Twas the night before redeployment, when all through the town The folks on the manifest were wandering around; The bags had been dragged and labeled and weighed In hopes that their owners wouldn’t get waylaid; 3:30am is the departure time, So I’ll fast-forward through this quaint little rhyme; We want to tell you before we [...]

This morning we all came to work at the usual time. All except for Scott, who was several minutes late. The rule is if you are late then you have to wear one of the silly hats. Scott thought he was safe because the hats were already packed. However, Stacy quickly pulled out a hat [...]

14 Dec 2008 Stacy Writing It is unbelievable how long it can take to pack everything up.  Or maybe it is unbelievable how short a time it takes to transfer our homey busy crowded workspace into a sterile echoingly empty space ready for the next science group to use.  Either way, we are still working [...]

Another day of packing. There were still a few items getting returned to various departments, but we spent a lot of the day playing with bubble wrap and tape. Well, ok, playing is probably not the right word, but we used a lot of it today. At lunch I learned the circuitous route that phone [...]

Today was the day that the ROV’s got all of the attention. SCINI was the star of a webcast and she let Stacy and Bob share the limelight. The webcast was put on by the Exploratorium which is in San Francisco and believes that a museum should be a learning experience. If you would like [...]

11 December 2008 Stacy writing With our last mission finished yesterday, we have 5 days to pack up all our stuff.  This may seem like a ridiculously long time, but we have to wash and clean and dry everything, return all the borrowed gear to the various workcenters, go through their lists and our lists [...]

Posted by Bob. Our last day on the sea ice started with the normal hustle and bustle of getting all the cases loaded and packing the Pisten Bully (PB) with the “System” components necessary to penetrate the depths of McMurdo sound with a miniature robot. With the checklists completed and the wind pants and bunny [...]

I turned on my iPod as we headed out of town and one of the first songs it played was “Go Speed Racer, Go”. Anyone who has driven a Pisten Bully would chuckle at the juxtaposition. These machines do not go fast. In town, on the dirt roads, we’re limited to 5 miles an hour, [...]

I was at the Medical Center first thing this morning. In fact, they open at 7:30am and I was there before they unlocked the door. I have been getting progressively sicker the last several days and Stacy thought it was time that I saw the doctor. He examined me and then handed me three types [...]

7 December 2008 Stacy Writing It’s Sunday again, the day off, and we are hosting an “Open House” for the community, to show them SCINI in action as well as some of the life that lives on the seafloor in their front yard.  It’s our chance to show them what they have helped us accomplish [...]