Welcome

Hi everyone! Sorry it's taken me so long to start posting on the internet. I'll soon be linking this to a website with pictures and adventures. I'd like to put up a forum or guestbook for everyone to sign, but we'll see how well I learn to make webpages. I may have an abundance of time in the winter (our winter here is opposite the Northern Hemisphere).

Things here are well. I work long hours but I'm not that busy. I volunteer to help a lot of people and am apprenticing my partner in crime, Bill, on satellite communications. He's pretty crazy. I brought dog slippers down and brought them to work. He showed up here with fuzzy monster feet slippers. We sit around work on office heavy work days in the slippers. Our boss thinks it's funny. The atmosphere is quite liberal. I remember showing up to the interview in a suit and following a women with pink hair into the Raytheon Polar building.

So the holidays are over. No I'm sorry to say I haven't received much in the way of your packages. Cargo this year has been a nightmare, though most veterans just shake they're head and say it's always something like this. They bring cargo through on Air Force planes and a Coast Guard vessel to McMurdo station on the coast of Antarctica south of New Zealand, then on to us at the Pole via a C-130 with skis for landing gears. First, McMurdo's runway out on the sea ice melted early and they couldn't get non-ski planes in. Then a ice berg the size of Rhode Island floated in front of McMurdo Sound. The ice berg didn't actually block the Sound, so we were able to get an ice breaker in. The ice breaker broke. They're working on fixing it but the Russians are bringing down a monster of an ice breaker and we'll probably just let them break through. They're discussing unloading our cargo ship and a fuel ship at the same time using a very long hose, but everything is smoke until we see it happen.

We just found out we need 156 C-130 loads of fuel out of the scheduled 180 remaining flights down here. We already have work stoppages here for lack of supplies. They're requesting the Air Force stay on longer to ship more cargo. I guess if they ask that we generally start having a ton of flights come in every day. The Air National Guard likes to go home on time. We'll be fine, but I don't envy the higher ups' stress levels making sure of it.

Well, I’ll let everyone go before I write too much no one wants to return to this site. More to come, and a link to the pictures.

Love,
-d