WATIZIT
WATIZIT
I planned to write this final” report as I was flying north, but as you can see that didn’t happen.
I am not sure which was more disorienting and surreal; last week when I arrived back in Texas and walked through the San Antonio airport and out into the darkness to catch a shuttle out to my car in the back of a flat concrete parking lot, surrounded by skyscraper mountains lit with electronic daylight. Or, a month ago walking off the C-17 into the constant daylight and onto the flat featureless McMurdo Ice Shelf with the distant blackness of the Transantarctic Mountains.
Last week I left The Ice the same way I arrived, only backwards. The long slow commute out to Pegasus airstrip on Ivan the Terra Bus. (When George and I flew out to repair the Pegasus AWS it was a lot faster taking a helicopter.)
Ivan at Pegasus
Unloading Ivan at Pegasus Air Strip
It was a beautiful clear day, unlike the overcast foggy on which I arrived.
Shuttle Van at Pegasus
Shuttle Van at Pegsus Air Strip
This provided myself and the rest of the large group flying North, one last panoramic view of the incredible surroundings.
Mt. Erebus, Ob Hill, and Castle Rock from Pegasus Air Strip
Standing out on the middle of the Ice Sheet we waited for the C-17.
C17, Ivan and preboarding passengers
C17, Ivan and Passengers Waiting in the airport lobby.
Boarding the C17
Boarding the C17
About 50 hours after I left McMurdo in the southeastern hemisphere, I was walking through the San Antonio airport in the northwestern hemisphere. That night out in the rural Hill Country of Texas where I live, I saw my first stars in over month!!!
Time exposure of stars
Time exposure of stars
What an incredible experience this has been. Thank you very much George, Shelley, Jonathan, Jonas, Matthew and John for allowing me to participate in the AWS project. Thanks to PolarTREC/ARCUS and NSF for developing such a great outreach project. Thanks to Dr. Ford, and everyone else at Blanco ISD, for being so supportive of me participating in this real world science project. Thanks to the students at Blanco Middle School for being so excited about this project, and of course thank you so much to all of you who tagged along and participated on the website and webinar.
As I was leaving McMurdo, someone commented about the ending of my "project”. As I told them, I like to think more in terms of this as a beginning rather than an ending.
One final comment…. Before I headed south, a friend of mine in Austin asked me to check out the common belief that toilets in the southern hemisphere swirl in the opposite direction than in the northern hemisphere. George tells me that fluids have to travel a much longer distance for the Coriolis Effect to have an effect. But science demands data, I made many observations of toilets (I have to admidt that I did not keep a written record of my observations- but I do have video
Cool
). I did not see any evidence in either Antarctica or New Zealand that water in toilets swirls in the opposite direction than in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, most of the toilets in New Zealand that I observed don’t really swirl at all, neither did the outhouses in Antarctica
Cool
.
New Zealand toilet
Toilet in New Zealand Hotel
Oh... and today's WATIZIT??? It is the handle to this New Zealand toilet.
Thanks again for joining this science project to The Ice!!!!!