I don’t know what that means it just came into my head so there you have it! I spent my first shift in the control tower yesterday and did I ever have fun. Working in the Center has been rewarding but you never get to look out the window to see airplanes or scenery. In the tower I have a great view of Mt Erebus with its smoke plumed cap and Mt Terror rising majestically on the horizon. I can even see the Royal Society Mountains almost a hundred miles away and the ice breaker churning the ice where the old Ice Runway used to be. The weather was snowy and windy yesterday but even that was beautiful. I am really looking forward to finishing the season out there.

Last night I went to a travel log on Kayaking the Inside Passage from Glacier Bay, Alaska to Bellingham, Washington. I don’t know if I’m up for that trip but the scenery was captivating and the wild life abounded. If you are a kayaker you should definitely look into it. I have to admit it did look a little cold on their journey and I’m looking for some warmer weather right now.

I received some really good news last week. I get to spend the rest of the season working in the control tower. I’ve always been a control tower/approach control kind of guy so working in the center, while interesting, has been a little dreary. You rarely get to actually see airplanes and the view from the tower here is quite spectacular. The move does mean that I will have a thirty minute commute to work each day on one of the huge transport vehicles that look like they just drove off the screen of a Star Wars movie. Unlike traveling on the New York Subway you can actually make eye contact with and talk to people on the commute. (Did that sound like I was being mean to New Yorkers?) I didn’t mean to. The change also means I go onto a rotating shift but that should be a real help to the tower since they have been working short handed all season.

On an unrelated subject, the Oden continues to break ice, the seals continue to come up on the ice in bigger and bigger numbers and more and more penguins are showing up on our shores. The crew of the Oden says the whales are also waiting with “bated” breath to get into the sound for a little lunch.

I just returned from a tour of the Swedish ice breaker Oden. Last year they were here helping break ice but didn’t have time for tours. Our guides were three of the senior officers of the crew of eighteen. We were greeted in a reception area inside the ship where we were invited to remove our coats and shoes before the tour began. The ships store was also in this area so of course I had to buy a golf shirt there. Then it was off to the crews berthing area. Each of the crew members has his own room but the ship can accommodate up to eighty people sleeping four to a cabin. The lounge/ bar was very homey and comfortable as was the movie theatre room with real movie theater seats. The sauna room adjacent to the sauna was really nice and warm. The second officer told us that they spend two hours normally per day in this area conversing in between trips to the sauna. The exercise room was well equipped with a full set of gym equipment. Our next stop was the control bridge of the ship which was very large and fully equipped with state of the art equipment. The officer conducting this part of the tour said that because of the flat bottom design of the boat in open seas the ship could list from 40 degrees port (left) to 40 degrees starboard (right) in a matter of twelve seconds. Under those conditions it was necessary to secure everything and everyone on the bridge. They described to us how the boat slides up onto the ice and crushes it down to the knife shaped hull which pushed it aside. They can make three knots of forward speed crushing through ice three meters thick. The ship also has a V shaped rubber bumpered stern to allow the Oden to be used as a hood ornament on a larger ship to help it break through an ice sheet. The crew told us that the Orca’s and Menke whales were moving up the ice free part of the channel they are breaking. The Oden will be in the area until the container ship leaves McMurdo around the 9th of February.

Before the tour on the Oden I was down at Hut Point watching a little Adelie penguin trying to find his friends. He would run along and toboggan for a while and then stand up to call out to his friends. When he didn’t hear anything he would head off again in search of them. He was really cute and really moved along quickly. The day was spectacularly pretty in full sun with no clouds but the wind was very brisk which made hiking kind of cold so I didn’t go up the hill to check on the Skua chick. I’ll try to head up the hill later this week in better weather.

Check the gallery for some new pictures

It just keeps coming down. This kind of snow just doesn’t happen here, especially in the summer. Snow men are beginning to appear. You can’t see the ice breaker at work in the sound. It’s kind of fun though walking around in the soft wet snow. No flying does make the days drag on. We have distinguished visitors (DV’s) scattered all over the place trying to get to the South Pole for the dedication ceremony of the new South Pole living complex. Hopefully they will all get a chance to get there by Saturday and then get on a C-17 back to Christchurch.

What’s going on in the world of weather? I read there were tornados in Wisconsin yesterday, the first winter tornados since 1967. I walked through 3 foot snow drifts to get to work this morning. In the two seasons I’ve been here it has never gotten close to this for snow fall total in one day. And this is the middle of the summer. I made my plane reservation yesterday for the return trip home. I leave Christchurch at 3:00PM on February 20th and arrive half way around the world in Pensacola, Florida at 8:00 PM the same day. I’m getting antzyer by the minute.