ninja invasion

It is WINDY here today.  It is blowing over 35mph currently and that really drops the temperature.  I have mentioned numerous times how cold the wind feels, and here are some numbers backing that up.  Currently the temperature is 17F.  But with the wind chill, it feels like -4F!  That is a 21 degree difference, I told you that wind was cold and angry.

We really lucked out with the weather yesterday.  It got a little chilly when the sun was behind clouds, but there was luckily not much wind yesterday.  I think the low yesterday while we were outside watching bands was around 20F and that was in the shade with a minimal breeze.  Relatively not bad at all, the majority of the day was in the 30s.  That’s almost T-shirt weather here, in fact many people were in T-shirts and some in shorts.  It was a real outdoor festival…in Antarctica.

For a little more information about Ice Stock, it was some of the most fun I’ve had here.  It started at 12 noon outside and the outside portion ended a little after 6pm, but then there were bands playing in 2 different bars late into the night.  A total of about 17 bands played yesterday.  Outside they had a huge stage set up where about 7 or 8 bands played during the day.  Some of the bands are from previous seasons together, but the majority were bands made up of people that had only been practicing together since they got here.  And a lot of the bands had members from other bands, but it was very impressive.  There is some real talent here.  The bands varied in style too.  You had punk bands, funk bands, rock bands, folk bands, jazz bands, cover bands, etc.  One even featured a violinist playing “J.S. Bach”, a few bands with banjos, one with a harpsichord looking thing, keyboards, the whole gamut.  My favorite band during the day was a group that covered Kings of Leon and Stone Temple Pilots, they were pretty awesome.

In addition to the stage there was a lot of other stuff going on too.  There were bleachers set up for seating, a coffee shop (Sawbucks, the carpenter shop set it up and served coffee), an arts and crafts hut, a hut where you could make tie-dye t-shirts, a beer stand, a bar-b-que hut pumping out brats, burgers, and chili, and an old military flatbed where they had set up a bunch of sofas.  It was great.  During one of the intermissions when the bands were switching out, out of the blue a group of people had independently made up some AWESOME robot costumes and made their way to the stage and started an impromptu dance party.  I was dying laughing.  Then another group of people dressed up as ninjas came out of nowhere (but everywhere) and started fighting the robots until only one robot and one ninja remained.  They fell in love and then everyone started dancing again.  It was so unexpected and so much fun to watch, I couldn’t believe it.  I don’t know who came up with that or who pulled it off, but it was incredible.  I was on the top of the bleachers when the robots appeared behind them so I got this picture:

 And here is a short video right after the ninjas invaded (on the left):

It was a lot of fun.  I took a few short little videos too, but nothing really does it justice.  Take my word for it though, it was awesome.

So the bands started up again in the bars after the outdoor part ended.  I only saw 2 bands in the bars and they were both very good.  My supervisor is the lead singer of one and she absolutely rocked everyone’s socks off.  They did a lot of 80’s-90’s covers and everyone just loved it.  They were probably my favorite band overall just because of the reaction they got from everyone.  Overall, yesterday was a great day.