Grey, grey and grey.
Our team has enjoyed wonderful scenery until yesterday early afternoon. It was colourful; blue (sky), brown (mountains), and white (snow). Unfortunately, the god of weather changed his mind and gave us boring monotonic scenery; today everything looks nearly grey. The sky is filled with clouds. Without direct sunshine, the snow is not so bright. Visibility is low so we can't see mountains nearby. Sometimes it is hard to define the horizon. We may miss seeing the occasional blue sky since it is windy and we tend to look down. Anyway, due to bad weather, we deferred our departure to our study site one day and we stay at the station today. We did both science (data analysis and paper writing) and helping others (bring 170 kg copper to an upper level in the station and carpentry) and eventually we are going to be ready for a wonderful dinner. Here, wine and/or beer is served as a part of dinner.
Apparently, there is little to report today, so I would like to introduce three pastes that I brought with me to the Antarctic. First and most importantly, I brought sunscreen. Due to my past experience in Antarctica, sunscreen is critical but is not used so much since I usually wear a
full-face mask to protect from the strong winds (I am a radar guy driving skidoo and pulling the radar system all day long). For the last couple of days, the weather has been fantastic and I have used sunscreen much more than I expected. I hope that I need to use all of the sunscreen that I
brought. Secondly, I brought Bag Balm, a skin lotion. According to the note on the can, Bag Balm is "the farmer's friend helping keep dairy cows from becoming chapped from the harsh Vermont environment". When I first joined the US Antarctic field programme for the 2003-4 field season, one of my colleagues told me on ice that one can is enough for the entire career since he has bought one can when he started Antarctic fieldwork (tens of years ago) and the can was still half full and he had only another decade until his retirement. I love Bag Balm much more than he does; after three Antarctic field seasons including this deployment, the can is already one
third empty... Well, early retirement is not such a bad idea.
Ok, the last one I would like to introduce is toothpaste. Boring? No. It is important to choose a right paste otherwise you need to squeeze the tube really hard every time you wish to brush your teeth. Usually we live in tents with no heating (or minimum heating with a mountain cooking stove) so almost everything gets frozen. My pocket is already full with sunscreen and rolls of adhesive tape (tape is the most useful item for Antarctic research but needed to keep warm otherwise it is rubbish). My toothpaste pick is "Aquafresh Extreme Clean Arctic Cool." I never got this toothpaste frozen even though all other team members' toothpastes froze and I just left mine in the tent without any special care. Do you know why I picked this toothpaste? Simply, it was on a pharmacy advertisement. I have a half dozen tubes of this paste at home (I bought a bundle to get a good deal); it looks enough for my entire Antarctic career.
Important Note: BELARE, BELISSIMA, ULB, and any other organizations do not officially endorse these products. Use at your own risk.
(Today's blogger: KM)
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