Friday, February 08, 2008
More Pics from the Second Season on Ice
You have to be nominated to have a land feature named after you here in Antarctica. Usually it happens to people who have worked here for 10-20 years. This year, a few people on station were rewarded for years of hard work here at McMurdo and in the field camps. One of my coworkers, Mike Ebel, was recognized by having some hills on the continent named after him: the Ebel Hills. Or as Mike likes to call them, the Ebel "Rugged" Hills. We had a surprise ceremony where one of the NSF Representative read the nomination entry that Mike's former coworker Jess wrote about him and presented him with a map showing the Ebel Hills. Mike works as a Utility Technician (UT) and has worked in Crary for the past 6 years (of his 20 years on Ice). So not only is he our coworker here in the lab, but he works with 15-20 other UTs at McMurdo who all came to surprise him. When he first walked into the room, he said "Wow. This is a big safety meeting." He didn't realize until the speakers stood up that we had cancelled the safety meeting to surprise him. When they were reading the nomination entry, he almost started crying. It was great to see such a dedicated, hard-working person be rewarded like this.
A few weeks ago, I was offered a boondoggle to "Room With a View" which is actually just a spot 1400 feet up on Erebus that has a great view, or so I've heard. When we were there Erebus was hidden in clouds but we could see out to the Dellbridge Islands in McMurdo Sound. It was a snowmobile trip and a day off of work which is all that mattered. Before we headed out to RWAV, we drove out to the Pegasus plane crash where I snapped this photo. If you click on the picture to see the bigger version and look closely you can read some of the things people have scratched onto the plane.
This season, my friend Bill wanted to make a movie for the McMurdo Film Festival. We had to shoot "on location" one day away from town. I snapped this pic of Bill and Ralph (in the background) trying to set up a shot. The movie turned out extremely well and was a big hit at the film festival on Monday night. It was titled "In Search for the Southern Yeti".
Ethan, my coworker, and I are camera nerds. All season we talked about the new camera gear we were both getting. I finally bit the bullet and bought two new lenses for my Rebel XTi. One is a super wide angle that Ethan used to take this picture of me at work. This is the computer I use to program key cards (the size of a credit card) for people to get into their offices and labs and to access the building outside of regular work hours.
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