Birthday Shenannigans

Temperature: -53.5C
Wind Chill: -71.5C
Wind Speed: 9.3 kts

Okay, I can't put this off anymore, the birthday was over a week ago! I'm still trying to hassle people for race pictures, so hang in there...

Last Friday, Francis, one of our chefs, made a very modest, quite small cake for my birthday, and was instrumental in providing the decoration above the frosting!



I thought the cake was awesome, but there was no way I was going to be able to have a single piece. I need to watch my figure after all!



I did, however, have a piece off the top, and got lucky with a chocolate piece. Fran had alternated layers with chocolate and vanilla, with chocolate pudding between layers...truly a delicious concoction!

That night, it was into one of the movie rooms for a couple movies that I will never say no to watching...Jaws and Finding Nemo! Poor Emily had never seen Jaws before, so we had to follow up with something a little more enjoyable for her! I must say, though, she took it well. I walked over to her to ask her a question right as Jaws started...and she screamed! That being the reaction I was going for, I returned to my seat to enjoy the rest of the movie.

The following morning, we had a balloon launch, and a couple extra people showed up just before the launch to send some birthday wishes up with the balloon. By the time folks were done signing the payload the balloon would be carrying (they even let me sign it), it was time to tape it closed and send it up.



We attached it to the bottom of the balloon,



and after I paused for a couple more shots...



we sent it on its way.



Later that day, I got to enjoy a batch of fudge that was also a part of the birthday(s). You might recall me saying earlier that I wasn't a big fan of fudge...this recipe has got me worried about my fighting weight! I got a good sized box full of bite-sized pieces...three layers deep!...my worry is that I am almost into the third layer already!


A couple weeks ago, it was a beautiful night, the sky was really clear and the wind was down a bit, so I climbed the tower, and before I decided to drop my camera off the tripod a few days later, took a panorama of the area from ARO over to MAPO and SPT. The moon is right above the station, The Dome, and the summer housing. I still have to play with settings a little, but with a little help from the Doc, it turned out okay...



Hope everyone back home is doing well!
Capt. Splash

Cinco de Mayo

Temperature: - 56.7C
Wind Chill : - 76.2C
Wind Speed: 10.1 kts

Yeah, I know, I'm a little past the 5th of May, but when I wanted to post this last week, I took the liberty of saving two pictures and deleting the text, so I'm playing a little catch up here.

Cinco de Mayo down here just proved to me that it doesn't matter where you are...if people want to celebrate something, they will find a way to do it! The galley was adorned with both good food and festive decorations! We were surrounded by tortillas,




big hats,



and cutouts of figures that looked frighteningly similar to David Hasselhoff!!



To finalize our tribute to the day, there was a jalapeno eating contest...



and there were two brave souls...Eric and Ross.



...Cully didn't enter the contest...he just really likes jalapenos!!



...and they were off! Ross put up a considerable effort during the contest, and it looked like he might have pulled it off,



but in the end, it was Erik that won the day, with the final numbers being Ross: 13 Erik: 20



Later on in the week, one of our temperature sensors on the tower decided to give us incorrect data, so Cully took it down one afternoon, and brought it inside to take a look at it. It turned out that the instrument was working just fine, but the fan inside the casing had stopped running. Cully switched out fans, and he and I wandered out to the tower to put the casing back over the instrument.

It wound up being a one-person job, but I tagged along anyway, so I could practice freezing fingers, and working on camera settings.



Within a couple minutes, Cully had the housing back on,



and we stumbled back inside to make a couple observations of the moon, and collect a couple air samples.

That took us to the weekend, and a 5K race through the inside of the station, but as I was "running" in the race, I don't have any pictures. As soon as some of them get shared, though, I will post them and tell you how the race went!

In the meantime, stay warm!

Capt. Splash

ANZAC Day

Temperature: -61.3C
Wind Chill: -84.2C
Wind Speed: 12.9 kts

This past Saturday, we had a unique treat! We celebrated ANZAC Day down here. The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) fought during WWI, and on the 25^th of April, they are remembered and honored in various ways. Some people actually pay their respects in Gallipoli, where the ANZACs fought alongside British troops against Turkey. Others will have tributes in their own home towns, remembering those who fought during that war.

On station this year, our population includes one Australian and one New Zealander (also affectionately called a Kiwi). They decided to celebrate ANZAC Day down here, and we combined the winter retiring of the station’s ceremonial flags with their dawn tradition!

Our PA took the lead, printed up literature on the history behind the day,

had paper poppies available for folks who showed up for the tribute,

and spent a couple hours in the galley working on Anzac biscuits to have with our tea or coffee after the flags were brought in.

Saturday morning came, and around 6am, people gathered in the Galley, waiting to grab poppies, hand warmers, cameras…whatever they wanted to bring with them. At 7am, we bundled up, and went outside…to be greeted by a fantastic aurora!

Once everyone made it to the Ceremonial Pole, we recited the verse from Laurence Binyon's ‘For the Fallen’

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

This was followed by a minute of silence,

then we took the flags from the Pole and brought them indoors, where biscuits and hot drinks waited for everyone! A couple days earlier, the biscuits were made…there were a couple different recipes,

and by the end of the day, all the biscuits were devoured…so I guess they were really good!

The day continued like any other Saturday, with the exception of the evening, with a screening of “Gallipoli”.

It was awesome to be a part of someone else’s traditions and ceremonies this weekend, and I think a lot more people showed up for the ceremony than anticipated, but that’s the great thing about this community!

I will leave you all with an awesome shot that Cully took of the sky following the ceremony…hope everyone is staying warm up there!!

Capt. Splash

Auroras, Looney Tunes and Ping Pong

Temperature: -53.4C
Wind Chill: -74.6C
Wind Speed: 13.6 kts

Okay, so not quite the week in, week out I thought it was going to be...sorry, I have to play a little catch up here!

Let's go back a couple weekends. Sunday morning, around 830, about eight grown men and women actually got up on their day off, and proceeded into one of the lounges to watch some DVDs. Everybody had a yearning for Bugs Bunny



...so there we were for about three straight hours watching old classics, from "The Barber of Seville" to "The Scarlet P-P-P-Pimpernel". It was awesome!! I think the LepreKhan would have been pleased!

Now we are up to about a week ago...last Sunday, where we had a ping pong tournament, and any and all could participate. It was a knock down, drag out tournament that lasted all morning.



There were plenty of upsets, a few Cinderella stories, and by the time it was all said and done, Bill Stiner walked away with a good chunk of the purse. The morning was full of pancakes, ping pong, and fudge that was made by our PA. It was a combination of light and dark chocolate that was tasty enough to get me to change my all around opinion of fudge!

So that was a weekend ago. Later on in the week, Cully and I launched the first of our plastic balloons to collect ozone data. This was a fun one, though...it was still a dual launch with the meteorological department, but it was a dual balloon. Two plastic balloons tethered together.



Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the actual launch, but hopefully there will be some this week when we do the same type of launch again.

The past couple weeks have been good opportunities to take pictures of some auroras,



so I will leave you with some shots that I have been taking, to try and get the optimum settings when the really spectacular nights skies show themselves....

Sunset Dinner

Temperature: -50.3C
Wind Chill: -69.0C
Wind Speed: 11.3 kts


One of the big traditions down here, and one that a lot of people look forward to, is sunset dinner, which we had on the 20th. Since the sun was supposed to start setting that week, it gave us the excuse to dress up, and have, yet, another outrageous meal down here! The meal also came with a roaring fireplace...you can see depicted by the computer screen above the table!



Part of the tradition, as well, was to remember those who had lost their lives while working down here. There was a smaller table set aside for three individuals, with food and drink at each setting, and their pictures, which are normally hanging in the main hallway on station, were brought into the dining hall as well. The three men that joined our meal had different times that they had worked down here, ranging from 1966 up to the year 2000.




While the dinner was supposed to mark the sunset, and potentially the best time to take some pictures, we didn't really get out and start shooting some pretty spectacular pictures until a few days later...



The shots at Spoolhenge were awesome a few days ago,



as were the shots taken out at ARO a couple days later.




We figured that was the last time we were going to see the sun, since the next couple days were obscured by a lot of cloud cover, especially around the horizon. We were pleasantly surprised, however, when yesterday we looked outside and found a very distinct glow right at the horizon. A couple of us grabbed cameras, extra gloves and hand warmers, and headed out towards ARO. The wind wasn't blowing too hard, so I felt it necessary to climb the tower and see about some pictures from up there.



Needless to say, when I got up to the top, and finished snapping pictures, I took some time to clean off some of the instrumentation that had been covered with flying obstacles!

The shots at the bottom were just as spectacular, especially with the formations of drifts in the foreground...



At this point, fingers were numb, and camera batteries had just about been exhausted, so it was time for a trip back indoors for a nice cup of hot chocolate! We'll see what the next couple of days have in store for us....

Capt. Splash