I have changed my morning 6:45 session to the runway instead of the gym unless it is a really miserable weather day. There is a bike on base and I am biking 10km every morning which is 5.5 times round trip around the runway. Sometimes I will do it in the evenings as well.

It allows me to collect my thoughts and I start the crane and tractor up on my last lap so that they are warming up before we use them in ernest to launch boats at 8:45. Sometimes I will even move some of the boats into position in front of the labs so the beakers can just load up and we are in the water quicker.

Today there was a lone Emperor Penguin sitting on an iceberg off the north end of the runway. They are very rarely at Rothera only seen once or twice a year having got lost.