Save our Frosty Boy

It could be a long, hard winter.

One of the luxuries of the Elevated Station is Frosty Boy, our soft serve ice cream machine. It's been a tempermental thing ever since we moved into the new station in 2003 and people either love it (ice cream fans) or hate it (galley crew and maintenance guys, aka UT's).

Frosty Boy was a big step up for us from the old days of the Dome Galley when we didn't have an ice cream machine but had an endless supply of cartons of orange sherbet. Every Saturday night was pizza night with orange sherbet and both of those got old pretty quickly. Now with good old vanilla or chocolate soft serve at your fingertips and an impressive selection of toppings, we've been living the good life.

I'm not sure why we call it Frosty Boy...we use Eskimo Pie mix instead of name brand Frosty Boy mix. McMurdo calls their ice cream machine Frosty Boy too and as much as we'd like to be more original than them, it's still a pretty good name for an ice cream machine in Antarctica. The galley in Mactown locks down their ice cream maker so the only time you can get soft serve is at meal time. Ours is freely accessible anytime of day or night...and maybe that's the problem.

Jon and James using their expertise to try to fix Frosty Boy.

Invariably someone pushes the wrong button and the whole thing freezes up or lets the ice cream mix get too warm. It's always been a maintenance problem since the beginning. As much as we all love our boy, it's a pain in the neck to clean and always makes such a loud, horrible racquet that's hard to hear over it when it kicks on. The freezing elements seemed to not work so well on the left side for the past couple of years, then both sides and now...well, it just doesn't seem hopeful.

"Frosty Boy is in critical condition and in the middle of brain surgery. Please do not spit in his open wounds."

We can easily make ice cream out of liquid nitrogen but there's just something wonderful about having it on tap. We haven't had any major medical problems but if there's one patient I'm worried about it's Frosty Boy. Pray for his recovery.