She goes on, "The Chalet called; do you want to do Happy Camper tomorrow?"
"Yeah!"
"Okay, check your email when you wake up tonight for the details."
Now, being on night shift, happy camper is a real interupption of my sleep schedule. It's like if you worked all day until 8 PM, and then at 8:30 leaving for the trip, digging holes all night, building walls, setting up tents, carving out Quinseys, and finally go to bed at 10:00 the next morning.
I was exausted by the time we were ready to turn in. I had chosen to sleep in a 'Survival Trench,' also known as 'the grave that saves.' It's essentially just a hole that you cover with snow blocks to survive extreme weather. The problem with the trench was that our weather was FAR from extreme. I think the low wind chill was somewhere around 15 degrees, but after the wind died it climbed to over freezing. This was the crappy part. I got pretty soaked. I had good gear of course, so I wouldn't say that I got cold, though my feet were chilly towards morning.
The other members of my camper trip included: 2 cargo guys, 2 prep cooks, 1 shuttle driver, 1 mechanic, me and Stan, night Janos, and 2 beakers. One beaker was an exogeologist who was travelling to a tiny field camp on a cravasse filled glacier to hunt for meteorites. He was obviously the reason that we were all there. You see, us low-totem pole folks don't need this training, but anyone going on a helo or field camp or anything like that needs the survival training. So when one guy like him needs the trip, a whole bunch of us get to go as a morale trip. Anyway, it was a great time, but I am totally exausted now.
We all turned in around 10:30, a half hour after when I would normally start work. I woke up at midnight totally convinced that I had slept the whole night through. Keep in mind that the sun does shine all the time, so it coulda been any time. So I got out of bed, started to wait for everyone else to wake up. I thought it might have been like 6:00 in the morning. Finally, someone with a watch got up to use the bathroom and broke the news to me. I had slept 1.5 hours. Damn. So I wandered around for a while and finally got back to sleep around 4 AM until about 6:30. Then breakfast and a quick movie tour of my campsite. So here it is for your viewing pleasure. If your wondering why I'm not talking, did you ever hear of 'Cowboy Coffee?' Well, I took a nice chunky sip of some right before I started filming. Sorry. So I'll narrate in text:
First, me, then my grave, and then a quick pan around camp. Note the awesome Scott Tents, a truly Antarctic tent.
Anyhow, that's about all I have the juice to write. As a consolation, take this picture from the very last sunset of the year, which I believe was Oct. 22.
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