July 4th on Ice

Despite the cold, wind, and dark, we celebrated the 4th of July in style at McMurdo. I am always kind of sad being away from Wisconsin on the 4th of July since my family has so many wonderful traditions and activities around that holiday. So it was nice to balance some of that nostalgia/melancholy with festivities here.


My McMurdo friend L, who is seriously awe-inspiring in her ability to rally and recruit people to participate in the fun events she likes to plan, spearheaded a 4th of July parade. It was the third annual such event at McMurdo and has to be the southernmost parade on the planet. Given the conditions, it lasted about 5 minutes and went for one block. But it gave me an inordinate amount of joy and energy and entertainment. L even made a video of the parade so you can see us in action down here. Just check it out using this YouTube link. I'm in the color guard (following the ambulance and baton twirler) and am the one in the purple jacket wearing the crazy pink and white wig. The whole thing is probably just going to look like a whole lot of inexplicable ridiculousness to you all at home, so sometime if you're actually interested, when I'm back, I will watch it with you and explain the back story and local significance of all the elements of this momentous event. :)

Weekly snapshot #19

Well, it's been a nutty week here at McMurdo. The plane that was supposed to arrive on June 27 to do a swap-out of about 25 personnel and bring in a bunch of cargo (and which I mentioned in last week's snapshot had been delayed by a few days) had a mechanical problem that could not be fixed before the special crew (with night vision qualifications for landing in Antarctica in the winter) timed out and had to be sent home. Due to complicated C-17 aircraft availability and qualified crew schedules, the news came down the line on Tuesday that the next flight attempt would not be until July 20 at the earliest. A bit of an uproar ensued, as that means nearly an extra month on Ice (and depending on how the weather is in late July, maybe a full month or even longer, who knows) for people who were supposed to be home in late June. I could go on and on about all the details and various scenarios for various people, but that's really all anyone's been talking about all week, and the topic is getting a little old. Plus we're all kind of jealous about the 25 incoming people who are getting a paid vacation in New Zealand while they wait out this delay. Craziness! This is when you really feel like you're in Antarctica, when stuff like this happens.


In the meantime, the weather was blowy and cold over the 4th of July. We had a little parade here, which hopefully soon I can share a video of with you. For now, though, I want to show you what happens to my store stockroom delivery dock door, which is supposed to look like this...

...after two days of the wind blowing snow every which way around the base. Which is this:

You can actually see where some silly soul walked up the drift from right to left and then slid down the steep part on the left side of the frame. Not a bad sledding hill!


So that was a good chunk of my morning today, digging out enough of that we could get the door open to do a delivery this afternoon. I only got about half of it done before lunch, and then one of the guys who does the deliveries kindly tackled the rest of it for me while I was running the store at lunchtime. Phew!


Anyway, here is your weekly snapshot, officially. The wind has died down and it's a peaceful day at McMurdo, but for the rumbling of the heavy equipment whose operators are very busy cleaning up all the drifts around town:

Weekly snapshot #18

Everyone is anxiously awaiting the midwinter flight that was supposed to be here on Wednesday, but which was delayed till Saturday due to Air Force aircraft availability. Now there's supposed to be a storm rolling in that could cause a significant further delay. (You can kind of see in this photo that it's snowing lightly right now.) But runway prep and flight preparedness meetings are happening as if we're getting a plane tomorrow...and barring a pretty significant streak of awful weather, we should at least have had the big event by this time next week. It will be nice to get in some mail and some fresh food. Plus, there's a relatively large swap-out of personnel happening: 24 of our crew of 133 are leaving, with 25 fresh ones coming in to pick up the reins. That's a lot of new energy to hit the station in the depths of the winter season, and I imagine it will be pretty amusing to see all of us who are pretty mellowed-out at this point trying to interact with people who have just recently had a lettuce salad and seen a child-age person and felt the rays of the sun on their skin.


We're on the upswing, now, though! The days of this darkness are numbered, and with how fast the season has gone from my perspective, it's not going to be long before there are literal rays of light in these weekly snapshots...

Midwinter dinner

Saturday night was our Midwinter Dinner celebration, timed with the winter solstice and the half-way point of our darkness down here.




Antarctic explorer Robert Scott and his men celebrated in their fashion....

...but life at McMurdo is a far, cushy cry from those days. (And not just because there are some women here now.)


I'm pretty annoyed with myself--I failed to take enough pictures of the festivities to make a good blog post. There are several really talented photographers here who I knew/assumed would take much better pictures than I could and that I'd get their photos after, but it's not really fair to post other people's photos on my blog, so that means I don't have much for you. BUT here's a few. On Friday I was lucky enough to get to go to Scott Base's Mid-winter dinner in advance of ours. There are only 12 New Zealand winter-overs but they threw an amazing dinner for 60, inviting 48 of the 133 of us at McMurdo over to their place for the occasion.

THERE WERE SO MANY VEGETABLES!!!

I did an even worse job taking pictures at our own mid-winter dinner the next night, but the committee that planned our underwater theme completely outdid themselves with the decorations, starting with this giant orca at the entrance to the galley.

And the post-dinner celebration at Gallagher's pub was so fun and festive and full of wonderful new friends.

Half-way through the darkness!!!

Weekly snapshot #17

It's not just me with my comparisons to Pole--people who have spent many winters here have been talking about how weirdly mild this winter has been. Except for a few times when I knew I was going to be outside for a prolonged period, going from building to building around here is a casual affair--I just put on my light boots and a parka and hat, much like I'd do in a Wisconsin winter. None of the five-minute head-to-toe-coverage prep involved in venturing outside at Pole. Kind of crazy. The wind will get ya with grit in the eyes if you don't keep your goggles handy, but that's easy done. And if I'm jinxing myself by calling this McMurdo winter Wimpy--and I am!...it's been a Wimpy winter so far!--so be it, because I'm still itching to experience a true Antarctic storm, which so far we definitely haven't. A few days ago the temp dropped to something like -25F but I was shocked to see that temp because it definitely didn't feel that cold out. And the next day it reached +9F. Today's much the same. Just odd. At least the sun is staying below the horizon, as expected since we've just marked the winter solstice. It doesn't get darker than this, friends....