26 November, 2000

Today was not a parcticularly eventful day for me with one notable exception--the remote camera that is looking into the crater on Erebus came clean today. It seems there may have been some windblown snow over the lens, and it fell away. There was also an issue concerning the radio channels being reset. When that was fixed, there was still no picture. From the lab it was difficult to tell whether it was a signal failure or an obstruction. It was an obstruction. Bill McIntosh, who is responsible for the installation of the camera, was very happy about that. For those of you who have seen the option for live video on the Mt. Erebus Observatory Homepage, you'll have to wait. There are some difficulties surrounding the amount of bandwidth needed to send the signal out to New Mexico Tech, where it would be re-routed to the Web. We shall see.

Tomorrow I will join the other first-timers in Antarctica for the snow survival school. That will involve making a shelter out of the hard-packed snow and then sleeping in it (among other survival chores). I will keep a journal and take pictures, but I cannot post them for a few days for obvious reasons.

I would like to begin including various scenes from McMurdo which will sometimes have a direct connection with what I've written, and sometimes not. The goal is to take you on little "walks around town" when we can.

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Two parting shots--the helicopter pad and the dining hall. (The food is excellent.) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp