Anywho, after wallowing in a pool of misery and going through a six pack of Coors Light on Sunday afternoon, I managed to rally myself in time for the final game of the Rugby World Cup between the All Blacks and the French. I'm sure the French have a team name, but nobody at the bar I drank in could seriously cheer on the French and expect to enjoy themselves on Sunday night. So I did not bother to learn it. Look at what I'm getting at here...
This is the reaction to the final seconds of the game, when New Zealand sealed their 8-7 lead over the French. The view of the French fans is not being blocked by overzealous All Blacks fans, there simply are no French fans present.
It was a good time, and I sat around afterwards to watch postgame celebration before walking back to my room and going to bed.
Life on McMurdo is not all about crazy Kiwi sports and drinking, and I do work sometimes. For the past two days though, Ross Island has been pounded with high winds and impossible driving conditions. While we Shuttle folk are a mean breed of driving fools, the airfield crews don't like working in horrible death inducing weather. As is the case, we've spent most of the last two days sitting inside our bunker with nobody to transport.
McMurdo is protected on 3 sides by large hills and mountains, so the station is pretty safe from the elements... most of the time. Ross Island is surrounded by frozen ice, though, and on that ice is the runway where planes land. While all is sunny at wonderful MacTown, the airfields can be in complete chaos a mere mile away. So you can imagine when conditions go from this:
to this
at McMurdo, conditions are a lot worse on the ice. Those two pictures were taken in the exact same spot in not similar conditions... Now take conditions like that, and put them on a road that looks like this...
That's what I drove in when I had to evacuate crew from the Ice Runway. Those flags in the picture above? They weren't there. Well, they were, but you wouldn't have known. Unless we're picking up large groups, most of our driving is done in regular vans equipped with snow tires, so don't assume that I'm doing crazy driving in my would-be-McMansion Ivan the Terrabus. In these conditions I was driving a vehicle that's greatest safety feature is a cup holder. Not to say it was a near death experience, but don't assume I was in monster truck safety.
Mad props to the firefighters who camped out on the Ice Runway for a few hours in the middle of this storm. You will note, please, that Grant was not among them.
