Hello from the future! It has been 2016 for almost 17 hours now. It’s just fine so far. Today was a working day for the station, but most people will get another two-day weekend, so everyone’s stoked. This will be the last two-day weekend for the rest of the season. Some people stayed up to […]
Christmas at McMurdo is a BIG DEAL! At a time when people are usually with their families, instead, they are stuck on a block of ice, thousands of miles from their loved ones. To accommodate for the potential loneliness, the meals are made elaborately and everyone is encouraged to spend time away from work. Most […]
My life on the ice has been cleaning, cleaning, dishes, sweeping, mopping, exercising, reading, cleaning. While the work is not awesome, the people are! Not just the people I work with, but the new friends I’ve made in other departments. The reality of McMurdo is that they keep you working long, hard hours so that […]
The plan was to take off last night, ski or hike — depending on snow conditions — to Castle Rock (a prominent rock column just south of Mt. Erebus and about 4 miles north of McMurdo, and sleep in one of the survival huts along the route. That was the plan. However, I needed to […]
Well, it’s not so much “ice” right now. It’s the height of summer at McMurdo, which means other than the actual sea ice just off shore, the roads and land around town are exposed dirt. That doesn’t mean it won’t snow again until winter, it’s just not constant snow. The weather has changed from warm […]
Richard had to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the night treating a patient that was staying in the medical building overnight before they could be evacuated. Then, he got up super early to go back in and relieve the Navy doctor who had stayed with the patient overnight. So, I showed […]
I have been at McMurdo Station now for 30 hours and it has been a whirlwind. I left my hotel in Christchurch lugging my bags, which then weighed closer to 100 pounds thanks to my Extreme Cold Weather gear. Once at the clothing distribution center, I changed into the cold weather pants and packed everything […]
My alarm went off hours after sunrise but I wasn’t ready for it. Orientation started at 9 a.m. in a building next door to my hotel. Despite a head of fog, I managed to find the right building. We watched videos that romanticized the ice continent and I tried very hard to keep my eyes […]
By the time my plane touched down in Sydney, I was 30. Not too shabby to spend my birthday in a new country and a new city. It was an overcast and slow Sunday morning in Sydney. I kept wondering where all the people were? Eventually it stuck that even metropolitan cities can be quiet […]
Hi dear Readers! Sorry I dropped off the Internet for the last few months. Since the PCT, Richard flew off to Antarctica, I worked at Sweetland Farm, freelanced for the Valley News and enjoyed New Hampshire. Now, it’s my turn to fly to Antarctica. I leave the states tomorrow and should get to the ice […]