Today, I would like to tell you all about one of the vehicles that we have been using to drive on the sea ice. The Pisten Bully is our primary mode of transportation. It is a vehicle built like a tank, with tracks; it can turn 360 degrees without moving forward; it can travel over snow and ice, and carry all of our bulky dive gear and people. However, there is one major constructional flaw in the design of this all-encompassing machine- there is absolutely no suspension! This translates into the passengers being launched in the air, hitting their heads on the roof while almost simultaneously compacting their spinal column from the impact onto the hard bench seat when they land. This happens each time the driver takes you over the slightest dimple in the snow. After this transpires for an hour (the general commute time to our dive sites), you begin to fight over who will sit in front and who will sit in the back. The driver and the passenger's seat have built in shocks, so not only do you have the power to harm or help your fellow passengers sitting in the back seat; you also have more of a smooth ride.

Driving the Pisten Bully is definitely a fine art. If you turn the steering wheel over a few inches, the Bully will jerk erratically and you will make all your passengers in the back sick from the motion. Additionally, there is no brake pedal. Therefore, when you want to slow down, you simply take your foot off the gas pedal. However, this is a sensitive duty. With your large white bunny boots on, it is difficult to feel the sensitivity of the gas pedal and therefore it is very easy to just pull your foot directly off the pedal, thus jerking the vehicle to a very abrupt halt. When you combine this action with a bump (generally you slow down when you go over bumps) you not only send your passengers flying into the person, hard cooler, or wall, in front of them, but you also simultaneously make them hit their head on the roof and you compact their spinal column (see the reference to this in the paragraph above). With these weapons at your disposal, you can either be a sensitive driver, an evil one, or somewhere in between. Likewise, if you aren't behaving in the back of the vehicle, you will likely be punished in the most horrific way. Moral of the story: be kind to your fellow mates and they will hopefully be kind to you.

So what did we do yesterday? Jim, Stacy, Jonna, James (our tender), and myself rode out to Turtle Rock in the Pisten Bully and went diving. Craig finished inventorying and pulling the 494 lbs. of food that we are taking to New Harbor for 10 days, and Dan played with the time lapse camera system that we will be deploying soon. At Turtle Rock, Stacy and I dove first to collect the remaining experimental samples that have been on the seafloor for a year. Then Jonna and Jim went in to search for the lost blue rings of another experiment. There weren't as many seals underwater as there were the day prior, but the dive was a success and we completed our tasks. When we were finished, our dive tender, James, did the polar plunge (A.K.A. he jumped into the freezing seawater for a split second and then was dragged out as quickly we could possibly manage). We all rooted him on, and then to our utter amazement, he jumped in again! Brave soul.

Afterward, we scooted back to town (in the Pisten Bully) in time to eat, shower, and don our costumes for the bowling tournament we had scheduled between our lab and another lab (the Martians). There has been an ongoing friendly rivalry between Stacy and Adam Marsh (head of the Martian Lab) and we had challenged them to a bowling tournament. The loser had to treat everybody to burgers so this was no joke as our team can eat a lot!

In the spirit of Halloween, we all had to bowl in some form of costume. Our team wore masks, while the Martians wore silly hats. But there was also a debut appearance by Marvin the Martian.

	Martin the Martin (aka Kevin) showing his lamentable bowling ability.

They turned on the black lights, broke out the glow in the dark pins and balls, we slipped some disco music into the CD player and the games began. Needless to say, there was a lot of hooting and hollering, and even a little dancing as the game was pretty close. In the end, we won with a score of 512 to their 503! We need not mention here that the scorekeeper was on our team...

Our combined labs, along with Rob the Super Dive Guy and our Pinsetters from Hell.