Gym Rage, Bird Strike, and Other Surprises!

There's really only one activity that I do here besides work, and that's go to the gym. Sometimes it's really hard to get motivated to put on all the clothing, walk through the wind, and get to the gym only to remove the outer clothing and start to warm up. Fun fact...the dumbbells can be really cold on your hands.

That's the gym building

So you can imagine my frustration one day when huffing it through crap weather to get to where I can work out, expecting all the treadmills to look like this:

And they looked like this:


At that point, we only had ~400 people on station and only 1 working treadmill. It was like the Hunger Games trying to get to use that one. After gym raging a bit, I asked the contractor to look into fixing at least some of the treadmills that all went belly up at the same time. Luckily, a tech was able to get 4.5 of them going. The treadmills are so needed for our mental and physical health here. Only the craziest of people can run outside in these conditions. I'm not one of them.

Here's some crazy weather from my work window

 We've started getting C-17s coming in when the weather is acceptable. One C17 took off in Christchurch and hit a few birds and had to return to NZ to inspect the plane. It's infamously called the Bird Strike Flight. There were a lot of cute memes hung up around McMurdo after that. Typically, planes are delayed for weather or mechanical reasons, but bird strike.... is a new challenge to getting here.



I've been working a lot and sleeping weird hours, but at least I was rewarded this week with a few surprises. I think this is one of my favorite desserts ever here.... Sweet Potato Cookies... I even took some back to my dorm room with me. They tasted like pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I don't normally go for the cookies here because most are from frozen dough, but these were "station made". 


And best of all.... I received my first package here.... from myself. I did some online shopping for a post Antarctica trip and my package from White House Black Market arrived! I bet no other WHBM outfit has ever been shipped here before. Can't say I liked all that I bought, but I won't be able to return anything. It was just nice to be part of the community and stand in line to get coveted mail.

Here I am at the mailroom for the first time (Note the penguin mailman on top of the mailroom sign)


And if you are wondering how we vote down here.... I got my ballot sent to me in email and had a friend take it back to the US for me to mail. Others here are sending them in from here, but we are at the mercy of the flights. Ballots are prioritized, but I didn't want to risk it. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Long Road Home...

Image
 After 10 weeks on the ice, it was time for me to catch my ride home on Thursday. This season, our LC-130s have had a rough go of it. We have barely had any flying because of maintenance issues. So, I knew going into the departure day there would be a chance that something would happen. We had expected two more LC's on the ice the day before, however they were delayed due to weather in Christchurch. So.... we only had the 1 LC-130 that was to fly me out.   We boarded the plane at 11am and took off about 11:30am. Although I had been in an LC to the Pole, that was only a 3 hour flight and I got to sit in the cockpit most of that time. This flight would be 8-9 hours and packed with people.   Here we all are waiting to take off. Those in black/orange jackets were from the NZ base. There were only 5 American passengers onboard and 20 NZ passengers.   30 minutes into the flight, there was a mechanical issue with the nose ski. We had to turn back. Turning back to McMurdo is not common. (I
Read more

Santa Flight and Shackleton's Hut

Image
For Christmas each year we send a helicopter with Santa and the elves to deliver Christmas goodies to those scientists out in the field camps from McMurdo. These camps are only accessible by helicopter. Seven lucky people get selected as elves after being nominated by their departments. This year, I got to play “Santa” since I’m the NSF Representative in Antarctica. Thankfully, I only had to wear a Santa hat and not a whole getup over my Emergency Cold Weather Gear we have to wear on the helos. First stop was Marble Point, which is a small refueling station that houses one camp manager (Katie) and a fuelie that rotates in that position. This Santa was thankful to get to that location after 1.5 hours of flying in a middle seat without a window. Katie has made the little hut a real home with homemade cookies, biscotti, and bread upon arrival and a computer generated “fire” on the fireplace and holiday music playing. We all took a chance to sample the goods, take in the holiday feel,
Read more

Setting Foot at the South Pole Station

Image
  On November 28th, I was finally able to fly to the South Pole. I was planning on just spending the day there, however due to weather, I ended up staying two nights. My fellow civilian passenger, Ase from Sweden, snapped this shot as we waited to board the LC-130 that would take us there.  When I landed, the South Pole management team whisked me away on a whirlwind tour of the facilities and issues the station is facing. As the Operations Program Manager for all of our Antarctic Bases, it's necessary for me to understand what the problems are and what needs to be fixed first. They also took me to the geographic South Pole and the ceremonial South Pole.    That's the South Pole Station in the background, which is one long building with three lodging wings off the main hallway.  Inside, they have a display of South Pole markers throughout the years. Each year, the team at Pole votes on a design and creates the marker that will be at the geographic Pole. There are lots of intrica
Read more