The end is coming. This is not one of those cult type announcements, it is a fact that I am extremely happy to experience. I am on my way home. I left Summit at 15:03 LT this afternoon. I am now in Kanger and I have showered, started a load of laundry and have had dinner. I am sitting in one of the lounges in the KISS building and I am laughing at an older movie, IQ starring Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins. I am also listening to a bad belt on a Danish washing machine. Oy Vey, it is very loud and annoying. The only good thing is that it is my laundry being washed.
I will be right back .... I need to check on it.
This machine is crazy, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to start the thing. I finally found a cheat sheet somebody wrote up and got it to start. I always thought I had a way with machines, but not with this one. I am looking forward to the clean smelling clothes and pillow case. I will be wearing clean clothes for the first time in a couple of weeks tomorrow. I have to say that it is a distinct pleasure to wear only one layer of clothes. I feel so much lighter than I have in a month. It is a wonderful thing.
The news from the flight (Ski 69) is that I made it up into the cockpit for the first time. I have movies of the approach into Kanger. I was up there the last 15-20 minutes of the flight. It was a wonderful experience. I will post the videos I made of it on my Picasa page.
I will see everybody soon.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Counting the Days
Here we are and it is less than a week before I leave Summit Camp. I looked back and realized that I have not written anything for more than a week. In that time we have had a lot go on.
We lost our primary generator at 01:19 AM early last week due to a fuel pump failure. We have been running on our backup generator. The primary generator is a 100 kw 6 cylinder diesel driver generator, which is not used much in the US. This means that they had to scour Europe for replacement parts. They won't be here until June 26th.
Our backup generator is a much smaller 48 kw 4 cylinder diesel driver generator. This one has been running since the primary died last week. This morning it started throwing error codes saying that one of it's injectors is failing. This afternoon we attempted to change over to our backup to the backup generator. This was an interesting period since when they tried to start the backup to the backup generator, it also failed. Just like the primary generator, it lost it's fuel pump. Luckily we had a spare pump on station and our mechanic was able to get the backup to the backup generator up and running. So, in the last week we have lost three generators, fixed one, working on another and waiting for parts for the third. Since we are down to the last generator right now, let's hope everything works from here on out.
On Wednesday we had the opening flight for this flight period. On that flight we gained 20 people, which for a small station like Summit is chaos. We went from 23 to about 40. Tent city was full, all the inside rooms were double bunked and people were scrambling to find some privacy. We actually doubled up on the House Mouse duties for two days. We had the second flight of the flight period this morning. Of the 20 people that came, 16 left along with all of the carpenters. We are back down the low to mid 20s population wise now. Sanity has returned to the station.
As the title of this entry states, I am on count down to leaving Summit Camp and heading home. I am down to 4 days and counting. Let's run down some other numbers from the last month:
1 - the number of loads of laundry I have done since I have been here
2 - the number of showers I have taken since I have been here
3 - the number of generators we have used and broken since I arrived
4 - the number of people on David Noone's project now on station
5 - the number of people currently in the Big House
6 - the number of people it took to run the hydraulics required to lift the Big House 3 feet
7 ...... I can't think of anything for this
To paraphrase the Animals:
I need to get out of this place
We lost our primary generator at 01:19 AM early last week due to a fuel pump failure. We have been running on our backup generator. The primary generator is a 100 kw 6 cylinder diesel driver generator, which is not used much in the US. This means that they had to scour Europe for replacement parts. They won't be here until June 26th.
Our backup generator is a much smaller 48 kw 4 cylinder diesel driver generator. This one has been running since the primary died last week. This morning it started throwing error codes saying that one of it's injectors is failing. This afternoon we attempted to change over to our backup to the backup generator. This was an interesting period since when they tried to start the backup to the backup generator, it also failed. Just like the primary generator, it lost it's fuel pump. Luckily we had a spare pump on station and our mechanic was able to get the backup to the backup generator up and running. So, in the last week we have lost three generators, fixed one, working on another and waiting for parts for the third. Since we are down to the last generator right now, let's hope everything works from here on out.
On Wednesday we had the opening flight for this flight period. On that flight we gained 20 people, which for a small station like Summit is chaos. We went from 23 to about 40. Tent city was full, all the inside rooms were double bunked and people were scrambling to find some privacy. We actually doubled up on the House Mouse duties for two days. We had the second flight of the flight period this morning. Of the 20 people that came, 16 left along with all of the carpenters. We are back down the low to mid 20s population wise now. Sanity has returned to the station.
As the title of this entry states, I am on count down to leaving Summit Camp and heading home. I am down to 4 days and counting. Let's run down some other numbers from the last month:
1 - the number of loads of laundry I have done since I have been here
2 - the number of showers I have taken since I have been here
3 - the number of generators we have used and broken since I arrived
4 - the number of people on David Noone's project now on station
5 - the number of people currently in the Big House
6 - the number of people it took to run the hydraulics required to lift the Big House 3 feet
7 ...... I can't think of anything for this
To paraphrase the Animals:
I need to get out of this place
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