AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Late in the day Thursday I received an email that I had been selected for Room With A View, a half-day snow-machine trip to Mt. Erebus where you get just above the peninsula to see the open ocean beyond. Well, they had sent me the email close to the end of the day, last minute.

So I showed up to the SSC on Friday dressed in full ECW gear and ready for the trip, only to find that I was an alternate. This wasn't a bad thing, as I did not even know how my name got put on the list in the first place. Since all eight other participants had shown up, I as told that I would be guaranteed a spot on the next trip on Saturday.

I went back to work, checking my email through the rest of the evening. Nothing. I checked my email Saturday morning. Nothing. I sent an email, saying I was told I would be going but that I had not yet received a new notice of when to meet and that I did not know if I was still on the list.

I received a reply later on saying that I was on the list and that I should meet up in the SSC as last time. Gee, thanks for reminding me.

We rode a van down to where the snow machines were parked and got on, two to a machine except for the two who were too large to share. The experience was not bad, but I did not really see why everyone else gets so excited. The ride was a little bumpy and sometimes the machine tried to wander one way or another but otherwise it was just a ride.

It was a NICE ride, but still.

We drove 15 miles out of station and 1400ft up Mt Erebus. We were nowhere near the top, but we did have a better view of it, up close. I think I was told the peak of Mt Erebus is 23 miles out of McMurdo.

We hung around up there, enjoying the view for a while. It got a little dull just standing there killing time, but everyone with a camera took photos and we played with a football and several frisbees. I toyed with my camera and figured out how to make it take High-Speed photographs in rapid succession.

The view was great. From as high up as we were we could see even more endless sea ice than before. I could see up the arm of the Ross Peninsula back to Scott Base, down the Erebus Tongue Glacier, or up to the open ocean north of McMurdo.

Several of the earlier trips this season had cloudy weather, blocking any views.

On the way up I drove, but on the run back I rode as a passenger.

I have decided I NEVER want to be the passenger on a snow machine ever again.

The machine bounced around so much I was afraid I might go flying out of my seat (I almost slide backwards of it several times). It was white-knuckle all the way down the hill. It did not help that the driver would slow down to put some distance between us and the next machine, then floor it. When I was driving we never got past 30kph. With my partner we were getting up to 60kph on his 'catch-ups'. He also accelerated into bumps, trying to get air.

I kept trying to think of how would be the best 'crash position' to assume should I fall off, though the situation never presented itself and I was not crazy enough (yet) to jump off on my own.

I enjoyed the trip out but not the trip back, as it definitely scared the flying monkeys out of me.

Twelve days left, not much longer now.  

Every day I seemed to get asked when my redeployment date is, I assume because everyone is just curious.  A lot of people think my date is really early, but I know of two guys leaving on the 26th of January.  

I am ready to come back.

I want food.

Good food.

Bad for me food.

I have a list of places I want to go and hopefully I don't attempt them all in one day!

I also only know of two movies that are out, or have been out.  Twilight and Quantum of Solace.

I haven't been doing too much lately, mostly cleaning up the shop spaces and now I am working on a computer project, cleaning up the shop harddrive and making a list of files for people to access to they don't have to go searching hundreds of folders for what they want.

The galley is out of hot fudge for Frosty Boy, and that makes me sad.

I wish I had thought of this sooner, it would have been funny to pose at the station sign in a different costume from Gear Issue every month.

And now here's an old photo from Christmas dinner:

Look, ma!  I'm smiling!

Do you have Prince Albert in a can?

Well, you'd best let him out, he has to spread awareness about Global Warming!

Prince Albert of Monaco is visiting the continent.  He is staying in Hut 10, a building normally rented out for parties down here.  I heard Monaco recently signed the Antarctica Treaty, so now he's touring the place and trying to spread awareness on global warming.  The other night he gave a speech.  I did not go to it, as I was tired.  

I'm tired a lot lately.  It probably does not help that i moved my bedtime back from 10pm to 11pm to make myself more sleepy by the time it came time for bed, or maybe its because I have worked 9 hours a day 6 days a week for the last 5 months now.  It'll be good to get back to the states.  

I might not trying Wintering over sometime, but not right after a Summer season.

There will be an art show tomorrow.  I might enter a couple dreamcatchers I made.  I made them from spare parts lying about the shop.  The second one is made entirely out of copper and brass.  I call it the daydream catcher.  It just looks neat.  I think I like making these.  I like working with wire.

And now, cookies:

The other day I sat down with Michael the Janitor Lead.  We eating and he started telling someone else that the steak was good that night.  I wound up eating one of the three pieces I had and thought it was good.  I started on the second piece.

I tried to tell Michael how good the steak was, but the steak was so good I could not speak

That has never happened before.

Congratulations McMurdo, you have now raised the bar on my expectations for steak tenderloin.

Viking Invasion

So the Swedish icebreaker Oden is in port.  Well, in and out of port.  You could see them from down in the distance past Hut Point slowly making their way in as they repeatedly backed up and rammed the sea ice.  By Monday morning they had cleared their way to the ice pier.  

The ice pier itself is funny because it is a small iceberg that rises and falls with the tides to make it easier to unload a ship.  There are power poles and small structures on it, its really quite amusing.

The Oden went back out to sea this morning and is out doing donuts in the parking lot to break up more sea ice to clear the channel for the resupply vessels.

Rock that Moon Bounce, baby!

So the other night I was driving shuttles, and a girl asked me if I could drop her off 'Near the BFC'.  I said I would, and then wondered if she wanted me to drop her off closer to her destination, since she had only said 'Near the BFC'.  She said anywhere near there was fine, and eventually said any place between the BFC and the SSC was good.  I thought this was a little odd, since that space is a large open area mostly used to park vehicles, and the NASA Moon Habitat prototype (which I refer to as NASA's Moon Bounce).

After I dropped her off and was driving away, I saw two other people I knew walking past the SSC.  At that point it occurred to me that something might have been going on at the Moon Bounce, and given the secretive nature it might be a party.

This morning at our shop's morning meeting one of my coworkers informed us that there was a party at the Moon Bounce, which was broken up by the station manager.  

Kinda a poor choice of location, considering the NSF Chalet is across the lot from the Moon Bounce.  Even more so when you consider the Moon Bounce is loaded with cameras to monitor it.

I keep finding out about all the 'secret parties', mainly because I know a guy.

Draining Lakes

It has been snowing pretty regularly the last several days.  It hasn't been sticking around too long though, I guess since it is warm enough to melt it.  It's funny because it often seems warmer during the 'day' and colder at 'night', even though the sun has been up since October 21st or thereabouts.  

I think weather is interesting.  Down here I like when on clear days I can look out across 50 miles of snow-covered sea ice to the mountains on the horizon.  Then again, I also like when it is clearly visible in town, but you can not see past the edge of the ice because wind is blowing snow around and making outside of town a solid blanket of white.  Most of the wind blows in from the south/southwest, and there are mountains surrounding the station from that side.  It produces a lot of interesting weather effects, like clouds that roll off the top of the hills and just create a rolling ceiling above McMurdo.

I think I might just stick with the February 2nd return date.  It seems like at this point it would be too much of a hassle to get into something else.  I am sure I could easily get into the Vessel Offloading, but I was told that is 12 hour days for 6 or more days straight with NO increase in pay.  Maybe if the pay went up, I would bite on that one.

I painted a doorway connecting the old UT shop to the new UT shop.  It now has a nice, bright, badly-painted yellow border.  

On top of that Ben and I found a much more effective way to remove the ducttape from the office trailers.  We pointed a heat gun at some of the tape residue and it started to kind of congeal and brown.  It wipes off easily with a dry rag, but you have to be careful not to just smear it.  We'll definitely finish by our January 10 deadline (of which I was only informed of today).

There are three runways out on the sea ice.  One is just called the Ice Runway.  The one I landed at when I came down was Pegasus.  There is also Williams Field, which I have been out to multiple times.  Well, Pegasus apparently has a large meltwater lake at it.  I think I heard it is not blocking the runway, but it is still in the way of operations.  So they want to drain the lake.

How?

There just happened to be a MASSIVE pump in the back of one of the shipping container milvans on Station.  So we cleared out the front of the container and then they brought a Pickle, one of the small old Navy forklifts, in to move it.  It wound up not being the right size so they had to bring in another loader which took care of it.  Funny, I don't quite know where they will move the lake too, since I was told the ice there is a hundred feet thick (that may be an exaggeration, though).  It also seems as though the water would roll back into the low point in the airfield where the lake used to be, so they would have to have a lot of hose.

Not to mention, what do they plan to do with the 3ft deep depression where the lake is?

I attended one of the redeployment meetings today.  They went over how we would be getting out of here.  Again I get to pick my hotel, but I also get pick how long I will stay extra in Christchurch (I figured I would not mind paying for an extra day to get in some souvenir shopping) and whether or not I want my flight to deviate from the default New Zealand - Colorado path.   I think I am a little too tired at this point to really do too much, so I think I will just come home and maybe sleep in for a week straight until I feel recovered.

...I don't know when I'll be back again...

Well, I received an email today informing me that my return date will be February 2nd, 2009.  Looks like less than a month to go.  This date is subject to change, especially since I'll see if I can't ask to be around as long as possible for the extra cash.

People keep asking me if I'm eager to get back to the States.  While I would like to stay longer because work = money, I have missed out on a lot of things such as movies, tv, food, and games.  Now I'll have enough to buy all of that, so no big loss.

With any luck I'll get a great evaluation and get the level 5 contract bonus, which is lots of money.

New Years Day

Last night was the big New Years concert party.  There was a stage set up and other portable buildings set up in an empty lot between the main building 155, the Gerbil Gym, and Southern Bar.  The concert featured live music and would run form 6:30pm until 12:30am New Years Morning.  The bands that I saw were all pretty good.

I got out there around 7:30 and wandered amongst the sparse crowd before bar-hopping.  I sat in Gallagher's for a while just talking to several of the Kiwi Carpenters on station before wandering out to check out the Coffee House (where they were showing episodes of The Simpons on the big tv in the theater room) and wandering back into the concert which had picked up a larger crowd by then.

At one point I realized that while I like people by themselves, I really can't stand massive groups (which I think falls under the classification of a 'mob') as the level of general stupidity tends to increase, especially when alcohol is thrown into the mix.  Ah well.

Sleep was out of the question, as even though my room was on an interior of 155, I could still hear the concert across two other rooms and a hallway in between.  So I wandered back out and stuck around till 12:30am or so.  I knew where the after party was (in a large, empty fuel silo up the hill) but I was too tired to go wandering around, especially in the cold.

The concert was interesting, and some people had some crazy costumes set up.