Trav's Travels: Merry McMurdo

12/14

Linnah organized a game night for all of Crary staff at the coffee shop. I checked out CatchPhrase from gear issue and introduced that to everyone. It's such a fun game, and we had lots of fun

12/15

It was group B-009's (seal group from Montana State Univ: Kaitlin, Shane, Thomas, and Jesse) last day here. It was sad for me b/c they are my favorite group. I felt like I really connected to them b/c they are all similar to me: into wildlife ecology, outdoorsy, skiers and bikers. And they're a very humble and soft-spoken group. Jesse actually is a friend of Lucas' and used to live in Pocatello. And we could of course commiserate about the near impossibility of getting a wildlife job in a cool place in the west.

Elisha and I took some fat-tire bikes and biked up the glacier and up to Castle Rock since it was a beautiful night. We parked our bikes at the foot of Castle Rock and climbed up to the top. The view from up there is always stunning! Then it's a fun and fast ride back down to McM

12/16

Today was my day off, and I took full advantage of it, especially since it was such a beautiful day! I skate skied out to LDB (15.5 miles roundtrip). The weather was so nice that when the wind died down in windless bight, I was skiing in t-shirt and no gloves and still sweating. I then hiked up scott base pass. In the afternoon, I relaxed a bit and waited for Elisha to get off of work. We then took the fat tire bikes and biked out to Willy Field (the airfield skiway, 14 miles roundtrip).

That night we went to the Helo hangar as the helo people threw a big party. 3 bands played: a bluegrass, a punk band, and a Strokes cover band. Elisha's work partner, Wyn, was the lead singer of the Strokes band, which was the headliner. They were good and everyone seemed to have a great time dancing.

12/17

I worked today, but Sundays are ½ days, so I still was able to do quite a lot. I gave my first Sunday Crary tour, which went well. I’m always nervous to give tours to groups of people. But today was the gingerbread house competition! This is one of my favorite McM activities because it allows you to be creative with candy and build things like being a kid. It’s fun to do it McM themed as well. Our first year we made a delta (one of the big-wheeled passenger vehicles), and our 2^nd year we made Christmas themed waste bins, which sounds weird, but back then McM had funny waste bins such as “hopes and dreams”, “glitter”, “urine soaked pants”, “unicorn parts”, and more. This year we decided to make a candy interpretation of the touch tank (the little tank full of critters that visitors to Crary are allowed to touch). We called it the tasty tank. We made funny little critters out of various candies and then gave them latin scientific names that were Christmas themed, such as ‘frostyfishii’ Our team was made of Elisha, a haz waste guy named Brad, and myself. We didn’t win, but ours was a crowd favorite in the galley where they are displayed. Most of the groups spent a whole lot of time prepping for the competition. We are just too busy, so we only used the 3 hours we were given. Several of the groups also had a lot of non-candy props they had made or bought, making their gingerbread creations less than 50% edible whereas ours was greater than 90% edible. All of the gingerbread creations were really amazing! My favorite was the model of the Science Cargo area. There was also a cool Scott’s Tent (the kind of tent they use in the field), a Piston Bully snowcat, a humorous beans warehouse, and then a crashing startrek spaceship driven by Trump, indicating that he was driving the NSF into the ground.

In the late afternoon, we hiked the around ob-hill loop. It was an incredibly beautiful and sunny day. In fact there was a group of girls sunbathing in their underwear next to one of the buildings. On our hike it was warm enough that I was able to take my shirt off for a bit. LDB was hoping to launch their balloon with the nice weather, so we hiked up to the top of obhill to watch it, but it ended up not launching, but it was still a beautiful day for a hike

12/18

Elisha and I got on one of the pressure ridges tours, which is always beautiful. It’s cool to walk amongst the seals and look at the beautiful blues of the melt pools. It’s starting to get soft out there, so there probably won’t be many more tours. In the last few days they’ve had some people fall to their waste in slush if they ventured off the safe and approved path.

6000 pounds of mail came in today! Elisha and I both got packages from our moms! Thanks moms! It’s funny because they post your last name, first initial on the webpage when you have mail. They are confused with us b/c most of our mail is addressed to Travis Guy or Elisha Kayser but the package from Elisha’s mom was addressed to Elisha Guy, which I think confused the mailroom and made us laugh.

12/19

Elisha's workcenter, Supply, held their Christmas party at Hut 10. Elisha spent the whole afternoon prepping and cooking at the hut, which I imagine she enjoyed as a break from work. The party was very nice. It was decorated, and they had lots of good hors d'oeuvres and then a main meal. They also had lots of very nicely decorated Christmas cookies. And they had lots of wine, rum-spiked egg nog, and mulled wine. After the party we went down to the dive locker to watch a movie with Mitch and the new diver, Christian. Christian is cool, and we found out he has done a ton of cave diving in the springs in Florida. He loves them and thinks they should be one of the natural wonders of the world. He's also the first person we've met outside of Florida who knows about how cool the springs and how Florida isn't this absolutely terrible place when you consider the springs and rivers in the area.

12/20

Today was the much anticipated Waste Barn Christmas show. We lined up outside in the cold 1 hour before the show started and still barely got a seat. We packed burritos and cider to eat and drink while we waited for the show to start. Due to fire code only the first 200 people are allowed in, so you have to get their early. Those wanting the couch or front row seats will wait outside for nearly 2 hours. It was a 2 and a half hour show full of mostly musical acts, but there was one stand-up comic and an acrobat performance. All were very good. A lot of singers with guitars, but also other musical instruments such as trumpets, flutes, drums, keyboard, and even an accoridan. A few did Christmas themed songs. My very favorites are always the ones that take a normal Christmas song and transform it into one that relates to McM and generally makes fun of the quirks of McM or the problems here. Wyn, Elisha’s partner in supply did a really great job on his set. They have an MC, the same MC who has done it for years, Ben Morin. He’s this hilarious guy who works in waste and has hair that looks like Albert Einstein. This year he had a ‘band’ to banter with, which involved one girl who was on drums. The wasties always go all-out in their decorations, and the inside looked amazing: with a theme of the children’s book “where the wildthings are”. They clear out the inside of the waste barn, decorate it and fill it with couches and chairs. They have a small bar set up, and then the funny challenge are the bathrooms since there is no plumbing up there. For the guys, they set up a big cardboard box over a large drum and this serves as the urinal. It was really cold and windy, and you couldn’t take your jacket outside to pee (since it was too crowded inside to try to make it outside with a jacket), so when there was a long line to pee (which was usually the case since there was a lot of drinking), you’d freeze. To make the line go quicker, we lined 2-3 guys up along the barrel, which made for some very intimate peeing.

It's always one of my very favorite events here. My favorite band that usually closes out the show with hilarious McM-themed Christmas song wasn’t there this year, but it was still a really great show. I’m always impressed with how much talent is here! It’s always a great crowd, in a cool place, and definitely a special event.

12/21

Today is the summer solstice, which means it’s the longest day of the year. Down here where we’ve been in one long day since October, it doesn’t really matter. Interestingly it snowed the entire summer solstice down here. We also had a visit from 4 adelie penguins that we spied on the sea ice through binoculars

12/22

We had our Crary Christmas party at the dive locker today. It included all of the crary lab staff, plus Elisha, Christian the diver, the Scott Base Sci tech Anitra, Liz’s husband Alex, Marci’s boyfriend Dan, Neal’s wife Clair, Graham (the new RA) and Megan (former lab assistant) and Chad. We had a ton of fun, especially b/c we played 2 of my favorite games: fish bowl and telephone Pictionary. We laughed and laughed and laughed. Many of us stayed up so late that we ended up going to midrats (the lunch for those on the nightshift)

My dad was worried that there wouldn't be much Christmas cheer and decorations here. While it's true that outside Christmas lights are pointless since it's 24 hour sun, almost all of the work places are very nicely decorated. Science Cargo was cutely decorated, ATO (air transport, cargo, and shuttles) has big blow up air decorations. Medical is crowded with all of their decorations. Crary is probably the worst since Marci and Carolyn don't like Christmas. But we did manage to get a tree up with decorations and some of the grantees have hung stockings on their doors. The cafeteria has a decorated tree in the middle, and it will soon be all decorated for the big feast. The VMF is hosting the Christmas party, so it will be decked out. And actually the electricians and lineman hung up wooden Christmas decorations on the electrical and telephone poles around town. Many of the doors in the dorms are also decorated.

fun green screen of mitch at the helo party

more helo fun with mitch

Bev and Abe sent the crary crew coffee that they now travel around the country promoting: kick ass coffee from kicking horse coffee company

kicking horse coffee

Elisha's work station

Christmas scene in our dorm

Crary touch tank

crary touch tank

our sea water pump went down so we had to had frozen sea water to keep the tanks cold enough for the critters. I added a little penguin to the mini icebergs