A Crazy Yet Seemingly Typical Day

One of my first close-to-normal days here. I woke up this morning around 8 only to come down to the training room of the firehouse and work on some pre-planning whilst most of the crew slept. The Antarctic Fire Department decided to try something new in regards to the 24 on/24 off schedule that they had been using for years. The schedule remains virtually unchanged with the exception of the Saturday and Sunday shifts. Who ever is working Saturday begins their shift at 0800 and goes off shift at 1200 the next day versus 0800 to 0800 on a normal 24 hour day. The crew coming on after them starts their shift at 1200 and works till 0800 Monday which is pretty nice because that crew can do whatever they want Saturday night and instead of waking up at 7 Sunday morning to get to work, they can sleep in until 1100. Anyways, breakfast (or brunch since it was 1000 when we went to eat) was amazing. It still ceases to amaze me how good the food is here. As I just stated, shift change occurred at 1200 marking the end to my first shift with the department. If I hadn't said it before, our room was a disaster when we first moved in (we being Lonnie, another firefighter on A-Shift, and I). I began rearranging our room the second I got back.

Now, the term dorm could not better explain the living accommodations in which we reside. In our room, there was a bar someone built, a lot of old alcohol, lots of "tasteless" posters, and an entire dresser drawer full of porn. The first thing I did was I gave away the alcohol to my neighbors only to find it in the recycling bin 20 minutes later. Down here we have a recycling program called "Skua" named after the large scavenger bird that comes in the summer and wreaks havoc on us all. Skua is a building here on base where people can pick up or donate things they want or don't use for free. Say I have a pair of pants I don't want. I'll drop it in the bins marked "Skua" in our dorms and they'll be taking over to the Skua building. Say I'm looking for a pair of pants, I can just walk over to Skua and pick up whatever's available in my size. An awesome system developed down here. Anyways, I donated a whole bunch of crap from our room to Skua. Then came the debacle with the bar. Now, I carted the barout of my room into the hall way and left a note on it free for the taken (a fire hazard, I know). Apparently that bar had been in that room for a while because I had a lot of people stop by inquiring why I was getting rid of something that had been there for so long. Someone stopped by later on to tell me if "Moose was getting rid of the bar or not." Not knowing who "Moose" was I just played dumb. Apparently, one of my next door neighbors (named Moose of course) owned the bar and had left it in my room from a previous season. He had no objection to it being left in the hallway which was good because it wasn't going back in the room after all the work I had put into it by then. About an hour after that, I heard some young kid yell out, "Sweet!!!" which was eventually drowned out by the sounds of squeaky polyurethane wheels as he skirted away like a squirrel with a new-found nut. Problem dealt with. After getting the room set up, I decided to hang out with my neighbors some of which were firefighters with me. I met one of my other neighbors who had a pretty extensive porn collection and definitely did not mind having any more. Needless to say that problem was taken care of as well. My addition to his pornucopia helped me out tremendously as I had an entire drawer cleaned out and ready for use. The rest of the day was spent eating dinner, playing a game of foosball, watching a few movies, going to the weight room and cardio room, and sitting here in the computer lab.

Living down here is a play on the senses in itself. The temperature today never got above -15 yet when you walk from building to building, as long as you have at least your jacket on, you can easily bear the cold. It's amazing to me how your body works like that. Every once in a while, however, I'll get a blast of wind down my throat so cold that it sucks the breath right out of your lungs. Haha, its actually a pretty cool feeling. The world here is not as white as everyone thinks. McMurdo actually sits on volcanic rock on Ross Island in the Ross Sea. Now, the sea itself is frozen and serves as the runway for most of the year. The only true white we see is looking out across the sea as we stand on the ice shelf. The mountains and the land have a brownish, speckled hue to it. Still, its beautiful none the less. The sun sets at 8 and rises somewhere between 3 and 4 still it doesn't set to far below the horizon for it's light 24/7. I really can't wait for our first condition 1 weather day. Oh well. Tomorrow, training and work. Take care.