More Pics

You can go to: http://ildidave.blogspot.com and click on the pictures to see them in a larger size.  

This is me in the cab of the Al-Jon metal baler.  It's so fun, I got to do it 4 times this season!  A whole dumpster full of metal, including drums and tanks gets crushed into the size of a suitcase.

Minkie whales in front of Scott Base.  A huge whale season since it was so hot and so much of the ice melted out.  The girls and I walked to Scott Base and saw fifty of them just swimming around out front.

Boat ops was fun, but long hours.  We pulled and removed spill containment boom around the Coast Guard ship when they took fuel, and the fuel tanker the Maersk Peary when they offloaded fuel to station.

The tanker ship from our little Spill Response boat.

My coworkers Paul, Kate and I got to take a fun trip out to "Room With a View" which is up towards Erebus with a great view of the mountains across the way. We all went in costumes and I really love these two.  Paul is actually wintering.

We rode two per machine on our trip and I was lucky to have Larry Fabulous as my guy.  He had never ridden on a snowmobile and was nervous, and I had and just wanted to ride with someone funny and kind.

Dream trips: I went out twice for further training on operating these tractors.  Last season I operated the Caterpillars more than the Cases, so on this trip I hauled a generator out a few miles.

The day before I flew out was a day off so I was able to pack super hurriedly so that I could go out for the afternoon and train more on the tractors.  That day I hauled a bunch of fuel tanks and fuel hose reels.  I kept joking that I should get the operator's pay since I was doing all his work and that in the least he owed me 5 hours of pay in chocolate.

This is my last day, on our way to the airplane in front of our ride to the airfield: Ivan the Terrabus.

This was an action shot from our Christmas Acoustic Show at the Waste Barn, where we enacted the whole Nutcracker in between live bands.  This was me as one of the rats during the Rat King and Prince fight scene with the soldiers.

This was the most violent storm I'd seen in 10 years, made worse by the moat between the pier and land being completely thawed out and waves being able to break like this.

Icestock 2014, our New Year's celebration.  I think this was the 25th.  It's Kevin (wearing pants that I made for him!!!! James, my boss, and Kate my coworker on stage.  Amazing band!)

Travis, my coworker, and I dressed up for the Acoustic Christmas Show bit where we ballet danced the Russian Dance.  We called ourselves Svetlana & Boris, and sent this picture out to field camps as our Christmas Card.

I ran my first race ever, and the first time running outdoors in Antarctica ever...the Antarctic Half Marathon, over the ice road which was grooved and slick, in 2 hours and 22 minutes!  And made it back in time for brunch, which was my only goal.

More storm and supply ship pictures.  It was a huge storm.  Dave I sent you this one.

Another storm and wave photo.  Dave will appreciate the size of that wave near the Tower of Power.

This is an audience photo from our Waste Barn Acoustic Christmas Show, and the only picture I have of my amazing roommate Sparky, up front in the purple/pink hat.  LOVE that girl!  This pic is for Dave who can recognise a lot of our friends in this shot. :)

My Dry Valleys trip in a helicopter to clean out old fuel barrels (thirty some) from a field camp.

Back on the Spill Response team.

 This is how you make a tutu our of trash, with a glue gun.

 My awesome help pilot Kareem.

On our way to Lake Bonney.

Blood falls from the helicopter.

Me hooking the nets of drums onto the bottom of the helicopter so it could be flown out.

A large ventifact near Lake Bonney.

Only 1% of Antarctica is not covered by snow and ice, and most of that is here in the Dry Valleys.

Ventifacts are rocks shaped by the wind.

 Glacier near Lake Hoare from the helicopter.

My coworkers Travis, Anne and Quinn at New Years.  We flash mobbed Ice Stock by ballet dancing through the crowd during one of the songs.  Getting some use out of those tutus.

An incredibly fun and fast season, which felt non-stop, not just at work but after hours.  Training four days a week for the marathon with one hour runs and keeping up with all the shows we put on and all the craft projects and mini-movies that we made.  It flew by this season for sure.  I'm in New Zealand right now visiting my beautiful family and headed back to the USA on March 1st to see Dave.  Love you very much, Ildiko.

Season 9 Episode 1

 A lovely walk to Hut Point my first weekend with some South Pole Traverse friends.

 Near the sea ice at Hut Point.

An awesome welcome party as my bus arrived from the air field. The whole department!  Check out Mark's Vote for Ildi tshirt (he's my boss's boss).

 A photo from the flight to Antarctica from the cockpit.  They let me sit up there for a few minutes and chat. 

I and a coworker Anne got to go on a snow machine trip out to a seal research camp at Razorback island where Anne and I took a million pictures and learned about the seals there.  Pretty great.

 They're Weddell seals out there.

 We saw starfish when we looked into the ocean.

A ladies tour of the pressure ridges at Scott Base, the New Zealand station, was an awesome eve!

So far this season is flying by unbelievably fast.  I can't believe it's almost Christmas.  I live in the main building above where the food is served, and there's delicious 24 hour pizza which is a new thing.  I've been running 45-60 minutes four days a week and have been going to every social event out there.  Really busy getting ready for the Christmas Acoustic Show that we're hosting up at the Waste Barn.  Oh yeah, that's where I work this season, back to Recycling Tech, which at the end of the day feels great because we make money for the Program.  Lots of fun things coming up for the holidays.  Thank you for your emails and Christmas Cards.  Love you very much. 

Springtime in New Zealand

 Cappuccinos and postcards at the Boat Shed Café...this one is for you David!

 The roses were in wild bloom at the Botanic Gardens.  Most as big as my head. 

 My 9th deployment, as usual spent admiring the beautiful flowers and trees.

 6 of my meals were sushi this go around.  Yum!  I had two extra days because of an airdrop and a weather delay so lots of good food.

 My scientist friend Jayred and I met up for Irish beer one night.  He's one of the ice core drillers from WAIS Divide last season.

 Amazing spring after a beautiful fall.

 This was in the NZ section of the Botanic Gardens.

 These were wildflowers out at Sumner Beach.  I jumped on the bus out to the beach one day and it was perfect weather, good sushi and a great Goodwill shopping.

 Sumner Beach (Dave this is where we played Scrabble with Zach 11 years ago).

A cormorant/blue eyed shag at the beach. I had another lovely trip through New Zealand.  Always a pleasure to pass through, admire the scenery and pig out on the delicious food.  Love you, pics soon from Antarctica and my trip to the seal research camp.

Fall

Coker Creek Falls in Tennessee.  We went with Dave's parents, and saw the 360 degree views of fall in the mountains from Buck Bald on the same drive as well.

This was Frankie, probably the cutest raccoon in the world.  He visited us a lot at the cabin and just begged and looked cute whenever we grilled food.

A particularly perfect day at the cabin, looking at fall colors from the porch.

We had a wonderful week together with Roger and Bette, lots of cards and great food, manhattans and scenic drives to see the colors, an apple orchard and a great day in Blue Ridge.  Thank you very much!

A fish that I did not catch, but that I got to eat.  Dave and I went running, while the fishermen (Brian and Donny) caught us dinner.  Pretty great deal actually.

 We got to go kayaking again!  Lake Apalachia is the best.

Fall color watching from the kayak.

Karen and DJ came up for the week too from Atlanta and we took the pontoon boat out, went hiking at Turtletown falls and ate really well thanks to Karen cooking a lot of Body Ecology foods.  Yum.  She's an Antarctic friend...we took her van on a roadtrip in Christchurch a few years back, and they along with Molly hosted us at their house in Atlanta before I flew out.  Dave and Brian had an awesome send off for me the night before I flew with a brewery tour of Saltwater Brewery.  Such good beer!

Before Atlanta, North Carolina and the cabin, I was in Reno for a couple weeks.  I was supposed to fly to Antarctica from there before the government shutdown.  Mom, Dad and I took a trip to Bodega Bay to see the ocean and eat fresh fish and saw a whole lot of pelicans.  Also seals swimming in the ocean and we had a beautiful visit to the Redwood grove at Armstrong Redwoods State Park.  Thank you very much Szulok!

 One cold and one perfect day at the beach!

 We visited a couple new to us beaches on this trip...this one was close to Schoolhouse Rock Beach.

And we took a wonderful trip to Lake Tahoe too to see the trees there, and the fish on the Truckee river. We also walked in the marshes everyday by their house, saw the ponderosa trees near Mt. Rose and my grandparents.

It's a month of lost work and a $300/week pay cut, but I got to see Dave again, take some lovely trips with my parents as well as Dave's and see the first fall I've seen in a long long time.  Beautiful!  I'm currently in Christchurch New Zealand, seeing their spring and flying to Antarctica in the morning.  Thank you and love you all!

Indiana, N. Carolina & California

I got to see my beautiful cousin Zsuzsanna for the first time in a long while since she lives in Tempeh.  She's engaged!  Mom & Dad and I watched my nieces for a couple weeks so that Tibor and Dora could take an adult vacation to Canada and Yellowstone, and so the girls got to see Zsuzsa too!

Roger took me to an Indiana University football game, and they won!  It was exciting and fun.

Blue heron at Roger & Bette's pond in Indiana.  It was great to see it up so close.  What a bird!

Roger & Bette in their backyard before their high school reunion.  It was great to spend some time with the Koehlingers.  We played a lot of cards, ate so well and even went to a harvest festival.

Dave on the John Muir trail in Tennessee by Brian's lake house.  So nice to hike on it!

Dave and Brian.  We just made a dinner for kings, bacon wrapped jalapenos, avocado salad and gorgonzola cheese and caramelized onion hamburgers!  Bloody mary's as the appetizer. And below is a lake I hiked by and Dave mountain biked in the Smoky Mountains.

Dave and I went kayaking on Lake Apalachia, and had a lot of relaxing days on the porch.

This beautiful cardinal sat on our car everyday.  He kept looking at himself in the mirror.  Funny!

After Dave went back to Alaska, I dog sat Bitsy the chihuahua and Max, a small black dog.  My friend Molly from Antarctica came up and we did a fast together and enjoyed the lake views.

We went to Auburn California with my parents to see some exotic plants and fall colors.  We actually found a regional park that wasn't shut down and it had mining exhibits as well as gardens.  Very pretty.

There were hollies and magnolia trees, as well as huge Ponderosa pines.

This was my favorite bit of fall color there.  Right now I'm packing (for Antarctica, Alaska, New Zealand, Atlanta, North Carolina........whatever comes first.)  Let's see where I end up, since politicians killed my job.