Freshies!!

Fresh fruits and vegetables!!
Whenever a plane comes in, it brings fresh vegetables. This is the highlight of flights for many of the people on base. For the first few days after the flight, you can see people leaving the galley with plates and bowls stocked high with fruits and vegetables. I don't know if I don't eat that many, but I hadn't really started missing freshies, as we like to call them, yet. I'm sure if we didn't get a resupply, I would have been missing them by August though.


Heated freshies on Scott base hill.
When the plane lands, it is immediately unloaded. The freshies are put in a millvan for the fifteen mile journey to base. The freshies won't last that long in this cold so a heating engine is hooked up to the millvan via a hose. In the picture above, you can see the hose coming out of the top of the millvan. In front of that engine, is the mail pallet! Thanks for sour patch kids, Reese's pieces, and odor ammunition Jay!


OH NO, stuck freshies!!
The road up from Scott Base is really steep. The challengers could not make it up the hill with the freshies. They kept slipping. Eventually, they brought fines (loose dirt) to spread out where the vehicles were slipping. Once they got that done, the challengers made it up the hill. Lucky for us, the freshies were heated.


Louie would like you to know that he isn't responsible for getting the freshies stuck. He has no idea why they are stuck.
When the freshies finally arrived, about ten volunteers helped off load them. They brought them in on huge pallets. We tore them down as fast as possible and filled up the freshie box. At first look, it seemed like we only had bananas.


Unloading the pallet.


Shane, a cook, checks out the his latest ingredients.
For whatever reason, New Zealand sends almost all of our freshies in banana boxes. They have apparently done this for years and no one that I talked to knows why. It is just the way it is. We label everything on its way into storage so that anyone looking to make a frosty boy banana split doesn't get confused and end up with pumpkin. Ick. Pumpkin flavored ice cream? Maybe. Pumpkin in my ice cream, I'll have to pass even if it is fake ice cream.


Just another side of the freshie box.
I was told that they should be able to make the freshies last until August. That should make this winter a pretty easy one. Normally, they run out with a couple months to go. We even got a bunch of oiled eggs that should last most of the winter. I'm pretty excited about that. I've never been a fan of the preserved Bag O'Eggs.


Caesar is not so fresh in the freshie box after working too many long days (10?) in a row.
By the way, this past flight was our last until August/September. There was some confusion about the last flight of summer/mainbody being the last flight until winter ends. My miscommunication. The last flight of summer/mainbody is normally the last flight until August, however, this year they had an extended season for the first time where they had one last flight which just left. I'm still not reeling from the effects of being stuck here whether I like it or not. I'll take that as a good sign.

I do know that I really miss Colorado right now. A little bit is the activities and fabulous weather that I'm missing, but most of it is the people that I do those activities with. I've been hearing from some a little less, but it has more to do with it being so long since I saw their smiles with a twinkle in the their eye.


The last of the freshies.