The Whole Wide World

One week in, which means it’s Thursday. My day off. During the summer season I packed my day off with every activity possible. I would volunteer in other departments, work part time in the store, go on a hike, bartend…whatever activity there was to do, I would do it. So far this winter, I am doing the complete opposite. It is truly a day of rest. I turn my alarm off so that I can sleep in. I surface to go get coffee, eat lunch and dinner, and to restock Gallagher’s. That’s it. And it is kind of glorious.

I’ve managed to silence the antagonist on these lazy days off. In the non frozen world, I would have a very hard time not beating myself up for having such an unproductive day. They are very far and few between. It is easier to have a guilt free lazy day partially because the the rest of the station are at work, so there really isn’t anything going on. My only wish is that I had decaf coffee so that I could drink coffee all day long. I love coffee. In fact, when I go to sleep at night, sometimes the last thought that runs through my head is an almost giddy, when you wake up you get to drink coffee. That level of love.

The only activity on Thursdays is American Night at our Kiwi Neighbor’s Scott Base. From 5:45-10PM our Kiwi friends open their bar up to us rowdy ‘Mericans. This was not on offer during the austral summer, so it is a winter over treat. I’ve been over to Scott Base three times now. The first time was during the summer season for special shopping trip. They opened their little gift shop up for us once or twice this summer and walked over for a visit on one of those occasions. I didn’t buy much, just some postcards which were different than what our store offers. Almost all of the merchandise in their store is better than what our store offers.

The second time was earlier this winter on a Thursday for American Night. I went with my friend Ethan for dinner before the actual event of American Night. Dinner was a treat in and of itself. Now that I am thinking about it, everything over at Scott Base is superior to McMurdo, including the food. I stayed for an hour or so after dinner and paid a visit to their pub, The Tatty Flag, which is such a nice space. Unlike our pubs, there are windows and it is bright and modern and just all over not dingy. Gallagher’s tends to feel like a college party in a basement bar. The Tatty Flag is like a posh members club in comparison. This is largely in part to do with the fact that their station is much smaller than ours. In comparison, there are 17 winter overs at Scott Base and 144 of us here at McMurdo. While I was there I played a few games of pool and just had a nice time in general. It was a welcome change of scenery for the evening.

The last time I went over to Scott Base was a couple of Fridays ago for a special Darts League. I played in two darts tournaments over the summer season here at McMurdo and did surprisingly well, so I felt confident that I would at least be mediocre and not too much of an embarrassment to the team. The summer league was Cricket, but over at Scott Base the Friday night tournament is 301. This was new for me, but easy enough to learn. I was paired up with Chris, our physician’s assistant, here at McMurdo. We weren’t too shabby, we lost the first match but not too badly. The second we kind of got our butts handed to us, but then we won the third. It was a fun evening and I will definitely go again when the opportunity aligns.

Each day this week, there has been a moment where I’ve had anxiety over the writing I knew was to come in the evenings. The antagonist told me that once the week was up, by nature of the routine down here, I would be out of things to write about. But today as I reread over what I’ve written this week, I realized that I’d barely even begun to scratch the surface. I shared only my daily routine within the week. There are moments everyday where I have a feeling or thought that I would like to explore more and for me that is what writing is for, to explore, to reflect and to go deeper. I’m looking forward to the journey.