The beat goes on

Same story to tell about flights in and out of Pole. Nobody is going anywhere. Our weather here is gorgeous today, a bit cooler at -54F, but I guess they're getting slammed with Condition 1 weather in McMurdo. In memory of the good old days when aircraft could successfully fly between McMurdo and Pole, here's a pic of the Basler on which I winged my way south.



When I was at Snow School in McMurdo the instructor had us do a search and rescue drill with simulated conditions approximating the visual and audio limitations one undergoes when out in that sort of high wind/low visibility. The simulation involved us putting 5-gallon buckets over our heads and trying to move around and communicate in order to find the "victim" out in the field. I never got to see actual Condition 1 weather, but I'm sure people in McMurdo have had their fill by now.

The word on the street is that the Today Show folks are still in McMurdo and planning to come to Pole, but I'll believe it when I see it.

I had a great day at work yesterday. I don't know exactly why I was so pumped up about what I was doing, but I did make considerable progress on troubleshooting and resolving some of the ongoing problems with a number my projects. I even had time to draw up a proposal to improve the routing and protection of some of the cables connected to my electronics rack in the B2 lab (see my last posted picture).

We had our first fire brigade (a.k.a. Team 2) meeting last night, which went reasonably well. The projector decided it didn't want to display my PowerPoint presentation correctly, but other than that I was pretty much satisfied with how it transpired. I've got a lot of work to do to get our people to the various training sessions they need here before our first major drill the third week of this month.

Today, being Thursday, I get to do my weekly duty as a "house mouse". Here at Pole we all pitch in to clean the bathrooms and common spaces of the station. There are janitors (a.k.a. stewards this year) on station too, but I think they mostly clean the halls that run the length of the station.