A Lovely Day for a Walk

The airdrop was rescheduled for today. Last night they moved the arrival time from 6AM to 8AM, so I was able to sleep in! We'd agreed to meet at Destination Zulu (one of the two main entrances) at 7:45AM, so I got up at around 7:15, brushed my teeth, put on my gear, and headed up to the galley for a quick breakfast, where I discovered that the drop was postponed until 8:55. Fortunately, the satellite is up until 9:45, so I got in some Internet time. (In case you don't know, we connect to the Internet via a few different satellites, and those satellites are only visible to the South Pole for a few hours a at a time. The current window runs from 2:42AM to 9:42AM, then there are a couple of hours starting at 11:30, and then nothing until 2:39AM tomorrow morning.) We met up at 8:40AM and trudged out about half a mile to the edge of the station grounds (an area which is normally off limits, but the station granted us special dispensation for this event.) It was fun seeing the clumps of two or three people all walking to the same location. It's the largest group of people I've seen outside here! We'd only been there a few minutes when the communications person announced over the radio that it was too cloudy and the drop had been cancelled. Oh well, it was a nice walk -- the most exercise I've gotten since I arrived here! That's not because I'm lazy -- I've been taking it easy because one of the other IceCubers has been suffering from the high altitude, which has made me paranoid. I am planning on working out for about 20 minutes tomorrow. I'll let you know how that goes. Right now, I get to take the first of my twice a week 2-minute showers! I'm so excited!