Close the Door!

Hello all,

Here are some pictures I’ve wanted to share with you all for about a month. These are courtesy of Casey Cosper in the carpenter shop. Thanks Casey.

This is one of the 3 galley buildings down on the ice runway. They have 24-hour firefighters and other crew on duty so they need a kitchen to feed them. Funny that it is only 2 miles from town.

Anyway, the door was left ajar while this building was unoccupied in the process of being moved from the winter runway. The door destroyed itself by bashing against the wall during a wind storm. At the same time snow filled the room. Here is why you always close the door.



Anyone want some cool tropical juice?



How about some ketchup?

We shoveled out the room and then swept it up. The next step was to fire up the heaters and have a little steam. I was back in the galley after a couple weeks and it was like nothing ever happened.

A few thoughts from the last few days:

I’ve been reading A Race to the Pole about Scott’s 2 attempts at reaching the pole. He made it the second time but died a few miles shy of his food depot during the return. It has been illuminating to sit inside a heated building while reading about these adventures from the “heroic age” At one point I was looking out the window to the exact location where 3 of Scott’s men and 3 of his ponies where swept out to sea on an ice floe. The men and 1 pony survived by running across the crushed and moving sea ice as the wind pushed it in various directions. Killer Whales (Orcas) spy hopped around the floe during the entire episode. The whales used the chaos of the ice break up to feed on seals (or ponies). This took place less than 100 years ago. It is somewhat easy to distance oneself from the harshness of the continent, but much of the adventures that took place during the initial exploration happened within 15 miles of McMurdo.

A parting scene from the that era. During one winter expedition a man had his teeth split from the cold. Another came out of a humid tent and had his jacket freeze with his hood/head turned to the side. With his head turned 90 degrees he had to hike to make heat until his hood thawed.

Shit—that’s cold. So why were they doing a winter outing? For Science!—they were getting live penguin eggs in mid-incubation. They thought that it would show the link between dinosaurs and birds.

Well here we are, still pursuing science.

More later. Good night all.

Ben