September 27, 1975: Saturday

I get up early, before anyone else. Didn’t step on Dr. Treves, either, when I got out of the tent. No rescue today. We use the Wannigan (or East Wing, as it is known) as a cloak room.

Dave H. and Sam go to the Jamesways and rummage through them looking for cigarettes. They find four and smoke them.

We tell Scott Base to call Jack up and play us a request on his radio show, “We’ll be Home for Christmas.”

McMurdo might have bad weather for the next 18-24 hours, but the weather here is fabulous. I go outside without a jacket, just hat and gloves.

This being a weekend, I get a discompensation, to go out and relieve my bowels. I finished The Cornerstone. Like Stranger in a Strange Land, it got too mixed up in its own personal justification for religion, towards the end. Left two problems unresolved and didn’t blend the story lines together. The climax was well constructed.

In the afternoon I go down to the Jamesways. They’ve been there since Deep Freeze III in ’58. The helicopter pilots pulled a joke about the Nurses at Marble Point. They put a red cross on the Dispensary Jamesway and dressed a pilot up in a nurse’s uniform. They’d fly a guy over the camp and the “nurse” would come out and wave. They fooled a lot of people. I went and visited them. They must have been out to lunch.

Sidebar: Another Joke - "Having to wait until the helicopters fly to be rescued." We said that the first night, when we saw all the food, not thinking it might be true.

No cigarettes. But we retrieve IGY rice, Jell-O, and cinnamon. I walk back, the day is just beautiful, and eat graham crackers with honey and peanut butter. We eat beef curry with rice and vegetables, Jell-O, and apples with cinnamon and sugar. I read The Wizard’s Back . (The King is a Fink, you know.) I pick up Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love and retire.