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!