The Weather Outside...

...is frightful!

Why do Monday mornings have to coincide with really crummy weather. It's hard enough walking up the hill to work, but have to fight this kind of weather just adds insult to injury! Luckily, I ran into friends Moose and Josh who have a pickup, and they gave me a lift to work. The commuting gods were definitely smiling upon me!

Where's Tom?

Click on Photo to Enlarge

On one of our trips this summer, we found a Waldo
(you know, Where's Waldo?) in the parking lot of a
Wendy's in Silverthorne Colorado. Lynn brought it
with her down to the Ice and it's currently residing
in our Dorm room. This inspired me to create a small
map titled "Where's Tom?". Maybe I'll expand it someday,
but for now, I spend roughly 90% of my week in one of
three places or walking between them:

A) Dorm 208 - Where I sleep
B) Building 140 - Where I work
C) Building 155 - Where I hunt and gather food

No Mellow Yellow

Someone was nice enough to put this sign up in the
Men's Bathroom in Building 140. I am all about
conserving energy, etc., but not flushing a public
urinal after using it to save water is just plain
goofy...not to mention pretty unsanitary and gross.
No, I didn't put up the sign...but I'm glad someone
did.

Where My Stuff Will Be

Today, my boss, Susie was kind enough to give me some
time off to move the rest of my stuff to storage. And what I
mean by storage is not anything like what you would find in
the real world. ATO supplies it's folks with a Milvan. A Milvan
is a metal box. The kind you see on trains or cargo ships.
All of my things that can freeze, are in this Milvan for the
winter. We also get to keep our DNF (Do Not Freeze) items
in a small room inside Building 140. It's a very generous
storage policy and I feel grateful for it.

Blue Bird of Happiness

OK...the bird isn't blue...it's a penguin! But
the sign is and what's under the sign makes people
very happy. It's the mailroom and when people get
mail and packages here at McMurdo, this is where
they go to pick it up. Not the Post Office. I've
lost count how many times I've seen people go to
the Post Office to pick up their mail. Yes, they
are right next to each other, but in McMurdo's
case, all you can do is buy postage and mail things
from the Post Office with Kathy and Carol,while you
have to pick up things from Arnita in the Mail
Room. Apparently someone got tired of explaining
the difference and had this sign made. I like it!

Northbound Baggage

This baggage frame holds the 142 bags, weighing
3719 pounds for 72 northbound passengers to
Christchurch on today's C-17. In the next few
weeks we will have at least two of these for
every northbound flight since each plane will
be filled with 130 passengers.

McMurdo...We Have Steps!

I work in Building 140 and although there is a road
that goes by it that anyone can walk on, most people
walk up and down the "goat path". Always an "unofficial"
route to and from the building, it had become established
over the years as the main route. Having my "problem"
with going down hills (uphill is no problem), I voiced
the need for steps for years and finally this year I had
given up. I had given my last breath to the subject and
although not satisfied, I grieved in silence that the
cause was dead.


One day a couple of weeks ago, I started my way up the
hill to work and lo and behold...what was going on here???
Steps were slowly being built up the hill. At first I
thought it was just the extension of a new bridge that
was talked about, going over some pipes, leading to the
vehicles for the Shuttles department. But these steps
were going the wrong way...they were heading up! Our
department manager knew of my crusade and asked me how
I liked the steps. I was cautious because I knew not of
them and answered weakly that I thought they were ok.


Over the next two weeks, I watched the construction
progress. Up and up they went. Taking a dog leg
right, then a dog leg left. None of the steps of
course are the same as it's going up a hill that
twists and turns. Eventually it was finished! A
long time wish was granted. The funny thing is...
I had nothing to do with it. Apparently an FEMC
manager needed something for some of his idle workers
to work on and alas, the project was begun and
eventually finished. Some people were skeptical at
first but most everyone I've talked to lately is
positive. Now, if we can just get that pontoon bridge
built....

Long Duration Balloon

This morning, from the front door of Building 140,
we watched a 300 foot tall Long Duration Balloon
rise into the sky and start to drift lazily
upward. It's part of the Cosmic Ray Energetics
and Mass (CREAM) experiment and was "designed
to measure cosmic ray elemental spectra using
a series of ultra long duration balloon (ULDB)
flights". It will eventually rise to almost
25 miles into the sky. I haven't seen one
of these take off before and although I wasn't out
at the launch site, it was still fun to see such
a large object rising above our terrain.

Bag Drag / Transport

A major part of my job is to conduct
Bag Drags and Transports for flights.
When people fly back to New Zealand, out
to Field Camps, or down to South Pole,
they have to come through us at Air
Services for their transport needs.
This means that up to a day before their
flight, they need to Bag Drag. In other
words, they have to bring everything they're
taking to their destination with them to be
weighed and prepared for flight. There is a
whole checklist of procedures that folks must
follow in order to prepare for their flight.


Anywhere from 4 hours to several days,
depending on flights, weather, etc.
passengers then prepare to leave McMurdo
for their flights. To do this, they must
Transport through Building 140 (Movement
Control Center (MCC)). This is where we
Air Service Reps register their readiness
for the flight, read them a litany of rules
and then send them on a vehicle to the
runway, where they catch their flight.
It can either be fun or stressful, depending
on the group mostly. Today, I did my first
Bag Drag and Transports of the season. Both
went very smoothly. Hopefully the harbinger
of a good season.

6 Years Ago Today

On June 28, 2002 I was walking with our friend Eileen
to of all things, a Safety Meeting. There's a bit of
a slope on the backside of B-140 between there and B-175
where the meeting was being held. All of a sudden, POW...
down I go. I still remember the falling and landing part.
There had been a light dusting of snow the night before
and this was just enough to make the hard ice below
slippery. Apparently Eileen stopped me from rolling down
the hill any farther by placing her foot in my way but I
don't remember this. More embarrassed than anything else,
I tried to get up. It's amazing how your body won't let
you do something you're not supposed to do. I could not get
up off my knees. I was in no real pain. I just couldn't
get up. Eileen went upstairs into B-140 to tell Lynn and
called the Fire Department. They came in an ambulance.
Now THAT was embarrassing. Actually it was the first time I
had ever ridden in an ambulance so that part was OK. When
I got to Medical, they couldn't tell what was wrong with me.
I know I couldn't walk correctly and they gave me a brace,
thinking I had done something wrong to my knee. Our friends
Mike P. and Ken M. saved me from falling on my face between
Medical and B-155 (even with crutches) and I settled down into
my office on Highway One for the rest of the afternoon. Lynn
brought me ice packs and I hoped for the best. What a trooper
I was though...didn't miss any work! Over the next couple of
weeks they did lots of tests including ultra sounds and a tele-
conference with the University of Texas to find out what was
wrong with me. Station Manager Tom V. and his boss and our
friend Jim S. made sure that I was going to leave at WINFLY and
Jim arranged it that Lynn would be leaving with me as my
caretaker. That was a big relief. So for the next two months
I crutched it around station with an inadequate knee brace and
really cool crutches with carbide tips (kind of like Leki poles)
There was definitely not going to be a medevac and I would
just have to wait for WINFLY to arrive. It was far from fun. When
WINFLY came, I got to leave on the third flight after I did
turnover with my replacement and I was off to Christchurch to
be repaired. Leeann, who would later become our friend, took
care of us, getting us set up at Colombo in the City Motel with
future friends Brendan and Pauline and that would be our home
for the next three months. I went to the doctor and still didn't
know what was wrong. A CRT Scan showed that I had torn my right
quadriceps tendon. The doctor didn't believe it when I told him
and until he looked at the scan was dubious. "Nobody tears their
quadriceps tendon". As you can guess, this didn't make me feel
that great. They scheduled me for surgery which hopefully would
repair it. The doctor had done work in the past for the All Blacks
rugby team so that made feel better and the day I was preparing
for surgery, they drew a big arrow on my right leg to make sure
they took care of the correct leg! What didn't make me comfortable
though was the doctor told me that only twice had he performed this
surgery before...on two Samoans, and both times were unsuccessful.
Great...right before going under the knife. So they gave me a
shot, I started counting down...and was out like a light. I
remember waking up in the recovery room in a lot of pain. Thank
goodness for morphine because I kept giving myself tons of it due
to the little button they provided me to push. That night, Lynn
had to stop me from eating because she thought I was going to
choke to death since I kept falling asleep in mid-bite! After
about three days I got to go back to the Colombo and found I
couldn't sleep in a bed while wearing a hip to ankle cast. So
I slept in a really comfortable chair that Brendan and Pauline
found me and over the next three months learned the difference
between Kiwi, Australian and British accents and the difference
between Union Rugby and League Rugby as well as viewing VERY
boring cricket matches. So much for television. Lynn and I bought a
small van so she would coax me out of my chair as frequently as
possible and when she wasn't alienating the nation of New Zealand
with her other lane driving skills, we had a good time. By
October, lots of fellow-winterovers stopped by to see us and that
certainly made the boredom disappear. Finally in December, I got
the cast off and a shiny new leg brace. As a test, we visited
Queenstown on a long weekend and the brace seemed to work well.
After a bit of physio (not nearly enough) we were ready to leave
New Zealand and head to Australia. On none of the flights between
NZ and home, including Australia, did they ever check that a leg
brace was actually making the metal detector sound off. They just
took my word for it! Sydney was great but those stairs at the
Opera House were killers on someone with a bad leg! Then we made
it home and waited for the next winter.
6 years later, I have most of my mobility back, although I'll
probably never be 100% again. I have trouble going down stairs
without a hand rail and I can't run (not that I could before).
They say that waiting the two months before having surgery is
probably the reason for this. It tried to heal on its own and
didn't heal properly. Overall though, I'm OK with my situation.
It hasn't radically changed my life and I always walked a little
funny anyway!

It's Almost Here

A sign that the upcoming flight is going to be here
before we know it is the fact that the television
scroll announcing flights has been updated after
seven weeks of unchanging power point slides.


The last stage before the flight is the Bag Drag, in
which all of the passengers of the flight need to come
into the Movement Control Center (MCC) to have their
bags and themselves weighed and readied for the flight
the next day. That's another one of my jobs. As of
now, we have 95 people leaving on ACH055, but that number
seems to be growing by the day.