Oak here

Ah Sunday. This is the Day of Rest at McMurdo. Brunch starts at 10, to give people time to recover from the Sat night frolics. However, just because most people have today off, that doesn't mean we all sit around. After brunch, Jen and Stacy rented some skis and went off skate skiing for a couple hours. Given their rather nominal level of expertise, and the fact that they were skiing into a 20kt wind, they didn't get far, but got a great workout.

The rest of us turned into computer geeks for the day. We have a 1:1 ratio of computers to people in our lab, and we all have stuff to do, so much of our otherwise free time is spent in front of a keyboard. The network here varies hugely in speed, from pretty fast to slower than a dialup. Now (2300) its pretty fast, but around dinner when lots of people are online it is glacially slow. Its easy to complain, until one stops to realize we ARE in Antarctica, and its pretty amazing it works at all.

	Geeks-R-Us

Sunday is the day that Crary Lab (the stronghold of the "beakers", as the scientists are called here) is open for tours. Tours are prime recruiting grounds for dive tenders. Stacy went schmoozing in her penguin hat, and came back with several prospective folks. Today is the day for open volleyball in the gym, so a bunch of people got on their shorts and headed down to the gym. It turned out to be too crowded to get on the court, so it was back to the computers.

After dinner, whistle in hand, I headed off to an Irish session. Yes, there is quite a bit of music in town (and I'm not counting the kareoke at Gallagers last night...). There were 7 people of varying experience levels--a very congenial group. However, things are a bit different here. Just as we were about to get going, 3 beepers went off simultaneously. Apparently there was some kind of communication emergency, and people were being called in to deal with it. So much for the session... We'll try it again tomorrow.

Instead, I headed off to the Sunday night science lecture in the dining hall. The talk was on the ozone research that has been going on here since the 80s, and was very well attended. The take-home messages are: yes, there is a hole in the ozone that forms every year over Antarctica; it can form over the Arctic, but is much rarer; the ozone depletion is caused by chlorine released by the breakdown of CFCs in the upper atmosphere; if you live in New Zealand or Australia (or here) you have to be very careful of the sun; if no more CFCs are produced, the atmoshpere will probably heal itself in 40-50 years.

Since I don't really have any pictures for today, it might be a good time to show what we can see from our Lab window.

	Looking Southeast: Observation (Ob) Hill and the helio pad.

	Looking South: The gym (gray bldging), helio hanger.

Dive hut, our dive hut, a couple PistonBullys, and the transition from land to sea ice. Looking across McMurdo SOund is White Island (far left), Black Island (center left) and the continent. Between Black and White Islands is Herbie Alley. Herbies (Hurricane Force Blizzard) are the nasty storms that come off the continental interior. When they become visible between Black and White Islands, we have about 2 hrs till its Condition 1.

	A storage building, the Communications Shop, with the Discovery Range in the background. The tip of Hut Point and Winter Quarters Bay are on the far right.