October 19, 2003- Jennifer writing

Today was suppose to be our 'day off', but when you only have two months to do your research in a very remote place, you are delayed almost a week, and your workers don't accomplish all the tasks they are suppose to on a dive, you invariably work on your days off. So, what did we do today...we worked, but we had fun doing it.

After dancing all night at the 70s party,

Stacy, Craig, and Jonna geared up and ready to groove.	Craig showing us his pseudo John Travolta move while freezing his toosh off in his polyester slacks, not to mention the short sleeves!

a few of us slept in this morning while Stacy and Craig went diving and collected video data at a site where we had forgotten the video lights a few days prior. By the time they were finished, the rest of us were up and we all went to the special Sunday brunch where you can have Belgian waffles with whipped cream or ice cream or both...Yumm! Then we slowly meandered back to the lab, staffing off offers to go hiking, skiing, or to play volleyball, and we gathered the equipment needed to go to the Penguin Ranch, which is approximately 15 miles from McMurdo towards the ice edge.

The Penguin Ranch (see location on SeaIce Map on Map page) is a penned in area where they have submerged an observation tube made of plexiglass so the researchers can observe penguins as they dive and return to their hole. They apprehend renegade Emperor penguins that stray from the ice edge and they bring them back to 'the ranch'. The penguins stay there because it is far enough out of swimming range from the ice edge that they are then forced to stay in the vicinity and use the holes provided by the researchers to breathe and come out onto the ice. But...I digress...we didn't see any penguins because we were there on a different mission.

We went out there to deploy a current meter in a hole that was drilled the day before. We will use the tripod to suspend the current meter to look at the water circulation in McMurdo Sound. For the past two years, an iceberg the size of Massachussets (B15) has been parked at the entrance of McMurdo Sound and has potentially altered the current patterns within the Sound (see photo on Map page). Stacy and Craig are going to deploy current meters at various locations to try to determine what the current patterns are these days.

Carefully extracting the S4 current meter from its happy home.	Stacy fishing the ice out of the hole.

The wind was whipping the snow across the road at truck level which made it quite difficult to follow the road in our Mattrack on the way out to the hole. In fact, once we left the heavily flagged road and were following a not so heavily flagged route, we lost the road a few times. Luckily we had two GPS units logging our track (considering one fell into the snow and ceased operating) so were able to not only find the hole to deploy the current meter in, but most importantly, we were able to find our way back home!

The hole being drilled the prior day in beautiful weather.	The view from Penguin Ranch, with Mt Erebus (an active volcano) in the background.

The mission was a success and we made it back in time for another nourishing, well balanced meal in the cafeteria (the weather has been so bad that there has been a shortage of planes flying in, and therefore there has been a shortage of 'freshies').

Mission Accomplished!

After dinner we attended the Sunday night science lecture about Mesopotamian civilizations and their connection with massive ice sheets (please don't ask me to explain). Then Stacy and I took a sauna and we all caught up on a good nights rest. Bye for now...