Where were you on the Week of Mid-Winter?

A few photos from our midwinter pub crawl... all pictures not by me - i was sensible and left the camera in my room!

What have we here? BungeeBar! Each different work venue made up some sort of bar based entertainment for the grand Rothera Mid-Winter Pub Crawl. Although around the middle of the night, the crawl was more of an bungee cord inhibited sprint, with the possible reward of various types of drink. In this picture our chef Cyril takes a stroll up the course, defying the taut elastic to ping him - he made it look easy and almost reached the glowing bottle of whisky at the end of the course (similar to Nirvana - nice to imagine getting to, but simply impossible given the rules of life...). Even the mightly Frenchman was beaten by the fearsome retaining power of the giant elastic bands though, having just about time to read the label on his newly won bottle of port as he was pung gracelessly through the sledge store air. I managed reasonably well, coming out with a slightly shaken-up can of Stella but stangely, during my attempts on the prize, all cameras around the world simultaneously refused to work...

The gallant Gaul, stretching the leashes a bit like the Big Bang stretched space-time. Photo by Jim.

The GA bar - made out of the discarded corpses of previous drinks from previous places and times, reminding us all that despite the transitory nature of the hangover, the desire to have a nice pint of beer will endure until the end of the human race. Perhaps. The rocking chair there was made by Pete (head GA and general hardcore outdoor guy) out of bits of an old Nansen sledge that was decommisioned this year. Behind the bar is Roger Stillwell, bassist in our band, and another very decent sort of a fellow.

Boatman Jim "The Boatman" Elliott set up a bar in his boatshed by filling up a RIB with snow and all manner of tasty beverages. By this point, people were inclined towards making the snow into little spheres and throwing them. Photo uncredited...

This is me skiing off a little cornaced edge above the Bonner Lab - trying to find little exciting routes to ski around the base. Pretty cool picture by Matt.

Winter olympics - before the pub crawl we had a winter olympics sort of thing, with speed snow sculpture - a bit like ready-steady-cook, but i'd like to see those chefs making something as good as this in 20 minutes with only 1 ingedient. Of course they cheat in that program by having fresh herbs at the back on a shelf - a luxury not afforded us on this occasion. Other events were skiidoo trials around an obstacle course, abseiling off the communications tower, and throwing Mukluks (winter moon-boot things). My team of Alistair the Doc, and Birgit (marine biologist) came last... Pic by Liz
Matt and Tris had spent a week and a half clandestinely digging in a large snow drift out the back of the base, and unleashed this snowbar on the unsuspecting public on the evening of the pub crawl. Top Notch. Pic by Jim.

In the snowbar - Left to Right - Mike Mailing (base commander), Carpenter Scott Jamieson (with head turned away), Matt and Tris through the little hole in the "VIP Area", handing lethal but innocuous-looking "white russians" throught the portal, Kelvin (dive maestro), Steve Boulton (plumber). Pic by Jim again.

Alistair the Doc is pretty much Tee-Total but that didn't stop him turning his surgery into a den of iniquity, force feeding "fluids" to unsuspecting crawlers whilst they reclined in the falsely reassuring and obscenely comfortable "inspection table". I think Mike is just resting his eyes in this picture... Don't know who took this one.