Birthdays and blizzards

Blizzards and Birthdays

Wednesday Oct 26^th, 2011

3:45PM

Yesterday was my birthday. Generally, I tend to make plans that always fall through on my birthday, so I wasn't really banking on anything major going on down here in celebration. I had invited some friends from Scott Base (Kiwi Base), told a few people I was going to have a PJ Pub crawl, and that was about it.

My day started with egg line, of course. I wasn't very busy at first so I had some time to catch up with some people I had not seen in a few days. One, who's name has escaped me, does the South Pole Traverse. It's a fuel/supply run down to the south pole, I think. Basically, it's a bunch of guys driving all the way across Antarctica, for a month. Nothing around but flat white, being guided by GPS. Totally crazy stuff!!!!

Anyway, I asked him where he had been hiding, and if my eggs were really so bad that he just had decided to flake out on me. We joked, I cooked his 7 eggs, and I told him it was my birthday. He in turn wished me a happy one, of course, and his smile alone set the mood of the day. So genuine, so real, so compassionate. That very smile will remain in my mind forever, I am quite sure of it. Along with many others I received yesterday.

Around lunch time I had to take out the trash. Pretty normal stuff. But when I threw up the door of the loading dock to dump cans, the whole station was in a haze of huge white snow. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, since it is Antarctica, however, it snows very little here in the grand scheme of things. Usually what we get is ice being blown up and around. This was proper fat white fluffy snowflakes. Instantly I reverted back to a 5 year old! I just laughed, jumping up and down, spitting out “it's never snowed on my birthday before!”

Bill, AKA Panda, the guy taking the trash out with me just stood there, laughed and enjoyed the spectacle I was creating. We went back in and finished up work, with many more best of birthday wishes, and our day wrapped up pretty quick. Then it was time to rest up and get ready to go out.

Rest I did, here I am a huge fan of naps. They really are pretty awesome.

I went to one of the bars here called Southern. It's a cool little place really. When you go in early you may as well be in a bar in the middle of nowhere Montana or something because it's a bunch of bearded, old men in plaid and carhartts. It's pretty awesome to see. It was just a few of us that were there so we had a few drinks. Eventually, the gang rocked up, and all in all there were 5 people in the bar that night who were celebrating their birthday. Three from the kitchen, one from supply, and one a Kiwi soldier who is here doing some kind of engineering for a few weeks.

We all just moved about the bar chatting, laughing and celebrating, everyone was mellow and cool, nothing but big smiles and lots of hugs and laughter. All in all, the best that someone can ask for on their birthday. An abundance of genuine love.