Things are a wee crazy over here. Remember how last snapshot I said that by the time I posted the next one, summer season would have started? Well...I love that Antarctica has the power to foil the best of plans. The start of summer season has been significantly delayed and there are currently several hundred Ice-bound Americans spinning their wheels in Christchurch while some wild weather has roiled Ross Island this past week. Monday's flight was delayed till Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and so on...and at this point the soonest we'll get a flight is Sunday, but word on the street is we're more realistically talking mid-next week. A 10-day delay to the start of Mainbody season in McMurdo is a really big deal! In New Zealand the program is booking out empty ski resort hotels more than an hour outside of Christchurch to try to find space to house all the summer folk that have been flying in. Down here, everyone is trying to figure out when exactly they should actually start packing and strip their beds and--once again--cancel or delay their vacation and return-home plans.
My own departure--originally scheduled for this coming Wednesday the 10th--will very likely be pushed back, as it's looking entirely possible my replacements will not even have arrived by then. That's okay--I hadn't made any reservations for off-Ice, just in case this happened, and every extra day I stay is an extra day of pay that can go to eventual travel. So I'm just waiting this out and we'll see how it all goes!
In the meantime, I have a fun snapshot for today. It's actually two snapshots. We're in what the weather folks are calling a "pinwheel" storm, where one second it's completely nice out and the next you can't see 50 yards away. Case in point, here's the snapshot I took at 12 pm today, as everyone was coming in to lunch:
And then here's what everything looked like one hour later when people were trying to head back to work after lunch:
So Antarctica is dishing it up till the very end for me. I wouldn't have it any other way!
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