It’s been a while since I’ve last made a blog post so here I
am updating the world. Not too much has
dramatically changed down here, but there are a few exciting bits of news that
I can share:
The window coverings are now down! We had to have them up since March to block
out all artificial lighting in the building.
There are optical instruments on the roof of the elevated station that
look at the auroras. I’m not totally
certain how the science works behind the experiments as it’s never been
explained to me (and I’ve never asked), but the essence is that no white lights
can be observed by the instruments as it messes up the data. This is why we would walk around with red
headlamps to get to and from the outer buildings and why the heavy equipment
had all been equipped with red headlights.
Now that the sun is up, albeit not over the horizon yet still, the
auroras cannot be observed; the
experiment is over. We’re free to remove
the window coverings and actually enjoy the view outside of our windows!
It’s still a bit dark outside from the perspective of the
station windows however. All windows are
tinted so as to block out some of the sun’s light and radiation during the
summer months. They thusly give the
false impression that the outside world is still cast in darkness. Not true!
My team and I went for a walk last week before we got a strong wind
storm so that we could enjoy the view.
It was -90F, a beautiful pink and purple glow on the horizon from the
sun, and I was able to maneuver without totally tripping over the sastrugi and
new drifts. Of course it’s me though so
at least some tripping is required.
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| Sunrise! Photo taken by Brett Baddorf (the one I took is on a different computer) |
We have also been getting more information from the Denver
HQ about our redeployment. Right now it
appears that there will be a KBA (Ken Borek) twin otter plane arriving at the
Pole on October 15th. They’re
just passing through, but it still signifies the first new person that we have
seen since the first few weeks of February.
They also, as is rumored, will be bringing freshies! You don’t know how excited I am to eat an
orange again. Yes, we have the
greenhouse so we aren’t going completely without fresh foods, but we haven’t
had fresh citrus in months. I have a
feeling that my diet is going to dramatically change in those few weeks; I will probably go completely raw vegan and
just engorge myself on freshies if it’s possible.
Of course with the announcement that we’ll be seeing some
friendly Canadians coming down our way in a month signifies just how close we
are to redeploying. There are still
things to do on station to prepare for the arrival of the summer crew such as
prepping the skiway (runway for you on terra
firma), getting all of the heavy equipment up and running, and preparing
any retrograde cargo that may have to leave the station. The past week or so my team has had a lull in
our workloads as we wait for the extremely cold temperatures to break and the
extreme winds to die down (yeah okay not as extreme as McMurdo or
Florida/Texas, but pretty extreme for here), but soon enough we’ll be
busy. We’re tired and mentally fatigued,
whether we know it ourselves or not, but I think the knowledge of our soon
departures will reinvigorate us a bit.
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| And it's a good thing too - we have to start shoveling out enough snow to get a loader in here to scoop it away. From left to right: Brett Baddorf, me, Steve Ashton |
