Flying to Greenland

	This is one of the C130s (also known as Hercs) like the one I flew on from Albany, NY to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland and then on to Summit Camp, Greenland. (I was supposed to fly on this one, but it had mechanical issues.) Note the landing geear - skis!!
C130s aren't set up quite like a regular passenger plane. First, instead of a flight attendent, there's a 'load master'. The load master sits with the passengers but has on headphones so he can hear what's going on in the cockpit and tell you when you can get up. There's no seatbelt light or anything so that's the load master job. The guy standing in this picture is the load master. There's also not normal bathrooms. It's hard to see but there's a green/gray curtain behind the load master. That curtain is used to block the urinal from view when it's being used).	Second, the seats are made of webbing (think of the unpadded straps on a backpack - that's webbing). Third, the passengers either face in towards the center of the airplane or out towards the fuselage. The nice thing about this is there's no one behind you kicking your seat. The less nice thing is that, if it's a crowded flight bumping knees with the person across. There's not a lot of insulation in the plane, so while they were able to heat the space where we were sitting it was really loud. The load master passes out ear plugs before the plane takes off and you have to wear them the whole time.
	C130s are primarily used for transporting stuff. They are used for people, but also for cargo like food and vehicles (tanks and bulldozers and trucks). On the flight I was on they carried all of our luggage plus a lot of food for the research site because people stay there year round, but the C130s don't fly to the site from October to May. So at the back of the plane but in the same part as us passengers was all the cargo. To get to the 'bathroom' with a sit down toilet the passengers had to crawl along the side of the cargo and then behind it. There was another privacy curtain for that bathroom.
	There's not a lot of windows in the airplane, so that kind of sucks, but it's pretty cool because they do let you go up into the cockpit and look out the windows. This is a picture out the cockpit windows as we were leaving Kangerlussuaq and heading to Summit Camp. The Russell Glacier is visible towards the right side of the picture. It's about 20 miles from the town of Kangerlussuaq. But, we were going a bit farther than that...
	This is where the C130 dropped us off. You can see how the ski landing gear would come in handy. It was August, but the high temperatures at Summit Camp were ~8 Fahrenheit. I borrowed a lot of cold weather clothes from friends - thank you friends!!