-

It is 5:00 AM. The shuttle will pick me up to take me to the USAP centre at the airport in 15 minutes. We all have to change into our ECW and hopefully we will launch at 9:00 AM. I am passenger number 62. Yes, they do stamp your passport and yes you have to have your baggage screeened. Antarctica is clearly (in) a strange political and regulatory "state". I can envision Washington folks wasting a lot of time worrying about the extreme exceptions of Antarctica for no real value as compared to worring about things stateside. The current weather at McMurdo is -5F with winds of only 7 mph. Visability is 7 miles. Sounds like a nice day except for the visibility. The flight takes about 6 hours. I am getting comfortable with the idea that I will be in Antarctica today. I think I got my computer working right yesterday. I did have to spend about an hour and a half connected for downloads via dial-up. I went to bed early and I am pretty refreshed at this point.

See you from the ice.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Job, New Car and Always New Experiences

-
Image
We took the new Tesla Model Y up to Tugaloo State park on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. I bought non-OEM cross bars for the canoe. The install was a bit tricky since the mounting is in exact places under the roof glass. The test was successful since I was driving up to 80 mph with 50 mph winds. No issues whatsoever. I did put a line from the bow down to the truck for some additional piece of mind. We did some canoeing, but not as much as hoped due to strong currents in the Tugaloo river. Cooking and eating out in the woods always makes food taste better.
Read more
-
SU School of Architecture - Contact Main Page I am looking to work with a student architect on our property redesign. Some things are obvious, some are not. Since the house is basically a box sticking out of the ground it is like a white canvas. The old house dictated a lot of how we could proceed. This one is all open. The elements we are looking at incorporating are: Two or three car garage, preferably connected Large porch for valley view, roofed Deck for sunrise and coffee Outside brickoven, incinerator Carport Some kind of circular driveway Optimized valley view New bath down stairs Fireplace New septic system location Ponds Outdoor water cistern Improved drainage Barn attachment, equipment shed Curb appeal Larger window in computer room, bay window Improved plumbing and heating Barn electrification New roof New southern elevation Veneer rear existing chimney, or remove
Read more
-
Image
STC Awards Woo Hoo! The folks in my department won the top awards at the Regional STC conference Friday. You can't ask for better than that. The PDF link above shows some of the awards we won. We are still sorting out the significance of some of the awards, including overall best of show! I don't think I could be more proud. All sorts of folks were scrutinitizing the books and we let a Technical Communications professor from RIT borrow them for some work she is doing. Friday was a good day. Saturday, the weather was fantastic. I don't know how warm it got, but I was lying in the grass next to the llama pen for quite a while. I did some farm work and relaxed. Now I have to pay for it. I have a lot of home work (at least 10 hours) to get done on this great day (possibly even nicer than yesterday). It takes a lot of discipline to concentrate and work through homework on a weekend like this one. I will do it. If someone, someday, ever asks, "How did you manage to
Read more
-
South Pacific travel - Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, Cooks We are planning our next vacation. It appears we may meet up with Nostril and his family in Australia. They can get there pretty cheap from Japan. I was astounded when I looked and saw that the round trip from JFK to Tokyo is only about $550.00 US. Cheap. It looks like we can get to Australia for about a grand. We will probably rent a house on the coast somewhere. Of course, we will have to see Sydney since I haven't been there before. It is about 10 below zero outside right now. The coal stove cannot keep the house warm alone. The furnace has come on a couple of times this evening. I am trying to figure out how to get more heat out of the stove. I am thinking that some of the air vents are partially filled with ash. It is way too hot to dismantle those parts now, however. I hope the llamas are ok. I turned up their heater, and gave them more straw. It is cold out there though, even for them.
Read more