Here we go

22 Oct 2016

T-minus 7 hours as I write this.  At 16:30 today I board a plane here in Denver, ultimately bound for Christchurch.  I'll skip the 23rd entirely and land on the 24th.  And then things get uncertain.  Depending on the weather in McMurdo, I'll be in Christchurch for somewhere between a day and a week or so.  Then, depending on the weather at Pole, I'll be in McMurdo for somewhere between a day and a week or so.  All through that period, internet access will be uncertain and haphazard.

The last two weeks have been really great.  I met about half of the winter over crew in Estes Park Colorado for a three day team-building experience.  We did some fun activities like building cardboard boats and a geo-cache type of scavenger hunt.  We talked about communication and team work, but ultimately about 70% of our team building was really done in the cafeteria and the lounge over a couple of beers.  This week we spent attending the Aurora, CO fire academy covering basic firefighting and rescue.  There are no professional emergency services within 800km of the pole, so we have to become the fire department.  The instructors at the fire academy were great, and the whole experience was a lot of fun.  Of course, my real hope is that this week of firefighting training was the most useless waste of time I've ever had.  When you live in an isolated station in temperatures that reach the negative triple digits, the best fires are the ones that don't happen, not the ones you put out.