supplies

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!!!) and trying to nail some things down back home.  It is getting pretty stressful.

I know I said that not much has been happening, but that’s not true.  McMurdo has been abuzz the last couple days.  There are tons of new faces around town.  People are coming back in from the remote camps before redeploying home, people are arriving for the “offload” (I’ll explain more later), and winter people are starting to show up.  So there is actually a lot going on.

I mentioned the offload, well that is a term to describe more than just actually off-loading the cargo ship.  It is used to describe the entire time period that the vessel is here, the act offloading it, and also the re-loading of it.  It is a huge deal.  Once the supply ship arrives (tomorrow morning supposedly) there will be a constant stream of activity until the ship leaves again.  It is unloaded and loaded around the clock for a few days.  The roads are going to be busy and certain high traffic areas are off limits all together.  So it is going to be nuts for a while.  To support this effort, the US Navy sends down the “NAVCHAPs,” which I think stands for NAVy Cargo Handling And Port group.  I think they’ve actually changed the name, but everyone here still calls them that.  These guys have such a historically bad reputation that NSF closes the bars and prohibits selling alcohol when the ship arrives.  It’s pretty crazy.  In addition to the NAVCHAPs there is a bunch of Kiwi’s in town also to help support the offload.  As a matter of fact, there are quite a few in the “mancamp” (where I was those initial days) and they are constantly in the lounge and generally making a ruckus.  So when I said not much has been happening, that was a lie.

Speaking of a term that’s used for lots of different things (like offload), the term Kiwi is another one.  For instance, everyone knows that there is a fruit Kiwi and a bird Kiwi.  Well people from New Zealand are also called Kiwi’s and so is their currency.  Just throwing it out there, that little tid bit of knowledge is free of charge.