Help Wanted: Heavy Equipment Operators willing to work in an extreme environment. Must be willing to work long hours six days a week. Job requires living on site for five or more months at a time. There will not be any cell phone service at the work site and there will only be limited internet connectivity. Housing (shared room dormitory style) and food will be provided. Must be able to operate excavators and fork lifts to accomplish diverse tasks such as road construction, road repair, transporting and loading supplies and equipment, painting, making tea, playing basketball, and various other tasks as assigned.
Today was the Smooth Operator Competition here in McMurdo. This afternoon after the regular shifts ended there was a competition to see which team at McMurdo can operate heavy equipment with the most skill and finesse. There was a team from Science Cargo, Fleet Operations, and Waste Management. This year's competition included events that probably don't happen anywhere other than McMurdo like Excavator Basketball and Forklift Pictionary.
A forklift operator at McMurdo station paints a picture as part of the Smooth Operators Competition. The word was CAT and here is the finished rendition.
The Science Cargo team even made a cup of tea with a forklift in simulated low visibility conditions. The driver had to rely on just her spotter to guide her through making and serving a cup of tea because the front window was completely blocked with a couple of large pieces of foam. It was amazing to watch.
A forklift operator at McMurdo station makes a cup of tea as part of the Smooth Operators Competition.
My favorite part of the competition was watching the excavators. It was amazing to watch such a large piece of machinery be used to perform relatively precise tasks.
There is a unique culture here at the station and events like this are a big part of that culture. Today while we were at dinner one of our team members pointed out how nearly everyone in the cafeteria was engaged in a conversation and since there is no cell service and you aren't allowed to connect your phone to the station internet nobody is distracted with their smartphone. It is nice to disconnect for a while and be able to focus on just one task, but I imagine for many people it can become quite lonely being so separated from your life back at home. Participating in the various events at McMurdo is an important way to cope with long deployments at the station.
In addition to spending a few minutes watching the Smooth Operators competition, we also had a full day of work to do. We extracted the animals from all of the Meirs Valley and Garwood Valley samples that we collected yesterday. The lab work was the same as what I described earlier in the week, with us partitioning samples and using a portion of each sample to extract the animals using soil sieves and sugar centrifugation. Tomorrow we will count the animals that we extracted today. Here is a time lapse video of us extracting animals in the lab today.
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