Homeless Heidi

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T09:52:00.000+13:00

Many miles have been traveled since Fiji.

We spent a few weeks in the states visiting family and friends in the Bay Area and Tucson and getting used to being back "home". Now, we're in the transition of moving across country and settling down in New York.

First step is figuring out the best way to move our stuff. I've gotten rid of a lot of my worldly possessions over the years but was stunned to find out how much stuff I still have and can't part with. So we went with an option that is halfway between professional movers and a Uhaul truck. This mini shipping container, a "ReloCube", was delivered and it was the perfect size for the amount of stuff that we have to move.

We do the loading and they pick it up, put it on a truck, drive it cross country and deliver it to the new address where we unload it.

It's the perfect solution for us as Michael ponders what to do with my bike. It all fit with room to spare but unfortunately there was not enough room for my 14 foot sea kayak which will have to stay in Tucson.

We're riding the rails for our trip to NY and turning the journey into a little vacation. We have a nice sleeper car since we're spending nearly 74 hours total on the train.

One of the first stops was El Paso and our sleeper car is the one right next to the sign.

The depot was a nice historic building right next to the border of Mexico.

Thirty-six hours later, we got off the train in New Orleans to spend a few days playing tourists and to ring in the New Year.

Jackson Square had the usual assortment of artists, musicians and tarot card/palm readers.

Silver is very in. There are almost as many silver painted people here as there are Alabama and Utah fans here for the Sugar Bowl.

This guys marionette was really singin' the blues.

For New Years Eve, Michael had a huge surprise for me - a limo ride to dinner! And dinner was 40 miles away on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain. We had a fabulous meal at La Provence, a restaurant run by a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America where Michael will be starting in a few weeks. Afterwards, we came back to the city in time to join the thousands of revelers on Bourbon Street and to watch the fireworks show over the Mississippi as the clock struck midnight. We even met up with a couple of Polie friends, Adit and Jason, through the miracle of cell phones. It's a small world when you want it to be.

Tomorrow the journey continues with the leg to Chicago...

Parting shots from Fiji

2008-11-29T08:28:00.010+13:00

Fortunately, there are very few hazards in Fiji other than the occasional falling coconut.

We ended up doing a whole lot of nothing while we were in Fiji, which was the main objective. There was however nightly entertainment including crab racing night.

Hermit crabs from the beach were rounded up and had numbers painted on their backs. Each person picked a crab and had their name and number written down in a ledger. The crabs were all gathered in a martini shaker and plopped down at the starting point. The first crab to make its way outside a hand-drawn circle on the floor won that leg of the race.

The Fijians running the show had a smooth system of tracking the crabs and the races were done in heats leading up to the semi-finals and finals. My crab, little #7, was promising in the first heats but proved to be no match against formidable crab #9.

Another night was Fijian feast night with a traditional lovo pit prepared to slowly roast the entire dinner underground. A pit is dug out then filled with embers then fish, beef, chicken, pork ,cassavas, taro, potatoes, squash and veggies are placed on top, covered with leaves, tarps and dirt.

The whole mound is left to cook for several hours then unearthed just in time for dinner. It was quite tasty!

And the entire staff at Oarsmans Bay performed traditional Fijian songs and dances.

It was an interactive experience as all of us guests were pulled from our seats to dance along with them. Couldn't get any photos of that because I was dancing and having too much fun.

For the second half of our vacation, we moved to another island and another resort. Nanuya Island Resort is at the Blue Lagoon, as in THE Blue Lagoon of the movie fame.

It was considerably more luxurious and we felt like we were living the good life in our treetop bure.

Not a bad view from the deck either.

Michael's birthday was a special romantic celebration at a private table by the beach. We dined and had cake and champagne by lantern and tiki torchlight while listening to the waves gently lapping the sand only feet away from our table.

We had fun with the wildlife. I was trying to observe this lizard on the ground without scaring it away when it came over to my foot and ran up my leg. It seemed to like riding around on my back and shoulders.

I handed the little guy off to Michael and it nearly became camouflaged in his bula shirt.

Yes, we are complete geeks but how cool is it to have wireless and drinks by the beach? I mean, there's only so much reading and napping you can do in the hammock. And when it got too hot, we were cooling off in the refreshing blue water.

The combination of the two different places we stayed at gave us a wonderful experience in Fiji. We soaked up some culture and made some friends at the first place and got some first class pampering at the other place. Both were completely relaxing, warm, friendly and exactly what we were looking for. Antarctica seems so long ago now that we are tan and well-rested.

We're back in Christchurch now renting an apartment for a few days to relax some more before heading back to the states on Dec 2. The Christmas decorations have come out around the businesses downtown here and I have to remind myself that the holiday is coming up even though it's shorts and sandals weather here. And I'm happy to know that I'm coming home for Christmas this year...just a few more days and I'm home for good.

Village visit

2008-11-25T11:23:00.008+13:00

One of the highlights while staying at Oarsman's Bay was a trip to Nacula Village. The only village on the island is home to nearly all of the staff there and the residents were as friendly as the kind people we had gotten to know at the lodge.

The kids especially loved having their picture taken as long as you showed them the results of the photo shoot.

The village is about a 15 minute boat ride away and the boat captain's family came out to say hello.

His daughter was shy but incredibly adorable.

This house wins the best decorated category and the woman who lived here greeted us with big smiles and very hearty laughter.

Almost everyone had laundry hanging out in the bright Fijian morning sun.

The last stop was the best - the village school.

It's a boarding school with up to 150 children attending during the school week.

The kids assembled in the auditorium to sing for us and boy can they sing. Not only do they sing on key with lovely voices, but they belt out the songs in full volume and with four part harmonies.

On the way back to the boat we passed by the outdoor gym.

I know we're just tourists but I'm glad we got to see a bit of real life in Fiji other than the guest lodges and resorts. Our hosts at Oarsmans took delight in telling us all about the cannibalism that was a part of Fijian culture, a practice continued until just 80 years ago. From the open kindness we've received from everyone here, it's hard to imagine that until recently, visitors were eaten instead of warmly greeted.

Bula!

2008-11-23T08:54:00.011+13:00

We've gone from this:

Waiting to board the plane at South Pole on Nov 6

to this:

Finally, we're warm and tan in Fiji!

Our final exit from South Pole happened only 1 day behind schedule as we boarded the first LC-130 of the season on Nov 6 to start the journey north. Mercifully, we had only one night to endure in McMurdo before the final leg to civilization, reaching Christchurch, New Zealand the night of Nov 7.

What a great feeling to breathe moist sea-level air again, to walk around outside wearing only a light fleece, to eat fresh foods, to see city life again. Getting reacquainted with life again as we used to know it isn't too hard. There's a certain feeling of elation mixed with disbelief as you see familiar sights again, things we didn't have at South Pole like cars, trees and children.

After a week in Christchurch, we landed in paradise! We have 2 weeks to warm up in the beautiful Yasawa islands and we spent the first half on the island of Nacula at the Oarsman's Bay Lodge.

This place was perfect...a picture postcard tropical beach, warms water, a reef teeming with fish only meters away and plenty of good fresh food. The friendly hosts knew us by name and always gave me lots of hugs (I felt like I had half a dozen mothers fussing over me there).

The staff drank the legendary kava every night and invited us to join them. The drink made from a pounded root was supposed to have a narcotic effect but didn't seem to do anything to us neophyte imbibers except to make your tongue numb. The locals who drank it every night around a convivial circle always seemed to have kava hangovers the next morning.

Our bure, or bungalow, came with a dog who never moved much from this spot.

After seeing just one sunset in Antarctica all winter, we celebrated each one in Fiji in style.

We've moved on to another island now, and a resort that has wireless internet, so more photos are soon to come!

Farewell South Pole

2008-11-06T10:04:00.003+13:00

Well, this is it. The first LC-130 is on its way here and I'm getting on it. My room is packed up, my bags are palletized, I'm saying goodbyes and finishing up last minute work that I've procrastinated about for weeks.

Yesterday our satellite went down around the time that voting sites starting closing in the east coast states and predictions from exit polls starting making the news websites. Through updates emailed from Polie friends back in the states, news of the election trickled in. Our Comms staff here got updates from McMurdo over the HF radio which we used to update our own electoral map tracking results on our station scroller.

By the time Obama was called the winner by nearly all of the news sources, a large crowd was celebrating in the Galley. The celebration was filled with relief that he won and hope that we'll get our country back on the right track. We also had news that the weather forecast was looking good for both South Pole and McMurdo and that chances were very good we would be getting flights in the next day.

My last night here was a mixture of excitement, happiness and a little bit of melancholy. I've spent the majority of the past 6 years living and working in Antarctica. Life here has been a bizarre version of reality that seems so natural now and returning to the "real" world might take some adjustment.

I'm ready for it. I'm ready to face living back in the states again now that the future seems more hopeful. I'm ready to see my beloved family again and to be home for Christmas for the first time in a while. I'm ready to settle down in a home and to no longer call my self "homeless". Of course I've never really been homeless in the unfortunate way that thousands of people are struggling to overcome. I've been more of a globe-trotting gypsy and migrant worker by choice, blessed with generous opportunities and it's been a great adventurous lifestyle for me.

So what will happen to Homeless Heidi the blog now that Heidi the person is getting married and settling down in one spot? I don't know yet but I'll continue to do a few updates on the road so that Mom and Dad won't worry about me and I'll post some pictures from places that are much, much warmer than here.

It's been a fun journey and thanks to all of you who have been following the adventures. The plane is landing in one hour and I'll soon start the gradual migration north for the last time.

The 2008 Winterover Crew photo taken at Spoolhenge just before sunrise.

Southern support

2008-11-03T05:48:00.005+13:00

Even though we're thousands of miles away from home, some of us are still trying to make a difference and to support our candidate for president.

We posed yesterday at the ceremonial pole and will send the photo to the Obama campaign via various channels. I'm holding the Arizonans for Obama sign and Michael is to my left. My absentee ballot came in on the first Basler and went out on the second one so hopefully it will make its way to AZ to be counted.

We're still scheduled to leave South Pole on what will be election day back in the states, although it will be Nov 5 here. We've only had the 2 Basler flights here so far and we're behind already on getting new folks in and old folks out. Hard to say what the weather is going to be doing in 2 days and if we'll get those LC-130s in here as planned. We'll see if we learn about the election results in McMurdo or here.

A South Pole welcome

2008-10-27T06:09:00.009+13:00

After another day of weather delay, the Basler finally made it here to South Pole carrying 17 new people. We've changed the appearance of the main entrance, Destination Alpha, just a tad:

Little did anyone know that during the winter we were taken over by pirates who made an unfortunate Polie walk the plank from the Observation Deck.

Even worse, they put the station up for sale and given the state of the housing market, it's probably now worth less than what the taxpayers paid for it.

The only person who can save the tired meteorologists who have been doing hourly weather observations around the clock is their replacement, Tim. He wintered last year and is back for more fun.

We're waiting for the McMurdo CSI team to come in to work this crime scene. Our scroller is now listing the population as "56 wankers, 17 hypoxic avengers and me". And it should grow again today as the second flight is scheduled for this morning.

The first landing

2008-10-25T06:14:00.007+13:00

The Basler finally showed up yesterday morning.

Only 3 days behind schedule, it flew from the British station Rothera on the Antarctic peninsula and landed here around 8am. Because the station generator exhaust was blowing right over the skiway, we couldn't see the plane until it was nearly parked.

It stayed only long enough to take on 600 gallons of fuel, then took off again for McMurdo. It was a strange sight to see a plane on the ground and strange new people in black walking around.

The Canadian crew from Kenn Borek brought us gifts from Chile:

We snacked on fresh apple and orange slices at lunch and Michael grilled this fresh pineapple to serve with the sirloin steaks and BBQ chicken for dinner.

A few hours later, the Twin Otter KBG arrived and its crew has spent the night with us. Again, it was a little freaky to see new people eating in the galley.

What the heck, I just found out I can't get on the plane! Oh well, the Basler is scheduled to return here today with a load of people and flu shots. Hopefully the newcomers won't be shedding germs that will surely take advantage of our sluggish immune systems. Last year, I came down with three colds within the first month of getting out of here. We may not have fresh food during the winter but on the flip side, we don't get sick much either.

Fly by

2008-10-24T06:13:00.002+13:00

Three days ago we were expecting to have our first plane, the Basler, land here but the weather at Rothera had other plans for it. We did however see a plane yesterday:

The FAA flew a Challenger jet from McMurdo to here to inspect our skiway, which has been shifted to start further down and ends just past the station now.

They made four low passes along the skiway and we all came out of the station to gawk at the strange sight of an aircraft in the air. The South Pole Telescope out in the Dark Sector is in the background.

Various photographers snapped these photos, including this one with the end of the station and the ceremonial pole.

Even though our skiway is nicely groomed and ready for something to land on it, the Challenger only flew by. It couldn't land here on wheels anyway. But we are expecting more company this morning - the Kenn Borek aircraft are en route now and the Basler will be landing in an hour. One Twin Otter is following it and the crew will spend the night here so tonight our population will be 63. And tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, the Basler will return with 15 summer people and from then on, the population will just keep growing. Yikes, time to get out of here!

Last day to ourselves?

2008-10-22T11:30:00.002+13:00

We're just about ready for company.

Monday we had our big station-wide cleanup day in order to do some final spruce ups for the new folks. I was on a team that worked on getting Summer Camp ready. It's a collection of Jamesways, Korean War era huts that we use as berthing for the summer. The Jamesways had to be cleaned with new linens put on the beds.

We also cleaned up the head module which is totally covered with a snow drift on the backside.

Here's Mandi going into Altie Meadows to check on stuff in there.

We were expecting the Basler and one Twin Otter to come through here yesterday on their way from South America to McMurdo but weather has delayed them by a couple of days. They both just made it this morning to Rothera Station, the British station on the Antarctic peninsula and they're now planning to take off again tonight to arrive here tomorrow morning. If all goes well, they will be the first planes we've seen since mid-February. Then the Basler would return here on Friday with the first passengers from McMurdo and our long isolation will be over. Stay tuned...

Hibernation

2008-10-16T05:46:00.004+13:00

Ahhh, the signs of springtime around this place...we don't have budding trees or the sweet sound of songbirds in the morning but we do have snow falling off of buried heavy equipment as the sun starts to hit them.

Make no mistake, the sun is not making it toasty warm yet and we're not wearing shorts outside . It was -72 degrees F when I took these pictures yesterday, but it is bright and beautiful outside and you can just about see forever.

The heavy equipment and vehicles have to be winterized before they're stored outside. All fluids are drained and for the shuttle van, the tires are removed too.

The long hibernation is nearly over for us and the equipment. We're still digging out snow, cleaning up the station and getting outlying buildings ready for occupation. The Basler and a Twin Otter will transit through here in 5 days on their way from South America to McMurdo Station. Then the Basler is scheduled to return in a week with the first new people that we'll see since February.

Shoveling is good for you

2008-10-12T06:12:00.004+13:00

My favorite graffiti scribbling on station is inside the Hypertats, where someone scrawled with a sharpie on one of the plywood walls, “Shoveling is good for you”.

The Hypertats is a series of four berthing modules out in Summer Camp, each named after a Flintstone - Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty. We used to have to dig them completely out at the end of each winter but now that they’re no longer being used, they just get more buried by snow drifts.

Shoveling is a constant activity at South Pole. The amount of snow falling as precipitation can be measured in a mere few inches but the amount accumulating as snow blown in from elsewhere is measured in feet. With our prevailing winds blowing in from grid north, snow can travel for hundreds of miles across the Antarctic plateau before it hits our buildings and settles down to create our drifts.

In the summertime, there’s an army of General Assistants, or GA’s, who tackle snow shoveling all over the station. Over the winter, we let most things drift over except for doorways and other things that we have to access. Then before station opening, we unleash our own small army of shovelers (us) to uncover the buildings that will be used during the summer.

The other day I helped out Katie C. dig out these milvans where some construction supplies are kept. Yes, that’s a metal Christmas tree on top on one. It was a nice sunny day in the -70s and we had fun shoveling and gossiping as we girls like to do.

And yesterday we did more shoveling, this time digging out the construction Jamesways. Kiwi Paul and Katie worked on this one:

and I started on this one:

It got a bit more blustery as we worked and my hand warmers didn’t last the hour and a half that I was out there but Paul and Katie got their Jamesway doorway all dug out.

There’s plenty more shoveling to do around here, as well as other activities to get the station ready for our first plane in less than 2 weeks. Hopefully these winds won’t blow all of shoveled snow back and obliterate our hard work!

Ozone hole - it's for real

2008-10-02T07:27:00.005+13:00

Neutrinos and cosmic microwave background radiation aren’t the only things being studied down here at the South Pole.

The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) folks get pretty busy this time of winter collecting data to evaluate the ozone hole on top of us. Ozone has been getting depleted from the stratosphere every year for the past few decades, forming an ozone-less hole over Antarctica. Man-made CFCs make their way up there where chlorine atoms eventually destroy the ozone molecules as the sun’s light starts hitting the stratosphere. The Antarctic wind vortex prevents new ozone from moving in and in that area of our atmosphere, the ozone level goes down to zero, allowing harmful UV rays from the sun to reach the earth’s surface.

Ozone levels are studied throughout the world but nowhere on earth are the levels considered so important to watch closely as down here.

Carpenters Andy holding the balloon as Travis watches

How do they do it? A big plastic balloon is used to lift a little disposable instrument as high as 30km into the sky.

The instrument has an intake tube that brings in the surrounding air and measures the ozone molecules as they cause a change in current across a cell and the data is transmitted back to a computer through a radio sonde. The signals are turned into data which measures the ozone in partial pressure. The levels are plotted versus altitude and results in a graph that looks like this:

The blue line shows the baseline ozone at a nice healthy level in August. The red line is what’s going now…zero ozone.

The balloons are being launched every other day right now as the ozone up there is currently bottoming out. The majority of the ozone destruction is taking place between 12 and 23 km above us. The level will eventually rise again back to baseline levels as the vortex eases off and allows more atmospheric particles to circulate into the area of the hole. The whole process repeats every year and will continue to do so until the CFCs up there degrade, which may take decades more.

It was a gorgeous morning for being outside. A crisp -82F temp reminds us that it's not quite spring although the sun is on its way up into the sky. In just 3 weeks the first scheduled Basler plane is due to arrive here with new faces and that will truly mark the end of the winter for us.

New old glory

2008-09-24T06:17:00.006+12:00

The American flag flies proudly at the geographic South Pole. After being constantly whipped by the frozen Antarctic winds over the winter, the old tattered flag is going into retirement.

This one was put up on January 1 of this year and flew the entire winter. Per tradition, it's now being replaced by a new one for the summer. Katie invited members of our crew who haved served in the US military to take part in the changing of the guard. The sun is barely visible in the background as blustery winds were blowing snow all over the place.

Todd (Air Force) and Jared (Army) started the folding of the old flag.
Chris (Marines) helped out too and it was a little challenging for them wearing heavy gloves in the -72F temps. With the windchill factor around -117F, we were all hoping for a quick ceremony.

The new flag is going on to the pole now. Andy and Sue (both Air Force) also participated. There's a Scott tent in the background that was erected a couple of weeks ago. People have been spending the night camping out in it, more for the novelty of being able to say that you did it than because it's really any fun sleeping outside in these temps.

The new flag will fly next to the pole marker and sign for the summer and a lucky winterover crew member will win the old flag in a raffle. I already won the Japanese flag that flew over the ceremonial pole so I'm happy to already have a special memento from this winter.

Morning

2008-09-22T06:55:00.002+12:00

Our horizon cleared up enough last night to see this:

The camera exposure makes everything else look dark but this photo shows the sun's image the best. This is undoubtedly a refracted image because at this point, only the top of the sun should be physically just peeking over the horizon. The atmosphere bends the light and projects it higher than it really is, creating an optical illusion of the orb. We still count it as seeing the sun.

A group of us hung out in the Galley last night enjoying a tenderloin appetizer, cheese and wine and just watched the sun slowly make its way around along the horizon towards ARO.

Thus the long night of 2008 officially ends.

Celebrating the return of the sun

2008-09-21T06:48:00.006+12:00

We still haven't seen the sun yet but that didn't stop us from using its return as an excuse to throw a big party.

We had our last traditional formal dinner, the Sunrise Dinner, on Friday. It was the last time to bring out the table linens this winter and decorate the Galley with lights and crepe paper suns. As you can see through the windows, it's finally light again outside and the window coverings are back in storage until next year.

We raised $450 in donations from the crew to buy wine for the meal. Michael tried a new concept this time for the feast - a family-style Thanksgiving meal. He wanted everyone sitting around a huge table around which the plates of food would be passed, just like a family holiday.

I don't think my family has ever feasted quite like this. Michael and his crew prepared 25 different dishes, from starters featuring tenderloin, salmon and shrimp, to two kinds of homemade rolls, 4 different types of stuffing, 2 kinds of potatoes, 3 different gravies, various veggie sides, ham, cajun pulled pork and 6 perfectly seasoned and cooked, juicy turkeys. Of course, Deb made the most beautiful pumpkin and apple pies for dessert.

Lead mechanic Jack did the ceremonial turkey carving which signaled the start of the meal.

And then the dishes just kept coming out of the kitchen every few minutes. I did a poor job of pacing myself through the meal and ended up with a giant mound of food on my plate by the time all the dishes passed by. I polished off everything - I may not be that big but pound for pound, I can pack away an atonishing amount of food.

We had 50 out of our crew of 60 show up for the dinner. A few here hate the rest of us too much to sit down and eat with everyone else but that's what happens after being cooped up together for nearly 8 months now. We all had a great meal and kicked off a much-needed two day weekend.

The sun should theoretically be visible anytime now. If it weren't so overcast out at the moment, we might be able to see refracted rays peeking over the horizon before the actual globe rises high enough to see it directly. Just as we missed hitting -100F this winter (-99.9F was the closest), we might also miss seeing the sun's initial slow and happy reappearance. That's OK, it just means that we're that much closer to being out of here and sitting on a beach in Fiji...

One more week

2008-09-15T06:45:00.002+12:00

This was the view yesterday outside my berthing wing in B1 looking towards Summer Camp:

The sun is coming back...it really is! In just one more week we'll begin the 6 month long stretch of full on full time solar rays. The night is almost over.

Dinner these days

2008-09-13T07:39:00.004+12:00

Last night, in celebration of Leah's birthday and in "honor of toasty cooks, past and present", Michael served this:

The ramen is to commemorate a legendary night a few years ago when two feuding cooks couldn't get along enough to produce a dinner so the station manager threw a bunch of instant ramen soups together and served it to the crew. I wasn't there that year but the story is indeed a legend. The burnt toast is to symbolize how we all feel right about now...toasty and burned out. And the cooks always joke about being so toasty, everyone is just going to be served cold cereal for dinner so tonight's selection features frosted flakes.

At least milk was provided to go with the cereal. Actually right next to the ramen, cereal and burnt toast were grilled steaks and lobster tails so no one was actually deprived of the traditional Friday dinner of surf and turf.

But people actually ate it! Stacy sprinkled the frosted flakes on the ramen and mopped it up with burnt toast. OK, it was his second symbolic course after his steak and lobster but his gesture was saluted.

Michael will make it up to us tonight by more of his homemade Chicago-style pizza...mmmm!

By the way, he has recently updated his website Cooking South with lots of photos...check it out!

It's coming

2008-09-10T08:35:00.003+12:00

This is what the horizon looked like all day yesterday:

It looked like the sky was on fire. This photo was taken from the Galley window overlooking the Dome, which you can't qute see but it's in the dark half. Only 11 more days until sunrise...

The rest of the weekend

2008-09-09T06:48:00.006+12:00

Last weekend part 2:

After the Art Festival, our greenhouse tech Terry held a Farmer's Market open house. The official name for the greenhouse is the Food Growth Chamber and as I've mentioned before, it's a project that was designed by my alma mater University of Arizona.

Kiwi Paul not doing a good job of impressing Katie

Terry made some delicious salads, spreads and dips to go with greens that we were able to pick ourselves from the FGC. The biggest hit was some carmel corn that tasted just like Cracker Jacks.

There was a mojito bar set up in front of Polemart, which is right next door to the greenhouse. We found a good use for some of the fresh mint that is coming out of our ears now.

Everyone enjoyed grazing and trying some really peppery mustard leaves.

We have plenty of bok choy that we put in salads and the cooks use it up for veggie sides.

Swiss chard and some long leaf lettuce.

We got locked inside briefly when Deb and Mandi put a broom handle and a ski through the door handles but we certainly would not have starved in there.

And we had a putt putt golf course set up in the A3 hallway.

There were six holes including the BioMed Bunker that was in front of Medical.
Michael is about to tee off on the second hole. It was a par 2 and the corner made it too difficult to get a hole in one.

This one required another person to operate the ferris wheel. You have to time it right to get the ball to go into one of the baskets as the wheel revolves.
Here's a close up of the wheel. There's a vise grip for the crank handle.

I didn't get any photos of the open mic night but it was loads of fun - great music, corny comedy acts, bad jokes and some late night blues karaoke that happened long after I went off to bed.

The sun is coming back! It's light enough outside and it looks like a nice early dawn. When it's clear on the horizon, there's a wonderful orange glow, our assurance that the sun is indeed rising slowly. In just under two weeks we'll finally get to see the sun itself and squint like moles in the brightness. After setting a record warm temperature last week of -28.7F (-33.7C) due to a warm storm that moved in, we're back down to normal now at -78F. It will still be winter cold for a while longer. We're going to take our official winter crew picture outside this afternoon so you'll be seeing that in a post soon.

Art Fest

2008-09-01T08:08:00.014+12:00

We kicked off our monthly two day weekend with an art show, a farmer's market and an open mike night.

IT Nate's posters for the events this weekend

Who knew we had so much artistic talant on station? Calee was the organizer of the first event, where the Galley was turned into an art gallery with displays of the abundant creativity of our crew.

Deb, Todd and Michael checking out the thousand of tiny photos within

One of the centerpieces was this work by IT Nathan. He took a photo of Jon O outside and used a program to reconstruct it with thousands of little photos, all of us from this winter. It's a great homage to the crew and fun times of Winter 08 and it's a beautiful work of art.

One of our meteorologists, Lance, turned scrap copper wire into a forest of bonsai trees.

Greenhouse tech Terry had her handmade jewelry and notecards tastefully displayed.
Artistic talent came in many forms - our mechanic Jack had a booth set up for giving dream interpretations and fortune telling.

Stacy the painter's hobby is making clocks from recycled objects. The window display is Deb's painting of a Martian space ship zapping penguins.

Here's Stacy again, getting his head painted by Mandi who was doing face painting and tattoos.
Our resident brew master IT Mike had a sampling of three of his homemade craft beers. My Michael is trying the South Pole Pale Ale which was fresh and delightful, unlike the more than two year old beer we sell in Polemart.

This last art installation was the work of our power plant guy and resident juggler/punster Will. So these are plastic ants...and it's art...and the piece says "ica". I had to have it explained to me. I'll work on putting up some more photos of the rest of the weekend fun soon. Today, it's my turn in the dishpit so it's 9 fun hours of washing dishes but I get to work near my favorite person on station!

I know you're wondering

2008-08-27T06:48:00.000+12:00

Where does our waste go? All of the regular waste like paper, plastic, glass, food, etc gets sorted into 20 different specific categories in the station, then dumped into the various triwall boxes outside. Everything will eventually get shipped back to the US for processing as recyclable material or put into a landfill. In the 2005-2006 season, 62% of the waste shipped back was indeed recycled.

Our sewage waste however stays here. We pump all of that stuff into the "Rodwell", a huge cavern in the ice shelf from which we've melted the ice and used it as our water supply. We're using the original Rodwell, after it lived out its normal life as our water supply and now our sewage gets pumped into the hole that's over 500 feet into the ice.

As Station Manager, Katie has the dubious honor of measuring the level of the sewer outfall each
week.

She has a special pair of mittens just for the occasion too.
To get to the outfall, you have to go into the ice tunnels which are bored into the ice under and around the station and seem to go on for literally miles. It's a constant -57 degrees F and in the summertime, it seems frickin' cold in there, but during the winter, especially after we were out in -117 degree windchill, it seemed warm and pleasant.

Here's the opening to the sewer outfall. Lots of crystals and icicles form here from the moisture condensing out of the opening. It also forms lots of snow on the floor which has to be regularly shoveled out and removed. We're told that the ice that forms here is just water that condenses out from the waste stew and although it looks nice and white and fluffy and doesn't stink, I certainly wouldn't try to lick it.

Katie has the measuring tape wheel and has just let the weighted end start the long downward journey. It pays out close to 300 feet before coming to a stop on something kind of solid. Then she reels it back in, being careful not to let anything splash back on her. Sometimes the Station Manager job is not all glamour.

The ice tunnels have some of the coolest (no pun intended) crystals and icicles I've ever seen and everything is coated in a fragile fluffy frost.

There are no sewer rats down here but there is a dried up sturgeon somewhere and some bizarre little shrines with prayer candles and strings of popcorn. We didn't visit them on this trip but maybe I'll have to return and leave my own personal token of some sort since I won't be back this way for quite a while. Any suggestions?

Price of gas at the Polar Pump

2008-08-23T12:59:00.000+12:00

We live in a surreal world down here where we don’t have to worry about paying for rent or utilities here, driving to work or gassing up the car. Gas prices have skyrocketed since we’ve been down here. The last time I filled up a tank, I think I paid something like $2.60 a gallon. It was a while ago. Actually I’ve been working down here for so long, I remember being outraged when I read that gas was going over $2 a gallon!

While we don’t have cars to gas up down here (except for a shuttle van during the summer), we do have heavy vehicles that require fuel and of course all of our power comes from generators running on gas. Pretty much everything uses AN8, a high grade jet fuel that we offload from the LC-130s then store in tanks. We typically use about 9000 gallons of fuel each week.

Emergency fuel tanks with snow drifts

Yesterday, Calee and I joined our Station Manager Katie for a trip to the edge of the world, or where the emergency fuel tanks reside. We have seven 5000 gallon tanks and four 10,000 gallon tanks stored about ¾ mile from station. These are in addition to our main storage of forty-five 10,000 gallon tanks in our Fuel Arch and another 5000 gallon tank just outside of the B1 wing.

Windward side of the 5000 gallon tanks

The amount of fuel in the tanks has to be estimated by a dipstick measurement every month. This is to get a reading on our usage and also to assure that the emergency tanks haven’t sprung leaks or fuel-hungry terrorists haven’t stolen our precious gas.

Katie on top of the tank

I’m kidding about the last part but indeed our fuel is a valuable commodity. It’s estimated that the cost to bring our existing fuel on station works out to about $30 per gallon. That’s the cost of buying it, shipping it on a tanker to McMurdo then flying it here on an LC-130 and pumping it out of their tanks into our storage tanks. Now that the cost of fuel has soared out of control in the past few months, it’s now estimated that it will cost more than $50 per gallon to bring in more fuel for the upcoming season.

Katie measuring the fuel levels

Photo by Calee

No wonder why the Antarctic Program is having budget cuts everywhere, from issuing only 2 pairs of socks to each crew member to no longer necessarily flying us all the way back home when we're done with our contracts. There will be a lot of changes in the upcoming season because fuel costs have eaten up budgets...smaller crews, shorter summer seasons and longer winter seasons, fewer flights. We'll be lucky if we get all of the medications and supplies that we've ordered for the next crew.

As much as I'm looking forward to living in the "real" world again, I'm apprehensive about just how much more expensive everything is going to be since the last time I had to buy milk or pay an electric bill. We haven't had any fresh fruit since May but I'm afraid that I won't be able to afford to buy it now from all of the news that I'm reading. And as far as gassing up the car (that I still have to buy when I get back), maybe I'll be lucky enough to find a job within biking distance of wherever we live.

Counting it down

2008-08-17T08:08:00.004+12:00

I usually make it a rule to not count days around here but imagine this: since Feb 14, you have worked 151 days, had only 33 days off on weekends lasting exactly 1 day (occasionally 2 days), had no extra days off for federal holidays, had no vacation days or paid time off. The 1 day weekends that you have had, you've had to spend at your workplace - you don't get to take a road trip, no visits to the beach or mountains, no movies at the mall or walks in the park. You've eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same restaurant for months on end, although the food is quite good and the cooks can do amazing things with only frozen food.

It's been 26 weeks since station closing and right about now, people are getting sick of being here. We're all a bit "toasty"...irritable, cranky, sleep-deprived, fatigued, increasingly anti-social. It's Angry August at the South Pole. No one has completely gone off the deep end and there are no front-runners for passengers on the "plane of shame", or someone sent out on the very first flight, usually for hushed up reasons like they've gone bonkers and can't hack it here anymore.

But still there are plenty of people who do want to get out of here as soon as possible. After much uncertainty in station opening planning, we're being told now that the latest plan is to have the Basler, a smaller twin engine plane seating 18 people, start flying missions here on Oct 23 to bring in the new crew. Then the first LC-130 is due to arrive Nov 5 and that's when we can start flying out of here. That's later than previous seasons when we're had 130s here in late Oct but better than the recently talked about plan of delaying them until Nov 12. People were very grumpy over the idea of being stuck here until mid-November.

So that's about 81 days, weather permitting, that we have left to go here for our winter experience. We're in astronomical twilight right now where the sun is less than 18 degrees below our horizon. We can now see a very faint but unmistakable pink glow on the horizon, although it's still dark as night out. In three days, we'll enter nautical twilight and the sun will be only 12 degrees below the horizon. This morning we saw a partial luner eclipse and we'll still seeing vivid aurora displays but those will gradually dimish as the night sky gives way to the light.

And another number...I've now run 913 miles on the treadmill and elliptical machine since February as part of the Run to McMurdo event that I hold each winter. It's just a fun way to track your workouts and now that I've made it to McMurdo, I'm now somewhere over the Ross Sea heading to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Michael was just accepted into the Culinary Institute of America last week. He's going to be in the Advanced Career Experience course, a special program for experienced chefs that accepts only 18 students per year. We'll be moving to Hyde Park, NY in January and are looking forward to life on the East Coast and being so close to New York City. I'll start looking for PA jobs in the Hudson River Valley area soon. Boy, it's been a while since I've had to look for a job.

We still have a ways to go this winter and if people can just hold it together for a few more months, we'll soon be reliving the memories in Christchurch from the outdoor patio at Dux de Lux over pitchers of Blue Duck Amber.

The monthly drill

2008-07-31T10:24:00.000+12:00

Every month we are required to hold an emergency response drill for training the fire and trauma teams. There are many challenges down here to dealing with emergencies. First of all, none of us are professional fire fighters or paramedics. Some get some training in pre-deployment sessions held in Colorado but for most of us, it's all on-site and on the job training.

We're also faced with unique environmental challenges - how often do emergency responders back home have to deal with rescuing a victim in -80F temps in the dark? SCBA gear freezes stiff, we can't take our AEDs outside, O2 tubing becomes brittle and breaks if a patient requires oxygen outside.

And the station design challenges here are just as ideosyncratic. Our exercises yesterday focused on confined space rescues. We were divided into two groups and one was involved in rescuing someone from one of the ice tunnels, narrow corridors carved into the ice for water and sewer pipes. And the exercise that I took part in had a scenario of rescuing someone from the subfloor of the station, an unpleasant but likely situation that could certainly happen.

We met in the gym for a outline of the plan and discussion of the safety aspects of the extraction.

Our victim, Nathan the IT guru, was already conveniently strapped to a backboard and the fire and trauma team members just had to negotiate the obstacles in the cramped space.

They had to organize into teams to lift the board with victim and manuever around the crawl space. There were some awkward tight spots where the victim was handed off to another set of team members.

It's not easy carrying a guy while on your knees ducking to avoid hitting your head on metal beams. And it's a bit dusty and cold down there too - we were all covered in old drywall dust.

The end is in sight for Nathan as he's being prepared to be lifted up out the hatch in the floor of the music room.

It was a good exercise to get us familiar with the bowels of our station and the difficulties we might have if faced with an emergency down there. And it was a nice change from having a fire to put out and an injured hypothermic patient to load up in a Dr. Down bag and a sled.