I haven't written anything recently, so I feel a bit guilty. I finished my first week on the ice, today. One week down, 24 more to go. Thus far its been what I expected it to be like. Long hours of darkness, bitter cold and same old McMurdo charm. Our crews are coming together nicely, and it should provide to be a good season. Many of the leaders here are happy with the crews, so that restores my faith in my gut feeling of this being a good season. It is strange that now I'm the experienced Antarctican, it is a new role that I play this year. It is nice to know what to expect and sort of help the new people along. I provide the good helpful hints and tricks to them from time to time. So for the next couple of weeks I'll be on town schedule, which basically translates to less internet time. I feel wicked tired at the end of the day, so I usually hit dinner and I'm in bed before 10pm. I attribute the tired feeling to the sun being down and also being around -60 all week. Working out and going through some pretty dry classes aren't really helping the matter either. Being outside for more than a couple minutes is pretty painful on the lungs, I have come to find. The cold dry air sucks the wind out of lungs and makes it hard to breathe. But, I'm getting used to that feeling. I can hardly wait for the "warmer" summer weather though.
The training that we have done thus far has been pretty much review. The picture to the left of this is our scba familiarization drill. Basically we are blacked out (can't see out of our masks) and we are told to change our air bottle. It is pretty hard, you have to really know the pack well and how it is set up. All week we have been going over our standard operations and just getting everyone up to speed on our gear. One of our Lt's pulled a very well known (to us returnee's) prank on everyone. They call it "confined space training" and they got all of us all the day room and turn on the tv. After everyone was gathered, our Lt got all serious saying that this training could really help our firefighting skills. The movie he put in was R. Kellys "Trapped in the closet", which if you don't all know, has nothing to do with firefighting, but it was hilarious. I think it was the biggest viewing of this prank to date.
We have also been doing some area familiarization. The buildings down here, have no rhyme or reason in how they are numbered. I'm fortunate to know many of the buildings because I worked down here last year but its still a daunting task to memorize them. So for one of our trainings, we drove around town pointing out the buildings by name and number. I was able to get some get shots of the town from observation hill, from the area of the old water plant. As you can see in the photo, McMurdo looks pretty cool next to that sunset. What is really cool about Winfly is that most of the buildings aren't open yet. In our part of town, the walk from our dorm to the chow hall is pretty freaky.
The other dorms are dark because there are no lights on, and the darkness at 7am is very similar to midnight back in the states. The cold winter walk and crunching of snow is very peaceful, but at the same time I feel that I am walking through a rough part of town. I joke about getting mugged because it is so dark. In the next couple weeks, the snow will be removed from the buildings and sleepy McMurdo will awaken for the summer. I'll try to update this the best I can, but I'm not sure how intense the training schedule will be. So I hope this all satisfies your craving for news from me. Take care and Stay safe.
I haven't written anything recently, so I feel a bit guilty. I finished my first week on the ice, today. One week down, 24 more to go. Thus far its been what I expected it to be like. Long hours of darkness, bitter cold and same old McMurdo charm. Our crews are coming together nicely, and it should provide to be a good season. Many of the leaders here are happy with the crews, so that restores my faith in my gut feeling of this being a good season. It is strange that now I'm the experienced Antarctican, it is a new role that I play this year. It is nice to know what to expect and sort of help the new people along. I provide the good helpful hints and tricks to them from time to time. So for the next couple of weeks I'll be on town schedule, which basically translates to less internet time. I feel wicked tired at the end of the day, so I usually hit dinner and I'm in bed before 10pm. I attribute the tired feeling to the sun being down and also being around -60 all week. Working out and going through some pretty dry classes aren't really helping the matter either. Being outside for more than a couple minutes is pretty painful on the lungs, I have come to find. The cold dry air sucks the wind out of lungs and makes it hard to breathe. But, I'm getting used to that feeling. I can hardly wait for the "warmer" summer weather though.
The training that we have done thus far has been pretty much review. The picture to the left of this is our scba familiarization drill. Basically we are blacked out (can't see out of our masks) and we are told to change our air bottle. It is pretty hard, you have to really know the pack well and how it is set up. All week we have been going over our standard operations and just getting everyone up to speed on our gear. One of our Lt's pulled a very well known (to us returnee's) prank on everyone. They call it "confined space training" and they got all of us all the day room and turn on the tv. After everyone was gathered, our Lt got all serious saying that this training could really help our firefighting skills. The movie he put in was R. Kellys "Trapped in the closet", which if you don't all know, has nothing to do with firefighting, but it was hilarious. I think it was the biggest viewing of this prank to date.
We have also been doing some area familiarization. The buildings down here, have no rhyme or reason in how they are numbered. I'm fortunate to know many of the buildings because I worked down here last year but its still a daunting task to memorize them. So for one of our trainings, we drove around town pointing out the buildings by name and number. I was able to get some get shots of the town from observation hill, from the area of the old water plant. As you can see in the photo, McMurdo looks pretty cool next to that sunset. What is really cool about Winfly is that most of the buildings aren't open yet. In our part of town, the walk from our dorm to the chow hall is pretty freaky. 
The other dorms are dark because there are no lights on, and the darkness at 7am is very similar to midnight back in the states. The cold winter walk and crunching of snow is very peaceful, but at the same time I feel that I am walking through a rough part of town. I joke about getting mugged because it is so dark. In the next couple weeks, the snow will be removed from the buildings and sleepy McMurdo will awaken for the summer. I'll try to update this the best I can, but I'm not sure how intense the training schedule will be. So I hope this all satisfies your craving for news from me. Take care and Stay safe.
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2 comments:
I like your blog.I'm waiting for your new posts.
what bldg did they put you all in?
you're bringing it all back home Gretel!
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