On a magic carpet ride

Twilight colors at Arrival Heights, with Erebus in the background

Starting off with something pretty. The sun set last week, leaving us in twilight, and it has definitely gotten darker through out the week, as night continues to fall. But before we get to 24-hour darkness, we've been getting some lovely colors, at least when the weather cooperates.

This week was very eventful, hopefully the most eventful of the winter. Most of the excitement was related to CTBT. On Tuesday morning I got an email from the grantees that one of the vaults out at Windless Bight had gone down and they weren't receiving data from it. I spent most of the rest of the day organizing transportation out to the site and getting everything together. Since this is one of the few opportunities to get off station during the winter, the folks in admin also organized for a couple of stewards to along with David and I as a boondoggle.

The drive out to Windless Bight is about two hours and we started out in the dark, and we were able to watch the colors change as we got to the brightest part of the day. It was about -40 when we got to the site and started working.

The vault that stopped transmitting data out at Windless Bight

Marci and Will, our two boondogglers, hanging out in the cold

Getting out of the PB at Windless Bight

Once we got the vault open, it didn't take long to figure out what was wrong. The digitizer was off and wouldn't turn back on. So the solution was obviously to replace it with the spare, which was sitting back at McMurdo, since I didn't bring it out with me. I brought everything else, but not that. So we ate a quick lunch and headed back to the rock.

Wednesday night was trivia night, so I hung out at Gallagher's with the Flaming Mangos and ate a burger somewhere other than the galley.

Teams getting ready to play trivia

We were able to get the PB again on Thursday and the weather was clear, David and I headed out again the next morning, along with Kristy from Supply, and Jason from Fleet Ops. Another beautiful day, but colder than Wednesday.

Computers still work at -40, but not very well.

Jason and Kristy at the vault.

The digitizer was pretty easy to swap out and I got my computer hooked up and talking with the new one to make sure it was working. At below -40, my computer was still working, but it was slow and the screen started fading pretty quickly. The ethernet cable was tough to get out, since it kind of froze into the port. I ended up using a hand warmer to get it unstuck. Once we got the vault closed up and the door sealed, we got back into the PB and started for home. We got about a half mile and the Engine Control Error light came on. We called into the VMF and were told to turn the PB off and on again. We did that and the light turned off, so we started driving again. We made it about 30 seconds and the light turned on again and we figured out that we were able to get a top speed of about 5 mph. At that point, the VMF told us to sit tight and wait for a Challenger to come drag us back to town.

David frowning at the error light.

Looking back towards town. That is a lot of wide open space between us and them.

Looking out the PB window. You can see the lights of the Challenger in the distance.

We waited about three hours for the Challenger to come get us, spending our time talking, playing "Name that Tune", and napping. The Challenger got in position and we drove the PB onto the magic carpet, which is two long rubber sheets that get dragged behind the Challenger, so that it can tow things. Definitely the smoothest PB ride I've ever taken.

Jay and Kevin came and rescued us with the Challenger.

The magic carpet behind the Challenger

The PB in position for a magic carpet ride.

Getting ready to go.

Nap time on the ride home

Of course, once we got back to the transition at Scott Base, the engine light turned off and the PB started working normally. We think that it was probably just to cold out at Windless Bight for it to work right, and since it was warmer close to town, things started working again.

After all that, Friday was pretty quiet, and lead into our two-day weekend for May, which I'm celebrating by playing guitar and watching Game of Thrones with friends.