September 3, 1975: Wednesday

I have a hard time keeping track of the days. Time is ephemeral. Only meals count towards time.

All morning we look for keys. We find the ones to the cabinets in the Bio-Lab. Boy is that a nice place. It’s huge, with lots and lots of sophisticated equipment. Cathy and Janet would like it here. We look for a microscope down there. Can’t find it, either.

I like the Earth Science Lab, even though it is way up on the windy ol’ hill. It reminds me of the Newspaper Shop, the way the lights softly hum and there is hardly any noise and the gray metal desks and the cloudy gray skies, and the sort of used-but-needed smell. I like it.

After lunch we get our pick-up truck. A four door Dodge that won’t engage third without sputtering out. The foot-feed sticks and it won’t idle.

Jack, the mechanic for Winter Over is lost (gone, perhaps). He wears a field jacket with a plastic flower in the lapel and a CAT baseball cap, out in the snow. He took Dr. Treves in a ride in the Cushman Trackster. Up and down hills, over dale, and up snowbanks. It was wild.

We went over to look at the diffractometer in storage. We get some water jugs and three sleeping bags for our little trip (traverse, as they call it down here on the ice).

We go back to the lab. I find a star chart. It’s not very good. I try to figure out longitude and latitude, 77º 51’ South is close, but I vary from 166º 35’ East to 166º 45’ East on different charts.

There’s an Auroral Observatory around here somewhere. It’ll have a nice dome.

At supper we hear on the radio, KGRI, Grand Island. That’s strange. I’d found the Armed Forces Radio studio, but it was all locked up. Jim was trying to teach Dr. Barkov about credit cards. Dr. Treves thinks that’s the way communism will fall. Give ‘em BankAmericard.

Dr. Barkov got some magazines on Soviet Life, the Black Sea Area.

“Bikinis, beaches, and good oil!”

“Ah, that’s just propaganda,” from Jack.

“Sure, a little,” from Barkov.

They’re friends.

Pete has a tape player. Tea for the Tillerman, Dark Side of the Moon, and Venus and Mars are All Right Tonight.

All right!

Expenditures:
None.