October 27, 1975: Monday

Busy, busy day. Cold and very windy.

Got Henry loaded onto a helo.

The Japanese arrived. They’re very short and talk in unison, saying the same thing like two mouths working off one mind. Also, they went to the movies.

They moved into Cal and I’s office. We moved into Dr. Treves’s.

Peter Barrett wants me to do size analysis on the grab samples from 1A. He’s done a haphazard job on them. I don’t understand what he wants done, nor what he’s accomplished until late this evening. John Oliver has some of the samples. I have to make arrangements with him to dry the samples. The problem is the mud. He wants it wet so he can do a size analysis with our machine, but he also wants the weight percent of the whole.

The surveyor gave us some distances, in meters, that we were off from the proposed site. Dr. Treves told me to figure out the latitude and longitude. I fooled around with a derivation and the law of cosines for awhile, then looked up how many miles to a degree in the dictionary. A few transformations and I had feet and seconds. Then I figured it out using data in the Ops Plan. Finally I measured the miles in one degree on the large wall map. The last two agreed in latitude and differed by four seconds of arc in longitude: 77º 28’ 25” S and 164º 25’ 29” E, compared to the proposed 77º 27’ 40” S and 164º 26’ 02” E, and to my original estimate, 77º 25’ 17” S and 164º 33’ 20” E.

We’re 1200 meters south and 200 meters east of where we’re supposed to be. Not too shabby.

Peter has three people coming in on the 30th. One of them is a girl, Kathy Sillars (Kath, for short). They’re going to do a bathymetric survey between 1A and Marble Point and between 1A and New Harbour. Calvin and I go out to the drillsite the 5th. Jim the Kiwi and most of the crew are out there now. Max and another tractor train will start out Wednesday, a day late. Another official Navy photographer will go along for documentation purposes. I guess my job is finished.

Calvin put up a picture of the seal in our hole. It’s the official seal of DVDP. There’s also a picture of an abandoned farm house after a snow storm. It’s labeled as the Clubhouse at Taylor Valley Estates.

Ran a lot of errands today. Peter walked back from Scott Base. I met him at the Jet Fuel Tanks in 589 (590 is out at the drillsite). Dr. Treves and I went to the Navy photo lab, the BFC for water jugs, a banana boat sled, and food lists. The drillers wanted one dozen blanket warmers (6 blonde and 6 brunette).

Got a letter from Marilyn C. today. Hurrah. She anticipated almost everything I wrote her about last week. She gets a sweatshirt.

It’s 11:00 p.m. and the sun is just passing over Mount Discovery. I’m not going to wait around for the Midnight Sun.

Nebraska beat Colorado 63-21. All right!