Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone! Before I forget, tomorrow (Christmas Day for those of you back home), I'll be headed to the South Pole for two weeks. This means there is limited Internet access so the blog will not be updated while I'm gone. This also means that emailing will be limited and therefore don't expect me to write back (although I'm not very good at that anyway :)

These are two of my friends, Terry and Betty. Betty is a Yankees fan so sometimes we don't share the same opinions. The wonderful people below are Dave and Chelsea. These were the first two people I ran into at the Denver Airport on the way here.

The party on Sunday nigh was a ton of fun. I had to work on Sunday and after which I quickly ate dinner and then volunteered washing dishes in the Galley (so the Galley staff could make it to the party). I may have had a little too much to "fun", but I fit right in with the rest of the people there. It is amazing that we could transform an 8 bay garage into a large party hall. Santa even came to the party and I heard a rumor today that he to had a little too much fun and may be getting sent home (he's on the naughty list). I hope Mrs. Claus doesn't find out.

On Monday I went up to Arrival Heights with Brian, Bamma, and Megan. This section of town is off limits, but Brain works there and needed to check some of the equipment. It was a beautiful day and we could see Erebus smoking in the background. I have many more great pictures, but it takes way too long to upload them to the blog.

This is Brian hard at work. I told him to push some buttons so I could take a picture and he assured me he was going to have to push a lot of buttons. His job looks very cool.

Monday night was our big Christmas Dinner. I had to rush through it because I adopted my roommate the DA (Dinning Attendant) for an hour. This meant that he could skip work for an hour as I did his job. He truly appreciated it. However, before I left, I grabbed a tray full of King Crab Legs. Wow they were good. I ate most of them on Christmas day as a snack.

Also for Christmas I made my roommates stockings. I stuffed socks I grabbed out of SKUA (free thrift store) and filled them with all kinds of cool things I found in the trash one day working at the waste barn. I know it sounds weird, but they really appreciated it and there is a lot of fun stuff in the trash here.

Once again, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

Operation Tiger Strike

Operation Tiger Strike was a success! We were on the ground for 70min (10min over our allotted time) but we not only completed what we were suppose to, but also completed half of the work the third team was suppose to do. We could have been back on the plane in an hour, but we had to mess around and take pictures for 10 mins. Our take-off was so smooth that we made it in one attempt and we saved so much fuel that we didn't have to go to pole (not so good). Our takeoff took a total of 7 miles and we finally left the ground with a little help from the JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off). Since we only have one set of JATO on the plane, I'm glad it worked the first time because if it didn't, we would have been stuck there. This is the tent after we finished setting it up. There is a plywood box floor on top of leveled footer. Then there are arches that are all pieced together and put up. Next "blankets" are put over the structure and secured into place. Deadmen lock it down to the snow as seen by the lines in the picture by peoples feet.
This is a little view of what things looked like right before we left. It's weird to think that scientists are going to study a mountain range in a place that is so flat (the mountains are under the snow).
Between the star and the "New Your Air Guard" sign are the four JATO bottles. There are four on each side and burn all at once for a total of 8 seconds.
To help with the takeoff, we needed to get all the weight we could into the back of the plane. For this we had 7 people cargo strapped to the back ramp. I guess technically these people came back as "Cargo."

Just after we took off, we found out we had enough fuel to make it back to McM and that we were not going to Pole. At this point, I pulled out my tiger suit from Halloween and ran around the plane to cheer people up. I don't think it worked but I did see a couple smiles. One of the NYANG guys came up to me and said "there are a lot of strange people on this plane!" Remember, this is all in the name of science.

This week we all have to work on Sunday (7 day work week) because we get Monday and Tuesday off for the holiday. It will be a nice break having two days off in a row. Merry Christmas everyone!

Boomeranged

Well, the first try to AGAP was boomeranged. This means that after we sat on the plane for 2.5 hours we were told we were headed back home. Well we first continued the 30 min to AGAP to buzz the two tents already set up. We were boomeranged because the weather at the Pole was bad. Pole weather needs to be good because as I mentioned before after we set up our tent for an hour and then try to take off, we will need to fly to the pole to get fuel to come back to McMurdo. Thus if weather at Pole is bad enough that we can't land, we don't have enough fuel to make it back home and everyone has a bad day.

While on the flight we had plenty of time to have fun. I took a few hour nap on a bunch of cargo before trying to fly a broom around.

Ben pretended to drive this snow machine around. Ben and his wife Gretchen life just down the road from a former girlfriend of mine in Anchorage plus Gretchen knows my good friend Shawna Compton (what a small world).

On the way back I watched out the window to see the Trans Antarctic Mountains. I have to say it was amazing. I happened to get a shot of Mount Discovery which meant we were almost back home.

When we transitioned from the Ice Shelf to Ross Island, the road was blocked by two ambulances. I guess an ANG (Air National Guard) guy was having some health issues. They were transferring him from one ambulance to the other (one was from one of the air fields while the other was from town). After they took off we caught the ambulance on the way back to town when the transmission died going up the hill by Scott Base. They asked if we could tow them back with our Delta. Since this seemed like a bad idea and we already had one hurt guy, we radioed it in and continued on. Well, another day at the office and we were back home. We'll try again when the weather clears.

No Life Guard On Duty

Okay I have been really bad about updating this blog, but I hope to be a little better as the next few weeks will get exciting. First off, I have not made it to A-Gap yet, but I hear that we may fly tomorrow, this means I'll start the drugs tonight. The past week was laid back. A couple good gatherings and some fun movies, but nothing over the top.

I did manage to go swimming last week. We are not suppose to do this, but I just had to. I was out helping take down the penguin ranch since the sea ice is starting to melt. We were taking a brake when I noticed these great holes (that were used by the penguins) just sitting there only being used by seals. So I talked Meghan into jointing me for a little swim. We stripped down to our underwear, tied a rope around our waist, and jumped in. I have to say, this water was very cold about 29F. After I got in, these two guys helping break down wanted to pull me out, but my head had not gone under yet. So I sucked in and went down. When I came up, they pulled me out. The rest of the day was fun with salt water soaking into the cuts on my legs from the sides of the hole.

On the way into town, we saw Shuttle Joe stuck at the transition (land to sea) in Ivan the Terra Bus. Meghan tried to push him out, but no luck (little joke). With the warm weather, the roads are starting to melt away.

This weekend was the Women's Soiree. It was a ton of fun with live music, skits, poems... I tried taking pictures, but it was to dark and the flash didn't work at the distance. However the picture above is of everyone waiting to get in.

Have a great week and thank you John, Lynne, Linda, Dad, Brian, Kimmy, and Ella for the X-mas presents, it is killing me not to open them. I did send stuff off in the mail, but we'll see how long it takes to get them back home.

Coach or Cargo

Sorry no pictures for this post. I just wanted to tell everyone about operation Tiger Strike. This is a mission to put in a field camp at high altitude. Next week team 1 will fly to A-Gap on a LC-130, land for an hour, set up a tent and return home. Day two, team two (that's me) will also fly to A-Gap and set up half of a more complicated tent. Since we will run low on fuel, we will fly to the pole to get more gas to return back to MCM. I guess this is the first of this type of mission and there is finally a real sense of danger. They will have us all on high altitude drugs to prevent us from getting sick. They will carry O2 for us and one person is dedicated to just watching over the others. If someone does get sick, they mission is aborted and we leave immediately.

This is going to be true Antarctica and I'm looking forward to the risk associated with the adventure. This week we were had a safety meeting and did a few dry runs of the tent setup. During the safety meeting we were told everything would be fine if we do things right. However if we mess up, we would be coming back in cargo instead of coach (a little humor). I'm hoping I'll get some good pictures, but with the nature of the work and the temperature, I'm not sure I'll be able to. There is a lot of talk around town about this project and some think it is foolish while others think it will be a piece of cake. Who knows, but I'll get paid for an 11 hour day to work for an hour :)

Nothing But Fun And Games

Okay, I haven't sent any post cards out yet, but I am over half way done filling them in and each one has a personal (not a form) note. I hope to get them in the mail before the end of this week so they make it back by X-mas. I've spent about an hour the past few nights working on them.

Last Friday I woke up to see it snowing out. It is amazing that for a place covered in snow, it doesn't really snow all that often. I was headed out to LDB (a site about 8 miles from town), so I made snow angels as I waited for the bus.

I worked with Ann out at LDB until about 1pm when the bus came to pick up all the beakers (scientists). The weather forecast said there was going to change to condition 1 (really bad weather), so everyone wanted to get back to town before the weather hit. In condition 1 all travel is prohibited. Well Ann, Ben, and I stayed out at LDB and risked the weather that never came. At one point Ann (who skied to the South Pole back in the early 90's) asked Ben and I to "test" all the snowmobiles out. Boy it was hard work, but someone had to do it.

Friday night I was able to get on a boondoggle out to Cape Evans. This is the site that both Scott and Shackleton have used. The last historical event there was captured in one of the books I read, Shackleton's Forgotten Men. It was really cool to step into history like this. I could feel the events of the story I had read. Another way of describing it is to imagine what it would be like to walk through the halls of Hogwarts (yeah, that cool).
On the way there, we spotted three Adelie Penguins sitting next to the road. We all got out of the Delta (our big bus like thing) and took pictures of the funny looking birds. After about 10 minutes we decided to get back into the warmth of the delta and head on. Well the funny little birds immediately wanted to become friendly and came running after us. So everyone stopped, dropped to their knees and stomachs, and the little birds ran up to us and did all kinds of cute things so we could take pictures. After another 10min they got bored with us and decided to move along.

Inside the Hut there was all kinds of things left behind by Shackleton's crew.

Saturday was a fun filled day with FSTP. We "had" to go out to the pressure ridges in front of Scott Base (Kiwi Base) to flag a safe route around the ridges for snowmobiles. While we were out there we saw Fleet Ops moving all the airfield buildings from the ice runway out to Willey Field. It's amazing that in one day they can move a whole airport. Just after leaving the pressure ridges, Thai and I had an interesting moment on the Sea Ice. I was ridding behind him in the trailer when we suddenly stopped with a big crash. We had fallen through a melt pool. Water forms on top of the ice and then freezes. Then after the top freezes the water drained out leaving a nice hidden hole for us to zoom over. Well, I guess I've been eating too much food down here because it was the trailer, not the snowmobile that fell through. However by the time we were done messing around with it, everything had fallen in and it took a lot of time and muscle to pull it out (it was fun though).

After flagging, we headed out to Turtle rock to profile a crack. I mentioned back when I first got hear how to profile a crack, but it involved us drilling five holes across the cracked area. We go down 1 meter at a time adding another flight to the drill as we go. You can see in the picture Matt with the drill and Erebus in the background. In the center of the crack we hit water at 4meters. Yes, that is a lot of ice and it was safe for us to be out there. We ended up coming home on a rarely traveled land route which added much excitement to the day.

Sunday, a day of rest (yeah right). I woke up and headed to church. Church here is kind of fun and it's a nice way to start the day. After church I ate brunch and got ready for the big race. This was a Cyclo-cross race. Rec (department) just got a bunch of new bikes and what a great way to break them in then by racing them. To make it more fun, we had to dress up in funny costumes.

The course was short, but we had to run to the chapel and back, carry our bikes over steps, bike to the top of a hill, do push ups, then the fun part. Just before the end of the course, there was a flight of stairs. Rec suggested that we walk our bikes down the stairs as they egged us on to ride it. Well I made it safely down the stairs but not everyone did. This is a great pictures I got off the I:Drive.

Here is a picture of a seal I saw today out at the penguin ranch with an Antarctic Tooth Fish. It was in one of the dive holes in a hut. Just coming up to say hi, take a breath of air, and show us his fish.

Alright, time for me to get back to the postcards!