I've been swampped lately, but the end is close and I've almost finished everything up. Nice to get things wrapped up and actually have the time to do it right for once.

All in all, they ended up getting 5 of the 6 Basler flights in. The rest of those people were supposed to come on the first C-130 flight today (officially station open), but the flight was cancelled for predicted bad visibility here. The C-130 also needs 3 miles to land it's first PAX flight. Funny, well, not funny if you saw all the grumpy faces as breakfast, that the temperatures are a 'balmy' -43C, 7 degrees warmer than required, but still it's a no go.

I also got a nice surprise the other day. Heidi saw me in the hall and told me I had mail. I figured something came in on the planes from someone in McMurdo, but it was real live mail!


In support of Stephen Colbert's territorial claim, Michael and crew made a flag and a bunch of us went out to the Pole:

The heavy equipment operators have started moving snow all over station. There is a huge hill between station and the pole that is now eye level with the 2nd floor window. Nearly a ski slope.

No Going Back

The summer is back and we are gone, maybe not physically yet, but certainly mentally. Don't ask me where all these new people get all their energy from, but it's more than anyone should need. I'd like to compare the summer season to a broken water faucet. It was great when the first flight came down, but now the people just keep flowing and you can't put them back where they came from.

I did get a special message from Andrea yesterday. I've never gotten mail on a watermelon before:

Moments after the flight landed, 54 flu shots arrived in the galley and we lined up for service. Heidi and Robert did the honors:

I opted for the German physicist. Big regrets:

Here, Robert is sedating a wild animal:

Better Late than Never.

Our incoming passengers are officially late. They were going to try to send them in earlier than scheduled, but we had a nice little wind storm move through all this week. The Twin Otter pilots are leaving us shortly, but since the Basler is carrying passengers for the first time of the season, their visibility restrictions are much tighter. I think they need 2 miles visibilty to take off in McMurdo and 3 miles to land at Pole (for the first flight) before their requirements are reduced. It's frustrating for a lot of people especially since they fly all the time in a lot worse. Anyway, the official schedule was for them to come in yesterday, and now they will try again today. We shall see. Soon enough, the summer people will be here pushing their new agendas with there brown faces and elevated energy levels, and we will be cowering into the corner of the galley hoping that at least our flights out of here aren't delayed.

Here Come the Canuks

That snuck up on us very fast. Yesterday we saw new faces for the first time in 9 months. Kenn Borek (based out of Calagary, Canada... I think) flew in a Basler (DC-3) and a Twin Otter plane via South America and Rothera (the British Station). The Basler (with 4 people) landed, fueled up and was gone within 40 minutes.

Let's not underestimate their presence though, afterall they brought us two small boxes of fruit, causing everyone to congregate in the galley and pretend that they all liked eachother for a couple hours. Not only was it fruit, it was great fruit. Oranges, apples, grapes, pineapple and rumor has it, avacados for our fajitas today. What does fresh fruit taste like after 9 months? I'll let the pictures do the talking (Claire, Dainella, Katie, Kari):





The Twin Otter (since they have longer flight hours) stayed over night, and now are waiting for McMurdo weather to clear up before they fly on. The three guys actually came into station to eat and sleep so it's weird to see new (and tan) faces around.


Supposedly our first flight of South Polies comes in tomorrow if they can, so then things will start to get real busy again. A change in pace though is whatever everyone has been needing lately.

Oktoberfest

Our token Germans put on a little Oktoberfest celebration on Saturday. They decorated the galley with Bavarian flags, made huge pretzels and we had brats for dinner and a couple cases of beer:



At least some of us have some festive energy left (and no, that mug is not full of beer, however, I'm sure Robert suffered just as much after drinking 4 mugs FULL of apple juice... maybe more:


We poke fun of our 'foreigners' quite a lot, but they sure add a lot to this place and most of them have called this place home before any of the Americans on station.

(Pictures from Heidi and Steffen)

Hmm, what else is new... nothing. Just counting the days. Oh yeah, we set a record low for October the other day when it reached -97.4F (or something very close). Not too shabby, but not low enough to satisfy some who are still hoping for a chance to do the 300 Club.
This is our last week (if flights go as planned) by ourselves. I did an overhaul of my room yesterday and I was informed today that I've got to pack up and move out of my office. Everyone's got spring fever.

October?

The troops are coming back to the continent. McMurdo kicked off "mainbody" yesterday bringing in 140ish people followed by more and more and more. My sister, Andrea, flies in today. My office is near our communications center so I'll be able to hear if/when she lands over the radio.

My only worry is that all these punctual flights are really going to mess up our opening. Station openings always have their weather dealays, mechanical problems, etc that keep the schedule ever mutating. If McMurdo's flight plan goes smoothly, we certainly must be bound for disaster. I'm also realizing why it took an extra two weeks to open the South Pole last year. I mean, the sun is up, the weather should be getting warmer, but here we sit for over a week at -80F which is much colder than it was most of the winter. For our opening we are supposed to get a series of Basler flights in carrying the supervisors and key station openers. Its a new thing and they are calling it a "soft open". The Baslers have a slightly lower temperature constraint (-54C/-65F) than the C-130s (-50C/-58F) so the idea is that they will be able to get in earlier, bring us the people we need to get the summer rolling, and then it will be warm enough by October 29 to bring in the rest of the summer crews and get the winter overs back to warm air and fruit excellence. I'm due up to leave on November 3 with short weekend layover in McMurdo. I'm trying to remain optimistic about the flight schedule but it seems like the more seasons people have worked here, the more skeptical they are about seeing any tan faces around here before the end of October.

Happy travels, Andrea!

Albino

I guess it isn't really fair to say that I'm grumpy and then not write for a week. In some ways we are all doing better, since we had to turn our redeployment form in today which decribes when we were leaving the Pole, when we'd like to fly out of New Zealand and which hotel/hostels we'd like to reserve while we're there. Just one more concrete concept to get our minds thinking past this place... hopefully not thinking past work too much, since there is still much to be done, but.. yeah, ok, we're thinking past work and onto the beach nearly every waking moment these days.

About 2 weeks ago we finished up our 9-Ball tournament. It was a lot of fun, but it it's also nice to have Tuesdays and Thursdays free (for all those projects I meant to finish before winter was over). I started strong, then fell back and ended up in the championship game in the loser's bracket. I choked big time though and Jordan swept me 4-0. But, that's ok, he can be the winner of the losers. Brian, with only one season loss and Jason, the up and coming superstar, met for championship face off. They both were smokin' but the title went to Jason at the end. Michael spent a lot of time and effort setting up the whole league and it was a nice distraction to have around for several weeks:



Then the sunrise. I should have been more on top of this one: it's the first sunrise in 6 months afterall, but it really was pretty anticlimatic. People are tired and the venue for the event changed several times, and ended up in about 4 different places. Dinner was a less informal than our previous events and people are tired. Dainella, Liz, Bruce and I all spent some time on a little project that we presented in the windows that evening. Katie had found some old medical bottles while cleaning out the old dome, and we were trying to think of something to do with them. We ended up making a sandblasted bottle with WO'07 and each person initials on them. I think they turned out pretty great, and just when we were getting sick of the monotanous work and even looking at those bottles, we got a lot of great feedback from everyone.


Also exciting for me: Derek finished and presented the pole marker that I designed that will be switched out with current marker on New Year's. I don't know how to say this without bragging, but... it looks fantastic! I had an image in my mind of how it would look, but now that it is in polished brassed it looks way better than I had hoped. Derek did an awesome job and I can't wait to show it to everyone, but we aren't allowed to share pictures until it's officially presented.

So, where did I watch the sun rise (a little past due at around midnight)? From behind my big pile of chips in the "smoking facility". Thankfully, even the smelliest place on station still has a window. Here's a view from there shortly after the sun made it's appearance, plus some other people's photos from the last few days:






Pictures from Sven & Heidi