I’ve come to the conclusion that I am a superhero. I mean, not a very powerful one, but nevertheless, definitely a superhero. Now, my ability to be annoying in almost any situation has long been considered a super power by many (often former) friends. These first five days in the field have shown me several other talents that I was previously unaware of, however. Based on the amount of “stuff” I have crammed into my 3′ by 8′ area of the tent, I clearly have an uncanny ability to pack things into small spaces (perhaps I could be known as Captain Tetris). Based on my activity levels over the past two days, I also am completely capable of sitting for hours at a time and doing nothing (perhaps Sloth Boy?). Granted many would argue that this is not a unique talent amongst civil servants. I can find no other rational explanation for these talents other than I was bitten by a radioactive penguin in my room while in McMurdo. I will await the further manifestation of my powers as the season progresses. Note: I’m fairly certain that the other members of my team are also superheroes, but they are being very cagey about their secret superpowers. Rest assured I will do some sleuthing and expose everyone’s secret superpowers at a later date. So the first 5 days here at Davis Ward have been something of a blur. We have had both extreme activity and extreme inactivity; oh, and we also collected a few meteorites. The first two days we spent moving “stuff.” We put into the field with approximately 16,000 pounds of “stuff” (I’m putting stuff because I don’t think I am allowed to call it crap on the blog). For those of you not very good at math (or who don’t have access to Excel like me), that’s nearly 1800 pounds per person.If you’re thinking that makes us soft and that what we’re doing sounds like C-130 camping (as opposed to car camping), you’re mostly right. But, what you also have to take into account, is how many times we moved that “stuff”: (1) We pack it into the cargo stream at McMurdo where it goes into two C-130 flights to our intermediary put in point (Beardmore Camp); (2) we unpack and redistribute the material into 9 semi-equal loads at Beardmore Camp; (3) we load this material into 9 different Twin Otter flights (and driving a 700 pound ski-doo up a ramp into a small plane then manhandling it the rest of the way into the plane is both exciting and exhausting); (4) we unload these same 9 Twin Otter flights of gear at our field site (again, manhandling the 700 pound ski-doo off the plane is a blast, especially since we have all of about 3 inches of clearance to get it turned and out the door); (5) loading all of the gear onto sledges and towing it from the landing site at Davis Ward to our camp site; (6) moving the materials around camp to get everything set up; and (7) re-moving most of the things in camp once Jonny got here to tell us the “right” way to set up camp. In any case we did steps 2-7 in three very long days, the second two at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. On a not unrelated note, the rhinoceri seem to have followed us into the field….which means their invasion of the Antarctic continent seems to have reached epidemic proportions. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, (1) go back and read my previous blog and (2) apologize to me for crushing my fragile ego.) After these very hard days, we had a nice day of searching for meteorites. Now, because Ralph is a little mean spirited, he made us search in a moraine on the first day, and not just any moraine, but a moraine that has previously been searched twice, oh, and did I mention that it was a moraine full of shiny black pieces of fine grained basalt and coal? For the non-ANSMET veterans, this may need a little more explaining. Moraines are where glaciers have spit out the rocks that they have been carrying along inside of them. Thus we are trying to find the meteorites that were entrained within the glacier amongst all of the terrestrial rocks that were entrained in the glacier (at a ratio of 1 to 1000 or so). This is particularly bad here since there are two (or three) types of terrestrial rocks that are black(ish) and often round(ish); this is a problem when the two most recognizable feature of a meteorite are that they are rounded and coated with a black fusion crust. Still, the fact that we found 12 meteorites in three hours in a previously searched moraine with a team where 1/2 the people had never searched for meteorites before was fairly remarkable. Note: there are very good reasons to search where we did on the first day, I simply am omitting them to make Ralph look like a mean spirited tyrant who rules the camp with an iron fist! After 4 hard days in a row, everyone was tired. Most of us weren’t fully acclimated to the altitude yet, thus sleeping was still a bit of a challenge. Thus, when yesterday dawned with wicked winds that kept us in our tents all day, no one was too disappointed. We used the time to read, reorganize the tent, watch a movie, and pick our nose (maybe that one was just me?). When today dawned with near white out conditions (it was cloudy and snowing and blowing), people were starting to get a little stir crazy, however. I mean, we aren’t quite at the level of Jack Nicolson in The Shining yet, but I’m pretty sure I heard my tent mate mumbling something about redrum. Thus, despite the temperature in camp that hovered around zero with a wind of nearly 20 mph, most of us wandered out at some point for a little hike around camp, just to be active (except our mountaineers, who apparently spend most of the day laying in their sleeping bags, saving their energy for some hypothetical future need). Ralph (and Jim) went out onto the blue ice field to poach meteorites (sorry, I meant to say reconnoiter, but must have spelled it wrong). Shannon, Devon and I waked over to the ridge between two of the Davis Nunataks (I actually walked it twice, but that’s not bragging…see the lessons below). The wind at the ridge was just whipping along at 15.5 meters per second, which brought the wind chill down to -35 degrees Celsius…that would be 35 mph and -31 Fahrenheit in civilized units (I had to use the original units because it is a Belgian who let me use her weather station…and she had demands). The wind is still blowing along at a pretty good clip as we try to go to sleep, but it seems Iike it is lightening outside so hopefully tomorrow we will be able to add to our meteorite total! Finally, a blog from me wouldn’t be complete without a (mostly) anonymous list of stupid things that people with PhD’s do, or as we call it in the PC world….lessons learned: Lesson 1 – Take your camera with you when you go hiking. This way, you don’t have to duplicate the 1 hour hike in -35 degree weather to get the picture you want. Lesson 2 – Ice only melts on a stove that is on. I know, who knew?! Lesson 3 – The handles on the pots we use to melt water are too hot to touch with your bare hand. Every time. Posted by Ryan Zeigler, 12/23/14, from Davis Ward Antarctica P.S. A special hello to my beautiful wife, who I love very much and miss even more! (This isn’t in Vietnamese because Google translate apparently isn’t available via satellite phone.) Caption 1 –  Caption 2 –  Caption 3 –