Journey to the Bottom of the World: The long wait has come to an end.

It has been almost 2 months since I was PQ’d and about 3 weeks ago I took a leave of absence from my job at PS01 to work at the South Pole for 4 months. In the meantime, we all suffered from the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis because everything was put on hold since the National Science Foundation runs the program down under. Finally when the logjam broke, the fine folks down in Colorado went into overdrive and started processing the plane tickets for the folks going to Antarctica. I leave tomorrow morning for the first leg of my trip to The Pole via Seattle, LA, Sydney, Christchurch and McMurdo.

I have been fairly patient, visiting old friends, taking walks along the Chena River that is beside the condo that we moved into this summer, taking photos of the sunrises & ducks, and I’m still unpacking boxes from the move. I checked in with my family Doctor and friend, Dr. Peter Marshall out in the town of North Pole who has been looking after my health for over 30 years. He congratulated me, gave me the green light and gave me something for my sniffles.

Since I’ve been trying to go to Antarctica for three years I kind of feel like an astronaut whose mission has been scrubbed a couple of times but tomorrow is launch day, everything looks good and the mission is a GO!!!