Medivac!

Ahh what excitement on the 7th continent. So on Tuesday September 26th around 1:30 in the afternoon Palmer station members were gathered together and informed that one of our fellow Palmeranians had a possible appendicitis and needed to be medivacked. Those of us scheduled to depart on Sept. 5th now had 4 hours to pack and get ready to leave. So I managed a last meal on station, thanks Diane the cherry pie kicked ass! I also managed to glue together a sushi tray I was making, thanks Graham and Jordan. So off we went with 2 or 3 game plans. As it would turn out we headed to King George Island and the Chilean station there had medical facilities that could perform surgery if needed but there was also a plane standing by. Our patient was offloaded around 7:45 am and by 9am was in the air headed to Punta Arenas and a proper hospital. That done we waited until the plane was past the point of safe return, about noon, and then........headed back to Palmer! So I've decide to stay on the boat and help out with another fishing trip (for science)instead of moving all my stuff back on station only to haul it back to the boat on Sept. 5th. Had the opportunity to take lots of pics on the medivac trip and should have another 3 days on this fishing trip. I'll get to eat on station tonight and hang out in the bar with friends but tomorrow I'm guessing we will leave after breakfast and head out on a 3-4 day trip. So back out on deck to see if the bergy bits in front of the pier are yielding to the boat.
Cheers

Nacreous Clouds

Words and barely pictures can due these beautiful clouds justice. We've had an opportunity to see these on two separate occasions now.
Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), also known as nacreous clouds, are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 metres (50,000–80,000 ft). They are implicated in the formation of ozone holes; their effects on ozone depletion arise because they support chemical reactions that produce active chlorine which catalyzes ozone destruction, and also because they remove gaseous nitric acid, perturbing nitrogen and chlorine cycles in a way which increases ozone destruction.

A 2 Day Weekend!

I'm laying here in bed listening to the wind blow and pound, what could be considered a 2 story double-wide, and thought I'd update you, whoever you are.
Last weekend was truly a weekend, we had the last day of one week and the first day of the next week off, if that's how you define a weekend. During the winters at the US Antarctica stations it is usually the first weekend of the month, April through September that they give the workers the traditional 2 day weekend. All other weeks are 6 days and 9 hours a day of work. So how did I spend mine. Saturday started off with, laundry! Yes I blew a perfectly grand Saturday morning doing laundry. This gave me a later start than I wanted to go hike and ski the glacier that sits right behind the station. With all the snow we have had recently I thought it was going to be a great day but as the day progressed so did the wind speed. The skiing was OK but I'm guessing it would have been better if I would have started 2 hours earlier. Well this 3 hour adventure left me plenty tuckered out and I'm remembering something about getting back making a tuna fish sandwich and falling asleep watching a movie in my room. The next day was an earlier morning, starting with bagels and lox with cream cheese and capers, yes, yum. I followed that by roasting some huehuetenango coffee beans. I was very excited to find out that Palmer Station had a coffee roaster and a few pounds of green coffee beans. By the way I think they roasted up very nicely. The green beans may not have been the freshest but the coffee tasted better than grinding beans roasted 2-4 months ago. Having that accomplished it was off to the glacier again this time to hike up down and out onto the Bonaparte peninsula. I chose snow shoes for this, although one can cross country ski most of the peninsula. The photos in the slide show are from these days on the glacier I hope someone enjoys them, I did. I made it back from the snow shoeing in time to catch a movie from 1995 called Underground. "This movie reflects the history of Yugoslavia since the beginning of WWII (and similar to all ex-communist countries) to the last horrible events in Balcanian countries. Behind the comedy is hidden the pain of whole generations, which have suffered WWII, The Cold War, the war in Yugoslavia, the communism, the treachery of their own leadership, the fall." I highly recommend it, even though it runs a bit long at 170 minutes for those use to the 90 minute movies of Hollywood. I should also mention you have to work a bit since it is subtitled. Let me see.........I think that evening was another early to bed but I could be wrong. That's all for now, later today I may post again and add some fabulous, my opinion, photos of a rarre sighting of nacreous clouds here at Palmer. Cheers Enjoy the slide show

Just Another Morning At Palmer

Good morning!

A Wednesday morning at Palmer. The sun is rising today at 8:49am and setting at 3:56pm.
I believe we get about 8 to 10 minutes more daylight each day. Of course we don't actually see all that sun due to the glacier that sits in our backyard but slowly we'll see more and more. The L.M. Gould left yesterday for a trip back to Punta Arenas with passengers and cargo, and will return here in a scant 13 days bringing, you guessed it cargo and a couple of workers for the coming summer season.
This past weekend or Sunday as we call it I woke up with a bit of hangover so my original plans of doing some coffee roasting, yes they have a coffee roaster here,in the morning was not to be. I did manage to get out for a bit of skiing on the glacier in our backyard. The wind was howling so simply hiking up making switchback passes was not to be so I donned a set of crampons, skis on my back and hiked straight up. I have to say I had a great time despite the wind which was gusting to around 30 knots. I skied down towards the Bonaparte peninsula and found plenty of signs of penguins but none of the little black and whites. On my hike back up I headed to the top of glacier to see what I could see and the accompanying picture doesn't quite do the view justice. Contrary to everyone saying the glacier was really icy. I found it to be a far cry from New England boiler plate. The top shatters quite easily and skiing back to the station was only difficult due to my lack of energy.
Another week started and I was back painting stairwells. The front stairwell always busy, in the back stairwell I was left to my thoughts and my ipod. Things get done more quickly when it's me and my ipod. So that's where I leave you today, me and my thoughts. Cheers