19 December, 2002

Resupply Day

"We didn't do much, but it took us all day to do it," said Jaime Pierce describing our day. We've been looking forward to this day for a while because it meant we would receive some new supplies, and most importantly, mail.

At first the plane was scheduled for today, then last night McMurdo said it had been delayed until tomorrow. This morning McMurdo let us know we had two hours before the plane would arrive. The TEA mantra is "Be Flexible." That is certainly necessary in the field. Resupply flights are important because they also haul out our garbage and broken or unused equipment. We don't want to have to traverse all our stuff back to Beardmore South Camp, so the plane can make our lives easier. Another plane will come Jan. 13, right before we leave for our scheduled Jan. 15 pull out. This will help in sending our garbage, used fuel, and empty sleds back to Beardmore for the LC-130's when we leave.

We spent the better part of the morning getting ready for the flight. One member of our team was going to get to fly back to Goodwin and Beardmore to help the pilots with the loads. Neither Scott or Dante got to ride in the cockpit of the LC-130, so they used the ancient art of "Rock, Paper, Scissors," to decide who got to take the flight. Dante won, so hopefully the opportunity will come again for Scott next month.

Many members of our team received gifts and chocolate just in time for Christmas. We were teasing Dante that we took all of his candy while he was on the flight. We won't receive mail again until our next resupply in January. But this really made everyone happy. Nancy and Linda have gone completely into the Christmas spirit by decorating their tent with stockings and an inflatable penguin wearing reindeer antlers.

With the afternoon still open, we headed back to a moraine near where we were searching yesterday. 14 more meteorites were recovered, seven by person and seven by metal detector. Nancy was determined not to have the machine win, so we recovered one found the other day by Danny when he was out exploring around camp. This broke the tie.

The weather has been good, but cool, so we should be able to search again tomorrow if the weather holds. Winds have been light and the highs have ranged from 0 to 5F. Hopefully, we'll be just as successful tomorrow, if not more, as we were today.

An aerial view of our camp from the Twin Otter that came to resupply us today (photo by Dante Lauretta).