Back to the great white south

My Base

I have made it back to Rothera on the Antarctic Peninsula, but what should have been a fairly easy (if long) couple of flights to get here, turned into an epic. The plan was to take the military flight from Brize Norton to the Falklands, spend a night in Port Stanley and fly to Rothera the next day.

The first part went well and we landed in the Falklands after an 18 hour fight, with a brief stop off on Ascension Island to refuel. But then the cracks started to show, a cough here, a sneeze there, and before we knew it half of our group were in bed sick with temperatures in the high 30's Celsius. Our flight the next day left with cargo instead of us and we were to spend the next week quarantined in Stanley until dead or better, luckily we all managed the latter and so after several checks of our temperatures to prove that we really were well and not about to carry the plague to Rothera we were finally allowed on the flight and, all be it a week late, we got here!

The place hasn't changed much; lots of white stuff, blue skies, and mountains, I am back in my old room. In fact I am not convinced I ever left. A few of my old winterers from 2006 and 2007 are even back here too so it is very groundhog day.

Stirling Moss?

It may not look it but I was moving very fast here.

This is the track day that I went to last week, a present from my dad. After a briefing session about how not to crash the car (or I would have to pay the damages), I got to go out on the track in a mini cooper with an instructor. We did a few circuits so that I could get used to the racing line, where to turn into the corners, and generally not having to worry about speed cameras. Then it was straight into the single seater to be let loose on the track and see how fast I could go, it really wasn't all about speed though, braking at the right time and getting around the bends without loosing too much speed was half the battle. But the car was very fast on the straights, I didn't have too much trouble passing the Ferrari 360's that were using the track at the same time.
A great experience - I think I could go for a career change.

The blogging begins

Hi all, well I'm heading back to the Antarctic again, this time I'm going to be the winter base commander of Rothera and during the summer season I'll be the station support manager, grand sounding titles; yes, massive amounts of money; no.
I'm starting this blog now so that I can actually try and make it work before I head south and hopefully keep in touch with everyone through the blog rather than forgetting to send emails as I did the last time I was south. Unfortunately by starting it now I have nothing interesting to post at all, as for the next four months I'll be in Cambridge preparing for my new role, but hey, when I get there I should have something more interesting to talk about.
For now its a busy few months of training, conferences, and meeting all my winterers.
That's about it - look out for some of my old pictures from Rothera, Bird Island, Belize, and Peru going on my Picasa site which I have linked through the blog.
More posts when something interesting happens.

My Cambridge residence - nice eh?