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.

Hubble vs Pole

2008-07-22T17:01:00.001+12:00

My blog entries have been a bit sporadic lately. Most of that can be blamed on a lack of inspiration as the doldrums of winter take hold of everyone here. We’re all still doing fairly well down here although some “toastiness” is becoming apparent in many as tempers flair, little matters blow up into big deals, more division in the crew arises.

Now I have another good reason for my lack of writing…I can blame NASA.

We’ve just been informed that we will have virtually no internet connectivity for 2 days coming up on July 25-26. Seems that our TDRS satellite is being commandeered by NASA to support some space shuttle going up to fix the Hubble telescope. I guess that wouldn’t be so bad normally but last week we also lost our ability to connect to our other satellites, Marisat and GOES, when our dish broke. At first it was just the elevation motor, for which we have a replacement, but now the elevation jack screw broke (just like it did last year) and that problem is proving harder to fix.

So instead of having about 11 hours of satellite connectivity a day, through which we get our internet access, phone connections to the outside world and up/downloading of science and other data, we’re down to about 6 hours a day at the moment using just the TDRS satellite. And now later this week, we’re not even going to have TDRS.

I know this station survived for a long time before “the internets” and communication to the world used to be through short wave radio. But now we’re all accustomed to checking our Yahoo accounts, catching up on the latest news, researching vacation destinations that we’ll be heading to in a few months and calling home for a few precious hours each day. People plan their breaks and lunch times around the satellite schedule.

I guess this is yet another way in which we are supporting science. I can accept that the Hubble telescope repair is more important than my need to Facebook. It’s a good thing that we’re scheduled to get the satellite back for our own use on a Sunday because I doubt any work would get done after 2 days of internet deprivation.

The truth is out there

2008-07-05T16:32:00.005+12:00

Not that I know everything about this place that there is to know, but this old web article from 2006 was news to me:

South Pole Telescope (SPT) — America’s New Planet X Tracker (from yowusa.com)

"America is now spending huge sums to deploy the massive The South Pole Telescope (SPT) in Antarctica. The final installation will be the size of a mini-mall and will require a massive C-130 airlift effort to transport pre-assembled modules and a large staff to the most desolate, inhospitable and inaccessible region of the world. Why? Because Planet X / Nibiru was first sighted in 1983 and this discovery spurred the USA to build the SPT — humanity's new Planet X tracker."

Someone printed this article and posted it on the Galley wall where we used to have a joke of the day posted until someone complained that they were a little too offensive. Now we have this joke of an article that shows the entire station being the South Pole Telescope which is not looking at cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang like we always thought, but is actually seeking out Planet X.

"Now we have the corroboration we've lacked for years, The South Pole Telescope (SPT). Far more powerful capable and survivable than the 1983 IRAS spacecraft and Hubble Space Telescope put together, this manned observatory will soon begin tracking Planet X / Nibiru from the pristine skies of Antarctica."

So the guys "manning" the Planet X observatory this winter are Dana who is here for his 4th winter and is one of the best drummers Antarctica has ever seen, and Keith who has a cute Canadian accent and hosted a Canada Day celebration last week with Crown Royal drinks and face painting of maple leafs on cheeks and foreheads. They also are skilled photographers and if you want to see some amazing outdoor shots of auroras and such, please check out their websites.

I don't think, however, that you will be reading much about the latest research on Planet X/Nibiru from the South Pole Telescope but some of us were thinking that the premise would make for a great SPIFF/WHIFF film, our versions of film festivals usually featuring hilarious homemade films about life down here. I'm sure one of us can act the part of a Planet X alien.

It's official

2008-06-28T17:07:00.002+12:00

I usually don't put too much really personal stuff on my blog but I do have to share this news with family, friends and total strangers.

This picture has been on our scroller for the past few days:

Yes, Michael and I are officially engaged! He proposed on June 25 as we took a moonlit stroll around the station. For anyone who knows Michael, for him to want to go outside here for a walk should be the first sign that something unusual is up. But he said that he wanted to get away from the station and enjoy the moon so we suited up in our ECW and headed out. Even though the temperature was -90F at the time, it was indeed a nice afternoon with soft waning moonlight and a faint aurora overhead.

We got to the geographic pole and that's when he got on his knee and popped the question. He even had a symbolic ring that our friend Paul, a plumber/maintenance specialist, made for us out of a section of copper pipe. Of course we had to take off our gloves and mittens to get the ring on, which led to some mild frostnip on the fingertips, but how often do you get a marriage proposal at the actual geographic South Pole?

Then he led me to the Cargo office where Nate had helped him decorate it with Christmas lights, had a video of a roaring fireplace playing on the TV and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice which had frozen solid on the way out there. We toasted and tried to make a call home to family to tell them the news but the satellite was squirrelly and we couldn't get a line out. So we headed back to the station for dinner and to my surprise, just about everyone there already knew the news. And soon, our Comms tech Shaun had the above message on the scroller to congratulate us.

So now the word is out and although we're enjoying the winter here, we're now especially looking forward to getting off the ice and starting a new life together. South Pole will always be a special place to me but now it's even more special since this is where I've met the love of my life and it's only perfectly fitting that we got engaged right at the pole marker for 90 degrees South.

Mid-Winter

2008-06-21T13:24:00.008+12:00

We've reached the halfway point of winter.

Mid-Winter's Day is the biggest holiday for all Antarctic stations with crews wintering over on this continent. The winter solstice marks the farthest that the sun is going get away from us and from now on, it's all downhill from here. We sent out our official greeting card plus an invitation to join us for dinner, as if anyone could drop by, but it's a tradition for many of the stations to extend jocular invitations to fellow Antarcticans or a toast in their absence.

Calee was the photographer for our group photo and although it looks like we have daylight, honestly it's pitchblack dark out. She used a 15 second exposure which caught enough moonlight so that you can see us in the dark. I'm the shortest one standing in a red parka.

Our menu reflected the talents of our fabulous chefs and Deb, Chris and Sous Chef Michael planned out an internationally themed feast featuring ingredients and recipes from around the world.

The main entree was a trio of duck, salmon and tenderloin, all paired with unique sauces and starches like homemade spaetzle. The half eaten roll in the corner is homemade kumara bread, a recipe from a Kiwi show that we're watching, Hunger for the Wild, and we used the last of our fresh kumara (like sweet potatoes) from New Zealand in the bread.

I couldn't finish everything in the entree but I ate my entire dessert, a mint creme filled chocolate cake covered with rich ganache. It was Michael's personal creation and if he ever opens up his own restaurant, I'm sure this will be a signature dessert.

This will be our last Mid-Winter celebration. After this season it will be time to move on to something different and for now, Michael and I are going to enjoy the rest of our time here at South Pole, look forward to the return of the sun in a few months and think about what will come next in life...

A whole lot of nothing going on

2008-06-12T14:43:00.005+12:00

I recently received a copy of this Reuters news article from Rediron, an Antarctic veteran from the glory days of Operation Deep Freeze station construction in the 1950s:

Antarctic base gets condom haul before winter
16,500 prophylactics arrive for 125 scientists, staff before darkness sets in

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported Monday.

Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them. The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter.

"Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable," Henriksen told the Southland Times newspaper. About 125 scientists and staff are stationed at McMurdo base, the largest community in Antarctica, during the winter months when there is constant darkness.

The first sunrise will occur on Aug. 20 and McMurdo's population will start to increase again in September when supply flights resume, peaking at more than 1,000 during the summer period.

News from Antarctica always seems to be popular but making non-news into even more sensationalistic headlines is just too irresistable for the media. Knowing Bill, who was the South Pole Winter Site Manager for my winters in 2003 and 2005, he probably included some bad jokes and sarcastic remarks about the fact that the reporter was trying to turn this into a news story, but it seems that the only pieces of information that caught on were "16,500 condoms" and "125 scientists and staff". The reader's own imagination serves to fill in the titillating details from juxtaposition.

They're almost making it sound like it was a desperate last minute emergency supply flight for a pallet of condoms for the 125 crew members who must have nothing else to do for the winter except screw around. Why didn't they report that there was a supply of Southern Hemisphere flu vaccine on that last flight that will be used to innoculate the winter crew just before the first flight of the summer season which is like a plague ship to the New World? What about reporting about the precious fresh food flown in that will be the last fresh stuff that the crew will see for months? Surely there were some interesting scientific instruments or construction supplies that just made it onto the continent in time for the winter? No, no one will care about that but 16,500 condoms...that's news!

The article also caught the attention of the government agency overseeing the stations and apparently it wasn't aware that our official Standard Operating Procedure for each station states that Medical will provide some OTC items to the community such as ibuprofen, cough drops and condoms. I was told an alarm was raised that we are wasting our precious budget (which is being cut by 10% this year) by providing FREE condoms to everyone and if you do the math suggested by the headline, that's 132 condoms per person. By the way, our supply at South Pole is 2592 condoms which comes out to only 43.2 condoms per person for the winter. We're getting gypped here.

Of course, it should be emphasized that these large numbers of supplies are meant to last a population that fluctuates to more than 1000 at McMurdo for more than a year and it's probably expected to last well into the next season.

In case anyone thinks we're just having orgies down here...it's just not the case. We have 48 men and 12 women here for the winter and there's a whole lot less shacking up than you probably think. I stocked the bathrooms with condoms in February and they haven't needed any resupply as far as I can tell.

Now because of this ridiculous article, the idea of charging people for the condoms has been raised because the government agency certainly don't want to be subsidizing the wanton free-for-all sex that must be going on at these hedonistic stations. It's been a part of the Medical budget for years and it makes sense from a public health standpoint that condoms are easily available to the community because some things are just inevitable. This important part of our standard Medical supplies was never an issue before this article came out.

The price for a supply of condoms for an isolated community: a couple of thousand dollars. The price for several unwanted pregnancies because people were too embarassed to buy condoms at Polemart in front of their colleagues and supervisors: priceless.

Memorial Day BBQ

2008-05-28T20:02:00.001+12:00

Once again, the Heavy Shop (garage) hosted a huge BBQ for the station.

This past weekend we had our monthly 2 day weekend but this time, we got Sunday and Monday off so that we could pretend that we were also getting Memorial Day off. And like many others celebrating the holiday, we held a barbeque, although it was far from the summertime activity most people know.

The mechanics, Jack and Jason (above), cleared out the garage bay of the heavy equipment usually parked there, except for the LMC behind the beverage cooler.

The BBQ grill was moved outside instead of having it inside the garage like last year. It got so smokey inside last year, the bay doors had to be opened to ventilate and people turned into icicles as they munched on their burgers. The heat from the grill kept Jack and Jason warm enough even though it was about -80 degrees F outside.

And like last year, the horseshoe pits were brought in from the berms and a tournament went on into the wee hours of the night. Here's UT James showing his excellent follow-through.

Station manager Katie also had some good tosses after putting some dents on the heavy shop floor.

A new feature for this year's BBQ was a station in the adjacent UT shop making frozen martinis with liquid nitrogen, the same stuff that I used to make ice cream and another procedure that I won't mention in the same sentence.

Here's construction manager Kevin mixing away, complete with his safety goggles. He carefully poured the liquid nitrogen into the martini and stirred until a nice slush formed. It was very smooth going down.

This is Chris our cryo tech. He maintains the plant that makes the liquid nitrogen and he made it all possible by supplying plenty of the super cold nitrogen.

Of course we don't have flamethrowers down here but if we did...

And of course this is the South Pole and things freeze a little faster than anywhere else. Even the beer cooler (a sled filled with snow) did too good of a job on Nate's Corona. Another fun-filled weekend has passed and now we get the added bonus that this week will be short...only 5 days long.

Our boy is back

2008-05-24T15:54:00.000+12:00

Frosty Boy is back!

Comms tech Shaun and Galley Materials extraordinaire Leah serving up some vanilla ice cream.

With great sorrow, I wrote about the health problems of our ice cream machine, which we generically call "Frosty Boy" in a previous post "Save Our Frosty Boy". After many frustrating days, our UTs were able to resurrect it to life.

Now we can have our ice cream bar on Saturday nights once again! To the Frosty Boy CEO in Brisbane who left a comment, thanks for your sympathy and I'm sorry that we don't have real Frosty Boy ice cream in our machine but it's truly a well-intentioned compliment that we call our machine "Frosty Boy" and not just the ice cream machine.

And while the boy was down, I made some ice cream the old fashioned way. Well, it's more like an old-fashioned science-aided way of using liquid nitrogen for the freezing. Our cryogenics tech Chris maintains a liquid nitrogen plant out at MAPO and the nitrogen is used to cool down the telescopes optics. He brought over a dewar of LN2 that I used to freeze a plantar wart on a patient and with the leftover nitrogen, I whipped up a batch of ice cream.

Add a little chocolate ice cream mix, add a lot of Kahlua, add a little bit of liquid nitrogen and watch the show. It's a fun and quick way to make it and the nitrogen completely evaporates after doing its freezing business. The Kahlua chocolate ice cream pies turned out really well even though I did a very inelegant job of decorating the tops with whipped cream. Even though Frosty Boy is in good health these days, I might keep making special batches of nitrogen ice cream...mmmm...cookies and cream...or maybe mint chocolate chip...or pecan praline or...

Solar minimum?

2008-05-13T16:26:00.004+12:00

We've been told that this year should be a bust for auroras. The sun goes through a solar cycle with usually predictable variations in activity of solar flares and sunspots. The cycle is about 11 years but can vary give or take a couple of years. At the low point of activity or the solar minimum, there are far fewer sun spots spewing out charged particles towards Earth. These particles collide with oxygen, nitrogen and other atoms in the upper atmosphere, causing the atoms to emit light as they release their briefly borrowed energy. And this is what we see as wonderful, magical aurora shows.

I don't know. So far this winter, the auroras have been really spectacular with some of the largest and most dynamic displays I've seen in the years that I've been spending the night down here. It's a daily occurance and you can usually count on the southern lights getting fired up around 1-2pm or so.

On of the projects here at South Pole is the All-Sky Imager run primarily by Nagoya University. The camera used to be mounted on top of Sky Lab, the orange tower next to the Dome, that used to have the nicest, comfiest lounge on station. Now the camera is operational on top of the Elevated Station and once again showing images of our night sky.

You can see them for yourself at the All-Sky Imager website. It's not updated in real time but you can still see the most recent still images of our auroras and some movie clips as well.

And we received an email from Ethan, one of the science techs running the aurora projects, that SpaceWeather.com provided this news alert:

ERUPTING PROMINENCE: Today, astronomers are monitoring an unusually active prominence on the sun's eastern limb. Even veteran observers are impressed, using words like "amazing" and "jaw-dropping" to describe the activity they have seen. One onlooker described the fountain-like eruptions as "volcanic in appearance." This beautiful activity may herald the approach of a new sunspot--or it may be just a temporary upheaval, here today and gone tomorrow.

I've not attempted to take photos of auroras because that would require me to do something with my point and shoot camera that is more complicated than leaving it on the automatic setting and pointing and shooting. Calee however is a photographic genius who doesn't seem to mind sacrificing her fingertips to the -70 degree F temps and has posted some nice shots on her blog.

So I'm not complaining if this is a solar minimum year because we've had some really incredible light shows so far this winter. I just need to find more excuses to go outside to my ringside seat to the show.

Polestock 2008

2008-05-03T19:38:00.006+12:00

It was almost as psychedelic as the 60s and surely the music was just as good.

Polestock 2008 was the crowing touch to our two day weekend last week following the BF5K in the afternoon. It was a huge event that took weeks of planning, practicing, organizing and constructing.

No detail was missed...security guards Detroit Andy and Josiah frisked everyone at the door with a metal detector, including BFK.

The souvenir stand offered one of a kind hand-made commemorative concert t-shirts made from salvaged clothing from "Skua", or our second-hand exchange named after a carniverous scavenger Antarctic bird.

An open bar was tended by the bottom of the world's finest bar tenders Jason and Kiwi Paul in a mullet wig.

Shaun was in charge of the sound system and lighting.

And the musicians really put on a show. There were five bands and two solo performers playing genres that ranged from original compositions to the iconic 60's tune "Wipeout" to David Bowie to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughan and beyond.

The Retardis in action.

"Dish" and JT3 jamming.

House Mouse Seasonal Affective Disorder Blues Project

There was lots of dancing and jiving going on including a between-set interlude featuring Jonny O and Kiwi Paul gettin' down to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

I really never could have imagined that we would have so much impressive talent down here, not only musical but technical production and artistic design. The organizer of the event, Kevin Torphy, has plans for more shows including a Mid-Winter performance and he's looking for ways to top last weekend's music festival. If it gets any better than this, they'll all have to take the show on the road post-ice.

The 4th Annual BF5K

2008-04-28T17:57:00.002+12:00

We survived the 2 day weekend. For the fourth year in a row, we've had an indoor 5K race, called the BF5K, named after Kevin, whose nickname is BFK or Big F%$&ing Kevin. The course is a lap around the station, upstairs and downstairs, and it takes 18 laps to make 5 kilometers.

There are a couple of twists on the usual 5K event - all of the participants must be in costume and the runners must have sponsors. Instead of pledging a certain amount of money per lap, the sponsors must instead drink a drink of choice every 3 laps. The following photos were taken by me and Weeks.

Kevin was of course the grand judge and along with co-judges Nate and Derek, they came to the event as North America. Derek is half Canadian and had his hockey stick. Kevin is the all American red-blooded conservative so of course he was the US. Nate by default was Mexico but he just happened to have a sombrero chips and salsa bowl so his country was quite fitting. And between the US and Mexico, there was the symbolic border fence of barbed wire.

This year we had full media coverage with color commentary provided by Michael and Philip, who came as Dr. Scotch and his patient. They narrated the entire event in something that sounds like a cross between the Macy's Thanksgiving parade and the Super Bowl. When Michael finishes the podcast, I'll have links to it so that you can hear the action.
We had quite the crowd of runners, sponsors and spectators. Our population was briefly at 62 as not one but two blow up dolls made appearances.

Our trauma team became Team Trauma as we donned scrubs and surgical masks. Deb in her dragon costume opted for a simple surgical gown that would accommodate her wings and tail.

Poor Todd found his legs temporarily amputated above the knees and being the professional carpenter, he built his own rolling cart to get around. His IV bag was filled with something that smelled suspiciously like Bushmills and he evoked Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump as he rolled around bitterly haranguing people who tried to help him. He would have probably collected a couple of dollars in his change cup but folks around here just don't usually carry money around.

We registered our team at the judges table, got our jersey numbers and collected our prizes for participating, a can of beer and a pack of smokes. Don't forget, it's the 2.0 Bar crowd who's sponsoring this event.

Our competition included Team Ice Capades, or Tonya Harding's Revenge. Mandi on the left was Nancy Kerrigan with a knee brace and next to her is Jane's Tonya with a pipe. Robin was a glamour girl skater with scary streaky makeup and Sue was a hockey punk.

Team Maintenance had an elaborate pre-race show that I missed because Team Trauma took a while to get dressed, but they arrived with Tyvek suits and some circus-looking gear.

Then Adit shot out of a cannon and landed on the mattress. They then went on to win the race in the team division, sans suits.

The devilish Katie won the Women's division and she still would have easily won if there was another solo woman running. Her sponsor was Leah who was an "angel" but still devilish.

Weeks took 1st place in the Men's division but since he came in costume as our station leader, Katie Hess, some of us weren't sure if he was in the right division. By the way, Katie looks way better than that.

The best costume went to our Plumber Foreman Detroit Andy, another cross dresser. He ran the course with extra large love handles, a can of Crunchy Cheetos and a cigarette but on the final lap he miraculously shed about 150 pounds and crossed the finish line svelte and ripped. He kept the makeup and wig though.

Bill Spindler ran the entire race as a mad doctor type. Medical themes were popular this year because we probably have the most fun toys and props at our disposal.

And to prove that, as the laps went down, Team Trauma got progressively bruised and bloodied along the way. On one of my laps, I returned with a soft cervical collar. The next one I had a black eye and bloody nose, thanks to mulage makeup that we have for drills.

Andy developed a head wound then ran a lap with a leg brace and crutches. Our team got further traumatized as the race went on as team members emerged with a straight jacket, revealed real casts on arms and then for the final lap, Andy was carried into the Galley on a military litter.

What a fun day it was and the night was even better with Polestock 2008 and the debut of the bands. Photos soon to come.

Ready for the weekend

2008-04-25T16:32:00.005+12:00

We have just completed a grueling stretch of 5 weeks straight without a real weekend. Normally we only have one day off per week, Sunday, but once a month we are treated to TWO whole days off and now it's the eve of our 2 day weekend.

There's a lot in store for us. The 4th Annual BF5K race will be run tomorrow afternoon and I'll post some photos from the indoor 5K race soon. This year, we have an abundance of musical talent on station and tomorrow night five bands will be making their South Pole debut at

Polestock 2008.

While the bands were busy practicing their sets, the halls and doors of the station were plastered with concert flyers, a sound stage was constructed, security staff and roadies hired and backstage passes designed and printed up. Our unofficial historian Bill Spindler released the official media kit for the many news and wire services fighting to cover the huge event.
"Contact the promoter’s office for information regarding performer interview availability and backstage passes."

And the gym is being turned into the South Pole Coliseum.

The sound stage was constructed in pieces and put together this afternoon.

I was on the decorating commitee (OK, it was just me and Calee) and we went for a pseudo-60's theme plus white Christmas lights and mosquito netting...can't tell you how we ended up with a mosquito net down here.

The official USAP/NSF emblem in the gym now has a big smiley face.

I was also in charge of rounding up costumes and wigs for the band members and concert goers.

While Paul and BFK help out with the sound checks, the roadies will work tirelessly into the night preparing for the festival. We'd all camp outside the Coliseum tonight for the best seats if we all weren't participating in the 5K but I'm sure we'll rush the gates as soon as we finish scarfing down the post race pizza. Stay tuned for the weekend reports.

News elsewhere

2008-04-17T17:54:00.002+12:00

This is our new Comms operator in training.
I spent this afternoon doing flight following for the McMurdo "Extended Season" flight, a single C-17 flight from Christchurch to bring in a few late arriving winter crew members and to take out 100 others who stayed beyond the usual station closing day in February. McMurdo's population has now gone from 216 to 122, if I'm doing the math correctly, which will be their official winter population.

We won't see any planes until October but they'll get more C-17 flights in August during "Winfly" where a series of usually 3 flights are scheduled to bring in more people and take out a few. This is the first year that they've done a "reverse Winfly".

Today's flight was of interest to me because it was supposed to bring in Southern Hemisphere flu vaccine which will be stored at McMurdo hospital with the plan of immunizing their winter crew a few weeks before Winfly germs arrive. And when we have our first flight, 60 doses will be sent to us so that we can do the same with our crew. I see on the flight manifest that they also received 14,365 pounds of freshies and 3005 pounds of mail...we're on the last salvagable pieces of fresh fruit but still have plenty of onions and potatoes and such. I just can't imagine that 122 people will be able to eat all of that fresh produce before it goes bad.

Save our Frosty Boy

2008-04-11T16:48:00.004+12:00

It could be a long, hard winter.

One of the luxuries of the Elevated Station is Frosty Boy, our soft serve ice cream machine. It's been a tempermental thing ever since we moved into the new station in 2003 and people either love it (ice cream fans) or hate it (galley crew and maintenance guys, aka UT's).

Frosty Boy was a big step up for us from the old days of the Dome Galley when we didn't have an ice cream machine but had an endless supply of cartons of orange sherbet. Every Saturday night was pizza night with orange sherbet and both of those got old pretty quickly. Now with good old vanilla or chocolate soft serve at your fingertips and an impressive selection of toppings, we've been living the good life.

I'm not sure why we call it Frosty Boy...we use Eskimo Pie mix instead of name brand Frosty Boy mix. McMurdo calls their ice cream machine Frosty Boy too and as much as we'd like to be more original than them, it's still a pretty good name for an ice cream machine in Antarctica. The galley in Mactown locks down their ice cream maker so the only time you can get soft serve is at meal time. Ours is freely accessible anytime of day or night...and maybe that's the problem.

Jon and James using their expertise to try to fix Frosty Boy.

Invariably someone pushes the wrong button and the whole thing freezes up or lets the ice cream mix get too warm. It's always been a maintenance problem since the beginning. As much as we all love our boy, it's a pain in the neck to clean and always makes such a loud, horrible racquet that's hard to hear over it when it kicks on. The freezing elements seemed to not work so well on the left side for the past couple of years, then both sides and now...well, it just doesn't seem hopeful.

"Frosty Boy is in critical condition and in the middle of brain surgery. Please do not spit in his open wounds."

We can easily make ice cream out of liquid nitrogen but there's just something wonderful about having it on tap. We haven't had any major medical problems but if there's one patient I'm worried about it's Frosty Boy. Pray for his recovery.

Colbert Nation Part II

2008-04-07T17:48:00.002+12:00

As we were getting ready to leave here last October, Michael finally got around to stepping up to TV host Stephen Colbert’s challenge to fly a Colbert Nation flag at the South Pole (see “South Pole IS Colbert Nation”).

Unfortunately when he sent the photos to the shows producers, it coincided with the beginning of the entertainment industry’s writer’s strike that very same week. Of course the strike dragged on until just recently and figuring that the shows producers were buried under 4 months worth of emails, Michael decided to send the photos again plus some new ones.

Back in early March on a fine Saturday night, the weather was nearly perfect with clear blue skies and the 12 knot winds would make the flag fly nicely. We picked 9:30pm for the photo shoot so that the sun would be positioned to directly light up the flag with the station in the background. As we were waiting around in the Galley, Michael checked his email when the satellite came up and found that lo and behold there was a message from one of the Colbert Report producers wondering what was up with him.

What timing! That news got all of us Polies fired up so we marched out of the Galley, down the Beer Can and out to the geographic South Pole following the Colbert Nation flag.

Michael took off his parka and wore just his chef coat (plus a few underlayers).

It took a few minutes to set up the camera so there was a bit of horsing around in the meantime. It was the best way to stay warm in the -65F temps out there. That's Deb in the dragon suit.

As people got into place, a few of the women unfurled a sign hoping to catch Colbert's eye.

Several group photos were taken and then some victorious shots of Michael and the flag, claiming the Pole for Colbert Nation.

Afterwards, we warmed up again in the Galley and enjoyed a Saturday night off while Andy, Weeks, Michael and Jason were looking at the freshly snapped photos.

So once again, Michael has sent off proof of the Colbert Nation flag flying at the bottom of the world, or the South F%$&ing Pole, as Colbert calls it. Michael still has yet to hear from the show's producers but we're figuring that there is so much juicy material for the writers with the upcoming election and heated Democratic nominee stalemate, they're not in dire need of filler material like the South Pole.

In the meantime, Michael finally has his website Cooking South back up and is working on reconstructing some pages and posting new photos. He's also working on a podcast so stay tuned for those and I'll let you know if he hears back from Stephen Colbert...

Celebrity Guest Chefs

2008-04-01T18:13:00.012+13:00

We had a star-studded weekend with appearances from various local, self-made South Pole Celebrities.

On Saturday, it was Galley Appreciation Day where the kitchen crew got the day off as a thank you for the many overtime hours it took them to execute the fine Sunset Dinner. In their place, members of the community rallied together and made breakfast, lunch and dinner, hence Celebrity Guest Chef Day. I was on the dinner crew and it was pizza night!

Among the Celebrity Guest Chefs, we had our Station Manager Katie, electrician Jared and engineer Weeks cranking out the pizzas. It’s a sanitation requirement whenever in the kitchen to have your head covered…but it’s not specified as to what kind of hat it should be.

Unlike Michael, we used pre-made crusts instead of homemade dough. At first we grabbed some frozen crusts from the deck outside but the boxes must have been sitting in the Dome too long (i.e. years and years too long) as the crusts had an unpalatable fuel smell to them. Katie and Weeks made an emergency trip back to the Dome and found “fresher” boxes that didn’t smell like fuel and then we were able to assemble the pizzas in time for dinner.

Dinner was a success (or at least we didn’t hear any complaints) and Polies partied into the night long after I went to bed. Unfortunately, I left my camera sitting in the Galley and found these photos on it later:

..self-portraits by Weeks...

...and the late night musical act of Deb in her dragon costume (which she wore for her wedding a year ago) and Todd playing an accordion duet. I really need to remember to NOT leave my camera sitting around.

Then on Sunday evening, I hosted a wine tasting event, again using Celebrity Guest Chefs who made wonderful appetizers that were paired to different wines. We had more than half the station population turn out for the food and vino but what I didn’t anticipate was that some of the tasters would also turn out to be celebrities themselves.

Our equipment operator Josiah turned into Rambo, construction manager Kevin a cowboy swigging beer and whiskey at the wine tasting, Kiwi Paul as a Studio 54 cokehead and Nathan as Austin Powers. Not only do we have accordions down here, we also have a ridiculously large collection of wigs. Everyone had a great time enjoying some outstanding culinary creations that were nicely paired with a white or red wine or port. Typically wine tastings tend to be fancy, reserved events. At ours, we had an attempted scalping but there were no injuries, just a few hangovers on Monday morning.

And early on Tuesday morning, April Fools Day, I stumbled into the restroom half asleep with bleary eyes only to find all of the stalls locked but seemingly occupied by abandoned boots.

I'm just waiting for those blasted ping pong balls to show up again somewhere today.

Easter Bunny visits South Pole

2008-03-27T20:21:00.001+13:00

Although we have plenty of fresh eggs this winter, we awoke on Sunday morning to find a different kind of treasure hidden all over the station.

At first it didn't register with me that there was anything out of the ordinary even though I was finding random ping pong balls in strange places. There has been an ongoing war using a huge bucket of balls that we got over the summer so it's not uncommon to sit on one or step on one around the station. I think it all started with a practical joke played on our System Administrator Nathan, who opened a cupboard above his desk and had hundreds of ping pong balls rain down on him. Since then, the little plastic balls get thrown around at people and they seem to be no longer be contained to the Game Room.

But ping pong balls showed up in the blankets in the laundry room...

...and on the anunciator panel which shows the location of fire alarms going off around station.

There were just too many ping pong balls in too many places. Every drinking fountain seemed to have its own collection.

The greenhouse was particularly hard hit, not only a ball amongst the dying sunflowers but also

...in the control room on the CO2 tanks...

...and above the sink in all of the beakers.

The Easter Bunny found creative places for the balls like the sign out board for the entrance to the Emergency Power Plant.

Door handles were the perfect ledge for them.

In the Galley, balls outnumbered the glasses in the dish racks.

It was a cute Easter morning treat and we later found out that the culprits were up at 2am distributing ping pong balls. They've all been cleaned up now and put away but I know we're still going to be finding a stray ball here and there come May or June but at least they won't be rotten like real Easter Eggs.

Goodbye sun

2008-03-23T18:41:00.009+13:00

The only fitting way to bid farewell to the sun is to throw one big party.

The weather didn't quite coorperate and we actually had snowfall for most of March 21 which turned out to be a cloudy flat day. Although we couldn't see the sun, we still had our traditional Sunset Dinner and once again got out the table cloths for a fabulous plated dinner with your choice of salmon:

...fresh portabello mushrooms that were still actually fresh:

...surf 'n turf or just plain turf:

...and of course dessert, a choice of a sinfully decadent layered ice cream dessert or the best homemade apple pie you've ever had.

Our cooks Deb, Michael and Chris put in a lot of time and hard work to pull off a memorable feast that marks the real start of winter. When you're eating that well, it's easy to forget that you're in a frozen wasteland for a polar winter.

With the sun no longer dominating the landscape, the old familiar sights of winter are starting to appear. Today was our first good look at our forgotten friend the moon, which comes up for 2 weeks at a time then disappears for 2 weeks. The full moon seemed as bright as a lightbulb in the twilight sky.

And the sun isn't quite done with us...this afternoon as we were walking back from the South Pole Telescope Open House, a blazing orange sky over the station reminded us that the sun was just below the horizon. We'll have a few more weeks yet before the dark of the night begins.

Heading into the night

2008-03-20T19:51:00.002+13:00

It’s that time of year again to say farewell to the sun until September.

The sun peeking through the columns of the A1 berthing wing.

At 6:48pm local time tonight, the equinox occurred when the sun was exactly halfway below the horizon for us. Now the last moment when we will actually see the sun’s rays will be anyone’s guess.

The atmosphere refracts or bends the light upwards so even when the sun itself is below the horizon, we can usually see its image for a couple of days after it sets if the weather is clear.

Today the weather was gorgeous. After some cold temps in the high minus 70s F earlier this week and then some winds up to 15 knots that stirred up the atmosphere a bit, it’s now about -70F with light wind and the waning sunlight casts soft pink light across the frozen plateau. Hopefully the visibility will remain clear for the next few days so that we’ll get to see the sun sink slowly towards the other hemisphere. And tomorrow night is our Sunset Dinner feast, photos certainly to follow.

In other Pole news, our trauma team held a training session in which I went over patient assessment in the field. The most important take home message was if the patient is outside, get them inside pronto and forget about the assessment stuff you just learned because it won’t matter much if your patient is frozen. Then after the meeting, the trauma team decided to do an impromptu practice drill on how to restrain and backboard a combative patient. Since the patient had no idea he was about to participate in a training exercise, he was truly combative.

The original targeted victim wasn’t in his office and the team was not to be disappointed so they marched around the corner and found our engineer Weeks, of the toilet paper wall fame, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Despite the struggling, he was no match for about 10 team members who picked him up, plopped him on the backboard and strapped him down. They then practiced their board lifting and carrying techniques out of the computer lab and down the hall to the Galley where he was deposited onto a table for the gathering dinner crowd.

Weeks isn’t really an innocent victim…I must mention that he interrupted our trauma team meeting by opening the door and hurling ping pong balls at us so he should only expect revenge sooner or later. You can bet that as the winter goes on, the pranks will get more elaborate as people will be looking for ways to keep themselves entertained during the long dark winter.
To add to the humilation, he's wearing signs saying "Trauma Team Rules" and "You're Next Nate", the original intended victim.

Random shots

2008-03-15T19:04:00.016+13:00

Last Sunday was a great day for a stroll outside. It's a different place around here compared to

the busy summer season now that we're just about ready for the 5 months of darkness.

Many of the vehicles and heavy equipment have been parked for the winter. Lines have been drained, batteries taken out and these Pisten Bully's and loaders will all accumulate a thick coat of snow and ice before they come out of hibernation.
The Summer Camp gym will be kept warm this winter so that we have another place to work out in addition to the gym in the Elevated Station. Even though it's a 5 minute walk to get here, this is preferable to some who want to work out in solitude. Some of the guys are putting together a new bouldering cave with brand new hand holds so the old boards are sitting outside for now. The old hamstring curl machine that was in the El Station gym was moved out here but looks like it didn't make it inside.

Spoolhenge is casting very long shadows now that the sun is so low on the horizon.

During the summer, there's so much traffic, they actually have to have signs directing which side of the groomed road to the Dark Sector the vehicles can drive on. Again, the tracked vehicles chew up the surface so much, they get their own lane separate from the vehicles with tires. During the winter there are only a few tracked vehicles running and they just have to watch out for people walking outside in the dark.

We have to be prepared for unthinkable emergencies and have a cache of survival gear out on the snow berms. There are extreme weather tents, sleeping bags, frozen food, cook stoves and other gear located out here in case we lose the station to a catastrophe but manage to survive ourselves. Each one of us has also set aside a big orange bag with a full set of ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. These are stored either in a big box on the berms or in an outlying building so that we would each have another parka, pants, boots, etc in case of an emergency.

What are these berms?

The Marisat satellite dish ball is in the background.

It's where we store a lot of stuff. Long rows of raised snow benches hold all kinds of treasures...
...like food...

...extra mattresses and furniture...

...and the old washers from the laundry room that used to be in the Dome. I think I had another photo of them in an earlier post when they had just been taken out from there.
This year we have plenty of toilet paper. Not only do we have the restrooms in the El Station to keep stocked, the 2.0 Lounge, the only indoor smoking area, now has its own outhouse.

It's nicely decorated, has a seat carved out of blue insulating board and is stocked with plenty of TP. And another reason why we need so much toilet paper down here:

...for practical jokes like the one played on Weeks, our Facilities Engineer, who found his desk under a wall of Heavenly Soft yesterday morning. Fittingly, there's a Jesus bobblehead on top of the TP...and it looks remarkably like our dear friend Weeks.

Polar Pizzaria

2008-03-09T21:24:00.001+13:00

Just like last winter, I have to brag a bit about how well we eat down here.

Last night was our first Reehmeo’s Pizzaria Night, featuring homemade personal pizzas customized to each crew member’s specifications. Order forms were filled out the day before and people could choose from 9 different meat toppings and 15 various veggie toppings. We still have freshies from one of the last flights and were able to offer fresh tomato slices, red and yellow onion, red and green bell peppers, mushroom and roasted garlic along with the usual canned and frozen items.

Our sous chef Michael made batches of homemade pizza dough, rolling out individual crusts the size of a dinner plate (the template was actually a dinner plate). Black was probably the not the best color to wear that night but he did earn the nickname of "Ninja Chef".

The next step was saucing the crusts with either regular pizza sauce or pesto.

Then the toppings are heaped on according to each order sheet. Here’s Leah adding some fresh herbs from our greenhouse. Some people ordered just about every topping available making for a very hefty pie. Others were very precise in their orders for half and half pizzas, drawing a diagram for the placement of the ingredients. One of the electricians added his own ingredient request, a little bit of “love” thrown in with the pepperoni. Lots of thank you's and smiley faces were added to the order forms.

In all we cranked out about 70 pizzas, mostly individual ones but also some regular sized ones with our own choices of toppings.

Personal pizzas fresh from the oven waiting to be sliced and served up.

It was a successful night for Team Reehmeo with lots of happily stuffed diners ready to kick off the one day weekend. This event is sure to be repeated a few times before the end of winter.

Tour de Station

2008-03-05T05:47:00.002+13:00

No matter how many times I've seen the sights around station, it's always fun to go on another tour. Last night our Winter Site Manager Katie led 5 of us on a tour around nearly the entire outlying areas of the station as a familiarization of the buildings and emergency response gear stashed in them.

After visiting the New Power Plant, the Logistics facility under construction, the Vehicle Maintenance Facility under the arches next to the Elevated Station, we took a ride to the outlying buildings in an LMC 1800, a tracked vehicle that barely fit the 6 of us. The tracks really chew up the snow and since we were going to drive over the skiway, we didn't want to leave it rutted with irregularities that would build over the winter into monster sastrugi. We attached a dragger to the back of the LMC to smooth over the tracks...yes it's a bedspring, a bit ghetto but it worked just fine.

The first stop was the Dark Sector and the South Pole Telescope, the giant 10 meter telescope installed last year that is scanning the skies for cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang.

Here's a view of SPT from a window at the Dark Sector Lab next to it.
Then we went to MAPO then the Ice Cube Lab as pictured above. Ice Cube is a huge project looking for neutrinos using an array of detectors buried deep into the ice.
The most fascinating thing about this part of the tour was that they had their U-barrels (or pee barrels) outside but the commode inside was a little more civilized.
The tour then took us out to the Marisat Radome but we couldn't go inside because the satellite just came up and we would have been bombarded by microwave radiation. We did go into the RF building then back through Summer Camp and ended up at the Balloon Inflation Facility or BIF and the Cryogenics building.

The BIF.

A few posts ago when I was flying down here in the C-17, we were fellow cargomates with a large helium dewar. I don't know if this is the same one but the Cryo building has plenty of different types and sizes of dewars for the science experiements.

The last stop was ARO but it was getting late and I needed to get back to the station. Actually I really needed to pee but I just couldn't bring myself to use the pee barrel outside...

The Women of 2008

2008-02-29T20:09:00.007+13:00

Among our crew of 60 people this winter, 12 of us are women. Our feminine constituents include a carpenter, a cook, a meteorologist, materials specialists, a work order planner, a green house technician, a scientist, a physician assistant and our leader, the Winter Site Manager.
From left: Katie, Deb, Calee, me, Jane, Robin, Mandi, Amy, Leah, Terry, Katie. Sue had to launch a weather balloon.

Continuing the tradition from last year, we had our first Ladies Night last weekend. It was a gathering out at ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory), the building in the Clean Air Sector where the NOAA personnel carry out climate research. With the location of the building and instruments upwind of the rest of the station, they're able to sample the cleanest air on earth. It's about a quarter of a kilometer from the main station so it always feels like a getaway going out to ARO. We were going to watch chick flicks all night and have a sleepover but we ended up all heading back to the station at the end of the night to get a good night's rest in our own beds.

In this photo taken by Leah, you can see the entire front of the station as we were walking back.
It was a fun evening of chatting, gossiping and laughing and hopefully the first of many Ladies Nights to come this winter.

The state of the Dome

2008-02-24T07:12:00.011+13:00

The Elevated Station isn’t the only thing around here that underwent some radical changes over the summer.

The beloved Dome, which served as the South Pole station from 1975 until 2005 when building demolition started, is slowly getting reduced to just a metal shell on the snow. The big wooden sign that said “The United States of America Welcomes You to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station” was removed from the entrance and then the tunnel itself that was the entrance to the Dome was also taken away.

What is left now in front is a metal arch that connects the fuel tank storage arch to the old garage arch and it completely blocks off the front of the Dome. To enter the Dome, you have to come from inside the arch, go out a hole in the back of the arch.

The old Dome now just sits there, not connected to anything else. Todd is one of the carpenters working on constructing big wooden doors to seal off the Dome and arch from drifting snow during the winter.

Inside the Dome, it looks pretty much the same as last year, just a big warehouse for mostly food, like a frozen Costco. On Fridays, a few of us do the “food pull” to bring up the food that will be eaten the following week. You have a list of items and using a sled for a shopping cart, you go around to the different aisles pulling cases of broccoli florets or chicken breasts.

This last time I had the bakery section and had goodies like chocolate graham cracker pie crusts and pre-made croissants on my list.

You’ll find some casualties scattered around like a bag of polenta that broke open. I’m not sure why the hard hat is there.

All of the cases on the shopping list will get loaded into triwall boxes like the one Nate is standing in. Then on Mondays, the pallets of boxes get forklifted over to the Elevated Station, lifted up to the second level on a hoist, unloaded and stocked in the kitchen, outside on a deck or in an empty berthing wing. Unfortunately when they designed this new station, they forgot to add storage space so we stash stuff wherever we can find empty room and during the winter, food is literally stored in empty bedrooms.

The arch that used to house the old garage, carp shop and gym is now the site for a new building for the Logistics department and storage room for "DNF" (Do Not Freeze) cargo. Inside construction will take place over the winter. The thing I'm not sure about is why there is a window at the top.

The arch will be fairly dark and the view from the window will be pretty much this, plus a bunch of pallets of food eventually. The old Galley under the Dome used to have some plastic flowers and a little section of picket fence...maybe they can spruce up the pallets with something scenic to gaze out at.

Changes during our absence

2008-02-19T06:49:00.008+13:00

When you leave for the summer, there are always lots of striking changes when you return "home" in the fall.

The new Elevated Station was officially dedicated on January 12, 2008 and the panel crew worked hard to finish up the gray siding on the front of the station in time for the ceremony. The ceremonial flags that normally fly not too far from the geographic pole were moved to be centered more in front of the station. It makes for a prettier picture.
Because the ice sheet that we sit on is steadily moving about 30 feet a year, the geographic pole is moved on New Years Day to the actual spot that marks 90 degrees south latitude. It is now no longer right in front of the station but marching off towards the Clean Air Sector.

Here's the entire front of the station, although the photos turned out a little dark as it was overcast yesterday after work when I went out for a stroll. I'll try to take more pictures on a better day for later.

This is the main entrance to the station, what we call Destination Alpha (to distinguish it from the other entrance that most people use, Destination Zulu where the trash line sits). It's the closest entrance to the station from the flight deck for the newly arriving passengers stumbling off of the plane gasping for air. The top deck is an observation deck that is great for watching auroras during the winter.

The American flag no longer flies on top of the Dome. Its new home is at Alpha next to the flag for the National Science Foundation. It's hard to tell in this photo but the flag pole for the US flag has a compass cross that points north in all four directions. The NSF flag has a continent of Antarctica.

The paneling now wraps around to the backside of the station and this summer they finished the far wing which holds the gym and then got as far as the B1 wing. This is the berthing wing where I live and my windows are the bottom left two (I have a double room again this year). The B1 wing also houses the emergency power plant and the tank at the very bottom left corner is the emergency fuel tank.

This is the backside of the A2 wing next to the beer can and they'll have to finish the siding here next summer. We've moved the smoking lounge, the 2.0 bar, right next to the beer can. Last winter it was next to Destination Alpha but resulted in lots of snow drifting so this location was chosen in hopes that the drifts won't build up too much. The smokers get only a little temporary building because all of the USAP stations are to go smoke-free by 2010. It's small but the guys make the most of it and have plans to paint the interior this year.

More photos to come...

Closed for winter

2008-02-15T06:07:00.004+13:00

Station closing day came early this year. A forecast for bad weather here on Friday led to a late announcement on Wednesday that the last flights of the season would come and go on Thursday. All of the remaining summer folks who weren't planning on staying for the winter were sent scrambling to pack their bags, clean up their rooms, finish up last minute projects and say their goodbyes.

So on Valentine's Day, plenty of hugs were shared as we assembled to see the last plane off. Skier 93 landed early at 1pm and a steady stream of parkas filed out from the station to the flight deck. They didn't waste any time loading up the plane so goodbyes were quickly said and the last passengers hauled their orange carry on bags to the awaiting LC-130.

Following tradition, Skier 93 did a flyover of the station as we waved goodbye. We started walking back when the announcement came over our radios that the pilot called and said he was going to do another, probably because the contrails left a murky haze and we weren't able to see the plane too clearly on the first flyby. It was worth waiting around for a few minutes more as the plane roared by in a low pass, dipping its wings at us in a final farewell.

And now we are once again left here at the bottom of the world for another polar winter. This year we have a crew of 60, including 11 women. It's a good mix of seasoned veterans and fresh new faces. Some in the crew have been here all summer and some just arrived 2 days before closing. There are many names and faces I don't know here but I'll have the next 8 months to get to know people.

The next month will be busy as we prepare for the long winter, moving supplies in, shutting down outlying buildings, taking down skiway flags, marking routes with other flags. This morning we're going to move in the last pallet of our freshies that we received and will enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables for hopefully a couple of months until they run out or rot.

So, let the winter fun begin!

Lots of frequent flyer miles

2008-02-09T06:30:00.000+13:00

After nearly 20 hours sitting in planes and 7 hours waiting around in airports, we finally arrived in Christchurch, NZ on Feb 3. Saturday was lost altogether in a travelers time warp as we crossed the international date line going forward in time.

It seemed like we had never left. Cathedral Square was still crawling with tourists and Dux de Lux still had great beer on tap. The one noticeable difference is that the American dollar is tanking even more against the Kiwi dollar, another sad indicator of our pathetic economy.

We did indeed watch the Superbowl live on TV at the Holy Grail sports bar, except kickoff was Monday 1pm NZ time. Of course, our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear issue time just happened to also be at 1pm Monday at the Antarctic campus near the airport so we missed the first half of the game and arrived to standing room only at the bar. Wow, what a game. As a football non-fan, someone who likes the sound of a football game in the background while I’m cleaning house but cares little about the game itself, I was riveted. I would have been on the edge of my seat, if I had one but actually after all of that sitting, I didn’t mind standing at all.

Tuesday morning we boarded the C-17 right on time with no such luck of getting any weather delays to strand us in Christchurch. Besides five of us heading to Pole, there were a bunch of McMurdo winter veterans and some high ranking Air Force brass on a boondoggle trip. We were squeezed around two large helium dewars and a fork lift while the brass sat up in the cockpit. It’s no wonder you feel like cargo yourself on these flights.
In McMurdo it felt like a perfect calm, wintry Christmas morning kind of day with gently falling snow. Not that I ever experienced those growing up in Tucson, but I've seen them on TV

We boarded our ground transport, Ivan the Terra Bus, which must have a top speed of about 10 miles an hour. The Air Force brass got on that private van which flew by us on the sea ice road back to town.

Thankfully we had to endure only one night in the big city and flew out to Pole the next day in an LC-130.

There was a four hour delay in takeoff due to a poor weather forecast that never materialized with poor weather so we took off in beautiful clear conditions that continued all the way to Pole.

We had a nice view of Mt. Erebus, the active volcano near McMurdo that continually puffs away.

And just like Christchurch, it almost feels like I never left South Pole. They were busy over the summer, making progress on the exterior paneling, preparing the old garage arch for a new logistics facility and more demolition. The place looks a little different, improved, in some places but mostly the same, just ridiculously crowded. There were over 200 people on station when I arrived but the summer folks are steadily redeploying and now we have 187 people here.

In one week we'll close the station and winter will begin. The crew number is expected to be somewhere around 60-65 or so but so many last minute changes happen that the number fluctuates crazily and you never know who you end up with until you count heads after the last plane leaves.

I'll work on wandering around to take some photos in the next few days...

Time's up, headin' south

2008-01-30T23:21:00.000+13:00

It's been a busy few weeks since I returned from Thailand and I haven't stayed in one place for too long. As soon as I got back to Tucson, I had to fly out the next day to Denver for the psychological exam required for wintering in Antarctica. Depending on your point of view, I passed...or failed. In either case, I'm going back down... a reward or punishment?

Then another weekend I found myself in Minnesota visiting a dear friend post-op and the temps there were about the same as what South Pole was experiencing. I must say that tunnels and sky walkways are fabulous urban assets.

And as San Francisco was beset with cold, wet, grey weather and Tucson was having a cold snap with freezing nights and not-nearly-warm-enough days, Michael and I decided we didn't want to be bothered with more winter during our austral summer off.

So we went to Jamaica. It was back to sandals, shorts and sunscreen for another week of pure relaxation and most importantly, warmth. The most energy we expended was in trying to decide which jerk chicken stand to try but then we just tried them all and didn't have to make any hard decisions afterall.

There's not much to write about. My major accomplishment was reading back through all of the issues of Outside magazine for 2007, which my sister saved up for me throughout the year, while sitting on a lounge chair on the beach. Now that was work, reading about the Everest base camp circus or how to survive a cougar attack or one of the writers little experiment of working as a sherpa for a few days (hilarious).

Even though we did have access to the internet, I wasn't much in the mood for blogging.

And now like a student on the night before the start of school in the fall, I'm grimly accepting the fact that the summer vacation is finally over. I leave for Denver tomorrow to begin the deployment to South Pole for winter 2008. The journey will take us from Denver to LAX to Sydney, arriving in Christchurch on Feb 3. We're already planning on watching the Super Bowl at the Holy Grail, a huge sports bar near Cathedral Square. Then if the weather is good on Feb 5, we'll board the C-17 for McMurdo and Pole whenever we make it in.

I can't resist another sunset photo. As we watched the sun sink into the ocean on our last night in Jamaica, Michael melodramatically announced that it was our last sunset to enjoy, ever. I reminded him that we're soon going to have a month-long sunset starting in late March. Then he amended his statement saying this was the last sunset he would watch outside without a shirt on for a long time. True.

Actually we're both excited about going down for one more winter but the last three months of vacation have been so enjoyable, it's taking a little more psyching up this time. It will be interesting to see all of the changes that have happened around the station while we've been gone. It will also be fun to see some old friends again and it looks like we'll have a really good crew of vets and newbies.

Time to hit the road once again but I'll update when I can...

End of the trip

2008-01-07T15:34:00.000+13:00

Luang Prabang is known as the Jewel of the Mekong. Once the royal capital of Laos, it has a dense concentration of temples, some dating back to the 16th century, and of course plenty of monks.

Every morning at around 6am, streams of silent saffron robes file out of the monasteries as the monks make their daily rounds to receive alms. The monks are not allowed to cook for themselves and instead rely on food offerings from the locals, who receive blessings and merits in return. The typical offering is sticky rice, which the givers scoop up from their common basket with their hands and drop into the monks' bowls. Others are giving them bananas and other fruits and everything goes into the same bowl so I'm not sure if it becomes a big sticky mixed-up mess by the time they go back to the monastary to eat.

Most males will go through a monk period and there were reminders that these people with shaved heads and shaved eyebrows were still young men and boys with the same interests they had before.

A bamboo bridge over the river Khan was manned with monks at a toll booth. Yes, their young friend is wearing an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt.

Originally a monarchy, Laos fell under Siamese (Thai) control in the late 1800s then became part of the French Indochine colonial empire in the early 1900s until independence in 1953. During the Vietnam war, Laos was allied with North Vietnam which led to the US trying to bomb the country into oblivion. We dropped nearly as many bombs on this small country as were dropped on all of Europe in WWII. With the fall of Saigon, Laos came under Communist control and today the Lao People's Democratic Republic remains Communist.

It doesn't seem too hardcore from a tourist's point of view. They've relaxed some requirements like having to register your whereabouts with the government at all times but then make other decrees seemingly at will. For example, in Luang Prabang, it became illegal within the last couple of months for tourists to rent bicycles or motorbikes. We couldn't get a straight answer for the reason why but were alternately told that the tuk tuk drivers were behind the move so that tourists would have to hire them to get around or that a tourist was involved in an accident that was somehow problematic. I'm not sure what the real story is but the town itself is small enough to easily walk around to see just about everything.

Capitalism is alive and well especially in the areas that tourists are flocking to. Apparently efforts to preserve this UNESCO World Heritage Site will prevent the weed-like spread of fast food joints, billboards and some new construction. Nevertheless, existing buildings are being converted to more and more hotels, guesthouses, shops, tour companies and restaurants but thankfully no Starbucks or Burger King.

For many of the locals, shopping hasn't changed much. Seasonal crops result in a bounty of the produce and when we were there, oranges were the hot item. This little market of nothing but oranges went on for quite a way.

Rice remains a staple and is separated out by color and grade. The most expensive kind is a purple grain of sticky, or glutinous rice which has a beautiful color but tastes pretty much like the white grains.

These arrangements of marigolds and banana leaves are used for the Baci ceremony which invokes the spirit world for blessings and good luck.

One of the highlights was taking a cooking class with Michael at the Three Elephants Cafe Cooking School. We started out the morning learning about the local ingredients at an outdoor market that had everything from chili spices to betel nuts.

Then we cooked, and ate, lunch and dinner, recreating some of the most popular Lao specialties.

After much tasting and snacking, by the time we sat down to enjoy our dinner of chicken larb, green papaya salad, pork/eggplant stirfry with lots of sticky rice, we were rather full and couldn't finish everything.

Now we have less than 24 hours remaining in the vacation. We're back in Bangkok trying to sort through purchases and pack up our bags for the long overnight flight back to San Francisco.
I know I'll be back to this area of the world sometime, maybe again after this upcoming winter at South Pole. Laos is a gem of a country that deserves a long, leisurely visit to really get to know its charms. Like the slowly flowing Mekong, the pace of life goes along at "Lao speed"...unrushed, unencumbered by the hectic outside world yet welcoming to those who want to slow down to discover its beauty.

The road to Laos

2008-01-02T14:55:00.000+13:00

In my first visit to the country of Laos, I'm finding a rich culture and land that are like stepping back in time yet are on the cusp of discovering the full bounty of modern day technology and living through greater access to the outside world.

Laos opened its borders to tourists in the early 1990s and in the past few years has seen an explosion in visitors. In just this past year, a record 1.4 million tourists descended upon this country of 5 million. The effect of having so many foreigners visit this land of mountains and rivers has been to introduce not just dollars and euros to their economy, but to also bring imported goods that did not exist before for the Lao people. Six years ago, the shops in Luang Prabang sold only local produce and foods, regional textiles and traditionally used items. Now the shops all have displays with Lays potato chips, Nivea lotion, Toblerone chocolate and Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch. A local resident bemoaned the fact that parents now feed their children cookies and other junks foods instead of fresh foods to the extent that youngsters are developing scurvy.

So many experiences and thoughts to write about after just a few days here. I'll try to narrow the focus of this entry to the journey here and various forms of transportation.

The capital of Vientiane has an international airport that is connecting the city to more and more countries throughout Asia. It was a quick hour and 20 minute flight from Bangkok, a better option for us than an overnight train since we have only 6 days to explore.

We rented bicycles once again to see the sights of the city. It was all fun and good until the back wheel fell off of Michael's bike and we had to hire a tuk tuk to drive him back to the bike shop. At 20,000 kip (a little more than 2 dollars), the tuk tuk ride cost more than the bike rental.

It took us a few minutes to flag down a tuk tuk that wasn't loaded down with people or goods.

Tuk tuks are the workhorse vehicle of much of southeast Asia and they come in all different shapes and sizes. They have unmuffled two stroke engines and spew out stinky exhaust but they don't seem to use much diesel.

The capital city was really only interesting for a day or so and we moved on to Luang Prabang, a colorful temple city declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The domestic terminal is a little less flashy than the international...

...but it does has a great little gift shop and restaurant.

Like many cities around the world, the ones in Laos are also becoming smoke-free environments although you can buy a pack of cigarettes for about 40 cents.

We didn't have a problem fighting for overhead luggage space on our flight from Vientiane to Luang Prabang.

There aren't many options of airlines to choose from and Lao Airlines dominates all of the routes. They've had 5 plane crashes since 1990 and the US State Department has a travel warning about using them to fly in mountainous areas (most of the country). We had good luck with fairly new planes and even got decent in-flight meals, even on the 40 minute flight to Luang Prabang.

The mighty Mekong river flows through much of the country and has always been a major route for trade. There are many rivers though like this one that we took a short boat ride on to see some waterfalls.

The Khan river joins the Mekong at Luang Prabang and together they form a beautiful landscape where a rustic culture prevails despite wi-fi cafes like the one that I'm sitting in. It's a tenuous comfort zone for me...I love discovering the third world for the first time but at the same time, I'm quite happy to have a sweet Lao coffee or ice-cold BeerLao while I write my blog entry. I'll keep supporting the local economy with my kip while I work on another entry with more images from Laos.

Ayutthaya

2007-12-29T20:22:00.000+13:00

The ancient capital of Siam, Ayutthaya, makes for a great day trip out of Bangkok. Only 85km north of the city and easily accessible by bus, or in our case, third class train, it's an easy trip to go back in history.

Once there, you can have your option of modes of transportation, like these crazy tricked out buses that were common on the streets.

We opted for a carbon-friendly slower paced form of wheels and rented one speed bicycles for the day for 40 baht, about $1.30. We rode around all day and explored 5 different temple ruins, and there were many more to see had we more time.

Ayutthaya saw many kings of Siam rule their dynasties from 1350 and leave legacies of grand temples and palaces. After the Burmese sacked the capital in the 1700's, the city never regained its glory and slowly crumbled away. Today there are numerous temple ruins to visit within a very small area, making for a full day of terrific concentrated sight seeing.

They built prangs and chedi in veneration of Buddha and the structures are supposed to contain sacred remnants of Buddha himself. There were an awful lot of prangs and chedi so I'm not sure how that all worked out but many of them are still standing and still considered very sacred.

Of the thousands and thousands of remaining Buddha statues, most are missing the heads and other parts due to looters throughout the ages.

One head that was left behind is now one of the most famous images from Ayutthaya as its been engulfed by tree roots at Wat Phra Mahathat.

This is all that remains of this one at the same temple.

More headless buddhas.

Wat Chaiwatthanara was the perfect place to see the sun beginning to set and the prangs were lit with the soft glow of the late afternoon.

This was the last fun outing for me in the Bangkok area. Michael finished his TESOL course and we hit the road over the weekend so I'm sitting in a cafe in Luang Prabang, Laos buzzing from an iced Lao coffee and taking advantage of their wi-fi for 5000 kip (50 cents). The crazy German Robert is still tagging along so we'll all find something fun to do tonight for New Years Eve. Happy New Year!

Like no other Christmas

2007-12-26T17:27:00.001+13:00

Spending Christmas away from family and in a predominantly Buddhist country could be a lonely experience but actually it ended up being quite amusing. First of all, our friend Robert Schwarz from South Pole joined us so it was nice to have company for the holidays. He and I went out on Christmas Eve day to do some last minute shopping and look what he found:
We thought we left ECW gear far behind us but we found a store where you can buy a Canada Goose big red parka with a "Canada Goose Arctic Program" patch on it. Here in Thailand you can buy knock-offs of anything from any name brand article of clothing to DVDs of new movies showing in theaters to Rolex watches. I had no idea there would be any demand for down parkas here but then again, it probably doesn't have real down in it. It's only 2700 baht (roughly 90 bucks) so you can get your own big red if you're nostalgic about your old issued gear.

The only aspect about Christmas that seems to be of any importance here in Thailand is the tacky commercial shopping part.

All of the traditional carols play non-stop in all of the businesses and tree decorating has ascended to a whole new level.

We weren't too concerned with trying to recreate a traditional Christmas Eve celebration in Bangkok although plenty of upscale hotels and restaurants offered fancy turkey and roast beef dinners for tourists and ex-pats.

Instead we had seafood in a coconut and other scrumptious dishes at a fabulous restaurant called Cabbages and Condom s, a very elegant Thai dining establishment with a mission. Part of the Population and Community Development Association, proceeds from the restaurant and gift shop go to support programs to raise awareness about family planning and to promote condom use.

This place has outstanding food, a good cause and a great sense of humor.

Santa is decked out in a suit made from condoms.

And next to him are his caped super hero elves.

This one also has body armor made of birth control pill packets.

And of course their Christmas tree is festively covered in prophylactics.

After dinner, our check indeed came with condoms instead of mints. This display offered more but I have no idea what they're trying to imply with their choices. The "Democrat" size was in a plain white wrapper and manufactured in South Korea while the "Republican" size came in a rainbow colored wrapper covered with Thai writing.

Notice that our table has condoms under the glass. I thought it was a perfect way to spend Christmas Eve and if you can't spend it with family, might as well surround yourself with a little family planning instead.

Weekend at the beach

2007-12-19T15:58:00.001+13:00

I was hoping that our quick weekend getaway to the island of Phuket would provide some interesting blogging material but predictably, the resort destination is not so much a Thai cultural experience as it is as exercise in vacationing with thousands of European tourists.

I love a nice beach as much as any Swede or German and I can understand why we're all drawn to the beautiful white sands of Kata and Karon beaches.

You can rent a deck chair that comes with an umbrella and little table for 100 baht (about 3 bucks) for the entire day. It only took about half an hour walking on the beach at 10am to get a burn on my shoulders. I wasn't quick enough with my 55 SPF sunscreen.

The water was delightfully warm and clear, perfect for cooling off when you've had enough of the chair and umbrella. Long tail boats for hire take people out to nearby islands, which we would have done had we more than 48 hours to spend in Phuket.

When you get tired of the beach, the little roads are packed with hundreds of businesses all with signs in several languages, none of them Thai. Almost all of the restaurants advertise "European food" and you can have your pick of German, Scandinavian, Italian, French cuisine.

I still go for the Thai food, like this place where we had a traditional breakfast of rice soup. This is actually a bunch of separately owned establishments all offering pretty much the same thing with the only difference being the color of the table cloths.

Phuket felt more like a tropical Disneyworld than Thailand. At night, this Dino Bar was packed.

Or maybe it was more like Vegas. We heard another Thai Elvis singing at an outdoor restaurant on Friday night (or maybe it's the same guy, different night?). He was singing "Green, Green Grass of Home" and sounded like the King except he couldn't quite get the "green" without a touch of accent.

The 2004 tsumani destroyed property and took lives but Kata and Karon beaches suffered less damage than other parts of the island. Now they're building more and larger hotels at a furious pace. I doubt there's an agency like OSHA in Thailand but that bamboo is probably stronger than it looks.

So I enjoyed my pina colada in a young green coconut, got sand everywhere and am nursing a sunburn just like everyone else. We all need places like Phuket to indulge while we're on holiday and Thailand knows how to deliver and does it well.

Wat Pho

2007-12-13T20:49:00.000+13:00

I had been walking past Wat Pho (or Po) going to and from my massage class and I finally got a chance after school one day to go into the temple and explore what's behind the white walls.

This is the oldest and largest wat in Bangkok and it also holds the record for the most images of Buddha. Wat Pho was the site of the first university in Thailand and remains a center for the study of Thai massage and traditional medicine.

There are chedi or pagodas creating a skyline of spires. Four enormous ones represent a reign of a different king. Chinese porcelain tiles cover the chedi forming ornate mosiac patterns and each one is different in detail and color.

The grounds have gardens and lots of statues including fierce guardians and peaceful little monks.

The most famous attraction of Wat Pho is the largest reclining Buddha in the world.

An impressive 46 meters long, the head alone is 15 meters high and towers above the visitors as they walk past.

The feet are also gigantic, 3 meters high for each foot and 5 meters long. I think I came up only to about the 4th toe on the bottom foot.

The toe pads were my favorite part. And the soles of the feet are inlaid with mother of pearl depicting the 108 auspicious signs of Buddha.

Here's the backside.

The walls of the rooms housing the Buddha are just as interesting as they are covered with paintings like this:

And along the wall opposite Buddha's backside is a long row of bowls. You drop a coin in each bowl for good luck so there's usually a rhythmic sound of change clinking as people walk by dropping half bahts in each one.

And I'm pleased to say that yesterday I passed my practical exam and am now certified in basic Thai massage. At the end of the 30 hour 5 day course, you perform a complete massage in front of an instructor and must finish in one hour. I tested with a group of young giggly Thai women and when we all passed, they were delighted when I did high fives with all of them.

I wonder if learning Thai massage is like learning Spanish...if I don't keep using it I'll probably forget it so I suppose I'll have to keep practicing on willing recipients. Any takers out there?

Commuting to school

2007-12-10T20:55:00.000+13:00

While Michael is busy with his TESOL class, I decided to enroll in a Thai massage course so now we're both students during our time in Bangkok. Here is what my commute to school entails:

I walk about ten minutes to the Skytrain, an elevated subway-like train, and ride for just three stops, getting off at the end of the line at the river. The Chao Phraya river is like a pulsating artery through Bangkok, a source of water for agriculture, a feeder for a canal system supporting homes and commerce and it also provides an important form of transportation that beats the exhaust fume-choked streets of the city.

I hop on a public water taxi like this one and for 13 baht (about 40 cents) I can ride up and down the river.

The boats are usually pretty packed with locals commuting as well as tourists who are trying to get the full-on Thailand experience as they use the river to get to popular sites like the Grand Palace and Wat Po.

You have to be very quick to get on and off the boat as it docks, unloads and loads passengers then pulls away from the dock in a matter of seconds.

The ride is never dull as there are all kinds of boats going by and buildings and temples on both sides of the river. Elegant-looking boats owned by big hotels like Sheraton ferry hotel guests around right next to rusty, worn-out wrecks that look like they should go under at any moment.

Like the country of Thailand, the river Chao Phraya is full of contrasts that I always find fascinating. There are fancy riverside hotels like this one with their own private boats and piers.

And just a few hundred meters down the banks you see sights like this:

This is actually a more typical scene along the river and it reminds me that Chao Phraya is not just some tourist attraction for westerners like me to enjoy a "quaint" boat ride on. It's a major living and breathing hub for a city of 9 million people, many of whom live on the banks and use the river to bath in, wash things in and unfortunately, as a refuse drain.

I get off at the Tha Tien pier and walk through a little market that is always lively in the morning with deliveries being unloaded while street vendors cook up soups, noodles and other unidentifiable dishes to order for the breakfast crowds.

This is primarily what is for sale here...

...every kind of dried fish and squid product you could ever hope for. It's a very fragrant street.

My class is at the Wat Po Thai Traditional Massage School. It's based at the famous wat, or temple, where the giant Reclining Buddha lounges, although the massage class is in a building outside of the temple grounds.

This is THE place to learn Thai massage. The classes are full of Thais learning the art, plus a few farangs (foreigners). We're learning five basic massages and like a martial art, it's a very precise choreography of body movement, positions and actions that always follows a set sequence. You use your thumbs, fingers, palms, elbows, knees and feet to apply pressure along lines of the body that correspond to different aspects of health. There are also some really amazing stretches that you do to the recipient like passive yoga.

I must say that Thai massage is not my favorite form of massage...it can actually be quite painful with all of the firm pressure if it's done right. Part of the learning for us students is to let others practice on us then we take our own turn doing the same. Each day I receive about the equivalent of 4-5 massages and believe me, I'm sore when I go home.

So after taking this course, maybe I'll hang out my sign offering Thai massage by an expert from Wat Po...but I'll probably just keep my regular day job instead.

Staying in shape Thai-style

2007-12-06T23:49:00.000+13:00

Just like Burger King and Office Depot, big glitzy gyms are springing up around Bangkok.

This one, called California Wow is just down the street from our apartment and it blasts ridiculously loud techno music from the lobby that opens to the street that is already noisy with traffic and hordes of pedestrians. The whole corner of the block is plastered with signs showing model perfect men and women to convince Thais that they need this place to help them stay fit.

On the other hand, there is this gem: Lumphini park, just a few blocks away from the Wow gym. We first visited this park last Sunday morning in a quest for a good place to go running. We headed over there around 6:30am thinking that we were early enough to avoid the heat and more importantly the inescapable crowds that are the essence of this city.

Wrong. There were literally thousands and thousands of people who had apparently already been up for a lot longer than us getting in some exercise.

There's a road going through the park making a 2.5km circuit and it was so thick with walkers and runners, we had to dart around people as we ran. And in most open areas there were groups doing Tai Chi, yoga, fan dancing, some kind of martial arts with swords, even a western line dancing class for seniors.

I was simply astounded to see so many people being so active and so early in the morning. It totally makes sense to enjoy the coolness of the morning but I just wasn't expecting to see a massive aerobics class with probably a couple of hundred people bouncing around right as we got past the parks gates.

And I just loved this outdoor gym under a huge tree dripping with vines. Venice's Muscle Beach has nothing on this place.

So I'm inspired that if this woman can ride a stationary bike with her cane to help her balance, I can strive to get up early in the mornings and start out my day at the outdoor gym.

Greetings from Thailand

2007-12-02T11:53:00.001+13:00

Even Ronald McDonald is going native in the Land of Smiles.

I'm writing my 100th posting from Bangkok where we'll be living for a month while Michael takes a course for teaching English as a second language. We're hoping to get to know this vibrant, crowded, dynamic city a little more in depth, if not quite from a local's level, then with an ex-pat kind of experience. We're renting an apartment in the Silom area, lively with all kinds of shopping, food vendors on the streets and alleys, embassies and banks, Starbucks and McDonalds on every corner. And we're not far from the skytrain and subway lines making much of this huge city more accessible since we're on foot.

One of a gazillion stalls selling Thai silk items at the Chatachuk weekend market.

One of the hazards of shopping there although no one seemed to bother my pockets or backpack.

Young monks lined up for food offerings

So I have no agenda while I'm here except to remember that I'm on vacation and to absorb as much of the local flavor as I can. That being said, we spent last night doing very un-Thai things as we met up with some friends from Pole who are also traveling around Asia.

Michael with Kevin, Derek and Paul at Molly Malones.

Not one but two Irish pubs are within minutes of our apartment and we met up at one and caught up on what we've all been doing after leaving South Pole a month ago. Well, actually those guys were in the group that got delayed for an agonizing 9 extra days so it's only been a few weeks since they've been off the ice but they've acclimated quite well to the tropical weather here by now.

After wandering around looking for some tasty street vendor food, we decided to see what a Thai version of a Mexican restaurant would be like.

It was actually better than I expected because I had little faith that there could be anything remotely resembling Mexican food in Southeast Asia. My Grilled Chicken Big Burrito could have been a star entree on something like an Applebee's menu. Actually the hot sauce condiments were quite good but the margaritas a bit too limey.

Paul with our waitress at Coyote Margarita Bar and Restaurant

Like many of the tourist establishments around here (the seedy Patpong streets are just a stroll away), there were plenty of lovely Thai waitresses at our Mexican place to entice the predominantly western male tourists roaming the streets. There's definitely an element of "entertainment" in this area that is a huge draw and I suppose that's just another facet of what makes Thailand a richly layered country that keeps pulling me and other tourists back to enjoy its wonders.

Tales of the city

2007-11-27T13:18:00.000+13:00

My stay in Tucson was brief and it was soon time to begin the next phase of the off-ice journey in the San Francisco Bay area.

We spent Thanksgiving morning doing some urban birding at the Albany mudflats just outside of Oakland with Michael's mother, brother and a couple of friends. Perhaps that was a good way to build up an appetite for the turkey feast that afternoon. We joined an eclectic collection of extended friends and family and feasted on food that was just as varied and delightful as the company.

We've spent the last few days soaking up the sights, sounds and tastes of the city as Michael has been showing me around his old favorite haunts. He let me indulge in some obligatory tourist activities and we took a cable car from Chinatown to Fisherman's Wharf.

The city competed a massive restoration project of the cable car system in the 1980's and today they happily clang away carrying tourists as well as residents. I thought it was a great way to get around instead of hoofing it up and down the hills. Besides, how often do you get to hang off the side of a moving vehicle in traffic?

We walked along the wharves and Embarcadero early enough in the morning to avoid the crowds and most of the shops weren't even open yet. As much as I love being a tourist, I can't stand any of the other pesky tourists.

But it wasn't too early for the sea lions. Pier 39 has become home to hundreds of sea lions since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and now they are a beloved attraction at the water front, just like clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.

Alcatraz looked so close on this beautiful sunny clear day. Funny, people often compare South Pole to Alcatraz for some reason but I'm sure we have better food than the inmates ever had.

And speaking of South Pole, it's apparently the hottest brand of jeans among trendy high schoolers in the Bay area. I'll see if we can start carrying some of the styles in Polemart.

We spent lots of time visiting the old favorite hangouts, like eating burritos at El Farolito in the Mission and drinks at Vesuvio in North Beach. This is where Jack Kerouac hung out and there are plenty of hommages to the beat generation.

I though it had a great interior and since it opens at 6am, it also has its own collection of colorful regulars. We've actually gone there three times so far, the earliest being 10 am, and I must say the Bloody Mary is fantastic.

I love the nuances of the city and amidst the hustle and bustle on the streets with business men closing deals on cell phones, tourists wandering into traffic to take the perfect photo and an endless barrage of panhandlers, nothing disturbs the concentration of some intense checkers players in a little park on Kearny St.

This is all providing a nice transition for heading over to Bangkok in two days...

Home

2007-11-18T10:12:00.000+13:00

OK, I'm not exactly 100% homeless...I'm fortunate to be able to call the desert of southern Arizona home where Mom and Dad still live in Tucson.

I was born and raised here and called it home myself until age 30. Now I use it as a homebase where I keep my stuff and repack my backpack in between gigs on the ice or in Alaska or elsewhere. It's always good to see family again and to get my fill of the best Mexican food in the world. OK, maybe in Mexico they have the best Mexican food in the world but here in Tucson just north of the border, we have amazing Sonoran style Mexican food that I always dearly crave whenever I'm gone. My first dinner after arriving here was at our favorite little restaurant El Minuto in the historic barrio district of downtown Tucson. Carne seca tacos...mmmm.

Today was a perfect day for a hike with my friend Lynn. Sabino Canyon is just north of Tucson and a very popular spot for its gorgeous scenery and nice easy trails but it's recovering from massive rains last year that caused landslides to erode away parts of the mountain sides and covered the trails with giant boulders and debris. Trail restoration is still underway and the one that we did, a 3 hour loop trail was only recently reopened for hiking.

You can see the city of Tucson in the distance

Just like tamales and carne seca, I have to also get my fill of desert and cactus whenever I come back home to Tucson. And at this time of year, you can always count on delightful weather, even before global warming started up. Temps are in the low 80s today and despite slathering on SPF 55 sunscreen, my arms and legs are a couple of shades darker.

South Pole seems like a world away right now...

Road trip

2007-11-12T20:18:00.000+13:00

Believe it or not, this is a tourist attraction in New Zealand:

The public toilets in Kawakawa in the northern part of the North Island were designed by the German artist Hundertwasser and they are now one of the biggest things going for the little town on the way to the Bay of Islands.

We rented one of the smallest cars in the country but we just needed it to take us up to the scenic coastal area a few hours north of Auckland.

The weather was mostly gorgeous and yesterday we did a coastal hiking trail linking the towns of Paihia and Opua.

What we didn't spend on the rental car, we used to splurge on accomodations.

We rented a beach front apartment in Paihia that was larger than the entire B1 wing at the South Pole. I swear the walk-in closet was bigger than a standard berthing room back at the station.

Cuban cigar: $30. Enjoying it on your beachfront balcony: priceless.

Back in the city

2007-11-04T11:13:00.000+13:00

Ahhh...civilization again! We've been enjoying sun, warmth, a few rain sprinkles, lots of good sushi and Thai food, the most beautiful lattes in the world, street performers, seagulls screeching for handouts, lots of walking on grass and sidewalks, a huge grocery store with really expensive fruits and veggies but three separate displays of all kinds of cheeses, etc. One of our favorite hangouts so far is the Belgian beer garden, just down the street from our apartment, where they have imported Belgian beers and a wonderful patio overlooking the Avon river. We went there twice yesterday. I've been putting on sunscreen and wearing my hat but still feel a little glow from hours in the sun. Michael is a healthy pink now.

We hosted a little get-together last night at our place and had a room full of Polies. That's Jamie, Gail (Dennis's friend from Perth), Michael, Dennis, Francie, Kris, Jason, Randi (Kris's girlfriend) Jack, Leah and Noah. We were hoping that some friends would make it in to Christhurch yesterday but heard that they were actually still stuck at South Pole and not too happy about that. So we toasted our friends still on the ice and were even more thankful that we were the first and only group to escape Pole so far. If we don't see you guys here, safe travels and we'll see of you in a few months.

Warm again

2007-10-31T14:36:00.000+13:00

A forecast for low visibility at South Pole cancelled the morning flight but after good conditions prevailed all day, an evening flight was launched and at 9:35pm the first LC-130 of the summer season landed.

It was a great relief to a large group of us who were anxious to get out of there even though it meant landing at McMurdo at 2am. It made sleeping on the plane easier although it was really cold in there especially since we ended up standing outside waiting for about an hour to board.

Twelve hours later we were on the C-17 at McMurdo's Ice Runway and starting the trip north to civilization. I slept most of the way on that leg and before I knew it, less than 24 hours after I was at Pole, I was walking on pavement again at the Christchurch airport.

It's great to be back in a city, to smell flowering plants, to see someone other than the same 53 people, to have an endless supply of freshies. It won't take any time at all to get used to this again. The next few days will be busy with medical appointments to get PQ'd for next winter but I'll also be spending plenty of time at the favorite hangouts enjoying fresh beer on tap and the best sushi around. I'm just happy to be walking around outside in sandals with no worries at all about frostbite.

To our friends back at Pole, we'll see you soon!

South Pole IS Colbert Nation

2007-10-29T05:59:00.000+13:00

Last year Michael Rehm gained dubious notoriety when the Comedy Central TV host Stephen Colbert featured him on his show "The Colbert Report". It was an embellished before and after story and a subsequent show in March served up a challenge to Michael to design a Colbert Nation flag and fly it at the South Pole (and get rid of all of those other dumb flags). By the way, Michael's website hasn't been updated since he spilled a Mountain Dew onto his laptop and shorted it out.

As one who excels in cooking and procrastination, Michael finally finished the mission and yesterday, a few of us in the winter crew posed proudly with the Colbert Nation flag at the geographic pole. All photos by Robert Schwarz.

We're heading up the southern-most fundraising campaign for Colbert for President. OK, we're not raising any money but we made signs (I'm holding the hot pink one and Michael is the one behind me).

Using Michael's design drafted up on a napkin, Dainella Nartker sewed together the flag from old red flag markers and the blue is an old flannel sheet. Nate Dyer sketched the Colbert image with a black sharpie marker. Michael will fly it next winter when we take the other flags down for the long night and then the Colbert Nation flag will truly be the sovereign reigning flag at the bottom of the world.

After the photo shoot, some people couldn't resist the giant snow hill.
Meteorologist Johnny G was carving turns on skate skies...obviously he's from Alaska.

Brian H. was working the hill on his board, getting ready for his surfing vacation in Costa Rica.

As I was watching this I was just glad to no longer be on call. I've officially turned over my radio, keys and all duties to my replacements and I'm scheduled to fly out of here today. If all goes well, our first LC-130 of the summer season will land here at 11:30am and take 28 of us out of here to McMurdo. We'll spend the night there and then head on to Christchurch tomorrow. Michael and I will be in New Zealand for a couple of weeks before heading back home to the states. We'll spend Thanksgiving in San Francisco with his family then over to Thailand until January when we'll once again begin the southern migration to spend one last winter down here. I'll keep you posted.

Otter's eye view

2007-10-27T06:45:00.000+13:00

It was time once again for the aerial photo missions. Yesterday the Twin Otter took up two groups of several Polies to take photos of the entire station. This is done every year to survey the place and to help measure the amount of snow drifting that occurred during the winter. Photos are by Robert Schwarz and Steffen Richter.

This is the whole thing, minus the Dark Sector that is to the left of the skiway. The plume of exhaust is from the power plant generator.
The Dome and Elevated Station.

This is a good shot of the snow mound that is being created from the snow dug out of the Dome entrance. A couple of guys have skied down it already.

The Dark Sector: MAPO on the left and SPT, the 10 meter South Pole Telescope on the right.

SPT is where we took our winterover group photo.

The Ice Cube Lab is in the foreground and SPT in the back. The haze is the power plant exhaust.

Another good one of the station. HERE is about where the geographic pole is (where the word "HERE" is just outside the photo).

These are the berms where we store all kinds of stuff including

a bunch of spools like the one that rolled up the fuel hose.

The fourth Basler flight came in yesterday and our population is 116, now doubled what we had for the winter. The fifth and now final Basler flight is planned for today. We have beautiful clear skies and unlimited visibility so if conditions are good in Mactown today, we should have more company later today. Currently the temp is -60.5F or -51.4C. We'll need to warm up a tad if we want to get an LC-130 landing here on Monday as scheduled.

Our old friend the Dome

2007-10-24T06:43:00.000+13:00

We finally had our third Basler flight make it in last night around 6pm and now our population is 99. Replacements came in for IT, maintenance, the kitchen, science techs and the summer doc is now here.

Yesterday I had to retrieve some supplies from the Dome, some more sharps containers, one of the few medical supplies that we can safely store frozen outside.
This is what the inside of the Dome looks like now. It's just an empty space for frozen storage, mostly our food, and no buildings are left. Notice the hole in the wall that is letting sunlight through and a slow trickle of snow that has piled up over the winter.
The double wooden doors to the entrance of the Dome are still a bit buried but if this looks bad, take a look at what is just outside the doors:
The snow ramp that usually leads from the Dome entrance was not maintained all winter and a huge wall of snow built up in front of the entrance.
That's Froggy the equipment operator bulldozing away the snow. I'm peeking out of the door to take the picture in case the snow comes crashing down.
And this is what it looks like from the Galley window. Snow removal by heavy equipment is a full time job for an entire fleet of operators around here.
The dig out job is halfway finished. All of the snow has to go somewhere and what was removed from the Dome entrance was piled in front of the station in an irresistable hill.

It was gorgeous out last night and with winds about 11 knots, it was perfect paragliding weather for Robert Schwarz.

He got airborne a few times and dragged downhill at least one good time. Froggy said that he's trying to make the snow mound "as peaky as possible" and it's no coindicence that it's in perfect position in front of the Dome entrance to make a nice long sled ride from the top of the hill down the ramp entrance and through the double wooden doors to the Dome that will be open for the summer.

It's not our fault

2007-10-23T08:14:00.000+13:00

This is the latest update as of 23 Oct 2007/0545L from the McMurdo airfield:

The ice runway has snow drifts as outlined below. Request the C-17, C-130 or other aircraft arrive no earlier then 1500L from CHC. Its expected it will take this time to remove snow drifts and open the ice runway and ramp to all aircraft,

If we can open the runway earlier will advise Charleston and Christchurch,

The first 5,500 feet of the runway is about 70-80% clear of any and all snow. The 20-30% of it that does have snow is 3"-4" in finger drifts.
There is about 2,500 ft. of runway that is across from the town site and apron area that has about 85% coverage on it. In places it's up to 6" deep but again mostly 3"-4".
The last 2,000 ft of runway and the 1,000 ft. over run area has about 40-50% coverage on it most of it being 4" deep.
The apron is about 60% covered with snow. Most of that is on the taxiway end of it. The fuel pits are in very good shape right now.

Williams Field and Pegasus Airfield, and associated snow roads remain closed.

Meanwhile, this is what it looks like here:

View from the window in Medical, looking at the skiway and Dark Sector.

The Basler offdeck is delayed until 1pm today so we'll see if we get new people in for dinner tonight.

No planes today either

2007-10-22T11:56:00.000+13:00

Once again the weather is messing with us, but it's not too bad. Yet. For the third day in a row, less than ideal conditions here at South Pole and then at McMurdo have kept the Basler from returning here with more summer people. Today, at McMurdo they're having up to Condition 1 weather where the wind speeds are greater than 55 knots and visibility drops to less than 100 feet.

Down here, it's a beautiful day with clear skies, temps around -45F and winds around 10 knots.

It's work as usual and we're all taking advantage of the extra time to get things done before the masses arrive.

A fuel line has to be laid out from the fuel tanks in the arch off of the Dome, around past the geographic pole, around the station and out to the flight deck fuel pit. The hose gets rolled up on a giant spool and put away during the winter and then rolled out and laid down again during the summer. By the time the LC-130s start landing, scheduled to be happening a week from today, the hose will be all set to go to offload fuel from the planes, fuel that we use to run our generators and power everthing on station.

We'll see what the weather brings tomorrow...

Population: 67

2007-10-19T06:32:00.000+13:00

Only a day behind schedule, the Basler returned to South Pole on October 18.
It brought in 15 new people to help with station opening and left with two of our winterovers.
Brien had a huge smile on his face as he waited to board the plane. He and Francie are scheduled to fly on to Christchurch today and will hopefully be enjoying city life and warmer temperatures tonight.

The Basler also brought more freshies and a very important delivery: flu vaccine. We've just spent the last 8 months in isolation without any infectious diseases being passed around and haven't had any colds or cooties to share for a while. McMurdo during the summer is like a giant petri dish and there is always "the crud" making the rounds through the population. So each plane that arrives here with a load of coughing, sniffling passengers is like a plague ship descending upon a New World tribe. We always fear that once the summer people arrive, we'll all come down with colds.

Or worse, the flu. New Zealand is having a bad season of influenza and we all have to spend at least a couple of days in Christchurch on the way down to the ice. There have already been 22 confirmed cases of influenza A and B at McMurdo and an aggressive campaign to immunize as many people as possible is underway.

54 doses of southern hemisphere flu vaccine were hand carried down here on the Basler and within an hour of the plane's arrival, I set up a vaccination clinic in the Galley, as most everyone was milling around in there relaxing and eating fresh watermelon, honeydew and pineapple.

Neal was one of first in line. He eventually sat down in a chair for me so that I didn't have to reach overhead to give him his shot.

Robert the QuAD scientist, pretzel maker and all-around medical assistant helped out in administering the flu shots. He's really very good and actually I didn't feel a thing...I was just hamming it up for Sven the photographer.

Now our population is 67. Another Basler flight is scheduled for today and it looks like a beautiful day for flying down here.

When you can't fly

2007-10-17T07:02:00.000+13:00

Yesterday the weather in McMurdo was a little blustery, preventing the Basler from taking off to fly here and keeping the Twin Otter grounded here. Faced with another day of not flying, the Otter crew gamely volunteered for dishpit duty.

Brian the pilot had the floors gleaming

During the winter, we have no DA, or Dining Assistant, so we all take turns spending a full day in the Galley washing pots and pans, wiping down tables, cleaning the floors and vacuuming the carpet, filling up napkin dispensers, doing laundry and making juice. We all rotated through the dishpit four times this winter and the last scheduled person was last week, then we went to a volunteer basis since we were expecting the summer DAs to come in soon to take over.
Steve the pilot having too much fun with the dishes.

So it was hugely appreciated that the Kenn Borek crew volunteered to pitch in and they did an outstanding job. The weather looks like it's going to be a bit soupy here all day but I think the Otter crew should take the day off and just watch some movies today.

Unexpected company

2007-10-15T08:05:00.000+13:00

Sometimes you have unexpected visitors crashing your last 2 day weekend off.

We had a window of decent weather and the Kenn Borek aircraft, the Basler and a Twin Otter, were positioned at Rothera station waiting to pounce. We were all set to enjoy our last 2 day weekend of rest and relaxation before the craziness of summer hits, but learned on Saturday that if the weather held up, the planes would make the journey south on Sunday.

I got up early on Sunday and found out that the planes were fueled and ready to take off at the British station. They departed a little after 8am Pole time and I assumed my part time job of doing flight comms and tracked their progress as they inched degree by degree closer to 90 south.

At around 3:20pm the Basler touched snow. I can't tell you how weird it is to finally see something like a plane after being down here for 8 months without any. We're amateurs when it comes to flight ops and the Basler got parked just a little too far away from the fuel pit but with some earnest stretching of the hose, they were able to get the fuel all the way to the tanks.

The Kenn Borek guys have been doing this for a while and they know what's important to bunch of scrappy Polies who have just spent a winter cooped up.

Sean the pilot gave Andy our manager a bottle of Pisco from Chile. Hopefully Andy will share.

But more importantly they brought:

FRESHIES! This is the first fruit we've had since the last dregs of our end of summer stash fermented and got squishy and moldy around April. Those Basler guys really made our day and hopefully those who overindulged on the fresh ambrosia won't be paying for it today.

The Basler refueled and took off again after a short half hour. They flew all the way to McMurdo station despite a change in weather over there resulting in some nasty conditions.
And our last visitor the Twin Otter KBG arrived around 5:30pm. The 3 member crew stayed with us overnight so our population increased to 57 souls. Since it was a day off, the cooks weren't making any dinner and everyone was foraging through the leftover fridge. Not very hospitable on our part, but we did save them some homemade calzones from Saturday night and they seemed happy with that instead of old leftover Mexican food from the back of the fridge.

The weather today in McMurdo is crap so the KBG crew is staying with us another day. If conditions are good tomorrow, the Basler will make a return trip to Pole bringing in the first of the summer crew and soon we'll have to learn all over again how to behave in public.

It's almost summer

2007-10-12T13:02:00.000+13:00

The end is in sight. After 6 months without the sun, 6 months since our fresh fruit ran out, 8 months since the last plane took off, we are about to end our isolation and are expecting company next week.

The first scheduled arrivals are the Basler, a twin engine DC-3, and a Twin Otter which have flown all the way from Canada down the length of the Americas to get to Antarctica. They will be coming from South America via Rothera Station (British) and will stop here sometime on Monday, weather depending. The Basler will refuel then go on to McMurdo and the Otter will spend the night then get going.

On Oct 17, the "soft opening" is scheduled to begin with the Basler returning here with 18 Polies. A total of six Basler trips is planned over the following week or so, each one bringing in 18 people, including our replacements, fuelies, cargo people, cooks, dishwashers, managers and others. Then the official station opening day is scheduled for Oct 29 with the arrival of the first LC-130 planes bringing in the masses for the summer.

Hopefully on Oct 29 I will be on a plane heading north, the only direction possible from here. A replacement PA was hired but only until early December...after that, who knows. Today I signed an offer letter to return next winter for my 5th and LAST one. I know I've said that before but I mean it this time. It promises to be a good crew next year with some familiar faces from this winter, past winters and other seasons. There will be quite a few first timers too, but we were all a first timer at some point.

I'll keep you posted.

The Southern-most Oktoberfest

2007-10-07T09:38:00.000+13:00

We don't need many excuses to throw a party at the South Pole but Oktoberfest has been a big celebration here every time Robert Schwarz has spent the winter.

A native of Bavaria, he was born with the ability to make pretzels.

He deftly rolled out long strands of dough and twisted them into giant pretzels the size of a hubcap.

The twelve flags that were hanging in the Galley for the winter are gone now but Kris helped to transform the boring colorless dining facility into a festive bier hall.

Travis was in charge of the streamers. OK, it's toilet paper.

But it still made for a fun party and we dined on bratwurst, sauerkraut and pretzels.

To add some scale, here's BFK eating his pretzel. He's a rather large guy so the diameter of that pretzel is actually about 2 feet.

And of course there was beer. People brought out their precious supplies of imported beers that they've been saving all winter. Brien still had a can of Kokanee that was flown in from Canada in 2005 by the twin otter pilots for Eric the Canadian cook.

Robert and Laura look like they came straight from Munich. The party went long into the night with countless rounds of Ein Prosit and bad 80s German music. It's a good thing we just celebrated for one night instead of several weeks like the real Oktoberfest.

The 296 Club?

2007-10-05T10:02:00.000+13:00

Well, we didn't get to initiate any new members into the 300 Club this winter but we did just set a new all time record low temperature for the month of October with -95.6F/-71.4C temps today. Maybe we can fire up the sauna anyway and do some naked runs around outside, although without the cloak of darkness there might not as many eager streakers.

When I did my first 300 Club run in 2003, we didn't hit -100F until mid-September. My friends Jon and Dan and I thought we'd wait for the first rush of people in the early morning to finish up so that we could have a little more modesty. When we finally made our naked dash after 11am, we didn't realize people were already gathering for lunch and we ended up having an even bigger audience from the galley windows than we realized.

Here's the latest addition to the wall of winterover crew pictures:

Classy, no?

Another photo for the collection

2007-09-30T10:21:00.000+13:00

Every year the South Pole winter crew leaves behind a group photo of the members who spent the polar night taking care of the station and running the scientific experiments. There's quite a collection now since crews have been wintering over since 1957. The photos used to hang in the old Dome library and pool room,which were demolished last year, and now there's a new home for the memories.

This is the new hall of fame with all of the crew photos hanging on the wall between the computer lab to the left and Medical at the far end.

The very first winter crew braved the elements in 1957 and included Paul Siple, a great explorer of the Antarctic who also developed the wind chill factor. The photos above are of the 1957 and 1958 crews.

Just outside the door of Medical are the photos from the last four winters. Even if you zoomed in on this shot, you still probably wouldn't be able to make me out but I'm there in 2003 (upper left), 2005 (upper right) and 2006 (lower right).

So following the tradition, we gathered for one last group photo.

One of the proud accomplishments of this winter is this is the inaugural year of the South Pole Telescope, the 10 meter telescope looking at cosmic microwave background radiation from the earliest moments of the universe's formation. We gathered at SPT for a photo shoot.

Once again, Robert Schwarz was the photographer and we ascended to the roof of the DSL building for a group shot with the 10 meter dish in the background. Unfortunately the BICEP groundshield was casting a shadow over half the crew.

Luckily our other shot came out better as we posed on a big snow mound just outside of DSL with the dish towering over us. I think this picture will look very nice on the wall...

For more information about the early South Pole crews and Antarctic history in general, see Bill Spindler's fabulous website.

Mid-level practitioner needed for South Pole summer

2007-09-27T07:01:00.000+12:00

As of today, there has been no one hired yet to replace me in Medical for the summer season. A couple of potential Physician Assistants were offered the position but they both dropped out for various good reasons. I’m scheduled to fly out of here on October 29. My replacement is supposed to fly in here on the 18th so that we can have adequate turnover. Now I may not have anyone to do turnover with but I’m still hoping they just let me on that plane on the 29th.

Here's my own job ad: Needed: Physician Assistant or Nurse Practitioner to work at the South Pole clinic from late Oct to early Feb. The pay will be less than you’ve ever made before. The hours will be long as you never really leave work for the day and you won't have any days off except for Sunday and then you'll be on call. Your patients will be your neighbors, your co-workers, your fellow Bingo players. Your commute to work will be less than one minute, depending on if you get stopped in the hallway for a consultation on someone’s rash. You get free, unlimited food and a free membership to the gym which is less than a minutes walk from your office. You’ll meet the most fascinating carpenters, plumbers, cooks, electricians, mechanics, oh yeah and scientists and have bizarre conversations that you would never have anywhere else in the world. You’ll meet people with masters degrees who are taking jobs washing dishes or shoveling snow just for the experience of visiting Antarctica. And you yourself will have the grandest adventure of your life while you’re being paid for it. No lazy wankers need bother applying.

We’re running out of time. In less than a month, we would need to have someone interviewed, hired, PQ’d (the process of extensive medical exams that must be passed before you can deploy), flown down to New Zealand then McMurdo then South Pole with enough time to make sure that the person isn’t going to crump from the altitude or freak out at the sight of this place.
If you are a PA-C or an FNP or know of one who is interested, email me at Heidi.Lim@usap.gov

From my window

2007-09-26T09:07:00.000+12:00

These are the views this morning from the window in Medical:

The flags of the 12 signatory nations to the original Antarctic treaty are back flying at the ceremonial pole, which is a few feet away from the actual geographic pole. The station is casting a long shadow that almost reaches ARO in the background.

The skiway is being groomed again as you can see it in front of the Dark Sector buildings MAPO and the South Pole Telescope.

The moon is up too, a faint spector at the end of the skiway.

It's -83 degrees F out and simply beautiful with soft pink light from the sun low on the horizon. We'll still have a few weeks to enjoy this before the summer crowds begin pouring in.

At long last

2007-09-23T10:09:00.000+12:00

Here it is:

The sun finally returned to the South Pole! We waited for the skies to clear on Sep 21 but didn't see it when it was supposed to have risen above the horizon around 6:30pm. We had our sunrise party anyway, with a roasted whole pig, prime rib and game hens (aka skuas) and those who were still up celebrating around midnight were treated to the first glimpse of the orb itself.

For those like me who were too sleepy to stay up, we got our first view of the sun yesterday as the horizon finally cleared up enough to give undeniable proof that the sun didn't change its mind about showing up again. And now it will continue to circle around us for another 6 months and the whole cycle will repeat itself again.

The Champ

2007-09-21T07:01:00.000+12:00

Who cares about the end of baseball season and the beginning of football season when we have the Nine Ball Tournament and Championship going on at the bottom of the world.

For the second year, Michael organized a pool league where 16 players battled each other for 7 weeks of regular league play then squared off in a 2 week championship series. The 8 Ball league took place earlier this winter and last night, the championship games of the 9 Ball league were fought out.

The pool hall in the B1 lounge still has the decorations up from the last party, an 80's themed party. The carps set up some stadium seating for the crowds to watch the action in grandstand style. Here Jordan and Laura are playing for the consolation match title.

Laura was the lone woman playing the in the 9 Ball league and she made a respectable showing. She had some early wins and upsets in the league play but ended up in the consolation bracket and final match, which Jordan swept to win.

The championship game was between top ranked Brian H. and Jason S., who was an underdog if there ever was one but proved he got game after defeating both Michael and Tracy in the playoffs.

Jason was a model of concentration. He played the table well and made some beautiful shots including sinking a 9 ball on the break in game 4 to give him a comfortable lead. Brian played extremely well as he has all season but his precision wasn't enough last night as Jason capitalized on every opportunity to put away that last ball.

The underdog shot without mercy to take the 11 game series 6-2 and was crowned 9 Ball Champ of 2007.

Tonight we are celebrating the return of the sun with a grand feast and high hopes that the visibility will clear to allow us our first glimpse of our old friend after a 6 month absence.

Emerging from winter

2007-09-18T12:37:00.000+12:00

Today was the first "nice" day in a while, with winds finally under 15 knots. I had a mission, to take down my flags that I had been flying at the geographic pole, so I wandered around a bit and took a few photos of what the station looks like after a winter.

Here are my flags with the Scott tent and Dome in the background. I recruited the tallest person on station, Neal, to help me get them down.

The entrance to the Dome is pretty much gone now. Tim the heavy equipment operator is going to have his hands full doing lots of grooming and digging out.

The moon is up now as you can see it above the Beer Can.

These are the back stairs to the A1 berthing wing. Once the sun comes up and starts to warm things up, the frost will melt off of things pretty quickly.

Some pretty impressive drifts formed between the A4 and B1 wings. The prevailing direction of wind is from the opposite side of the station and it's supposed to whip through under the bottom of the station and not deposit too much snow but actually we do see quite a bit of drifting on the front side and parts of the back.

Tim was already working on getting the garage entrance cleared out. Right now it's just messy piles of snow.

Good thing we have heavy machinery to do most of the big snow removal as the shovels just about need shoveling out themselves.

The BBQ in the back corner of the A2 first floor deck hasn't seen much action lately.

And the sun should be popping up in just 3 days now...

The Last Breakfast

2007-09-17T12:32:00.000+12:00

All winter long we've been treated to a Sunday Brunch once a month. Michael once again has been the mastermind behind this dining treat, also known as Biggest Breakfast in Antarctica, or BBIA. As we now have one month left to go this winter, we celebrated our last BBIA this past Sunday.

And it was no ordinary meal as we turned the Galley into a formal dining room. The coverings are off of the windows now and we're enjoying ambient light from outside, although a blizard is currently making it look still quite wintery and dark at the moment.

It was a sit-down dining experience complete with menus, table cloths, candles and unique candle holders.

Volunteers were recruited as the wait staff to take orders, serve the diners and attend to their every need. Here's Neal with Katie, Lynette and Dainella as they wait for the breakfast rush.

We also had a BBIA Bar serving up Mimosas, Bloody Marys, Velvet Beer (Guiness and champagne) and red beer (Bloody Mary mix and beer). The bar tenders Dan, Jordan and Paul kept the diners happy, as well as their best customer Dave (seated in front) who had been helping Michael back in the kitchen since 5am.

It was a full house that morning with hungry Polies and busy servers.

The orders came in quickly and Michael had his hands full cooking up steaks, salmon, eggs (made with frozen egg product since we ran out of fresh eggs in the shell). There were also hash browns, home fries, biscuits and gravy and an assortment of baked goods to go with the mains. That's one of my homemade bagels in the background with lox, capers and cream cheese.
Katie was busy bringing orders from the tables and lining them up for the chef.

A crowd favorite: homemade cinnamon roll with cream cheese frosting!

If Neal decides to give up his career in science, he could make a living as a waiter judging by the attention Sven got. Here he is getting some honey for his tea, one of the many drinks Sven ordered, in addition to the sampler of all of the beverages offered up by the bar. We're talkin' full service at this joint!

And one last shot taken from the Galley windows of the geographic pole with a Scott tent set up for intrepid campers. The flags are my personal ones that I'm flying for the winter for some friends. Believe it or not, the sun will be peeking above the horizon in a few days...whether or not we see it on Sep 21 will depend on the visibility at the time. Currently we're having winds of 30 knots and gusts even higher. Old man polar winter isn't quite done with us yet.

Thai day

2007-09-15T12:41:00.000+12:00

I must return to one of my favorite subjects: food. We eat so well down here...creative, tasty meals three times a day, nothing but homemade bread, enough cookies and desserts to keep us well insulated for the winter. The chefs have to excel in making just about everything from frozen food, some of it sitting out on the snow berms literally for more than a decade.

One of the biggest treats though is Thai Day.
Michael has been our resident Thai chef for the past couple of years, having mastered the culinary art at a previous cooking job. And now after last year's trip to Thailand, he even has the authentic yellow Thai shirt with the king's emblem that you see everywhere from the streets of Bangkok to the beaches of the Andaman Sea islands.

One of Michael's offerings for the last Thai day was Pad Thai made to order. He whipped up individual batches for the hungry diners using fresh Asian greens from our greenhouse.

The final product brought back fond memories of freshly made Pad Thai straight out of the hot woks of the street vendors on Koh San Road for 25 baht.
But Michael went all out as always and had a whole spread of scrumptious food...chicken satay with peanut sauce; red, yellow AND green curries to which you could add grilled chicken, shrimp or tofu; spicy squid salad and spicy fish balls...and of course plenty of rice to sop up the flavors.

I'd be willing to say that this is the best Thai food buffet on the continent and probably anywhere else outside of the Land of Smiles. Just think what Michael could have done with all fresh ingredients!

Mucho mint

2007-09-08T00:05:00.000+12:00

We have an unusual predicament...too much mint in the greenhouse.

We've harvested it before for making mint juleps, mojitos and even mint chocolate ice cream made with liquid nitrogen.

Terry the greenhouse tech is going to hack away the plants soon to make room for something else so we need to pick mint this weekend and do something with it. Any good ideas out there for more mint recipes would be greatly appreciated!

Updates

2007-09-07T09:16:00.000+12:00

For the past few summers, National Geographic has been sending down a camera crew to film the ongoing construction of the Elevated Station down here at the South Pole. They've finally completely the documentary and it will air tonight (Sep 6) in the states at 9pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. Click here for a preview on their website.

And now for some updates...

Remember the egg oiling party we had in early April? Well, they held their freshness but unfortunately we didn't have nearly enough for the winter, especially for the number of folks here who must have their 2 eggs over easy every morning, and we ran out of fresh eggs in July.

The Race to McMurdo is still going strong. Johan reached the goal before midwinter and is on his way back to Pole, or continuing on to Christchurch, as he would like to think of it. I finished the 840 miles to McMurdo on July 14 and am continuing on myself. I'm now at 1210 miles logged running on the treadmill and elliptical thus far since February.

On September 3 we were allowed to removed the window coverings from the station as the light sensitive experiments came to an end with the lightening of the skies. Our Galley Gallery is no longer up but soon we'll have the polar vista views to enjoy. Right now it's still too dark out to see anything other than your reflection from inside a normally lit room.

We never did reach -100 degrees F long enough for people to run around naked outside for their 300 club membership. The chances for that happening are slipping away, although we were at -98.1 yesterday but now it's warmed up to -92.9F. When the temps outside plunge, sometimes we have a hard time regulating the heat inside the station. This is what one of my window sills looks like:

This is the window right next to my bed (I have 2 windows since I have a double room...one of the benefits of racking up ice-time). It gets a little frost build-up but then again, who was the genius who decided to put metal window sills in an Antarctic station anyway?

We are scheduled to see our first plane, a Basler, on Oct 17. The plan is to use this smaller plane to fly in groups of 18 people for 6 flights in an effort to get people in here sooner without having to worry as much about the cold temp limits that the LC-130s have. Those planes will start flying in here Oct 29 bringing in the masses of summer workers and scientists. After last year's agonizing delayed opening where we were stuck for 10 days before it warmed up enough for the LC-130s, this is probably a smarter plan but you can never depend on the weather to do what you want. It wouldn't surprise me if we hit -100F again right about when we're hoping that our rides out of here will arrive.

Briefly...

2007-09-03T08:31:00.000+12:00

We finally hit -100 degrees F for the first time this winter a few minutes ago.

But it's not looking good for the 300 club...it's already warmed back up to -98.7 degrees F.

I'll keep you posted...

Lunar eclipse at the bottom of the world

2007-08-30T09:45:00.000+12:00

Like other parts of the world, we got to witness the lunar eclipse on August 28.

Our resident astronomer and professional photographer Robert Schwarz was out all night armed with an arsenal of cameras and giddy with excitement. He was worried that we would be skunked with clouds and poor visibility that night but instead we lucked out with incredibly beautiful weather and clear views of the show.

We had great views of the moon out on the back decks of the station over towards the cryo barn. The earth's shadow started creeping over the face of the moon around 8:30pm and the total eclipse occurred from about 10-10:30pm.

Robert has a great website here with loads of his beautiful photos from this winter and previous winters (this is his 6th winter). His lunar eclipse photos were also featured at SpaceWeather.com on the front page, quite an honor!

We are now seeing a nice pink tinge on the horizon where the sun is circling around us, although it's still pretty dark out. It will only get lighter and lighter from here on out until the sun emerges from below the horizon around September 21 and then the 6 month-long day will begin. For now, it's a lovely dawn full of promise...