South Pole Sunset...when will it end ;}

So the sun has gone down, i thought it had disappeared completely until yesterday when it was magically back. It's an illusion with a name caused by another thing that I can't remember. Either way it is cool. I was staying up for work and following the sun and taking pictures every hour or so after midnight when it is on the N-NW track around the station. It was really unbelievable how beautiful it was. The sun was really not fully there it was more of a sliver, a shimmering wavy sliver. Very cool let me tell you. As the sun began sitting many people were getting to be quite grumpy or just in a bit of a funk. The impending darkness, the increased cold all that good stuff takes a bit to ingest. I've taken many photos of the sun as it progressed further down and will be slowly adding blog entries with them. I really don't feel like a big ol entry ever ever again. So here are a few to start off with. This is out the exit of the second floor in the A1 wing where krissie and i have our room. This is looking out over the arches with the power plants ever present steam stack making some purdy little puffs.


Looking through the railings from the same exit stairway. One of my favorite shots.

I'm not really sure how many days after the above photos i took these coming pics, i think it was only the next day but i am not too sure about that. The sky was beginning to get very pretty. This first shot is from the same location as the other two.



This is a shot from the roof looking over A2 Wing in the foreground. The little mount doodad you see ther on the edge used to hold a webcam with a live feed folks could get to over the internet when we had satellites available. It kicked the bucket in the beginning of the summer unfortunately.


My new office has a window there with a pretty nice view. It was really cool to be able to watch the sun as it got lower and lower day by day. It was also very cool to have the moon out that window. It's amazing how clear everything is down here, the moon was very very cool as well. This was that night around 12:30am



We have 3 major meals over the summer, sunset dinner, sunrise dinner and umm the fourth of july i think ( not sure on that one). The dinner was amazing, i didn't take very many photos, and forgot to take any photos of the meal itself. Oh well. We had roasted leg of lamb (this was the first time i had ever tried lamb, not sure how i feel about it yet), grilled asparagus, an amazing salad and rolls to start the meal with, dang can't remember what the other side dishes were. That's what i get for not taking photos. It was all very good, but then, oh then they brought out the desert. It was a small mini cupcake sized spice cake with 3 wedges of apples topped with an amazing caramel sauce and then also topped with a sweet cream sauce. Wow, it was quite honestly one of the best deserts i've had anywhere, and i get around... Thank you Francis!! We ate all of this in the nicely decorated galley with the warmth of a crackling fire.


And this was the view out our windows, the pictures do it no justice.

Here is a zoomed in shot of the sunset, Karate Kid anyone?

So i will keep posting more photos of the sunset every few days, and you damn well better enjoy them. I came in last night after taking some photos on the roof with my hand complete frost bitten. I was up there it went totally numb to the point that i couldn't put my out glove on over the liner because i couldn't tell where my fingers where. i had to wrap my arm around the rung of the ladder to get down. I've done this before when i went into the ice tunnels so once you've had it once it's very easy to get it again. And man did i get it. I've never been in so much pain from the cold before. When i got in all of my fingers were white. It was the weirdest most uncomfortable sensation in my finger tips when i was swinging my arm trying to get my hand to warm back up. I can't even begin to describe it. I then was thinking about the incident and asking myself, well was it frostbit or was it frostnip, what's the difference. So once i was able to use my fingers again i looked it up and because quite confused.

There were many conflicting sources of information, and what i found very interesting was that frostnip can occur with temps starting at and below 59 degrees F, and frostbite can occur starting at and below 32 degrees F. So i began to wonder what they had to say about -74 degrees F... I had my hand out of the outer glove for no more than 2 minutes more like a minute and a half and it did this to me...

One of the coolest things about being down here i think is my breath in the freezing outside. It makes the coolest sound when you blow your breath out hard. Have you ever heard a blow torch or maybe even a bunsen burner, that's what it sounds like. So cool.