I forgot to mention that the science lecture on emperor penguins was awesome. It was given by the head penguin and seal biologist here who first got a PhD in wildlife bio and then got an MD in anesthesiology (he uses the anesthesiology here to put put down penguins and seals for a bit while he attaches cameras and physiological measureing devices onto them so he can monitor what they are doing and what their bodies are doing while swimming) It's quite interesting with the penguins how they can dive for so long and deep (they get their heart rate up extremely high before diving so that they are super saturated with oxygen and then once in the water they can lower their heartbeat to almost nothing in order to consume less O2.) He of course had some sweet video of from cameras attached to the penguins as well as video he took. National Geographic has used a lot of his video as did the Movie March of the Penguins. The emperor penguins are just so funny to watch. They have such unique mannerisms and just look and act goofy. If you haven't seen march of the penguins or happy feet, you really should.
10-25
More driving today and also got trained on dispatch. One of the cool things about today was that we had a big blizzard and storm come in. The areas out on the ice (ice runway, for example) were in deathcon 1 (i.e. condition 1) the whole day while at McMurdo we went down to Condition 2. Condition 1 means no one can leave a building while condition two means only work related travel can occur and it has to be with special permission and with frequent radio contact. The storm was really wild. You could hardly see 10 feet in front of you at times. I earned some points today by keeping the stairs and walk shoveled during the whiteout. They couldn't believe I wanted to be out their in those conditions. I guess they just didn't believe me on my cover letters when I told them I just really enjoy cold and nasty winter weather. For me it's just exciting.
But the best thing was that while driving a guy named Storm (interestingly named considering the day) out onto the ice where the pole traverse staging is set up, I saw my first penguin! An emperor. And of course he was goofy and funny just like the videos. For awhile he just walked around awkwardly but then fell onto his belly and slid away. The big emperors are majestic and the sight was even more picturesque as the background behind him were some large mountains. After Storm and I watched him tobaggan away, Storm gave me a tour of the traverse equipment. Basically they do a huge 30 day one way trip to the southpole carrying loads of fuel for the base down there. It would be a sweet trip b/c they are going across a huge swath of the beautiful continent to reach the south pole. They go on these giant snowcats that pull trailers full of fuel, supplies, and little motorhome type trailors. That would be pretty epic.
Worked a bit on my Duke essay today and went to spanish class and the tail end of yoga.
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