Last night the C-17 came in around 4 a.m. (someone else took this picture). I took Ivan out to the airfield, full of people headed home just in time for the holidays. The prime minister of Norway also took the plane home last night. The hundredth anniversary of Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole was celebrated on December 14th.
National Geographic had a pretty good article about it:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/amundsen/alexander-text
There is a sobering graphic in the paper version of the magazine showing how many ponies, dogs, and men were lost for the two dueling expeditions. Amundsen's group ate a lot of dogs and fed their remaining dogs dog meat. Bleck.
Scotty was adorable singing Christmas carols! He will be doing about 6 performances in the next week. Fun!
The Shuttle's flight board takes a few seasons to decipher. We have to make sure every passenger and every crew member is taken care of. It's not an exact science and planning can become quite stressful since the ride to the airfield can take take over an hour and there are a limited number of drivers and vehicles.
This week I took a little field trip over to the Vehicle Maintenance Facility, or Heavy Shop, as they call it here. I'm writing a safety topic on air brakes, but I also got a super fun tour. These guys are SO knowledgeable and talented. Imagine trying to fix ancient machinery with no NAPA Auto Parts store to go to. I call this picture "Gear Soup" because it is the remains of the inside axle of one of our passenger deltas.
There are endless bins of bolts and parts, yet they regularly run out of things like starters and tie rods. How can you ever plan for every vehicle issue?
The choir has practiced many times in the last month and a half. They sounded on key and they projected beautifully!
Tim Pare is the VMF night supervisor. My half season working nights is coming to a close next week. I will miss the more personal nature of working on the midrats shift. Since there are about 200 of us on this shift rather than a thousand, it is a close knit community. Tim and his mechanics have bailed out shuttles numerous times in the past couple months. Part of the shuttle's night shift job is to get everything ready for the busy day ahead and if Ivan, for example, is out of commission, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down. That's how tightly everything runs with vehicles around here. The great thing about night shift is that everyone helps each other out. I will sorely miss that. |
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