The Coziness of McMurdo Hi everyone! Jani here. Were in McMurdo, having just finished a satisfying few days of assembling all our gear and getting it into the system, ready for flight out to our field locations. We bring a lot of gear with us, so this takes a while. This is especially fun to do in McMurdo, where there is a strong energy about the place, with everyone working hard to get things done while being good to each other, patient and helpful. Yesterday was particularly beautiful to be out and about, as there was a nice, gentle snow falling and we watched as Ob Hill behind us became coated in white.
Given all our tasks, from assembling our sleep kits and kitchen kits, to gathering meteorite hunting equipment, to pulling all our food for five weeks in the field, to remembering to bring the poo buckets, we did a lot of trips between a few key locations in town. Our home base is the Berg Field Center (BFC), where we have a cage for our project and where we get all our gear for the field. I love being in this building, where there is always fun music playing and people are busy hanging tents to dry, pulling sleeping bags, washing dishes or putting S hooks on Siglund sleds. Its always warm and cozy, and I love having a little mug of tea upstairs while waiting. But there wasn’t much time for waiting, because we were also moving over to next door, where we get our gear into cargo, and where we pull all our food. This is always a really fun but daunting task, to gather our food for five weeks in the field. Will we want 50 or 70 chocolate bars each? 45 or 60 packets of cream of wheat? Is 8 cans of Pringles enough (probably not…)? And we find gems like red curry paste and scallops, Vita Wheat crackers and Tasty Cheddar from New Zealand, and if were Ralph and Johnny we might find a stray chicken patty or two, even if they’re not on offer this season. Minako and I are feeling very pleased with our selections and can’t wait to get out and start trying them out.
Once we got our food pulled and banded onto pallets, we also moved up to the cargo yard on the hill, by the mill van with our long-term storage. There, we assembled cardboard triwalls (3-wall thick cardboard, did you know that, vets??), big boxes where we put things like our checked bags, solar panels and odds and ends. We also found other gems in the storage bins like field notebooks, magnets, and a pump powered field shower! We’ll see if I go from not changing my long underwear for four weeks last time to a full on shower this time… This back and forth went on all day, and was lots of fun and ultimately satisfying, as we got rid of all our stuff. This was mostly yesterday – today Johnny and Duck went through the same thing, and we helped where we could. Minako and I volunteered in the BFC because they’re especially short handed this season, so we helped decant oils, sugars and corn meal into Nalgene bottles and bags. The others got the GPS ready to go and talked to fixed wing ops, and made our plans for putting into the field. And a few of us took some well-earned (we think anyway) long naps, or went to the gerbil gym (just what it sounds like) and ate some Mongolian BBQ. Part of what I love so much about being in Antarctica is being in McMurdo, I hope this helps you see why!
Jani Radebaugh 7 December 2016
Pic 1: Fire trucks gather snow
Pic 2: Minako and I with our food haul!
Pic 3: The old and the new: Vets will know why I love this picture so much. You can see Ralph, Johnny, Jim and Brian, all at the helm of the project and working and learning together. Then there are a couple of vets, Alex and I (taking the pic) and one newbie this season – Minako. 
