Traversing the Space Between

Took a look at the bar spaces today and had time to workout in one of the gyms. Most of the furniture and equipment is very old. The recreation budget is small and there are so many things I’d like to update. People use these areas a lot as you can imagine. Probably the top two things to do are meet friends at the bar or workout in the gym.  The main bar that is open now is Gallagher’s. There’s always something fun going on here. I went to trivia night, and it was packed. Lots of people having fun and hard questions! There’s also quite the music scene here at McMurdo. I missed open mic night, but heard it was outstanding.  This is the bar area. It’s cash only due to internet speeds. It would be hard to use a credit card machine. I got to play Ms Pac-Man on a stand up machine just like in the 80’s! There’s a few video machines with gitchy joysticks in the back corner. Here’s where trivia and open mic night are held. The next bar is Southern Exposure or Southern’s for short. It’s not ope

 There are two airfields used for McMurdo. One called Phoenix is the one I landed on a few weeks ago. It’s used for wheeled aircraft. The second runway is used for aircraft with skis. It’s called Williams Field.  To get to the airfields you have to drive about 40 min outside of town. Right now everything is covered in snow and everywhere you look is disorientating as you drive along the plowed path where everything is white. Luckily there are flags all along the route. As you drive out of town, you pass by the New Zealand Scott Base’s wind turbines. They add to our combined power grid and we share our power with them too. Scott Base is much smaller than McMurdo. There’s about 70 people there. All their buildings are green. As we drive out, there are rolls of fuel hoses that are being connected from the hardline fuel lines to Williams field. There will be about 8 miles of these lines that have to be connected each year. This is the hardline coming down the hill to connect the fuel lines

Today  I received a tour of the Vehicle Maintenance Facility, the Firehouse, and the Aerospace Ground Equipment facilities. All of these are my responsibility in my NSF role. We were asked to wear lovely safety goggles as we toured the VMF. My OSO friends from NASA would have loved this tour. Wait until you see the tools rooms….. Here’s where they are working in different vehicles in 8 bays. These first tractors are used in the traverse that hauls fuel to the South Pole. Up close look at a traverse tractor.  They just drive the vehicles right on in to the bay to get worked on. There’s a parts department and a tools department. Each mechanic has to check out and back in with the toolset he’s given that day. Every tool is accounted for to make sure none get lost.  Rows upon rows of tools…. This is the VMF Supervisor, Jonathon. He gave us the tour today, and we discussed the challenges his team and the facility are facing. Look at the size of the wrenches!!! This is the machinist’s shop.

 Before you can go on a hike outside the station perimeter or go out in the field by helicopter, you have to take the Antarctic Field Safety class. This class walks you through risks, the contents of a survival kit, how to start a camping stove, how to set up a tent, what different flag colors mean, cold weather injuries, and a little about safety when flying in helicopters.  The field safety kit is about 60 lbs and is contained in the red bag. There’s two tents in that small black bag (I would NOT want to try to put those back in the bag….), food and water for two people for three days, a camper stove and fuel, a shovel and a large knife for cutting ice, some padding to get you off the ice directly, and some extra clothing and hats. My co-worker, Marc, is lighting the camper stove we had to put together. We received lectures on cold weather injuries and discussed hypothermia signs. Then it was time to set up the tents. Marc snapped this photo as I struggled with the poles. At least no

 In the afternoon, I took a drive around to see some of the construction vehicles. The fleet is under my responsibility as well, so I’m getting to learn what all these big vehicles do. I’ll get an up close tour where I can climb on these vehicles when it’s not blustery out. Glad I’m inside a van like this as I do the tour. It was very windy and cold! We visited an area where some of the construction vehicles are kept. It’s amazing that these vehicles can work in this weather. Here’s some snow plows. I got a chuckle from the name of this vehicle “Darth Grader”. This is the VMF Vehicle Maintenance Facility where all the fleet is worked on. I’m anxious to get this tour. These folks work so hard to get these old vehicles working. Just so impressed with how much work they have and what they get done under these conditions. We are in the midst of building new dorms and a main building. Lots of heavy construction fleet, such as cranes are scattered about. This is a rock crusher. It creates th