More work

Station closing continues this week and we are all very busy getting things ready to go cold.  The buildings and systems that were needed for the large summer population of 275 are no longer needed and have to be cleaned and "de-heated".  Since our fuel has to to last all winter conservation is very important here - if we don't need to heat the buildings we don't.  Fuel is very closely monitored and we have enough for the winter as long as nothing unexpected happens.

The aircraft fueling system also had to be taken up and stored and I spent much of the week helping with that.  Being the new guy I'm sure I helped some and hindered some, but I think the extra hands were helpful.   The picture is of the crew rolling up about half a mile of fuel line that ran from the ice runway to our fuel storage tanks.  Every LC-130 that lands during the summer pumps fuel from its tanks into our fuel storage tanks and it all goes through these lines.  If they were left in place all winter they would be buried in huge drifts by spring and impossible to dig out - so up they come.  I'll talk more about drifts in later posts.

That frosty guy at the top of the post is me.  Yes it looks cold but I am really pretty warm under all that fur and down.  The outside temperature was a comfortable -25F with no wind so staying warm was not hard.  The coats here are so warm I was just wearing a t-shirt under mine, but when it gets colder I am sure that will change.

Inside the station things are also progressing.  The Polies are becoming a community and I have learned almost everyone's name.  Things are very quiet in the station which is actually pretty big for only 47 inhabitants.  It is easy to find a place to be alone, or just as easy to head to the galley to find people to talk to.  My work is turning out to be very rewarding.  I can't talk about it on the blog, but we are in the process of making some operations safer to perform.

On the fun side I get LMC and snowmobile training later today!