3 days of weather delays, 1 boomerang, and 1 fruitless trip to the Ice Runway later, I'm still in McMurdo. Each day of weather delays has started out with our flight scheduled early, then successive delays within as little as 15 minutes of our transport time. Each time we get all suited up in our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear. On Saturday we flew to within 20 minutes of South Pole (of a total 3hr flight) then an engine quit. So we turned around and flew all the way back, since an LC-130 with 3 engines can safely fly and land at Pole, but it can't quite make it off again in the high-altitude thin air. It's awkward to get a plane stuck at Pole so they chose the minor headache of the boomerang and a 5-hour wasted flight. They gave us Sunday off (thank you) and now we're trying again. The weather was nasty this morning and we all scoffed at the prospects even as we loaded up in Ivan the Terra Bus and cruised out to the runway, a couple miles out on the sea ice. Nobody was too surprised when they turned us back. Now we're on delay but the weather has cleared up soo.... well something might happen. It doesn't pay to get too attached to a specific flight schedule here.
Time for me to vamoose, no time for smoothing out the rough text above. I hope my next letter will be from the Pole. McMurdo's fun and all but I've got a job to do.
Best,
-Sarah