So Long Texas

On Thursday the rest of the waste dept. joined us and we started the boat portion of spill training. This meant two long days of being out on the sun on the water learning techniques to clean up oil spills that might reach the water or leak from a vessel. In a way it was great because we had just spent three days in the classroom so it was good to get outside and be active, the time went by really quickly, but it kinda sucked as well because it was soooooo hot out. Despite multiple layers of sunscreen everybody got a little burned and we were all pretty exhausted at the end of both days. I feel like I learned a lot, though I didn't start out with a whole lot of boat knowledge so I'm not particularly confident in that department...at least I probably have the time to get more confident with the whole boat thing since the spill team in Mactown hasn't put a boat in the water in ten years.

It was a little crazy having the rest of the dept. there after it had just been me, Quinn, Jane, Ben, Alice, Nick, and Nandi in class for the first half of the week but it was pretty cool to get to know the entire group (haz waste, environmental, equipment operators, and techs), a good team bonding experience.

Despite the fact that I had been having an amazing time in Texas (yes, despite it being Texas) by Friday night I kinda hit the wall as far as my time in Texas goes. I was suddenly just done with all the sun, heat, humidity, frigid air conditioning, and exorbitant amount of fried food wrapped in bacon. Unfortunately this feeling of wanting to flee the Lone Star state came on the eve of our incident scenario (our little practice run of what a hazardous waste spill would be like). So I went in the next morning a little more crabby then I would have liked. I chose to work decontamination (decon) because I really felt like I knew that part of the operation pretty well. James gave the chance to opt out of suiting up (the decon leader doesn't don the moonsuit) but I wanted to push my boundaries a little so I chose to be one of the worker bees...which involved setting up the showers in the decon corridor, suiting up, and scrubbing down the recon and entry teams as they exit the contaminated area. We had to take the SCBAs (Self Contained Breath Apparatus) on and off in between the teams coming out (usually you wouldn't do that, you would just have multiple decon teams but this was practice so...) so that we didn't run out of air. Everything went great, even if it was like being in a giant ziplock bag in 98 degree weather (the ice vests only help so much) until the last time I had to put it on when I had problems locking the O2 tube in (which involved a brief moment of of suffocation) and then the mask had a hard time sealing cause my hair had gotten a bit tangled in it so I had a pretty bad leak (watching that little needle drop on the tank gauge is never fun) and though I didn't freak out it definitely rattled my nerves a little. It was a good experience but I definitely wouldn't be cut out for it in case of the real thing...at least not the "Level A Gear" real thing. Thannkfully if anything like that happens in McMurdo there are a lot more qualified people in line in front of me to handle that sort of thing.

Overall the scenario dealy went well and it only took half the day so it was nice to get out of "school" a little early on our last day. I was pretty nerdily excited to get my waste dept. hoodie, probably because I am pretty nerdily excited to be working in this depatment. All the same on Sunday I didn't want to wait until 4:30 that afternoon to get the hell out of Texas so I headed out to the airport at 8am and rolled the dice on the whole flying standby thing and managed to get back to home sweet home by early afternoon. I loved stepping off the plane to 65 degree weather and not so much humidity, it felt like I could finally really breathe.

So long Texas. Only a couple more months to til the ice.