Due to some extenuating circumstances, I spent about 3 months at McMurdo Station on Ross Island…ANTARCTICA. During that time I attempted to write my first blog to capture what I was experiencing, please enjoy those posts below.
quick aside: I am not being elusive about the “extenuating circumstances” it is just that I have outlined them in embarrassingly gruesome details on a post from the archived blog: antarctica:
I have changed sites and largely abandoned that blog, but I’ve pulled along the content ever since. In this most recent endeavor, I have even gone through to clean up the links to photos and attempted to use higher resolution photos that I had not posted previously. I, mainly, left everything untouched (even some blatant typos) but did update a few thing here and there so it is not exactly the same, but pretty darn close.
I took a picture of myself every day because one of the things I was doing was not cutting my hair or beard. I’ve probably had a dozen beards since then, but that was my first. It is chronicled here:
Not much has been happening lately. Things are winding down somewhat as the end of the season approaches. I am already adopting the mindset that I’m getting out of here soon (less than 2 weeks!
The wind was BRUTAL today. I know I’ve said that before and I’ve meant it every time, but today was especially windy. It was consistently blowing between 25-35mph. That’s fast. It really dropped the temperature too.
Yesterday, as I mentioned in my post, I got a tour of the Paul Buck tanker. I said it was a VIP tour because it lasted almost 2 hours! We saw everything from top to bottom, it was awesome.
Today the entire IT department (7 people) took a tour of the waste water treatment plant. I think I have heard it called Poo Palace and even if I haven’t, that’s what I’m going to call it.
I didn’t do too much today. I had had a rough week so I took it pretty easy on my one day off. I spent a lot of time on the computer trying to get things sorted out for the next couple weeks, but other than that, not much.
I saw a whale today. It was from a long ways away, but it was definitely a whale. Someone was telling me how they just got back from seeing a whale at Hut Point and I was like, man I can see Hut Point from my work window and as I was looking out there I clearly saw a puff of mist shoot up and shortly after saw the dorsal fin pop out of the water.
I don’t really have much to say again today. If it seems that I’m not doing much and that this blog is becoming stale, I apologize. As my time in Antarctica is winding down I find myself more and more occupied with scrambling to find a job for when I get back as well as planning my vacation in New Zealand and Australia.
It was a beautiful day today. Absolutely awesome. As such, it was determined for our health and safety that we should leave work a little early. I took full advantage and soaked in some Vitamin D.
