Fun stuff happens, too!

Two posts in one day! I'm making up for lost time. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, the days here have been pretty full, but there has been a little time for some fun. During small breaks during the day, I try to keep up with goings-ons in the news. I'm loving having regular access to the internet for this purpose. Bandwidth is limited, especially for non-science purposes, so it can take a little while even to load a single story, but compared to other locations like the South Pole (where we had extremely slow internet for only a few hours during the day - often during the middle of the night) or deep field sites (where the only "internet access" is text-only email via satellite phone), we are living in the lap of internet-relate luxury at McMurdo.

Those who know me well will also know that I have a little trouble unwinding at the end of the day, so I've started watching an episode of a TV show every night before going to sleep. I downloaded a few from iTunes before coming to the ice and am currently working my way through "Game of Thrones." For some reason, I had the impression this was a calm family-friendly fantasy show (maybe because of all the child-actors?) - but boy I couldn't have been more wrong! I'm enjoying it, but I'm not sure it's actually helping with the unwinding. :)

During a longer period of downtime a couple days ago, I tackled one of the hikes around town, Ob Hill. This is an old volcano (Ross Island is a volcanic island.) that borders McMurdo. It's a pretty short hike (~1.5 miles), but since it's up and down the side of a 754' high mountain (to those of us from Florida) or hill (to the rest of the world), it's still takes a bit of time (~1.5 hrs). I set off with Erica and JR from my team. They shot off up to the top of the hill, while I trotted along a my own pace taking pictures and such on the way up. Here they are on the trail ahead of me:

On the way up, you can see Mt. Erebus, which is blocked by hills/mountains while you're in town.

And, there are some nice views of town as well.

I met up with JR and Erica at the top, where we enjoyed the beautiful views and discussed life, the universe, and everything - it's that kind of setting.

I posed with the cross at the top of Ob Hill, which was erected 101 years and one day ago in memory of of the men who died in Scott's Party in 1912.

Finally, we headed back down, JR and Erica down towards Scott Base and me directly back to McMurdo. Although it wasn't a very long trail, I was reminded going down of how unnerving steep trails on loose gravel can be. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights!