we lose some, we win some

today we had a medevac, the first in seven years. a woman was very ill and her bowel got twisted, so it was decided that her and her husband fly out.

they ordered a c-17 from honolulu and flew in our crew separately to fly down from christchurch to mcmurdo. they had to fly down in night vision goggles. i was outside when the plane was landing and it was odd to see the plane running on minimal lights. hell, it was odd to see a plane in the sky. after it landed they had to wait for the crew to cover their eyes to turn on the light trees because they have to maintain their light sensitivity in order to best utilize the goggles. after that they unloaded cargo and then those departing could board. within an hour they were refueled and took off back towards christchurch.

tomorrow is our 4th of july carnival. normally all of the proceeds go to charity, but we have decided to donate the money to the couple. they are both kiwis and since christchurch has been devastated he wont be able to work, and it is expected that she will be hospitalized for a while.

it was very sad to see two well liked and vibrant community members leave. the positive side was that we got 300 lbs of mail and 6000 lbs of freshies. tonight they put out bananas in the middle of dinner which was SO FRICKEN EXCITING I THOUGHT I WOULD PEE!

I was sniffing my banana while working video counter and one of the store girls, took a picture of us.

i really didnt think it was going to be a big deal for me to have freshies again, especially since i work in the greenhouse fairly often and we get salad about every 10 days. but when the rumors were going around that we might get a medevac and might get freshies i started thinking about fruit all of the time.

today was sad, but it was also very good indeed.

fashion show!

last season our station store hosted a fashion show and it was such a huge success that they decided to run another one this season. the theme was mcmurdo's next top model. we had a plethora of talented models, but only one could win! our esteemed panel of judges couldnt decide amongst the final 6 so there was a huge fight and none of the finalists survived. theres always next year! my favorite thing was our gift bags. we were given a model sized snack (3 cheesy poofs), a box of special K, an expired disposable camera, handmade designer aluminum foil bling and a voucher for free airfare (it reads: FREE AIRFARE gift certificate, good for 1 (one). one way only, ross island to new zealand. transportation provided by airline of sponsor's choice, on date of sponsor's choice. may or may not include business-class service. expires when the USAP wants it to. no cash value.)

enter darkness

slowly we lost around 20 minutes of sun a day until april 24th when the fun finally set. we took a trip to castle rock in a nodewell to view the final rise. the sun wont rise again until august. bring on the T3!

More Penguins!

The Ice Rededeth

Right before the last three flights left McMurdo we had a incredibly strong storm. It broke up a lot of the ice and now the sea edge has receded further back than it has been in over 15 years. In the pic below you can see how dangerously close the edge came to the road to the runway.

It was really amazing to see some of the big bergs breaking off and floating away.

The bergs took some flag markers and we heard rumors that it took a small Kiwi fuel tank. This looks like it may have stolen a toilet!

PENGUINS! (and more)

These penguins are hanging out at the 'Halfway House' which is the midpoint of where our fuels lines run betwwn town and the airfield. They still haven't finished molting, which seems odd since the winter is coming!

We had an amazing storm recently and because of that the sea ice has retreated further back into Winter Quarters Bay than anyone can remember in recent history. the ice is breaking up so much that it is encroaching the halfway house and threatening the road to the Pegasus White Ice Runway. From here you can see the Halfway House in the background.

This is the Skua; very big seagulls that will steal food out of your hands or wherever you may be hiding it on your person. I think they know about the Antarctic treaty because they wont ever move out of the way and will sit in the middle of the road.

It's pretty here

Our first sunset! 2/20/11 1:51 am

3 hour tour...

Because I am such an amazing wonderful employee I received a boondoggle despite only being here for a short season. I arrived at work one morning and was told to turn right around, get my ECW (extreme cold weather clothing) and head over to the MCC (movement control center) because I was getting a sleigh ride (a quick trip to the pole to deliver fuel and bring back cargo or waste). I didn't have time to be excited because I was supposed to be at the MCC in two minutes, but by the time I boarded the plane I was pretty giddy!

After getting to a specific altitude, which I believe was 28,000 feet we were invited to come to the cockpit to take pictures!

Some of the amazing things I saw from the plane:

The plane was extremely loud and freezing cold at first, but after a while it was so warm I could have hung out in a kiddy pool. Since the only thing we were bringing was fuel there was plenty of room to mill about and take pictures from the windows. I even made it back up to the cockpit a second time to take pictures.

Upon our decent I was invited back up to the cockpit for the landing. Even though we were seated and couldn't really see anything I was pleased because I have always felt that if I was in the cockpit I wouldn't be freaked out as much about flying. What can I say, I have issues?!

Right before we got off the plane we were told to take it easy because the pressure altitude was pretty high that day, however we only had 30 minutes before we needed to board the plane again.

Midway back to McMurdo we were told that weather had moved in and we were diverting to CTAM (Central Trans-Antarctic Mountains) for a few hours. Well I was as happy as a bug in a rug upon hearing that! CTAM hasn't been a field camp in decades and was only open for the season. It is also the only large field cap that has a view, thus all of the rumors I'd heard about how beautiful it was. CTAM's purpose this season was to find meteorites and fossils. This season they found 3 brand new dinosaur species and over 30,000 meteorites!

When we landed we were told we might not be able to deplane, but almost immediately after that the camp manager invited us to come visit, much to our delight. She greeted us very warmly and told us we were going to get a tour of the town and then snowmobile trips into the mountains! Holy crap, what! This was so unexpected and so wonderful my head nearly exploded!

Inside the shower tent:

An igloo out in Tent City (everyone sleeps in a tent)

Two of the town folk skidoo'd us up into the mountains and one of them took me down to a quartz vein to look for blue quartz. I ended up finding blue, white and rose quartz out there. SO amazing!

After we got back we met up with the flight that landed just prior to us to find out when we would be taking off. However we found out that the weather had gotten worse at McMurdo and we were going to spend the night. YAY!

Immediately the camp rallied to get us tents and sleeping gear, though luckily we only needed to build one tent because they had just lost 30 people to redeployment and were expecting almost as many Carps (carpenters) to come disassemble the camp after we left. We then joined them for dinner which was amazing and then we spent the night socializing and playing games. A few people did chip in to do dishes and help break down some of the structures.

Then we saw a fogbow!

The next morning we ate an amazing brekkie and sat in for their town meeting where we found out we might be leaving in the early afternoon if all went well. So we played some more games, socialized, and ate a wonderful lunch. I also took a bunch of pictures of their outhouses (more on that later).

At 1 o'clock we were on our way back to MacTown and arrived just in time for dinner! I still can't believe that I lucked out so well. I believe we had the longest boondoggle in history and we were the talk of the town for a few days. Lots of people were envious of our luck, but everyone was excited for us. It really couldn't have been better!