A day for reflection, relaxation, and a little indoor exploration

It is strange to hear "squeak, squish, crunch" when you walk in the snow. When you step out of the dorms you have to carefully peak at the ledge of the stoop to check for what is called "a happy", or in regular English, a big ole' pile of snow that is waiting for you to cross under it so that it brighten your day.

I heard distant crunching sounds in the middle of the night and I wonder if it was the sea ice moving and flexing. The wind whistles quietly while I sleep. On a clear day you can look over the sea, and it looks like a sea, but it doesn't move. Most of the sea in this area is covered by 6 to 12 feet of ice. They are building an ice pier in the bay. Check out YouTube if you want to see how that works (there are time lapse videos). They pour water in layers and build the ice thicker to create a pier for the whole season. Last year they lost the pier and it floated away. Apparently they have a team where it ended up trying to chip out the cables that were frozen into it.

Tomorrow I have a class on the sea ice, that will run the full day, to learn how to tell if the ice is safe to drive or work on. We will be drilling and surveying cracks to determine how much weight the ice around us can support. Our airport is on the sea ice right now. We landed just off the shore of McMurdo Station not far from the Kiwi base.

The people are wonderful here. Everyone is jazzed to have arrived. Allot of return icemen and women came on the flight with me. Like any airport there were many joyous reunions between friends, lovers, and married couples when we arrived. There are some generational "icers" here as well. There are enough new people so that we all still feel welcome and have new neighbors that are going through the same transition as ourselves. The long term icers have been welcoming and helpful with directions and advice. We are from all over the states. Some are here for the paycheck. Many more would take any pay, or any job, to be here.

The food is excellent and I expect to gain a few pounds. They offer a full breakfast every morning, hot lunch every afternoon, and many options for dinner and desert.

It is cold and visibility is extremely poor today. The wind pulls and billows through the station coating everything, even the vertical walls, with a thin layer of snow and ice, carving little snow dunes around the corners of each building. I am hiding in a cafe that is built like a small airplane hanger. It is called a Quonset Hut. Someone is playing electronic music that sounds very much inspired by Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. There are less than a dozen of us hiding in here, most of us on facebook or email, a few playing cards. Most buildings, like this one, have their windows covered or don't have windows at all. It is strange- like living in a basement.

I send love to my family, and warm greetings to friends,

T