I just finished watching Anthony Powell’s “Antarctica: A Year on the Ice” and having spent over a year on the Ice now (minus 3 weeks for a round trip home) it puts many things in perspective. It’s nearly the end of October, and my brain does finally feel like it’s returned to a nearly normal … Read more
Like any addiction, it comes at a cost. We may walk away being able to pay off student loans, debt, or go on a nice vacation to recuperate, but we trade this intense period of work & play in this extreme environment for those possibilities.
So we have 3.2% of station touching science. The other 96.8% of the people are keeping this place from being overrun by the environment and preparing it for the wave of people at summer. It gives you an interesting perspective on how harsh this place is when you realize that your overhead has to be so high.
Midwinter dinner is now less than two weeks away. It sort of a dual celebration of the northern solstice and the middle of our deployed winter, although they coincided perfectly. In my case it’s pretty close as I’ll be here till mainbody/summer, but for those who are out at winfly, it’s a little late. In … Read more
A few days ago I went out to Pegasus preparing for flight ops to work on a troublesome weather computer exhibiting strange networking problems. Driving back from Pegasus I got caught in a Herbie and it went from Condition 2 to Condition 1 in all of 10 seconds. During the ensuing seven hours waiting, … Read more
This is my 3rd season in McMurdo, two Summers, and now a Winter. In many ways I’m still a neophyte as compared to some of the 15+ year veterans and some things are still new to me. For most of my readers, you’ve never been to the Ice, so I want to elucidate on some … Read more
Nope, but Antarctican’s won’t see it again for several months, so like a friend who gets lost in the wandering, we tend to forget about them. Although the sun is a big friend and it’s hard to miss our friend’s effects… so maybe that’s a fib. Unlike many who’ve been writing and showing sunset here … Read more
Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How, although the latter is generally tacked on. I’m the “Who,” and hopefully an older and wiser “Who” then when I started this this written journey. Having started to write again for my blog, and being more self-aware of time, feelings, motivation, and having the perspective of time, I … Read more
Last time I was down 7 years ago, I wanted to do an inventory of all the strange vehicles on station. I didn’t remember that I wanted to do that until just a few minutes ago when a friend back home asked me about the how a Pisten Bully–hereafter referred to as a PB as … Read more
This is a recent view at about 5:30pm, frankly a stunning view that happens daily. These last few days have been about as idyllic as McMurdo weather gets. We’ve had sunsets like this at about 5:30pm out my desk window (geting a little less then 8 hours sunlight these days). On Friday evening only about … Read more