After months in Antarctica everyone has their reasons for wanting to leave. When people here talk about how much time they have left on the Ice they generally say "X days and a wake-up." Usually people start admitting they are counting the days when the number of days is somewhere below 45.
February is when return flights get in full swing. People come and go throughout the summer but they are usually specialists on short deployments to do something like upgrade communications gear or scientists who are generally only here for 6 weeks at a time. My winter-over replacement came in yesterday and then the plane turned around carried out about 100 "contract-complete" people who had spent the whole summer here. I'll train my replacement over the next few days and then on Wednesday the 14th (weather permitting) I'll be flying back to Christchurch New Zealand. Everything going to Christchurch is labled with the three-letter airport code "CHC" so most of us on the Ice call it "Cheech."
February is also "Vessel season" when ships come in. Two icebreakers finished opening a channel a couple of weeks ago. The Sweedish icebreaker ODEN went home around the 19th of January but the Coast Guard Icebreaker POLAR SEA has stuck around to make sure the channel doesn't get frozen back up or jammed with chunks of floating ice. The winds were favorable and blew the chunks out of the channel so the POLAR SEA had time to give three-hour "morale cruises" last Sunday.
To get on the morale cruise we were asked to sign-up and then names were pulled out of a hat to see who got to go. Of the 900 people on station at the time about 500 got to go. Luckily my name came up. I started off on early on a Sunday morning and rode the ice-breaker through the channel with the pilot occasionally brushing up against the ice for fun. (I think he liked seeing all the red parkas in front of the wheelhouse bouncing to the side when he hit the ice) The Polar Sea is 400 feet long so it's bigger than a ferry but smaller than a cruise ship. The channel we were cruising throgh was 400 feet wide with miles of ice and mountains on either side. Just out of the water on either side were seals and penguins and some whales even made it under the boat. Pictures and words won't do it justice, but I can understand why some tourists will pay up to $35,000 for an Antarctic cruise on old, cramped, Russian icebreakers.
The station got busier just after the morale cruises. A newer science vessel called the NATHANIEL B. PALMER pulled in to change crews and take on new experiments. I got a tour of her while she was in port and got to learn about how they run science operations on board. One guy I met was a recent Mechanical Engineering grad who was rigging chains and winches for hoisting experiments over the side. (sounds kind of familiar) The motto for him and the other "Marine Techs" who do this is "Strong like bull...Smart like tractor." (don't think about that too hard)
The PALMER had two days in port before it had to make room for a U.S. Navy tanker to bring in Millions of gallons of fuel for us to use over the next year. 48 hours after that the tanker made way for the cargo vessel AMERICAN TERN. The TERN is being unloaded by the U.S.
NAVy
Cargo
Handling
Personell or "NAVCHaPs." Most of the NAVCHaPs are big, muscular guys, with a few tough-looking women mixed in. It's a change to see more uniforms on station. Another change is that the station is running 24/7 to unload the ship and the space between my building and other dorms that usually is a parking lot for trucks and heavy equipment has become an area for unloading frozen food from refrigerated containers and moving it into the food storage warehouse. With forklifts and
Pickles running every which way the area has been cordoned off with snow-fence so people walking to lunch don't get mowed down. I've started calling the area STALAG-McMURDO!
Most of the food we eat came in on a ship within the last 5 years, though one pig was found in a crate marked "197?" and was recently roasted at a party. We do have a warehouse with freezers to keep our frozen food from thawing during the one month of the year temperatures can get above 32F. My friend Austin works on the coolers and gets endless fun back home telling people he works as a "freezer repair man in Antarctica."
With all the vehicles running around and the station being so busy, alcohol is no longer sold on station. The bars are all closed and the store doesn't sell it. The story goes that back in the day a NAVCHaP got drunk and stumbled down to the pier where he got crushed between a truck and a cargo container that a crane was lowering onto it. Since it's not possible to get rid of the NAVCHaPs, cranes, trucks, or cargo containers it was decided that alcohol had to go. And since it would be a nightmare to figure out who was involved in unloading the vessel and who wasn't every time alcohol was to be sold it was decided we would be a "dry station" for a week or two out of the year. (not that it stopps people from stocking up before hand)
That's the excitement for now. My most recent books finished include
Ender's Game and
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I've found that this far into the season the only non-fiction I can seem to make it through are short articles and political blogs. Guess I'm getting a little toasty so it will be good to see trees and a sunset again a week from now.
