Hello again, everyone!
In the meantime, I’ve cobbled together some new bracing struts for our PowerKite, and treated it to a test flight on a day with pleasant weather but unfortunately very little wind (wind speed: 6 knots, temperature: minus 20 degrees). And it paid me back with an extraordinary picture of the station. Who says the Earth is flat? … ;-)
The past few days have been full of things to do: writing our monthly report, restocking the emergency equipment in the Library in the Ice and the Emergency Base, taking an inventory of the consumables in our OR, giving interviews on how we’re coping with the isolation … and on 1 April we celebrated our cook Wanderson’s birthday, followed by Noah’s birthday on 8 April. There’s been one appointment after the next, and just like the beginning of every month, it’s a bit like the movie Groundhog Day. It’s time for me to take care of the monthly routines: cleaning the water lines, running functional checks on our X-ray and other medical equipment, a telemedicine test with our home base, running bacteriological tests on our drinking water, updating and double-checking the Garbage Record Book, checking our alpine rescue and survival boxes … plus, this month it’s time for the big sterilisation sweep, which involves sterilising every surgical instrument we have (we do this every six months, and it takes three to four days). As you can see, we’re not exactly twiddling our thumbs; everyone else is just as busy as I am. Nevertheless, today I’m taking a bit of time out of the day to make our next blog entry, before tomorrow comes and I have to spend a great deal of time on the medical study …
Based on your comments, I noted a few topics I’d like to give feedback on today. We received a number of questions on the German Aerospace Center (DLR) greenhouse EDEN ISS. Roman kindly provided me with a few photos from his last rounds in the greenhouse, plus some information I’d like to share. Personally I have nothing to do with EDEN, which is a good thing, since I don’t have what you’d call green fingers. As I’m writing this entry, two of us are in the greenhouse for the weekly check. We’re currently growing the following there: tomatoes, cucumbers, various types of lettuce, herbs like oregano, thyme, rosemary and basil, plus radishes and kohlrabi. What makes the greenhouse unique: we’re not allowed to import or use any soil in the Antarctic; as a result, the plants’ roots dangle in the air, and are sprayed with a nutrient solution from below. The greenhouse’s lighting is designed to simulate the normal day-and-night cycle, including sunrise and sunset. Every week, we harvest an average of three kilogrammes of vegetables, and we invest roughly 100 hours of work in the greenhouse per month. You can find more information at www.eden-iss.net. The greenhouse is a DLR research project, and we overwinterers do our best to support it, and to reap (= eat) the benefits …
Another question we received was about the inner makeup of the station. Our fitness room is on the first basement level, where the floors aren’t heated and the temperature is usually right around zero. But the room itself is heated, and features two ergometers, a rowing machine and treadmill. A few days ago, after checking on our garage, I visited the fitness room to take some photos, but couldn’t find anyone willing to model for me … so I had to do the honours myself. Normally I don’t wear a tempex snowsuit while working out, but like I said, I’d just gotten done checking the garage. ;-) Our weightlifting bench and a bit more fitness equipment can be found on Deck 1 / the gallery, beside the basketball hoop – we’ll soon have some photos ready for you, plus more on the inner workings of the station … we’ve still got plenty of time here.
Hmm, what other newsworthy things happened? On 1 April we had two fire alarms, but thankfully both were false alarms. This happens every few weeks, and always gets our hearts pounding. But twice in a day is unusual. Regardless, both times the team was quickly assembled in full firefighting gear, and quickly responded to the situation. Plus it’s a great feeling when the adrenaline stops pumping and things go back to normal. During this month’s fire safety exercise the focus was on rescue procedures with resuscitation and transport to the hospital. Everyone was focused and motivated, partly because exercises like this one give you a real sense of your own vulnerability in the Antarctic. And our CPR dummy ‘Roland’ survived it pretty well …
In terms of weather, we had three fairly nice days over the weekend, which our geophysicists used to set up a new monitoring station 25 kilometres away, and the next day Julia and I did a recon of the terrain near the sea-ice ramp, of course with safety lines and harnesses …
Today the garage ramp is closed again, and a snowstorm with wind speeds up to 40 knots is raging above us. Earlier today, I spent 45 minutes outside, checking the equipment in the Library in the Ice.
Impressive weather: thanks to the wind, the snow managed to find its way into every single one of the tightly closed pockets on my snowsuit. It gives you a real ‘Antarctic feeling’.
Last but not least … a few days ago, we read in the news that Bill Withers had passed away. While washing up the dishes the past few nights, we’ve been listening to his old songs and singing along … “Ain’t no Sunshine”, “Lean on Me”, “Use Me” … even in the Antarctic, he’s sorely missed.
And once again we’d like to send our best wishes from the iciest continent to the rest of the world, especially our friends and families. Talk soon …