First Flight

First flight coming in for refueling

 Exciting happenings! We had our first flight come in on Friday. It was a Basler on its way from Canada, via Rothera (British station on the Antarctic peninsula below Chile), to McMurdo for the summer.

They were only here for about an hour, just stopping to refuel. But they brought treats for the Polies:

Precious cargo. Delicious, precious cargo.

 Apples all the way from Punta Arenas, Chile. And a couple of bags of yellow onions. There were enough apple for everyone to get one, and they went fast when they got put out at dinner. I guess everyone was pretty excited about our first fresh fruit since February.

We were initially scheduled to get two more planes in over the weekend, but we had some bad weather blow in and the flights were cancelled. But the weather today is beautiful, so the planes should be coming in this afternoon. Then, if the weather holds, we'll get our first C17, along with about 20 new faces, flying in at the end of the week. That'll also be when we start saying the first of our goodbyes, as the first couple winterovers to redeploy will be heading out at the same time.

In preparation for summer, we've been doing major cleaning all over the station. A lot of us have also had to move into smaller rooms from our long-term quarters, to make room for the people who'll be here for the summer. When the summer folks get here, they should find everything spotless and shiny.

See, spotless and shiny.

Edit: Forgot to add that the Basler took our ballots with them when they left. So, my absentee ballot is now on its way to Minnesota. Yay!

Oktober

Winterovers 2012, with the doomed Scott crew

Welcome to October. With only a couple of weeks left before most folks head home, we've been busy getting the station ready for summer. The station itself is getting a deep cleaning, and most of us have started to move from our winter rooms, to one of the smaller rooms, so the summer people will be able to move in to there rooms right away. The plane runway has also been groomed and flagged, just in time for our first planes to come in on Wednesday. We're expecting three small planes, a Basler and two Twin Otters, on their way from Canada to McMurdo.

Earlier this month we celebrated Oktoberfest with Robert, our resident German. He provided Bavarian-themed decorations and German music.

Dancing to Robert's German music

 and he and the galley crew made German food for dinner, chicken and brats and sauerkraut, along with huge pretzels.

We've also had a number of people brewing beer throughout the season, so we had plenty of that to go around as well. I think I liked the Coffee Stout best, but the Raspberry Ale was pretty good, too.

South Pole homebrew: Raspberry Ale, IPA, Barley Oat and Quinoa, and Coffee Stout

This last week Sven Lidstrom, of IceCube, joined Steffen and I for part of our LHe delivery to BICEP, and he got some great pictures:

Getting the sled into position

Lower Fatman down from BICEP2

Getting Fatman onto the sled

Driving back to cryo for the fill

Those of us doing the torch run finally made it to McMurdo. We actually ended up overshooting running out into the ocean about a hundred miles. The final tally for individual milage was very close, with Carlos and I contributing the most, 333 and 337 miles, respectively. Top three got prizes, which was exciting. I got a gift certificate to the Ledge Swing in Queenstown, NZ, so I'm going to have to try to squeeze that in to my vacation plans. I also made it to McMurdo on my own this weekend. I probably would have made it sooner, but I didn't start tracking my individual milage until about a month and a half into the winter.