Well! I expected to be writing this note in McMurdo on weather delay, waiting for the plane to Pole, but the weather cleared right up and the mountains came out and now here we are. We had as smooth a 3-hour flight on a crowded LC-130 as you can imagine. I got through the altitude crud pretty well this year, just a mild headache, and now I can enjoy being back here catching up with friends who did various bonkers things in the northern summer and friends who wintered over here.
A couple of Comms operators got held up in the States so I got pressed back into service on the radios yesterday. Pretty quiet on that side of things, no flights on a Sunday, but I spent the whole shift doing laptop checks (they have to be virus-free and well-behaved to use our network). Phew.
The winterover crew getting ready to leave now is the first crew to have used the new station, which is about half done. Seems they had a pretty good winter, none of my friends is especially grouchy or antisocial. That's good, considering we have about four days for turnover! Not much time to pick everything up again and get up-to-date on changes.
The new galley is up and running along with the first section of new station berthing, which means that the Dome (old station) is spooky quiet. It's a couple years yet till they tear it down but this feels like a big emotional shift. I'm living inside the Dome this year since I'm on call for computer problems. Last year this was primo high-status real estate and this year it's shabby suburbs. I'm not complaining: it's comfortable and I don't have to get all dressed up to go to the bathroom. It sure is odd to go into the old galley, which used to be the heart of the station and is now home to a few pieces of exercise equipment and misc storage. On the up side, work is now a 30-second commute in bedroom slippers; on the down side, food is a cold 10-minute walk up about a zillion stairs.
Well I wrote more than I really meant to. Hope you're all well. Seattleites please feel free to tell me rain stories.
Best,
-Sarah