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.