"The hallmark of a good traveler is to live as live as comfortably as possible using the minimum of equipment" -- British Antarctic Survey's Field Operations Manual
I've suddenly realised how lapse I've been. Over two months and no blogging. Some people would say "I've been too busy", and, even though I haven't exactly been sat around doing nothing, I'm afraid it's due mainly to laziness.
We're hurtling towards Midwinter, which is a big deal in Antarctic terms. I'm not sure if it was he who started the trend, but Shackleton celebrated Midwinter on the Endurance with gifts and good food back at the beginning of the 20th century, and the tradition remains. The sun began it's steady decline a few months ago, and now it barely makes an appearance. We still have
daylight, but only for a few hours a day, and this will reach it's low point in about a weeks time. Most of us have chosen to spend some of the dark evenings in various hidey holes around base, beavering away at our winter gifts, which we will present to our designated recipient during Midwinter's week.
The work continues to be steady. There have been some minor hiccups with certain experiments that I look after, but all have been solvable. Which has meant that there's been time for some fun stuff. I was approached by Rod Strachan, our Winter Base Commander a few weeks back, who asked if I'd be interested in taking part in the sponsored World Busk for Musequality (
http://www.worldbusk.org). I jumped at the chance -- a few of us on base had played guitar together and were forming a rudimentary band, and myself and Dave Hunt, the boatman, managed to throw a couple of acoustic songs together for a busking video, to be shown on You Tube for the World Busking Record Attempt. Our part in this is now on show at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmGNaCPVtZo and here:
I've had news from back at headquarters in Cambridge that my replacement has started training and preparation for the coming summer season. We've been in contact, and it sounds like the season is going to be interesting, with some field trips to some amazing places. Some adaptations to the experiments running at Rothera will also be quite interesting. For example, a system for analysing "whistlers", which are lightning strikes so energetic that they leave the Earth's upper atmosphere and travel along its magnetic field lines, changing their properties as they go, and are detected at various places in Antarctica. This new system would use the properties of the whistlers as inputs to mathematical models for predicting space weather -- important to the successful functioning of satellites, and to the safety and wellbeing of astronauts on the International Space Station.
With the loss of substantial daylight, it's important for us to take advantage of good days. There have been a couple recently, but normally it is snowing more often than not. When the opportunity arises then, a few of us have been getting off base, and going snowboarding, ski-ing, climbing etc. This picture was taken during a trip to the Stork area a few weeks ago. Try not to concentrate on the very dodgy facial hair -- it is left over from a party we had the night or two before. Instead, try to imagine my feet bolted to the plank of wood next to me, and me trying to look as cool as possible while hurtling down the slope. I definitely need more practice!
