Can I Get an Upgrade on this Flight?

Friday…Flight Day…the sun brought the Homeric rosy-fingered dawn to the eastward horizon, muting the soft neon pastels highlighting the facades of New Regent Street just outside my hotel window.  I took a shower, dressed warmly, and rearranged my bags an few more times, trying to find the perfect balance between weight, bulk, and my ability to cart them downstairs.  Eventually I gave up, taking advantage of a final burst of snobbish gentility to call the front desk for a luggage cart to get my bags down to the lobby, where someone else would load them into the shuttle to take me to the airport.

The bags themselves are part of the story.  I had just bought a really nice new set of luggage, hard case, little wheels, combination locks, and keys to let the TSA see everything.  But as I thought about this excursion, and knowing that I had already heard the term “bag drag” used in conjunction with Antarctica, I decided not to have the little spinning wheels break off on the ice and rocks.  (I like little wheels on luggage.)  During my team-building event in October, I had seen that some of the prior polar vets who were deploying directly from Colorado were using duffle bags.  So I got online and ordered, sight unseen, the biggest duffle bags I could finds, each four feet long in emerald green with my monogram stitched onto the side.  (Did I mention that whole snobbish gentility thing?).  It turns out that maybe I should have actually measured the other’s duffle bags first, because even on a luggage cart, the ends of the oversized bags wound up scraping across the ground, tearing up the fabric in a self-induced version of the “bag drag.” 

On the flight to the continent, a winter-over is allowed 100 pounds of luggage.  You can also take a carry-on bag up to about 15 pounds, and whatever ECW you wear on board doesn’t count against your total.  How you choose to distribute those 100 pounds is up to you.  Unlike commercial carriers, where each bag has to weight 50 pounds or less, and once you’re past the first bag or two you wind up with hefty fees, on the USAP flight you can take as many bags as you like, and they can weight whatever you choose.  If you want to bring 95 pounds of socks in one bag and 5 pounds of Hostess Twinkies in the other, that’s okay; if you want to distribute those Twinkies between five separate bags, that’s okay too.  But one of your bags has to be a “boomerang bag,” packed with several days of clothes to get you through days when flights are either cancelled before departure or return to Christchurch once enroute (a “boomerang”). This is the only bag you can access if your flight doesn’t go through, as everything else is palleted for flight, and the pallet doesn’t get broken open until it hits ground on the ice.  Probably best to  keep some Twinkies in the boomerang.  

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Your first destination is McMurdo Station, the main supply depot and jumping-off point for all continental Antarctic sites.  (There is a separate site known as Palmer Station located farther north on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is reached by boat across the Drake Passage from the tip of South American).  It’s located on the Northern end of Ross Island on the Ross Ice Shelf, both memorializing the 19^th Century British explorer James Clark Ross, who named the two largest peaks on the island, Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror, after the ships comprising his expedition force.  McMurdo Sound is named for Clarks’ Senior Lieutenant on the Terror, Archibald McMurdo.

McMurdo is the largest settlement in Antarctica, and is known not only for its’ current role but also its’ historical importance.  Scott built a shelter there during his Discovery expedition of 1902; the hut was used by others including Ernest Shackelton later that decade and Scott’s own Terra Nova expedition of 1910.  The hut still stands today, the cold and arid skies keeping the wooden hovel in a state of suspended animation.  It lies on a finger of land known as Hut Point, and is overshadowed by Observation Hill, where a cross atop the summit is engraved with the names of the ill-fated Scott party, and a quote from Tennyson:

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Departure happens from a small passenger terminal operated by the USAP across the street from the main Christchurch airport.  Before you get your boarding pass (a laminated number on a chain worn ‘round your neck), You get weighed along with your gear.  I weigh 165# dripping wet; with my ECW gear on and my carry-on, I hit an even 200.  Most of us were determined to wear all four layers of our ECW gear throughout the flight, as we had been warned that the cabin experience would be like going to an ice bar without the beverages.  However, it turns out this was all a ruse…perhaps an initiation prank…because as we got on the plane, the crew was wearing tee-shirts and camo pants.  It turns out they actually turn the heat on inside the aircraft.  Who knew.

Before you board, you watch a safety video in the passenger lounge (a few rows of plastic chairs and a restroom…again, no SkyClub). You watch it before you board because on military aircraft there are no overhead on in-seat screens on which to watch the safety demonstration, nor flight attendants to which to direct your attention.  The safety video covers the basics, including the seat belt, the flotation vest, and the oxygen hood.  The latter device is a magnitude above the commercial airline oxygen mask that falls from a compartment above your head, at which point everyone calmly looks up with an air of amusement, sees the mask, surmises there might be an issue and perhaps they might place the mask over their nose and mouth and continue to breathe normally,  not worrying if the bag is not inflated because oxygen is flowing, and being sure to put on their mask before helping others, instead of wondering why the plane is falling form the sky and screaming “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIE!” and texting farewells to loved ones and reminders to feed the cat.

In the military video, you are told that should there be a need for oxygen, you will find a green plastic bag just above your seat.  The bag contains a polythene hood with an oxygen canister fastened to a neck dam.  As best I understand, in the event of an emergency you take the hood out of the bag, position it over your head so the transparent part is in front, slip it on and secure the neck gaiter, and do something with the small cannister…I think there’s a pin to pull somewhere…to activate the oxygen.  You are then instructed to breathe normally (a little shout-out to the civilian world), and that condensation may occur within the hood.  You are to keep your head in the hood until instructed by flight crew or until the cannister runs out of oxygen, as indicated by the bag deflating.  Whichever comes first.

So if I might summarize:

Flight crew says to put on your oxygen hood.

Remain calm.

Put a plastic bag over your head and seal it at the neck.

Remain calm.

Bag fogs up so you cannot see. 

Remain calm.  Continue to breath normally.

Bag deflates.  You are now out of oxygen and you have a sticky wet plastic bag glued to your face.

(I’m presuming that at this point it’s acceptable to use your last breath to scream.  And your last moments of useful life to remind someone to feed the cat.)

Have a nice day.

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The aircraft itself is an LC-130 Hercules, a four engine, eight-bladed turboprop first built in the 1950’s as the military’s principal cargo aircraft. Newer versions continue to serve as the primary transport vehicle of the USAP, with missions to the ice flown by the New York Air National Guard.  Inside, the aircraft has fold-down metal benches with fabric stretched between the supports for seating, and webbing along the sides of the aircraft serves as backrests.  The middle of the floor is taken up with rollers for pallets and multiple stanchions acting as tie-down points for more irregularly shaped loads.  The rear of the aircraft folds down to allow loading, then is raised back up for flight.  It’s very spartan inside; wires are bare, pipes are uncovered, and windows seem to be an afterthought.  It’s clearly an aircraft built for a mission, and not for speed or comfort.  I couldn’t even upgrade to business class no matter how many Delta miles I was willing to spend.  Still, there’s something reassuring about being in an aircraft that can fly a self-propeller howitzer into battle.  Compared with that, getting you and your bags to Antarctica must be a very cold piece of cake. 

Being one of the first to board, I chose to sit at the end of the bench on the starboard side.  It was pretty comfortable until others started to fill in the seating, which meant that I was eventually pushed down the row until I had one cheek on the seat and the other perching precariously over some kind of valve that was important enough that the flight crew would come over and check it every few minutes or so en route.  This was not comforting to me, as each visit to check the valve just raised more fears that my posterior, which had heretofore been a pretty innocuous piece of anatomy, causing a horrible accident that makes the evening news.    

However, the benefit of the cargo flight is that once aloft, you can walk up and down, stretch out on the floor, and generally make yourself a lot more comfortable during an eight-hour flight than you might when trapped in the small seat of commercial aircraft.  I recognize that there are different configurations for passenger carriage on military aircraft; a soldier retuning from overseas who has to sit knee-to-knee with his fellow troops for ten hours at a time may feel differently.  But on our flight, with sixteen passengers, two pallets of cargo, and a number of softer bags strapped down in the midline of the plane that gave you a great place to rest your head as you bedded on your parka, it’s not a bad way to go. 

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Inflight catering is critical on any flight of long duration, and the Air National Guard understands this well.  As we boarded we were handed a gourmet sack lunch featuring a main course of two sandwiches, each of which had one slice of white and one of wheat bread to cater to the indecisive.  Both seemed to be filled with what might be politely called “mystery meat,” although my years of experience in handing out Emergency Department fare suggested that at least one was likely to be turkey with lettuce and what I believed to be a shredded carrot dressing.  In fact, this was shredded carrot, and I have subsequently come to understand that the shredded carrot sandwich is a rite of passage to the ice, much as one cannot go to Buffalo and not eat wings.  The other sandwich I never touched, because I had no clue what was in it other than some sort of red paste, and I learned long ago in the practice of medicine that if you see something and you don’t know what it is, you don’t touch it, let alone eat it.  That being said, I probably would have tried to eat this in the spirit of adventure, but was dissuaded from this by my colleague Jesus who, when he saw me staring indecisively at the sandwich, knew that the drone of the engines and the hearing protection we used would not allow him to give me a verbal warning.  Instead, he demonstrated the International Sign of Imminent Puking (putting than hands to the throat, gagging, sticking out the tongue, and then flinging the hands forward in a projectile manner), which dissuaded me from downing the enigma.  In this case, Jesus Saves.

The bag also contained a Mars bar, an apple, two packets of Bluebird’s Original Ready Salted Chips (with a dapper dancing penguin on the package to remind you of where you’re going), an unlabeled baked good which I hoped was a chocolate chip cookie, and a muesli bar proclaiming itself a “wonderful source of fiber,” because when you’re eight hours over an ocean with only ice and rocks ahead and there’s the remote possibility that you might die with a plastic bag over your head, making sure you’re getting enough fiber is a top priority.  Drink service was provided by a 750 cc bottle of New Zealand Spring Water, which you could then refill from a large Coleman jug which was last used to douse the winners of the Army-Navy game.

Herein lies a conundrum.  Because you’re in flight and at altitude, you need to stay well hydrated.  And if you eat the chips (which I did, and which were pretty tasty, but I may have been seduced by the dancing penguin) you’ll need more even water to dilute your crisp-induced serum salinity.  Which means you’ll need to go to the bathroom.

One always likes to know the location of the restroom on an unfamiliar aircraft.   Males can partake of a small urinal at the front of the hold.  Privacy is insured only by a curtain, which means that the poor guy on the end of the webbed seating next to curtain knows exactly who went and how many times, and could likely sense the presence of diabetes, assess a fellow passenger’s prostate health, and know if asparagus is involved in any way.  Perhaps I’m more sensitive to people knowing when and where I go because of my age.  If you’re a fit 20 year old, with a bladder the size of a football and a urine stream the magnitude of Montmorency Falls, it’s a non-issue.  If you’re sixty and getting up way too many times at night to pee, the location of the urinal means that someone else knows your shame.

(Speaking of urinals, it seems that the bathroom dividers as we know it is most likely an American creation.  In New Zealand, as in other lands far afield from our Puritanical shores, male excretions take place in a row of undivided porcelains, or else in a common trough.  Clearly, the traditional British characteristic of staring straight ahead and keeping a stiff upper lip is at a premium in these settings.  But it also reminds me of a story I heard once in a pub:

A guy wants to impress his girlfriend, so he has her name tattooed on his manhood.  Her full name has been inked, but under the usual circumstances all anyone can see are the letters “W” and “Y.”

He’s out with some buddies the next evening, and gets up to “drain the lizard.”  As he’s doing so, he notices the man standing next to him also has the letters “W” and “Y” featured on his member. In the bonhomme spirit of camaraderie, he says “I see your tattoo.  Is your girlfriend’s name Wendy, too?”

The second man answers in a deep booming voice with a Caribbean lilt.  “No, mon.  Mine says Welcome to Barbados and Have a Nice Day.”)

Because I man a Man of a Certain Age, I’m not sure I want people to know if I’m a frequent or prolonged excreter.  So I was fortunate that there was another convenience available for use.  This metabolic repository is located towards the rear of the plane, just where the floor slopes upwards as the closed cargo ramp.  To get to it, I had to go around one pallet, past a small junction where one of my fellow passenger had stationed herself as Restroom Monitor, navigate a gap within a pallet canyon, and approach a curtain which shields the appliance for casual view.  Because the aircraft is so loud, shouting, “Hey!  Is anyone in here?” is not going to work, so you rattle the curtain. If there is no rattle in response, the coast is clear. 

You then peel back the curtain to find that you must ascend a three-foot step to get to the seat.  You draw the curtain, climb up, and turn around while trying to balance on platform.  You then have to peel off layers of gear and hope above hope that they fall forwards away from you (you don’t want to be lingering the next few hours in garments that fell the other direction).  Once settled in, the raised setting really does make you feel like you’re sitting on a throne, albeit without a throng of admirers; and you really hope there’s no turbulence to knock you off the seat, causing you to roll under the curtain and be subject to either the admiration or derision of your fellow travelers, depending on what’s in view. 

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Before the flight, there was one last chance to call home.  I talked to my son as well as the BGFE.  I told her I loved her, and of course I was not going to leave her for a polar bear, not only because there are no polar bears in Antarctica, but because while in Christchurch she had told me I was getting married in Mexico next year and I had to show up.  I do so much better when I follow commands.