Trav's Travels: The Whales are back! and Double Sunset!

2-14-13
For Valentine's day, I had hoped to take Elisha on a hike up to one of the apples (shelters) on the trail to castle rock to have wine, fancy cheese, and some food. Unfortunately, the weather was super cold and Elisha was still hobbled by the marathon, so instead we went to the open mic "love and anti-love" performances in the coffee house, which were actually really good and often funny. I don't know if I had mentioned in a previous blog that during the last open mic night, Elisha had sang a couple songs: one with Jerod where Jerod started the song all by himself up on the stage and then Elisha sneak attacked him (or so the audience thought) and walked up to the stage and started singing. She then sang Brett Dennen's "Ain't No Reason". This was a song that Elisha had sung to me last year when I was interested in her and thinking of pursuing her, and I have told her since, that if she didn't want me to like her, she definitely shouldn't have sang that song to me. She does it beautifully.
Elisha gave me a fun scavenger hunt throughout Crary with cute little notes

Also, the C-17 is back and running, so we finally got in some fresh fruits and vegetables! Yum!

2-15-13

I volunteered for another nightshift run for shuttles out to Pegasus (wow! I can't believe we ran that whole way). As the season is winding down, Elisha and I had no passengers, so it was like a special Valentine's Day date (it was still valentine's day in America)

2-18-13

The icebreaker had done a good job and chopped up the ice. After the tanker came in, we got a big storm that blew out a lot of the ice so that we had open ocean in front of McMurdo. The tanker has since left and the "Ocean Giant" supply vessel is now docked, which means Elisha, being in supply is working about 14 straight 12 hour days until the end of the season.

Today was a really nice day, so I skied out to LDB and back. It was perhaps my last skate ski out here for a very long time. So it was slightly emotional. It has been one of my favorite things out here...skate skiing on the lonely expanse of the ross ice shelf with perfect skate skiing conditions.

After skiing, I walked the ob hill loop to take a good look at the open ocean. I saw lots of Minke whales swimming and feeding out in the ocean, which was really cool. Also tons of seals out on the ice edge. The highlight; however, was watching a small group of emperor penguins swim and play in the water and slid around on some floating pieces of ice. It's definitely great to have the ice move out so that we can start seeing the whales again. It also adds a cool contrast and is beautiful! Not to mention that the sun is getting lower at night now, so we are getting some gorgeous colors and near sunsets.

2-20-13

Last real day at work today, though I might have to go into work tomorrow to clean up some things. Finally got our tickets booked. It was a pretty big issue. We didn’t get the dates that we wanted (Feb 26^th) and had to go with the 25^th. This means that my weekend trip to Kaikoura, NZ with Mitch will just be a one night trip. I feel bad bc I have tons of fun with Mitch and we were both looking forward to it, but I had no choice since Travelocity (the company that books the tickets for the Antarctic Support Contract) was such a mess. I ended up writing them a pointed and direct email and copied my head boss on it. Within a few hours we finally heard back, but before that it had been a month and we had not heard anything. Some of my friends actually got on the plane from McM to Christchurch without having heard about their flights home. And we lose our usap email as soon as we leave the ice! So I don’t know what they’re doing. Some people (Elisha included) were booked only to LAX, so if they just took their standard flight home they would be stranded in LA. In the end, I’m lucky that I wrote the email and was a bit forceful with it so that we could get our flights home. I’ve pasted the letter I wrote below in case you are interested at the mess we had.

Today we are having a final last hurrah party for Crary at the Dive Locker, watching some movies, having some drinks with glacial ice and watching the sunset. The sun hasn’t set in several months and today is a very unique and unusual day in that the sun will set twice. It set very early this morning (at 12:22am) and will set again very late tonight (11:55pm). That’s pretty cool!

See pictures below of things from the last couple of weeks

Hi Kirk and Cara,

I don’t know if you are able to help at all with this. If you can, that would be great! But at the very least, I wanted to make you aware of the issues Elisha and I have been having with redeployment.

Although we initially emailed Jan 23 and have done so weekly (and daily this week), we have not heard a single thing back from Travelocity, and I leave in 2 days. I leave in 2 days, and I still don’t know when my ticket home is! We are quite stressed and completely frustrated about this. See below for details.

I hope you are enjoying your time off the ice! I can’t wait to join you!

Thanks,

Travis

Subject: Travel Help!
Importance: High

Hi Mike,

I have been pointed in your direction as to someone who could potentially help with Elisha Kayser and my flights back home. I redeploy from McM in 2 days (the 22^nd), and I still have not heard anything back from holidays@usap.gov. I first emailed January 23^rd, and I have emailed about once per week since then, and several times in the past week. I have saved all of my correspondence for records.

I understand that Travelocity and the travel people are busy and perhaps even overwhelmed; however, I am completely frustrated/stressed because I have not had one reply. This is completely unprofessional. I would expect an email saying they have received my request, but are busy at the very least! I am the only person in the Crary office who has not heard back and had their tickets finalized. I am also the person in the office who has the earliest return date to my area of departure, so one would think I should have been ahead of my co-workers who have much later return to USA dates.

My request is simple. I would like to fly back, standard routing (or any routing for that matter) from Christchurch to my AOD of Denver on the 26^th of February.

The frustration lies in that I sent in my travel request shortly after my redeployment meeting (in other words, as soon as I could). My first email was sent over 1 month before my requested travel date. The folks in travel told us to be patient, that they would get our itineraries to us. I was patient, but I needed to make plans. Last minute is rarely good. We were still reassured that our tickets would be booked, so I went ahead and made plans, while continuing emailing. I booked hotels and vehicles in NZ for the time I would be there to travel with a co-worker. My parents, planning on my arrival to Colorado on the 26^th, took a week off of work and booked a condo for us and Elisha in Crested Butte to ski.

Yesterday, I was given the Travelocity business phone numbers. Last night I called Travelocity. The man I spoke with was extremely helpful and worked hard to find flights. He had no flights for the day I had requested other than going with Air New Zealand/United at a cost of $1790 to me. He also found a flight leaving on the evening of the 25^th, laying over a night in Melbourne and arriving to Denver on the 26^th. This would be at a cost of $400 to me not to mention having to get a visa for the night layover in Melbourne.

I realize that having the opportunity to be flexible with our flights is a privilege; however, we were told we would have this privilege and have made plans around this. I understand this privilege and that flights get booked up; however, there has been absolutely no communication, so we had to proceed with our planning as if everything would get done (as we were assured here on base). If they had told us within a week of our initial email, we could have made our plans accordingly and perhaps even taken FAA. As it is now, if I stay longer in NZ (if there happens to be flights), my parents reservations in Crested Butte and their days off go to waste. If I leave FAA, my plans with my co-worker and our deposits on hotels and car rentals are lost

The case with Elisha is even more frustrating. She cannot simply take FAA to get to Denver like I can. Her AOD is Spokane as she was living in Idaho last summer. As she no longer lives in Idaho nor has an address there, she has been wanting to change her AOD to Denver. She talked with Tom Hamann with how to go about this. She emailed the correct people. However, she was told by each person she emailed to email another person. As it stands she has not heard yes or no whether she is able to do this. In our attempted dealings with holidays@usap.gov, we played it safe with the assumption that she would not get her AOD changed; thus, we suggested a change in itinerary from Spokane to Denver. We assumed this would not be an issue as flights to Denver from LAX were cheaper than they were from LAX to Spokane, so we figured this wouldn’t affect her ticket price. We, of course, heard nothing back from travel. Additionally, back in mid January, we looked at flights from Spokane to Denver to see how much we would have to pay if she flew to her AOD, and we booked our individual ticket (risky in case of weather delays out of McMurdo). Tickets at that time on the day we wanted were $80 one way. They are now nearly $200 with no afternoon flights left; thus, she would have to also pay to overnight in Spokane. Had we heard early on from Travelocity that her proposed changed itinerary was not an option, we could have booked these cheaper flights ages ago. Now, considering how much it is proposed to cost me to fly anything other than FAA even on the standard itinerary home, we have no idea how much it will cost Elisha to get to Denver and thus do not know how to get her there without a spending a small fortune.

Perhaps the most frustrating issue has been the lack (none!) of responses and communication from Travelocity and the stress it has caused. I had to reach out myself. Elisha and I spent nearly 2 hours last night on our own time, staying up to close to midnight on the phone with Travelocity. In a professional outfit, communication would be prompt and the service would be taken care of. We are paying these travel professionals so that we don’t have to stress or worry about our flights home. The opposite has instead occurred. Elisha, who works with the vessel, is working 12 hour days for 14 straight days. The last thing she needs is to stress about travel and lose 2 hours of sleep to it especially considering we have already had a safety stand down here due to all the accidents and medivacs. I also should not be using hours of my own time and hours of company time to get this straightened out. I have had several friends now leave McM without having their itinerary booked nor any communication from Travelocity.

It is unacceptable to me that after emailing Travelocity 1 month ago, we have not had a single response back even though I redeploy in 2 days. It is unacceptable that we have had to take hours of our own time to reach out to Travelocity as well as take hours away from end of season tasking in order to attempt to book our flights home, especially considering that we properly contacted holidays@usap.gov right away after our redeployment meetings. It is unacceptable that Elisha is working at a potentially hazardous job, with long hours and little sleep and that undoubtedly she is thinking about and stressed about redeployment as opposed to focusing on her tasks with vessel offload. The fact that I would have to pay nearly $1800 dollars (Elisha likely more) to get home with the same routing is unacceptable.

I believe, due to the complete lack of response, that Travelocity or ASC (whoever is responsible for the situation that has resulted in ZERO communication) should be responsible for covering the extra costs that those of us who did everything correctly are being asked to incur to get home, especially those of us who aren’t asking for some crazy itinerary change or en route layovers. From the talk of everyone around town who have also not heard anything back, I know I am not alone in believing this.

I do not want to be a pain, and I understand that you are very busy and likely overwhelmed. I would just like some help. I would like to have received a response and an itinerary by the time I leave McM (when I lose my usap email).

Thank you,

Kind Regards,

Travis