Grandparents camp

A moment of zen on the ice sheet

Sverrir was told today, that he has become grandfather to a newborn boy in Iceland. Actually, several in camp have the age to be grandparents, grandaunts or granduncles. One member is mid-thirties. That is Trevor. We call him “boy” or “junior”. Then we have Oli and Henrik in the mid-forties. They are the young ones. The rest of the crew is between 50 and 59, except for Bruno, who is slightly older than 59. When we get new people up next week, the average age will drop below 50. Until then, NEEM is a “granny” camp.
We spent some time today discussing with Copenhagen on how to coordinate and proceed with getting new winch components up next week and how to insure, that this time it will work. We believe we have found a good solution, and we are confident we can solve the problems. Otherwise everybody went to their tasks, some below ground and some on the surface. After several air leaks along the outside wall have been sealed, the temperatures in the main dome are now +20 °C even at outside temperatures of -31 °C.

What we have done today:

1. Discussing with Copenhagen about how to proceed with procurement and shipment of new winch motor and new winch controls.
2. Erected a weather port, “Stapi”, named after a small village on Snæfellsness in Iceland close to Jules Verne’s entrance to the interior of the Earth.
3. Grooming old skiway in zig-zag. There are still some bumps from snow drifts caused by the skyway flags being too low.
4. New shelves set up in kitchen.
5. Work on installing a second toilet in main dome.
6. Filling more PU foam along edge of kitchen floor .
7. Calibrating the load cell on the drill tower.
8. Floor gratings for drill trench floor hoisted into trench with the crane.
9. Working with drill electronics.

Weather: mostly blue sky, - 30 °C to -19 °C, 6-12 knots from ESE.
Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen