Trav's Travels: Dodgeball Champions!

1/14/19

Tonight I gave a presentation to the community on my time and research at Mpala Research Centre. Once a week a member of the community gives a travelogue. These are always amazing because the McMurdo community is the most well traveled group I've ever been a part of. AND they don't just travel a lot, many do some really crazy and adventurous things (ex. flying rescue helicopters on Everest, rafting the congo river solo, crossing the darien gap solo and getting captured by drug runners, biking from alaska to southern south america, first climbing ascents in greenland, and more). I finally got the courage to give one this year. Normally they are held in the galley, but b/c of a scheduling conflict mine was held in the coffee house theater. This was a special thing for the rec coordinator as the coffee house is being torn down at the end of the year, so she said it was the last major coffee house event, and a good one to go out on.

The coffee house was packed past capacity and my talk seemed to be well-received, so that was good. Many people told me later they really enjoyed it, and I do think I spoke rather smoothly and easily, which is challenging for me. I even told some off-the-cuff jokes that made people laugh. And I was just getting over laryngitis, so I was stressed if my voice would work (it did).

1/17/19

An event was held where we got to watch the new Warren Miller ski film. Susan, a co-worker of Elisha's has a son in the movie, so Warren Miller productions sent a special disc down here to her so we could watch it. It was a fun crowd watching it as it was all the ski people. You should have heard the collective sigh that went up when the first powder turn was shown--those familiar with Antarctic know that there is basically NO powder here. This little gathering of people was probably the only people on station who would rather see more white (in the form of snow) after their Antarctic contract than green (in the form of grass and trees) like most people are hoping for.

1/18/19

Today was the first day seeing Orcas!! From our dorm we saw a couple swimming close to hut point, so I sprinted down to get a closer look. They have moved on, but in the distance we could see 7 or 8 spy hopping in the broken ice that the icebreaker had created.

1/19/19

Today Cargo Tim organized pickup ultimate frisbee up in the cargo yard. We had a surprisingly warm and mostly windless day, so it was a lot of fun.

1/20/20

Today felt like going to the big city for errands. haha. I had both a dentist appointment and PT appointment at the medical clinic

1/22/20

The resupply vessel, Ocean Giant arrived today. Also, we flew out to Miers valley and finished up our work removing the old Antarctica New Zealand Stream weir. It was touch work, but in a beautiful location!

1/25/20
Today was the dodgeball tournament. It featured 8 teams of 6 and was double elimination. Our team wore Hawaiian shirts and we were called The Fury?. The Fury? ended up losing its first game, but then we kept winning and ended up in the championship. In order to win the whole thing, we would have to beat the opposing team twice, b/c they had not lost yet. And lo and behold, we were able to!

2/4/20
Today Nate and I flew out to Moore's Bay to flag an old project as well as dig out a cargo line from the snow. To flag the huge instrument array, I had to ski about 6 miles in a big circle. Because we took a helicopter out there, I jokingly referred to it as my first time heli skiing. The snow was great, the sun was shining, and the wind was light. If only the terrain had been about 40 degrees steeper!

The tanker arrived today to bring fuel to the station.

After work, I ran around obhill and during the run saw a mink whale, several adelie penguins, and an emperor penguin.

2/5/20

The coast guard ice breaker pulled up along the tanker, and they were going to help us (enviro and spill team) boom the boat (in case of a spill); however, conditions of the ice did not allow for it, so we had to postpone it.

2/6/20
Today the Coast Guard of the Polar Star had their Liberty, so they came on to station. This means at night was the infamous Coasti-oke at Gallaghers. Elisha and I went for a bit, and it was fun to sing along with the Coasties.