Well, as light fades from the sky, the business picks up for us science techs. Being a tech short for the winter we are redistributing the workload, and hopefully everything will turn out well. A lot of science projects lay dormant during the bright summer months, but are activated once the sky is dark and the auroras come out to play. This week saw a lot of progress for our initiation of these experiments that is drawing nigh. It includes everything from establishing whether people can use flashlights on the roof while the instruments are enabled to getting the domes that house the instrument in the roof defrosted and ready to start generating data.
But, all is not work at the South Pole, though it oft feels that way. Wednesday night we had another Pub Trivia gathering, which seems to have made a successful transition (at least this far) from the summer to winter crews. My team did pretty well, and I'll be the host next week. I usually toss in an extra, fifth category that is a real doozy. Folks best be preparing themselves by boning up on my favorite set of books, because I'm bringing the pain when next Wednesday rolls around!
The core guys doing the 300, the Spartiates if you will, continue to sweat it out every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I have been doing the full 30 reps on all the exercises save pull-ups, but today I gained back a couple pull-ups after having been unable to keep up my numbers due to so many more reps in the other nine exercises. In a week or so we'll be about half-way through the 12 weeks of this workout then will transition to the really insane final test 300 workout the actors did at the end of their intensive training session for the movie "300". I don't quite have the figure of those guys yet, but there is gradual improvement. It definitely feels good to be back in the exercise routine again, even though doing it here where the altitude (10,800 feet above sea level today) is so much higher than where most folks doing this probably are. One guy has already lost 10 pounds since we started the program, and I'm really glad to see him there consistently as one or our die-hard 300. Well, more like 6, but who's counting?
1 comment:
Yeah, sorry I wasn't there to be the stop-gap on those experiments, but it will keep you from getting bored this winter. Have fun with it. Seen any good aurora yet?
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