Counting down

Snow just blew through the window onto the desk where I’m sitting. It’s Feb. 1 and that may mean that summer is officially over here in Antarctica. That’s what my roommate said, adding that there will be about two weeks of fall and then winter will be here until spring sometime in December. Of course his rather negative analysis might be colored by an earlier comment of his. He was holding up seven fingers and asked, “Do you know what this means? Seven days until we leave!” Actually, it’s close to eight days, but who’s counting? Well, just about everyone who’s leaving.

Yeah, my departure date was bumped up a little bit and we’re scheduled to leave here Feb. 9. That can change again ... earlier or later ... due to changing circumstances, but it looks like a pretty good date. We are winding down at work, putting the finishing touches on the last edition. We will then start shutting down the office for the winter and doing various things that need to be done.

Being none-essential personnel, we’re among the first to leave. There is still a lot to be done on station before it sends out the final flight about Feb. 25. Just today, the fuel tanker arrived and they have started pumping millions of gallons of gasoline, diesel and airplane fuel into storage tanks.

The fuel tanker is the one on the right. It is docked at the ice pier, which is just that, a huge block of floating ice. It doesn’t look like it because it’s covered with a layer of dirt to insulate it from the sun, which causes melting and that’s bad.

To the left is the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea. It and a privately owned Swedish icebreaker, the Oden, opened the channel and turning basin for the delivery vessels. The Oden is gone now, leaving the Polar Sea to keep them open. In the background is the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, which is owned by the National Science Foundation and used to conduct research. Pretty quickly after the fuel vessel completes its offload, the cargo vessel will arrive. A few dozen members of a U.S. Navy cargo handling battalion arrived a couple of days ago. They and a bunch of our people will attack the vessel when it arrives, emptying a year’s worth of supplies and reloading it with a year’s worth of garbage.

Before they finish that, though, I should be en route to Texas and home. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.