Fun Day

Wow, I have a lot to talk about, this has been a pretty exciting past couple of days. First off, the regular flights will start soon after next week, which means....sort of reglar mail! So send me packages and such any time you want! Woohoo! I never knew how much I missed mail until I couldn't get any for almot 2 months. Anyway, enough with the shameless encouragement tosend me stuff...a couple of days ago some of our people had an accident in a Nodwell vehicle near Scott Base, they were coming back from Happy Camper School (see my boondoggle entry for an explanation of Happy Camper School) and their vehicle slid off the road and down multiple embankments, 2 guys bailed out in time but another 15 or so kept tumbling down what was a pretty steep drop off. They would have gone straight into the sea ice and probably all died except that they hit an empty fuel line that kept them from sliding over. So that was a great stroke of luck, things could have ended up in a pretty horrible but instead everybody got out pretty much okay, only three people were injured enough to go to medical and even then there was nothing life threatening so good times! Yesetrday I got to go out for the housing departments "fun day", a fun day is when we get to take a couple hours off work for a mini boondoggle, sort of a morale thing. We got to go up to the Nasa "golf ball" that is above the station. Blogger is being lame and allowing my videos to work at the mometn so here's a link to us heading up in the van: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3743474980718550634&hl=en
It houses a gigantic dish that tracks the polar satellites (satellites that are moving back and forth between the north and south pole). Here's a video of going into the golf ball http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8168839215580615530&hl=en It was fun to go up and see the inside of this thing I look at from afar every day and it was also pretty cool to see McMurdo from above, it was even better than the Ob Hill view.
After that we got to drive up to Arrival Heights where we got a tour of the US and Kiwi labs (there are currently 2 kiwi labs there, an old one and the new one that is under construction) and got to see some of the science that goes on here as well as some great views. To top off the trip we then went to the NASA "beach ball" which sits above Scott base and houses a large antenna, it wasn't nearly as impressive as the golf ball but it was a fun drive. After work me and Adam and some other friends went out to Scott base, it was the last American Night before Mainbody so it was good to get out there while it was less crowded. I visited the store there and drank tea (their tea set up rules!)in their little library corner, it was nice and cozy, there's nothing like being able to go into a bar with your shoes off (they are very clean there). Here's Adam's mini tourof the Scott Base galley/bar area withme in the background waiting for my tea to steep:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3548574254386922820&hl=en