Updates on Station Life

A little less than four months left of our winter stay, and the sun is expected to peak just slightly over the horizon (more like its light rather than the ball of gas itself) in only four weeks.  We've all been busy plugging away at our winter projects the past few months, and now we are reaching the final stretch.  Currently there are a few things happening on station that affects our lives.

Right now the carpenters are busy replacing the flooring upstairs in the elevated station.  What this means for us is that parts of the upstairs hallway in front of the galley entrance is blocked off during the day.  Detours are put in place for us in the evenings so that we can still access the galley without having to go outside or in the beer can (cold!), but they change every night as the carps make progress on the project.

This morning, after having not gone to dinner last night, I found myself having to navigate around the blocked off areas by taking a few flights of stairs.  My room is in the lower level of the B1 wing, and the only access to the elevated station is through a flight of stairs in the wing.  So, every morning I must climb three flights of stairs to even get to the main part of the station (as if I don't climb enough stairs each day).  This morning I climbed the stairs, noticed that the hallway was blocked off from where I would normally access the galley, and had to come up with a different method of getting to breakfast.  So I went down the station stairs, down the hallway of the lower level, and then back up three flights of stairs in the beer can to get to the galley.  Talk about a morning workout.

The station safety engineer is really good about sending out emails each night notifying us of which parts of the hallway/station will be inaccessible and which parts we can still use.  Last night though I was incredibly tired and didn't process or retain the information in the email.  I haven't been feeling well either, oddly enough, with some swollen glands and a sore throat.  Shouldn't be the case since there should, in theory, not be new viruses on station...but here we are.  So, back to the main topic, I was a little confused waking up this morning on what to do to get to the galley.

As for other projects, my team is busy continuing with our inventory of all items on station.  This winter we have been specially assigned to count the items in four electrical milvans.  The newest milvan, milvan 3, has been staged for us to go and inventory.  We have been told that it has double the amount of parts of the previous milvans and is kind of a mess.  Oh joy.  We should get started on that inventory today.

And, as a special request I guess from my coworkers, other events have been happening on station.  This past weekend and the one before it were the South Pole Winter Games, aka the poleympics.  I didn't compete and chose to enjoy a more quiet station as everybody else pulled sleds outside, but from what I have heard it was a lot of fun.  Quite a few winterovers were walking around on Sunday after the medal ceremony looking like Mr. T.

Unfortunately my coworkers, Brett and Steve, dishonored our department by not winning gold in the team sled pull.  The two of them, with the help of our electrician, were pulling Brett's wife, Sarah, in a sled from the geographic pole to the ceremonial pole.  They came in second place after a group of guys all hailing from Michigan won gold.  Such shame Brett and Steve have casted upon the logistics department.  I suppose second place can do just as well as gold, but that's if you're really a loser at heart and don't have respect for yourselves.

Second place winners in the team sled pull.  From left to right:  Steve Ashton, Sarah Baddorf, Brett Baddorf, Peter Bammes