No Snow School

So I got a phone call just as I was about to walk out the door on Friday. It was from the captain, telling me that I had been bumped from snow school because of my driver class. Oh well. At least it'll give me a chance to get my packages in before I go, with my gloves that actually fit.

I talked to a couple of people who have gone already, and they told me pretty much what goes on. Basically, the first hour or 2 is in town, in a classroom where they tell you what you need to know. Then they take you out to the area (which is on the road, and not far from Scott Base or the snow runway), show you how to build the shelters and stuff, and then they take off for the instructor tent, which is a good thousand or so yards away from where the students are. So you are pretty much left on your own with your class for the rest of the day. They give you food and tell you how to melt snow for hot water (there are little stoves and stuff they have) and stuff like that. The next morning at 0900 they come out and get you and you go back to the instructor's tent, where they go over the VHF radios and some other things. I think they might also do a little bit on checking for cravasses and such too.

Today we flowed some water, and I got to practice some on the pump. We were out there for about 3 hours, and while it wasn't really cold like it has been, it was pretty cumulative. When we got back, we switched the engines, since the one needs to go in for servicing, and reloaded one of the supply hose beds. Fun. By the time we were done pulling all the hose off the one side, there was about a half inch thick layer of dust on the back step of the engine.

At dinner tonight they had fresh lettuce, from the greenhouse. One of these days I'll actually get up there and go in. Someone said they have a couple of hammocks set up to lounge on.

Other than that, not much going on. My new date for snow school is November 27-28, but with all the scientists coming in, I might get bumped again. We'll see.

The class got canceled anyway, due to weather conditions (it was Condition 1 in the area where the class is, which means they couldn't drive out to it).

So I got my Kelly day, and was able to chill for a few days and pretty much do nothing.

There are more skua in town. I saw 2 on Friday evening, one of which someone almost walked into. Later on, when I was on my way back to my room, I saw one sitting on one of the food waste bins outside the galley. A skua's favorite place, I guess. I'll post the picture later. They really do blend in with the roads around here. They are exactly the same color, so unless it moves, you really don't know it's there.

It's really warm today. Even the wind chill is above 0F. Last I looked, the forecast for today was about 25F with the wind chill around 10F or so. It's quite pleasant out, not at all like the past couple of days when the wind has been so fierce and cold. I hear that there is a cold front moving in, thanks to the glacier flow (not quite sure what this is), so we'll see what it's like in the next couple of days.

The ANG is trying really hard to get caught up on flights. They normally don't do back to back flights, or fly on Sunday, but they flew 2 C-17's in from New Zealand yesterday, and another 2 today, and then one a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The one flight today came in around 0500 this morning, and was all cargo. Those planes are capable of carrying 100,000 pounds, and it came in only 1200 pounds underweight. And they are still way behind on all the science cargo. From what I've heard, in the next 2 weeks we are getting another 100 or so scientists coming in, and they are really going to need all that cargo so they can get their work done. I'm not sure if the rest of the flights this week are cargo only, or cargo plus people, but hopefully if the weather stays good, we can get caught up on cargo over the next 2 weeks.