Orange Raro

Today some travelling salesmen arrived with bladders full of orange raro. We bought their entire stocks. Its a thirsty station.

Yoshi

The Tallest Peak at South Pole

PP has successfully summited the tallest peak in South Pole. It was grueling.

Yoshi

Getting the wheel ready in the Heavy Shop

For the Wheel of Fortune tournament. I think we can get this spinning at 2 million rpms.

Yoshi

Some drillers showed up

These boys from the Alaska Refinery Association are here to drill for oil. It takes 1.6 barrels of oil to extract 1 barrel of oil from Antarctic proven reserves, but prices are favorable and the Association has hit yet another record quarterly earnings.

Yoshi

Extreme Cold Weather gear

Trying out some new ECW. Bright Green is so much less bulky than Big Red. And Crocs ventilate so much better than bunny boots.

Yoshi

Thanksgiving

Yesterday the Americans on station celebrated this holiday called Thanksgiving where they feast on Turkey. Unfortunately I'm allergic to trace amounts of turkey feathers. Turns out it wasn't a problem as the food replicator went into overtime delivering roasted, fried, baked and smoked penguins instead.

Yoshi

Checking on next year's winterovers

Today we checked up on next year's winterovers in the freezer. They seem to be soundly sleeping their deep frozen sleep next to a food container of refried beans.

Yoshi

Shortage of Christmas lights

This year we have a shortage of Christmas lights. Pipe is devastated. Christmas is a big holiday in his country. This project rudely used up the entire supply of LEDs on station!

Yoshi

Testing our rail gun

Just because we are pacifist countries doesn't mean we can't have nice toys!

Yoshi

Voted off the Station

These grantees were voted off the station for their unsound science.

Yoshi

Bermuda Grass

We have a pretty sophisticated sprinkler system here. Its hard to keep grass green in this weather, the landscaper techs can tell you that. To make it easier on the LTs, we're experimenting with white grass.

Yoshi

New Zealand rules, no shoes in the station

Yoshi

Not as interesting as the Anti-Gravity Station

Yoshi

Crane

This is Crane, my android butler. He's currently organizing my toiletries. Crane's a classy guy with his bow tie.

Yoshi

My Gun

There's been a recent crime wave here so Sheriff Weeks, the law around these parts has approved concealed carry weapons. I ordered this one, the R0DE Mysterium, a 44 magnum watt laser blaster. Got it with the 185 degree diffuser, so you really can't miss!

Yoshi

My turn for Housemouse

While Antarctica is the cleanest place on this side of the warpgate, the coal we use to heat our station produces a lot of soot. But since we get the coal for free from a long ago agreement with some Ohio mines, we'll deal with the soot. The soot, gets into every crack and orifice, so we have these ManSoots, which separate the man from the soot. It helps to take like five showers a day in the ManSoot to keep clean. Once in a while the ManSoot needs cleaning, and today is my turn to do the cleaning.

Yoshi

The station blanketed in a cloud of soot.

Winterover Changing of the Guard

Lven Sidstrom and Parlos Cobes left today after one year of working on SNOAPE. They're also escorting Ichiro's hair back home for a hero's return. Great guys, they taught PP and me a lot about the project for the next year. Here they are using their antigravity bunny boots to board the C-130 in the little known vertical takeoff mode. Next stop for the Herc and our buddies, Fiji!

Yoshi

Skua

Skua is an exchange for things on station where things can be left and taken. This shack holds skua and is a good place to find long underwear or xbox controllers. Skua is named after skua, a trash eating cyborg bird. They were created by a defense company that made UAVs and unleashed on the continent to help pick up the trash. They also developed a taste for baby penguins and have an inexplicable hatred for blue hover sleds. Which is hilarious since there's blue hover sleds everywhere on Antarctic stations. Turns out the $100,000 per unit price of the hover sleds weren't commercially feasible so the thousands of unsold units were bought by the government and they're used as food trays on station. Occasionally they get to live free and sled down some hills too.

A lean mean trash eating machine

A hover sled

Yoshi

Shredding

Oh good, the snowboarding has been completed. Time to wax the stick.

Yoshi

Party!

Since most of the station works a six day week, Saturday is our Friday. Which means time to Party! Here is Pipe dropping some beats on the synth. Hit em with the green lasers Pipe.

Yoshi

Weather WIzards

Still getting to know my way around this amazing station. Today I walked to the clean sector, where the NOAA building is. As I understand it, this is where they control the weather in the 50 states. New this year, the NOAA guys are implementing a vote by text messaging system. Just like Japanese Idol or Eurovision Song Contest. Now you can vote on what weather you want for the next week and the weather wizards will deliver. Sorry for the heatwave Los Angeles.

Yoshi

A Royal and a Scientist

Little known to Sweden, the King is also an amateur particle physicist. Here is his majesty's bunk at the observatory on his frequent visits.

Yoshi

Pipe wanted to catch up on the last three years back home. So we setup a video conference home.

Yoshi

I dialed up Hakata Ramen on the food replicator. I think I got instant. :(

Yoshi

The Wormhole Blaster

After the squid incident, the darkest day in Antarctic research history, which was ironic since it was only November, a Warp Gate Blaster was installed. Now any accidental wormholes to hostile invading squids can be repelled with microwave energy. Thanks to the NRA for the funding.

Yoshi

The Wormhole Generator

Somebody fired up the wormhole generator today. Hopefully no militant hovering giant squids squeeze through looking for biped crab sympathizers from a rival galaxy again.

All hail Lord Calamari. (mandatory annual statement of allegiance, as required by the treaty).

Yoshi
Photo: SL

The food here is excellent

After a three year freeze I'm quite hungry, gonna dial up some food on the food replicator.

Mmm, some fruit dessert.

Everything has  hint of chili for some reason?

Yoshi

Supremely honored to be experiment operating

Now, please where is the WC?

Yoshi

There has been a terrible accident

We lost Ichiro. He volunteered to be beamed by the Transporter but all we got back was his hair. He said "70% success rate, thats better than I did on my multiple choice PhD dissertation." Your bravery will be missed good man. We will have to unfreeze an alternate now. Thankfully, SNOAPE froze alternates along with the 20 men and women frozen for wintering over. Back when the project started, planners decided it would be easier to train all 30 volunteers, 10 2-person crews and 10 alternates at the same time and freeze them only to be unfrozen for each of the 10 years that the project will operate. So we will visit the freezer and wake up Dr. Yoshi Koshiba.

PP

Our First Experiment!

Yay we're heading out to the Atom Splitter-Sender Highly Accelerated Transporter to do a test. The transporter has been working about 70% of the time on the test penguins we captured off the coast. So maybe today we'll beam someone to McMurdo. I hope I get to go. I think my leg is turning blue.

Ichiro

I have been unfrozen!

Hello! My name is Ichiro Son and I am one of two winterovers for the 2012-2013 SNOAPE season. SNOAPE, Swedish-Nippon Observatory for Antarctic Physics Experiments, is partnership for conducting experiments at South Pole Station in Antarctica. My partner Pipe Pobestrom and I will be running various experiments all year for our collaborations up north. I think my leg is still thawing.

Ichiro