Castle Rock Outing

Yesterday was a gorgeous day - lots of sun, blue skies, 20 degrees F(-8 degrees C - downright blamy!) and little wind. We took advantage of our day off and the great conditions to do the longest marked (note the flags along the route in one of the photos) hike in our vicinity called the Castle Rock Loop. The entire hike from the Fire House, where we are required to check out and receive a radio, to Scott Base station (the New Zealand base) is 7.8 miles (12.5 kilometers).

Here are some pictures from the day.

Our life on the ice

Our life this season isn't terribly exciting - except when we scavenge Gear Issue for fun party clothing and then come back to our humidified room. Generally, since we both have fairly stressful jobs, we don't have a lot of free time. We get up at 7 AM, eat breakfast in the room or at work, put on our parkas and walk to work. I work until 7 PM; Michiel has a bit more flexibility and can work later but take some time off during the day to go for a run. We generally grab some extra food at lunchtime and eat "supper" at work. After work, we go to a yoga class, take a hike or a walk, watch a movie (documentary nights are on Fridays), go to a lecture or a travelogue or go to the wine bar or regular bar. On Saturdays, I work a half day and will probably work a couple of hours in the greenhouse around lunchtime with Michiel. We get a day off on Sunday and usually start the day off with brunch. Since we have had so many large military cargo planes flying here from Christchurch, we have a steady supply of kiwifruit, apples, oranges, plums and bananas. At brunch, we are also treated to melon, pineapple and papaya - quite luxurious, really.

Sunday afternoons are set aside for activities like playing music, playing basketball, running, hiking or going on special trips like the one we went on this past Sunday to Cape Evans. In 1910, Robert Scott built a hut at Cape Evans to support his push to reach the South Pole with ponies. Wiht our dry, cold climate, the wood of the hut and all of the products within have been perfectly preserved (even the wheel of Dutch Edam cheese from Rotterdam!)



We have a great room this season - with high enough season to accommodate a loft. We've created a sitting area underneath with a "borrowed" couch from elsewhere on station. It makes a huge difference having a comfy and "warm" space to come home to.

More Halloween

Richard Simmons!



Groundskeeper Willy from the Simpsons


Winner for Sheri's Most Favorite!

Halloween

As always, Halloween is a very big event in McMurdo. The big party at the gym and the possibility of winning a fun trip if you are chosen as the funniest, scariest, best Antarctic Theme or best overall are good reasons for people to put a lot of time and creativity into their outfits. Here are some photos of some of the best:

The Biggest Loser - Before and After (by the way, we have a group of people competing in McMurdo's Biggest Loser competition. Each one is putting $100 into the pot.)




The lounge lizard won for Scariest Costume

Finally! A posting from Antarctica

I finally have enough free time at work to do an update from McMurdo Station, Antarcica. I arrived on the first flight of Mainbody and Michiel joined me about 5 days later. After my flight arrived, the weather turned for the worse (wind and low visibility) and the flights scheduled after mine were delayed. The passengers on those flights (including Michiel) enjoyed several extra days in New Zealand, jogging along the river, visiting the Botanical Gardens(see below) , eating goooooood Asian food, and shopping.



This season, I manage four people in the Passenger Services section of the Antarctic Terminal Operations department (basically – logistics). We specifically handle all movement of passengers from McMurdo to Christchurch, the South Pole and Field Camps. We enter info into our (very out-dated, DOS-based) passenger tracking software, weigh passengers and their baggage, coordinate shuttle pick ups and drop offs, order lunches (vegetarian or regular) and send out all of the communications on take offs and landings to the world. For passengers traveling to Christchurch, we request hotels and onward travel arrangements to the travel agency in NZ.

The biggest challenge is the number of changes to flights that we have to track and respond to and communicating those changes to the station, South Pole and Christchurch. We manage a PowerPoint presentation with updated flight info that is broadcast on the television and have several locations where we have printed out notifications.

My staff work 24/7 – each of them work five 12-hour days. Two of them work days and two of them work nights. We swap them halfway through the season. I am supposed to work 7:30 to 5:30 on Monday through Saturday, but I have been working far more than that. I have adjusted my schedule to 8 to 7 on Monday through Friday and a half day on Saturday. We’ll see how that goes…..

Michiel is working in the IT department as a System Administrator. He manages email accounts and updates and maintains servers (from a software perspective). I'd have to have him add more detail here! He works a normal shift - 7:30 to 5:30 on Monday through Saturday, but has a lot more flexibility to come in later or take a longer break during the day in order to go running (he is training for another Antarctic marathon). He'll make up the hours on Sundays and evenings when servers require maintenance.

We don't have much time to ourselves, but we both are trying to do some running (he is a lot more serious about it than I am - but I am training for the half-marathon) and go to yoga classes once per week. The picture below shows Michiel with his frozen beard, proving that that at the moment temperatures are quite chilly. (wind chills of -40f/ -40c) are not uncommon. In fact we are both wondering wheter it is colder than last year or whether we just chose to only remember the fine summer weather we left behind last summer. We have also been trained to work in the greenhouse and will be doing that once per week. We also try to squeeze in some movie time - Fridays are documentary night - and some socializing time and I am still trying to put together some kind of music project.

Sadly, we both need lots of sleep so we don't have as much fun and down time as we'd like.