Back in the states, I always looked forward to Mondays. Yeah, I'm that person. Monday, to me, meant a new week and new surprises. Monday also meant the start of the business day during which I could get what ever errunds in my life done with. Down here, however, Monday means a business day here at McMrudo but Sunday back home (remember, we're 18 hours ahead of the east coast). So whatever I have to take care of back home always has to wait to Tuesday. Today has been pretty fun so far. For one, I got word that 2 vehicles that were assumed to be out of service for the entire season as of last week may be coming back to us tomorrow! I suddenly feel like an ass for the rumors I've spread about those vehicles! We started the morning off with a small hazmat call in front of Building 155:
We were called out to 155 for an "Unknown Type Spill". When we got there, the janitor who made the call showed us the "container" that was leaking which turned out to be a bottle of blue hair coloring. Any where else in the United States this would have been blown off by any respectable fire department upon identification of the product (in fact, I don't think anyone in the country would call a hazmat on an obvious bottle of hair coloring leaking on the ground). Because of the
Antarctic Treaty we were actually
mandated by federal law to clean it up....so that's exactly what we did:
Not exactly the way I wanted to spend my morning cleaning up hair care products and what not but that's part of the job. Since we did worry about run-off and turning a tedious and petty task into a major pain-in-ass task, we actually took the time and effort to build a damn and dike out of dirt and ice around the product. Our second call of the day was for a fire alarm at the same building which ended up to be an activation because of work being done on the sprinkler system. Our third "call" (more of a scheduled transport) was a transport of 2 patients out to Pegasus Air Field to be medevaced back to Christchurch. Not bad for a Monday.
Another thing I'm really excited for is the return of Red 3 from the South Pole. With Red 3 back on base it will illeviate a lot of the problems we've been having with equipment issues and staffing for our air field. About 3 weeks ago, I got to drive Red 3 into the back of an LC-130 so it could be transported the 600 some nautical miles to the south pole:
At first, it would fit in backwards due to the fact that the fire package on the back of the rig would hit the ceiling of the plane before it leveled out off of the loading ramp. After we realized that I was told to drive out and turn it around to nose it into the aircraft:
Now I can't begin to tell you how tight of a fit it was. I had to fold in both my mirrors in order to make in the aircraft. At that point I was relying solely on one person in front of me to make sure I didn't hit anything:
I almost had to crawl out of the windows because I could get my door open all of the way. When I got out to look at how good or bad of a job I did, I noticed that I had about 3 or 4 inches on either side of the tracks of the vehicle from the walls of the aircraft...
The end result. I had a blast trying to drive that thing on that C-130. All in all it took me about 30 or 45 minutes to drive it on there just right. Of course after all of that work, it's coming back here for the rest of the season.
Yesterday was spent skiing. I took a 30 minute nap after getting back from work after which I strapped on my skins and skiied all the way (About 2.5 miles) to the top of the Castle Rock hill here on Ross Island. It felt really good to get out by myself and ski for a few hours. Not bad for a "3 day" weekend...
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