Today, I left the South Pole, my home for the last four months. It was a bit sad leaving, most of the winter-overs came out to see us off and it felt weird to finally be the one leaving instead of the one saying goodbye to others leaving. I looked around one last time at this unique place that I had come to love so much, wondering if I would see it again. I hope so but only God knows. I pretty much have a job here next season if I want it, not in the kitchen, but working in Cargo instead. I spent the last couple weeks hanging out with the Cargo and Materials crews, learning how to drive a front loader. We shall see if I return, something to pray about for sure.
This season had its ups and downs for sure, some of the moments were not fun at all, but overall I feel so incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to come down here. The people that I have met, the things that I have gotten to experience, so amazing. If I am able to come back it will be great, but if not I will cherish this experience as a most unique and wonderful one.
Tonight we are hanging out in Mac town, its kind of fun to come back after four months, see how things have changed. All the snow has melted so the town is just dirt, it almost feels like a different place. Its fun though seeing people here that I either met last time or spent some time down at pole, makes a big difference in being here again. I wish we had a little more time here, but I will take what I can get and at least they didn’t send us straight though. We are on the first flight out tomorrow which should put us in to CHC sometime in the early evening which will be nice, most of the time when you leave they send you straight through and you get in around eleven or twelve at night, no time to enjoy your free nights stay in CHC. So that’s a bonus anyway. I will be so nice to just relax for a while and get to do some sightseeing. Our friend, Danielle, that will be traveling with us, won’t be off the ice until Fri, so C and I will just bum around cheech for the week, maybe go to the hot springs, get some manicures and pedicures, well needed I assure you, whatever suits our fancy I imagine. Sounds so nice, nothing on the agenda…
Friday, February 12, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The end is nigh
At the beginning of the season, looking all fresh and chipper :-)One week until the end of summer. Wow, the season has gone by so fast, but I am ready to be done for now. Its weird to have the people you have spent the last four months of your life, living, working, recreating, with slowly leave. Headed back into the real world to continue on with their lives. Our station population is slowly decreasing, preparing for the winter when there will only be forty people who stay. Its is a little sad saying goodbye to these people who I have spent so much time with. Every few days another plane-load of friends that I have made is leaving. Its kind of a strange feeling, at first I was really excited to be leaving on the last flight, a neat thing that I got to do the whole season, first flight in, last flight out, but now, it kind of feels like I am being left behind. Everyone else is leaving, starting on their vacations and I am still here, having to work for another week. Not a big deal really, but I am getting tired, every morning it gets harder to wake up, to drag myself out of bed. I mean I know that I will be done soon enough, and that I will probably miss it and wish that I was back here when I leave, but right now a week seems like a long time. Our replacements were suppose to be here yesterday, but our weather was so foggy that all three flights that were suppose to come wound up boomeranging instead of landing. So that means that they should be coming tomorrow instead. We will have a week to get them all transitioned over before leaving them for the winter. So that should be good. Man, I can’t wait to go on vacation, to wake up in the morning and not have to work for ten hours everyday, it will be so nice. The first thing I am going to do when I get to CHC is find an all night grocery store and I am going to buy a gallon of milk, it will be so great to drink real milk! Then I am going to find a coffee shop and get some espresso. Mmm. That might have to wait until the following morning though. The plan right now is, we bag drag on Friday, basically the same as checking in at the airport, only the palletize our luggage so that it can be loaded on the plane all in one fell swoop, we have to do it so early in case the weather turns bad and they decide to pull us out early. We are scheduled to leave on Monday as of now, but if the temperature starts dropping quickly they may have us leave on Saturday if they need to. If we leave on Monday, like we are suppose to, we will have a “straight through” flight to Christchurch. I put say “straight through” because its not really, we have to stop in McMurdo to switch planes, we will fly there on an LC130 and switch to a C17 to CHC, who knows though, I guess the last couple flights of the season are always up in the air. It all depends on what the weather does, sometimes a plane will be on its way and they will decide to make it the last flight, pull everyone out, they will do an all call telling everyone to get their stuff ready cause “everyone is leaving in two hours.” Shouldn’t be a problem for me cause my stuff will be ready and checked three days before I am schedule to fly. Who knows what the last few days of the season will look like, I am prepared for about anything.
End of the season, four am and not looking so fresh...
Friday, January 1, 2010
some pics
my room
the dome, in the process of being torn down
my humble abode :-)
Inside the dome, my one and only trip to it.
At thanksgiving dinner
...
The day after Christmas, we had a traditional south pole event called the Race Around the World. Normally it would be a track that would just go around the geographic pole, this year however was a special year. The old station, or the dome, is in the process of being deconstructed, it will be completely demolished by the end of the season, so the race this year went around the dome, the new station, and the pole. It was about 2.4 miles total, for the runners track that is. There is also another track which goes around the outside of the runners track for the vehicles and floats and such. People will run, ski, ride bikes, walk, whatever they feel like doing. Many people will make costumes to wear, and we had one guy who carried two fifty gallons fuel barrels which he had strapped to his back! It was pretty fun. I was going to ski the whole thing, but that didn’t work out quite as I had planned. I was going along fine until just before I got to the dome, unfortunately what I didn’t know was that there was a steep hill right before the dome. That would have been all well and good if it had been straight, however it was not. For someone who had been cross country skiing for less than a week, going downhill and having to take a sharp turn was not a happy scenario. Anyways, after tumbling my way down the hill, I decided that I would be better off to finish on foot, not that trudging in ski boots was great either but it was certainly better. Anyway the whole thing was fun, albeit eventful. Some of the floats that made appearances were a gigantic chariot that was built by one of the science groups here, they also built a dragon that had smoke coming out of its mouth and a hot tub, with people in it, on wheels. I don’t think they got much science related work done that week. :-) It was a great event though and I got a free t-shirt out of it too!
For new year’s we are celebrating today because it works out better to have the holiday on Saturday so that we get a two day weekend. And amazingly enough I get to take it with everyone else, which is nice for a change. Yesterday on the actual first day of the year, we had the pole moving ceremony, since the ice is moving under us, slowly sliding towards the sea, the place where the geographic pole is shifts too. Every new year’s day we have a ceremony to relocate the pole to the actual geographic location, which it stays at for about a day before it is off again, oh well. The pole winds up moving about thirty feet every year. I watched the ceremony from inside because I was working, but that was okay with me because in the last couple of days it has started to get colder again, the wind has started blowing and it will just get colder from here on out.
Something fun that we did last night in the kitchen during dinner was to make ice cream. Now I know that does not sound like anything spectacular, I mean making ice cream is pretty normal, right? Well how many people have make ice cream in a big five gallon mixer and used liquid nitrogen to freeze it??? That’s right, liquid nitrogen. You see, our ice cream maker, a soft serve machine named frosty boy, met his end this year. He decided that life was not worth living and croaked earlier in the season. So, my boss decided that for new year’s we should definitely have some ice cream. He took some of the mix from frosty boy, which we still have plenty of, recruited one of the science guys with his big tank of liquid nitrogen and tada! We have ice cream! It was great, so much fun. We didn’t eat it last night, we decided to save it for tonight, to let it freeze all the way through, it will be great when we eat it tonight though. Yay for doing odd things at the south pole on new year’s day!
Tonight is out new year’s party, we will be having a bunch a bands that people have formed while down here play amongst other things. It should be great fun, I think that I need to go take a nap so I will be well rested for the evening.
One more side note, I am done working dinner, had the last one last night. Monday I go to breakfast, yay for starting work at three thirty in the morning! Ah, well, it will only be for about six weeks and then the season will be over. Wow, only six weeks left, time has flown right by and it has been such a great time. I have really enjoyed being down here, such an amazing experience.
That’s all for now, signing off. :-)
For new year’s we are celebrating today because it works out better to have the holiday on Saturday so that we get a two day weekend. And amazingly enough I get to take it with everyone else, which is nice for a change. Yesterday on the actual first day of the year, we had the pole moving ceremony, since the ice is moving under us, slowly sliding towards the sea, the place where the geographic pole is shifts too. Every new year’s day we have a ceremony to relocate the pole to the actual geographic location, which it stays at for about a day before it is off again, oh well. The pole winds up moving about thirty feet every year. I watched the ceremony from inside because I was working, but that was okay with me because in the last couple of days it has started to get colder again, the wind has started blowing and it will just get colder from here on out.
Something fun that we did last night in the kitchen during dinner was to make ice cream. Now I know that does not sound like anything spectacular, I mean making ice cream is pretty normal, right? Well how many people have make ice cream in a big five gallon mixer and used liquid nitrogen to freeze it??? That’s right, liquid nitrogen. You see, our ice cream maker, a soft serve machine named frosty boy, met his end this year. He decided that life was not worth living and croaked earlier in the season. So, my boss decided that for new year’s we should definitely have some ice cream. He took some of the mix from frosty boy, which we still have plenty of, recruited one of the science guys with his big tank of liquid nitrogen and tada! We have ice cream! It was great, so much fun. We didn’t eat it last night, we decided to save it for tonight, to let it freeze all the way through, it will be great when we eat it tonight though. Yay for doing odd things at the south pole on new year’s day!
Tonight is out new year’s party, we will be having a bunch a bands that people have formed while down here play amongst other things. It should be great fun, I think that I need to go take a nap so I will be well rested for the evening.
One more side note, I am done working dinner, had the last one last night. Monday I go to breakfast, yay for starting work at three thirty in the morning! Ah, well, it will only be for about six weeks and then the season will be over. Wow, only six weeks left, time has flown right by and it has been such a great time. I have really enjoyed being down here, such an amazing experience.
That’s all for now, signing off. :-)
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