Day 12 - October 22 '11

Day 12- October 22 ‘11

Tonight is the ATO (Antarctic Terminal Operations) BBQ party in the cargo bay. It’s a meet and greet for everyone in the unit. Every unit in town is having one tonight.

Spring and Tricia

Spring the shuttle driver brought her roommate, who coincidentally was Tricia M. I hadn’t seen her much since we got to the Ice, so it was nice catching up with her.

The 2 Tricia's

Cassa trying to force feed Sully a drunk inducing Carl Bourbon Cherry

The food was delicious. Excellent cheese (fancy type) and crackers and salads along with Carl’s bourbon soaked chocolate covered cherries. One cherry and you felt like you could be instantly drunk, they were so strong. All the meat was seasoned and grilled to perfection. There were 2 huge watering trough tubs filled with snow (and volcanic dirt). One filled with cans and bottles of beer and wine and the other pop.

Craig trying to cut in on Kevin and Tricia

The ambience and decorating of the cargo bay, gave the feel of low budget wedding receptions in fire halls or VFWs. Or school dances and proms in Smalltown USA, like in the movie “Footloose”. 80’s music was jamming. Some people started to dance and it was like an awkward Jr High first dance, which Tricia and Kevin reenacted by dancing stiff and 3 feet apart like teenagers who’d never danced before. It was too funny.

Kevin and Tricia

Queen and Burke

Tricia trying to mess up me capturing the essence of the ambience

Luke

Kevin and Christen

Jamie

Burke is from Seward AK and I coincidentally worked with his Dad Brandon Anderson at Point Thomson.

Danny and Kelly

Today was the first day Jerry and I started having phone issues. We think it had to do with the phone cards we got at RadioShack. Whenever I called the house, I got a busy signal or his cell phone went right to message, but on his end it rang and when he answered it, all he heard was a dial tone. It was so frustrating.

So we Google chatted. This will go on for 3 days before I decide the phone cards are useless and I purchase a virtual phone card from pingo.com that will take another few days to activate. At least there are other ways to communicate thankfully.