Saturday, October 18, 2008

Busy before big week

Well, once I get myself ready to go this morning I'm going to start in on the very large amount of cleaning that in my share of opening this station up for the summer. Every week we have had routine "house mouse" duties to keep the station in relatively tidy order, but spring is upon us-almost summer-and we have to get the place ready for some company.

My turnover to the 3 people replacing me in various capacities is going to be an interesting process. I don't know exactly how I'm going to juggle every body's schedules, but hopefully everything will sort itself out on its own. I'm nearing the completion of all the document updates necessary to turn the reins over to the new guys, and I'll gladly be shot of that stuff once it is indeed through.

The bands have continued to practice, and between the two of them (Picardis and the Irish band) we are adding 3 new songs to the combined set list. I believe we're at just a couple days short of 3 weeks until that concert is currently scheduled to happen.

Tuesday a Basler and Twin Otter aircraft will make appearances at Pole. The Basler will continue on to McMurdo after refueling here, but the slower Twin Otter will spend the night and continue on to McMurdo the next morning. This schedule is all naturally dependent upon the weather. Once those aircraft reach McMurodo then the personnel scheduled to come down before the main station opening with the C-130 aircraft will start flying. Again, the weather has primacy in this schedule.

Hopefully things will go fairly as well as planned, because I've started the booking process for my airfare to facilitate this great trip to Australia (Sydney, Alice Springs, Darwin) and SE Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia). I should be getting home on New Year's Eve, so that will be quite a weird time to be reinserted into my past life. I'm just waiting for confirmation about the airfare from the company travel agent to book my tours, hostels, and Cambodian visa before I drop the rest of the cash, though I may cave and go ahead and do that today if I have the time while the satellite is up.

Anyhow, things are going to get really interesting here pretty quick. I'll try to keep a better stream of updates coming as station opening and turnover gets underway.

2 comments:

The Frozen Desert said...

The South Pole meteorology department has stated that the Twin Otters are in Punta Arenas, but the Basler is still in Calgary. This could have significant impact on winterover departures.

Of course, it could be a rumor designed to drive Dave P. over the edge.

EthanG said...

Tis the season (for rumors).