Author: edelaquess92

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have access to a good-quality Nikon camera that my boss left for me. This was an unexpected delight, since I came down to Antarctica with only a basic point and shoot camera, and I am very, very grateful for having access to this camera. I’m also grateful for having foks on station willing to show me how to use the thing, since I know nothing about photography.

Starz.

There’s a faint red and green aurora to the left.

The Transantarctic Mountains.

Mount Discovery.

The moon and stars out at Phoenix airfield.

Across the sea ice towards Scott Base.

Across the sea ice towards the Hut Point Ridge trail.

aaaaaand… glamour shot!

This week is probably the busiest music week I have ever had at McMurdo. I’m playing with two groups at open mic tonight, I’m playing jazz music with a vibraphone player on Friday night, and I’m playing at the carpentry building (“carp shop”) party on Saturday night. I’m also recording some fiddle tracks with a guitarist who’s making a demo for a record company out east, which means there’s a tiny, tiny chance I’ll be on an actual studio-recorded album someday.

I like having music abilities that are so sought after here, but I kind of wish I could clone myself. Or get another fiddler down here to split the strings-playing duties.

Nothing big has happened lately. It’s getting colder and darker. The sun rose at around 9:20 and will set at about 4:30 today. The last sunrise will be two weeks from today. I’ve started learning how to take night photos with the Nikon my boss left for me to use (Thanks Ralph!) and I have another interview for The Antarctic Sun lined up. I still enjoy my job. I often go to bed looking forward to going to work the next day, which is always a good sign. With a six-day, 54-hour work week, it’s easy to feed workaholic tendencies at McMurdo.

Chris from the waste dept. dressed up for Easter.

Climbing with Lee, Brian, and Joel.

Someone set up a giant Connect Four outside the galley. It ahs since been replaced by jenga.

My room, with a UV lamp!

My awesome little humidifier.

Yes, I have a fat tire bike for the winter.

Ray, one of the engineers at NASA’s satelite monitoring station at McMurdo, talking about NASA’s work here.

NASA’s satellite-monitoring dish is inside this radome.

The IT and comms dept. taking photos.

SCIENCE!

Doug and Steve on Ice Radio.

I don’t have the time to write much this week. I went from having no projects to every project… I’m inventorying records in the station’s vinyl library, updating the movie binder for the galley, and teaching myself to use a video camera, amongst other activities.

Other highlights in the last week include ordering new glasses from Christchurch and riding a fat tire bike-and biking in Antarctica-for the first time.

And now………Pictures!

Hut Point is so beautiful when the sun is setting.

Volcanic dust covers the snow.

Volunteers sorting trash, recycling, and clothes at the skua sorting party.

My first time on a fat tire bike… and first time biking in Antarctica!

The sun setting over the sea ice.

We had a playreading at Gallagher’s this weekend. It was awesome.

Other than my two-week emotional roller coaster, which I have mostly recovered from, life is good.

The sun sets ten minutes earlier and rises ten minutes later every day. In another month, it will be completely dark out. Right now, McMurdo is enjoying the one month or so of the austral autumn where we have “normal” sunrises and sunsets.

I have settled into my job and have formed a core group of people I have lunch and dinner with almost every day. We also have been enjoying lots of campy horror movies and the Canadian TV show Letterkenny, which is one of the best shows I’ve seen in years. When I have an introvert night to myself, I’ve been binge watching Northern Exposure, knitting, and I just started reading The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garard, which tells the harrowing details of Robert Scott’s explorations in Antarctica from 1910-1913.

I hosted the first episode of Esotera Australis, my *hopefully* all-vinyl show that I will be hosting once a week on Ice Radio. I don’t know if I will ever be able to top hosting an all-vinyl show on a radio station in Antarctica.

I’ve also been teaching myself how to play the banjo, working a few hours a week in the station store, and I just signed up to do peer counseling. I think being in McMurdo in the winter will give me the chance to learn/try things that I would never think to learn or wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn back home, and I’m gonna try to take advantage of those opportunities as much as possible.

Historically, staying busy and learning new things have been great ways for me to fight sadness and depression. Time to put that to use. Again.

Members of the New Zealand Defense Force perform a haka in the galley (photo by Mark Vogler).

Beautiful sunset in mid-March.

Scott Base, the Nw Zealand station two miles away.

The last flight of Mainbody (summer season) departed early this afternoon. McMurdo’s population is now 320.

I moved into my new winterover room, where I will live for the next seven months. I’ll have pictures of that soon. I’ll say for now that I have done more to decorate it than I have in previous rooms in Madison.

I’ve been wearing my blue down jacket more than my USAP-issued big red parka, which I wore all summer season, lacking any other warm coat. I like wearing something that’s mine, and not something I’ll have to return to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) in Christchurch when I redeploy. It makes me feel more at home.

I spent all summer with one key, my dorm room key. Now, I have six keys keys swinging on the carabiner Gina gave me before she left. A dorm room key, the key for the fat tire bike I still need to pick up, and four keys for work. Yessss….. just like WMUU 🙂

There’s something about walking around McMurdo in my own jacket and a set of keys jingling at my hip that makes me feel at home. It’s like they are anchoring me to this place. They’re little signifiers that I am needed here; that I am less migratory than I was when I came down here in October with my CDC-issued clothes and lived in a spartan dorm room that I never really turned into a home because I was almost never there and I thought I was only staying for four months anyway.

For better or for worse, I seem to have become an Antarctican. I live here now.

And I intend to make myself useful here. In addition to working 54+ hours per week at my regular job, I also got a side job working in the station store a few hours per month. I plan on leading one or two rec activities, I might volunteer with the fuels department so I can be a fuels operator and go to South Pole in a future season, I want to learn to play the banjo and the saxophone, I’m writing the monthly station update for the Antarctic Sun, I’m gonna start my all-vinyl radio show in a week or two, and starting in April I’ll be the band room coordinator, or “POC”.

I didn’t really feel like this was my home until I was mopping the station studio, looking down the empty hallways, and realizing that “summer camp for adults” was over. As my friend Steve, who’s done winter seasons before, would say, “Now the real fun can begin.”

Pastafarian shrine in my old dorm.

Folks on the last summer flight go through the gauntlet of well-wishers.

Apparently this is a tradition here.

*Crickets*