Lee and I are scheduled to be canceled for Alexander Tall Tower! tomorrow (again!) and on Wednesday we are scheduled to be canceled to go to WAIS 😉 I think I am almost getting used to it.

I listened to Lee’s advice and scheduled my snowmobile training today despite us being scheduled as a primary and as a backup flight for today. We woke up to a light snow and poor visibility in McMurdo, it also turned out that Tall Tower! weather wasn’t acceptable for landing either, so we got canceled right away at 7am – did not even have a weather delay. This allowed me to do the training. It was a lot of fun, although somehow I imagined driving a snowmobile to be very different (I have not driven one before). The visibility was not the greatest, so I don’t have a spectacular picture like Dave had earlier this season. But I am now officially done with all the possible trainings – all the cancelation days were put to good use 😉 I am ready to drive a truck, a snowmobile and to go to a field camp.

Lee, Joey and I also went to McWeather and had a nice chat with forecasters. It was really cool to talk to them and to see the AMRC sign there. A special “hello from Matt”.

Unfortunately it looks like temperatures at Pegasus will stay somewhat warm for a couple of days, which will not help the road or the runway. We did ask the McWeather people about their ability to change the weather, but somehow they did not admit to it 😉

I wish I had more exciting news to post. Oh, I know, I know! I did get to see the penguins yesterday (Sunday, January 6). Two Adelie penguins came to Hut point, they were swimming in the water, then climbed on an ice floe, walked around, performed their washing before bed routine, slept, woke up an eventually went back into the water.

As I mentioned before my “happy camper” instructor moonlights as a photographer, he managed to get some amazing shots, so here’s one:

(after posting Alasdair’s pictures here I feel a little inadequate posting my crappy point-and-shoot-not-sure-what-I’m-shooting pictures. So let me apologize in advance for those).