My 15 minutes of shower

It’s better than 15 minutes of fame.

Even though we’re surrounded by frozen water, it’s very expensive to make liquid water that we can use. We have to burn jet fuel, which costs about $16 a gallon just to fly it here, to melt the ice and therefore, we are strict about conserving the very expensive resulting water.

We’re limited to taking only a 2 minute shower twice a week. As awful as that sounds, it’s very doable and you just end up spending most of the time in the shower with the water off.

Summer Camp is about a 5 minute walk from the station and it’s where many of the summer folks live in cozy Korean war era Jamesways.

Summer camp Jamesways

They have head modules where there are bathrooms and washers and dryers too. The water out there comes from a snow melter that is fed snow regularly then the water is stored in huge tanks. As part of the winterizing process for Summer Camp, the water tanks are emptied before the power is shut off but this year, we just happen to still have 2500 gallons of water ready to go in the tanks.

Summer Camp water tanks still with about 800 gallons of water each.

Thus the 15 minute shower. Word got spread around over the weekend to head out to Summer Camp and take a shower for as long as you want because we have to get rid of the water soon.

Brien in the window of the Men's room.

Those of us willing to make the trek out there were treated to unlimited showers - I washed my hair (twice), conditioned, shaved, exfoliated and pumiced my heels until my fingers turned pruney. It was only about 15 minutes but it seemed like a heavenly hour.

I feel like a new woman! I just may have to take another shower tomorrow!