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Standard Procedure, part 2

The program needed a plumber, and while I don't know how desperate the situation was at the time, the USAP typically only hires New...

Standard Procedure, part 1

The drinking age in McMurdo is 21. Occasionally, someone younger than that will deploy here, but it happens infrequently enough that the...

Operator Error, part 2

There is a consistent managerial philosophy in McMurdo that any and all of the problems encountered while driving an ancient piece of...

Operator Error, part 1

When I think back on my time in Antarctica and how it has affected my perspective on the world, what surprises me is not the gradually...

Freshie Gut

The mood inside the passenger terminal at Phoenix was grim on the day the northbound winterovers finally left. After 21 days of delays,...

First Sunrise

Nobody saw the true first sunrise at McMurdo. The hills to the north of town are arrayed in such a way as to block any direct sunlight...

Winflop

Having been spanked by the debacle that had been Monday’s boomerang flight, the program adopted an unofficially official hardline policy...

Boomerang, part 2

It's called a boomerang, and while it happens less frequently to C-17s than the smaller and more finicky LC-130s, it’s still a common...

Boomerang, part 1

The winter operations manager had a reputation for cruelty. When I asked the Fleet Ops airfield foreman for his opinion of the man, his...

A Shot in the Dark

After all the outrage, the angry emails, the submissions to the Ask the Site Manager board, the endless memes, the letters to the...

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