Winfly is almost here

  The first flight of winfly will be here in two weeks. Everyone is excited because today we found out we will be getting fresh produce! I would do almost anything for a fresh salad at this point. It seems crazy that the winter season is almost over and that I will be going home in a few months. It's hard to believe I've been here for almost a year. It's been busy around McMurdo lately. The runway needs to get set up, buildings need to be opened, and I still have 20 rooms to remodel before October. We have our last two day weekend in a few days. One of the benefits of working here in the winter is that you get one two day weekend each month. Two of my friends are having their wedding ceremony on Saturday and it should be quite the party. You can't legally get married in Antarctica, but they decided to have a party anyway. Fun fact: Even though you can't really get hitched here, you can begin divorce proceedings.

  The weather is getting worse lately. The runway has been -40 for the last few days and the wind has picked up a lot. August is always the coldest and windiest month. Everybody hopes for a condition 1 storm so we can get a day off, but the station almost never goes con 1. Only if there is blowing debris that could kill you does con 1 get called. There has been a storm here that blew a sheet of plywood into  a building like a knife.

  I've been trying to sort out all my photos from this winter and I will make an effort to post more of them. In the meantime here are some photos of the aurora australis, the moon, and our station winter photo. 

Daylight is returning!

 

 

 

  It's funny when I think about how long it's been since I have seen daylight. I'm actually suprised that constant darkness has not bothered me at all, though on a clear day you can always see a faint glow on the horizon, which for the last month has slowly increased each day. Yesterday around 13:00 I could even see the outline of Mount Erebus. It won't be long until we have full daylight for part of the day and only a month until the first sunrise. Another odd thing is how much warmer it is than I expected. The ambient temperature is usually only about -10, though it has gone down below -30. Only when there is a strong wind does it get really bad. -100 wind chill kind of sucks. It is also only four weeks until the first flight of winfly, when we hopefully will get fresh produce and mail, along with about 75 new people who will most likely infect us all with whatever nasty viruses they picked up on the flights here. Oh joy. Winfly (winter flyover) is the official end of the winter-over season and a reminder to us that we will no longer enjoy the luxuries of wireless internet, a hot tub, having no competiton for time in the band room, and other small benefits of winter. The only thing that really matters is if we will have to get a roommate or not. There is talk of letting us keep our single rooms until mainbody, but there is always talk.  

  Overall, this winter season has been great. I really can't remember the last time I had this much fun. Almost every weekend we have some sort of party to keep our morale up. We had a huge party for the 4th of July, a mid winter dinner party both here and at Scott base, a medieval party at the waste barn, Scott base had a birthday party for the queen, and this coming weekend there is a party at the south pole traverse shop where both my bands will be playing. All this along with a host of other activities during the week leave me with little to no free time, which is better than being bored at a frozen outpost at the bottom of the world.