Finally after a month a new post!
I'd love to say that so many wonderful things have happened and everything is magical, the physical therapist down here would call me on that lie.
We are understaffed this year. During Winfly it was stressful, the idea of keeping up was daunting but doable with a lot of burnt out energy. By Mainbody we had 30 stewards all sharing Jano and DA duties and spirits were up. Now that the population has hit over 800 we feel the fact that we are at half the staff of last year. Almost a third of us are in physical therapy for repetitive motion injuries and we are all burnt out in terms of moral.
I still love it down here though. I got a Boondoggle this week and got to go out with the Fuelies to a place called Road End. It is one of the fuel cache sights where in case of bad weather the smaller plains can land and wait out the storm. With the right GPS they just need to look for the flags and start digging. Refueling is just a few feet of snow away!
I flew out with five other people and a flight crew of three on a Bassler. It is a small craft from back in the day outfitted with skies on it's front two wheels, much like the size of the Pegasus crash plain which was not comforting. We spent an hour flying low past the Royal Societies and Mount Discovery. Rumored to be the original mountain choice for the Paramount Picture logo, it's a great view and makes you feel really small when flying next to it.
Once we landed on our glacier (surprisingly smooth) and found the buried flags poking out of the snow, the work began. We dug for two hours in roaring winds to uncover nineteen 400lb barrels. The barrels had to be pulled out, tagged, sampled, and reset on the surface to be buried by snow during the next year. It was hard work, freezing, and AWESOME!!!
The chance to get out of town for a while was amazing, and the experience to finally get my "frozen face" photo was a first. I also got a good workout in, not that I needed one as I am clocking miles of run around time at work. Once we off loaded the new barrels and picked up the empty ones, we re-flagged the neat stack and were on our way. Flying back I marveled in the fact that I had gotten to the actual continent once this season. It made coming back to town a bit more digestible.
For now, just trying to give my thumbs a break, fitting in sleep somehow, and rolling with the punches. There's always going to be something. Choosing to Mary Poppins the shit out of the job makes it the Hunger Games, but at least it's still a game.
Holding up for now,
Chris
