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.
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