Walking is hard

When there was still a lot of snow and I bypassed the snow shoes, it was for me, anyway!

Recent landscapes

Can't stop (won't stop) taking pictures of the amazing scenery here. A batch from recently....

Me and shipping containers

Six months ago if you would have told me that I would now be working in marine cargo operations/logistics, I would have laughed in your face.

And yet, here is a picture of me from a couple weeks ago, walking on a shipping container in the shadow of a nearly 300-foot cargo vessel. (I'm about to start hooking the ship's crane to the container so it can be swung on board.)

Here's our crew with a container in the air between the ship and boat. I am supposedly overseeing this operation, making sure it's done safely and determining the order of the movements. Which surprises no one more than it does me!

We've also used the SkyTrak to move an (empty) container from one part of the station to another. Thankfully I wasn't in charge of that movement. I'm learning that I do not enjoy being in charge when I simultaneously have the feeling that I don't really know what I'm doing. And realizing that there are a lot of people in the world who either don't care about that feeling or have far grander ideas than I as to what they "know" how to do.

Or maybe it's just a matter of time and comfort level. I have only been down here for six weeks. And I'm already pretty cozy in a shipping container.

And on one. (That's me again either attaching or removing the hooks of the crane's lifting straps. I can't remember which. It's only been six weeks, but it's been a lot of containers.)

Yep, folks. This is really happening. They say seeing is believing...

Happy 70th birthday, NSF

The National Science Foundation--which ultimately oversees and administers the three US Antarctic research bases I've now worked at--is turning 70 right about now. And was not bashful about asking for birthday gifts. But it was a simple gift--they just wanted a video from the station of us wishing them a happy birthday. We did this at the end of yet another long, busy week, so that it was hilariously difficult for even this smallish group of people to manage to say the same thing at the same time. But we had fun trying. Here's the majority of our crew at Palmer this summer:

Evolution of the garage

The flip side of Palmer being quaint and cozy is that it's very small and every space is multipurpose. C and I share an office with the mechanic, and the garage that is just large enough for him to bring in and service our heavy equipment doubles as a receiving area for the cargo that comes off the boat for us. The last time the boat was here was our major resupply of the year and we emptied five shipping containers before all was said and done. There were boxes EVERYWHERE, and the garage looked like this:

Unfortunately, the SkyTrak (telescoping forklift) that we used to deliver this stuff and still needed to keep moving it around as it was unpacked starting having major technical difficulties when the garage was completely full of stuff. In a classic Catch-22, the patient mechanic couldn't fix the SkyTrak until we cleared out the garage, but we were having trouble clearing out the garage because the SkyTrak wasn't working right.

Through really amazing efforts on the parts of half a dozen people and a ton of helpers, we went from that to this in just about 48 hours:

And five minutes after we got the garage looking like that, the mechanic eased the SkyTrak in and it looked like this:

Hang in there, SkyTrak. We need you!

Replacing myself

Since the guy who was supposed to be my on-site supervisor here quit right as we were heading south and I ended up in his job, someone else had to be hired to take the job I was supposed to do. And in a great turn of events, my friend C from McMurdo got the job and made it down here on the next boat. So we are a fierce Cargo/Logistics team and are doing a pretty good job so far of freaking out on different days about how much we have to do and that we don't have reliable or readily available information about how to do it. So glad to have her here!

The day after she arrived in late October, I took her and two of the other newcomers on the same snowshoeing walk up the glacier that the Cargo Senior I was replacing had taken me on at the end of the at first overwhelming week here. It was a crazy beautiful afternoon!

Me and C:

Mt. Williams, NOT totally covered in clouds! Rare, I've heard...

Don't worry, Mom, we stayed on the flag line.

Surfing Antarctica

I didn't take this video (thanks, K. Leonard!) but it's so great and I'm not sure I'll get one this good myself, so here you go! A visitor to station a couple weeks ago....

Amazing skies

This night was special.

Cozy station

I've been working really crazy hours trying to keep up with the boat schedule on what's still a really steep learning curve. It's been overwhelming, and I'm looking forward to a month or two from now when I'll know the job better, the boat schedule will slow down, and my new boss will be up to speed and I'll have more time to just enjoy being here.

In the meantime, I'm stealing little moments of Palmer bliss here and there. The skies are always changing, giving a different view each time I go outside, we've started to see a penguin here and there (hopefully some pictures soon!) and I'm trying to get better about leaving work on time at least every other day or so, so I don't burn myself out right at the beginning. And one of the things that's keeping me going is that Palmer is SO COZY. I mean, look at this! This is the corner of the dining room!

Everyone is like a family here, too, constantly pitching in and helping each other out, and at break times people play quick little board games and there are snacks set out for us by the chefs...it's such a treat.

Here's to little by little having more time to enjoy all these touches that keep so much of the support staff here coming back year after year after year.

Palmer in black and white

Hopefully it will still be this fun to take black and white pictures when all the snow melts, which it really likely will eventually, with temps just warm enough to have it raining a lot of the time. But I'm also grateful for the snow while it lasts. It feels like Antarctica this way to me! This way I can ease into this further-north version of Antarctica.

So while it's lasting (there's more and more slush, less and less snow by the day, and it can't seem to decide between raining and snowing), here are some wintery Palmer shots for you!