Plagasus

some photos of pressure ridge tours, turkey trot, and thanksgiving, and skiing, and happy camp

12-8-11

Elisha (the shuttler from Couer D'Alene) has this velcro thing across her carhart bibs where she puts a word of the day. Today she made up the word, Plagasus, a play off of our airport road Pegasus and Plague. Little did we know how true her word of the day would ring. It had snowed and drifted during the night, setting up for an epic day on pegasus.
By the time I got into work, Shuttle Queen, Shuttle Fran, Shuttle Kroise, Shuttle Dan (x2), Shuttle Dave (x2), Shuttle Randy, and Shuttle Adrain had all been pulled out of the snow. By the time it was over, and this is likely an undercount b/c it's impossible to keep track of all shuttle drivers, the count had ballooned: Shuttle Elisha (x2), Shuttle Mel (x2), Shuttle Linnah (x2), Shuttle Char, Shuttle Kat (x2), Shuttle Bob, Boss Pete, Shuttle Cassa (x2), Shuttle Jerod (x3), Shuttle Shafer, and Shuttle Bobbick. And those are just the ones that I heard on the radio and remember, but I am not always monitoring the radio. Listening on Channel 5, the channel for fleet ops, the ones who pull us out, was just hilarious. It was so busy with people calling in to get pulled out. Of course the galley truck non-stop. Lots of deltas from Cargo, and just other random departments. Sometimes, like in the case of Dan, a driver would be pulled out and then be stuck again just a few hundred yards down the road. Eventually they had to close the road to light vehicles (except of course the vans for shuttles)

I finally got stuck today, though it was mainly to avoid danger. I actually first had a close call of being stuck. I was driving a delta and when a posse of 4 vans (b/c they had finally all been pulled out) rolled by I pulled over far to the right to give them as much of the "better" part of the road as possible. I pulled too far right though and found myself stuck. As I watched Bobbick fly by (keeping speed is important), he hit a huge hole (some of the holes were so giant they were described as tank catchers), and came out of it with all 4 tires at least 1 foot of the ground. He landed it nicely with just a bit of a swerve and kept on chugging as us shuttle drivers do. The delta is an articulated vehicle, so I was able to do a crabbing maneuver to get her out and back onto better roads. On the way out, there was a particularly hairy and nasty section (mile marker 13, aka Mel's mile). I somehow got throught it. On the way back I heard fleet ops go over the radio saying that they highly suggested using another lane than what we were in b/c that one was a 100% sure stuck way. So I was feeling pretty good that I had made it out. Mel, heard the broadcast when she was a MM13 and tried to cross over but ended up getting her delta hopelessly sutck and creating a monster hole in the road. My stuck came on my last run of the day. I had made it to within 1 mile of the airport when I came upon a slow moving cargo delta. I asked permission to pass, and they said OK to pass on the right. So I went around the right, but it started to swerve towards the right, so rather than be smashed by a huge delta, I made for the ditch.

After work, I had dinner with Aunt Karen (Shuttle Shafer) b/c she wanted to interview me and ask me questions about my experience of coming down here, why I came down and what my life is/was/and will be like. She's not entirely sure what she is going to be doing with her interviews but she is thinking about perhaps writing a book and she's also using them in her correspondance with schools back in NYC.
After my dinner date with Shafe, I joined a bunch of friends to watch a Mad Max movie (starring mel gibson and tina turner). Terrible. I'd never seen them, let alone heard of them before, but this weekend's party is a mad max (post apocolypic) theme, so we watched it to get costume ideas. After the movie, I joined Elisha, Mel, and Cargo Margo for some beers at American Night at Scott Base.


***Broadcast only, do not reply to this email***


All,

Due to deteriorating conditions, the snow roads are now closed to all wheeled light vehicles. The only exception to this restriction is the shuttles department who may have an occasional van on the roads due to a shortage of available vehicles. I understand that this will pose difficulties for many departments and we will open the roads to light vehicles as soon as conditions permit.

Thanks for your cooperation,

Dave Scheuerman
Chalet Sr. Admin
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
720-568-1000 x2624
pager #661

12-9-11

My day off. Slept in b/c I was in need of some rest and then worked on my grad school essays. Finally submitted all three: to Yale, Duke, and Florida. So that feels awesome.

Went on a pressure ridge tour with Elisha, Mel, and Nate. It was snowing hard with big flakes, so the pressure ridges weren't as specactular as last time; however, there are starting to be some melt pools. These melt pools are gorgeous turquoise blue set back in the white. They look like beautiful blue lagoons. And the cool thing is that we got to watch some seals swimming around in them and then breaking up through the slush for air.

12-10-11

The road to Plagasus is getting a bit better, but the holes are still huge and you stil need some speed to get through them. On my first run this morning, I definitely had all 4 tires way off the air on 3 different occassions. You feel kind of like you are in one of those wild chase movies. It's not often you get to catch huge air in a vehicle. I've been lucky as my passengers generally hoot and holler and thank me for the ride as compared to complain like some people get. I had someone tell me today, that it was an awesome ride and that usually something that exhilirating would cost him 50 bucks at an amusement park.