4am on the Fuel Farm

A couple of weeks ago we did the mid year fuel transfer from the lower fuel farm to the upper fuel farm. You can read the slightly more official and definitely more boring story here. The monitoring of transfer was conducted by crack teams of expeditioners, taking watch in 2 hour periods over the 24hrs it took to complete the transfer.

My group, consisting of Jukka, Aaron and Ben M (Young Swayze) on the upper fuel farm and Matt the Viking, Ben H and me on the lower fuel farm were given the dubious honour of trying to keep ourselves awake during the 4am - 6am shift of death. Our previous shift had ended at 10pm so trying to squeeze some sleep in there was vitally important.

What's the best way to keep yourself awake at these times of morning? Well may you think that coffee and other warm drinks are the answer, but you'd be wrong. The correct answer is: singing and putting on ridiculous accents over the radio. You see, every 15 minutes we were required to call the upper fuel farm and compare the amount of fuel in the tank we were draining to the amount of fuel they were filling and that number would give us a good indication as to whether or not there was a leak somewhere in the 500m hose.

We had some lovely renditions of "If you wanna be my lover" by the Spice Girls, "Like a rolling stone" by Bob Dylan and "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot. It's a pity none of these were recorded, we could've made millions from people laughing at us!

The sun, at midday, was pretty much following the cloud line towards the left of frame until it set about 2 1/2 hrs later.

Ben suddenly realised he was having his photo taken

The fuel farm

The big sign so that we don't forget where we are.

Home sweet home, with a pretty awesome ice cliff in front of it.