Life on the Ice

Today's Sunday - finally a day off and already 10 at night since life here doesn't really slow down much. I like it here. There is always something going on.

So I did arrive safely last Tuesday. Getting off that plane and seeing the ice and the mountains in the background was breathtaking. It still is that way. The place is beautiful. It amazing to me how we landed on a sea ice runway that by mid December will be closed because by January it will most likely be open water. A C-17 is a huge plane and that thing barrels down into the ice on landing. I've seen a couple landings since and it still amazes me.

There will be some pictures to come. My camera died on me as I was exiting the plane but I should be able to post some pictures from a flight arriving the next day for everyone to look at. I might be able to find the person who took pictures of me right after arriving on her camera and can post those too. I think I need to figure out how to post pictures better since I screwed up my other post and gave up posting any more pictures to that one.

So my job on ice is going to be awesome. I've really only been through training so far. It hasn't been that busy and won't be too busy until full operations start a week from now. I've been trained on how to properly drive in the harsh conditions here and it is generally pretty easy stuff. I still need to be trained on Ivan the Terra Bus. I think I'll like driving the big deltas the best. They aren't very fast but they are a lot of fun to drive.

My coworkers are all pretty cool. There are about 18 of us right now and I was surprised that most of them are older. Of the 5 guys I'm the youngest by about 20 years. One of the guys is 78 years old and most likely is the oldest guy on the base. There are a few older women, women my age with boyfriends or husbands, and a few younger women. It's really a great group of people. We had a shuttles party on Friday and it was a good time getting to know the group and all of them are such unique people. It won't even really feel like I'm working.

I am living in Building 155, which is the main building on base. It has the galley, dorm rooms for most of the fingees, and a few other offices. I've got four roommates that are all pretty cool. Two of them are in cargo and the other is a DA - Dining attendant. The room is pretty small and hard to move around in but most of the time is spend outside of the room so it hasn't been a problem yet.

People are extremely friendly on ice. It is a pretty interesting crowd. I think I'm in the minority on the number of adventures people have had. There are a great number of people who have been in the peace core and have down seasonal jobs since college. I kind of took the plunge to this great adventure. I'm looking forward to many more to come.

On my day off today I went with a couple shuttles people and another two guys and did some cross country skiing on the sea ice. Today just happened to be the worst weather of all the days I've been here. We skied for about 4 miles and walked back the short way. It was kind of cool to be in the wind and the blowing snow and get through to the end. There is a lot of opportunity to get out and hike and see the surrounding area. It's going to be fun to explore in the coming weeks.