Sunday, November 14, 1993
Hello,
All is well with me. I hope that you are well, also. There have been no major happenings with me of late, so I shall have to ramble on about trivial items. So, here goes. The weather has been quite poor this entire season, but yesterday it cleared up and it is incredibly beautiful today. It has warmed up significantly, too. Today is the first completely cloudless day of this season. Last week it snowed quite a bit, more than it ever snowed last season.
One new feature of this season is that we now have live television. Well, it's live Armed Forces Radio/Television Service (AFRTS) which is a little bit different than regular television. It's just one channel and has a limited selection of programs on it. We also loose the signal every so often.
Just recently we have had Italian and Russian Antarctic Program scientists and workers here. McMurdo is a major logistic hub for more than just us Americans. The Italians are on their way to their base called Terra Nova. The Russians are going to their base called Vostok. The Italians have their own planes, but the Russians will be flown by us.
Sunday November 20, 1993
Yesterday I got to go on a special trip up the coast of Ross Island to a place called Cape Royds. An Adelie penguin rookery is there, so we saw lots of penguins. Adelie penguins are the kind that are most often displayed in zoos. There were about twelve of us that went and we rode in a tracked vehicle called a Hagland. We drove on the ice the whole way, and it was a fairly rough ride. About half way there we stopped at Cape Evans, which is where Scott's Hut is located. It has been preserved as it was when he last used it. We got to go inside and look around. At Cape Royds is Shackleton's Hut, which we also got to go into. I took eighty pictures on the trip. It was great. The weather was real nice, which made the trip that much better. There were a couple of ice bergs that had been trapped in the ice shelf right near the cape. On the trip back we stopped to look into an ice cave. It was not very big, but it was still great to look at. My birthday was last week. I consider this trip as my birthday present, and it was a great one.
I have just finished reading my third book. It is called "Maori" by Alan Dean Foster and is an historical novel about the colonization of New Zealand. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The two previous books I read were science fiction by Robert Heinlein. I had read them both before, but many years ago. I enjoyed them both very much this time through. This last book is the shortest of the three I've read and it was 501 pages. The shipping of package mail down here has gotten caught up, so I have all of my books now. I have just started "The Sum of All Fears" by Tom Clancy, and it is quite long, also.
I am on a volleyball team here. There are two volleyball leagues, there are that many teams. We play either one or two times a week. I am having lots of fun playing, and am doing fairly well at it. There are two other guys on our team that are pretty good, and we enjoy playing together. We have not won very many games, but it has been fun.
Over the past week the weather has been quite nice, so the snow has been melting quickly. Mac Town is rapidly turning into Mud Town. But, before the ice melted around town I did fall once. It was a spectacular fall. I was walking along and all of a sudden I was on my back and sliding along. Ice is quite a hard substance to fall upon, too.
I am scheduled to go to Christchurch for four days on December 3rd . I am going to train some people who use my program. All of the documentation clerks there are new this year, so they are somewhat deficient in their knowledge of the program. I am looking forward to the trip greatly. I have lots of requests for items for me to bring back for people. I have a large list of my own. I will get my photos of yesterdays trip developed and printed. I will eat some decent food, and bring back supplies for cooking in the room. Yes, the food here will not make you sick (a least not often but it is not real desirable. It is no worse than Navy food, though.
You might be wondering exactly what it is I do down here. Well, I have written a computer program from scratch to track all of the cargo that is shipped to Antarctica, from Antarctica, and around Antarctica by the United States Antarctic Program. We also ship cargo for the New Zealand, Russian, and Italian Antarctic Programs. All of the tracking of this cargo is done with my program. I am continually adding new features and modifying old ones in it. I spend most of my time on this program, but I also help support many other software products that we use here.
Friday, November 26, 1993
At the end of this summer the Russian Station Vostok might close for the winter, which it hasn't done for over 40 years. The other thing that this means is that the U.S. will be the only country to maintain an inland station over the winter, that being South Pole.
Just last week a princess from Thailand paid a visit to Scott base and McMurdo. She was a guest of the New Zealand Government as the result of some big deal just signed between their governments. She stayed for only a few days, and I never did see her.
Sunday, November 28, 1993
We celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, so we the day off and had a big fancy dinner. It was nice and relaxing and enjoyable. This is the first time in a couple of months that I have had two whole days off in a row. I am spending some of this free time to finish up this letter. It has taken me quite a long time to finish it. By the time you get this letter it will be getting close to Christmas time and I will not be able to send you another letter before then, so I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. Well, I must sign off now. Hope to hear from you soon, and take care of yourself.
