Distinguished Visitors and Polishing the Floor with Kiwis
We seem to get “Distinguished Visitors” (or DV’s) down here quite a bit, but for the most part I don’t get to meet them. Sure, they pretty much eat the galley food, and though the DV hut is nicer than my place (read, no roommate), it ain’t no crystal palace. Usually the DV’s are high-ranking military dudes or that type of thing, but every year there are some congressmen or senators who come down. (And occasionally freak out because there isn’t a French maid to turn down their covers in the evenings.)
We were kickin’ it at breakfast today, and a member of the House of Representatives came over to our table. It was Rodney Frelinghuysen, from New Jersey. Yeah, he’s a Republican, but I have to say, I appreciated that he came over to chat. So many times DVs get here and don’t interact at all with participants, and some (including John McCain a few years ago, I heard) are really nasty. Hopefully Rep. Frelinghuysen has gotten an appreciation for the program, is having a great adventure, and will go home and tell the members of the Science Subcommittee to please, please, please give us more funding.
In other Antarctic news, the finals of the Dodgeball tournament are going on right now. The fires have been fueled by a controversial article in a New Zealand paper, touting the Kiwi team’s abilities in this, America’s National Sport (no lie, that’s what it said.) Yep, the Kiwis are in the finals. In fact, every team who managed to show up for most of the games got into the finals….and I just got word, Kiwis got knocked out in the first playoff round. AWWWW! So much for their Dodgeball Dreams.
It’s been cooling off here (summer lasted about one day) and today it snowed a lot, was windy, and about 30 degrees. If you think about it, that’s something considering there’s never night to cool us off. My friends tell me this is the most snow they’ve seen here in several seasons. The snow never lasts long though, because the wind blows hard! But the other day I was down by the water and could actually smell the sea.
I’m starting to think about places to go afterward…some people are going sailing in the New Zealand archipelago, and I’d consider that, and also some people have talked about going to the Cook Islands (New Zealand’s Hawai’i). It’s just a question of timing, really. I might want to go out and do something on my own, too - you can swim with dolphins, or go horseback riding, or lots of other things. I can’t wait to eat some non-galley food and see some green that’s not olivine! (Dave, I got you some olivine, don’t worry. I have peridot bits all over my desk right now because of it.)
