The Adventures of Ryan
I am back in the US. For now I am putting the blog to bed. I will be leaving online for the foreseeable future.
I had a wonderful time in Antarctica and am talking with people to go back one day.
Thank you to everyone who visited my blog. I has been fun hearing from everyone who wrote to me.
Ryan
I have had a wonderful time here at the South Pole. I have met a wonderful group of people who have worked here for summer and the daring crew that will work here the entire winter. Hopefully one day I will get a chance to come back and stay for the winter.
I got a tour of the NOAA Atmospheric Research Observatory. Here they study the levels of different gasses in the atmosphere. They take readings on site and send off canisters to be analyzed off site. They also have a massive laser.
You can read more here: NOAA ARO
A Sun Dog is an atmospheric phenomenon that happens when ice crystal reflect light and create two “false” suns. This one came with a wonderful halo around the sun and
a tangent arc on the top. We had two very strong one twice on the same day.
You can read more about them here: Wikipedia Sun Dog
So it happened. They galley staff all took the same day off together.
Then chaos ensued. (Not really)
Our wonderful galley staff all took a couple of days off for the days on Christmas and New Years that they had to work to keep us fed. So all the departments took a meal shift. IT worked the lunch shift with the supply department and a few other one man departments.
We made grilled cheese and tomato soup. I spent most of the shift cleaning the galley and working in the dish pit.
We rung in the New Year at the South Pole.
On the 1st we moved the Pole marker.
Part 2
We had an interesting visitor today. Currently two people are attempting to cross Antarctica unsupported. Louis Rudd arrived at Pole today. He is a British explorer attempting the trek. The American Colin O’Brady arrived last night around 3 am so I did not get any pictures of him. The other person in the pictures is from Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions. He was only there to help take a few pictures. A few people from Pole decided to go out say hi. And maybe also to slow him down a bit and give America bit of a better lead.
The two explorers are currently racing to see who becomes the first person to make the trek. You can read more about them at The New York Times.
