Sunday Hike

Another Sunday day off, much needed. It was a long week of work in freezers, ironically enough. Monday I was cleaning out those freezer compressor rooms, Tuesday I was working in a small freezer shipping containers moving frozen food from one to another, Wednesday I was in the galley for their weekly food delivery, when they pull the weeks worth of food out of warehouses. The station is overpopulated now – about 1,200 people, because they haven’t been able to get out flight to the South Pole or any of the deep field camps on account of bad weather. That means a whole bunch of people just waiting around in temporary housing, and it means that the galley is going crazy – we probably moved about 12-15 1,000 pound pallets of frozen food alone. The freezer is kept at -20, so it was actually colder in the freezer than outside. Then on Thursday I was inside organizing DVDs in the morning and shoveling outside in the afternoon, Friday I was doing inventory of huge pieces of metal outside town, and yesterday in the morning my job was decorating the gym for the Halloween party and in the afternoon more shoveling and labeling parts in the carpenter’s supply shop. Last night was the Halloween party – one of the biggest events of the year. It was a good show – it felt like everybody at the station was there, and the costumes were amazing. Today was awesome. Woke up late, went brunch, which is the best meal of the week – fresh fruit, eggs to order, breads, potatoes, and the best part is that there’s nowhere to be, so you can sit for hours and chat with people and drink coffee. Then I went for a hike this afternoon – just a three mile loop above town, but it was beautiful, and it was nice to go for a walk. There are some good trails around that station – and you can also check out cross country skis, which I think is my plan for next weekend. Here are some pictures from the hike: