Late Night Nonsense

So it's been a while since I've updated this.

It happens. I'm a busy person here. I have a life at the bottom of the world. I can't always pander to your every whim.

Bet you didn't think that living on a sparsely populated research station could have so many things to do in my free time. You were wrong. Most of you are missing out on some of the best times I've had in my life. I'll be sad to leave this place.

Since it is late (I'm covering the midrats dispatch), I'll be brief tonight. The large quantity of coffee I drank today has worn off. I was splattered with some ancient foam premix today and have savored the aroma all day. I'm covered in dirt after beating various fire trucks with hammers. We just came back from a bells call and the wind is blowing. I'm glad I get to engage the pump and just sit in the truck and stay warm when the windchill is below zero again. I'd like a shower, but I'd like to find my rack and doze off more.

Things have been busy here. We had the annual rugby game against the Kiwis and lost, maintaining our tradition of being forever winless against them. It maintains the Kiwis record of having the longest (time wise) winning streak in the history of rugby. We put up a good fight in the first half, but by the second, everybody was just tired and the Kiwis took advantage of that.

All in all, it was a good time, and I was able to catch a sled towed by a Challenger back.

So I smelled seawater the other day. It was pretty awesome. The Swedish icebreaker Oden arrived almost two weeks ago and has been crushing ice ever since with a couple of brief stops in port to let their crew wander the streets of Mactown. It's interesting to see the slab of ice that I called home for many shifts in Ice Town crushed into little bits.

Anyway, some of the ice has started to push out to sea. It's pretty incredible to walk down to Hut Point and smell the salt air (something that's not diesel) and look into the clear waters of the Ross Sea.

The penguins have been wandering about more lately, too. Packs of up to sixty Adelies have been spotted frolicking in and around town. The seals and whales have found the open water and add to the fauna. The occasional skua rounds it out.

I can hear the fuelies chattering away on the radio right now. They're the only ones working tonight besides us. A few days ago, the USS Paul Buck (an oiler) arrived to resupply us with about a million gallons of fuel so we don't freeze to death in the next year.

In about a week or so the Tern will come to port and bring all the cargo we need so people like me will still have things to break and food harvested in 1998 to eat.

Frisbee golf here in the Antarctic is certainly a challenge. Some of the obstacles I encountered included pipeline traps, bulldozers, milvans, ice covered melt pools, steep and rocky slopes, and the heckling of Cap. It's a fun time, provided you didn't get into the sport to enjoy scenery more breathtaking than unheated storage buildings and Hazwaste.

So we won the scavenger hunt the other day. I got a "Get Rec'd" hat out of it. It took us a while to find the correct cowboy and Ant. 1 sign as well as the penguin pooper, but we did it. That's the most running I've done in boots in a long time. My legs were aching for a few days after that.

Luckily, I have a new hero at the coffee house to remedy that problem. She makes the strongest coffee with whiskey of all the baristas. It goes a long way to relieving those aches and pains (Irish Coffee and extra strength Tylenol have a lot in common as they both have caffeine and thin the blood). Red absolutely hates the taste of it. It's still funny seeing the look on her face whenever I make her take a sip.

Sounds like they're getting ready to shut down the mogas transfer soon. That's a big step, but I'm pretty sure they have a lot more AN-8 to move before they're done.

So I went to "Room With a View" yesterday for my boondoggle. It was pretty cool. It was my first time on a snowmachine and I had a blast. It was the fastest I've gone since I've arrived here. I topped out at around fifty miles a hour. The machine had a lot more left in it, but since I was with a group, I couldn't just blow past everyone.

The views up there on the foot of an active volcano were pretty awesome. The ice edge has progressed up to Inaccessible Island and is apparently approaching Mactown quickly. Seeing wide open water after seeing miles and miles of white ice for the last several months is a little weird.

I just pulled a metal sliver out of my knuckle. That explains why it felt funny.

So I'm a short timer now. Officially less than a month left in this contract. It doesn't really have that good of an effect on me. I'm starting to feel pieces of my old self come back again, the pieces that I was happy to leave behind.

Thoughts of being stuck back home leave me irritable. Looking at jobs makes me miserable. If there was something back home that looked interesting, maybe I'd be in a better mood. Potential unemployment doesn't really worry me. I've set myself up so I can manage for quite some time if the market doesn't pick up.

One of the few things that I have to look past that is the traveling that I have coming to me. I'm going to wander through a few countries before I touch the states again. I'll probably even come out of them with a few interesting stories and a bunch of pictures that can be used to torture people who don't really want to hear all about it.

To all those who keep asking me when I'll be back, the answer is that I don't know. I'm pretty sure I will be back eventually, though. I'll have to pick up my stuff at some point, at least. I'd hate to just leave my tools and truck behind.

Lori just referred to me as a cowboy redneck. I denied it, but maybe there's a little truth in it somewhere.

Looks like I'm getting relieved. Time to go hit my rack and sleep. I'll put some dream time aside to looking towards whatever the next adventure is. I'm pretty sure I'll have to have another one. If I don't, I'll probably lose my mind.