Katie Joy, Recon Team, 10th January 2013, Szabo Bluff

Well, regrettably there is not a lot of meteorite action to report from Szabo Bluff. For the last four days we have been tent bound waiting for the opportunity to change camp. We have two days where the wind blew and the noise was incredible, and then it just stopped to be replaced by a weather system from the north that has brought cloudy skies, warmth, fog – and today – quite a bit of snow. It is eerily quiet outside, the flags aren’t flapping and we can barely see the hills around. The only sounds come from when somebody is walking around crunching snow underfoot, and Tomoko and I can hear John and Joe chuckling from the tent next door. Occasionally someone ventures outside to chip ice that we use to make water (see photo of Joe hard at work), to visit the loo, or just to check out what the weather is up to and admire the rainbow ring that forms around the Sun when the air is thick with ice crystals, and have a wander around camp to stretch their legs. But mostly we are still just playing the waiting game and hoping that the weather will change.

A could of notable strange events to report along with the eerie weather… my PC suddenly came back to life today… total surprise… I had been trying to randomly plug it and turn it on for the past three weeks and today it picked to revive itself. A minor miracle in this dirge of bad weather – I can only assume that it dislikes the cold and the warm weather has revived it. Also we had a strange visitor in camp a couple of days ago – a mischievous penguin with a natty red bowtie who calls herself Priscilla, and who we found helping herself to the chicken patties from our foodbox. She even tried to steal the giant pepperoni John and Joe have been saving for an emergency food day (see photo of her caught in the act). The cheek. She claims to have stared in all sorts of movies including ‘March of the Penguins’ and having inspired ‘Happy Feet’, ‘Pingu’ and even the penguin heroes of ‘Madagascar’. Sounds like a lot of delusional nonsense to us… but anyway, we are hoping she might come in use to help us sniff out those pesky meteorites when we can move camp. In the mean time she has been busy eating the rest of our chicken patties (see photo), helping us dig up the tent stakes which have become drifted in from all the snow, and generally keeping us entertained.

If everyone could please send us good thoughts that the weather will improve we would appreciate it. Thanks 🙂