Camping, MCI's,Penguins, BBQ's and more...

Before I start, I want to point out that this post will be all over.

Well there is a fair amount of news from MacTown. First, Paula should be going to Happy Camper School this weekend. She is scheduled for Friday and Saturday. She won't be riding in the Nodwell. And unlike myself that slept in a Scott tent she will likely sleep in a snow trench.

We had another MCI training session today. (Mass Casuality Incident) Paula is the leader of the Medical Aux. and I am in the Med. Aux. as well. We did scenarios for Red and Yellow patients (Bad and Really Bad patients) and it looks like we have allot of people for Med. Aux. but most are Wildland CFR's or basic Red Cross first aid trained. And we had 3 other EMT's but Paula and I are the only two that have ever had a real patient. So the most trained person on the team is Paula, and the second most qualified is me and then down from there. Notice the steep decline in skills here? There are several medical proffesionals here and we are basically here to be assistants to them. Paula will fall right in with them due to her higher training, and the rest of us are just assistants. And we are having the big station wide MCI drill within the next week. And the only rumor is that it will be on Friday or Saturday. Enjoy camping Paula!!! But we don't know when it will happen.

Last years MCI drill was an explosion at the fuel pumps with people involved. So, when the Fire Department rolled up with two engines and an ambulance, they then recieved a structure fire on the other end of town. So, they had the MCI, Fire, Haz-Mat and lots of logistics. And for the winter over MCI drill, they had a MVA (Motor Vehicle Accident) with 8 patients, and to make things interesting three of the patients we on the Red team of the Med. Aux. so they were down 3 people right away.

As I mentioned quickly before, I saw more penguins. This time it was three Adele Penguins. They are about a foot tall and they are histerical. They run around like they have no legs and they look like cartoon characters. We were within 150' of them.





See how their wings are up on this last photo. Those wings are useless, but the move 100 mph when they are running. That is the funny looking part.



Jamie, how do you deliver new Polaris ATV's?



That is how we do it in Antarctica!

Our shop will be having our first BBQ this Saturday. Just in time for my birthday! We have on a few times a year. We dug out the grills yesterday and let them thawout in the shop last night. We started cleaning them today. When your BBQ grill at home needs new lava rocks in the bottom what do you do? Go buy a new bag of them? Buy a new grill? Well when you are on an island that was formed by a volcano and there is no vegitation or top soil, you just go outside an grab some rocks. It's very easy.

I just returned from our volleyball league game. I am not on theVMF team, but Josh went to a science lecture tonight and I filled in for him. He is paying me with his allotment of Chocalate Chip cookies from the Galley tomorrow. We lost 4 games in a row, each time by 10 points or more. And we had 6 players to their 3 players. Needless to say they will never have any service done to thier vehicles.

Until next time.
R.J.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry some of your comment haven't shown up lately. I have corrected this problem, I think. If you type in a comment and it doesn't show up, it has to be approved by me for publication. I am trying to turn that off.

I don't want to be accused of censorship.

P.S. I saw me pengins yesterday on the Detla trip!!!!

It's So Good, You get two in one day!

Suggestion: Go to the first entry that I made today titled "Life on the Ice, Literally!" and then come back and read this one. It will all make more sense that way. Enjoy.

The original title of this post was "Lavocat! Where is my hound dog and rocking chair!" But I will save that title for another day. And the reason for two posts in one day is my lack of time in MacTown lately. I wrote my last blog on Wednesday and I didn't have time to post it on the web that day. And the last entry ended with "That is all of the excitement of last week. So far this week I have been in the shop all of the time and nothing to interesting to report." That all changed Thursday.

Anyone want to guess where I went, and what I went to go rescue, and why it needed rescuing?

Yep, we went north on Evans Road to Razorback Island, but it was Little Razorback Island this time.

And you area correct that we went to save another Pisten Bully with a leak. But I got you on the last one. It is a fuel leak instead of a hydraulic leak this time. The suprises never end here!

So Josh, myself and two Haz-Team members left at 3PM on Thursday to go asses the scene. We cleaned up what we could and determined that the fuel tank ruptured. So we found that the tank still had 68 liters of diesel fuel left in it. Luckly the tank also had a drain plug in it and we had two 55 gallon drums for contaminated snow on the trailer. No problem, just drain the tank and put it in the drum right? Well the PB is about 8" off of the ground and the drum is 4' tall. Not a good thing for draining the tank. So if you are an hour north of town on the sea ice in Antarctica and you need a drain pan what do you use? Well how about a tool box. I chucked all of the tools out onto the ice and pulled the plug. My index finger served as a stopper as the others dumped the toolbox full of JP-8 into the drum. Nothing like having a bath in fuel out on the ice in 5F weather.

The good part about this trip was that the PB was parked about 150' from several seas. And so I will have some really good photos next week.

Well we rolled back into town about 11PM. Remember at 11PM it looks the same out as it does at 11AM. Brught sunshine. Very interesting. The night foreman took us to Mid-rats dinner at Midnight. I have heard about Mid-rats before, and everyone says that is a very good meal because it is made in much smaller quanities than the day time meals. The dinner lived up to all of the hype. So that was one good thing about being out all night.

Then on Friday Josh and I took a Challenger out to drag the PB home. I won't get into all of the details, but it was a very look and frustrating day. We left the shop at 9AM and returned at 6PM. But we got it home.



If you click on the map and look closely you should see the areas that I have been talking about. The road heads straight from McMurdo to Tent Island and then to Cape Evans. You can see the Ice Tounge that we pass all of the time. It is a very nice drive in good weather. It is miserable in cloudy or bad weather. Oh and I get to drive it again on Sunday as a Cape Evans trip leader. I am hoping that they will soon change the neme to the RJ Road.

And for everyone's entertainment here are a few photos of our room. Paula is watching football and talking to Bill Reed on the phone.





Go Sabres!
R.J.

Life on the Ice, Literally

Last week was a nice busy week for me. I had 4 trips in one week out of town. All were north on the Cape Evans road. On Saturday we received a trouble call for a Pisten Bully with a hydraulic leak on Huttington Cliffs road. So the lead mechanic and I packed up all of our ECW gear and some tools jumped into a PB and headed north. Huttington Cliffs is about 13 miles north of MacTown just south of the Erebus Ice tongue. We were out for the entire afternoon and we were not able to solve the hyd. leak and so the PB got to spend the weekend out on the ice.

Then on Sunday I drove my first Cape Evans trip in a Delta. It was a very nice easy trip. We had a CAT Challenger (a large rubber tracked vehicle) leading the way and pulling a snow drag. So we had a nice smooth groomed trail to follow.

Then on Monday, Dave and I returned to the scene of the first PB mess. This hyd. leak was called in over the radio which quickly was escalating the whole thing into a major spill response from the Haz-Waste group. They did not want to take the entire crew out onto the ice that far. So, we acted as the repair crew and the Haz-Mat cleanup team. Aka we shoveled all of the contaminated snow into 3 plastic barrels and marked the GPS coordinates for the Haz-Waste crew. They were very grateful. When we find a leak on a vehicle and we have to call it in to the shop on the radio we have a code word. “We have a maintenance issue” is the proper term. This doesn’t get the attention of the firehouse and everyone else that listens for oil spills. And then we clean things up properly without allot of excitement.

Next was on Wed. There was a PB with two dead batteries out at Razorback Island seal camp. Notice the theme with dead PB’s? So my friend Josh and I packed up our ECW gear and tools and headed north again. Razorback Island is about 16 miles north of town just north of Erebus Ice Tongue. The island gets it’s name from the profile of the island. It is long and narrow and has a long sharp peak.

1

As you look at this photo the camp would be on the right end of the island near the area without snow on it. The interesting thing about going out past the Erebus Ice Tongue is that the sea ice was gone in this area last year. So as you pass the end of the tongue you have to cross over some major ice heaves and a few cracks and then you are on very smooth blue ice.



The field camp consists of four fish huts, one outhouse, one solar array, one fuel depot, and a telephone transmission site. The scientists will usually spend a week out here at a time. One hut is the galley, one is the living quarters, one is storage, and one is the lab. This group is studying the food supplies that are available for the seals in the area. We were about ¼ mile from the shore of the island and there were many seals along the edge of the island.



As you can see they are already having pups.



Well we were not here to tour Seal Camps. We had to rescue another PB. So, Josh and I would take turns installing the new batteries into the beast. After a 45 minutes or so we had the PB up and running.



So we left the camp about 11:45 and we had about an hour trip back and lunch ends at 1PM. The plan was to make good time and be back in time for lunch, which was Pizza and so it was an important lunch to make. Along the road back to town we passed several snowmobiles and other PB’s. And then in the distance we could see something yellow headed towards us. Everything yellow here is a CAT piece of heavy equipment. As it got closer we saw that it was a D7 dozer and it was on the wrong side of the ice road. It was a New Zealand train headed out to setup a camp.



They were towing 5 cargo containers which are used as Fish Huts. And this was followed by a Haggland which is a very expensive Swedish tracked vehicle that floats!



If you look closely the Haggland has an outhouse and drums of fuel on the trailer. All of the important stuff. Gary, do you have a GPS like that on the truck yet???

Just after we passed the NZ crew we were starting to see the ice runway and we could smell the pizza. So we had the Pisten Bully running flat out when all of the sudden we came to a very fast stop. And the engine was still running, so I guessed what was happening and I was correct! We blew a hydraulic line on our PB.



As we say in the VMF, “We have a maintenance issue” on our hands. So I had to call the shop and let them know and we grabbed the tools and started to diagnose the leak. We blew the hose that runs from the emergency brake to the final drive motor. So we were going no were any time soon.



It is now 12:45 and we have no chance for lunch. After we got the line off we lowered the cab back down and sat inside to stay warm and ate all of the granola bars and candy that we could find in our ECW bags. We were rescued at about 2:30 by some co-workers. We had a new line made by 3:30 and we were driving the PB back into the shop by 5:30. Not a bad days work.

That is all of the excitement of last week. So far this week I have been in the shop all of the time and nothing to interesting to report.

Until next time.
R.J.

And the winner is...

Well thank you to everyone for participating in the 1st annual fall photo contest. Little did we know that it would include snowplows for some people. Here are a few of the entry's:



This wonderful shot was sent in by Gary. It is obviously a front runner in the contest, but he has more photo equipment and brains in his pinky than most people have in total; so he doesn't win. Plus he is a geek.



Dawn S. from Yosemite fame sent in this beautiful shot. Not a tree from the east, but that is not a part of the contest rules.



Cheryl sent in this shot of our old four wheeler. This proving that an eleven year old is smarter than Don Butcher. Even Matthew knows enough to ride a vehicle with four wheels in the snow. (Sorry I was guessing on the age and correct spelling)



Ah, Don. He used up all his brain power years ago, melting the hair from the top of his head.



Oldsmobile Dave got this entry in at the last minute. A very nice photo from Mill Road East Aurora. A nice place to be as long as you don't have to drink the water.



And the lone Fisher-Price entry comes from BobbyJ. As you can see Bob has chosen to display his colors in a different form. The red X. Just like old times Bob. I pick on you weather it is playing Halo or from 9500 miles away.



And here is a second entry from Brian Greeson. This one is much better than the first. Brian, didn't anyone ever tell you that Pine trees stay green? And FYI Brian there are several fish huts up on the ice now. I will try to get in one for another edition of the blog.

So as you can see the main outcome of the contest (not the original goal) is another chance for me to pick on people from Antarctica. I enjoyed it, and I hope you have as well. And it has been nice to see some colors of fall. Stay tuned, in March we should be able to send fall photos from NZ. (After re-reading my entry for today I have noticed that the only person I didn't attack is Dawn. And of all of the people that I have picked on, she would be the one to fight back the best. Sorry Dawn I'll try to be myself next time.)

And so the winner is:

Don Butcher

Anyone that is dumb enough to ride a motorcycle at the beginning of a state of emergency needs all the help they can get!!! Don, you can cook that chicken for yourself in May and then send me the bill. Contragtulations.

I thought it would be at least December!

Before I could trash talk Buffalo about having worse weather than McMurdo.





The headlines are for the views on the West Coast that might now know about Buffalo weather. 22.5" in October??? To give you an idea, today is one of the nicest days that I have seen in McMurdo. The temp has been holding a 2F with no wind at all. The sun is shining and when you are outside you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

Actually I was able to get outside to enjoy the sun for most of the day. We had a Pisten Bully blow a hyd. line about 17 miles north of town on the sea ice. So after lunch my boss and I got to go for a 45 minute Pisten Bully ride and then we spent about an hour and a half working on the dead PB and then a 45 minute return trip. A very nice trip with the weather that we are enjoying.

And tomorrow I get to lead my first trip to Cape Evans. We will be taking one Delta and a group of 20. It should be a good trip. I will post more photos tomorrow evening.

Enjoy the weekend everyone, and Beth in the now famous words of Jimmy G. "get a 6 pack and stay home."
R.J.

Time for you people to do some work!

Ok, so Paula and I have chosen to live on a continent that can support no plant life, and is considered uninhaibitalbe to most. Well I have just realized that we will not get a chance to experience any fall colors, or at least until we get to New Zealand in March. So, it is time the "The Three Hour Tour's" first contest. I want everyone, or at least someone to send me their best photo of fall colors to airrj1@gmail.com I will post some of them and the winner will get a free chicken barbecue.



Mmmm, Chicken.

Actually this will just be one way to help keep me from going crazy. When may be a short trip at times. So don't plan dinner around winning this contest. And someone from F-P need to take a photo out the back window of the maple tree at Fireman's field that turns bright red every year. That was one of the memorable things about standing on the back deck during break time. That and all of Darren's hot air.

This week will be the first full week of the busy season here. We got our bananas yesterday and more fresh fruit at brunch today. Remember, we are 17 hours ahead right now, so when you are eating dinner on Saturday night, we are eating Brunch on Sunday. And soon you will be off of daylights savings time, so it will be 18 hours then. So since we are ahead of all of you (I have been saying that I am ahead of everyone for years now) if you would like the winning numbers for the lottery, please send me a cash advance of 5% of the possible winnings and I will get those numbers right off to you.



Here are more penguin photos. We likely won't have any this good again, so I will share a bunch as I get a chance.



And I have reduced the size and quality of all of these photos by allot for the internet. If anyone wants some full size copies (about 1mb each) send me an e-mail. I would be happy to send some along. I am looking for a easy way to post video and then I will try to post some action shots.

Time for me to go watch the end of the Austrailan V8 Tuner race. It ain't NASCAR, but then again factory V8 rear wheel drive road racing cars are much more interesting than NASCAR to me. And we don't get the Sabres games here, so racing will have to do.

R.J.

Holy Crap!!!! Penguins!!!!!

Well it is the same Penguin sighting, but I am still excited about it. And Eric liked this title better and so I promised to use it for him. It has been a week now since we saw the penguins and the town is still buzzing about it. It is very rare to see emperors around here and even more rare to see them this time of year. So we were incredibly lucky to see them. I will add more photos of them soon.

And more current events; our first flight arrived without incident on Tuesday afternoon. There was two more flights scheduled for Wed and Thurs. but the weather did not read the schedule. So the next flight just arrived today. And I heard that there will be two more on Sat.



So we received allot of people (about 250), some letter mail, 3 helicopters, and NO FRESHIES! If someone offered me a fresh banana right now for $20 I would take it. However it has only been a month since we had freshies. If I was a winter person and someone offered me a banana for $20 I would take it and then beat them instead of paying for it.



Here is a good photo of them unloading the cargo without freshies.



Here is a Delta driving off to MacTown without freshies. And in all reality, I am not too concerned about freshies at this time. I just like to complain about something and Marty isn't here to complain about, so freshies is a good enough subject.

Today I got out of the shop for the day, and I got to go out of town as well. I worked with Will, the generator mechanic, for the day. They are trying to train me as a backup to him so he can have some help. His job is a seven day a week job, and so when I get up to speed on the generators I will likely volunteer to check on them once in a while on Sundays so Will can have a day off. Basically there are generators at all of the runways providing power for shelters, equipment and anything else. The big one right now is the ice runway. There are two 200kw generators out there. One at the end of the runway providing all of the runway lights and radar, and one in Ice Town that powers all of Ice Town. Which includes the air traffic control tower, and communications center. So that is the exciting runway right now. I spent the day at Willy Field and at Pegasus. These runways are about 8 miles and 18 miles from town respectively. I will explain the runways and how they are built and their differences soon. It is actually very interesting.

Otherwise not much new. My friend John, who was hurt in the Nodwell accident, flew out on Tuesday. And he should be at home in Denver now and hopefully resting comfortably. We will not have any fall colors to watch here. Because it is actually spring here, and because nothing can sustain life on this continent. We have lots of football on TV, which is a good thing. You can't be picky about the games, but at least we get football. We are planning to go to the climbing wall on Sunday. And we teach our first class for the climbing wall next Sunday.

Well that is enough rambling for now. Maybe I'll try to put together a group of interesting sentence over the weekend. Now I am going back to the room to read the Ford Overhaul manual for 4R100 transmissions. I start rebuilding them on Monday.

R.J.

PENGUINS!!! PENGUINS!!! WE HAVE PENGUINS!!!

Paula and I went on a field trip to Cape Evans on Sunday. This is one of the Delta trips that I will be driving/guiding soon. It is about 15 miles north of us on the Western shore of Ross Island. Well as we were traveling we spotted 9 Emperor Penguins on the Sea Ice. We quickly stopped and got out to view them. As soon as we got out of the Delta they started coming right for us!

We stood in a group and watched and listened to the group as they came towards us. They are very noisy. The Antarctic Treaty starts clearly that you cannot interfere with wildlife. And anytime that you are close enough to wildlife that they are reacting to your presence means that you are to close. So, after they came to us, we stood still for a while and then started backaway towards the Delta. They followed us again. We were walking along and they went sliding by us on their bellies. They can really move quickly on their bellies. Faster than I have ever gone on the Emery Park ski hill.

So the group we were with was made up of mostly winterovers that left today or this week sometime. And most of them have been here for 14 months and have not seen any penguins. Last year was a bad year for wildlife in MacTown. So, to see Emperor Penguins at this time was incredible. They are very uncommon in MacTown and it is very early. I haven't looked it up yet, but we were likely 100 miles from the ice edge. A very lucky day for us.

And here is the Delta that I will be driving for the trips. It is actually not very good in the snow. We had to dig it out 6 time on our trip. However it was the first trip out to Cape Evans and so the road was not very compacted.

Ok, how about a little lesson. Cape Evans is the site of the base camp for Scott's expedition to the South Pole. They setup camp there in 1911 and stayed the winter and in 1912 the expedition to the pole was started. Scott's crew did make it to the South Pole, however when they arrived, there was a Norwegian flag posted. So they did not make the first trip to the South Pole, and they were beaten by only a few months. Oh, and did I mention that none of the party survived the trip back. Not exactly a successful trip.

The Hut is left almost exactly like they left it. There is food on the table, clothes hanging up, science equipment, and even a Penguin carcass on the table. Everything is incredibly preserved.

The other interesting view on the trip was of Mt. Aribus. It is the large volcano on Ross Island. It is an active volcano and it is the only volcano on the planet with an active lava pool at all times. When ever you see Aribus it has steam coming out of the top of it. The lave pool is several hundred feet down into the crater. Scientist spend allot of time studying and filming the lava pool. Once the Beakers get into town here and have their cameras set up on the rim I should be able to get some photos of the pool to pass on.

Well I am off to dinner. Sheppard Pie, as requested by my supervisor. And by the end of the week I will post again (if I can get on a computer) and whine and complain about all of the mainbody trash that is coming in. I will actually have to wait 20 seconds in line for dinner tonight. And it will only get worse. One flight today, two on Wed. and Thurs. 500 extra people by next Tuesday. Now I know how the winterovers felt when us idiots invaded their nice little town.

Until next time.

R.J.