Memorial Day BBQ

Once again, the Heavy Shop (garage) hosted a huge BBQ for the station.

This past weekend we had our monthly 2 day weekend but this time, we got Sunday and Monday off so that we could pretend that we were also getting Memorial Day off. And like many others celebrating the holiday, we held a barbeque, although it was far from the summertime activity most people know.

The mechanics, Jack and Jason (above), cleared out the garage bay of the heavy equipment usually parked there, except for the LMC behind the beverage cooler.

The BBQ grill was moved outside instead of having it inside the garage like last year. It got so smokey inside last year, the bay doors had to be opened to ventilate and people turned into icicles as they munched on their burgers. The heat from the grill kept Jack and Jason warm enough even though it was about -80 degrees F outside.

And like last year, the horseshoe pits were brought in from the berms and a tournament went on into the wee hours of the night. Here's UT James showing his excellent follow-through.

Station manager Katie also had some good tosses after putting some dents on the heavy shop floor.

A new feature for this year's BBQ was a station in the adjacent UT shop making frozen martinis with liquid nitrogen, the same stuff that I used to make ice cream and another procedure that I won't mention in the same sentence.

Here's construction manager Kevin mixing away, complete with his safety goggles. He carefully poured the liquid nitrogen into the martini and stirred until a nice slush formed. It was very smooth going down.

This is Chris our cryo tech. He maintains the plant that makes the liquid nitrogen and he made it all possible by supplying plenty of the super cold nitrogen.

Of course we don't have flamethrowers down here but if we did...

And of course this is the South Pole and things freeze a little faster than anywhere else. Even the beer cooler (a sled filled with snow) did too good of a job on Nate's Corona. Another fun-filled weekend has passed and now we get the added bonus that this week will be short...only 5 days long.