It was a pity that this top photo ran in black and white in today's paper, so I wanted to post it here – the blue sky of Antarctica is unlike any I've ever seen, and this picture does it justice.

The lower photo shows the payloads floating to the ground. The C-17 is just visible to the right of the picture.

These photos are courtesy of Forest Banks, the U.S. Air Force, Raytheon Polar Services and the Royal New Zealand Defense Forces.

The Operation Deep Freeze team from McChord Air Force Base passed the hat to come up with $2,000 for local charity in their temporary home of Christchurch, New Zealand. Men and women from McChord donated to the team's annual holiday fund the past couple months, then had a group out for a visit and tour of the C-17.

Pictured here are the McChord team and visitors from the Cookie Munchers Charitable Trust, a charity that helps underprivileged children with dyslexia in the Christchurch area.

One of the cool things about having a blog, as a newspaper reporter, is that it allows us to pass along more information to supplement the stuff we run in the paper – footnotes, as it were.

As usual, Wikipedia is a good place to start for information about Operation Deep Freeze, with lots of links to Antarctic topics, including early exploration by no less than our own Charles Wilkes and many others.

For a lot more about what it's like to live and work in Antarctica, check out Big Dead Place. Also, Seth White has a cool collection of pictures with informative cutlines.

I already told you about the Antarctic Sun, the weekly paper published during summers at McMurdo. The South Pole has a more informal news outlet at South Pole Station, with a huge set of links to virtually anything else that's happening related to Antarctica.

The National Science Foundation has an interesting site up about life and work at the South Pole.

The University of Wisconsin maintains a cool site about its part in the massive IceCube project under way at the South Pole. It hurts my puny unscientific brain to try to understand that stuff, but it's amazing to think of drilling a 3,000-meter hole in the ice in one of the most remote places on earth.

There are far worse places to spend a week than Christchurch, New Zealand. Consider this my vacation recommendation, if you don't mind spending 20+ hours in an airplane. Be sure to visit the International Antarctic Centre and see the great new facility for rescued New Zealand Little Blue penguins.

There's much more about the tragic crash of Air New Zealand Flight TE 901, the worst disaster in New Zealand history.

And finally, for a good take on a different approach to McMurdo – by sea, aboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker – check out former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Judd Slivka's journal from his 1999 trip aboard the Polar Star. (The aging ship was benched from further Antarctic duty earlier this year.)

Last post here before I hop on an Air New Zealand jet in a couple hours for the long jaunt home to the FOB. That'd be Christchurch to Auckland, Auckland to San Francisco, San Francisco to Sea-Tac. That's 17+ hours in the air, in case anyone's counting.

Won't be home 'til Friday night, PST. As such, you won't hear from me.

But bottom line: We made it to McMurdo Station and spent four hours there trooping around the station. That's more time than we thought we'd get, and to be honest with you it's kind of an intimidating prospect to put what I saw there into words.

But we'll have a go. I'll tell you all about it Sunday.

Update: Made it home. Itinerary included a quick stop in Wellington, N.Z., in between Christchurch and Auckland. It was all I could do to not get out and kiss the ground on landing – a little bit of turbulence, mate.

Now the story and Ted's photos are running Monday. I'll post here too with a set of links to other sites of interest.

Ssssh. Whatever you do, don't utter a certain three-letter word that might come to mind to describe any of what you see on the left.

At least not when you're flying way, way south with the McChord Deep Freeze crew. It is forbidden to speak that word, from wheels up at McChord until all are back in the Pacific Northwest. All within earshot are entitled to demand that a violator pony up for a beverage of their choice.

Do not trouble yourself to find a rationale for this mild bit of hazing. But the Deep Freeze tradition is a spinoff from the longstanding airlift prohibition against speaking the word "green" during air- drop missions. Green is what the code word for when it's time to start shoving the load out the back of the airplane. Pilots with that surname are rechristened "Capt. Lime," or somesuch.

Biggest offender so far is Maj. Ernst "Dutch" Coumou, who slipped no fewer than four times on a group outing Tuesday.

When you're a globetrotting foreign correspondent, one of the first things you learn is to pick up the local paper to get the lay of the land. And a news junket to Antarctica is no different.

We bring you the Antarctic Sun, a weekly published by the National Science Foundation out of McMurdo Station and dedicated to covering the news and people who work down there every summer.

My favorite piece in a recent edition was by South Pole correspondent Tom Lohr, who reported that the "polies" -- that's what they call the guys who tend the place in the dark over the long Antarctic winter -- have been fighting the blues waiting for their first air deliveries of fresh fruit and other niceties. (The temperatures have to climb above minus-50 degrees Fahrenheit for the Air Force LC-130 cargo planes to come in.)

Their relief? Only one of the greatest video games of all time -- Tecmo Bowl.

After having spent time on the ground with the joes in Iraq, I cannot help but use that as a reference point every time I travel someplace with the military. It's kind of a mental trap, I know.

The world stands to benefit from the research that so many are conducting in Antarctica, and the scientists down there cannot do what they do without the logistics and transportation support that the Air Force is providing. I suppose the National Science Foundation could contract it all out, but I don't know that that would be any cheaper, and the nation wouldn't have a corps of air crews capable and experienced in operating in this kind of environment.

These Air Force airlift guys made their choices about which branch of the military they wanted to serve in, and most, if not all of the men and women I'm with here have flown countless missions into the box in Afghanistan and Iraq. The ground crews have done their time at the 'Deed in Qatar and at tougher places down range.

One pilot told me he flew the mission to whisk Iraq's interim governing council off to the big international donors conference in Madrid in 2003; he was sure he was going to get shot down lifting off from Baghdad International, and even more sure they were going to light him up when he ferried the Iraqi politicians home a few days later. And while on the ground a few days in Madrid, he and his crew were wined and dined and stayed in a fine hotel. It is good to be a pilot sometimes.

But I believe they are speaking from the heart when they express appreciation and respect for joe on the ground. They know their jobs are very different, and that while they've got things to bitch about, they've got it very good indeed compared to Pfc. Snuffy manning a traffic-control point in Dora or Ghazaliya or Mosul.

That said, part of me feels a little guilty when on an off-day here I tag along with the pilots on a wine-tasting tour of New Zealand's Waipara Valley. I was invited by McChord's Deep Freeze commander, Lt. Col. Jim McGann, and it was a great time. The Kiwis are terrific hosts, and McGann does an enthusiastic job of making sure that his troops get out and shed their $93 per diem on the local economy, and then some. That's about $150 Kiwi, and it goes a long way.

McGann, who lives down here about five months during the Deep Freeze period, says he rarely encounters anyone who gives him static about the war or U.S. foreign policy. And given the current shape of things in some places around the world, it's a good time to be keeping the friends we've got.

We'll be on and off the net the next several days as we head out to cover Operation Deep Freeze with folks from McChord.

I hope to encounter these guys while I'm down there.