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Today was colder than some recent days, -53°F (-47°C), and I was dressed for a day in the office, not a walk out to MAPO - sneakers over issue socks, jeans over thermals, and no fleece under the parka, just a tee-shirt. Between waiting for the cargo folks to position the load, and standing in one spot in a human chain, I didn't last long. I came back into Science to thaw out my fingers and toes, then went upstairs to my room to put on my FDX boots and another layer.
By this time, the five tri-walls were down to three. There was a chain of at least 20 people trying to get the beer inside before it froze. I think we only lost a few loose cans and a bottle or two from handling. We were all happy to help replenish the stocks.
My afternoon was mostly filled with building a Windows 98 box for one of the teams out at MAPO. The hitch was finding/making a boot disk when there are no remaning USAP Windows 98 machines. As I did this, there was another parade of recent arrivals looking for where to have their laptops scanned and approved. We do have a sign up that directs people next door for that, but it appears to be too plain or too small.
I kept my time at dinner short - tonight was the first official night for the store to be open. Of course there was a line. We filled the tiny three-room store and looped around the merchandise to fit ourselves in. I think I waited somewhere around 20-30 minutes. Fortunately, things shouldn't be so crowded once people have had a chance to pick up a few essentials.
From the store, I went straight home to shower and get ready for the Halloween party. I watched the end of "Dune" as I sat around my room drying off. When I went back to the bathroom to brush my teeth, etc., I stumbled across a strange tableux - Kyros was getting his head shaved by Sarah. He's going as Charlie Brown and wants to look the part. The two of them talked Billy into a shave as well, but I resisted their offers. My own costume was nothing elaborate; I threw on a brightly-colored silk shirt over black street clothes, then donned a punk rocker wig I brought down with me from Christchurch.
I walked out of the dome, down one of the arches, and out to Summer Camp with Sarah, Paddy, Kyros, Nicolas, and Billy. It's probably a 1/4 mile from the end of the garage arch. The walk was bright and windy. We got to the Summer Camp non-smoking lounge and had to walk around to the far side to the main entrance, past a stack of furniture and the foosball table. They had cleared out half of the jamesway for a dance floor. The bar was still in place by the door, as was one of the couches. Randi and Angela were sitting on it, photographing the parade of people and their costumes as they entered.
Some of the costumes were just amazing. Kyros, of course, shaved his head to go as Charlie Brown. Robert was there in his cow suit (complete with plastic udders). Sean found a stuffed doberman and walked around with it taped to his leg all night. Susie wore a harem-type outfit, with cardboard boxes over the bikini, covered in USAP cargo stickers ("Do Not Freeze", "Explosive", "Cargo Genie" and more). Not everyone had a costume, but lots of people really tried.
The jamesway never really got too crowded to move around. Most of the time, the dance floor was half-full or less. The tunes that really packed them in were all disco. Scarily enough, I think the most popular song, based on dancer density, was "Stayin' Alive".
After about 22:30, the crowd started thinning out. I walked back to the dome with Kyros, and went up to the old bar above the old galley. With all the flights in the past week, there were more 2004 winter-overs than 2003 winter-overs up there for a change. I sat and talked with Byron for an hour; Pete was there, too, but drinking soda water because he has a power plant watch at 02:00. It was good to see two tables of new winter-overs. It shows that if we start hanging together this early, we should have a tight crew.
Long before midnight, I headed back to my room to read and get some sleep before Sunday Brunch.
After nibbling and chatting well past noon, I returned to my room to take advantage of the remander of the satellite window. I caught up with e-mail and what not, then caught up on my sleep.
I woke up in time to grab a quick bite of dinner (all the tofu stuffed mushrooms were gone; I had to settle for the beef), then to run back to the dome to watch Robert's lecture on the haloes and aurorae of 2003. He has some amazing photos he took with his Cannon AE-1 and a 15mm lens. I wish I could find an affordable lens that wide for my Pentax P3. He has loaned me his heated camera box, but it doesn't solve the problem of how to wind the film (he has an auto-winder). I have several months to figure out a solution (the sun doesn't set until late March, but there'll be some interesting shots of the station to take in the weeks before true sunset).
After departing the entirely-packed library, I ran up the beercan and back to the new galley for the first of our Sunday Science Lectures. Jeff Peterson spoke on a new project of his - "PAST", the PrimevAl Structure Telescope, which uses inexpensive TV antennas (3000 to 10,000 of them) and off-the-shelf cable TV amplifiers to detect heavily red-shifted hydrogen emissions from the era of star formation when the universe was only 200 million years old.
Because of all the interference from TV and FM radio stations in inhabited area, the two most promising sites are rural China and the South Pole. Strangely enough, Pole is less remote than area of China near Nepal, at least in terms of materials, electricity, and such. In terms of transportation, though, China is much "closer". The critical thing, though, is how much interference there is from human activity. That remains to be proven, but the expectation is that Pole is a perfect site (and would require one third the amount of antennas due to the fact that see the same part of the sky for 24 hours a day.)
After the lecture, I hung around in the galley for an hour and a half, talking with Martin, Nick, Shanna, Dar, Jeff Peterson, and a few others. Topics included travel in China, the "Hollow Earth" conspiracy, and National Anthems (U.S., Australia, Britain, etc.)
While we sat and talked, the weather turned for the worse. The temps have warmed to -36°F (-38°C), but the wind is up as high as 21 knots and the visibility has gone sour. At various times over the evening, I could see MAPO fading in and out of sight (1 km away). The ARO building never completely disappeared, but it's only about 400m away. The LC-130s aren't supposed to attempt a landing if the vis is under 1 mile. Nobody at the table was expecting any flights tomorrow.
I breakfasted with Nick, Jules, Doc Will and Chris Martin. Doc Will was supposed to be heading North this morning, but was accepting of the fickleness of the weather here. He figured that this was a standard three-day patch of bad weather, and he's probably right.
At work, the morning was devoted to the SPASE project. Robert, Jeff and I went over some of the details in the back of Science, visiting web pages on and off the station for information and statistics. After reviewing the data-side of SPASE, we walked out to the SPASE shack, near MAPO to go over the hardware. Before entering the shack, Robert handed Jeff a hand-held temperature sensor box (like a volt meter). We all stood in the wind between MAPO and SPASE as Jeff read off temps from a set of buried thermal probes and I recorded. Operating a pencil is harder than you think in these conditions. Inside, Jeff and I started and stopped runs, turned the high-voltage to the PMTs on and off, and generally just ran the equipment through the range of things we might have to do in the middle of winter.
When we were done for the morning, Robert called someone over at MAPO, to arrange for a skidoo ride back to the station. Jeff and I walked back for lunch. The selection today was a little out of the ordinary: chicken in coconut milk (labelled "Chicken Pad Thai"), rice-noodle salad with a ginger dressing, and for dessert, coconut rice with crushed pineapple topping. Tasty, even if it was made mild enough for everyone to eat. I sat down with Nick, Jules and the rest of the AST/RO crowd. Before I could take a bite or even say a word of greeting, Nick handed me the hot sauce and said "trust me, you'll want this". To be fair to the cooks, I did try the chicken as served. It did need a touch of spice (but that's always been an issue down here - there are lots of people who don't even want any black pepper in their food, let alone something hot).
We stayed close to home after lunch. Jeff and I went down to the back of Science and processed the latest round of run log entries. He reviewed the histograms that the detector software generates, while I tweaked my Perl script that digests run log e-mails. It doesn't do everything (there's not enough data in the e-mails to fill in all of the boxes on the run log sheets), but it now extracts everything it can, and summarizes all of the interesting things present (skipped files, noisy OMs, etc.) It's a nice thing to have next to all of the charts and graphs when filling out the run logs.
Shortly before we knocked off for dinner, there was an all call that the remaining scheduled flights had been cancelled. As seems to happen here, if the morning flights are delayed more than a few hours, or rescheduled for the afternoon, they don't tend to happen at all. The temps are still up, -28°F (-34°C), but the visibility is still down.
Over at the galley, it was Mexican Night (tamale casserole, beans, rice, etc.) I sat with Sarah, Drew Logan (who is redeploying very soon now), and Chris Martin (who should be redeploying sometime later this month). It's been a good hand-over from last year's winter-overs to our crew, and we are going to miss plenty of them; but, they've done their time, and now it's our turn to do ours. We'll be in the same boat next year (in many cases, handing-over to the very same people). It's kinda wierd to be thinking about leaving a few days after getting here, but we are still in the process of "taking possession" of the station and making it ours. Once we get into the thick of summer and all of the 2003 winter-overs have left, we won't have to distinguish between "last year's" winter-overs and "this year's" winter-overs. We'll just be the winter-overs (until next October when the cycle begins again).
From the galley, I went down to the dome and to the library to swap out some "Dune" books, and to play some pool. Jason had the table when I arrived. I rotated in and won a couple of games, lost several others. Of the two I won, one was because my opponent scratched on the eight-ball, but the other was because I managed to sink the eight-ball myself without scratching, a rare accomplishment for me. I haven't played pool since the last time I was on the Ice, but it is coming back to me slowly. I'm doing OK at straight-in shots, but I'm still fumbling at bank shots.
The last thing I did before calling it a night was to stop by the back of Science and whip up a Perl script to format and convert temperatures for my web page - I give it a temp (ending in 'C' or 'F') and it prints out the temp in both Fahrenheit and Celcius, and prints it out again with the right HTML tokens for the degree symbol, ready to cut and paste into a web page (since I write all of my HTML with vi, emacs or CRiSP). In the past, I used a calculator and manually formatted the HTML. After finding several typos with the degree symbol here and there, I decided to automate the process. Writing the script was easy. Making it elegant took more time than writing it in the first place, but it's worth it. What I _should_ do is write up some Javascript to have two temperature scales that slide up and down as you move one of them, then display the HTML in a window nearby. I could probably put that up as a page for others to use. It's the obvious solution to a problem posed by one of my fellow 1995 winter-overs who wrote an F-to-C app in Visual Basic for Windows 3.1. He got it working, more or less, but the slidebars weren't tied together in real-time - you had to set one, then press a "convert" button. If you didn't press the button, then the old temp on the other scale remained on the screen. I showed him that it was possible to show that 100°C "equalled" 100°F, at least as far as the user could tell. Sadly, he didn't seem to understand the flaw.
After putting the finishing touches on the script, I walked upstairs to my room, read a chapter in the next part of the "Dune" saga, and hit the lights.
AMANDA didn't roll over cleanly at 09:00 as it usually does, so Robert called Jeff to have him hop on a skidoo and reset the detector. That went fine, but just as Jeff was finishing up, the fire alarm sounded at MAPO. We heard the notice repeat three times over the all call before we heard "Disregard, disregard, disregard." Fortunately, a real fire is rare here. Let's all hope it stays that way.
At 11:00, P011, the PAX flight, was holding at 18,000' due to poor visibility on our end. The temps are up again, -26°F (-32°C), but the vis was wavering in and out of 1mi. After a bit of a wait, they announced over the all call that the plane was past "Papa 3" (one of the closer waypoints on the flight from McMurdo) and would be landing in 15 minutes. Unlike previous flights, I knew people coming and going. I ran up to my room to throw on some ECW gear and ran out to the plane as fast as I could.
I didn't get any photographs of the landing. The LC-130 was already taxiing by the time I passed the PAX terminal. There were lots of people there to say farewell to the latest batch of departing winter-overs, and to greet the new arrivals. I really only knew one departing winter-over well enough for a personal goodbye, Drew Logan, one of the RPSC IT guys. It was easy to spot Darryn and Bob, seeing as they represented 50% of the PAX onboard. People stood around for a few minutes, saying hellos and goodbyes, then, before the outgoing PAX could load, the recent arrivals began to slog their way into the warmth of the station. I followed, but I went the long way 'round, down the ramp and straight into the dome and back to Science for a few minutes before climbing the beercan to lunch.
I didn't sit on one place the entire meal; I moved around two or three times and finished sitting with Darryn, Robert and Steffen. From there, we all went down to the back of Science and I set up accounts for Darryn and Bob. It's very crowded back here now; there are more AMANDA people than available computers to work at. It's only the first day of this; it won't be the last. We will have as many as 14 AMANDA people on station at the same time. Not everyone will be working in the back of science, but there still won't be enough machines to go around during waking hours.
After the winter-over meeting in the new Carp Shop, I went back to Science before heading off to dinner. During the meal, we heard over the all call that all the flights landed today, three in all (one PAX, two cargo). After dinner, I stopped by my room to shed my ECW gear, then was getting ready to go to the library to play pool when the all call sounded the call for volunteers to unload mail under the dome.
As before, we formed a bucket brigade and unloaded eight tri-walls of mail into the pool room. Boxes were stacked everywhere, including under and over the pool table. It being patently obvious that there would be no pool this evening, I stayed behind to help sort the packages into piles. This is the first real mail delivery since the station opened a week and a half ago. Most of the mail was from the winter-overs, to themselves, things that they expect to need and want after station close. I didn't send myself anything this time; I'll probably have friends back in the States send my things over the next few weeks. Once the packages were sorted, I went next door to the bar to see who was hanging about.
Even though the old galley is a shadow of its former self, the bar upstairs is much the same as it has been for years. With the round of 2003 winter-overs who left today, it's finally our bar. I sat at the large round table with Paul, Darryn, Bob, Sarah and Paddy for more talking than drinking (OAEs know how hard even two drinks can hit you on your first day at altitude). As seems to be more common here than at McMurdo, by 22:30, the place emptied out. Things should be more lively as the summer progresses and people start to get out more.
I spent the morning in the back of Science, keeping the AMANDA computers and their users happy. Lunch was burgers and fries in the company of Chris Martin, Jake, Darryn and a few GAs. Not unexpectedly, as we ate, we heard that all flights had been cancelled today (again!)
The AMANDA team made a mass exodus to MAPO after lunch. Jeff and I practiced resetting some of the embedded processors, while Bob inventoried high-voltage cards. We also pulled two HV power supplies to retro for repair. Our last task was receiving a 1458 HV box from Cargo. Once that was unpacked, upstairs, and warming up, we trekked back to the dome for dinner.
I didn't have an exciting evening. I crashed right after I got home from dinner while trying to watch "Black Adder I". I woke up a few times, looked at my watch, considered going out, then fell back asleep. I finally got up for a little while to chase LES 9 and try to get on the 'net. After catching up on correspondence, I finished the last few pages of "Soldier, Ask Not" and called it a night.
P015, the morning's PAX flight, was cancelled. They rescheduled it for a 19:00 arrival, and kept one of the cargo flights coming in an hour later. Perhaps they'll fly today, but the weather hasn't changed enough for that to be likely.
Steffen, Jeff and I hiked out to MAPO in the afternoon to practice detector shutdown. It could have gone more smoothly, but that's why we are practicing while the 2003 winter-overs are still here. The big hitch was having to extract the HV database and reset the 1440s to their proper values. We had gone over it on paper, but we weren't expecting to have to apply it so soon.
I decided to return to the new station the way I came, along the "road" rather than the shortest route, straight across the sastrugi. I'm enough shorter than most of the AMANDA folks that I take much longer to step up and down, rather than over, the terrain. On the way out, I decided to experiment; Jeff and Steffen took the direct route, and I walked the longer, but smoother way, over snow that is dragged every few days. I arrived at MAPO at the same time as they did, even though I probably walked 20% further. Normally, I'd be two to three minutes behind them.
Dinner was well underway by the time we arrived. I think we showed up about ten minutes after the swing-shift let out, so there was a line for food and few open seats. I had to steal a chair to sit with Sean and Kevin. They are keen to form a band this summer, and were making plans to have a preliminary session this Sunday at Skylab. Kevin used to live in Ireland, and is trying to pull together enough resources and talents to play a little bit of Irish music. I offered my talents for bass, piano and vocals. They are still looking for a concertina player. I've never picked one up, but I'm willing to give it a try. During dinner, as expected, there was an all call that all flights today were cancelled.
From the galley, I went down to the back of Science to see how the detector was settling in after we powered everything off. It seemed to be happy, so I went up to the pool room for some billiards. Jason was practicing alone, and we played five or six games before the usual crowd showed up (I lost every game, but sometimes by only one or two balls). Paul took my spot in the rotation, and having played plenty of games already, I sat on the sidelines while Jason continued to dominate the table for the rest of the evening.
After watching several more games, it was late enough that I decided to skip a visit to the bar. Instead, I went down to the back of Science to take advantage of LES 9 being up before going to bed.
Another morning in the back of Science fiddling with printers, and recording the current state of the detector. Presuming You-Ren and Mike fly today, someone will go meet them when they arrive. Meanwhile, Bob, Jeff and I are planning on spending the afternoon at MAPO swapping high-voltage cards.
(later in the day...)
Just before lunch, we heard that P015 launched at 11:20. If it doesn't boomerang because of low visibility here, it should arrive at 14:20. They've also pushed the departure time of the aerial photo flight an hour sooner. It should be here by 19:00, now.
(still later in the day...)
After lunch, I walked out to MAPO before P015 could arrive. I didn't want to get caught at the beacon at the edge of the skiway and have to wait for the plane to land before I could cross. Fortunately, I was early enough and got to the Dark Sector in time. Just after I left the skiway, Nick caught up with me on his way to AST/RO. We walked together for a few minutes until we reached the cluster of buildings. He went into his and I went into mine.
Bob was starting in on the high voltage controllers; Steffen watched Jeff and me shut down the entire detector. In the middle of our start up, Steffen powered off a crate of equipment to simulate an odd hardware failure. We watched the error messages spew by, and Steffen pointed out all the ways we could tell that something was wrong (the frequency of the blinking lights for one). We had to shut down all the software before restarting. I managed to remember to power that crate back on before the next startup attempt (saving another cycle).
In the middle of all of this, the PAX plane landed, bringing with it three more members of our team, Mike, Pawel and You-Ren. I made sure they had accounts, then went back to helping Bob swap high voltage modules. Things were going great until I found a single high voltage channel that read back at zero volts no matter what I set it to in software. The really ugly part was that externally, it read 3800V - the max possible. We decided to shut that crate down, grab dinner back at the galley, then see about tracking down the problem. Bob, Steffen and Robert left MAPO first, leaving Jeff and me behind to fill out the run logs.
Dinner was Chicken Fried Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Wax Beans (with non-serious labels like "Rooster Fried Steak" and " Mashed Potatoes Plus", whatever the "Plus" is). I sat with Mike, You-Ren and Pawel. Mike and I talked about the ordeal of their trip down. I think they spent an extra five days in McMurdo, with nothing to do, no computer account, etc. At least when I had two extra days, I had places to go, pictures to take, people to see...
As we were finishing dinner, Bob came over and said that the group had reached a concensus to return to MAPO immediately after dinner to complete the work on the high voltage unit. I was still in my ECW gear, eliminating one obstacle, at least. I put my dishes in the dish bin, my napkins in the "Burnables" bin, and walked down the wooden staircase and back to MAPO. Robert was a little bit ahead of me, Jeff a little bit behind. All of us were stopped by the warning beacon at the edge of the skiway. P016 was departing.
We watched the LC-130 taxi away from us, disappearing as it went to the end of the skiway. After a couple of minutes, I could see a trio of landing lights in the ground clutter. They turned off and on a few times, then started to grow larger and closer until we could see the plane itself. I had my camera out, which was good and bad. At full zoom, I snapped some nice shots of the plane speeding down the skiway, growing closer, and lifting off. The bad part was that my batteries froze, depriving me of a side-shot as it passed by, less than a wing-span above the snow. Later, Jeff showed me his shot of the plane flying "over" Robert and me, with MAPO in the background.
Another few hundred meters and we got ourselves inside, warmed up, and back to work. Jeff started by shutting down the other 1440 unit so we could test its ports (all fine); Bob and Robert tested the unit we'd previously shut down; and I went to the other room to print out the map of the high voltage channels (any task involving lots of wires needs a map to keep things straight) There wasn't lots of room behind the 1440s, so while the three of them worked on the HV unit, Robert had me replace the fans in a rack-mount auxilliary cooling tray. The fault, it seems, was with the 8085-based controller in the 1440, not with the high voltage cards. We threw in the spare, finished testing the high voltage cards, and had everything buttoned up by 23:00. Restarting the detector software went well, except for having to manually reboot the processor card in the TWR (Transient Waveform Recorder) crate. Robert stayed behind; Jeff, Bob and I walked back to the station.
It was light, of course, but there was enough stuff blowing around that when we first stepped out of MAPO, we couldn't see the new station at all. By the time we approached the skiway, it was visible, if a bit dim. There was an indistinct halo around the sun (not as sharp as on a clear day with blowing ice crystals). Jeff tried to take a picture of it over the ceremonial Pole. I was pretty sure that the contrast was low enough that I didn't try to take one of my own.
Right after walking past the geographic Pole, Jeff turned to the right to head home to the new station. Bob and I continued on down the ramp, into the dome and to the back of Science, him to shuck the heaviest of his ECW gear, and me to check on things one more time before going upstairs to crash.
We were supposed to meet in the upper galley (under the dome), but because they are preparing to tear out the freshie shack next door, all the tables were covered with hundreds of containers of spices and herbs. We adjourned to the old gym, filling all but the very middle of the gym floor. Paul Sullivan led the meeting, first a round of introductions by all the RPSC folks, then a round of introductions by the grantees. Among the announcements was a mention of two planned power outages and three planned comms outages.
Lunch had begun by the time the meeting ended. I walked up the beercan with Nick and a few others. It was Beef Stew over Noodles, Mexican Rice Soup, and Cucumber-Beet Cous-Cous. There was some kind of excellent chocolate-covered, toffey-filled slabs for dessert. They were so rich, I was quite satisfied with a half-slab. I sat with Mike, Nick and Jeff. Before I could even start on my dessert, the fire alarm sounded in the new station. Those of us on the Fire and Trauma Teams lept up, and headed to our assigned posts (mine was in Bio-Med, under the dome). I passed several Fire Team members, some already in their bunker gear. I reached Bio-Med right behind Angie, and at about the I sat down to work the radio, but never had to use it. The alarm was caused by cooking smoke from the galley. We heard the stand-down and returned to lunch.
After lunch, it was back to Science. The RPSC IT folks surprised us
by coming over
It was the standard first-of-the-season all hands meeting. Various
departments heads took the mike and made introductions and announcements.
We heard from Pete, the Winter-Over Site Manager; BK, the South Pole
Area Manager; Lisa, the Safety Supervisor; Cookie Jon, the Head Cook,
Tracey, the Comms Manager, Al Baker, one of the Science Support folks,
his wife, Mary, who runs the store; and a few more. The meeting bled
into dinner. Lots of us waited around until the pizza came out of the
ovens. After dinner, I went back to the dome, got cleaned up, and
returned for Bingo Night.
I fell asleep for a little bit when I got out of the shower, and was
a little late for Bingo. Brandon was generous enough to loan me one
of his cards. The prizes were whatever they could scrape up from the
store; the real Bingo prizes haven't arrived from McMurdo yet. They
gave away notepads, T-shirts, ball caps, and the grand prize, $135
cash, the pot collected from selling the Bingo cards in the first place.
I got close to winning a couple of times (once, I needed one ball, the
next ball in the chute, when someone else yelled
"Bingo"), and was two squares away from completely covering
my card for the jackpot when Angie and Bride won. I helped scoop up
the cards, and split when they started to organize "high stakes"
Bingo for $5 per card. I'm not much of a gambler; I don't like losing
more money than the entertainment value of the activity. I left with
Nick and Paddy to go sample a rare taste of North American Single Malt
Whisky.
It was a clear, sunny and calm night, about -35°F (-37°C). I
grabbed my issue red wind-breaker to throw over my AOL polar fleece
and walked out to Summer Camp in sneakers. The party was hot. The
dance floor was packed for most of the songs, especially disco numbers.
Before I showed up, I thought I had the only bottle of Tullimore Dew
on the continent (I'm saving mine for a special occasion, like
last time).
I was pleasantly surprised to see someone walk by with a bottle.
I hung out for a couple hours, alternating between dancing, talking
to some of my fellow
winter-overs
and meeting some of the summer people. Long past
midrats,
Tammy and Sean started getting hungry. Even though the party was
still going strong, I walked with them back to the dome.
The galley was nearly empty, owing to the late hour. Tammy and Sean
both grabbed something out of the left-over fridge, but I wasn't hungry.
I just had some fluids. Afterwards, Tammy and Sean went home to their
respective rooms in the new station, I went down the
beercan
to the dome. I stopped by Science to check on the detector, then up
to my room to crash. It was not to be. The AMANDA alert system called
me about fifteen minutes after my head hit the pillow. It needed to
be prodded to start the daily run. I threw on some light clothes, walked
back downstairs to Science and tried to restart things remotely, but
as expected, the hardware needed to have hands placed upon it. I went
back upstairs, threw on my usual regimen of
ECW
gear, then a miracle occurred: Richard Weber was next door to my room,
doing his laundry, saw me getting fully dressed, and offered me a ride
in a tracked vehicle out to
MAPO.
Of course I took him up on it. It was a nice night, sunny and calm, but
I arrived sooner and with more energy to tackle the problem.
I had the detector restarted a few minutes after I arrived. It's nothing
serious, but it does require physical contact to restart on occasion.
We are hoping to fix this annoyance in the next week or two when some parts
and personnel will have arrived. Since I was expecting the photographer
for the Antarctic Sun to stop by in the morning, rather than make a
round-trip to the dome in the next few hours, I siezed upon the comfy
chair for some much-needed sleep.
It was not the photographer, but Al and Mary Baker, and Dana, the science
tech, that first came by. They were out at MAPO to look at DASI, a
large interferometer that was about to be dismantled so its successor
could be installed. I tagged along with them for a tour of the inner
workings of the telescope itself. After they had their turns, I climbed
the ladder into the instrument platform, took a couple of pictures,
listened to the
PI
tell me about his project, then headed back down the hall to help Bob
and Mike move some of our stuff off of another group's workbench,
downstairs to be packed and sent back to the dome.
It was getting close to the end of brunch; I decided to walk back to
the dome rather than skip one of two meals of the day. It was pretty
much the usual spread - omelettes, some sort of breakfast meat, some
sort of breakfast potatoes, pancakes and eggs. One treat was a tray
of fresh-made doughnuts. I normally skip them, but these are rare here
(unlike at some places I've worked in the past). I sat with Nick,
Eyvind and Kevin. Later in the meal, Nick left, and the DASI guys sat
down with us.
Right after brunch, I scurried off to the Greenhouse Volunteer meeting
in the pool room. There were more candidates than available slots
(volunteers come in twice a day, seven days a week), but people quickly
sorted themselves into a larger group who really wanted to tend the
greenhouse, and a smaller group who would fill in as necessary. Jack
and Tree told us the basics of the systems, the cycles and tasks to be
done, then we drew our names out of a hat (literally) to choose a shift.
I was the fifth or sixth name. I picked Monday afternoons. We then
broke up into three groups to tour the greenhouse and learn specific
things to do.
The greenhouse is on top of the "Annex", a berthing area
attached to the side of Science. There's a wooden staircase up
to that level, then a trail of matresses to keep things quiet for the
people living below. The greenhouse itself has a tiny vestibule (to
keep the heat and moisture in), and a main room no larger than 8'x12'.
Tree pointed out the three water systems and the insulated box of
sprout jars, and walked us through what all of us would have to do when it
was our turn. It's much the same as when I tended the greenhouse in
McMurdo - record humidity and high and low temperatures of the room, add
water to the systems; and record pH, conductivity and water temp of each
system (but we don't have to add nutrients). It's a little tricky to
work up there - it's closer quarters, plus the "sink" is a
six-inch drain with a sliding steel cover. It's important not to flood
the greenhouse because of the people living below.
I returned to the pool room to catch an encore of Robert's aurorae
lecture (from a better seat). I did procure a better vantage point,
but with a busy as I've been, I regretfully kept nodding off. Afterwards,
I extracted a picture of myself and Jeff from Bob's camera, and inserted
it into his presentation for later tonight. I then headed back my room
for a nap.
I had intended to hit the celtic music appreciation and jam session in
Skylab,
but I slept right through it. I slept through dinner as well. My
next conscious perceptions were of Paul Sullivan on the
all call,
saying the Weekly Science Lecture started in 10 minutes. I met Mike
on the way; he had just left the Library from Robert's final encore.
By the time we made it up the beercan to the Galley, Bob's talk had
just begun. We came in the back to a full house. We grabbed the last
empty table at the back of the room. It was a good talk. He covered
the source of the neutrinos we are looking for (cosmic sources), the
noise of neutrinos created in the atmosphere we have to filter out,
and some the details of Ice Cube, the successor to AMANDA that will
be a cubic kilometer of sensors.
When it was over, I raided the leftover fridge for some dinner. I
wish I hadn't slept so late. Besides the condiments, what was in
the leftover fridge was mostly things that weren't popular enough to
be consumed the first time around (I passed on a large container of
fish taco filling). I'd much rather attend meals where there's almost
always options (vegitarian and otherwise).
I went back down the Library with Tyler, Bride and a few others, to
watch "The Tao of Steve". There was a movie still in progress,
so I tried to play a game of pool with Kevin. I was too tired to
concentrate, and kept missing trivial shots. Kevin mopped the floor with
me, but by then, the Library was empty, and we could start our movie.
After the movie, but before going home to crash, I checked on the detector
and all looked well.
I did try, but I was only approaching the crossing point when the
LC-130
began to taxi. The light came on, and there I waited, but not alone.
There were four of us on foot, soon joined by Allan on a skidoo,
with two passengers. After the plane took off, the light stayed on.
I checked, but nobody had a radio. After several more minutes, Allan
sped back to the dome on the skidoo to let Comms know that the
crossing beacon was still on, long after the plane had departed.
Eventually, the beacon went dark, and those of us who were still
waiting around, resumed our trudge to the
Dark Sector. I was still
enroute when Allan drove by, picked up his other passenger, dropped
them off, and came back for a couple of us. Even though it was the
last leg, I was still grateful for a ride part of the way.
The work on the detector began with Robert causing failures for
Jeff and me to find and fix. After a couple of rounds (including
messing with the high voltage), I helped Pawel briefly with his
work on the DMADDs, then Robert and Steffen went over the TWR
(Transient Waveform Recorder) with us again. I answered a couple
of UNIX questions for Steffen while he was finishing up some new
start/stop scripts, then I had to get back to the dome for my
first shift at the greenhouse.
I was almost out the door when Tammy showed up with some
DNF
for us. With the weight on the sled, she couldn't back the skidoo
up to the door. We carried the crate inside and upstairs. I hopped
on the back of the sled to give her some drag to keep the sled
upright, and had big fun on the ride back.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the greenhouse was how
frosted my glasses became. I tried switching to my sunglasses (which
had been in my pocket), but even they frosted up in the humidity.
I finally thawed things out by holding my glasses in front of a fan
to burn off the moisture. The second thing I noticed was how much
harder it was to breathe the heavy, moist air (55% RH) I had just
begun filling the systems when Kris and Don came by from Met to see
how things were done. I told them all about what I was doing and how
I was recording it as I worked. Tree came by around 17:30 to see if
things were done. She watched as I continued to work and explain things
to the Met guys. When I was finished, I asked her how I did -
"Perfect"
(my experience at the McMurdo greenhouse has been most valuable).
Dinner was some kind of cooked chicken in a light sauce that was
labelled "Chicken Parmesan" It was good, even if it
bore no resemblance to any Chicken Parmesan I've ever seen. I sat
with Pawel and one of the
GAs,
but moved to sit with Paddy and Bob for dessert (baklava!)
After dinner, it was time for more detector training with Steffen down
in the back of Science. We worked on the "reader" program,
and went over how to compose weekly status e-mails. It was after 21:00
by that point, so I dropped by the bar above the old galley to see who
was around. Sean was there, along with Byron and a couple of summer
people. Things dispersed by 22:30, and I went home to read myself to sleep.
I arrived at the new station before the freshies did. I took my place
in the bucket brigade, at the top of the stairs and we all waited for
Cargo to take something off the top of the freshie pallet before we
could unload. The stuff we handed up the stairs was all great stuff;
freshies from New Zealand: kumara, asparagus, aubergines, onions,
fresh peeled garlic, and plenty of dairy items, wheels of cheese,
sour cream, eggs, whipping cream and more.
Still out of it from lack of sleep, I fumbled through lunch. It was
one of the best we've had so far: gyros and falafel with tzatziki,
cous-cous, and hummus. We were almost smoked out of the galley by
the grilling of the pork chops for dinner.
Down in my room, getting into my
ECW
gear in preparation for the afternoon, I heard the AMANDA alarm
over the all call. I rushed downstairs to the back of Science to
see why, and asked Steffen what was up. He gave the first sign that
he was truely on his way out of here by answering, "I don't know,
ask one of the
winter-overs."
I killed the alarm and followed Steffen to MAPO to look into the
cause.
I never caught up with Steffen. I think Jeff might have passed me
on the road, but he didn't say anything, so I wasn't sure it was him.
Nick caught up to me just as the crossing beacon came on. Moments
later, Allan pulled up in his skidoo. We watched for the plane
to appear in the distance, and waited for quite a bit longer than
ten minutes. Allan spotted the plane first, then me, then finally
Nick. It seemed to take forever to land. When it finally did, and
turned off the skiway, the folks in Comms remembered to turn off
the beacon. Nick climbed on the back seat of the skidoo, I climbed
into the sled, and Allan took off (almost before I could put my camera
bag safely between my legs).
Looking across the skiway, there were several red-coated people
milling about the SPASE shack whom I took to be Jeff, Robert,
and Tom Gaisser (one of the SPASE people). I went straight to
MAPO where Steffen was trying to get some last minute things
done. Pawel had begun upgrading his part of the detector, and we
tried to do some test runs around him, but we couldn't get anything
going for a final tutorial session. Jeff and Robert returned from
SPASE, and we looked at the GPS hardware that provides the timing
needed to synchronize the detector activity. Steffen also had me
ensure the high voltage values for the 1440s matched the hardware
database. With no detector to play with, we headed back across the
skiway, Jeff, Robert and Steffen on skidoo, me on foot.
It was still early enough that Cargo was still open. They've been
sending me messages to pick up the extra ECW gear I requested
after I arrived, but I was never able to get back from MAPO in
time to do it. I hadn't actually been to Cargo yet, so
I wandered around the cargo lines, looking for a sign or a likely
building. I stumbled across the FMEC (Construction) office, and
got directions from Tree and Aaron. I walked back towards the dome,
and behind a two-story-tall mound of snow, I found the one-story
Cargo building. I picked up my stuff, signed for it, and took the
closest entrance back to the dome, along the garage arch.
I'd heard over the all call that package mail was in and waiting for
us in the old galley. I couldn't find anything for me, but Mary thought
she saw something of mine up by the Post Office. Indeed there was, some
stuff sent from home on 27-October including a panoramic camera
(I forgot to bring my el-cheapo with me). I swung back to Science,
then over to dinner with Mike, stopping off at my room to stash my
loot.
The pork chops we smelled at lunch weren't that great. What was
excellent was the curried tofu. When I went up to thank the cooks,
they said that the tofu didn't last the entire dinner period; the
whole station scarfed it up. As we were lounging about the galley,
Robert joined us, first with a plate of salad and some bread, then
with a full-sized dinner plate covered in a layer of banana halves,
topped with a thick layer of vanilla ice cream, copious quantities
of slivered almonds, and Hershey's syrup. He offered to share, but
only Mike and I dipped in. It was fabulous. After we gorged ourselves,
Paddy walked by with her own ice cream that Robert topped with
chocolate ever so slowly and deliberately to the amusement of all.
As I got up to leave, Bob buttonholed me to restart the detector after
Pawel reassembled it. I went back down to Science and ramped things
up and down while Robert and Steffen continued packing to leave
tomorrow. I watched the histograms long enough that Pawel had time
to walk back from MAPO. We decided things were working fine, and
I headed up to the bar to see who was hanging out.
This early in the week, the answer is "not many people". There
were a couple of folks watching a movie, and another couple of folks
chatting at the bar including Allan who was bartender for the night.
I said my goodbyes to him (he's leaving tomorrow but will be back to
winter after some time off), but I was too tired to stay for even
one beer; I went right home to finish reading "Dune" before
passing out.
Besides Robert and Steffen, Allan was also leaving. There were
lots of people there to say goodbye to the latest batch of departing
winter-overs.
We all took pictures and watched as they walked out to the plane
and flew off. On our way back inside, Darryn took a hero shot
of Jeff and me with the dome in the background.
I went to lunch with Mike and Jeff. We sat with Eyvind; he had
some questions about how to set up a video conference to his
family back home (given that they aren't set up to experience
with Linux software, I didn't have a good solution). Andrea and
Fernando (two of the summer folks with
AST/RO)
joined us with their desserts of enormous plates of ice cream
(the soft-serve machine is extremely popular, despite what you
might think about the appeal of a frozen treat when it's -40°F
outside).
For the afternoon, Bob went out to
MAPO,
Darryn and Jeff went to move some boxes on skidoos, and I stayed
down in the back of Science. With last year's winter-overs gone,
I moved across the aisle to take over Steffen's workspace. GOES 3
had set by that time, and we won't have a MARISAT window tomorrow
because of a maintenance window on the 9 meter (22 foot) dish.
As I settled into my new desk, Jeff and Darryn returned with the
boxes from MAPO. As we were putting away the contents, Pawel
called from MAPO to let me know that he had completed today's
upgrade work and for me to restart the detector. Unlike yesterday,
not everything seemed to be as it was before. We brought things
up and down a few times, with Pawel checking connections in
between runs until we got it all put back to normal. One thing
that made it easier was that we could see on the histograms that
the problems were grouped by the strings of
OMs,
as opposed to grouped by blocks of cards in racks on the surface.
It helped us to visually eliminate several sources of errors.
Once the detector was happy, we all went to dinner.
As freqently happens when they serve fish as a main course,
in the back of the steam line, they had hunks of some kind of
cooked meat labelled "anti-fish" (there are enough
construction worker-types that prefer a simple "meat and
potatoes" diet that the cooks usually have to provide an
option to keep the peace). I took my plate of five-spice Mahi
and sat down with Chris Martin to ask him about the state of
photographic chemicals before he headed North tomorrow. I
had thought that there was a dedicated photo lab, but apparently,
there used to be, but the one in the upper galley
was converted to a bathroom a few years ago. Would-be
photographers have had to find dark space to load processing
canisters, and space with water to do the developing. There
was supposed to be a darkroom built into pod A3 in the new
station (near the new Bio-Med), but someone deleted it from
the plans. Chris said that with some input from a variety
of individuals and departments, it's been restored, but
somewhere else in the new station (and not for this winter).
After dinner, I went down to Jeff's room with Brandon to
watch an episode of "Twin Peaks". They dropped
in an episode of "Buffy" next, but I'm not a
big fan of that, so I split before it started. I was going
to see who was in the bar, but as I was going up the stairs
from the old galley, I was met by Mike and Bob, with
"South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" in hand. We
went next door to the dome library to watch it.
We passed through the pool room on the way to the library.
Sean, Jason, Paul and Kevin were playing pool; Kevin came
in to watch the movie with us. It's been a while since I've
seen it. One of my favorite parts is when the General is
trying to show the battle plans to the troops and they can't
get it to work because it's running Windows 98. After the
movie, Bob went home, while Mike and I stayed behind to play
pool. More through luck than skill, I beat Jason and then
Mike, then Jason took the table back from me. We finished
the evening with a game of nine-ball (which Jason won). I
stopped briefly at the back of Science to check on the
detector, then called it a night.
Lunch was an acceptable, but unexciting choice of chicken or tofu
stir fry. I didn't linger over it; I went right back down to
Science where Mike Hoffman was taking photographs of the servers
and the fire protection equipment. Sarah and I showed him where
the built-in CO2 extinguisher system was in the building, and
explained a little about how the Fire and Trauma teams work
(that all the
winter-overs
were members, etc.), then Sarah took him up to
Skylab
for the next stop on his photo-tour. Moments later, the fire
alarm sounded in "Summer Camp". I dashed off to
Bio-Med, my assigned muster point for Trauma Team, and arrived
at about the same time as Angie (she was under the dome, too).
We waited and listed to the radios for any request for Trauma
support, but as a few others trickled in (including Sarah
(who had only just arrived on the top floor of Skylab), we
heard no call. The fire this time, though, was a real one,
a water pump out a summer camp that burned out and was
belching smoke. From the time the alarm tripped to the time
it was out was under four minutes.
I noticed on my walk to and from Bio-Med that I wasn't used to
walking around the dome in my parks, and it felt a little odd.
Most of the time, lately, I've been walking back and forth
between buildings under the dome, and back and forth to the
galley in the new station, in my fleece and maybe with some
glove liners. It's been around -45°F (-43°C), but
unless I've been going outside, like to MAPO or to the
PAX
terminal, I haven't been wearing my parka. It felt like I
was wearing a sleeping bag - too warm and confining. Out from
under the dome, of course, it's just the thing.
With what remained of the afternoon, I ran a new Ethernet cable
to my laptop, and restarted the detector. Everything looked
mostly fine, except for a slightly lower than expected hit
rate. We decided to let it run for a while and go to dinner.
I sat with You-Ren, Mike, Jeff and Jules for one of the best
dinners we've had yet - Lamb Chops! Jules, who is Australian,
was surprised at how many Americans don't care for lamb. I
was noticing much the same. Those that like it, love it; the
rest, well, that just leaves plenty for us. I was hoping to
sit with Chris and Karina, the outgoing
AST/RO
winter-overs, but Jules told me that they'd eaten and left
just before I arrived. I think I heard their plane take off
before we'd finished dinner.
Right after dinner was our first big Trauma Team meeting,
in the Upper Galley, under the dome. The meeting was short,
mostly introductions, a debrief about today's fire, and a
few minutes training with our portable defibrillation
devices. After the meeting, since we were mere feet from
the bar, a few of us wandered in and sat down for a beer,
including Troy, the Physician's Assistant. As happens often
around here, especially amongst the winter-overs, the topic
turned to the PQ process. When someone swapped the music
for some Country, I decided it was time to leave. On my
way out the door, Mike walked in with a message from Pawel,
asking me to restart the detector. I went down to the back of
Science.
Inspecting what I could, I could see that the histograms
looked normal, but the hit rate was still a little bit too
low. There wasn't anything I could do from the dome, and,
with the recent maintenance, there was not much I could do
from MAPO either. I left the detector running, and talked
Mike into some nine-ball. He scratched on the nine-ball
more than once, but he also won on the nine-ball more than
once. While we were playing, Troy came in, looking for a
movie. He stumbled across "Dark Star", one of
my favorite cheesy 1970s sci-fi movies. It even has a
local twist - I tried to show off the opening scene to Mike
and Troy, but it was a bad copy from TV and the first
few seconds were missing, the part that identifies the
first bit as a transmission coming from McMurdo. Mike
and I finished up our game about the time Paul and Don
from the Met department came in. We let them have the
table, and I went back down to Science to check on the
detector one last time.
Pawel wanted to see the detector run with artificially lowered
thresholds. I made changes to detector.cnf, but for reasons that
were not apparent, the detector would not restart. Something
happened to the data-collector processor that messed up even
the "reboot" command. I knew I had to go out to
MAPO
to reset the processor.
As I was getting ready to go, Al Baker told me that he had time
to check me out on the skidoo. I've been here almost three
weeks and we haven't been able to cross paths on this yet; I
figured today was as good as any, especially with needing to
go out to MAPO anyway. Al and I went to the garage arch, and
he started the skidoo. It's right at the low end of the temps
that they start at - it took Al ten minutes to start warming
it up. We went over the controls, how to prime it, etc., until
it was warm enough to drive. Al took it for a quick spin around
the cargo line in front of the arch. I gave it two or three laps,
then picked Al up and he showed me where to refuel (over by the
PAX
terminal, from the drums marked "Pre-Mix"). He sent me
on my way to MAPO to get some riding time, and I was there in
no time. I parked it out front and went in to reset the data
collection CPU.
This particular computer is somewhat simple-minded. Its OS is
not altogether robust, at least not in the face of a hard reset.
I tried again to restart from the command line, but there was
some sort of memory corruption that interfered with normal commands.
I had to flip the reset switch twice, waiting half an hour each
time for it to rebuild itself. One of the things that Robert
and Steffen warned us about was how easy it was to corrupt the
disk with a hard reset. It happened. It looked like I was going
to have to rebuild the disk from a backup (and there were
backups!) This was going to take a while, so I decided to take
a dinner break first.
Out front, I had planned on riding the skidoo back and returning it
to Al. Unfortunately for me, it had stalled out front, and was too
cold for me to restart. Mike and I worked on it for a couple of minutes,
then decided to hurry back on foot, hopefully before the plane that
was in the fuel pits began to taxi and they switched on the crossing
beacon. We were 30 feet from the beacon when I saw them shut the
door to the plane. Ten seconds later, the beacon came on, right in
front of us. We had to wait for the plane to taxi and take off. The
cool part was that it lifted off the snow almost right in front of
the crossing point. The folks in Comms flipped off the beacon, and
we walked the rest of the way to dinner.
We didn't dawdle over dinner. Mike and I walked back as soon as we
finished our steak and mashed potatoes. I had a disk to rebuild, and
he had some general purpose random desktops to update. I restored
the backup from a file Steffen left me, but on a fresh disk (in case
there were any files I might need from the corrupt disk). It booted
on the data collection computer, but the backup was almost a year old.
Darryn had come over by this point, and between Darryn, Mike and me,
we tweaked the startup scripts and network settings on this restored
disk image, until it was able to come up cleanly and begin to restart
the detector. It still hung at the same place it had earler, so we
put the corrupt disk back on, restored some individual files over the
corrupt ones and tried again to restart the detector. It hung at the
very same place in the intialization phase. It being past 23:30 at
that point, we decided to tackle the problem in the morning with
Pawel's help to identify any problematic hardware in the DMADDs.
Outside, Darryn took a stab at restarting the skidoo. No go. At this
point, the last plane of the night was taking off. I had left my camera
under the dome, but Darryn and Mike had theirs on them, and took pictures
of the plane taking-off. Darryn then went back to working on the skidoo.
He got it started, and I ferried them, one at a time, over to the Pole so
that they could get their "Hero Shots". I'll be here for a lot
longer than either of them, so I'll have plenty of time for my own Hero
Shots. Mike is only here for two more weeks. The weather has been so
clear lately, that it's entirely possible that we could have something
nasty move in and blot out the skies for the entire remainder of Mike's
stay. Taking a few minutes for pictures in front of the Pole was
certainly worth it for him, especially since anything can happen here,
and he might not get another chance with such favorable weather.
I parked the skidoo in the garage arch, and went over to Science to
return the key to Al. On my way in, I ran into Mike and Darryn on their
way out. We all stopped up at the bar for a beer to cap the day. I
queued up some 1980s music and we talked about the day and what we were
going to do tomorrow to get the detector back on its feet. Byron dropped
by for a smoke. He was full of stories about Herman-Nelson heaters,
the D-7 tractor, and, because we had our first DV visit today, stories
about previous visits by other DVs.
I was going to go back to Science, but as Mike and I stepped out on the
porch of the galley, we heard some kind of noise from the pool room. I
decided to see who was hanging around; Mike followed. Don and Dar were
just finishing up a game I jumped in. I missed some really easy shots,
but made a few moderately difficult ones. I had more than one chance to
win. I blew it I was done for the night. Mike played another game
with Don as I left for Science. I tried to get my laptop working on the
LAN - no joy. It had worked earlier, but something wasn't working now.
Mike came by; he tried to help. We found all sorts of wierdness with the
loose LAN cables in the back of Science, but nothing clearly obvious.
I was on one for the desktop computers, trying to scope out the problem,
when the fire alarm sounded in the new galley. I made it to Bio-Med
before the Doc could even turn the lights on. Angie was there a few
moments later, Sarah followed shortly thereafter. The last one of us
in was Eyvind, a few moments later. It was the detector in the fan room
again. The people on the scene couldn't find any smoke. It was almost
certainly some kind of smoke or fumes coming down from the galley.
After a few minutes, we heard the standdown, and dispersed to our various
destinations. I went back to Science, got tired of chasing LAN problems,
and cheated by plugging my laptop into the back of the IP phone (there's
an open 10Mbps tap on the back of each one). I got my machine online,
threw the latest files up to the web page, and called it a (late) night.
At one end of the galley, the new arrivals gathered to
watch the new orientation video that had been filmed
during our first week here. There were plenty of familiar
faces to go with the information, Kris drinking water
(a good thing), Paul drinking coffee (not so good when you
first arrive), scenes from our
emergency drill,
Drew being treated in Bio-Med, Sean reading the South Pole
Visitor's Guide, and even me, checking the local web page
and the satellite rise and set times. The video was a
bit longer than I expected, but it was good, and filled
with good advice (keep hydrated, stay safe, respect the
quiet hours in berthing spaces, don't waste food and
materials, clean up after yourself, pitch in to unload
freshies, etc.)
Back down in Science, I restarted the detector with the
lowered thresholds, and watched it carefully. As I
monitored the run, the Raytheon IT folks filed out for
their weekly safety meeting (to watch a movie about
slips and falls). With the test run still going, I
popped up to the galley for dinner, then came back down
to Science to stop the test run and start a normal run.
Things looked good, so I called it a day and headed up
to the bar to see who was around.
Bob was up there, talking to Nick and Brandon and
Andrea. Over at the poker table, Kyros was pouring
martinis. I shared some Bushmills around. After
Sean and Brandon had each put some music on, I took
a turn up at the bar. I threw in some Boston, some
Jethro Tull and a few other classics (and one ringer:
"The Devil Went Down To Jamaica"). My
tunes were still playing when Tammy came in, fresh
off her split-shift, and dragged a bunch of us out
to the party at the non-smoking lounge at Summer Camp.
It wasn't the swinging time it was
last week.
There wasn't a consistent effort on the music, plus
some of the guys sitting in the lounge chairs lining
the dance area kept shifting the spotlight off the
disco ball. Also, folks were playing foosball in the
middle of the
jamesway,
and they had the one end all lit up. We managed to
get the music upgraded and chase out the guys who
were fiddling with the ball, but the brightest light
remained the one over the door. It was still a good
time. I especially love the "non-smoking"
part. After a while, Sean lead the usual expedition to
midrats/breakfast.
I stayed behind for a little while longer, but the
crowd started to trickle home, and I did the same.
I wasn't the only one - the place was packed. All the
public-access AMANDA computers were in use. Fortunately,
I have my own desk now, and I sat down to check the
detector and catch up on e-mail while we were still
connected to the outside world. Pawel called and asked
me to start a new run (he was out at
MAPO,
working on the DMADDs). Whatever he did, it brought
the data rate back to around 90 events per second
(something to do with the "string trigger"
being blocked). I bounced the detector one more time
to give him a few minutes to make his fix permanent.
After I restarted, everything looked great.
With the satellite down, and no connectivity for
several more hours, I dropped by
Skylab
to practice some music. The place was unfortunately
not empty. There were a few musicians puttering
around quietly, and someone was there, reading a
book. I sat down at the keyboard and played for
a while with headphones on. The other musicians
started up when Sean, the book-reader, left. They
strummed away on a variety of stringed instruments,
much better than I could ever hope to, even if I
did try to play along with them now and again (still
with headphones on, so as not to throw them off).
I must have been mostly quiet - someone made a
comment as I was playing that it was like watching
someone dance without hearing the music. I tried
to remember some fragments of Chopin, and various
bits of Scott Joplin rags that I've played for
years. Just before dinner, at the encouragement
of the other musicians, I belted out the first
strain of Maple Leaf Rag with the sound up, so
they could hear what I'd been doing the whole time.
Dinner wasn't bad - New York Strip with roasted
potatoes and fresh asparagus (part of the
freshie
shipment I helped unload
the other day).
I sat down and ate, and lingered over dessert
long enough that we had a few people rotate
out. I was still lounging about when the
Sunday Science Lecture started, on star and
planet formation. One of the coolest slides
was one of a star and what could be a jovian
planet, taken in visible light by the Hubble
Space Telescope. Time will tell if the detached
blob of light in the picture is really orbiting
the star or not.
Several people told me I had received a package
in the recent mail shipment. I was hoping it
was my 50mm lens for the Pentax P3 that I borrowed
from my buddy Bill Kirke back home. There were
no packages in the old galley, and none for me
up outside the post office. I went down to the
back of Science and it was sitting in our area
next to the laser printer, a smallish box from
Activision - my complimentary copy of
" Empire: Dawn of the Modern World. If
only I had a computer here that was new enough to
play it.
I checked on the detector (running fine!) and
stopped on up at the bar to see who was hanging
out. Folks were watching "Red Dragon",
but since I missed the first hour, I decided not
to spoil the ending for myself, and went back down
to Science to try and catch LES 9. I got on
AIM and checked in with friends back home, but
they'd just left the party at Erin's apartment
a few minutes before I could get online. I
chatted for a while, then, as the satellite
window closed and the comms grew increasingly
unreliable, I went upstairs to bed.
Back down in Science, we heard another fire alarm,
this one in the back of Comms. As I headed for
Bio-Med, I thought it was odd that the person
calling out the location of the fire was working
a few feet away from where the fire was reported,
but I mustered at Bio-Med anyway. Several members
of the Trauma Team reported in, but the call to
stand down had already gone out before we got
inside. Another false alarm, this one because
someone was soldering in the back of Comms
and the fumes set off the detector.
Back at Science, I watched the daily run turn
over smoothly, while Jeff was working out at
SPASE.
The end of the day rolled around pretty quickly,
and it was my day to tend the greenhouse. I
arrived before the lights came on. It was easier
to work in there, not as hot. I filled the systems,
checked temps and pH, and took some pictures
before going back down to Science for a little while
to watch the detector and wait for dinner to start.
After dinner, I tried to get back down to the dome
library for the viewing of "Chicago" but
I was a few minutes late. I stuck my head in the
door and caught a couple of the musical numbers,
then played a couple of rounds of pool with Jason
before retiring to my room to read.
It was a good first meeting of our sub-group. We
went over the agenda for the summer, and examined
the contents of a "jump bag" in detail
(bandages, gloves, oxygen, rescue breathing bag,
etc.) We finished by scheduling a station walk-around
to learn where our medical resources were stored.
After the meeting, down in the back of Science, Mike
and I discovered and corrected the last of the fiddly
details we disturbed earlier, and departed work, at
last, for the evening. I stopped by the pool room
and the library. Strangely enough, they were
deserted. I found a copy of "Grease"
on the shelf to watch later. Right before turning
in, I tried to get on LES 9 to chat, but it was
flapping so bad, I couldn't get a connection. It's
been like that a lot lately.
It was burger day. I had a burger with fresh onions, dijon
mustard, topped with N.Z. Whiskey Cheddar. By the time I
got back to my desk, GOES 3 was back in action (I heard them page
the satellite engineer). While catching up with the latest to come
down the pipe, we had to spin some directories off to tape to make
room for the latest run. While we were cutting the tape, Bob told
us that all of the high voltage boards had arrived at Pole.
Before heading up the
beercan
for dinner, I stopped by the store for some Bombay Sapphire and
Tonic to share around this weekend. I also picked up "The
Sting" in an attempt to stimulate my interest in practicing
some piano in my free time. Because of my errand on the way to the
Galley, I arrived at about 18:35, right after the swing-shift folks
arrived. The place was packed. Dinner was some sort of breaded
chicken breast, with peas and cheese grits on the side. While
standing in line, a woman I recognized from my last season walked
up and asked if I remembered her. I couldn't dredge up the name
(Kathleen), but I did remember that she was a grantee studying
thyroid hormone "T3" and cold adaptation. She and her
fellow researcher, Marc, are here to sign up
winter-overs
for a year-long study involving light therapy and supplemental
thyroxin. They need at least 20 winter-overs to fill the ranks
of their project.
After dinner, down in the back of Science, I tried to catch the
rise of LES 9, but I was falling asleep waiting for the packets
to start flowing. I headed upstairs and crashed early.
The morning in the back of Science was unremarkable. The only thing
we had to wrestle with were some SSH keys on a server that was locked
down from general use. Lunch was some kind of seafood in light sauce
over noodles. The table was mostly filled with AMANDA and
AST/RO
folks. Back down in Science, to quiet down some of the traffic in
the log files for my workstation, we rebooted it for the first time
since mid-August. It was much happier afterwards. I left work a
little early to get dressed for our Trauma Team's walkabout.
We met in the Old Galley, to locate and inspect the trauma gear we
might be need to find in case of a real emergency. We started in
the arches that are on either side of the dome entrance, going in
the Old Generator Building, out the Paint Shop, through the UT
Shop to the New Garage; then, the other way, past Bio-Med, down
the fuel arch (with its 45 10,000 gallon tanks of JP-8), and up
the spiral staircase to the surface, half-way to
ARO. We walked the rest of the
way to ARO above ground, and spent some time there, going over
the jump bag and the "Dr. Down" thermal wrap (essential
for transporting a patient outside for any real distance). From
ARO, we headed out to
MAPO,
and the
Dark Sector.
We came down the graded snow road, almost back to the new station,
then took a sharp right just past the ceremonial South Pole, and
went out the Dark Sector road. We crossed the skiway (no planes
due for another hour), then I took over leading the tour. We passed
by AST/RO, and I pointed out the names of all the buildings. One
of the things that's not clear people who don't work in this part
of the station is that there are lots of names used to refer to,
essentially, the same general area. The Dark Sector is the wedge
of territory that encompasses several buildings (MAPO, AST/RO, the
SPASE Shack, AASTO and the Dark Sector Laboratory), in which
are several experiments (AMANDA, DASI, VIPER, VULCAN, SPASE,
Ice Cube, Ice Top, and more). These terms are used somewhat
interchangably, as in, "I'm going out to AMANDA",
meaning, "I'm going to the second floor of MAPO in the
Dark Sector". I had several questions from the other members
of the trauma team about what was what and what was where.
Eventually, though, we did get to MAPO and I gave people an
upstairs/downstairs tour of where the gear was, and what some
of the more significant risk-of-injury areas were in the building.
We left MAPO, crossed back across the skiway, up the beercan, and
into the uncompleted parts of the new station. I had never been
in these areas before. They seemed larger than the sections we were
already occupying, but I'm sure that's because they were mostly
empty. Some parts weren't even heated; they are being used as
cold materials storage during construction. Our last stop was the
new Bio-Med which is scheduled to go online in January. We
finished up quickly so we could catch the last few minutes of
dinner (ribs in Hosin sauce). I saw with Andrea and Eyvind as
we filled out a survey on the quality of the food and service in
the Galley. I moved over to sit with AST/RO folks for dessert,
then went back down to the dome and to the back of Science.
After checking on things at my desk, I popped by the bar briefly
on my way to scare up a game of pool. There were two guys I
didn't know well already on the table, so I went next door to
the movie room and watched a bit of "Jurassic Park"
before going back to my room to read a bit more of the
"Dune" saga.
Up in the galley, lunch was Asian chicken over rice. I sat
with Kathleen, one of the T3 researchers, Nava, Brandon
and Jules. We had a big afternoon planned over in the
Dark Sector -
the Ice Top tank fill. I went down to Science, met our
newest arrivals, then suited up in my
ECW gear
and headed for SPASE.
The beacon was already on before I approached the skiway
crossing. Tyler pulled up on a cat, towing a large sled
of water for the tanks. As soon as the plane landed and
turned off the skiway, Tyler started creeping forward so
that he was in forward motion by the time the beacon went
off. He passed me on the skiway, but I was able to walk
directly to Ice Top (he had to go around on the road to
avoid the markers for the tops of the AMANDA strings).
Over at the tanks, Tyler pulled the sled of water as close
as he could, but the longest water hose was too short.
We tried to reposition the sled, but in the end, we needed
another hose. By the time someone had returned from the
main part of the station with it, the valve on the sled
had frozen. We thawed that out, but in the process got
some water in the hose which froze and blocked it - we
would have to bring the hose inside, thaw it out, dry
it out and try again another day. It's hard to work
with water when it's -43°F (-42.8°C) outside.
When we gave up for the day, I took the opportunity
to unstick a computer over at SPASE before returning to
the dome.
Folks in the back of Science had a variety of things going
on, but dinner came quickly. I went up with Mike and we
sat with Eyvind and his boss Bill. I chose my table wisely.
I almost had a front row seat for the science lecture that
followed dinner. Kathleen and Marc presented their T3
Polar Studies talk. Kathleen had more content about the
study, but Marc, being head of the NASA medical department,
had a number of great space photos he uses to illustrate
how extreme environments on Earth can be useful for testing
hardware before it's used in space for the first
time. Unfortunately for Marc, right as he was winding up
his part of the lecture, there was an
all call
for people to cart
freshies
from the bottom of the wooden staircase to the hallway outside
galley.
The galley emptied to help get the freshies in - cucumbers,
eggs, cheese, tomatoes, parsnips, whipping cream and more.
Someone nearly lost a large box of squash when the top and
bottom of the box separated, but we managed to get everything
up without losing a single thing. The lecture was over by this
point, so I went back down to Science to fill in some missing
columns on a spreadsheet filled with our high voltage values.
We'd heard rumblings of slushies out at
ARO
even though there were other things going on tonight. After
we got a little work done, we called out to ARO, and Glen
confirmed that there was a small gathering despite the widespread
rumors that nothing was happening. Bob, Mike and I threw on
our parkas and goggles and walked out to the
Clean Air Sector.
It was indeed a small gathering; we were the second group
there. Due to several thousand pounds of cargo distributed
amongst the upstairs work spaces, things were going on in
a medium-sized room on the first floor. A little while after
our group arrived, we were joined by some of the
AST/RO
folks. We all sat around talking until the wee hours
of the morning. One of the nice things about the
walk home is that the wind and the sun are at your back.
I checked on the detector one more time at the back of
Science, and tried to get sleep before breakfast.
I did manage to get the new cgi scripts written before I
left work, but that was at 21:30, another long day. The
bar was mostly empty, and, since they fixed the vent fan,
mostly smoke-free. Most of the people there were fellow
winter-overs,
and most of the rest, we wish would winter over
with us. We tried to play a little blackjack at the corner
table, but every other song on the CD player was a good
dance tune, and the entire table (including the dealer)
kept jumping up to dance. As at the parties at Summer Camp,
it seems that the Bee Gees get the ladies out on the
dance floor every time. We played cards, spun music and
danced until the crowd drained away, leaving us a few hours
to catch some winks before brunch.
I was scheduled for my T3 study computer tests today. They weren't
hard, but the point isn't to be hard, it's to establish a baseline
so that when I take these tests later in the season, there's something
to compare them to. With the rest of the afternoon open, I went up to
Skylab
to practice some piano. I played some ragtime, some Chopin and some
Gershwin until it was time for dinner. The pork loin was nice and
moist, but the best part was the sliced shallots in the gravy.
After dinner, Marc (one of the T3 researchers) led swing dance lessons
in the Bouldering Gym. There were six men and four women. We swapped
in and out between rounds. Marc taught us basic six-beat moves, spins,
duck-unders, and more. We were at it for an hour and a half, then
Angela and I practiced some more after the class broke up.
After dance lessons, back in Science, I caught LES 9 rising and tried
to get online. While fighting with a slow connection, Bob suited up
and walked out to
MAPO
to deal with our ongoing high voltage upgrades. I stayed in the back
of Science until my patience with the slow satellite ran out, then
I went to bed.
Dana came by with an interesting offer.
"Sky & Telescope"
(the ones that sent us the viewing glasses), also sent a sheet of mylar
filter material. We went up to BKs office to get it, and we made a pair
of camera filters at my desk. Dana put his piece between two layers of
cardboard; I nestled mine in-between my 62mm neutral density filter and
my polarizer. About this time, people started getting ready to head
out to find a good spot to watch things from. I finished putting on my
ECW gear and did the same.
I walked out of the dome and up the ramp with Angela, but she was on her
way to
ARO.
From the top of the ramp I could see where Mike and Darryn were standing,
and I joined them. Darryn had his tripod set up (mine is still on the way
from the States), and was trying to position the sun over the dome for some
multiple exposure work. Freehand, I just plopped down in the snow and took
a few shots of the unoccluded sun with my digital camera to get a feel for
what would need to be done. The weather was perfect - cloudless, nearly
calm, and a bit warmer than it's been of late - -36°F (-37.8°C).
The sun looked great through both the camera filter and a pair of viewing
glasses. There was a huge sunspot near the center of the disc that you
couldn't help notice even without magnification.
It was still a while to the start of the eclipse, so Darryn, Mike and I
went back into the Dome and warmed up in the Met department. I threw a
new roll of film in the camera (100 ASA slide film) and we went back
outside. The eclipse had started a few minutes earlier. There was already
a noticable chunk missing from the left side of the sun. I tried to
take some pictures with the dome underneath, but it was too hard sitting
on the snow without a tripod. I moved over to some tri-walls by the top
of the ramp to the dome.
As we snapped pictures every few minutes, two planes came and left, leaving
contrails that nearly covered the sun. Fortunately, they were just
below where the sun was in the sky, with the wind blowing them away from
our view. The
National Geographic
camera crew was on the second plane. The first thing they did when they
arrived was to set up a group shot at the ceremonial South Pole as part
of their coverage of live in and around the new station. There were
probably 40 to 50 of us there. We milled around, staring up at the sky,
taking pictures of the sun, direct and reflected in the ball on top of
the pole, until a few minutes after the maximum extent of the eclipse.
After than, people started to disperse. My cameras were frozen, so I
went in, too. Jeff and I went straight from the Pole to lunch.
Down in the back of Science, I tried to catch the waning minutes of
GOES 3 while I dumped the memory card from my camera. I captured
several good images of the eclipse. Taking the best images, I threw them
down into
a composite
with
The Gimp.
I finished my editing in time to slip out to do my weekly greenhouse stint
a little early, and still get back in time for our 17:00 meeting to go
over the current state of the detector's high voltage crates. We worked
out a plan to move some channels over to one of the old controllers while
we waited for repaired parts to come back down from the States. Plan in
hand, we all went to dinner - a real treat tonight: crab legs.
Unfortunately, as I worked hard for my tasty dinner, I noticed that it was
past 19:00, and that I was missing the second night of swing dance class.
After dinner, I decided to stop by the bar and see who was around.
The bar was empty when I arrived; moments later, Paddy came in. Between
the two of us, we got the counter wiped down, the dishes done and the
trash taken out. Michael, the producer from the National Geographic film
crew, came by to see what the place was like. The place filled in with a
couple of the regulars, and a few of us who had just come up from the back
of Science. I sat in the DJ seat, manning the CD player, mostly '80s stuff.
There was an anxious moment when the smokers ran out of cigarettes (they
found a pouch of Drum rolling tobacco, and worked on that till the place
reeked; from their reactions, I don't think they found it pleasant, either).
After a while, I went back down to the back of Science, checked my e-mail,
and read the message that the current phase of the high voltage upgrade was
complete and that the detector was put back together.
After dinner (good lasagna, mushy zucchini), I went down to the
Upper Galley for our weekly Trauma Team meeting. We went over
the A, B, Cs (airway, breathing and circulation), and practiced
ventilation and CPR on our Resusci Annie. When we had all had
a turn, and our meeting was over, I went next door to the library
and watched a few games of pool and waited for the movie room to
turn over. The new flick was "Miller's Crossing", which
I decided not to stay for. There were a few minutes left in the
satellite window, so I went down to the back of Science and jumped
on the 'net until Mike started a server upgrade that made my
home directory go away. In the abscense of fresh bits from the
outside world, I went up to my room to read before falling asleep.
There's a lot to do to shut down the detector - thirteen racks of
computers and analog hardware. What complicates things is that
there is a particular order to powering crates off to prevent damage.
In particular, the high voltage needs to be ramped down before the
amplifiers are switched off. I dashed from rack to rack, shutting
down CPUs and flipping off breakers. I also had all of the general
purpose computers in the outer room. The power went off right at
09:00, just as scheduled. I was just shutting down the last of the
the machines when the room went quiet and the emergency lights kicked
on.
I spent the next 70 minutes disconnecting plugs to protect the hardware
from any surges that might occur when the power came back on. I was
taking a few photographs of the quiescent detector when You Ren came
over to reload the high voltage values. He had a while to wait, first
for the power to come back, then for me to get enough of the detector
powered up to be able to load the high voltage crates, and finally, for
the station network to be brought back up so that we could have DNS
services, etc., to let the programs run.
Once everythng was powered on and we were taking muon data, I called
Comms for a ride back to the station. No luck. I think it was right
in the middle of the shuttle driver's lunch (mine, too!) Fortunately,
I'd brought my wind pants and some other
ECW gear
that I hadn't needed on the ride out. I walked straight over to the
new station, up the wooden staircase, and right to the galley to lunch
(sloppy joes and fries).
I spent part of the afternoon in the back of Science going over the
details of the new Java high voltage program with You Ren; the rest
of the day, there was a meeting for just the
winter-overs
to go over a few recent developments that affected us. Things went
on long enough that many of us went straight to dinner. I sat with
a bunch of fellow winter-overs, talking about stuff from the meeting.
I finished with dessert with Pat Smith and IT management. It was
fun, not work. The most serious we got was trading lines from Firesign
Theater.
After dinner, it was time to make pies for Thanksgiving. We cleared and
cleaned three rows of tables, and rolled two large bags of pie dough
into 19 apple pie shells and over a dozen pumpkin pie shells. Once we
had the apple pie tops rolled, we started getting creative with cutouts.
Some people did letters; I made an image of the dome out of dough.
Tomorrow night is vegetable slicing and peeling. I signed up for both.
On the way, I bumped into Kathleen, one of the T3 researchers. I
walked out the garage arch with her, and went straight to the PAX
Terminal where I could stay out of the wind. When I arrived, Bob
Morse was the only one there. As we waited for the shuttle van to
bring the bulk of the PAX, I popped outside a few moments at a time
to photograph the plane, and to watch the National Geographic crew
film the unloading of the plane. There was something unusual to
see - they were offloading a 21,000 lb steel girder for the new
station. When the shuttle van arrived and disgorged a full load
of PAX, I said my goodbyes to Abbie, Andy, Nancy and a few others.
I couldn't stay - my toes were starting to get numb.
I walked to the back side of the new station, up the wooden
staircase, and on up the inside stairs to the galley. My feet
started to itch from thawing out while I was in line for food,
Chicken Pot Pie and Mashed Potatoes. I sat with the usual
AST/RO
crowd, Nick, Jules and Greg, plus Mike was there, too.
I spent the afternoon in the back of Science, hammering on a
variety of OS upgrade-related issues. The National Geographic
film crew came through Science, filming people at work. Except
for a brief moment under the bright lights, it was an uneventful
day. I sat with Eyvind, his boss Bill, and Pat Smith at dinner.
Lamb chops! Pat left the galley to head back to McMurdo on the
evening flight. We watched his plane take off as we peeled
potatoes and sliced parsnips, cucumbers and more. Erika came
out of the kitchen around 20:30 to help me bake no-crust cheesecake.
For the rest of the evening, I bopped in and out of the kitchen,
swapping between chopping and baking. Some folks were around helping
out until well past 22:00. I did my bit, saw the cheesecakes to the
cooling rack, then hit the back of Science on the way to bed.
I worked in the back of
Science
for most of the morning, then trotted up the
beercan
for some fish & chips. In the middle of my late lunch, the fire alarm
went off, and it wasn't followed by "disregard, disregard,
disregard." Most of the rest of the trauma team was under the dome
or already out at Summer Camp, the location of the alarm. I was just about
last in to Bio-Med. When I arrived, I took over comms, keeping up with
what was on the radio, and taking notes for the doctor to refer to later.
About twenty minutes into it, I realized that it was a drill. I knew we
were scheduled for one, but they did not announce this one in advance.
The drill scenario was that there was a helium leak in the cryo barn, with
two people overcome by anoxia, one of them while standing on a ladder.
The trauma team went in (after the Onsite Incident Commander had the
presence of mind to ventilate the building) and got both patients assessed,
packaged and tranported to Bio-Med in 22 minutes. We had a debrief in
the carp shop afterwards.
After the drill, I went back up to the galley to finish my lunch. It
was there, waiting for me; nobody had taken away my half-finished lunch.
I ate, cleaned up my plate (and a few others who had also left for the
drill), and went back down to the back of Science. Darryn was going
over the polechomper script, looking for bugs. I took over for him,
squashed what he was looking for, and fixed another one while I was
in there. By the time I had things debugged and tested, the wine and
cheese party had started over in Met.
The Met department is on the other end of the Science building. They
had thrown table cloths over the counters, put some soft Jazz on the
CD player, and set out a spread of wine from the store and cheese from
the galley. Initially, it was mostly folks who work in the Science
building and in Comms. As the evening wore on, new folks came by from
just about every department on station. I hung around until the dinner
hour was almost over, then ran up the
beercan
to grab a bite to eat before the galley closed. They were serving
something with beef in it, and some excellent vegetable curry. When I
went back down to Met, things were still hopping. I didn't stay long.
I wanted to get cleaned up before the rest of the evening commenced.
Showering at Pole is not like showering at McMurdo. Here, they really
mean two minutes and they really mean no more than twice a week. We
get all of our water by melting the ice with waste heat from the
generators (McMurdo gets theirs by desalinating water from the Sound).
Every shower here is a joy. I've heard that Polies on R&R in
McMurdo enjoy the chance to take "Hollywood Showers" for
the week. I certainly expect to.
After my semi-weekly two minute immersion, I stopped by the bar briefly,
but the atmosphere wasn't as appealing as it was last week. Different
crowd, different vibe. I walked out to Summer Camp for the usual dance
party and spent the evening there. Some folks went to
midrats.
I went to bed.
I snuck in before 17:00 to get pictures of the food - cheese and
crackers, tapanade, smoked salmon (with cream cheese, onions and
capers), and a very nice wheel of baked brie that I'd watched being
wrapped in pastry just last night at our
vegetable cutting party.
Darryn broke out a bottle of champaigne for the members of the project
(and a few close friends), as six dozen Polies milled around in the
hall, chatting and munching until the galley staff threw the doors open
and let us take our seats for dinner.
They had rearranged everything in the galley. Instead of ten rows of
four tables, we had four sets of ten tables aligned the other way. I
sat near the middle of the room, with Nick, Mike, Kris and other people
I'd been hanging out with lately (you can tell who some of your good
friends are by who you end up sitting with at holiday meals). Before
we jumped up for food, Pete, the winter-over site manager, started us
off with a toast, then Jerry Marty reminded us that it was a historic
event - the first Thanksgiving in the new station. With the
preliminaries out of the way, we got in line for the food: smoked turkey,
deep-fried turkey, and plain-old roasted turkey with all the trimmings.
I had problems finishing my meal during our seating because I kept jumping
up to take pictures. We all were rushed out by the clearing crew to make
room for the third seating (the night-shift and swing-shift folks). I
finished my cheesecake, and met in the back of the seating area with Tyler,
our sommalier, and the rest of the wine stewards. Tyler briefed Eyvind
and myself on a few of the finer points, then the doors opened and the
last round of diners filled the hall.
In addition to wine, we served cold water and soft drinks through the meal,
and coffee and pie afterwards. Eyvind, Tammy and I milled around the floor
throughout the meal, as National Geographic filmed the festivities. After
all the dishes were cleared, and we'd made several rounds with the
desserts, Tyler cut us loose, and let the third seating folks continue
congregating (that's the advantage of third seating - nobody rushes you
out when you are done). I went back down to to the open house on the first
floor of the new station, and hung around with Topy, Amanda, Dan (one of
the Light Ground Traverse (LGT) crew), and Bride for a while, then went
back upstairs to the galley to see where things were.
Things were much as I had left them - there were numerous tables packed
with people. I sat at the less boisterous end of the room, and got to
play wine steward one last time when Darryn dropped of a bottle of
Chianti with us. This late in the evening, I was drinking more water
than wine, anyway. Eventually, the crowd worked their way through the
last of the wine from dinner, and started to disperse. I went home by
way of the bar to see who was up. Compared to the galley earler in the
evening, it was dead. It had been a long holiday, and it was time to
say goodnight.
I left Skylab when I noticed that it was time for dinner. Dehlia had been
cooking since last night, and I didn't want to miss it (she used to be
the cook at Palmer). She made pasta with a white sauce, vegitarian
shepard's pie (with real mashed potato topping), and a stunning chocolate
torte for dessert. After dinner, there was still a lot left to do on the
server upgrades in the back of Science, so Mike and I blew off the Sunday
Science Lecture, and headed down to the dome. I was so busy fixing
Polechomper bugs, and Mike was so busy with installs that we didn't even
notice that MARISAT had risen. We just kept working through the night.
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