The End of Winter

Winter didn't end with a bang, it ended with a small group of people staring into the fog at the end of the skiway straining their ears for the sound of the LC-130 landing. The visibility was pretty bad so no one really thought that the plane was going to land with it's cargo of 40, sun tanned, loud, and germ filled summer 'tourists'.  But it did. We heard it land and taxi long before we could actually see it. I marshaled the plane in and then winter was over. Six of our little winter crew left on the flight and 40 odd people trooped into the station to double the population.

There were lines in the galley and there are people everywhere. I was alright with the 6 new people on the Basler and I wasn't ready to leave the Pole. But 40 people is a different story, it's a bit over whelming and I'm definitely waaaaay more ready to head to New Zealand and start a new adventure. But on the other hand there are a lot of people that I made friends with last summer that came back and catching up with them has been a great time.

Calling for the missing out bound passengers.

" Hey look there they are!"

The youngest guy and the youngest girl on station were in charge of marshaling in the first (and second) C-130s!

Biggest Watermelon!

 It weighed 1.8 kg! I scooped out the inside and made it into our jack-o-lantern for Halloween.

 It's the ceremonial pole with a pumpkin as the top!!

Here is our winter over picture that will be framed in the hallway of the station!

 

Eventful day

Yesterday we had the most eventful day since, well I guess since the last plane left. The day started off with one of the most eerie experiences of my winter so far. I had just gotten up and was putting on my socks when my humidifier shutoff and the constant faint hum of the station faded away to a tremendous and extremely obvious silence.

I knew immediately that the immense quiet couldn't be good and headed up to the lab. All the lights were off but the lab's back up power was running so all of my experiments were running fine. However the back up power only lasts about 45-90 minutes... and the Basler delivering out first summer passengers had just taken off from McMurdo and was on it's way up to Pole!

While the rest of the lab and I were tending to science the rest of the station was trying to fix the generators. They eventually got one back up and running 46 minutes later and no permanent damage was done to the science equipment and I didn't lose any data.

"Hey guys, look at the size of this watermelon"

I harvested the 7th watermelon for breakfast yesterday as well, it was delicious. I have been spending a few hours in the green house every day for the last week or so cleaning it up for opening. Plus there was an NSF lady on the Basler that was going to get a short tour of the station and I had heard she was very interested in seeing the watermelon and had been following their progress through the winter (who knew my watermelons had a fan club off the ice too)!

The Basler was due to arrive just after lunch (this is still the same day). So besides some last minute cleaning in the greenhouse, emailing the project teams/my managers about the power outage to tell them everything was alright, I had to test the fuel for the planes (the twin otter was fueling in the morning and the Basler was fueling in the afternoon). Once the Basler called 20 minutes out I headed out to the flight deck to watch for it and help out where ever needed. I ended up helping to unload the 800 pounds of freshies stowed in the back of the plane. Eight hundred pounds of kiwis, pineapple, bananas, clementine's, cheese, milk, eggs, lettuce, cantaloupe, cucumbers, honeydew, avocados and strangely a few 20 kg bags of popping corn.

Their were six incoming pax and I knew about half of them from last summer. A friend in McMurdo sent me some Tim Tams and someone else brought me my very own hand carried avocado that was perfectly ready to eat.  

I wasn't really sure how I was going to handle all the new people (six people really does seem like a lot of new people...) would I become reclusive and eat in my room? Would I get nervous? Would they think I was strange and slightly winter deranged? Can I really be that different? Well there was really no reason to worry because I ended up getting very excited and full of energy and really happy to talk to new people and answer questions about the winter and show off my greenhouse. Someone even said "it's like she didn't even winter, she still super giggly" so I'll take that to mean that I wintered well and I'm not turning into Jack Torrance from the Shining.

I had a huge kiwi and two clementines and an avocado that afternoon. Fresh fruit is amazing. For dinner I had cucumbers, bell peppers, pineapple and some cherry tomatoes from the greenhouse. I think my cucumbers tasted better then the new ones but having so much fresh stuff was amazing. I did have a very winter moment when the new guy in front of me in the food line took three pieces of pineapple and I got a little mad but I suppose that is to be expected (I didn't say anything).

I was far too busy yesterday to take any pictures so you'll have to make due with this wall of text until someone puts some pictures on the common drive. I had cantaloupe and honeydew for breakfast and it was fantastic. I still can't believe there are new people here and winter is really over. So many things are happening and it's all getting so exciting so fast!

Paintings and More Shirts

I made some full rabbit shirts/jackets for some of the people who are operating equipment.  

 Also over the past month I've been painting a lot. Here are the results in no particular order.

In other news, the Basler with the first summer people has been on a weather delay for three days now and we aren't expecting the weather to improve until maybe Monday or Tuesday. There has been lots of cleaning and organizing happening around station to get ready for the new faces.

Beets and Shoveling

I harvested some strange looking beets.

 

Yesterday we did a ton of shoveling. This entire Jamesway was under the snow and every year the summer carpenters have to dig it out before they can start working on summer projects. This winter 10ish people volunteered to come help dig it out for them.

 After a fun hour and half of shoveling my hair froze to my eyelashes.

There was a cool snow formation off this building 43 sign.

Still enjoying life at the bottom of the world!

Me and a 953

Two days ago I felt the warmth from the sun again for the first time in about 7 months. It was pretty magical. We found a better way to raise the flags on the skiway, it's about 10 times faster, especially because we can pull two at a time. The entire skiway still took about eight hours to complete in three different sessions though. We didn't break anymore of them with this method.

Me in the 953 called Sundog. Check out that awesome blue sky!

This is the throttle (we always run at 'full rabbit' to combat the cold temperatures) and forward/backward speed. 'Full rabbit' has become something between my nickname and an inside joke between most of the people operating equipment right now.

The foot petals are how you steer.

And this handle is how you control the movements of the arm and bucket/forks. Pulling flags requires a lot of careful lining up and fine movements from this giant machine (okay maybe it's not that giant but it feels big to me) which took me a while to get a hang of but I did get a lot better at it over the course of the day. You also can't move the tracks around re-correcting yourself over and over because the tracks will just eat into the snow and sink the machine into the ice (that would be very bad, someone would have to drive two miles to tow me out) so you have to pretty much get it right on the first try with very minor corrections. I didn't sink the tractor so that was good, although you could feel it settling into the uncompacted snow when you stopped for a few minutes.

It was so clear and calm and you could see so far. Pretty awesome after being clouded in so much recently.

It was the perfect day to spend a few hours out around the skiway pulling flags. Sunny and warm and beautiful!

I harvested Watermelon number six on Sunday.

Delicious as always!

Official station opening is in 13 days, weather permitting. I even packed a box to ship home and bought the postage and brought it out to cargo DNF yesterday. I need to pack one more box, tidy up my work areas and I'll be ready to leave the ice, so crazy!!! There is less than three weeks until my redeployment date, I still can't believe the winter is over already!

 

First Flight

 After three days of gorgeous clear weather it fogged up just in time for the first two planes.

 The Basler landed fueled and went to McMurdo within two hours. The fueling module pump wouldn't turn on (even though it was working when we tested it the previous day). So we had to use a makeshift mini pump and rig together some hoses to get them fuel and on their way.

 The process was very slow and it was very cold out (-67 F with 12 knots) but we did eventually get them fueled. They brought us a gift of three small boxes of freshies (paid for out of their own pockets)! e

 The first fresh apples, oranges and carrots we have had in nine months. It was fantastic! So crunchy and delicious and the oranges were so sweet and juicy. Mmmm fantastic day!!!

The second plane was a Twin Otter, they parked in the otter pits and we hooked up heaters to their engines so the plane could sit over night. The three man crew spent the night in the station and will be leaving early this morning for McMurdo after we fuel them. Now begins the fighting of the onslaught of nine months worth of an entire world of viral/bacterial mutations we have been isolated from all winter. Fingers crossed I make it through the next 4 weeks without getting sick!

Watermelon #5

 Watermelon number five!

 I showed the watermelon the sun for the first time!

A friend of mine took this awesome picture of me!

Grooming the Skiway and other prep

 Because it has remained clear, calm and warm enough for equipment the station has been a huge flurry of vehicle activity.

 The skiway needs to be groomed for the flights that are scheduled to come in six days. This means doing lots of dragging the 'land plane' (see above) and the 'drag' which also flattens things out nicely.

It takes 40 minutes to do one pass along the length of the two mile long skiway and this has to be done many, many, many times to maintain a nice flat stretch of ice. Plus when the winds pick up you are forever fighting a losing battle with the drifts that form. Fortunately I wasn't asked to do the monotonous skiway passes... I'm far more comfortable in the smaller equipment anyways.

 The job I have is pulling the skiway marker bamboo sticks out of the ground to make them regulation high before we put the skiway marker flags on them. This involves hopping out of the cab, wrapping the chain around the stake, getting back in the cab, pulling the stake up to 4 feet and disconnecting the chain and moving to the next one.

 It is very slow work and many of the sticks are too far buried in the ice and just break when you try to pull them out. We are trying to figure out a new solution to the problem because we did less then a quarter of the entire skiway in 4 hours yesterday and broke probably 1/4 of the ones we did try. There are ~606 skiway stakes to pull up to regulation height.....

 It was a beautiful day to be out and about though.

 Different angle of the station that you don't normally see because there really isn't a reason to be here unless you are working on the skiway or leaving on a flight.

First sundog of the 2015-16 summer season!