Nov. 4th – Day 30 of “The Commute”

Alrighty! just about 1 month of “commuting” so far. Flights have been going to Pole almost on-schedule so far; we’ve had 3 flights take passengers into/out of Pole so far including one of the new SPT winterovers. The other new SPT winterover is scheduled to fly in tomorrow, and my flight is scheduled for Monday barring any weather delays.

I have to say, I will be pretty surprised if tomorrow’s flight goes to Pole because having 3 flights in 3 days is pretty miraculous.. and it would be reeeaallly amazing if my flight wasn’t delayed from Monday. Weather actually looks good tomorrow, so I don’t think it’s crazy to think that that will go, but it’s too early to predict weather for Monday.

One nice thing about staying in McMurdo for the weekend is that we are now in “level green” which means that because we haven’t had a flight carrying passengers from off-continent to McMurdo in the past 7 days, we do not need to do social distancing/mask wearing anymore. It was really awesome to see people’s faces – all of these people who I had seen on and off for around 3 weeks during quarantine but haven’t actually seen their faces. And to see smiles again! You could feel the moral of station explode yesterday when we moved into level green… it was really neat.

There is also going to be a Halloween party this weekend. I don’t have a costume, nor do I particularly like thinking of costume ideas or dressing up, but I know people around here take these things very seriously… so who knows, maybe I’ll find something.

Today the weather is super nice; 14F with nearly no wind! It feels extremely warm compared to the usual 10-20 knts here in mactown… so of course I feel like I need to get out there and enjoy it, but I also kind of wanted to take a rest day; I ran 12 miles yesterday (one loop of what I thought was going to be the 2-loop marathon distance… so I’ll need to add a bit if I want to do that) and had been doing lots of hill climbs before that, so I needed a break. But it’s so nice out, this day can’t be wasted! Tough decisions.

Anyway, not much else going on here but running, hiking, eating and sleeping. I have occasionally been reading some papers online, and promptly falling asleep at the computer. A very familiar feeling.