~HAPPY NEW YEAR!~

To all of our friends and family, we wish you a wonderful 2006 - filled with love, laughter and prosperity (no matter how you choose to measure it!)

Thank you for all of your support and love this past year as we've made big changes and travelled to new destinations.

Much love from Sheri and Michiel

Our ship has finally come in....

Well....the ice breaker has arrived. Its job is to cut a channel through the 6-8 (2-3 meters) foot thick ice that blocks McMurdo from the open water about 80 miles (128 km) away. Since both of the US Coast Guard ships that were built for this purpose years ago are no longer fit enough to do the task, we hire a Russian ship, the Krasin, to prepare the way for the fuel supply ship, followed by the re-supply ship, The American Tern. The Tern has just left California and is expected to reach New Zealand on the 13th or 14th of January to pick up more cargo before making the last leg of the journey to McMurdo.


We've enjoyed watching the ice breaker apporaching from afar - its big smokestack belching out black smoke as it slowly works forwards and backwards to gain enough momentum to break through the ice sheet. The weather has been wonderful - around 37 degrees F (2 degrees C) - and almost no wind. We've spent several afternoons standing at Hut Point and taking bets on when the ship would reach town. On the way to Hut Point, we first pass what is called "Vietnam Village", a colorful collection of dive huts pulled off the ice for the season.


We were also treated to close-up views of swimming Weddell seals and even an Adelie penguin!

New Work Schedules

We've just passed the midpoint of our summer season and tomorrow is SUMMER SOLSTICE, the day with the maximum amount of daylight possible. Considering that the sun last set some time in October, we aren't having longer days, but after tomorrow, we will be moving closer to our next sunset in February.

Along with solstice, this time of the season brings upon a change in work schedules. I now work the nightshift in Passenger Services and my work schedule is 6:00 pm to 6:00 am. With all of the daylight, the difficulty is not with the light, but with the fact that most of the members of our community sleep during regular night hours. It is always a little weird to wake up and encounter people drinking post-work beers.

Fortunately, Michiel's boss was kind enough to get approval for him to work on special projects during nightshift. Michiel and another Materialsperson work 7:30 pm to 5:30 am. It is a great relief that we can be together now and it has proven to be really nice to work nights, as the community is smaller and we have the chance to actually get to know our co-workers and fellow night-shifters.

In other Antarctic news, the Russian ice breaker ship that has been contracted by the National Science Foundation to clear a channel through the sea ice to our station has reached the ice edge and should arrive at the station on Christmas. Once there is a clear channel through the ice, the re-supply ship can get to McMurdo to deliver next year's food and supplies and remove the waste we have generated over the past year.

Nearly 60% of all of our waste is recycled and everyone in the community is expected to sort their trash into several categories - from paper, plastic and glass - to bio-waste (blood- or bodily fluid-stained), food, wood and cardboard.

Faithful readers

Here's a big thank you to all our readers. With a special mention of Marie-Birgitte and Sandra as they not only read our blog often, but also comment/write a lot.
You might think that because of our weblog we get so much e-mail that we cannot keep up. That's not true! We are feeling very much removed from the rest of the world and love to receive e-mails from everyone. The more you write to us, the more we feel motivated to write on our blog.

Keep 'em coming.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving on the weekend following the traditional celebration day. Everyone on station had Saturday and Sunday off and the galley staff prepared a huge feast with three sittings on Saturday.

My holiday weekend started on Friday evening with a departmental cosmic bowling party. The bowling alley has two lanes with manual pin-set mechanisms. Two people are paid to sit behind and to the left of the pins. After the first bowling ball is thrown, the pin setters place the ball in the return chute and place the fallen pins in the reset rack hanging above the pins left standing. We use fluorescent balls and pins and the pin setters turn off the regular lights and switch on the black lights so that everyone's light colored clothing glows. When we added good music and they switched on the fog machine, we've got a good party atmosphere. I placed a special food order from the galley and we enjoyed camembert and gouda cheese and crackers.

The snow started to fall on Friday night and by Saturday morning there was a beautiful 4 inch (10 cm) layer of fluffy snow on the ground. Many of us were signed up to run the 5K Turkey Trot run out to the ice runway and back but the race was cancelled (believe it or not...) due to snow. In an act of group defiance, many of us ran the race anyway and found that the layer of snow actually made the conditions on the town roads better, as the small stones were covered. The weather conditions also couldn't have been better - no wind and warm sunshine.

After the Turkey Trot, we walked out to the Ice Runway to see the Static Aircraft display. The Air National Guard, who fly the LC-130 aircraft (also known as Hercules or Hercs), gave us a guided tour of one of their planes and allowed us to sit in the cockpit. Very cool! These planes land here and at field camps and the South Pole on skis but can also lower wheels to land on asphalt runways in New Zealand. See the photos on our other blog-site: www.michielandsherithepictures.blogspot.com

Later in the day, we joined a couple of friends in their room for cheese, crackers, wine and stories and completed a fantastic holiday day with a big meal of turkey, stuffing, shrimp cocktail, cranberry sauce and pie.

Terrabus Training

As mentioned below, when we need to transport up to 56 passengers to or from an airplane, we use the Terrabus. The Terrabus is manufactured by a Canadian company called Foremost. Foremost has sold 7 Terrabuses around the world. One of them is here in McMurdo and the other 6 are used in the arctic regions of Alaska and Canada.

The Terrabus is designed to be used on tundra, snow and ice and its huge, inner-tube-like tires are supposed to allow the 66,000 pound (30,000 kilo) vehicle to remain buoyant if it should ever fall through the ice.

Later in the season, I might be called upon to help out an overworked Shuttles Department so I've been trained on both the Airporters (mini-buses) and the Terrabus.



Driving the "boat" is hard work. The road to the ice runway isn't so much of a challenge but maneuvering around town is HARD! Here are some statistics to help you understand why: Length: 48 feet 10 inches (15 meters), Width: 11 feet 10 inches (3.6 meters), Maximum Speed: 25 mph (40 kph), and most importantly, Turning Radius: 72 feet (22 meters). The trick is positioning yourself correctly before the turn and learning when to start turning the wheel.

Sheri Gets A Morale Trip

I got my turn to leave the safety of Mactown for a Morale Trip to Sea Ice Training. Since the annual sea ice (the ice that melts each year) is near to its break-up point, this was the last sea ice training course of the season and I was lucky enough to snag a spot with 8 other people.

Sea Ice Training is mainly meant for scientists and workers who regularly drive across the ice to get somewhere. The purpose of the training is to learn how to evaluate cracks in the ice in order to ascertain whether they are safe to cross in your vehicle.

We learned that the annual sea ice is 2.5 to 3 meters thick, while the permanent ice shelf is over a kilometer thick. The C-17 and LC-130 aircraft have been landing on the annual sea ice and each time a plane lands, surveyors measure the deflection of the ice beneath the load of the aircraft. If the ice sinks too low (that is, below sea level), the C-17s have to take off immediately in order to avoid getting frozen and stuck.


When a you encounter a crack in the ice, you are supposed to clear away the snow to reach the ice itself, then you drill a hole with a power drill and giant, metal drill bit (called a "flight"). Each flight is about 3 feet (one meter) long. Once the entire flight is drilled into the ice, you connect another flight to the first and continue drilling. Finally, you add a third flight and you'll probably hit water. The water that comes up through the hole is crystal clear and appears "blue lagoon" blue. Now, you measure the depth of the hole by dropping a weight and cord on the end of a measuring tape.


You will also measure the width of the crack and determine whether the crack is more than one-third the length of your vehicle's track. For example, the Pisten-Bully has a nine foot track and can only safely cross a crack that is less than 3 feet wide.

In order to try out our new skills, we travelled out on the Road to Nowhere to drill some holes. Along the way, we saw the same seals and pressure ridges that Michiel saw on his boondoggle. We had a clearer day, however, and got tremendous views of Mt. Erebus beyond.




After doing some drilling, we had an added bonus of hiking up a volcanic island that was home to several nesting skuas. The black soil was surprisingly soft (almost like sand) and the aggregate rocks were pitted and sculpted by the wind.

Makin' Music

Being a rock (well....reggae, actually) star is loads of fun! The band is called Jah Chant (I have no idea how Sky came up with that name) and we've been performing every week since our first show at Open Mike night. The band is made up of Sky, who writes most of the songs, sings and plays guitar; Kish, our bassist, who is rock-star epitomized; Devin, who plays didgeridoo and congas and me on drums. The community seems to REALLY dig our music and we always have a group of enthusiastic dancers at each gig (and not just our partners and good friends).




Last night, we played our first-ever Saturday night gig, which is a real treat because Saturday night is the night that most people go out. We played at Gallagher's, the non-smoking bar and played third, just after a tremendous performance by Sean on guitar and vocals.





We're planning on playing IceStock, the big outdoor music festival on New Year's Day, and have been invited to perform at the big end-of-season party in the helicopter hangar. We'll certainly play some more events before then.

All I can say is .....WOO HOOO!