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!