Whale

The fuel tanker left earlier so I went down to watch it go.  After it pulled back a way we saw a whale popping up. It was sweet.  I got some video of it.

 I didn't get a pic of this the other day. The little orange boat on the back is for evacuations. Everyone jumps in, they pull a lever and it shoots off the back of the ship. You just hope that all of the 7 million gallons of gas don't go up at the same time or you MIGHT not make it to the boat...

 

satellite shot

Here is a cool little satellite picture from 2 days ago of that channel the ice breaker had to make. Hopefully the resolution will come through so you can zoom in on it a little. You can see a little dot that is the ice breaker in the middle of the channel.  Kinda cool

UPDATED:  Once I posted it I couldnt really zoom in very well.  So I figured I'd blow it up and post it that way too.  If you want the original file so you can zoom, let me know.

Visit to the fuel tanker

So I just got the opportunity to go out on the fuel tanker to setup a laptop. I went with the comms guys and they setup a wireless connection and phone so they can call shore, and we can call them directly. I was a little worried because we had to walk across the ice peir to get on, ya know that ice pier I mentioned before that they were calling "slushy", and someone stepped in the wrong spot yesterday and sunk up to his knee!  Oh well, I had a life vest on just in case so I wouldn't have sunk, probably just froze to death, but luckily I didn't. Yay me!

The comms guys had trouble getting the internet connection up. So I'm back at my desk waiting for them to setup some other antennae system. Once it's up I'll try and connect to the laptop remotely and hope it works. If not then I guess I'm going back out. 

So since I'm just sitting here killing time I thought I'd post the pics I took for you guys.

This is what 7,000,000 gallons of gas looks like if you were curious...

 No one on board seemed to have a lighter, wtf!

 Thats a really steep climb...

 On the bridge...

 

 Trying to mount the antennae.

 Thats lotsa pipes or something...

 I dont know what those things do but they looked fancy...

The wheel of power...

 Implement of death...

 The ice pier and stuff. You can also see the antennae that they setup for the phone system...

 I dont know 
UPDATE: Apparently this is St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of a bunch of stuff. Thanks, Chris...

 That's alots of buttons and switches. I wanted to push em all...

Wait, is this supposed to be happening on a fuel tanker? Where are the exits again?

 Setting up a containment boom in case there is a spill...

 Boat on a boat, kinda like those Russian nesting dolls, I'm sure there was a smaller boat inside that one...

Hut point

I went back out to Hut Point again after work. It was cool to see the area that's been all broken out. 

 I just took this today

 This is the same area a little less than a month ago.

 Fuel tanker sitting out there waiting for the ice breaker to finish it's job.

 

PQ

I got word today that I'm all PQ'd(physically qualified) for winter so that means I passed my coo-coo for cocoa puffs test. So I'm all officially official now. It's a good thing I passed, the guy who was the "alternate" for my job failed. So if we had both failed they'd have been up shit creek. Hahaha

So now I can get some R&R and get outta this place for a while. It'll be nice to see a whole new group of people after seeing the same faces.

More ice breaker

Here are some better pics and a video of the ice breaker.  The area they're breaking out here is right next to the station where the resupply ship is going to pull in.  It's the "little ice breaker that could". Actually this is the icebreaker that saved the season. Every year this time they bring in a re-supply vessel and a fuel tanker to resupply for the next year.  So if we couldnt have gotten one here then they would have basically had to scrub this summer season and just have a skeleton crew here so they could conserve food and fuel until next years resupply.  So that icebreaker is what allowed me to come work here. Thanks, Mr. icebreaker!

Water

See, I told you there was ocean under there!  It's weird to see though after all this time.  The road out to the runway literally ran right through that spot just 2 months ago.  I still can't believe we landed on that in a plane! That's a little insane iffin you ask me.

Look a rabbit!

Ice Breaker

The Ice Breaker arrived today.  The fuel tanker isn't too far from here, but the cargo ship was delayed for weeks because of mechanical problems. It's on the way now but it'll still be a while until it gets here.

Out there clearing a channel for the tanker and the cargo ship.

 Here is the location update from yesterday.  We're located just a little off the bottom of the map. The "Greenwave" is the cargo ship. Just a little south of Hawaii as of this map.  The Vladimir Ignatyuk is the icebreaker, but as you can see by the pic above it made it the rest of the way here today. The Maersk Peary is the fuel tanker. It looks like the tanker is just waiting around the corner for the breaker to clear a path.

:(

So, I come down this morning for breakfast and what do I hear from one of the comms guys? 

"Hey, Rickie, you're flying with me today up to Erebus". Then came the frowny face when he said it was at 9, because my psych eval is at 9. :(

So I'm going to miss a ride up to the top of the southern most active volcano in the world so I can go do a dumb psych eval. Damn it, I'm not "too crazy", can't they just take my word for it!

Son of a.... fracka frickin!

Random shit

Hey guys,

It's been a while so I thought I'd say hi. I swear, I'm not ignoring you guys on purpose. A week will just slip by and then I realize I haven't said anything in a while. So I'm here to both dazzle and mortify you..muahahahah!


This is "Kress", I saw her out the other day so I thought I'd send you a pic.  I think there are 2 of these around here somewhere.  They're a more recent addition to the continent.  Apparently from what I heard they bought these things but didn't take their size into account.  They're just too damn big and they can't really turn em around in town so they don't know what the hell to do with them. Hahahaha  I can picture that order being placed over a phone. "I need a big ass truck like situation....Huh? No, no, I mean BIG. I want you to take the biggest thing you've got and weld 20 more feet of stuff on the back of it, ok? Payment? Yeah send that to Uncle Sam please. Do you offer next day delivery?"  Funny stuff right there.

They do this thing here called a travel log. There are a lot of folks here who have traveled all over so you can setup a time in the galley to tell everyone about it.  One of the girls in the tiki lounge did a presentation tonight. Earlier this year she rode her bike 5,000 miles from California, across the bottom of the country and then up to Maine!  I thought my 5,000 mile road trip IN A CAR was impressive, not so much.  I guess she applied to work here while she was on her trip. So she rode her bike for 5,000 miles, opened some art gallery thing, and then hopped on a plane to come work in Antarctica. Crazy! 

Speaking of traveling, I may have found a new crazy place to work.  www.krsjv.com

It's an island in the Marshal Islands called Kwajalein. It's very oceany and tropical so it would be quite the change from here.  I know someone who is going to work there and I guess several people from here have gone. So I might have a good "in", but at this point I haven't even applied, It's mostly a "wow that would be cool" thing to do.  I'm committed here through October so it wouldn't be for a little while even if it happens. I just like looking at the pictures, woohooo trees!  Oh and one of the cool things about that job is that you can have friends and family come to visit.  I don't think it's like a vacation type place you can just visit normally but it sounds like you can have people come down. That would be awesome!

I'm not really sure what else I should say...oh shit, it's 10:13, hahaha! 

Oh, I have my psych evaluation this Wednesday, wait, did I tell you that already? Hmmm, I dont remember.  Well I don't know too much about it at this point but I'll fill you in when I learn more.  I think it takes 4 or 5 days to get the results. You'd think they could just tell you right there on the spot whether you're coo-coo for cocoa puffs , guess not.  Maybe they want to get as far away from people as possible before they tell you that you're too crazy to stay. :)