not seen anything like this. When the LC-130 was ready to leave, they goosed it all the way down to the end of the runway to turn around. Nobody could understand why they did it. When they came back on their take off run, they used every single inch of the skiway. The skiway is 2 miles long and they just got the main skis off of the snow surface as they crossed the end of the skiway flags. The photos are spectacular to see. I will try and get hold of them.
Where do I go from here? I will be in Kellyville for two nights and one day. This will allow me to take a shower and wash my clothes before heading back to CONUS on Thursday (CONtinental United States) . Then according to the plans, I should fly out on the rotator ANG flight on Thursday morning, catch a United flight at 5:30 pm back to Denver via Chicago. If all goes as planned, I should be home around 11 pm Thursday night, and the end of my adventure.
I want to thank everybody for their support and their emails. I am looking forward to seeing everybody in the coming weeks.
Cheers,
Mike O
Thursday, June 3, 2010
New Flight Period
Today was the beginning of the new flight period. The ANG flys around Greenland for two weeks in and then spends two weeks at home in the States, then they repeat the process. Our first flight of the new flight period came in today. It was a DV flight. They spent a grand total of 1.75 hours on the ground here. They visited all of the science sites, including the MSF. Everybody on station was excited because it means that most of us are heading home sometime this flight period. I am scheduled out, I believe this to be correct, on the next flight from Kanger. This means I am a short timer. I am definitely at the point of being ready to head home.
The temps are relatively nice right now, in the 10 to -20 F range. I am ready for warmer temperatures and not crawling into a freezing sleeping bag. I also am not going to miss having to cover my head at night to keep the frost bite from attacking my head. I will take a photo of my boots frozen to the floor and how I have things set up in there. One of the fun things I have seen in the last few weeks is having my water bottle frozen solid first thing in the morning, even though I have hot water in it when I leave the Big House the previous night. There are times that it is really nice in the tent, like late mornings when it actually gets up into the 60-70 range in there. But since I am working during the day I don't get to spend that much time in there when it is that nice.
It is currently 0F 11 knots winds and -18 F windchill. I am wondering what I should do for the next 6 hours, since I usually don't go to bed until after midnight. This is the long time of each day, when time seems to crawl. At the beginning it was not as bad as it is now. This is one of the reasons I know that it is time for me to come home.
Seven Days and Counting
The temps are relatively nice right now, in the 10 to -20 F range. I am ready for warmer temperatures and not crawling into a freezing sleeping bag. I also am not going to miss having to cover my head at night to keep the frost bite from attacking my head. I will take a photo of my boots frozen to the floor and how I have things set up in there. One of the fun things I have seen in the last few weeks is having my water bottle frozen solid first thing in the morning, even though I have hot water in it when I leave the Big House the previous night. There are times that it is really nice in the tent, like late mornings when it actually gets up into the 60-70 range in there. But since I am working during the day I don't get to spend that much time in there when it is that nice.
It is currently 0F 11 knots winds and -18 F windchill. I am wondering what I should do for the next 6 hours, since I usually don't go to bed until after midnight. This is the long time of each day, when time seems to crawl. At the beginning it was not as bad as it is now. This is one of the reasons I know that it is time for me to come home.
Seven Days and Counting
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