Our first full day in New Zealand was spent preparing for our trip down to the ice. The most important thing is to have the right clothes. Fortunately I didn't have to buy all of my gear...that would be very expensive. Instead, the US Antarctic Program has a Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) where we can borrow warm clothes to take to the ice.
In the lobby of the CDC there is a board of all the clothing that can be issued to you to use.
When we arrived at the CDC we watched an information video on what clothes we would need to pack and then we spent a good hour after that trying on clothes and packing them into specific bags. I had to divide up all my personal gear and the clothes on got at the CDC into 5 bags:
1: Check-In Bag = This is the bag or bags of things that would be stored on pallets on the plane and I would not see them until I got to the ice. 2: ECW Bag = This is the bag carrying all my extreme weather gear that I would need to wear tomorrow and bring on the plane with me. 3: Carry-On Bag = This bag has everything that I would need for the plane and breakable stuff that I didn't want to store in other bags. 4: Boomerang Bag = This bag has an extra change of clothes, shoes, and toiletries for New Zealand incase the plane has to turn around, "boomerang", back to New Zealand because of bad weather. 5: New Zealand Bag = This bag has anything else that I didn't want to take to the ice with me and that I was going to store in New Zealand until I got back.
All the jackets and gear ready to be distributed to USAP participants.
Racks of Big Reds waiting to be used in Antarctica.
The warehouse has everything that you could ever need to keep you warm in Antarctica
Lots of boxes of more gear in the warehouse waiting to be opened up.
Thinking and rethinking how to pack and organize my bags was quite the task
Needless to say, it was quite confusing and what made it worse was that I was still missing one of my bags. It is pretty hard to pack when you are missing your stuff. Hopefully my bag will get here by tomorrow in time to fly out. Now all that is left to do is get a good meal and some much needed sleep tonight and I will be officially ready for Antarctica. Our flight leaves tomorrow at about 8:30 am so check-in tomorrow to see my first pictures of Antarctica!
My bags were finally all packed and ready to go.