Strange Winter Day

It is a strange winter day here in Anchor-town for this Alaskan.  This is not winter to me.  Hope your Tuesday is a fine and normal day.

Happy New Year!

We are all traveling through the same time and space. Relish each moment with love for each other and joy in your heart.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Sweet dreams of candy canes and sugar plums.

Love and joy to all near and far!

Superstition Wilderness Arizona

Enjoy warm thoughts and tons of love this holiday season.

Tons of love and blessing to all my friends and family, every one of you is so very dear to my heart!  

Wishing you and yours the very best. Today. Tomorrow. Always!

High Five Friday for Fluffy Clouds

High five Friday for fluffy clouds, and day dreaming of being in a place that makes you happy, and for being surrounded by those you love.  Where is the place on earth that makes you the most happy?

Have a great Friday my friends and a great weekend!

Another Message Home from Antarctica

Hello Mom & Dad,

Everything is going well here. We're pretty busy in this last week while we finish everything and start making sure everything is ready to leave for the year. I spent the entire day yesterday driving the 25 km back and forth from town to camp in a PistenBully (I don't have a picture yet, but it's a German made tracked vehicle) towing a 250 gallon fuel tank on tracks. The drive takes just over two hours but that thing will not get stuck anywhere down here!

Driving this was pretty fun but for everyone else it's pretty bumpy. It's also lacking in a way to play music or something, which it really needs. The sound of a loud diesel engine gets a bit old after 4 hours. They're not easy on fuel either; at about seven miles per gallon they're pretty thirsty.

There was a pretty funny issue when we were refueling for our second trip that caught us off guard. The 'Fuelhopper' truck came and refueled the 250 gallon tank we were towing (lovingly called the "Diesel Weasel") but he couldn't refuel the PistenBully directly because his fuel nozzle was too big. The guy drove off to go find a jerry can or something and Luke and I sat back in the PistenBully to warm up. We weren't there 30 seconds when we looked at each other and simultaneously and independently realized that the Diesel Weasel has an electric fuel pump with a smaller fuel nozzle on it. Why don't we just use that? Man, we're dumb... We just finish refueling the PistenBully by the time the Fuelhopper gets back to us and he tops off the Diesel Weasel again.

Here are two photos. A Skua bird, of which Wikipedia accurately describes the Skua's behavior as "piratical" when it harasses its victims; this one was chasing a group of white terns. It was an exciting and diverse day in Antarctica: two kinds of birds!

And the other is the stunning view from my tent when I'm going to bed out at Windless Bight camp. Nearly 15 km of snowfield and ice shelf stand between camp and the base of the mountain, just over 12,000 feet up treacherous ice falls and crevasses to a persistent lava lake at the summit. The peak just to the right of Mount Erebus is Mount Terra Nova, a now inactive volcano.

Glad to hear your trip to Arizona went well. It sure is nice to see such awesome people! The sun helps too, plenty of it here. Congrats to Dad with the 'first class' upgrade! We'll have to figure out how to get some pictures of you in the cockpit.

I haven't planned with Bear at all yet on the Christmas plans, but if Haley and I come down earlier then we can cram some chairs in my car. We'll figure it out. I return with plenty of time to plan.

Yesterday, we broke camp and double checked all of our equipment at the site. It has to sit there for a year all lonely but our work is done. Today, we have to check in and clean all of our issued gear and, my favorite, do dishes! We fly out to Christchurch tomorrow on a C130!

Busy day and I still haven't had breakfast yet.

Love you both!
Drew

Dad's Wise Words

"Be careful with who you think you want to be and choose wisely. As once you are that person it is harder to change".

Dad's wise words to his teenage sons.

Zinburger ~ Gilbert Arizona

When you are in Gilbert Arizona stop in for an early supper at Zinburger's for a tasty burger and the truffle fries! Yummy!

Be Still and Carry Love in Your Heart

14 Days Until Christmas

Fourteen days until Christmas. Time to enjoy hugs from family and be thankful for all the joys in our lives, large and small.  Each has value.  Each has weight.  Share the love and kindness with your fellow man each and every day!

The Pork Shop ~ Queen Creek

When you are in Queen Creek Arizona make a stop into The Pork Shop, you will not regret your purchases.  Be sure to pack plenty of their meat sticks when you go out on a long hike, because when you run out it is all you can think about during the long hike back.

Beauty in the Desert

There is beauty in the desert. In fact beauty is everywhere.

Happy Wednesday my friends.

Share the love!

Big City Rivers of Invisibility

San Francisco Plaza Quito Ecuador 

"As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people’s doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields. But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at a distance. It was the same difference as between a great public highway and a country by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilized life, where people pass without salutation. In sparsely inhabited places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man’s toes. In these waters we were no longer strange birds, and nobody supposed we had traveled farther than from the last town."

Robert Louis Stevenson words from Inland Voyage still ring true for me in Anchor-Town.  The drawback for nice people living in the big city is that we pass by everyone else without a notice or a care.  We are invisible at times as Mr. Stevenson states, 'unless we have trodden on a man's toes', so true some days in this new town, still.  I am fighting long hours as I continue to try to change the big city effect in my day to day work environment.  Keep wishing me luck!

High Five Friday for Our Galapagos Movie

The long awaited release of my latest movie creation is over.  It is just over 39 minutes long and might take a bit to buffer on YouTube for smooth watching. Hope you enjoy the show and your weekend head!

Another Message Home from Antarctica!

Drew is the fella on the right

Morning! We've been hard at work here on the ice. We have five of eight sensors lifted to the surface and are waiting for the heavy equipment operator to get out here to pre-lift our power station (BOB).

We're a 15 km drive from McMurdo and Scott Base where the nearest "real" buildings would be. On the way out to camp, there are other permanent and semi-permanent structures that may or may not be heated but are not often occupied. At camp we have BOB (our "Big Orange Box" hybrid power station built into a shipping container on skis) which is heated, semi-permanent but heated kitchen and workshop tents, and an outhouse on skis; I'm not sure those count as buildings though. Our sleeping tent is about 40 or 45 Fahrenheit inside at the coldest. Plenty warm!

As for the sensors they are our infrasound sensors that record the total pressure (atmospheric and, hopefully, acoustic) at eight locations (hence the term "array"). These sensors are basically just huge microphones designed to have a good response (measurement capability) in the infrasound band (0.01 to 10 Hz). The sensors and all the supporting equipment needs to be kept out of the weather so they sit in the field in weatherproof vaults. These vaults sit on the snowy surface of the permanent ice shelf all year. During the year, the vaults get buried under the accumulated snow (usually about 3-4 feet) and need to be lifted up to the surface every year or risk being lost. There's some old equipment people have left behind in similar situations that are now 40 or 50 feet below the snow surface and will never be seen again. If I remember correctly, there was a sighting of a bunch of equipment left from the 60's that finally made it out to sea and was exposed when the ice shelf broke off recently, pretty neat!

I think we're attending McMurdo's Thanksgiving gathering but I don't remember when that is. If there is one thing that McMurdo cooks get right it's the bread. It's not as good as yours but it's definitely the best around! I'm looking forward to some good French bread rolls again when I see you at Christmas.

As for the wifi, all seems to be working well, during heavy snowfall, the attenuation is high enough to break our line of sight, but the internet usually works.

It's definitely warm here today, the sun is blazing bright and it's 13.8 F outside with a 7 mph wind; the sun is offering our solar panels over 300 watts/m^2!

I've got some snow to go dig. Of course, the sun doesn't set so there's no night here but have a good night!

Miss you too! Love you tons!
Drew