First of all, my apologies for not posting recently. I don't know why, but for some reason I've had writers block. I'll try and be better about blogging. Anyway, I thought I'd write about what a typical day during the week is like for me.
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| Stars over the VHF tower-Courtesy of Lisa Harding | | | | |
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We start work at 7:30 in the morning, and who arrives when is all over the place. Some people get up early and come to the galley to have breakfast, read the paper, and do the crossword. We download the New York Times Digest and the New York Times crossword every day for the station, and if for some reason it doesn't arrive, the IT folks really hear about it. People are serious about their papers and crossword puzzles! There's also a group of bendy people that get up every morning at 6:30 to do yoga together in the lounge. I've been invited to join them, but told them that until they do yoga for full figured middle aged guys in Carhartt's, I'll pass. Their response? That's 75% of the people in Antarctica! But anyway, I haven't done yoga here yet. Another group of people are the ones that get out of bed at 7:29 and go straight to work. Exceptions to this are generally within the science groups. Their clocks tend to be tied to their experiments, so they work and sleep all kinds of odd hours.
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| Gentoo Penguin at Palmer-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
I'm one of the people that likes to get up and have breakfast, read the paper, and mosey into work. At 7:30, if you want, there is the morning stretch. People meet in the lounge and stretch for 15 minutes to loosen up for work. Some of the yoga people stretch too, they're extra bendy ;-)... Since I
stretch with Bob every morning and evening in my room, I don't stretch with the group very often.
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| Leopard seal on ice floe in Hero Inlet-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
Once you get to the office, the first thing you do, unless the paper didn't make it, is go through your email from the night before. Because all the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) infrastructure is in Denver, and that's who we work with mostly, we only have about 3 hours a day that we're actually at work at the same time as them. We don't start hearing from them until around 11-12 our time, right when we're going to lunch, and then we quit at 5:30, which is 2:30 in Denver, right when they're hitting their stride. So a lot of things are time shifted by a day because of the different schedules if you get what I mean.
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| Glacier calving in Arthur Harbor-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
So after going through emails, maybe doing daily maintenance tasks from the calendar, etc., I'll get called down to the pier because the
ship is arriving or leaving for a science trip, or to/from Punta Arenas. I'm on the line handling crew, so we have to be there to tie or untie the ship from the pier. In the picture at the top of the ship link, you can see the bow line handlers at the bollards out on Gamage Point. I'm a stern line handler, and the bollards are right outside the boathouse, so we get to sit inside the nice warm boathouse until we get called on the radio to go out to the bollards. Good deal!
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| Gentoo penguin swimming-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
After line handling, it's back to work until lunch doing the IT thing. Well, except for the 10 o'clock. We have a man overboard system, tied to
AIS, that would give out an all call over the intercom if activated. To test it regularly, we have it use this woman's voice to say "The time is now 10 am." Which means break time. Almost the whole station will come to the galley at 10, especially the folks that have been working outside and need to come in and warm up. The cook always has something for 10 o'clock, usually fresh baked goods. But what I do during this break, is go outside and do laps on the hill the station is on. It's not very far, *maybe* a quarter of a mile one way, but during break I can get 3 or 4 laps in for a mile or two. It helps me wake up after being at the desk, I always see some kind of wildlife, and dawn is just starting so there is some beautiful alpenglow on the mountains over on the peninsula.
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| Ice floes and glacier on Arthur Harbor-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
Where was I? Oh yeah, back to the IT thing. After 10 o'clock, Denver is starting to come online and we start to get the big stuff going. It might be deploying a new mail server, troubleshooting faulty backups, anything. We work until lunch, which is at noon. After lunch, it's back to it until, you guessed it, "The time is now 3 pm." Snacks for some folks, more laps on the hill for me. Then it's back to it until work is over at 5:30.
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| Swimming penguins and seals-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
Like line handling for the ship, the work you were hired to do can be interrupted at any time. If it's dumping snow you go out and shovel (I've discovered the snow blower!). If the cook needs help bringing food to the galley from dry storage or freezer storage, you help with that. If the science folks need
dive tenders to go out in the boats you help with that. If the research associate needs help
working on a weather station, you help. There's a lot going on here, so there's always a chance to get away from the desk and change it up. Speaking of dive tending and weather stations, I got the chance to go out and do both at the Wauermann Islands a couple of weeks ago and will do a post on that.
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| Antarctic light on icebergs-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
Dinner is at 5:30, and after that the evening is yours. If it's clear and the moon is out, maybe a hike. There are movie nights and science lectures all the time in the evening. Sometimes there are parties in the bar. Somebody always has a fire going in the wood stove in the galley, so you can go there and read a book and have a glass of wine. Or, sometimes you just want to stay in your room and be alone.
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| Palmer light-courtesy of Lisa Harding |
So that's what a typical workday is like here. Sabrina Heiser from the Amsler science group did a
great blog post about what the support people do here. I'll do a post soon about what a weekend is like. Although we work on Saturdays, it's a little different than the other days.
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| Mothers Day from the web cam |
Finally, I haven't curated all my latest photos, so I thought I'd include some amazing photos from our cargo person, Lisa Harding. She was supposed to winterover with us, but unfortunately had to catch one of the ships home to take care of some things. We miss her!
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| Lisa and Jason leaving Punta Arenas |
