Sleepy South

Lots of open water already.

By the way, this is the man I’m exclusively dating.  

Look how handsome he is.

Programming note: I’m back to doing this on my phone, so non-sequiturs are the fault of autocorrect.

Dude, I am TIRED.  The last two weeks on station it didn’t matter how much I slept (or how little I worked), I was just tiiiired.  We had some lovely snow and the penguins hung around; I bundled up for the cold first sunset; and then I got shuffled and delayed a few days which allowed for more thorough goodbyes and mental preparation for departure.  The last days of McMurdo summer are a quasi-ghost town: everyone’s doing last-minute chores, presumably inside, and the typical hustle and heavy machinery activity disappear as though it’s a snow day from school.  

Even with all that extra nap time, here I am in beautiful New Zealand, adventure at my fingertips—and I’m sleeping a solid 11 hours.  Ok, I’ve walked over some decent hills and scrunched my toes in some beach sand and am well on my way to a solid tan.  In a few days a buddy and I will tackle some sizable peaks and saddles and river crossings along the non-flooded portion of the Rees-Dart Track.  My tent stakes will take their first plunge into international soil, and I’ll light my own camp stove for the first time.  There are currently three types of cheese in my rucksack (all Kiwi).  I’m rested (I think) and I’m ready.

Molting

I made an effort to finish reading my books, hike to Castle Rock, and give the bathroom a thorough cleaning.  Soon it’ll be time to pack, to winnow things down for travel and leave a box of anticipation and postcards and socks for next year.  Fingers crossed for working in Fuels come October, but, no matter the job, this is where I want to be.

They're tiny, but look on the land in front of the ship...

HOLY SHIT!

Hey guys!  Thanks for choosing to molt here.

We’ve been doing lots of taxi rides.  They let the poor Coastie rats off the boat for two days and they swarmed, over the hill to Scott Base, up trails, and back down to the wharf and the boat.  And the shuffle of summer people departing and winter people arriving has filled our lobby with confused, overdressed people burdened by unreasonable amounts of luggage.  Another end-of-season sight: I will always chuckle at the actual boxes of rocks that come back from the field to be analyzed in labs back home (they’re looking for rare meteorites), boldly stenciled as “ROCK BOXES,” in case you have any second guesses as you lift them.

February is remaining oddly warm, and the penguins (and humans) are loving it.  They lay basking in the sun like so many beach bums -- face-down on rounded bellies, sometimes tucking their faces into their shoulders.  We all seek that ultimate comfort of dozing away the warm afternoons, burrowed into a choice pillow.

My roomie made it back after a looooong two-week weather delay from a deep field camp.  Day after day they canceled flights because of storms on one end or the other, and finally, a day before the seasonal cut-off, they managed to get one mission (instead of four) there and back.  The plane had to be dug out and re-launched with rocket boosters.  And here we’ve been sitting pretty with salad and fruit again, and the bountiful harvest of second-hand clothes and room décor people are shedding as they leave for home.