Last week I had to spend a day working out at LDB (Long Duration Balloon Launch). I didn't do anything cool but did get to shovel a bunch and make some people upset when I took a picture of their payload they were building. I guess the flash isn't good for the electronics. Woops! LDB is about 20 minutes from station out on the McM ice shelf. In the picture, the two tall buildings are payload buildings where scientists put together fancy electronics to take sophisticated readings in the atmosphere (okay, I have no idea what they do). I do know that they cost millions of dollars. What happens is a large balloon will carry the payload up into the sky for a length of time. Eventually a small charge will blow the payload (scientific equipment) from the balloon and a parachute will return it safely to the ice below. A second charge then detaches the payload from the parachute so it doesn't get dragged around by the high winds. Scientists then recover the equipment and analyze the data. I guess this will happen in January. This field camp has water trucked in from McM, a large generator for power, and a couple other scientific buildings. 
This is a picture of the inside of the galley at LDB. The lasagna for lunch was great, but we ended up having the same thing back in McM for dinner. Oh well, you can't win them all. The woman I worked with all day, Ann, skied to the South Pole back in 94 with three other women. How cool is that.
I spent Saturday helping change the big gym into a party room. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet more great people. So the question everyone wants to know is, did I meet my ice wife? Well, unfortunately I did not, but I still had one heck of a great time (maybe a little too great, because Sunday wasn't as fun). I made my tiger costume myself out of old runway flags. I have to say I did a fine job. I even remembered to cut a little pee hole for draining adult beverages from my system. The other fun thing about the night was beer was only $1. Above is a picture of myself and Sarah. Sarah is a shuttle drive and has become a good friend. I told her I have a parrot for her pirate costume in the mail, but there is a back log of 20,000lbs of mail in Christchurch. It didn't make it in time.
This was a fun picture of Audrey and Sarah giving me a kiss on the cheek. For some strange reason, I have a lot of these types of pictures.
Hey Amber, this picture is for you! This is Cindy, Amber's friend form Last year. For those of you who don't know Amber, she is an amazing friend that helped me get a job down here. She has quite the reputation and any time I mention her name, I instantly have a new friend.
On Sunday (your Saturday), I nursed a hangover by watching the Red Sox win game 3. Gallagher’s, a bar across the street, was open for people to watch the game. There are a few sox fans here, so I was in good company. They had free wings, mozzarella sticks, burgers, chips... for us to enjoy as we watched the game. People kept offering me drinks, but I politely turned them down.
Before the game started I found out that a woman had fallen from her bed and was unconscious. Her roommate found her and the fire department was called into action. The sad news is that they had to med-evac her to Christchurch on the LC-130 I was suppose to take to WAIS today. I hope she turns out okay. I overheard some firefighters saying they were about to intibate (sp?) her meaning she was still unconscious. What a horrible way to leave this place.
After the game, I had to finish my laundry and get ready for bag drag. Bag drag is as fun as it sounds. Everyone about to depart from McM drags their bags up to building 140 and gets weighed in. There were a bunch of people there, people for the two flights to Pole and our backup flight to WAIS. Most of it was just waiting for our time on the scale. We do fly by FAA rules, so no liquids or sharps in our carry ons (however nobody checks).
This morning it was too cold at Pole to fly (has to be >-50F) as it was -56F. This means that our flight was on for WAIS. The only issue was that power was out down on the ice runway. SO they delayed our flight until 1000 when we caught a shuttle down to the ice. After 30min of sitting in the shuttle talking to shuttle driver Naoma (good friend) we were told to go into the galley and wait. Well a couple hours went by along with a lunch of burgers and curly fries to be told our plane was broken and we were now on standby for the evening flight to Pole. I was very excited because this meant I got to watch the Red Sox win the World Series! Well, it warmed up at Pole, so we are now on standby for the flight tomorrow morning.As always, I love this place and I love the people. If I were to write a fairy tale, I would write one about the last 3 weeks of my life!
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