The trip to nowhere

While we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, I was surprised how big a holiday it is down here. The airfield is closed for the entire weekend. I still went down to the aircraft to grab my data and Will, Dave, and Fred spent a lot of time working on the NO instrument. But for most of us, it was our first real time off. Saturday I slept in late (and missed the 5 km Turkey Trot). It snowed the night before, so the race was "officially" called off, but more than 40 people went and ran it in the cold and slippery conditions anyway. It is always cold and slippery here, so most runners know what they are getting into. Instead of the race, I went to the gym to shoot some hoops and managed to play in a few Dodgeball games. It was a lot of fun, and the first real exercise (besides walking out to the ice runway a couple of times) I have had in 2 weeks. The Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday was an amazing, I ended up eating dinner with Kathy Welch. She and I were both Graduate Students together at the University of New Hampshire many years ago. Kathy has worked down here every summer for the past 7 years (or longer). She works in the laboratory in McMurdo doing the chemical analysis on the snow, soil, water, ice, etc. samples collected in the Antarctic Dry Valleys. I had a nice dinner, and met a bunch of Kathy's McMurdo friends. They have a great Recreation Department here in McMurdo. Every day there are a couple of outings scheduled, but this is the first time we have had a chance to take advantage of them. Andreas signed for the exclusive tour of Scott's Hut (I am hoping he will write a blog about that for us). And a bunch of use managed to get on the "Trip to Nowhere". While we didn't know where we were going, the idea was to get a ride in the back of a big red truck, a "delta", and go 20-30 miles out of town. We ended up stopping at one of the ice leads where some seals were hanging out. It is hard to see them in the photos, they are mostly black blobs. We were not allowed to get closer than 75 yards, since you are not allowed to disturb the wildlife here. Mike Pastirik got this much better photo here. It was a lot of fun. But the best part of the weekend was when I heard about the pick up soccer on Sundays in the Gym. I really enjoyed getting a chance to run around and play soccer until I could barely walk.