Cold and Tired

Its -28 degrees F with 37 mph winds today... cold. Just walking from the galley to the lab, about 150 feet maybe, it was enough to freeze my face off. I'm completely pooped today too, I just finished taking a nap on my office floor for the last hour. Thats right, my nap was at 8:00 this morning, I just couldn't wake up. But I've been here a week, made it through week number one on the ice. We have accomplished a lot in the lab, 2 successful balloon launches and we are ready to launch one of our big instruments. Leslie and I have been building masts and preparing ozonesondes. Mahesh has built our big instruments. We can all run the big scary laser. My favorite thing so far is driving our big van around, its fun.
I earned my beastly badge yesterday in van driving, it was amazing, I backed all the way around a corner and up a ramp to a building. It was pretty hot.

The views are amazing here too, I always like to just look around and wonder, its just crazy that I'm actually here in Antarctica... I amaze myself sometimes. For those who don't know where I am exactly, its McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Here is a map and the red circle is McMurdo:
McMurdo is located on Ross Island in the McMurdo sound by the Ross Ice Shelf. We can see Mt Erebus, Mt Terror, Black Island, White Island and the mountains across the sound from different places on the station. I'll get more pictures of them later.

Here is a better map of Ross Island for anyone interested. So now that we've all had our geography lesson for the day, here are a couple of things I can see from the door by our lab. This is Mount Discovery across the ice shelf. This mountain is attached to the Trans-Antarctic mountain range which runs along the edge of the continent.

Here are some of the Trans-Antarctic mountains. This is one of the most amazing mountain ranges I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful. That is the permanent ice shelf you are looking at as well, the mountains are across the shelf.
I'll get some more pictures and keep putting them up. I have to be able to stand being outside for more than 2 minutes. :)

By the way, Leslie just told me it is -30 degrees F right now, thats just the temperature, not wind chill. Stay warm everyone!!