Friday October 7, 2011

Today was another long and exhausting day full of trainings, however, before I describe all of that, I wanted to provide a better idea of where we all eat our meals. This is "The Galley." We have breakfast, lunch (most days) and dinner here. It is all you can eat (which is necessary after long days on the sea ice) and the food is remarkably good considering how inaccessible Antarctica is. The first picture is where we get our food. It is all buffet style and there are usually 10 or more options about what we can eat. The next picture is where we actually eat our food. Behind me (I took the picture) are very large windows where we can admire the Royal Society Mountain Range every time we eat.

After breakfast, we had an hour long training on how to drive Ford F-350 pickups that are raised up and on massive tires. Since all of our roads are covered in ice and snow, they don't use hand brakes. Instead there is a mechanism that locks the hydraulic fluid from the foot brake in place so the vehicles don't move.

After our "light vehicle" training, we had snowmobile training. IT WAS AWESOME! For the first hour, we essentially got a crash course in snowmobile repairs. We learned how to clean out snow and ice from under the hood, how to dislodge the snowmobile from the ice when it gets frozen, how to clean out the air box, fix a damaged belt, spark plugs and fuel filters as well. It was great. Then we jumped in the back of a pickup and practiced driving snowmobiles.

There are many strange pieces of art all around the station. I found this "chopper style" snowmobile outside of our training building. It was all hand built and looks like a cross between a chopper, a snowmobile and a Star Wars vehicle!

Finally, we did our training on how to drive a Pisten Bully. They are basically like a tank for snow. Our team has a dedicated Pisten Bully just for our team so if the sea ice becomes a bit more stable, we will be taking it out quite often to our fishing places. I didn't get any pictures of us driving them, but here are a few pictures of what a Pisten Bully looks like. I will get many more pictures of us in them and driving them once they are all loaded up with our survival gear and fishing gear.