Malleable landscape on the move

The winds have been blowing for a while again here at Pole, but not nearly as severely as before. Still, plenty of snow is getting drifted around station in different patterns than usual, since the wind has been out of the (grid) WNW direction. It actually has evened out some of the road to ARO, but is also causing the leeward drift of that building to grow very rapidly.

I played bingo last night, but...alas...won nothing. You got an extra card if you came in costume, so I wore my fedora and a gaudy sweater and carried my lariat, and called myself Indian Huxtable in honor of Indiana Jones and Bill Cosby's avuncular character from his eponymous show. I figured I brought The Hat down, so I might as well get as much mileage from it as I can.

Early "winfly" flights into McMurdo Station were supposed to start this week. The first was supposed to go on Friday, I believe, but a mechanical problem with the C-17 (thankfully on the ground) preempted takeoff. I think there are supposed to be about 6 or 7 early flights. No such flights are possible at the South Pole at this time of year, because we inhabit a significantly less clement spot on the continent. Early predictions for flight schedules to Pole are floating around, but are as good as fiction until they actually happen.

“The sons of civilization, drawn by the fascinations of a fresher and bolder life, thronged to the western wilds in multitudes which blighted the charm that had lured them.”
~Francis Parkman, “The Oregon Trail”