The final push toward our main season began today as another McMurdo work week spins up. Our day started with discussing frozen food choices over breakfast, and was followed by “core” training for some of the group. Meanwhile Brian and I took care of other miscellaneous chores, always with our eye on the schedule of flights to Elephant Moraine that were to bring John and Duck back to town. As for me, I had “house mouse” duties in the dorm; every month brings some minor cleaning tasks to the residents, and so I spent an hour straightening up and vacuuming the lounge. Meanwhile Brian put together big “triwall” boxes (4 ft cubic thick-walled cardboard) for organizing and shipping all the stuff each tent pair will need. As many of you know, in the field ANSMET puts two people together in each 9×9 foot Scott tent. These triwalls contain the kitchen kit, stove and tent boxes, personal bags, basically everything the tent and the tentmates need for camping except for food and fuel and sleepkits (the latter are now treated as “special” and separate in the cargo system). We are on target to get all these things into the cargo system no later than about 3 days before we want to fly (friday and saturday).
In the afternoon we got a quick lesson on the new, improved solar power stations each tent will have, lugged those big heavy things up to the cargo yard, and basically spent some time getting more stuff ready for the cargo system. By mid-afternoon we’d pretty much done everything we could at this stage so we gave people time off to get their personal gear together. Tomorrow morning we’ll be pulling food (a big job) and start formally putting cargo into the system for delivery to Shackleton.
Ralph is shorn with a rakish sneer.
In the late afternoon I treated myself to my 2nd professional haircut this year (also the 2nd in the last decade). Alex wandered by and was much amused, resulting in the picture above. Without being too cruel, let’s just say that there’s a reason haircuts are an anomaly to Alex. As he freely admits, the lack of friction on the top of his head creates difficulty in keeping a hat on straight. He may just be jealous- when your hair is as luxurious and abundant as mine, it can be hard to relate to those less fortunate. And yes, I AM getting blonder every year, thank you for noticing!
About 6:30 pm John and Duck finally made it back to McMurdo; I went looking and found John a few minutes ago as he was rushing to put some personal stuff away, grab a bite to eat and get to the showers. Suffice it to say the Elephant Moraine trip was a success, both in terms of meteorite recovery and in terms of improving our understanding of what work we might want to do there in the future. More on how their trip went and what we learned in a future post.
-posted by RPH from McMurdo