Slow day in town last night all the bars and coffee house were closed to give employees a rest after the holiday rush! The last launch of a Long Distance Balloon (LDB) was scheduled for 9:00 pm last night so I caught shuttle out to watch it. Mother Nature didn’t cooperate so all I watched was my cards as we played cribbage in their dining facility.

I did get a few pictures of the holiday festivities. They can be seen at the photo gallery.

Change continues here as it does everywhere. These are some of the changes I have noticed in the last couple of days.

The melting around McMurdo is almost complete. Only small isolated pockets of snow remain anywhere to be seen. What were once raging torrents of water pushing bowling ball size boulders with ease down sluiceways have now slowed to a gentle muddy trickle of water barely capable of pushing a pebble. The sun has reached its zenith and has begun its slow descent into the inevitable winter.

Last night at the coffee house several of us were talking about everything and nothing when one of the guys began mildly bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t met a woman to try to form a relationship with this season. He turned to me and with kind words of off-handed apology he said, “All the women young and old like to talk to you because you are the ‘Safe Old Guy’”. I didn’t know if I should be flattered or mad! When did I become “The safe old guy”? And exactly what is the “safe old guy”? I guess it means women don’t worry about talking to me because they know I don’t have any hidden agendas. I guess it’s nice to be thought of in that way but “the safe OLD guy”.

While on a walk to Hut Point this morning I saw several seals lying out on the ice. I find it interesting that they always haul themselves out the same distance from the water as if they have a measured distance they know killer whales can come up in pursuit of them. As I started to walk away I heard what I thought was a bird singing I stopped to look and listen to try to find the source of the song. There were no birds in sight and as I focused harder I realized it was one of the seals singing. He only sang for a few minutes and then concluded his aria with a series of sounds that reminded me of the sound I heard when I was tuning an old car radio or the sound a whale makes in nature movies. I didn’t know seals could sing.

The last little tidbit involves a change in thinking. While I was walking this morning I met a couple of other hikers one probably in his early 30’s the other a few years older that I. We were looking out over the McMurdo Sound and it looked like we could see the “ice edge”. It looked too close in to be the actual ice edge but the other two insisted it was. There was a time in my life when I would have engaged in a discussion/argument about the subject but as I’ve gotten older I’ve changed how I think. I no longer think I need to be positive that I have the correct answer to every situation and I suspect even if I did it wouldn’t change the course of human events anyway, or so I think.

It was a beautiful day indeed.

When I was at the South Pole the post office wasn’t open so I couldn’t get my passport stamped. Problem solved. One of my friends was headed there to do some work on the phone lines so he took my passport which now has the official stamp from the South Pole Post Office.

It has been snowing here the last couple of days. The snow flakes are the big fluffy kind that gently wafts down to the ground. It really gets you in the Christmas spirit.

Last night I attended a winter solstice party. I tried some hot buttered rum for the first time. Thankfully I had to work this morning or I might have had more than one of those. I also tried a German spiced wine called gluevine (that’s how it was pronounced but I’m sure not how it’s spelled) it was also very good. The party was held in a building we call Hut 10. It looks like a two bedroom bungalow from the outside. Inside you enter through a coat room/mud room into a large family room. To the left is the kitchen that contains a mish mash of pots, pans, plates, glasses, silverware, etc. I was helping in the kitchen to prepare the hot buttered rum and the meatballs. Down the hall are a couple of bedrooms(one of which Ann Curry stayed in while she was here). The hut has the feeling of a mid-western home and with a few decorations kept us all in the holiday spirit.

The choir has pulled together nicely and we have our first performance at the town Christmas Party Sunday night.

I know many of you are concerned about my health in this harsh climate of Antarctica. Because of that, and to allay your fears, I scheduled myself for a one hour full body massage. The licensed massage therapist is a full time janitor and moon lights doing this to raise money for her travels when she leaves the ice.

I’ve only had one professional massage in my life prior to this. Deni set that one up for me several years ago when we were visiting Atlanta. You can now rest assured I am in good health, rested and feeling very Gumby-like. In other words it was a great way to spend an hour.

We had another Christmas Choir practice last night. Everything is going well and we sound pretty good. One of my weaknesses is when we are doing four part harmony I will drift over to the melody line if I lose my place. Not too bad for me but bad for other basses standing around me. Oh well, I don’t do this professionally.

After the practice I headed over to the monthly Yacht Club meeting. It was a very small group this time but was very nice and laid back. We had a little Christmas music playing in the back ground as we talked about sailing. The main topic tonight was Pacific crossings from the west coast of the United States. One of the guys was talking about cruising on a 38 foot boat. He was relating a story about their arrival in Tahiti. They had arrived in the evening in a sheltered harbor and anchored for the night. A massive storm blew up several hours later an within 10 seconds the boat had been wrenched from its anchorage and washed up on shore. They survived the ordeal but in the final analysis the boat had to be lifted onto a freighter with a crane and sent back to the States for a major overhaul. It was a very engrossing story.

Everyone here has settled into a nice routine and all are anticipating the Christmas Party on December 23rd and the Christmas meal on December 25th.