Turf in Antarctica?: A Fun Week!

Well it has been about a week since I last posted here. Everything is going well. I have finally gotten used to working at night with a few good nights straight working. The weather here has been great which has allowed operations to get under way, with this work has become busier. I have gotten to drive our Delta trucks a few times from town to the airfield and back again with cargo on board. I will get pictures of these large trucks up later when I get a chance to take some photos of them. I have also gotten chance to run the loaders quite a bit and help out my fellow teammates with the loaders and Deltas as well. Our last teammate finally joined our team yesterday, so now our team consists of Gift (Team Senior), Karl, Lisa, Alysa, Marty, Matt and myself. I feel real good that we have a great team and will have a great year together. The different personalities, experiences and overall knowledge of what goes on here, I feel real lucky to be working on this team. The past week working together has been great. I have gotten the opportunity to upload cargo onto a LC-130 for the first time, build pallets for transport, deliver cargo to the airfield, dig out our cargo sleds from the storm last week and all the mean while laughing and having a great time working.

I got the opportunity to got to the Observation Tube on Sunday morning. What the Ob-Tube is, it is a steel chamber that is put into the water outside McMurdo on the ice sheet where you can climb down into it and are able to look around at the sea life from inside this chamber. While I was in the Ob-tube I was able to see a seal go swimming by and I was also able to hear them as well. From other accounts it sounds like this seal has been one of the closest yet. I was also able to see some other smaller fish and several different kinds of jelly fish as well. Since the sun light a low, I wasn't able to get any good pictures from my phone to put up. I hope some others may have so I can barrow from them. It sounds like the Ob-tube will only be in place for a about a week more before it is removed because of thin ice conditions.

Tonight I was able to walk out to Hut Point to see the views of the Ross Sea and Discovery Hut. We can take tours of this hut that has been here for over 100 years. Here because of how dry and cold it is, wood doesn't rot or break down very quickly. The views I saw tonight were unbelievable.