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| This is the new shuttle vehicle Jen be driving next season. It's coming in on the container ship in a couple weeks. 97 feet long and I believe it will hold 64 people. Yowza! |
As the season begins to wind down there are some clear indicatons that our time for leaving the ice is right around the corner.
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| Official Antarctic Racing Series sign made from recycled cardboard, Magic Marker and duct tape |
The McMurdo Marathon was the "one-month-to-go" mark for us. Following a week of stormy weather we were all a bit nervous about what the race day conditions would be like.
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| Happy to not be running in -20 temps with horizontal snow |
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| Goofiest picture ever |
Lucky for us the day was absolutely beautiful (although the warm temperatures and sunshine made the snow pretty slushy). We ran the 1/2 marathon (starting at Pegasus ice runway and ending up at Scott Base).
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| Ready... Set... |
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| GO! |
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| And they're off! |
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| The crowd cheered and the spectators went wild! |
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A perfect day to run 13.1 miles. Actually, someone who does aerial mapping said the course was longer than that, but it felt shorter because, hooray, no hills!
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| Happy to be crossing the finish line. |
We managed to take first place in the Men's Over 40 and Women's Over 40 divisions. A couple of weeks ago we won the same divisions in the Hut Point 10k race. Yippee! Seems these old legs still have some good miles left in them. Ha, that plus a good segment of the population down here spends Sundays sleeping, so the competition isn't exactly fierce.
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| BLAST recovery site on the Ross Ice Shelf |
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Another event marking the end of the season is the recovery of the LDB scientific instrument payloads from the deep field.
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| Refuleing at the WISSARD fuel cache en route to the BLAST recovery site |
This year saw 5 balloon launches: CREAM, BLAST, BARREL I & II and SPB. So far, CREAM has come down on the other side of the continent, BARREL I went down over open water between Antarctica and Australia, BARREL II is out in east Antarctica near Dome C and BLAST is sitting on the Ross Ice Shelf. It has been quite a logistical challenge to get everything picked up before the end of the month. Scott ended up working nearly a month without a day off trying to get the launches off, then the payloads retrieved.
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| WISSARD fuel cache on the Ross Ice Shelf |
News Flash! Looks like Jen is getting a coveted boondoggle trip to the South Pole - you have to have been in shuttles for at least three years to get to go. Woo hoo!
1 comment:
Jen, I think you should get some major (major!) bragging rights for driving a vehicle like that! That is incredible! Must make guys in their "big" pick-up trucks seem pretty ridiculous. =)
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