Jennifer checking us out of the station on the way out to the sea ice. We are required to check in and out with the station’s communication center each time we venture onto the sea ice. A missed call-in means a hand-slap at best, a full-scale search-and-rescue operation at worst.

We had no problems initially. Jennifer expertly hitched up one of our dive huts that we affectionately call the “tomato” (although I prefer the more appropriate moniker “the ladybug”), and deftly maneuvered it over the dive hole in Winter Quarters Bay for Stacy’s mid-morning dive.

We then moved another hut called the “Polar Haven” (a fabric shell with an aluminum skeleton) out to Hut Point in anticipation of our own mid-morning dive. So far, so good...

Setting up “camp” at Hut Point. This is our Summer vacation, Antarctic style. Note, however, that the generator is for running our hotsy instead of a TV and satellite dish, and the hotsy fills in for a barbecue.

Fun with chainsaws. After yanking on the starter cord 6,821 times, I finally managed to fire it up. The objective here was to cut out the ice above waterline in the hole that the hotsy has been melting for the past day, so that divers had enough room to enter and exit the water - while retaining a foothold on the ice and all of my limbs.

Carving a hole in ice with a sharp chainsaw is like using a hot fillet knife to cut butter. The key is to keep the chain moving to prevent freeze-up. To minimize pollution, we don’t use bar oil to lubricate the chain like you would under ordinary circumstances.

We raced back to base to get another saw in the Pisten Bully - if you consider 16 miles per hour “racing”, that is.

Stacy being prepped for diving by Rob Robbins. Surface-supply diving means that the diver goes down solo (although a standby diver is at the ready), but has a direct communication link to the surface.

Stacy mentally preparing for a dive in one of the most polluted, least desirable places in Antarctica.

Our post-lunch endeavor was to sieve the sediment samples from the polluted area where Stacy dove this morning. Winter Quarters Bay is where tons of trash and toxic waste (like drums of oil, PCB-tainted material, heavy metals, etc.) has been dumped from 1955 until the 1980s, when the U.S. Antarctic Program began cleaning up its act. The smell in the lab during the sieving process harkened memories of similar aromas during excursions through heavily industrialized (=highly polluted) areas of Chicago, my old hometown.

We had a good time shooting the breeze (which was gusting to over 30 knots outside, also - our first "Condition 2" weather), and I made out like a bandito with plenty of Elvis paraphernalia, including a pair of collector's edition Elvis sunglasses sent all the way from Alaska courtesy of Jim Saracco and Lisa Etherington . Thanks again everybody!