Boomerang

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this last. To you dedicated readers out there who love to keep up with my Antarctic antics, I’ll be trying to do better.

In my defense, however, I have not had a full day off in about three weeks. Time has been flying here and we’ve been staying exceptionally busy due to short staffing, flights, and continuing repairs on apparatus. I’ve been spending many of my off days working on broken trucks so far this season, leaving me with little time to write.

How am I writing now, you ask? It’s actually a very simple answer. I’m sitting in Red 1, one of our giant articulated and tracked Chieftains waiting for an Airbus to land with the second official flight of Mainbody.

It looks like I still have another hour to kill before the Airbus actually arrives, so I’ll do my best to fill you in on the happenings down here.

Firstly, I have taken a part time job and entered into the proud ranks of Antarctic Mixologists. I worked my first shift as a bartender at Gallagher’s Pub the other night managing not only to mix drinks, but also to have a zero balance on the till at the end of the night. Considering my historically horrendous math skills, I was pretty happy about this. I’m looking forward to work my first mainbody shift in a couple of weeks. It should be busy and profitable.

One of the other activities that I’ve stumbled into is becoming a Nodwell driver for the Recreation Department. This means that I get to go on a lot of trips to a lot of places that I wouldn’t normally see since I’m one of two Nodwell operators on station so far this season.

In case you were wondering, a Nodwell is another product of Canadian Foremost and is similar to the Chieftains in many respects. It is a smaller vehicle and is not articulated. The easiest description of a Nodwell is nothing more than a tank with just a cab on the front of it. The Nodwell being used by Rec actually used to be one of our crash trucks. We officially retired it at the end of last season expecting it to be shipped off continent when the M/V American Tern departed. Rec, seeing an opportunity, quickly snagged it before it was loaded on. Shortly thereafter, a large passenger box was mounted on the back of it. Now, it is unofficially known as RecNod 3.

It’s actually a lot of fun to drive and does not handle badly at all. It took a bit to get used to driving with two sticks instead of a wheel, but now I can do it with ease. I’m looking forward to many excursions this season. I’ll see if I can’t get some pictures of it up shortly.

Mainbody is officially here. They touched down two days ago now. It was fun to see some old friends again, but also very unnerving seeing all these people invading our tight, close knit community. I’ve had a great time at winfly, meeting lots of new people from many departments. This is a marked improvement over last season where I barely knew anyone outside of the firehouse. I’m hoping to keep this pace up, but we’ll see. We’re supposed to be seriously over capacity this season with people, so we’ll see how this works out. I suspect I’ll be wishing that mainbody had never come shortly.

The weather here has been exceptionally nice lately. We had a con 2 storm blow through right before the first flight of mainbody hit and it brought a lot of warm air with it. We’ve been used to sitting around in -20F to -30F temperatures lately, but the storm brought some +10F air with it which felt absolutely balmy. Aside from the fact that you were getting blasted with blowing snow, it was actually nice enough to be outside with just a sweatshirt.

If the above statement makes you think I’m a little crazy, you’re partly right. First of all, nobody that’s completely sane comes here; especially for a second time. Secondly, the ability of the human body to adapt to extreme conditions is remarkable. My body essentially turns into a human space heater. While that does keep you warm while properly dressed, it doesn’t make you invincible.

Case in point, we were out pump testing the Chieftains the other day (with success) and I managed to acquire some frost nip on my toes. Luckily, I caught it early enough to prevent frostbite, but it wasn’t much fun. I think it was only about -20F that day and we weren’t even outside that long.

Wow. The weather just turned. Less than ten minutes ago I had a decent view of the Royal Society Range in the distance, now they’ve completely vanished and Ice Town (about 150 yards away) is starting to look fuzzy out the windshield. They’re trying to make the decision whether or not to land the plane right now.

The Airbus is about to hit its point of safe return, so this is the definitive moment of the flight. If the pilot decides the visibility isn’t good enough, they’ll boomerang and take their passengers all the way back to Cheech for another night. That makes for a long, ten hour flight day for the passengers…

They’ve boomeraged. Time to go home now. Cheers to you all, and hopefully I’ll get another update posted shortly.

Signing off from Red 1…