The colds that would crop up after a month always surprised me during my deployments. Where did it come from? We haven't had contact with anyone outside our group of like 40-50 people.

I remember always feeling suddenly overwhelmed by people. You spend a few months with only a couple dozen people. Then you end up in NZ or Chile and fly back stateside. Suddenly there are thousands of people around.

Dang, I suddenly miss all my Antarctic peeps.