Thursday, October 12, 2006

Day 1 at McMurdo

Started Day One with a tour around the station. Soon my chin was quite cold and I am now encouraging the hairs on my chin to grow like they have never grown before. The day was spent in, yet again, more briefings and information pertinent to life in Antarctica. We learned to drive two types of vehicles - one is called a Mattrack and the other is a Piston Bulley:

Then...some more briefings...then...finally...some shoveling. I volunteered to shovel some steps up a slippery slope between buildings and then shovelled out some doorways to the fire building.

This evening was spent at the gym playing hard matches of 3 vs. 3 indoor soccer. I held my own with two solid goals and am making my presence known before the regular season begins in November. Though after more than 30 hourse of airplane travel in the last week with only scant exercise between flights, my lungs are taking some time to recover after the many soccer sprints. I still have much to learn about life at McMurdo, but my mission right now is to meet as many people as I can - as quickly as I can.

Tomorrow, I am so happy to say, the GA's get sent out for "Happy Camper" school. We are heading out for field training and will spend the night out in a Scott tent or in a snow shelter. Needless to say I am very excited. Even more exciting is that the weather is supposed to deteriorate with an incoming southern storm. The temperature is forecasted to be +1 degrees F, but with a SSE breeze of 12 - 20 miles per hour, there is an expected wind chill of -47 degrees.

That is the plan for now, with Sea Ice training next week to learn how to drive on the sea ice without getting into trouble. Life sure is exciting out here. Thanks for reading.

1 comment:

  1. alrite, ben,
    glad to hear you made it to antartica, and that you're enjoying it. i'm enjoying reading about it. thanks for the updates.
    still

    ReplyDelete

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