BootsnAll Travel Network



Caesar Binge

Wow, it HAS been a while since I wrote last. I guess as we get settled into the work routine here the newness and novelty of the place wears out. It has been a long week. Thursday (our day off ) was bad weather so we didn?t do much. We did manage to run some errands but still haven?t gotten out to Castle Rock.
We are both on a Caesar binge. Caesar is a computer game. It is one of these SIM City type games where you have to design a city meeting certain criteria. You have to consider everything from policing neighborhoods to food production. Caesar happpens to be based on a Roman theme. Living in McMurdo reminds of living in a simulated society. In a way it feels like an attempt at a utopian society but more in the vein of the ?company town? during the industrial revolution than a Brook Farmseque social experiment. I guess we are essentially colonists exploiting the continent for scientific data.
Today I went to see the (company) dentist. As some of you know, I have a long history with dentists; sometimes good, most of the time bad. At least I didn?t get booted out of the office this time. I did leave the office with an appointment for next Thursday, my next day off, to fix a failing filling.
Summer is in full swing here now. Snow in the sun melts and snow in the shade freezes. The big iceberg, that has been blocking sea currents and causing problems for the migratory penguin colonies and the offload of fuel for the migratory human colony at McMurdo base, officially broke up last week. You may have heard it referred to as ?The iceberg the size of the state of _______? but here we use a much less colorful name but one that is more exemplary of our data product: B15. During the past couple of weeks we have also been seeing another sign of summer; the seasonal migratory birds called Skua. They look very much like seagulls only about 7 lbs heavier and they get into the trash just like seagulls, too. Skua is also the name of the local thrifte shoppe. The sign on the door actually says Σκυά Σεντραλ. It is a trailer up at the Waste building where the re-usable flotsam of life on the ice is deposited in a somewhat orderly manner and picked over by the brave and the desperate.
Here is a picture of Ivan the TerraBus for no particular reason other than it is interesting to look at. It is used when a plane full of PAX (passengers) arrives and needs to be shuttled into town from the Ice Runway.

Ivan the Terra Bus.jpg




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