Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. I was going to post this yesterday, for your New Years...but I got busy at work. The whole town had the day off, but of course we never close. It was a pretty good day at the Station though. We finally have all of our trucks working, so we took this opportunity to train with them. Unfortunately Antarctica is a harsh continent, especially for our fire trucks. It seems that almost every week or so one of the trucks has to go to the machine shop here. But, as a Department we manage to adapt to any of these issues without a hitch. These type of issues reminds me of my days at Franklin Pierce. I really do miss that 1969 truck sometimes. Our tanker down here is a left over truck from the old Navy days here. It recently came back from the dead. The tanker is so old, that the company that made it has disappeared. They had to manufacture a new part for the tanker down here at one of our very own machine shops. The training was pretty cool to work with the tanker and our other apparatus. To answer everyones question, yes we do use water down here. We also have a hydrant system as well, for those of you who are just joining this blog. All that training yesterday made me "le tired" and thus I went to sleep before posting this...So, once again sorry for the delay in posting.
So all of you must wonder, How does Antarctica Celebrate the New Year? We'll at McMurdo we have this event called, "Icestock". Its basically a big party outside with live music from 7pm-Midnight or so. There was free food, and other fun activities. The live music I think was the most interesting. The bands were made up of townspeople/staff who signed up to play, and the music was very diverse. We had some blue grass music then some Jam Band and then metal. It was quite extreme, but somehow it all flowed nicely. Anyway here are the photo's for you all to enjoy. The countdown was in the New Zealand time zone, so I was the first of all of you reading this to enjoy the New Year. New Years eve was also my shifts holiday party at Hut 10. That was also quite fun. Hut 10 is perhaps one of my favorite buildings down here. I won't repost photos of Hut 10, but you can explore this blog and find them.

So take a break, enjoy these photos and slowly recover from last night. You deserve it.

Happy 2009 Everyone!