15 November, 1997

Saturday November 15

I awoke rather early because of the early hour that I retired yesterday and was suprised at the daylight and the fact that this place runs continually for 24 hours a day. Lots of people were out and about at 5:00 am. The dining hall is not quite open continuously but close. After a good breakfast I tried to find my team and learned that they are all in the field at this time. Did get hold of Kathy ( my group leader) by radio and got a few instructions. McMurdo is a good place to be on your own. There is so much work to do and people are very helpful. LTER ( my group) has a nice lab and not a person in it but me at this time. I simply went next door and met another group Al, Amy and Dan and asked if I could help them in any way. They were happy to accept and I spent most of the day with them helping them inventory and put away their equipment that just arrived on the same plane I did. The endloader would bring in big pallets of material and you would try to locate what one was yours and see if any thing was broken in transet. Lots of glassware was broken and will need to be replaced. I simply did a physical inventory and crossed off the equipment there with the packing list. Not a tough job but they were appreciative of me helping out. Last night was my first condition 1 weather here at McMurdo. We went to supper and it was fine, probably stayed a little longer chatting than usual and got up to head out and NOT GOOD. Temp was near zero, strong wind and blowing snow. Could barely see anything. Luckly I had brought most of my extreme weather gear to supper, I put it on and headed back to the dorm. Made it with no trouble but the temp. in my dorn room was 53 and stayed there for the rest of the night. I'm still doing fine.