Antarctica
2009
A Few Facility Pictures of McMurdo
(I'll keep adding as I have time.)
This is the "street" that the Crary Lab is on.
Beeker is, of course, the quite squeaky assistant of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on the Muppets. Heh.
All exterior doors into Crary Lab are freezer doors. I'm not sure if this is for better temperture regulation in this particular building, or simply because it is a newer building, and these doors hold up to the cold much better (requiring less maintenance).
The McMurdo Firehouse
One of the McMurdo Fire Trucks. Not sure at this moment how many there are. At least two, it seems.
The non-demoninational Chapel of the Snows. Mount Discovery is to the left.
The McMurdo Library. I wish I had been able to spend more time in this cozy little space, and its location near my room would have been conducive to that, had I the time.
The library is full of works of art made out of scraps from around town. This dragon made of what looked like some sort of exhaust hose was the most notable.
This is a portion of the McMurdo Coffeehouse, which also serves as one of the three bars in town. This particular room also serves as movie theater and live music venue on certain nights.
Skua Central is this messy place. Skuas are seabirds that spend their summers in Antarctica, and are aggresive scavengers, known to pluck whole sandwiches out of peoples' hands. The word "skua" is used to describe anything left behind for others to take, and is often heard used as various parts of speech. I, in fact, skua-ed some very nice shoes during my visit here.
On my hike to find the greenhouse, which ended in failure (closed!), I at least saw this frisbee golf target. Chris played quite a bit of frisbee golf here last year, and I had thought they played by aiming for random, pre-existing targets (Ok, everybody, that guy over there!), but alas, here is a real frisbee golf structure.
Speaking of exercise, here's the Gerbil Gym, with its many machines. There is also a weight gym located in another building nearby.
The Berg Field Center, where we had to return all our field gear - everything from plates to fuel cans to climbing rope - has an upstairs lounge, nice hardwood floors, a stereo system wired throughout, and this floor-sized game of Macopoly. It's quite the pad, considering the sterile environments of most places in town, and the people who work here are envied by many in town.
To illustrate the location of our new building a little better, here is the view from the side of the building. The Town of McMurdo, Antarctica.
View from the front door of our new building of the new windmills that were installed (I'm fairly certain) just while we were out in the field. I don't have much info on them, but I have been told that the one that is currently running is providing most of the power that Scott Base uses.
Returning back to the rest of town from our place on the hill we pass this place, the outdoor storage lot, which stores lots of random, cold-hardy things, such as in this picture, doors. They have labeled their rows of inventory not with numbers or letters, but with facial hair styles, mostly mustaches. In this picture, in case it's too small to read, are the Fu Manchu and the Handlebar.
Here we are, waiting at the McMurdo bus stop, Derelict Junction. We were waiting for the shuttle to take us to American Night over at Scott Base on our last night in town, but it didn't show and the crowd got restless and gave up. Public transportation is the same everywhere.
This is the clock in the galley. I really wish I had one of these
for my home, even though it's probably bigger than any room in my little place.