Trav's Travels: Reuniting with long lost cousin, in Antarctica

1/18/18

The Polar Star docked today and the crew was granted Liberty until midnight. My mom had told me that her cousin's granddaughter, Gina was on the polar star, and I was hoping to meet her.

At the end of our day, after my safety lecture, Mitch's friend from the Polar Star stopped by his office. They have 250+ people on the ship, but I randomly asked if he knew Gina. He laughed and said, 'she's f*cking awesome!' and told me she had told him last week that her cousin was in Antarctica. So I gave him my information to contact me in case he ran across her. While I was showering after my workout, Elisha got a call from Danny who was bartending in the coffeehouse that my 'long-lost cousin was there'. So we headed over there and met her and chatted with her and her roommate for awhile.

We then headed over to Coasti-oke at gallaghers, which was a ton of fun. Mitch and his friend joined as well. The coasties REALLY get into their karaoke, so it was a blast. The whole bar would be singing and cheering and clapping. And often one person would start up on stage and then, by the end of the song, the whole stage would be filled with people. It was so fun that we stayed until bar closing time (and of course closing time was the last song sung) even though it was a school night.

It was funny b/c every coastie I asked about Gina all told me she was the best. And then even some of the McMurdo people (like Danny) who met her, said how cool she was. And they all thought it was a great story that we met for the first time down here

1/19

The Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel sailed into the sound today.

In the evening we took a tour of the polar star. It’s a pretty big ship, and was cool to see. We got led around by a funny 19 year old coastie guy, and actually my cousin was his supervisor. Everyone we ran into said how awesome my cousin was, so that was cool.

1/20

There was a Chinese research vessel not far from our station that had a medical emergency, so they flew 2 helos in full of Chinese. Only one was getting med-evaced , but the rest came to see the station. Some of the top scientists from China. I gave them the tour of Crary, and I think I am now famous on Chinese twitter b/c they must have taken a million photos of me. Afterwards, they gave us Tsingtao beer from China to thank us for our hospitality.

The Palmer docked this afternoon, so we had a little get together over wine at the coffee house to welcome them.

The gov’t shut down today. It doesn’t really affect us here yet. The NSF people have to stop working and the congressional delegation (congressmen from Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas) that is in Christchurch ready to come check out the program probably won’t be coming…or they shouldn’t, since they should be home voting.

1/21

Mitch, Carolyn, Elisha, and I tried for the all-trails hike today (do all the trails in McM in one day), but after we did the hut ridge loop, we bailed b/c it was just super windy.

The one bummer for me here with the shutdown is that since it was a bad weather day, I could have watched basketball on the TV. UF was to be playing Kentucky, at Rupp Arena, and the game was going to be televised here, but the Armed Forces Network (AFN) that we use to get our sports was shut down b/c of the shutdown, so I didn’t get to watch the gators beat Kentucky by 2 points at Kentucky!

1/22

Snowing beautiful huge spring snowflakes today! Town is covered in beautiful white, and it feels like ski season!

The congressional delegation was cancelled today. Liz said that is a good thing b/c if they had arrived here with no budget, town might have gone crazy, and maybe even more than just picketing. I’m kind of bummed though b/c I was the Crary person assigned to give them the tour of the lab and our displays, which I figured would be interesting since all 3 are vehement climate change deniers.

We got a personalized tour of the Palmer vessel today by Jamee who is in charge of Marien and Palmer station science.