Changes

Tonight, for the first time this season, I noticed that the sun sorta "set" tonight. It never went below the horizon however. No. It actually stayed well above the horizon...a good 20 or 30 degrees above the horizon. What I mean by set is that the sun sank low enough to cast different hues of light across the canvas of the norther sky. The Royal Society Mountains, Observation Hill, and Mt. Erebus all have an alpine-glow like yellow tint to them. As I stood outside marveling at this sight, I couldn't help but wonder how much my life has changed over the year much like the seasons down here do. I went from working in Fauquier County, to wondering what I was going to do next, to moving out to Idaho, to working in the bottom of the world. I love this life. Sure, parts of it suck, but I making the best of it with simple pursuits of my dreams. I tell this to people I meet since I left DC. If you have an idea or a dream try it out. You never know how your plans will pan out.

For those of us already down here, Raytheon opened up internal job announcements for the 2008-2009 summer positions for here and the South Pole which means we'll get first picks of jobs for next year that won't open up externally till April or May. Needless to say, the second I got word of this, I applied for one of the Lieutenant's positions. God has a funny way of making things fall into place. If all goes right (and that is a pretty big "if") the next year should look like this:

- Leave here and vacation for 2 weeks
- Go on unemployment and work on an on-call basis for Virginia Deparment of Forestry till April
- Travel to Yosemite for Wilderness EMT
- Travel to wherever in May to start working the wildland fire season
- Go off employment and rack in the overtime when the fire season gets in full swing
- Come back home for a week or two before heading back to Antarctica
- Start cycle all over again

Life is what you make it. You can say your life sucks and wallow in self-pity thiking that you can't do anything about it, or you can get off your ass and try to change the way things are going. If you try hard enough, if you set your mind to it, life will find a way. Your dreams will find a way. If my plans don't work out, there will always be something else to guide me along to keep my head up...

A Beautiful Day Out at Station 2

Well I'm back out at Willy Field which means time and sometimes privacy for deep contemplation. Today it is absolutely gorgeoos outside. It's warm, sunny, and just plain beautiful out. A great day for training outside. I've checked on our intranet to find that I have packages waiting for me back intown. Who cares? It's too nice out here today...

Life in Town and the Next Couple of Months

I find myself working more and more in a supervisory as the season's end draws near. With the hustle and bustle of the town because of the arrival of the ice breaker and cargo ships to come, injuries and medical emergencies are starting to rise. Between that, training, and deadlines to be met, my life at the fire department has been a hectic one. On top of all that, I have employee evaluations to work on. Sometime this week I find out what my tentative departure date is next month. I'm actually pretty excited for that and really excited to get home. Anyways, with the arrival of the ice breaker comes an abundance of wildlife the likes of which usually isn't seen until this time of the season. With the broken ice comes seals that pepper the landscape as far as you can see, adelie and emperor penguins running to and fro, as well as orca and beluga whales which I've yet to see.

I've been working on my NOLS application and scholarship for the past couple of days and I came to find out that my Veterans Affairs educational assistance does not apply for certain NOLS classes with the Wilderness EMT class I'm looking to take being one of them. What does this mean? It means, if I don't get this scholarship, I'll have to fork over $2950. If I do get the full scholarship (full meaning the full amount I had asked for) then I'll only have to fork over $1000. Still that's a lot of money. The closer I get to march, the more detailed and concrete my plans are turning out to be. I'm continuously becoming amazed at the benefits this job offers whether they're on purpose or not. One of the great things about this job is that since most of us down here are working a seasonal contract and this branch of Raytheon is based out of Virginia, everyone that will be filing for unemployment has to file through Virginia. Me being from Virginia means that Raytheon will take care of most of the paperwork for me so that I'll be receiving unemployment checks the second I get home until I start working May 15th. If I can find a decent job I'd enjoy that pays more than whatever it is I'll be getting from unemployment, I'll gladly take it. If not, I'm going to spend a lot of time in the Monongahela National Forest or the Fire Department. I'm also hoping for a busy fire season in Virginia. Maybe I can get deployed on a few fires within the state to get some extra money. So far, everything is looking good for the next couple of months. God willing, it will stay that way when those times come...

The Future

Station 2 out here on Williams Skiiway is a great place to be when you have a lot on your mind. The past 24 hours, for me at least, was spent contemplating on the future and thinking about problems in the present. Today I'm attending a meeting on redeploying back into the civilized world sometime in the afternoon. To be honest, I'm pretty excited about the idea of heading home. Don't get me wrong, I love this place to death which is why I looking forward to signing my contract for the next Austral Summer, but, like any true rambler, its time to move on to the next thing. New Zealand is starting to sound really nice right now, and home to see my family is starting to sound even better.

Wanderlust and Post Antarctic Plans

It's funny how it has taken me this long to realize how dangerous wanderlust can be. After all, I left the safety and comfort of civilized life in Washington D.C. to work in the wilds of the American West fighting wildfires or on the southern most continent that is Antarctica to ensure safety of those exploring science down here. I find myself constantly thinking of new ways to go farther, to do things and go places that no one I know has heard of. On the other hand, the life of a rambler is sometimes met with black clouds. I feel my "sins" of leaving my family and friends coming to haunt me. I wonder how I'm going to make it wherever it is life and God takes me. Then I think, that's the best part of my life right now. Dreaming about where I'm going and just doing it is probably the most rewarding feeling I've ever felt. It doesn't matter how I'm going to do it, or who I'm going to meet knowing I'm not going to know anywhere where I'm going, no. That's what makes it an adventure.

A few things have come up while trying to plan for the next few months. Because I wasn't able to get my Idaho EMT (Idaho EMT = National Registry EMT = Easier dealing with my expired VA EMT) and my Virginia EMT expired before I left for the ice, I've opted to take Wilderness EMT through the National Outdoor Leadership School's Wilderness Medical Institute before the beginning of the fire season which I think is a really cool idea. I've been meaning to take this class for years and what better way to do it than to drive to Yosemite Valley in California, live out of my truck, and climbing and fly-fish when I'm not in class or studying. After the class is done, I'll drive to Cedar City and spend the rest of the 10-12 days before the beginning of the season climbing around Zion. The only down fall of this all is I have to cut my trip short to the South Island of New Zealand by two weeks. To be honest, with everything that has happened in the past few months back home, I really can't wait to see my family. We'll see what happens...

Redeployment

Redeployment into the civilized world is near. Tomorrow at 1330 I attend a one hour meeting on redeploying. The edge of the ice is getting closer and closer and the Swedish Icebreaker coming down should be here if not tomorrow, the next day. With it will come emperor penguins, more waddell seals, more adelie penguins, and beluga and orca whales. Life is still pretty good down here. With the end of the season approaching, I'm actually finding myself acting in a managerial role for the first time since I've been a lieutenant with performance evaluations and other issues around the station. I've been spending a lot of time studying Spanish (!hola!) and Arabic (السلام عليكم). With the end of the season approaching, I actually can't wait to get back to New Zealand and then to home! I honestly love it down here but I need to change it up for a few months. After all, that's the point of working seasonal jobs. Sometime this month I should be hearing on the wildland jobs I've applied to. I still have my heart set on Zion National Park although a job, period, would be nice.

New Years

It's pretty cool to be able to say that you celebrated New Year's in Antarctica. Luckily, the evening of the 31st, I managed to get off work around 1830 to start celebrating the ringing in of the New Year. The night started off with a pretty large hallway party (about 20 to 30 people). After a few hours of that, I went to meet up with someone at the Coffeehouse only to spend the rest of the evening at Gallagher's Pub to bring in the New Year. Despite what you might have guessed, I actually grabbed something to eat from the galley at 0030 and went to bed. Now even though I went to bed so early, I didn't wake up until about 1230 that afternoon. The rest of the 1st was spent celbrating about 7 other time zone's New Years and going to a going away party for a few people I knew.

Going to the going away party hit me in the sense that the season is almost over. People are getting ready to wrap it up before the end of the summer hits. When you think about it, as fast as this summer has gone for me, I have only 6 to 7 weeks left down here. Life and the normal pace of things are starting to change down here as well. Soon the icebreakers will come and we'll start seeing a lot of cargo ships and fueling tankers down here. Employee evals are being prepared by supervisors, talks about contracts for next year are being held, times are definlitey changing down here.

As for afterwards, I'm planning on hanging out in Queenstown and Christchurch, NZ for a little bit only to head to the West Coast of the South Island to do a little climbing with some friends from down here. Hopefully, I'll be back stateside in mid-march.

On a sad and final note, Lieutenant Alex John Keepers of Loudoun County Fire & Rescue Services (the county in which I volunteer) was killed in an auto accident Monday morning while on his way to work. Please keep him and his family in your hearts and prayers as well as all of us firefighters. We're not as invincible as people perceive...

Screwy Life

It's funny how screwy life can be down here. This week has been very snowy….with the exception of Christmas of course. As a matter of fact, this entire season has been pretty snowy. For the driest continent on the planet, it has sure snowed its ass off on many an occasion. Tonight is no different. I think it's pretty safe to say that I lose absolutely all concept of time when I'm sleeping…especially in my dorm room. Since I don't have windows or any other source of natural or ambient light, when the lights are off, they're off which I actually prefer when I'm sleeping. It's pretty nice to have a completely pitch black room when I'm trying to sleep. The only problem is that I don't sleep with my watch and I have absolutely no way of telling what time it is when I'm underneath the covers. A couple weeks ago I woke up thinking it was 1100 on one of my days off when it in fact turned out to be 0430. The same thing goes with the firehouse. What's even crazier about the firehouse is the fact that even though the windows are covered, they still let enough light in to fill the entire room. With very little change in the rise and setting of the sun, the light places tricks with your mind as easily as the dark. It's not necessarily a bad thing this lack of time perception, but it's something I'm finding really hard to get use to. Gossip down here spreads as fast as a wildfire. I've ran calls where people in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the fire department or the affected have either asked me some off the wall question regarding the call or given me some crazy detail that was assumed to be secret….sometimes as soon as 5 minutes after we've completed the call.

With talks of re-deployment, mail deadlines, Christchurch, and contract renewals, the end of the season is drawing near. I plan on signing my contract for next year at the next opportunity. With all that is happening with my life at home and in Boise, I'd be a fool not to work a job where I managed to go 6 weeks without spending a single dime. I get to travel to New Zealand and Antarctica; I get free room and board, free food, and a decent paycheck without having to pay for a whole lot. One thing I've found myself doing after my pops died was learning from the examples he had set for me; one of them being how to plan for my financial future. Now I'm not one whose life revolves around money but it definitely couldn't hurt to have as much money saved up as humanly possible. It sounds weird to plan for my retirement at 22 but to be honest I can't think of a better time to do so. Despite ups, downs, and drastic changes in my life, I still manage to dream and so far I've managed to act out some of the most far-fetched dreams I've conjured up and I definitely don't think I'm done either.

Craziness and Christmas to Come

Craziness has erupted around town. The shift after the 17^th (my last post), we tested over 2,000 feet of hose, racked at least 1,000, and dealt with a few other things before having to deal with a pain in the ass medevac I had to manage for a few hours. Just like when I became a lieutenant back in Ashburn, I got to deal with a bunch of crazy things within my first week or so of office. We had a medevac where we had to transfer a patient from the hospital to the helicopter pad so that he could be taken to Pegasus Airfield. What I thought would be a simple task turned out to be a logistical nightmare trying to communicate between medical, the National Science Foundation (from whom I had to get approval to fly the patient), and Helo Ops (who controls all helicopter missions and operations). Back home (Loudoun County), if we wanted to medevac a patient to a more advanced hospital, all we had to do was call dispatch, have them start a helicopter our way, then call the hospital to get permission to transfer patient care to the helicopter crew. Down here, the complexity of medevacing a patient is damn near 3 fold. The request for Medevacs comes from the hospital. They call us to pick up the patient and a flight nurse and we transfer the patient from the hospital to the airfield. If they leave on a C-130, we transfer them to Willy Field which is about 10 miles away. If they leave on a C-17, we transfer them out to Pegasus Field which is about 17 miles away. Either of which is not an easy transport because of road conditions. If the patient is really emergent (as was our patient from the 19^th), then they can be flown via helicopter to one of the airfields. When that happens, we have to coordinate between Medical, Helo Ops, and the NSF….all of which I had to deal with by myself since I was the sole lieutenant working Friday. Thank god that was the last call we had to deal with. Including today, the past 4 or 5 shifts have been pretty busy. It's weird because we've been so using to trying to find something to stay busy with.

    With Christmas being in a few days, I've found myself thinking more and more about Jesus and trying to disassociate myself from things proclaimed as festive and Christmas. Now, I haven't preached to people about the true meaning (or at least in my opinion) of Christmas because I don't feel it's my right to tell people how to celebrate their holidays. I've found myself listening to a lot of music that reminds me of our Lord as well as Christian faith in general. I've been listening to a lot of folk and old-time bluegrass. I've been praying more. I more at ease and a lot more peaceful. This time of year, I'm truly happy. We had our town Christmas party today. Normally, I don't like being in large crowds like tonight. Seeing a certain someone however helped change my mood a bit. As I sit here though, 2 AM on Christmas Eve, I've retreated to my newly found peaceful state of mind. The years been good and bad. I quit working for Fauquier County (good thing), I started working for Virginia Department of Forestry, I moved away from home for the first time and worked a wildland season out west, I managed to land a job working in Antarctica, and I even got promoted within said job. This year however, I lost one of the closest relatives I've ever had in my life at what couldn't have been a more seemingly worst time. But that hasn't brought me down. I gain people in my life, I lose people in my life. I've met hundreds of people this year. I bridged new connections , new relationships in life. I've rekindled old ones. My relationship with my mother is a lot better since we realize how much we miss each other. Everything that has happened to me, every where I've been, where I'm at now, and where I will be in the new year to come, I owe it all to Jesus. Such an epiphany couldn't have come at a better time of the year.

Christmas and Crazyness

Christmas is around the corner. 8 days to be exact. Which means I'm in a good mood. Next Tuesday is Jesus Christ' birthday which means more to me than presents or shitty music. The 25th is about celebrating his life and everything he's done for those who believe in him. Part of me, however, isn't all that thrilled about the time period between Thanksgiving and the 25th. In America (and probably pre-dominantly Christian countries across the globe) those 30-some days are jammed packed with commercialism as far as you can hear or see and I absolutely hate that about our country. The great thing about being down here is that you're so cut off from the outside world that you get a much needed break from the commercialism of an American Christmas. Nothing but a lot of red and green, Christmas lights, fake reeves and trees (actual ones would be a violation of the Antarctic Treaty my friends), and some good ol fashion holiday cheer. Another thing that slightly annoys me about the holidays is the political correctness with a lot of people. A neighbor of mine wanted to put up a Merry Christmas sign above her door. Her roommate wanted her to put up a Happy Holiday sign up instead because she was afriad that she would offend someone who didn't celebrate Christmas. Maybe that's just a pet peeve of mine. I celebrate Christmas. People will know it. Anyways, I deviated from the mood of this post. Christmas is near. 2007 years ago, Christ was born to save us all. I'm happy, I'm enlighted. All I want to hear is music celebrating his life. Christmas music...not holiday music.

Today was probably one of the busiest days I've had to deal with here within the AFD. With Monday comes weekly truck checks which are incredibly thorough and usually take a couple hours. On top of checking out several vehicles, checking out a hydrant and driving around for a bit. We managed to stay pretty busy. Lunch went by fast and before we knew it, we were outside testing 1'000 feet of 3" hose, something that I thought I'd be able to skip out of by coming down here. I can't complain too much though. Ashburn had almost 8 miles of hose to test versus the less than 2 here at the Antarctic Fire Department. Our hose testing was interrupted by an in-flight emergency involving a C-130 with stuck flaps landing at Pegasus runways. After mobilizing people for that we went back to hose testing only to run into problems with our water supply. Finally we finished testing the hose we wanted to even thought we were 10 minutes late for our blasting/demolition stand-by. 1630 came around and told everyone to chillax before dinner. As we're walking out the door for dinner, Station 2 gets a call for a man with a severe emergency medical issue. Because of the condition of the road going from Willy Field to McMurdo (the road is closed to light vehicles), our ambulance here had to rendezvous with the ambulance from station 2 on the transition. Shortly after the patient transfer between the two ambulances, ambulance 1's tranny crapped out on the crew only to have the other ambulance switch the equipment and patient back into their original ambulance where they managed to make it through the treacherous melt pools of the transition. I'm tired....but I'm happy. I love my job and the people I work with. I love this unique environment. I love it all. Hopefully I'll love where ever I work in the summer as much as I do down here...

Lieutenant and Life at McMurdo

Well, to my suprise, out of 4 candidates, I was picked to be our next Lieutenant. Call me humble but I don't think I ever got excited as some of my friends...especially Betty. It is sorta cool though that I can say I am a Lieutenant with the Antarctic Fire Department. I've started overhauling my resume for the wildland positions I've been applying for. The best part is that I'm surrounded by people that have been working for the Park Service for years so I have input coming out the woodworks as to what my Resume should say and look like. Other than that, life is pretty simple right now. For some reason, I'm still up. I don't know why but I just felt I should share that. Maybe I'm excited for my first day back at work as a Lieutenant...

Lt Position, Wildland Firefighting, and Connections

I interviewed for the Lieutenant's position within our department on Friday. To be honest, I really have no idea how the interview went despite how many people have asked me. I think it went well, but then again, I don't know if my Chief or Captain who conducted the interview thought the same way. For some reason, we're waiting until tomorrow to find out who the two new lieutenants' will be. At this point, I've sorta lost focus on the entire thing. A week ago, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management began posting job announcements for positions within their respective organizations. So far I've applied to:

 

Zion National Park

Glacier National Park

Grand Tetons National Park

Mesa Verde National Park

Yosemite National Park

Redwood National Park

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

Point Reyes National Seashore

Mt Ranier Natonal Park

Denali National Park

Yukon-Charley Rivers National Park

Colorado BLM

Utah BLM

Idaho BLM

Wyoming BLM

 

It's weird how some supervisors have responded to the emails I've sent out. Some were pretty happy that I emailed them. Others were complete assholes. While applying for these jobs and attempting to contact the supervisors, I've come to find out how many people I work with and know that have worked out west…especially for the Park Service. There are two guys within the fire department alone that have worked for the park service as firefighters. I've met a few other people outside of the fire department that have worked as wildland firefighters. Just today, I was talking to one of the new firefighters that just came in last week who worked for the forest service as well as for SAR organizations in Colorado and California. On top of that he's a pretty experienced climber. If there's one thing I love about this place it's the connections you make with the people you work and party with.

Change in the Firehouse

Another day at the firehouse. During our morning shift change meeting, we came to find out that our (B-Shift) Captain landed a job working for the City of Omaha, NE as a firefighter and that he's leaving tomorrow. We're actually really excited for him but sad to see him go…especially so suddenly. With him leaving, however, that leaves a captain's position open for the taking. With that being said, it was announced that interviews for the lieutenant's position will take place on Thursday and that they'll now be hiring two lieutenants instead of just one on account of the department will be looking to promote one of the current lieutenants to captain. For now, the captain on A-Shift will go to a day schedule and over see both the shifts during normal business hours. So a lot of change will be happening within the fire department here very shortly.

Willy Field and Wildland Applications

December is finally here. Today, the ice town out on the ice runway was moved some 5 to 10 miles away onto Williams (Willy) Field on some nearby glacier ice due to the thinning sea ice. It's actually quite an amazing feat to move 20 buildings including a fire station, as well as all of the equipment and vehicles that support runway operations. The entire operation took about 8 hours to complete. To my surprise, since I haven't been down at station 2 in almost a month, I was stuck at station 1 while everyone down on the ice runway had fun.

I woke up this morning around 0530 for some reason. Not being able to fall asleep, I got up, got dressed and walked down to the computer lab for a bit. Low and behold, when I logged onto USAJOBS.com, I found that everyone and there mother under the BLM, NPS, and USFS was hiring....including Zion National Park! Through out the day, I've been applying to almost 20 some positions in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. I'm looking to apply to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon National Parks when they open up but for now, I've applied to most of the positions and locations that I had been wishing to. I guess that's the most exciting thing in my life right now.

A 5 Day Hiatus and McMurdo Life

A lot has happened in the 8 days I haven't updated this journal. Where did I leave off...I was feeling like shit with the whole idea of thanksgiving regarding myself and my family. What I didn't know at the time (Thursday) was that Raytheon's Thanksgiving is different than the Thanksgiving Americans normally celebrate. For some reason, Raytheon's thanksgiving was celebrated on the following Saturday. So Thursday I came out of my room and ate with some friends in the Galley. Friday turned out to be a pretty good day at work. Near the end of the night, I was told that I didn't have to come in to work since they had more people than they need that day and I haven't been sent home early in a good couple weeks. What that all means is since I have a Tuesday Kelley day anyways, having Saturday off and not having to work Sunday just tacked 2 days to a 3 day break making today my first day back at work since last Friday. Saturday ended up being an ok day. I stuck by my decision not to eat in the galley so I got in the ridiculously long line that wrapped around half of the first floor, got my food, and headed back up to my room to sit in front of my TV only to be joined by a few other friends from the firehouse. Apparently, a couple hundred people eating around them didn't sound to appealing to them either. After the last block of Thanksgiving Dinner eaters poured out of the galley, Building 155 (where I live) became sort of a party building with random hordes of people going to and fro (at one point in time about 20 or 25 of us were hanging in the hallway outside of my room. The rest of the night was spent partying in random places around the base including the gym and the Crary Science Lab. Sunday I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon recovering the night before. It truly dawned on me how much time I had before myself so in order to nurse my lack of energy from being sick earlier this month, I decided to not do anything too crazy. I played Ultimate Frisbee Sunday afternoon and I spent the rest of the time reading magazines, a book I got from the library, and studying a little bit. I went back out Sunday night but I didn't get as crazy as I did the night before.

Monday was spent again, reading, watching a movie here and there, and just trying to stay low. The evening, however, was a different story. My neighbor and good friend was celebrating her birthday by doing a "pub crawl" to different rooms on our floor and she asked me if I could make my room her first stop. More than happy to oblige, I ran down to the store to buy a bottle of Southern Comfort to bring a little flavor from back home to all of these west coasters. We ended up making mojitos in her room and made our way into my room where they brought the mojitos they made and I...drank the Southern Comfort I bought. When we felt we were pretty loose and tipsy we made our way to the next room. After about 4 rooms, my memory gets fuzzy. Apparently, we went to 2 more rooms only to leave 155 and stumble over to the Coffee house where myself and another neighbor/friend brought his guitar. We ended up jamming together for a small audience and I found out that I somehow play a lot better when I'm drunk and not really worried about being nervous playing and singing in front of people.

Tuesday was a rude awakening for me, literally, when the Fire Techs decided to test the fire alarms in our building at 0830. After waking up, I stayed up and hung out with Joe, one of my neighbors, friends, and fellow firefighters. After Laundry, a movie, lunch, and some computer time, I continued my daily routine of reading and studying. I had decided that three nights in a row of partying was plenty enough for a week or so so I instead went down to the Galley around 2000 for one of the many Travelogues the Galley hosts every week. This week, one of the Raytheon workers showed us a powerpoint of a backpacking trip he had taken to Puerto Williams, Tierra del Fuega, and Cabo de Hornos over the summer (Northern Hemisphere summer). The curiosity in me got me thinking about actually living in Puerto Williams considering the land around it, the fame of being the southern most city in the world, and the general seclusion of the place. Considering I just thought about this about 2 hours ago, I'm still researching the place as we speak.

Wednesday wasn't any different than the days before. I went to play dodgeball in the evening only to injure myself before the game even started (long story). Instead, refereed for the games and went to the bar with a few of my teammates.

Today, I'm back at work. Everyone's anticipating our annual Mass Casualty Incident drill which was suppose to have taken place last week. Because of that, our daily itineraries haven't been too full. I sit here now thinking about options for the future and next summer. I've added wildland firefighting in Northwestern Canada to one of the things I'm considering, as well as boondoggles to South America, Central Asia, or Greenland (Random, I know). December is around the corner and Summer is almost in full swing. The ice runways is getting thinner and thinner and on Saturday we're moving the ice town over to Willy Field some 5 miles away. Hopefully I'll get to be a part of that when I work on Saturday. Yep, I'm loving life down here. I think the days are going to go by a lot faster now.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving...at least down here it is. Today everyone in town will be eating dinner in the galley within a 3 hour period surrounded by new and old friends as they think about their families. I can only think about mine and so far today has been turning out to be one of the worst days in my life within the past couple of years. For the second thanksgiving in a row, someone is missing out of my life. It was hard enough to get through last thanksgiving without my dad, now it's even more gutwrenching to get through this one without my Uncle James. What makes things even worse for both my mother and I, this is the first thanksgiving in my life that I haven't celebrated without my mother or the rest of my family. That has been fucking me up inside for the past 12 hours. I haven't slept and I really don't feel like eating. A [what I like to consider a close friend] friend and I had a pretty big argument and a falling out yesterday and that's been eating me up inside to the point where that and the accumulation of everything else has left me pretty depressed this morning. Right now, I really don't want to be around a single person. I don't even want to be on the continent right now. I gotta find someway to be alone today just to clear my head. I hear the chapel is pretty quiet usually which is good considering God and I have some conversing to do. I'm not going to eat dinner tonight because I don't want to be around a couple hundred people when there are 4 people back home that are missing 3 people from the dinner table for the first time in our family history. I'm going to call my mother and maybe go to the sauna. Other than that, I'm going to lay low. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and stay safe.

Happy Camper, Partying, My Future

Friday, shortly after our shift change, I attended a class called Snowcraft I or Happy Camper School which was taught by NSF/Raytheon instructors. The class was designed to teach and prepare you to be able to survive and fucntion while operating out in the field. After some introductions and a little classroom time, we embarked for the same area where our SAR try-outs were conducted to begin our training. Now, at first, I was dreading attending this class at that particular date and time considering I hadn't been sleeping well for 3 days, I'm still somewhat sick, and I had only found out that I was going less than 15 hours before I had to leave. By the time I had left my room, I was actually pretty excited to go on this trip. I've been backpacking for going on 10 years and I've always wanted to learn the winter skills that I haven't been able to learn on the east coast. What a better way to learn them then on top of a glacier in Antarctica! A lot of people complained non-stop throughout the entire ordeal and to be honest with you, there were a few people starting to get on my nerves but for the most part I had blast while I was out there and I definitely learned a thing or two about cold weather camping. I slept in what's called a quinzie. We piled all of our sleeping gear into a giant mound a couple feet thick, then dug out the middle and a 5 foot tunnel underneath one of the walls. To my surprise, the inside of the quinzie was actually about 5 or 10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. With enough space to lay down flat and roll around, I slept for about 10 hours pretty comfortably. We did more training in the morning and afternoon including scenarios, risk management, radio operations, helicopter operations, and some environmental impact considerations. I'm really thankful for this class considering how much I learned that I use in Virginia and WV backpacking and climbing.

Antarctica is amazing in the fact that you can't go far without being reminded as to how far away you are from civilization. Away from town, out on the middle of the glacier where we were, the landscape is amazing. Asides from the flags marking safe travel routes and the distinct green buildings of New Zealand's Scott Base, The land is virtually untouched, virgin. Mt Erebus dominates the horizon topping off at 3700 m. Mt Terror, Mt Discovery, The Royal Society Mountain Range, all litter the horizon and add to the beauty of the land. One thing I noticed, in the middle of the night while I was outside peeing, when the wind wasn't blowing, when there were no planes, no vehicles, no wildlife, the world was silent. A silence I hadn't heard since Wyoming. A silence I long for and miss. It made me think about where I want to take my life next where I may want to try to live. Where I want to visit. I've been reading a book about a woman that spent 7 years living in Northwestern Greenland near the Baffin Bay. Something is pulling me to live in the wilds, away from society. I don't know. I have a lot of thinking to do on this new found feeling but I think it's something that will play a big role in my life here soon.

Low and behold, when I got back from Snowcraft I, my roommate was a sweetheart enough to pick up one of my packages from the firehouse and it turned out to be my Guitar! Between such an awesome time at Snowcraft I and having my guitar waiting for me when I got back, I couldn't have been any happier than I was at that moment. There were 3 of us from my shift that were in the class and when we called to check in after class was done, we were told to go home and not worry about coming in which led us all to Gallagher's Bar to party for the night. I ended up actually leaving the bar around 12 to go back to a friend's dorm room, only to meet someone in the hall, and go back to their building, building 210. In that building, I met even more people who dragged me to a party at the Antenna Rigger's Shack right across the street from the firehouse. Still drunk, at 3 AM, I walked out of 210, wearing a button up T-Shirt, flip-flops, and jeans, all the way (a 1/4 mile) to the Antenna Rigger's Shack in 20 degree weather. God bless Antarctica. I hung out there for a couple hours with my new found friends and finally walked back to my Dorm around 0445-0500 to go to sleep. Today, I woke up a little sicker than I had been over the past few days...something I attributed to being out in the cold for 48 hours. With that being said, I really didn't do much today.

So all in all, I had a pretty good weekend. Awesome training, night off from work, I got my guitar, met about 30 or 40 new people, life is good.

Packages

After almost 2 weeks of no flights or mail, the first flight with our packages finally made it down here. Mind you, they were just a small part of the payload of the plane that made the journey down here but some of us finally got packages. I still have god knows how many boxes waiting for me back in Christchurch but I at least got 3 of the boxes. I received, a few books, some extra clothes, my hiking boots which I've been waiting for for a while, and my new camera which I am soo thankful for getting. This week I had my Kelly day. I haven't done much. I'm still pretty sick so I've been waking up around 1200 everyday. The weather has for the most part stabilized. There's been a constant 10 knot wind in town but other than that, it's been pretty nice outside. Now that my hiking boots are here, it's time to start hitting the trails. My climbing shoes also made it down here so I'll be spending a lot of time in the bouldering cave in the weight room building. My options of things to do are definitely opening up for me.

The firehouse as been pretty busy. Yesterday (my Kelly day) they ran the season's first wildlife herding for an Adelie penguin that was hanging out on the ice runway. No one had managed to tell us that they were pretty feisty. Apparently there are pictures and videos of a few firefighters getting chased around by this thing as it hissed at them. Man, I wish I was there to see it. Today the opposite shift had a car fire way off on the ice shelf and everyone was running around like crazy. Myself and another firefighter were at Scott Base when it first got dispached. When we got back to our dorm, we checked our pager to find that they had called back all off-duty person ell (for a car fire no less). By the time we got to the firehouse (20 minutes later) we were told to go home since there wasn't anything for us to do. Thank God. So here I sit, another glorious McMurdo night waiting for our dodge ball tournament. Life is good down here...

Beautiful Weather But No Packages

The weather here has been incredible the past couple of days. Sunshine, warmth (20-30 degrees), and Skuas. Yes, they're finally here. A message that summer is here. I didn't make the SAR team. As a matter of fact, a few people that I thought would be shoe-ins didn't. I'm still waiting to have my interview for the lieutenant's position within the station. The snow is starting to blow away or melt within the base. Everything is turning shades of brown from white. We still haven't gotten our packages and no one has been able to give anyone a straight answer as to when they'd get here. The rumor mill has been spitting out all kinds of...well, rumors, about When our mail will get here, how much mail is waiting to come down, etc. 7 days of canceled flights didn't help much either. Haha, it's funny that I keep ordering things or having things shipped down here thinking that I'll have something in a couple weeks. Hopefully Raytheon or the NSF won't do anything stupid like put our mail at the low end of the priority scale. I can see a revolt being born because of that.

Condition 1

Today (tonight) I'm experiencing Condition 1 weather for the first time in the town. As a matter of fact, the weather we're seeing tonight is being considered some of the worse the base has seen in about 10 years. I finally found clarification on the weather rating system for McMurdo Station which is as follows:


Condition One
Weather conditions when visibility is less than 100 ft., or wind speed is greater than 55 knots (more than 60 mph), or wind chill is greater than -100°F (-38°C).

Condition Two
Weather conditions when visibility is less than ¼ mile, or wind speed is between 48 and 55 knots (about 55 mph to 65 mph), or wind chill factor is between -75°F and -100°F (or between -24°C and -38°C).

Condition Three
Weather conditions, from anything better than a Condition Two, up to a beautiful sunny day.


So yeah, the weather is pretty shitty right now. During condition 2 weather, all recreational travel is prohibited while everyone that has to drive as part of their job has to check in with the firehouse. Condition 1, no one is allowed outside period until the weather gets better which means some people may be spending the night where ever they're at...regardless if that's where they want to be. Also, during condition 1 weather, the SAR team is on stand-by to go "rescue" people stranded outside or in normally non-occupied buildings or set up rope systems down on the ice runway from certain buildings (i.e. the firehouse) to the bathrooms. Tonight they were pretty busy rescuing the stranded and getting them back to their dorms. All in all, it's been pretty interesting the past few hours. Tonight, I'm the sole person on Tanker 3 while everyone else is on the engine. Not to my suprise, they ended up getting a call for an odor of something burning in one of the bars on base. Pissed that I wasn't dispatched, I retreated back to my computer to waste time on facebook and ebay. Just another day here at the firehouse...

SAR Tryouts, Climbing, and Mail

6 days into the month and already November's starting to turn out pretty well. Yesterday, we had our Search & Rescue team tryouts. Tryouts consisted of knot and ropecraft, movement in snow and on glacier's, self-rescue, anchor systems, haul systems, and moving in roped teams. Unfornutately, our time outside got cut short because of a storm that dropped in on us all of a sudden. The cool thing was that the storm made the weather so bad that the base considered Condition 1 weather (3 being normal, 1 being the worse where no one's allowed to leave whatever building they're in) which not even most of the people who were there before us during winfly got to experience. As we were leaving, I noticed that I had lost feeling in my nose which was a bad thing but it slowly started coming back as we warmed up. We traveled several miles away from base to do our training. It was nice to truly see the continent on the ground for once without having any major buildings around. We had a jamesway which was nothing more than a canvas covered structure that was for the most part portable. Other than that, our classroom was in the snowfield and on the glacier ice. We came back to the Science Support Center where most of the SAR operations take place and we practiced what we would have been doing outside...inside. They have one more set of tryouts on Thursday. All in all, we heard that they're only selecting 4 main-body (which is me) persons for the secondary team since the secondary team is in fact, the primary winter team. I'm praying I get on the team. The good thing however is that for those of us main-body folks that are trying for those 4 spots, technical experise is actually compared so thankfully I have the upper hand over some of the other folks in our group.

My mother is sending down my climbing gear down and it should be in Christchurch sometime this week. I'm really looking forward to climbing somewhere on New Zealand when I get off the ice considering that I had to cancel my Morocco trip. I remember that the biggest nightmare I was having about coming down here was how was I going to get the gear I needed for Morocco in Christchurch when I got off the ice. Well, I didn't find out until after I got down here that I can have things delivered to Christchurch that can be held for me until I get off the ice. Now I know this for next year. For now, I'll have to have both my climbing gear and backpacking gear sent to me on the ice so I can go through it and see what I need or don't need for afterwards.

We're still waiting for our packaged mail. The total amount of weight of packaged mail waiting to come down has now topped 20,000 lbs and it's still no where in sight. So far, I have 3 or 4 boxes of stuff I sent from Christchurch so that I'd make the weight restrictions, 2 or 3 boxes of stuff I've bought from different online stores, and now 3 boxes of stuff that my mother has sent me. Not to mention my guitar I sent to myself from Great Falls in early September. All that I can hope for is that when it comes time to send this stuff either back to the states or back to Christchurch, I can score enough boxes to get it done.

Just Another Saturday

Station 2...yet again. This shift I get to spend 28 glorious hours sitting in a 15 by 30 foot trailer. The shitty part is it's not like it's been nice outside like it has been for the past 2 weeks. I woke up to -20 degree weather and a -30 wind chill. After showing up at station 1 to pick up our gear, we headed down to the runway to begin our shift in the ice town. We spent an hour checking out the apparatus, 20 minutes going over what needed to be done today, maybe 20 minutes doing training, and the rest of the day and evening gaffing off. Despite doing anything remotely close to being Antarctic Fire Department related, I did manage to get a lot done online that I had been meaning to do for a while. I spent a lot of my time looking at different schools and programs regarding fire science and EMS. I also had been looking at jobs in other parts of the world. My friend's wife from back home at one point in time helped with the hiring of firefighters who were stationed in Russia at an aerospace testing facility. Despite our current relationship with mother Russia, that still sparks an interest in me for a possible summer or winter job. I've also been looking at hazardous materials training, hazardous materials response jobs at chemical or industrial plants, paramedic training, ARFF training, etc. Needless to say, in all of my boredom, I managed to spend a lot of time online without falling asleep unlike half of my crew. We had a good group of people down here today which really helps pass the time. I can honestly say I don't have a problem with a single person in our department. I like all of the officers on my crew as well as the firefighters. Another thing that happened today that got me really excited is that I received an email in my USAP account telling me that I had been selected for the SAR team tryouts and my tryout date is this coming Monday. What's even better is that I found out that the fire department is willing to revolve my schedule around my SAR tryouts and, if I make the team, training and deployments should I get deployed with the primary team. For a pretty lackadaisical day, I managed to get what I consider a lot done.

Station 2

I woke up in damn-near a cold sweat to the sound of a C-130 powering up at about 0130 this morning. Considering that the parking "ramp" for the planes is 50 ft outside of our front door, 4 turbo-props can put off a lot of decibels. There were times where I was in a big enough half-asleep daze that I honestly thought our tiny little trailer for a firehouse was about to get over-taken by a 145,000 lb plane. Luckily it either took off or shut down because I fell back asleep and managed to live to wake up at around 0700. Fun times I tell ya…

November

Halloween has passed. We look forward to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's down here on the ice. My Kelley day was this week so I got to enjoy 3 days off from work. I'm still waiting for the rest of my packages to get here and I just found out that one of the more important items I ordered (my station boots) where shipped to my house versus down here so I'm pretty upset about that. I applied for the lieutenant's position that opened up within our department after several people voiced their approval and I'm actually excited for the process. So far this month is looking pretty interesting. SAR tryouts will happen sometime in the next 2 weeks. The deadline for the applications was yesterday. The interviews for the lieutenant's position are suppose to take place shortly after the job announcement closes which is tomorrow. I'm scheduled to take Snowcraft I (aka Happy Camper School) which is a 2 day course on living and surviving out on the ice using stoves, tents, and a variety of snow structures. They teach us throughout the day and leave us to our wits and skills to survive an Antarctic "night" out on the continent. Considering that takes place on the 14^th, hopefully my camera will be here by then. On top of all that, I may get to go to a Sea Ice class that goes over the dynamics of Sea Ice and driving over it and what not. Like I said, November is looking pretty interesting right now.

I emailed the crew supervisor for Zion National Park Helitatck's module requesting information about the crew and whatnot. He was pretty friendly and more than helpful. He was also eager to hear from me by phone should I have any other questions. Even though I'm still in Antarctica, it's that time of year to apply for fire jobs for next summer. Zion is at my top pick right now. If I don't land a job with Zion, a Hotshot crew someone would be my next step. The supervisor I talked to told me that the job announcement opens up in mid December so that's one thing to tack to the list of what December may hold for me. For now, it's November and I have a lot to do as it is.s

Halloween and Fire Department Life

Last night was the annual Halloween party, considered the biggest party of the year and man what a blast it was. I started working on my costume around 1600 yesterday. 4 hours later, 2 rolls of duct tape, a roll of foil tape, and a shit load of cardboard, I had a pretty bad ass robot costume which rivaled some other costumes at the party. I have to admit there were some amazing costumes last night...some of which some people put a lot of time into. Underneath my costume I wore just a pair of boxers and gym shorts along with my tennis shoes. On the few places of exposed skin I had I wrapped foil tape to authenticate my costume. With the gym being a 1/4 mile walk, it was quite cold walking around dressed like that in 10-15 degree weather and 15 knot winds. I'm not sure when the party ended but I left around 0030 dreading the walk back to my dorm. I figured everyone would be still at the party or mid-rats (midnight rations in the galley) but to my surprise and dismay, there where hordes of drunks roaming our halls. Instead of trying to go to sleep I decided to get out of my costume and head down to mid-rats to hang out with a few firefighters from my shift. A pretty great end to a fun night.

Today is just a typical Sunday: very little to do and asides from emergency calls, there isn't a whole lot expected from us. I've spent most of my time today looking for a particular pair of mountaineering boots on ebay and sending out emails to people. I've been thinking about applying to the Lieutenant's position that just opened up in our department. I've been apprehensive about doing so because I still really don't know a whole lot about day to day operations down here but then again, our chief, one our captains, and several of our lieutenants are first-years as well so I guess it can't be that bad. I know I'm qualified as far as certifications go but I don't know if my attitude or experience is adequate for what they are looking for in a candidate. I don't know. Several people are pushing for me to apply so I guess some people are supporting me. We'll see

The Good Life In Antarctica

I'm really starting to get excited for SAR tryouts. I've been studying the USAP field manual, I've been practicing, and I've been hyping up everyone else that has applied. I'm looking to talk to the head guy of the team, Kevin Emery and see what I can pick from his brain. Another firefighter here has got me thinking of climbing Mt. Cook in New Zealand which again, I'm pretty stoked from just thinking about it. Life here is pretty good. When your inside it doesn't feel any different than a college dorm or a military base with a little bit more freedom. Walking outside is when you get reminded that you're not in the states. All around us on the horizons snow-capped mountains soar into the sky. The Ross Sea disappears in the southern part of the horizon. Our last sunset was on the 22^nd so now we experience 24 hours of sunlight which create some of the most beautiful sunsets that last for hours. One loses track of time very easily when you look out a window at 12 AM and the sun's hovering over the world like it was 8 PM back home in the summer. The air is always crisp. USAP does a decent job of operating "green" down here so you don't smell a lot of pollution down here. I really love it down here and I'm already planning on coming back next year as well as for years to come.

Fun Days in Antarctica

My days off this week have been spent with my neighbors and firehouse coworkers Dave and Joe and boy have those days been lazy. We're still pretty relentless with my new neighbor but for the most part, he's having fun. At the firehouse, everything is starting to fall into place. Fore the most part, with the exception of a couple other people, our staffing is almost at full-capacity. I'm a released engineer in the company and most of my time (with the exception of yesterday being on the ambulance for some reason) is spent driving and I love it. We're still getting new people in a few times a week so just when you think you've gotten use to the faces around base, a couple hundred more people show up. It's actually not a bad thing. More opportunities to meet new people. One of the opportunities that I had been thinking about since I left our fire department training in Salt Lake City has arisen. The JASAR Team (Joint Antarctic Search and Rescue Team) posted applications for "try-outs" to get onto the team. I have no idea what the try-outs entail but I was told that it was a lot of practicing mountaineering skills, rope rescue, and crevasse rescue which I'm absolutely stoked about. I finished my application today and to my surprise I was the first person to hand in an application. Hopefully not many people do and I get a chance of landing a coveted spot on a small team. I've been looking for NASAR (National Association of Search and Rescue) classes for the past 7 months but I could never find one that agreed with my schedule. So far, I've been making a list of classes, both SAR and non-SAR related, I want to take and that list is growing quite large. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my time after the ice. I've been thinking about a Pacific island after a week or so in New Zealand but I can't make up my mind. Hopefully I can do something climbing related. I guess I still have time...

Last day off...

Something about days like today is very soothing: productive without really doing something extraordinary. Laundry, cleaning the room, studying, sudoku, peace. I met someone yesterday who had just arrived in town who is looking to start a Spanish club here on base to help people learn Spanish. We made an agreement where he'd help me learn Spanish if I help him (as well as help myself) learn Russian. An equal trade if not better for me since I'd be picking up all of the Russian that I had forgotten since I volunteered at Cabin John. The base is starting to get flooded with packages so I'm getting pretty excited waiting for all of the stuff I sent down before I arrived. Until next time...

After talking to my friend Dana, life has been pretty well for me here. The days are brighter, my moods chippier. I've been able to have a lot more fun versus just trying to take my mind off of things. I spent my Kelly day hanging around my dorm and a few other peoples, working out, and attending a mandatory outdoor safety lecture so that I may eventually venture out onto the trails here on Ross Island. It's amazing how fast time flies because I didn't realize that I had been here for 11 days until today. Lonnie and I got our 3^rd roommate today and he actually turned out to be pretty cool. When he first showed up, we fucked with that pore kid relentlessly. Everyone that was in on his hazing acted like they were the biggest racists on the base…including me. On top of being racists, Lonnie pretended to be a huge drunk and I pretended to be a registered sex-offender. I even went as far as writing a note to our new roommate stating that Raytheon and the Commonwealth of Virginia State Police required me to notify him that I was a registered sex offender. I even found a sex-offender registry form on Virginia State Police's website and posted on our door for when he got back. At first, he was scared shitless. When he realized that we were messing with him, he took it rather well. Since then, he's been one of the group. A lot of today was spent just hanging around with friends from the firehouse and as well as a few others such as Christine, Dana, Aaron, and a few others that escape my mind right now. It's amazing how fast one can make friends down here. I found out that some people actually opted out of living in Building 155 because of the college dorm-like atmosphere. So far that's been the best part of being down here. Ever since I cut my trip to Morocco out of the picture, I've been trying to find something to do for a couple of weeks after I get off the ice. It'd be a shame to go straight home after spending 5 months in Antarctica but there's so much to do I've been at a loss for trying to figure out what the hell I want to do. I guess I have plenty of time to figure that out…

A New Day In Life

A brand new day in life always feels good. A lot of the bad feelings I had been experiencing the past week or so is for the most part gone. I don't know how or why. I'm weird like that. I still feel that perpetual feeling of loneliness which really hasn't changed since my dad died but for the most part I feel really great today. I have three days off which will be nice but I gotta figure out how to spend it. Maybe doing nothing, maybe hanging out with Meagan or anyone else with a Tuesday Kelly day (for now she's the only one I know that has a Tuesday Kelly day). Hopefully my boots and my climbing shoes are in this week which will get me out and away from the base for a bit. I was told today that we're looking to put the old Nodwell tracked vehicles in service which got me pretty excited. Hopefully I'll at least get a chance to drive it a few times even if they don't go in service this year. Until then…

Alone

Well, it's Midnight and the wind hasn't let up yet. I slightly overestimated the weather down here on the ice shelf. The wind is blowing around 45 mph sustained and the temp is down to -25. Station 2 doesn't have a bathroom in it. The bathrooms we use are in another trailer about 45 meters away from the station (I've decided to try to get in the habit of using the metric system…one step closer to easier travelling) which makes having to pee pretty interesting. In this type of wind and cold, it makes it near impossible to open your eyes when you're facing the wind. By the time I make it to the bathroom and back, I'm completely dusted in wind-drifted snow. We were supposed to get another plane in tonight but they have decided to stay at the South Pole station until tomorrow.

I called my mother a few minutes ago and I'm beginning to feel bad for doing so considering I don't have a calling card yet and I have to call collect every time. With everything I'm going through now it's really great to hear her voice. I'm still having a pretty hard time dealing with the death of my uncle. The sad thing is is that it really hasn't hit me yet that he's gone. I went through the same thing with my dad. I'm still going through the same thing with my dad. There were times at home when I'd hear my mother open the front door after getting home and I'd think it was my dad coming home from working with my uncle. My mother told me that the funeral is tomorrow (Monday) which really is tearing me apart considering that I wasn't there for those last moments with him, I wasn't there to be with my family as they grieved, and I won't be there when he's buried. Right now, all the other problems in my life are pretty petty compared the pain I'm feeling over my uncle and even after hanging out with my neighbors and her and our friends last night, even after the days and nights before with my friends, I feel pretty alone….a feeling I haven't felt since my dad died.

Drunk One Night Working the Next

I woke up this morning very confused. I knew that I had been drinking the night before but I had no idea how I ended up in the bottom bunk of the other set of bunk beds far on the opposite side of the room from my normal bed. Anyways, I got my uniform on, brushed my teeth, cleaned the room up a bit, made myself a cup of tea, and headed over to the station to start my shift. The night before, the firehouse had tried to page some of us while we were at the bar to tell us that we needed to be at the firehouse 30 minutes early to head over to station 2. Great. So all day today, we get to hang around in a little trailer until that inevitable disaster doesn't happen. So far it hasn't been too bad. I've gotten in the habit of checking the weather conditions before I leave the dorm. The problem with the weather information down here is no one really knows how to get a hold of information from all of the automated weather sites. All our information comes from one of two sources which are either 1) the daily forecast which portrays the forecast for the base and not the runway (I didn't think this either when I first got to the base but the difference in the weather between McMurdo and the ice runway which right now sits only ½ a mile away from each other can be quite great) and 2) the weather condition model which tells you which parts of the area are in conditions 1, 2, or 3. Now the weather condition model will tell you what weather condition the runway is at which means shit until you either get hard information or experience the weather down there yourself. It's funny that despite being in condition 3 (the best you can get) the wind has been blowing at a constant 20 to 30 mph and the temperature is well below -10 compared to the 10 degrees everyone's experiencing in town. Earlier I got blown 15 feet across the ice while I was still on my feet. I almost broke the hood on one of the F-550 ARFF rigs when the wind caught it.

Life down here is pretty good. My neighbor across the hall is trying to hook me up with one of her co-workers which is pretty flattering but sorta unwanted right now. Since February I figured I wasn't looking for any time of relationship with anyone because of the complexity of myself and my life. On top of this spell of depression I've been going through, I don't think it would be fair to anyone to date me. I don't know. I met the girl last night and she seemed pretty cool. I hope that she hasn't fallen for me or anything and I hope my neighbor hasn't been talking me up. I somehow managed to meet half the town last night. I think I counted close to 15 people that said hi to me within a 10 minute period outside of the galley before I went into work. The sad thing is I really don't remember a whole lot of names. I mean, I'm pretty bad with names to begin with but being drunk last night didn't help any, either. Oh well. I guess I better get back to "work".

Skua

As I stated in one of my previous posts, Skua is the name for a scavenger bird found here in the outer parts of Antarctica. They're known to be pretty fierce and feisty. They'll attack you as you're walking from the galley with a sandwich in your hand. Skua is also used as a term to describe the recycling of things that people don't want any more…sorta like a McMurdo thrift system. Today, after getting off duty, Chris Cavanaugh and I decided to do a little dumpster diving in the skua recycling bin (or "skua diving" as I dubbed it) for our building to see what we could score. Despite only finding a Sudoku puzzle book, a t-shirt, and a bunch of Mardi Gras beads, we did not consider ourselves empty handed. Never the less, we decided to head over to the Skua Central building where everything out of the skua dumpsters for all of the dorms ends up. Christ walked away with a bunch of things I can't remember. I walked away with a few shirts, a newer telephone for my room, and some Q-tips. Needless to say we'll be doing a lot more skua diving in the days to come.

I'm still feeling pretty depressed about my uncle dying. I think for once, ever since high school, I'm starting to grieve like normal people normally do. Considering I forgot what that feels like, it's pretty hard for me to deal with it. My friends here are definitely taking my mind off of what I'm feeling and for that I'm pretty thankful. I've been trying to avoid large groups of people but the few friends that come by on a regular basis really. I don't know what I'm going to do tonight. A lot of people want me to go to Gallagher's tonight to see a bunch of "local" bands play but I don't think I'm ready to deal with a large mass of people yet. I'm pretty funny that way….

What a crazy ass day. For some reason, I love it when things don't go as planned and you have to come up with solutions to problems on the fly. I guess that's partly the reason why I love the firehouse so much. Shortly after I finished my written test for pump operators within the Antarctic Fire Department, I was assigned as the driver for Engine 2. After that, when our dispatcher had to go to lunch, the driver for Engine 1 had to come off the pumper and act as the dispatcher which meant I ended up driving Engine 1 while my friend Thomas drove Engine 2. After Lunch, I sat in on a Wilderness First Responder protocol class which turned out to be pretty interesting as how Raytheon and USAP combine their own SOP's in with Wilderness Medical Institute's protocols. The lecture also got me interested in McMurdo's SAR Team as I had stated in my last post. Anyways, I was back to driving Engine 2 only to get a call a couple hours later. My first call driving! I may seem like a dork to those of you in the department (or anyone reading this for that matter) but it was pretty significant to me. Albeit a bullshit fire alarm (Which in which I've been versed quite well after 5 years in Ashburn), I still was pretty excited driving. Haha, I could tell Tom wasn't as enthused as I was. When we got back we slacked around until dinner time.

Another Day In Life

I sat around my room most of yesterday instead of going out after word of my uncle dying. My friends helped me a lot as far as keeping me from going insane with depression but I managed to stay pretty low-key for the remainder of the night. Today is going really well but I'm still feeling pretty shitty. Such is life dealing with death. Today started with dealing with our tracked ARFF rigs. Both of the ones with the better tracked systems were in the firehouse today getting work on them. To my surprise, I spent most of the morning getting checked off to drive the engines and the tanker. Because of lack of staffing, I was assigned as the operator of one of our engines before I was able to complete our written DPO test and go out and do some pumping evolutions. My Lt and Capt both agree that since I have prior experience dealing with engines…particularly Pierces than it shouldn't be a big deal for me to get rushed through the process to help with staffing. Today I actually got to drive Engine 1 for the first time as well….albeit 200 yards to back it into the bays. Something about driving fire apparatus gets me really excited. As we speak, I'm working on some pre-planning while sitting through a Wilderness First Responder Protocol refresher which is making me interesting in volunteering for the SAR team down here. I think it would be a lot of fun and a great experience considering it combines 3 things I absolutely love: Technical Rescue, Mountaineering, and EMS. As I've been thinking about various things to take my mind off of the pain of the death of my uncle, I had been thinking of various things to do with my life over the next couple of years. One of them has been Search and Rescue (SAR). I had actually tried to join Shenandoah Mountain Rescue Group in Vienna, VA but it wasn't even three weeks after I started showing up to meetings when my dad died. Now, that I'm down here, I can start partaking in such activities which will also take my mind off problems back home. I don't know about this year but I'd definitely love to do a winter-over down here.

Rest in Peace Uncle James

Bad news sucks….especially when the shit happens 13,000 miles away. Today I got word that my uncle died on Monday. To be honest, I feel pretty terrible right now…more so than when my dad died. At least when my dad died, I got a chance to speak to him one last time 8 hours before he died. Down here I had been procrastinating calling home all week. I kept telling myself I wasn't going to call collect, I was going to buy a calling card and call my mom and call my aunt and uncle, I was going do this, that, etc. But now I missed my chance and what's worse is that I missed it by almost an entire fucking week. I was going to go out tonight to the New Zealand base but between the weather and this horrible gut-wrenching feeling, I'm just going to get trashed in my room and sleep till duty tomorrow. Rest in Peace Uncle James, I'll definitely miss you. Everyone else, have a good night…

Somewhat Exciting Day

Boy I love productive days. Yesterday benig my day off was spent trying to keep myself from sleeping for 8 hours during the day because of a Halo-a-thon the night before at the firehouse. I cleaned up our room, took a shower, read a little, worked out, did laundry, and a whole bunch of other things to take my mind off my fatigue and the problems back home that have been plaguing me the past couple of weeks. I managed to find a company that would ship packages via APO (Thank you amazon.com) which means in a couple weeks I'll have a brand new digital camera...one I'll take better care of. It definitely couldn't make it any sooner because it really sucks not being able to share what I've experienced down here with everyone back home...

Today has been a lot fun. After shift change, a few of us drove to Station 2 on the runway to relieve the crew that had spent the night out there. Apparently, the Air Force requires that a fire department with ARFF capabilities be present on any airfield where a military aircrft will be parked. So that is why Station 2 gets staffed 24 hours a day. Anyways, upon our arrival, we began to shovel out the stairs, check the apparatus, and go over some basic runway operations training. I was very excited because it was the first time I had been assigned to drive anything since I've been down here. My assignment for the morning was Red 6, one of our F-550s that uses MattTraks instead of wheels to move around. On top of that, I was by myself in the rig which was even more exciting. The funny thing was that I knew damn well we weren't going to get a call or anything of the sort. Our job for the day was to be present when a New Zealand C-130 took off for Christchurch and a US Air Force C-17 landed with fresh souls for McMurdo. When one of the engines on the 130 broke down as they were taking off with the 17 20 minutes away, our enitre plan for the day changed because of the fact that the 130 would be staying on the ice for a few more days...which meant that a crew had to stay at station 2 that night. Luckily, that wasn't me. 3 people stayed at station 2 while myself and two others headed back to town. Again, I found myself driving which I take great joy in doing...even if it's just an ambulance. The rest of the day when we got back was spent working on preplans, area familiarization training, ems training, and relieving the crew at station 2 for dinner. Who knows what else the following days will hold...

Things to Get Use To

Things I'm still getting use to:

Static: Fuck me, there is a lot of static in this place. Not just a lot....I mean a lot of static. I have been shocked on places of my body that I didn't think could be shocked. I even shocked, ahem, "myself" on my zipper because I moved wrong while I was walking. Yesterday morning when I was getting up for work, I was walking blindly in the dark to the light switch and a bolt of electricity reached out about 8 or 10 inches from my hand to the door handle. I shock myself every time I touch my bed, my computer, a door handle, etc. I shock myself when I touch electrical outlets. Getting into bed creates a light show in the dark that rivals the southern lights. My legs are constantly in pain from the electric charge in the hairs of my leg...

Perpetual Light: It's light 24 hours of the day. The sun may set at 2000 and rise at 0500 but it doesn't go far below the horizon. Several of us at the firehouse stayed up till 1 playing Halo 3 and when we walked pass the window, it looked like it was still 2000.

Cold: Now, before you label me an idiot for complaining about the inevitable cold in Antarctica, I'm talking about anything below -30. The temperature has never risen above -20 (I'm including wind chill) since I've been here. So far, for the most part, I've gotten use to it. Yesterday the winds picked up to about 35 knots which dropped the temperature to about -60. Now that, my friends, is fucking cold.

Static: Did I mention static?

Small Community: It's a very small community down here. Everyone knows everyone and if they don't know you, they've seen you around. My face, being one of 5 or 6 black ones, is a pretty distinguishing face which allows people to remember me very easily. I recognize faces, but trying to remember 200 names really is hard in the course of a week.




Yesterday was an eventful day. We ran two calls (trust me, in Antarctica, that's a lot) and did a lot of training. It's nice to be able to unwind after 1700. With the exception of the one medical call we had, we pretty much slacked around till we went to sleep. Today, my day off, is a day to catch up with laundry, take a shower, work out, play some volleyball, and meet a few people at the bar. I hope you all have a great day as well.

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.

Another 48 hours

We woke up 0430 Friday morning only to leave for the Antarctic Center at 0500. After checking our luggage, more briefings, and breakfast, we boarded our C-17 and began our flight to Antarctica. While in line for our boarding passes we were given ear plugs for the flight. I came to find out that while in flight, they were definitely needed. The flight was one of the smoothest flights I had ever experienced. The only thing that really sucked was that the only windows in the cargo belly of the plane where on the troop doors however it did force us to get up and stretch our legs if we wanted to get a look outside. We really started getting excited when we started seeing ice flows, icebergs, and finally the continent. I can honestly say without having any windows to look out from the longest part of the flight was the time after we were told we were descending. Even when I was sitting in the middle rows of the 747 we took from L.A. to Auckland I could still see land and city lights out of the closest windows. In a 17, there was no looking out of a window to guage when we'd hit the ground. All of a sudden ...we were on the ground. I was expecting cold. I was expecting bone ringing cold. It was actually quite comfortable in our cold weather gear. The one thing I'm still getting use to is breathing sub-zero air. As customary by now, we were driven into town for another briefing. We got our room assignemtns, learned a little more about living on base before we went to meet our supervisors. For us (the firefighters), we met our chief and walked 400 feet to the firehouse where we went on a tour of the firehouse. I didn't spend much time elsewhere on the base last night. We got dinner, went to the bar for a bit and then I headed back to my room. I was so tired after waking up at 0430 after 4 hours of sleep, I went straight to sleep before only unpacking my uniform.

Today, I was up at about 0630. After a shower and breakfast, I went to the firehouse early before the beginning of my shift at 0800. At the beginning of the shift, I received my turnout gear and began to go over the apparatus at the station. We had a flight to stand-by for at 12. I had always wanted to know how things were run at station 2 so today was my first lesson in ice-runway operations. We hopped into Ambulance 2 which was parked outside of the hospital (which is next door to the firehouse) and drove 10 minutes out to Station 2, a small double-wide on the runway. Every building out there was a small building on skis. The air traffic control tower, the firehouse, the support buildings...everything. It didn't dawn on me how different the weather was going to be on the runway considering that the runway is over an ocean. I think the weather in town was -15. Out on the runway the temp was around -20 or -30. Today, to me, was the moment of truth for I had wondered how my turnout gear would fair in sub zero weather. To my surprise the only part of me that was remotely cold were the small parts of my face that were exposed for a long period of time. Even the part of me underneath my nomex hood was moderately comfortable. It's amazing how beautiful it is out on the ice, staring out across the Ross Sea. The land is flat enought where you can see across McMurdo Sound 70 miles to the other side. We spent the first hour doing apparatus checks. I definitely have a lot to learn about the vehicles on the runway and I can't wait. I got word that this Monday I've been signed up for some type of airfield driving and operations class which I'm pretty excited about. After our checkouts we came inside to hang out until the C-17 touched down. Now, on top of Station 2, there is a thick plastic bubble that gives you a 360 degree view of the world around the Runway and the station from an elevated position. We spent a lot of time up there and got an excelllent show of the 17 landing. It definitely looks a lot more dramatic from the outside. We came back shortly after the 17 took off around 1600.

So far this job has been great. I'm having a lot of personal issues at home that have been leaving me severely depressed but being at work and being around my coworkers has been helping. Now, I can't wait for the next day or days to come...

It's funny that I considered today to be a long day of flying. I'm really not looking forward to Monday's 12 hours over the Pacific Ocean. Well today's pretty much over with. I'm sitting here in my free, uber-luxurious hotel courtesy of your hard-earned tax dollars. Belly full after a reimbursable dinner, I can only sit here and wonder what will go down tomorrow and the rest of the week. I don't know....that's all I got for this entry. Take care.

Final Night

9 1/2 hours to go before my flight is scheduled to take off from Dulles. When I was a kid, things like this would keep me up all damn night. Right now, I'm fighting to stay awake as a take care of some things at the last minute. It still hasn't dawned on me yet as to what I'm about to embark on. I stopped at the firehouse tonight to pick up a pair of shoes I had left there and ended up staying for about 4 hours. I'm going to miss that place...again. Kyle put it best when he said that Ashburn was my home. I mean, I can't think of another place where I've dedicated so much of my time and life to. I'll definitely miss the place but I can't pass an opprotunity like this up and I'm hoping that I'll love McMurdo so much that it will become a second home to me. There were several people with whom I really wanted to hang out. Some I couldn't get a hold of. Some our schedules didn't match up. Some didn't even put out an effort to hang out when I asked. Those I did see though, I'm glad I did. Well now, all I have to do is sleep and wake up. My suitcase is packed, my backpack will be packed as soon as I'm done with this post and I can turn my computer off and everything around the house I need to take care of....is taken care of. All I have to do is sleep and wake up in the morning. Good night everyone.

Unreal

Last night (now) was my last night at the firehouse for the next 4 or 5 months. Tomorrow I'll be Antarctic bound...an experience that will hopefully be a profound one for me. Something that will hopefully change my life. It's funny how firefighting has involved itself into my life so that it makes me revolve mine around it. Now, I'm heading down to the bottom of the earth to continue my career, my life in firefighting. I was hoping for a fire or something big tonight. Tomorrow I'll leave happy knowing I had seen one of the few people I had been dying to see all summer. I'll miss all my friends...but I can't wait to meet the ones I'll be living and working with Saturday evening. I've already found out that several people I worked with in Salt Lake City will be there Saturday which means I'll spend most of next week with them as well. Anyways, I have one day left. Exactly one day to finish packing, figured out the logistical nightmare of dealing with my gear for my Morocco trip, and spending my last night in town with close friends. Asides from everything that's happening, I can only think about how much I miss my pops and how much I wish he were here to experience this with me. This entire week, I thought about those I know and love both present and past. I've thought about those whom I miss and who miss me. I think about those whom I'm glad I don't speak to and who are glad that they don't speak me. I've pondered who will I meet, what kind of relationships with them will I forge. The weird thing about it all is that out of all of this thinking, out of all this rushing around getting things done before I leave Saturday morning, Saturday Morning, mind you, it all still seems unreal...

I'm an idiot

You know, it's easy to view procrasination as an ever-growing, evolving monster. One minute you're putting off something that actually needs to get done and the next you're doing something that really doesn't need to get done which leads to you doing something that really doesn't fall anywhere near the scope of what you had originally set out to do. Today I told myself I'd go climbing when I woke up, get lunch, and pack some in the afternoon before I went to the firehouse. Well because of some fucked up half asleep/half awake dream I had, I woke up to look at my clock showing 2:45. Thinking that my whole day was ruined, I said to myself fuck it and went back to sleep only to wake up at "5:15" a little more awake and aware than I was when I originally woke up. Well, to my dismay, that 5:15 was actually flashing on my clock versus being steady which made me remember that the plug for the power strip the clock was plugged into is so heavy that it will fall partly out of the socket after a few days...enough to disrupt power to my clock. Anyways, I got out of bed to look at my phone only to see that it was only 10:00 in the morning. Still barely awake, naked, and confused, I sat on my bed and just thought about how much an idiot I was for being so clueless this morning which actually led me to think about feeling the same way in Antarctica while dealing with 24 hour sunlight and a 24 hour/24 hour off schedule. So with my morning being shot (I had planned on going climbing at 6 AM) I got up, made breakfast, finished off season 3 of Grey's Anatomy, opened a new bank account with Bank of America and attempted to finish packing my bag(s). Now after about 10 minutes of packing, I decided, for some reason, to finish my laundry and start a new load. Haha, even better than that was when I pulled all of my stuff out of the drier, it dawned on me that I had a lot of shit with "Ashburn Volunteer Fire & Rescue Department" on it. So what did I do? I went around and counted every single article of clothing with "AVFRD" on it. I came to this total:

8 - s/s T-Shirts
4 - Tower Ladder 6 s/s T-Shirts
1 - Engine 6 s/s/ T-Shirt
1 - 2005 Open House T-Shirt
3 - Sweaters
3 - Jobshirts
3 - Polo Shirts
1 - Flex Fit Hat
1 - Pair of Gym Shorts
1 - Pair of Sweatpants
3 - s/s Button Up Dress Shirts
2 - l/s Button Up Dress Shirts
2 - Full Class-A uniforms which includes dress shirt, dress pants, belt, tie, gloves, shoes, hat, and badge

As entertaining as that was I decided to catalog all of my fire and rescue clothing and I came to this total:

Cabin John Park Volunteer Fire Department
3 - s/s T-Shirts
2 - Polo Shirts
1 - Sweatshirt
2 - s/s button up dress shirt
1 - l/s button up dress shirt
1 - pair of gym shorts
1 - Flexfit Hat
1 - Knitcap
1 - Hideous lime-green rain jacket

Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad
1 - s/s T-Shirt

Charlie Rouss Fire Company
2 - s/s/ T-Shirts

Fauquier County DFES
4 - s/s T-Shirts
2 - s/s Polo Shirts
1 - l/s Polo Shirt
1 - Job Shirt
1 - Flexfit Hat
1 - Knit Hat
1 - Fauquier County Charity Poke Run T-Shirt

Red Truck Wildfire
2 - s/s T-Shirts
1 - Sweatshirt

Antarctic Fire Department
4 - s/s T-Shirts
1 - Job Shirt
1 - Pair Sweatpants
1 - Flexfit Hat
1 - Knit Cap


Yeah, so needless to say I just wasted an hour of my life looking at shit I've owned since 2002. Whoever said procrastination's fun is an idiot....just like me.

Intriguing Indeed...

I find myself pretty intriguingly when I look at how I handle bad and potentially devastating news regarding my family. Today, almost 10 minutes ago, I found out that my uncle as stomach cancer. The same uncle who's been in my life, day in and day out since I came to my family in September of 1985. The same uncle who to this day gives me $20 or $40 dollars when ever he sees me. The same uncle who promised my dad as he laid on his death bed that he'd look out for me while my dad was gone. It's weird because ever since my dad died I've always said I'd never let anyones death sneak up on me again...yet with this news, I don't feel anything on the inside yet. I've heard the news. I've heard the words. They're in my head...but not in my heart yet. I don't know how I do it. I guess I can consider it a good thing considering the stress I've sorta been under the past week or so. I'd ask my uncle if he wants me to stay but I know what his answer would be and I know he'd be pissed if I did stay for him so despite how selfish it sounds I won't even ask the question. I guess I won't say anything about it at all really. This is once again something that I'll have to bring up with God and God alone...

5 days left...

Asides from a small argument into which I got roped, yesterday was pretty nice. I slept most of the morning, went fishing before duty crew, went to duty crew and ended the night pretty peacefully. Today being Monday means that all I can do now is count down the days, again, till I leave the area. It's funny that even though I have a shit load of things I need (maybe want) to do, I've still be slacking quite a bit. My to-do list is actually quite long but the things I really need to get done are as follows:

Pack!
Figure out what I need to pack for post-Antarctica and how I'll get it down there
Figure what I need to put in storage in Christchurch
Figure out a new budget for post-Antarctica travels
Pack!

Today's gone pretty good so hopefully the rest of the week will stay this way.

T-Minus 6 Days

As usual, another morning and I feel great considering how I was feeling the day/night before. I was hoping to hang out with a specific someone today but I don't see that happening at all before I leave let a lone this afternoon. So today will be spent going over my pack list, actually beginning to pack, and reading my Participants guide again. I'll probably end up going to a book store to pick up a Lonely Planet's guide to Spain for I really need to start planning out the details on my Moroccan trip. As I found my self doing before I left for Idaho, I'm start to list all the 'lasts' I'll be experiencing this week. For example: tonight will be the last Sunday night I'll experience at the firehouse and in Virginia for about 5 months. Coming back made me realize how much I miss the firehouse. I hope I'll be able to have a family down on the ice like I do in Ashburn. Visiting Inja yesterday was pretty awesome. Inja told me several months ago about a spot behind the Italian embassy to go bouldering so I'm going to try to hit that place up sometime this week before I leave. A friend of mine I met in Boise actually moved to D.C. a few weeks ago so it'd be nice to hang out with him before I leave as well. Well, T-minus 6 days and counting till I leave...

Well, I thought that bout of depression would have stopped by last night but it's kept me feeling pretty shitty for most of the day and night. I don't know what it is or why. All I can do is just sit and sulk in it hoping for it to subside. I went to a party thrown by a friend of mine in Maryland and that definiitely helped a bit. So did visiting another friend in Dupont Circle. After I left for home it just hit me again. I don't know. Hopefully the morning will hold a whole new day for me...

Every once in a while, I suffer a bout of depression that last usually no longer than a few hours or half a day. I think it has to do with my dad since I only started experiencing them shortly after he died. Tonight's one of those nights. I didn't feel like going out and doing anything. Watching 10 episodes of Grey's Anatomy didn't help either. Soon it will pass and tomorrow will be another day. A week from tomorrow I'll be on my way to Denver and eventually Antarctica. It's still an unbelievable feeling...especially after trying to predict where you'll be a week or a month from now. Now I spend my days relaxing, hanging out at the firehouse, and packing. I thought I was going to have to do more to get ready but I guess every thing I've been doing the past couple of months has pretty much made ready to leave. Man what an adventure this is going to be...

Counting Down the Days

Finally Raytheon has confirmed my tickets and travel itinerary. So that was it. That was the final step. In 9 days (and counting) I leave home for another 4 months. Saturday, 29 Sept. I fly from Dulles to Denver for new member orientation. Monday I fly from Denver to Christchurch, NZ only to arrive in Christchurch Wednesday morning, New Zealand time. Then Friday the 5th, I fly from Christchurch to McMurdo Station, AQ. It's funny because it's still hard to believe that I'm going to be working in Antarctica. I think I'm ready....I think. I have to pack and take care of a few other things but other than that, nothings really stopping me from being ready to leave. There are a lot of people I want to see. But I definitely won't have time. There's one person who is really one of the only reasons I even came back to Virginia for but now she may not even be able to spend time with me which is a bummer but I'm here now and there's not much I can do about that. 3 months ago I would've been dying to hang out with CJ but since there was really no effort to stay in contact with me on her part, I really don't care right now nor does she probably care as well. Now, it's a matter of counting down the days...

Back Home

Well I did what people thought I wouldn't do and I made it back...in one piece even. The season was great. It was better than I imagined. I had a blast and I even have jobs lined up for next year. I miss my crew already. On the other hand it's great to be back home. A little weird having been away for 4 months, but still great none the less. Now I can spend time getting ready to head south. Coming back made me realize how much I'm going to miss being around Ashburn. I've spent the better parts of 5 years hanging around the firehouse and last night was a reminder of both how much I did miss the place and how much I'm going to miss the place while I'm gone.

September Finally

Well it's September finally. The unofficial end to summer (Autumnal Equinox isn't till the 21st technically). In less than 14 days, my fire season will be over. By the end of the month, I'll be on my way to Antarctica...leaving the states and stable society behind. As I write this I'm sitting in our engine while it's getting washed and rid of "noxious" weeds to keep them here in the Sawtooth National Forest. Unfortunately we don't have another fire to head to so we'll be heading home until we get dispatched for something. The funny thing is, if we go somewhere today, I'd drive straight back to Boise tomorrow evening for tomorrow marks the end of my 14-day tour...the last 14 I'd work this year. Tuesday would start another tour which would end on the 13th with me being east bound and down for D.C. on the 14th. Hopefully, I'll be able to buy the trailer I've been blabbing about on my time off. Although I had been pretty excited about heading straight home, my friend Dan brought forward the idea of rendevouxing with him in Seneca Rocks, WV for a day of climbing. Me coming from the west coast, him heading to OSU, what a perfect meeting place. East coast, here I come...