Trav's Travels: Who are these other people?

10/21
After a 1 day weather delay, the plane (A Norland Air Twin Otter) was able to make it! It took Storm away but brought Matt O (my boss) Martin (Nate's boss), the replacement mechanic (Kevin) and 3 replacement techs (Sam, Nate, and Marissa).

We found out the huge wind storm we had the other day was the remnants of Hurricane Nicole.

I cooked dinner for the crowd. I went back to an old favorite and made chicken artichoke pesto pasta and then garlic brussels sprouts and wasabi brussels sprouts. Everyone said it was super delicious.

10/22
The newbies were still of course acclimatizing, so we didn't do much with them. Marie made dinner, minestrone soup and made some icecream with hot fudge.

Towards the end of September Elissa and I started a musical movies Saturday night thing in the bighouse. Since it has such nice speakers, we thought it'd be fun to watch musicals. We concluded our series by watching the Phantom. We had also watched Les Mis, Chicago, Mamma Mia, and Moulin Rouge.

10/23
Hopefully my last Sunday here! We actually worked most of it, doing some end of season presentations and such. But it was a rather nice day, so I went out for an 8 mile ski. It was cold, so I got very frosty, but the sky was beautiful. We're in the season where, if the clouds are gone, that we are sort of in an everlasting sunrise and sunset. Kind of like McMurdo during winfly.

I cooked up some salmon and ahi tuna for lunch and then made a steak for dinner.

We had a really nice aurora show as well.

10/24
Did a lot of training and turnover with Nate, Marissa, and Sam.

They seem pretty cool so far. Sam has worked here for 2 other seasons before this, so he's pretty familiar. He's from Helena, MT. He did his undergrad at Bozeman. I can't remember where he got his master's degree, but then he got his PhD at CU studying aeronautical engineering stuff. Nate has been here many times, some as a tech, others as a carpenter, UT, electrician. And he's done a lot of stuff in McMurdo. He's from Vermont where he runs a bike club. Marissa is from San Diego but went to college in Massachusetts at Worcester Polytechnic University where she majored in mechanical engineering . She spent a year at the South Pole as a research assistant last year and just finished backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail this summer.

Marie made dinner. She cooked up brats, pierogies, purple carrots, and broccoli. She also made chocolate muffins with whipped cream for dessert.

10/25
I did a big training today for everyone at TAWO. Went over all the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.

I found out one of my best friends in the whole world, Chris Sherman, just got engaged to Emily up in Stanley, ID. I love Emily a lot, so I am super happy for them.

Nate made a huge greek feast. He made gyros with toppings of canned tomatoes, humus, kalimata olives, cottage cheese, and tzatziki sauce. He also made a bake brie dish with orange marmalade that his mom used to make that was very delicious. The last time he made cheesecake, I absolutely loved it, and when he asked me what he should make for dessert I said cheesecake. But we didn't have any creamcheese up in the bighouse, so he said he couldn't do it. I said I'd happily dig down to the freezer trench to get some. So I brought up 3 bricks of creamcheese for him. He ended up making 2 cheesecakes and when he put them out, he labeled them Trav Cheesecake 1 and Trav Cheesecake 2. haha.

10/26

Last day of major turnover. Made my last trip out to TAWO which was kind of sad. I like TAWO.
Matt made tacos and refried beans with cheese for dinner

10/27

Mostly a chill and packing day. Finished up turnover. Nate, Elisa, and I did a fair bit of hanging out. I'm going to miss them. They've been a big part of my life the last 5+ months and even a bigger part of my life the last 2.5 when we dropped down to 5 people. I've spent such a huge amount of time with them: 3 meals a day, work time, hangout time, etc. It will be weird the first time I wake up and don't see them at breakfast. As time has gone by and we've gotten more exhausted and known each other even more, we've started communicating to each other in grunts, which we understand. And I think we've all let our guard down and let our craziness show.

Marissa made Bulgarian tomato stew with dumplings and Marie made lemon bars.

Our last night at summit!! (Hopefully!) Got to see some pretty good auroras and watched the Martian and finished up the last bit of alcohol we had left, which made for a fun little party