on-going and going

The last few days have been a bit of a sleepy blur. The biggest news, of course, was the three pallets of package mail that came in this week from Christchurch. That's roughly 18,000 pounds of packages. I finally have all the boxes I packed myself two months ago; and all the yarn I purchased in Christchurch, my shower caddy, photos of friends and family, my Halloween costume and some items I had hoped to hand off to Laura when she came through McMurdo! Packages are such a big deal around here they announced it on our radio station, everyone talked about boxes and mail at meals, and, as always, when new mail hits The Ice, we have a flag flying outside my work center that indicates to the rest of the town population that mail has arrived! It is literally, the highlight of every one's day or week! So, feel free to click here for info on dropping me a line.

I finally shook off the worst of my cold. So, I decided I should start running again and had a beautiful time on my first cold-weather, outdoor jog on the sea. It felt great partially because I needed to get the exercise, and partially because I was running on sea ice in Antarctica! Who gets to do that! When I got as far as our Ice Runway town, I turned and saw a unique view of the top of Mount Erebus in a shroud of clouds. It looks like a camera might have a filtered focus on the crown of the mountain. Erebus and its' steamy top were high contrast and bright compared to the muted, gray clouds surrounding the glaciers.

Two days ago, I stayed up way-late into the day and took a "push course;" a refresher for my Happy Camper and Sea Ice Schools from last year. By completing this course, I'm good to go off-station again this year. The content of the courses deals with measuring sea ice for safe travel, staying alive in the field with a survival bag, setting up tents, starting a cooking stove, treating hypothermia and frostbite, and helicopter safety. So, if I have any outside shot of heading out into the field, I'm ready to go!

The Station was abuzz with this little incident (picture from our shared photo i:drive). One of our tracked trucks had a fluid leak that got a touch out of control. The driver is safe and ok. The situation could have been much worse; especially given the distance from McMurdo (10 miles, or so). Anyone have a red retrofitted-for-Antarctica truck with triangle mattracks for sale?