So we were done! Finished at Patriot Hills. Now we just had to take advantage of the glorious still weather and wait for the Air National Guard to come pick us up. It felt brilliant to be finished.
We had packed and palletized all our gear and expected the call that the Hercules was coming at any minute.
No call. Followed a little later by the lack of call. Followed just a while later by nothing. Followed somewhat later by a cancellation notice.
“Must be the weather at McMurdo” Someone suggested.
“Nope” – according to Mac Weather we, at Patriot Hills, were having terrible weather. You know what, they were right.
It was cloudy, there was seven of ‘em.
I know, I counted.
There was one over there, and one over there, and one over there, a couple waaaay over there and a couple over there.
Seven.
Seven clouds in a blue blue sky.
But then that nasty bright glaring flaring ball of hotness must have been confusing people. You know that life giving radiant ball of nuclear destruction.
The Sun.
Or maybe it was the complete lack of wind – the whole calm before the storm thing. That must have been it. No matter the understanding staff at Patriot Hills instead groomed one of the nearby mountainsides for a marathon tobogganing session. Some did that, some (slightly more sane?) stayed around base reading, and hanging out. It was a quiet day.
The Ukrainian-operated Illuyshian came in that evening, to much booming and noise. A very impressive aircraft indeed.
This week has been weird according to the Patriot Hills staff — almost an entire week of calm weather and blue skies is essentially unknown. I will miss the folks there, it was a nice international mix of people who really did seem to like their jobs. One strange thing was that people were out in the environment all the time and you saw cases of frostbite and cold related injuries quite a lot. People were pushing themselves. At McMurdo either the training is better (seems unlikely), people were outside less often (probably) or were not really pushing themselves so hard, so often (probable too). You just don't see very many cold related injuries around McMurdo. Maybe during the winter or at the pole it’s different — I don't know, to tell the truth. Anyway, I will miss many aspects of being at Patriot.
The next day the Guard finally arrived, took their obligatory photos of plastic pink flamingos and hustled us back to McMurdo. Ah Mactown. Muddy, grubby, outdated and home for the next few weeks. It’s very strange, everything around me, every instinct says “it is now time to go home.” But we’re only halfway done. The next couple of weeks are going to be harder than at Patriot. I hope I managed to get some enthusiasm up – which basically means I hope we manage to get some work done soon. We will see.
The pluses – hot showers, faster internet, warm beds, friends. These really help…
