Adam On Ice

A year in the "real world"

2008-02-17T18:26:00.001-08:00

Valentine's day was my anniversary of getting on the plane and heading back to New Zealand. I celebrated by going with some of my friends to the New Hampshire showing of the Bamff Mountan Film Festival. The first time I saw the annual tour of outdoor-themed films was in Antarctica so it seems fitting. The winning films tour the world so I recommend going to see it if there is a showing nearby.

Antarctica has been on my mind daily for the past year. It is a place full of amazing, smart people with great stories. People who literally are willing to trade the world for adventure. People who pull together to keep very devoted scientists and each other alive. I've been part of small communities for most of my life from my home town in northern Vermont to a very small tight-knit college and now a small research company in New Hampshire. I've also seen the communities of thru-hikers on the Long Trail/Appalachian trail, International students studying abroad, Old VW enthusiasts, motorcycle riders, SCUBA divers and so on. Antarctica seems to forge stronger relationships than any other community I have been a part of.

I still keep in touch with ice people, usually the comment "do you miss it?" creeps into the conversation and the answer is almost always "Yes!" of the handful of people I keep up with, one is planning to go back in a few months, five have already been back, and one of them is spending a winter at McMurdo.

I don't have any plans to return...yet. At the moment my engineering career and starting a "real life" are more important than going back to the bottom of the world. So since it's been a year I figure this is a good point to reflect on what I've accomplished since my boots left the 7th continent.

What I've done in the first year post-ice, A partial list:

Completed a 8 day ~100 mile hike in New Zealand
Been Skydiving from 15,000 feet
Bungee-jumped off the highest platform in New Zealand
Traveled through two world heritage sites
Been SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef
Walked through lava caves in Australia and in Hawaii
Seen Volcanic eruptions
Learned to ride a Motorcycle in Hawaii, obtained a license and ridden about 1000 miles
Learned to drive a stick-shift and bought a new car
Drove my old VW over 1500 miles accumulating many new stories
Taken several hikes in the deadliest mountain range in North America
Read several books for fun
Moved into a new apartment in New Hampshire
Worked for 7 months (and counting) at an engineering job that I truly believe in
Expanded my cooking repertoire
Tried snowboarding
Tried skate-style XC skiing
Watched several classic movies I've been meaning to see
Taken several business trips
Toured a crash test lab and watched an automotive crash test from less than 20 feet away (wear your seatbelt!)
Ridden in what is arguably the world's fastest electric car in California
Volunteered for a presidential campaign in New Hampshire
Voted in a New Hampshire "First in the nation" Presidential Primary
Been issued license plates bearing the motto "Live Free or Die"
Spent a day in a wheelchair
Attended two film festivals and a silent movie
Been to a party at an inventor's house
Attended a graduation, two weddings and a funeral
Spent a couple of days on the couch doing nothing at all :)

Earlier today I climbed one of New Hampshire's highest peaks and felt at home in 60+ MPH winds with a wind-chill of negative something cold. In the process I used crampons for the first time. At the moment work is busy but I'm doing things I enjoy other than work so (knock on wood) life is good.

Take care everyone and thanks for reading!

Cheers

Adam

#$@! it's HOT!

2007-03-27T02:06:00.000-07:00

I got off the plane in Cairns, Australia at 11:30pm and was hit with a wall of heat.

I've spent the past week traveling into the bush and out to the Great Barrier Reef and it's quite apparent I'm out of the Antarctic and into the wet tropics.

I had seven days to spend around Cairns before my flight took off for Hawaii. I spent the first taking advantage of the cheapest internet I've seen since I got back to the "real world" (AU$1/hour) and meeting up with a couple of people from the Ice.

The next day (Thursday) I took a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to get a couple of SCUBA dives in. With some Ice people. On friday we went up to Cape Tribulation which is where the Rainforrest meets up with the Great Barrier Reef. Both are listed as World Heritage Areas and seeing Jungle and Ocean reminded me of my time in Belize. On the way up we took a boat ride to see some salt water crocidiles and took a swim in a different stream (no crocks in that one). We paused to see where Steve Irwin (The Crock Hunter) was killed by a stingray and made it back late in the day.

By Saturday my Ice friends had left so I took a long bus ride out to Undara to see some gian caves formed by lava cooling under the earth. On the way I traveled through Rainforrest, High-Altitude Rainforrest, the impossible-sounding "Dry Rainforrest" and the Australian savanahlands. The one lane road crossing the Savanah was built for "Road Trains" carrying minerals from the mines to the coast in trucks pulling four trailers. They were scary to see bearing down on the bus and we pulled off the road to let them pass.

I spent Sunday, Monday, and Today out on the Great Barrier Reef on a "live-aboard" dive trip which was amazing! The site I went to on Thursday was good but had been over-visited. I found out this time of year is the raniest with the worst visability and most of the people we were diving with were VERY inexperienced. Undeterred I went out in a diffrent direction with my buddy and still had some good dives while the dive instructors kept handling tourists that couldn't keep from popping to the surface or slamming into the bottom. But the three-day trip was in a completely different leauge.

While the visability wasn't as crystal clear as the Carribean, the variety of fish was bigger than I had ever seen. We did 3 dives during each of the days and a night dive on both of the first two days. In each of those dives I saw something noteworthy, whether it was a 2-meter long sea turtle, stingrays and sharks (I kept my distance) or schools of fish the size of busses. I'm exhausted now but it was an amazing experience and was worth the extra time to come here and see it.

It's dinner time now so I'm off to meet some friends from the SCUBA trip. Tomorrow morning I head to Sydney and then on to Hawaii, 13 hours of flying will get me to Hawaii before I leave on the 28th. Then for the first time in over 7 months, I will be living in the same day as everyone back home.

Where in the world is Adam?

2007-03-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

After almost a month hanging out and doing spectacular hiking on the south island I have lost some more weight and hopped a plane back to my old home of Auckland.

I stopped by the University this morning to say hi to a couple of old professor friends and am making my preparations to go north. So far I haven't made it to the northern end of New Zealand yet. That should be remidied by this time next week. After that I'm on a plane for Australia and then stopping in Hawaii and San Francisco on my way home.

One of the perks of the Antarctic program is relatively cheap travel around the pacific. I'm taking full advantage of flights to Australia and Hawaii for the cost of a couple of change fees.

Out and about

2007-02-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

Over the past 10 days I've been out around Christchurch. A couple of days spent out sailing, hiking and mountain biking in Akaroa on the volcanic peninsula two hours east of Christchurch and a few days hiking in Arthur's pass which is two hours to the west.

Hiking re-introduced me to rain and for the first couple of hours it was actually fun to be cold and wet. Ramen noodles taste best when cooked on a Coleman stove and eaten with a spork. Arthur's pass is a lot like Smuggler's Notch back in VT with mountains that are taller. I spent the night in a hut with a couple of Ice friends from the power plant and an old Kiwi who has hiked on every mountain I could name in Africa, Asia, and South America. The hike was in the clouds with occasional openings that let me see the west coast. It was cool to wake up and see clouds below me and above me with a clear patch to see the mountains around me in between.

We were somewhat surprised when two people from the Carpenter shop showed up at the hut. Then again there are lots of ice people around.

Bag Drag, flight, CHC

2007-02-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

For the first time in six months when I say "I'm here" I don't mean Antarctica.

The night before I left I had "bag drag" where I walked with my bags up to the Air Transport Office (ATO) in full ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. Both my bags and I had to be weighed. I had a checked bag full of my 40lbs of ECW and I had another bag with all my stuff in it that I would carry on the plane. We're still required to wear Big Red the parka, lined Carheart work pants and our huge issued boots on the plane just in case something goes wrong on the ride out to the runway.

After some doubts about weather the C-17 that would carry me back to the real world left Christchurch and headed down to the Ice. I was at Pegasus Field at 8pm; in time to see it land. The handfull of incoming winter-overs got off, I was handed a flight lunch "flunch" in a paper bag and climbed on the plane. When they closed the door to the windowless cargo hold I saw my last sliver of Antarctic light.

The flight arrived at 2am local time and I was one of the first off the plane and through customs. I found my bags easily and pushed a cart a few hundred yards to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) to turn in my 40lbs of Antarctic gear.

I've been told smells are amazingly strong when you get back to the real world and they definately are. On the Taxi ride to the hotel last night I could smell the tires through the open window. It's almost overpowering to walk through the Christchurch city gardens, smell the pollen and see a flowing river with several species of birds in it. I've heard the best part about Antarctica is leaving it and the intensity of seeing so much stuff and so many strange people around makes me see why people say that.

Six days and a wake-up

2007-02-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

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.

Jobs on the Ice

2007-01-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

In response to a comment on my last blog about jobs here.....

The first place to look is on the U.S. Antarctic Program website it shows all the different opportunities to come down here. If your friend isn't a Ph.D. or a renowned artist/writer her best bet for getting a job here is with one of the support companies. Raytheon Polar Services Co. (RPSC) is by far the largest.

RPSC starts posting job openings in February or March on their website:

On that website the best thing to do is apply for anything you might be qualified for. I applied for at least 10 jobs and that's pretty standard unless you're a skilled tradesperson like a plumber. (note: if you know any good plumbers, electricians or mechanics, RPSC always seems to need more of them)

The actual hiring process is long, complicated and everyone here seems to have some story about how their paperwork got lost... so if your friend wants a job she should keep following up on her application every couple of weeks.

Very few people here (aside from skilled tradespeople) get hired unless they go to one of the job fairs. Think about it, the job's at the bottom of the world so it's tough to replace people who are lazy or have severe social problems. RPSC doesn't pay to fly people to Denver Headquarters for interviews so the job fairs are really the only places supervisors get to meet the people they are hiring. A flight to Colorado may be expensive but it makes you a lot more attractive to hire. (and could get you a better job that makes up the cost of the flight in a few weeks)

Your friend will likely get a job as a member of the "377 club." It's named for the weekly wage of Janitors, Dish Washers, and General Assistants this year. There is also an internship program I don't know much about where you get paid less and have to turn in a research project. Evernone in the club is overqualified: there are a lot of Liberal Arts majors and even a rocket scientist here washing dishes. With a 54-60 hour work week and no overtime pay members of the club make less than minimum wage, but you don't have to pay for rent, food or the trip to New Zealand. (seeing your paycheck, however, is still depressing especially AFTER they take taxes out)

Jobs are competitive and you should really want to get to Antarctica and work hard. Mainly they want people with the potential to stay in the program for a few seasons who can deal with isolation and old facilities and won't want to go straight back home after they get off the plane.

If you have any more questions you and your friend can e-mail me at my Alumni.Olin.Edu address.

Playing Catch Up

2007-01-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

It's been about two weeks since I got back from Pole and my schedule is just about back to normal. I was working when I was at the pole but my shifts were being covered by the other night operator. Since weather extended my stay from 3 to 6 days he was forced to work 6 12-hour shifts in a row. I covered some of his shifts when I got back which meant for a little over a week I wasn't doing much other than working and sleeping.

In the blur of the last two weeks one of the day-shift operators left to go to start a winter contract at Palmer station on the other side of the continent. Palmer only has 20-40 people at any given time and the area is teaming with wildlife so Palmer contracts are coveted. His leaving meant one of the winter-over operators came here a month early. She wanted to swap with me so she could work nights so I agreed. This means I've transitioned from working days to nights four times in almost a month. I can't complain since the swaps let me take this job and get to pole. I am a little tired right now, however. I have two days off coming up and I plan to take full advantage of them.

The biggest change on station is the arrival of liquid ocean. While I was at pole the first of two icebreakers came in to help clear a channel for our resupply ships. There is open water in the channel and one guy in the power plant saw whales in it this morning.

The first icebreaker is a Sweedish ship called the ODEN and the second to arrive is the U.S. Coast Guard POLAR SEA. The POLAR SEA is based out of seattle so they came with "good" coffee and some people from station stood in line after a quick tour of the ship to get a cup of Seattle's Best Coffee. (I still don't drink the stuff)

The highlight of last week was a tour of the engine room on the POLAR SEA. I managed to meet the AEO/chief engineering officer while I was aboard for the quick tour and arranged a tour for Matt the Mechanic (see link at the right) and me. The engine rooms are tight and there is a maze of passageways to climb down. I usually have a good sense of direction but I was lost pretty easily as we climbed up and down half flights of stairs and ladders onto metal gratings. At one point I realized I was standing on a solid floor and the officer told me we were standing on the keel fuel tank 25 feet below the water line.

Much like a diesel locomotive the POLAR SEA uses diesel engines to turn generators and make electricity. The electricity is then fed to electric motors that turn the giant stainless steel propellers and move the ship through the water. This set-up allows the diesels to run at their most efficient speed while the electric motors can more easily have their speed adjusted. When eight diesel locomotive engines don't have enough power the ship can switch to using gas turbines which are effectively jet engines to turn the propellers. These burn a lot more fuel but quadruple the power output of the ship, allowing it to push a 400' long hull of 3" thick steel on top of the ice. The weight of the ship then crushes the ice underneath it and opens a channel.

What I was most impressed by, though, was the equipment they had replaced. One of the electric motors needed replacing a few years ago. It is a in a 10 foot cube of a box that surrounds the propeller shaft. Since the propellers are at the bottom of the ship this 10 foot cube needed to be hoisted 7 stories out of the ship. Problem was, there was a ceiling 1 foot above it. Some contractors in port cut through 7 decks of the ship making holes in bedrooms, bathrooms and anything in the way to take that motor out. Once they had put the new motor in they welded everything back into place so there is only a small seam around the edge of what used to be a gaping hole. If I hadn't been told about it I never would have noticed. It's crazy to think how much effort goes into keeping the dozens or hundreds of aging ships the navy has running.

Heading North

2007-01-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

The "Ultra-Dangerous Power Plant Recovery Team" in front of a Soviet-Built MI-8 "hip" Helocopter. Right to Left: McMurdo Electrician Mick, McMurdo Operator Adam 2 (me), McMurdo Mechanic Matt and Adam 1 the South Pole Mechanic

There are a lot of differences between McMurdo and Pole. Size is the most obvious difference since Pole has a max population of 250 to McMurdo's 1200. The landscape here is flat instead of seeing the coastal mountains. The differences cut deeper into the culture here. the scientists and support staff, for example, interact a lot more here than up at MacTown. Scientists at Pole stay on station all season where at McMurdo the scientists are mostly only down for six weeks and will usually head out to the field after a couple of days in town.

Another noticable difference, however, is the station-wide intercom. Having one main building and an intercom adds to the sense of unity at Pole. In my mind the building feels a little more like "South Pole High" than "McMurdo Community College" but the people are definately more fun and accepting than at your average high school. Of those who choose to spend the nine-month winter here about 1/3 return. The main reason given is usually "the people" and after a week of seeing all the smiles here I can definately tell why.

Planes usually take off from McMurdo heading to the Pole in the morning. The sit "on deck" here for about a half hour with their engines running while the cargo and fuel they are carrying to the station are unloaded then head back to the coast in the afternoon. I've been delayed here at Pole for the past three days because the weather in McMurdo hasn't allowed the flights coming to Pole to take off. The extra time gave me a chance to walk into the old dome that was built as the U.S. station back in the 1970's. The old dome is just used as food storage now and will likely be demolished in the next couple of years. The Navy Construction Batalion (CB or SeaBees) that built it would like to have it reassembled at their museum in San Diego. So the next time I stand under the dome may be in California.

Yesterday we had "The 2007 South Pole International Air Show." A flight of American/Canadian helocopters came in and was met a couple of hours later by a flight of Russian helocopters. For the first time ever there were four "helos on deck" at the South Pole. It is the official policy of the National Science Foundation that the United States Antarctic Program does not support private adventurers in their expeditions but that didn't mean a few of us couldn't come out from the station to greet the crews and welcome them to the South Pole.

This morning I was down in the power plant when a call came in over the intercom "South Pole: We have an inbound flight from McMurdo off-deck at 08:30 expected here at 11:30 carrying DV's. All outbound pax should be on deck at 11:30." Which means I just got my ticket home. The "DVs'" are Distinguished Visitors, in this case it's a congressional delegation and some higher-ups from the National Science Foundation. I don't know who the congressmen/women are but if I'll be getting on the plane they're getting off so I'll let you know if I recognize them.

When the Power Plant Goes South

2007-01-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

Me at the South Pole carrying the flag of the Green Mountain Boys and the Vermont Republic which is still flown by the Vermont National Guard

I made it to the Pole!

It took a pipe exploding and a flood of antifreeze but I made it.

Last week some maintenance was being done on one of the exhaust gas heat exchangers that pull heat from the hot generator exhaust so it can be used to heat the station. The exchanger needed to be put offline for a while while some checks could be run on it. Unfortunately (according to the mechanic) the engineer running the check didn't ask the mechanic about how to properly cut off the flow of exhaust and check to make sure it had been cut off. When the coolant flow was cut off the still-flowing exhaust continued to heat the coolant in the exchanger. The coolant trapped inside the exchanger was heated to 5 times it's normal temperature, overwhelmed the safety valves and caused a seam between 3" pipes to let go.

This meant the 2300 gallon coolant loop that carries heat to the station from the generators and their exhaust could now pour into the power plant (which is below the rest of the station) Some of the coolant landed on the running generator and was burned/boiled into smoke/steam that filled the power plant. The generator was shut down but the smoke detectors cut off fuel to the power plant preventing another generator from starting so the lights on station went out until the backup generators came online. Only about half of the coolant did pour out before it could be valved off but the damage was done.

Some of us from the McMurdo power plant have come down south to help out. The generator was a little sticky with antifreeze in the air filters but otherwise OK, the main casualty was the control electronics for two of the generators. The cabinets which are only designed to protect electronics against dust and curious fingers got drenched with antifreeze and some made it inside. In a battle between electronics and antifreeze, antifreeze usually wins. For most of the past week I have been helping the electrician carefully remove electronic components wire by wire and replace them. Since it is the South Pole parts are a little hard to come by but one generator (which didn't get hit with coolant) was already down for routine maintenance so we could borrow some parts from that one until the replacements come down in a couple of weeks.

By the time I head out today the station will be in about the same operating condition that it was
before this whole mess happened. I've been up to my elbows in antifreeze soaked electronics for a few days but I haven't stopped smiling since I got here. The electricians and mechanics have appreciated the help and are calling me "the engineer who has a clue." Considering an engineer has been given the blamed for this whole mess it's probably the biggest compliment they could give me.

MIDRATS

2006-12-26T02:39:00.000-08:00

Even though this station has been under civilian management for at least 10 years, it's interesting to note how much of the lauguage on station still has a military feel to it. The kitchen/ dining hall for example is called "the galley" and the midnight meal for day-sleepers is called MIDRATS. (short for Midnight Rations) It might seem clever to call the people who work nights "Mid-Rats" but that name hasn't ever stuck.

Usually when I'm on shift in the power plant at night I'm alone. Since I can't leave the plant unattended to go get food from the galley it means I usually skip MIDRATS and microwave something I find in the power plant's top-loading "deer meat" freezer. The exception, of course, is if there is another operator hanging out in the power plant who can relieve me for a few minutes so I can go grab a plate of food.

Grabbing a plate of food has a different challange since the local scavenger gulls called Skuas have showed up. Since they don't have any natural preaditors in Antarctica and the Antarctic Treaty prevents us humans from "interfering" with them these birds have no fear. A couple of times I have walked within two feet of Skuas and they turn their head a little but don't otherwise move or make any indication that they might want to. Several times during the season there will be the remnants of food lying on the ground near the galley being pecked up by Skuas who have successfully scared someone into dropping it and running.

(Our "take it or leave it" recycling bins where people put useable things that would normally be sold at a garage sale are labeled "SKUA" in honor of these lovely birds)

I'm not working tonight so I'll be heading to MIDRATS in a few minutes. Only about 10% of the station works at night so I probably will pass the rest of the time tonight by doing "fun reading" or catching up on e-mails.

As a brief side note: lots of people down here keep blogs so they can keep people at home updated on life here. I'll start posting blogs of people I know in the "links" section on the right side of this page. (insert disclaimer about me not editing what they write on their own blogs here)

Christmas

2006-12-24T08:48:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas here, at least I think it is.

The sun got to its highest point in the sky a couple of days ago so from now on it spirals back down toward the horizon. This means it's also about as warm as it's going to get. Most of the snow around station has melted but the temperature stays in the 20's to low 30's. The lack of snow doesn't make it feel that Christmasy around, especially considering how much of it I've seen in the past four months.

I'm working in the power plant the evening of the 24th and the 25th. Most people on station get Sunday and Monday off. I'm working both but I really don't mind. I was off last night so I got to go to the Saturday night Christmas party in the Heavy equipment shop. All the tools and equipment were moved out so there was a cavernous hall full of sleds and giant wooden snowflakes. One of the walls had pictures projected on it of people back home. It was a good time.

Just before I started this shift (at 6:30 pm on Sunday) I broke out the suit I had brought down to go to Christmas dinner. The galley did an awesome job making a overflowing table of desserts and an all around great meal. (there were even lobster tails flown in on the last flight)

Back in high school I had a job at a video store and as the new guy I had to work on Christmas. I remember thinking I would never want to work on Christmas again. Maybe it's because I know this is an important job to the 1100 people on station who use lights or maybe it's because I wouldn't be seeing my family even if I wasn't working but I don't feel bad about working on Christmas this year.

I did get a present while I was on shift tonight. Another penguin waddled off the ice and up to the edge of town so I could easily see him from the window of the power plant. I don't know why but they are obnoxiously cute.

The internets are a wonderful thing

2006-12-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

Part of working nights in the power plant also means my time off is while most of the station is sleeping. Tonight I had volunteered for the late shift in the library from 8-10 pm. Having slept during most of the hours from 8am-6pm today I was still pretty awake when 10pm rolled around so I left the library open and started reading things on the internet. I did check out a few good books from the library but I probably will save reading those until I am on shift in the power plant "waiting for things to go wrong."

Things are certainly different from 100 years ago when clubbing seals or playing solitare (with cards) were good ways to pass the time.

Below are the results from a personality test I just took.The written description (below) seems surprizingly accurate. (at least in my own head)

You are an Inventor

Your imagination, self-reliance, openness to new things, and appreciation for utility combine to make you an INVENTOR.

You have the confidence to make your visions into reality, and you are willing to consider many alternatives to get that done.

The full spectrum of possibilities in the world intrigues you—you're not limited by pre-conceived notions of how things should be.

Problem-solving is a specialty of yours, owing to your persistence, curiosity, and understanding of how things work.

Your vision allows you to identify what's missing from a given situation, and your creativity allows you to fill in the gaps.

Your awareness of how things function gives you the ability to come up with new uses for common objects.

It is more interesting for you to pursue excitement than it is to get caught up in a routine.

Although understanding details is not difficult for you, you specialize in seeing the bigger picture and don't get caught up in specifics.

You tend to more proactive than reactive—you don't just wait for things to come to you.

You do your own thing when it comes to clothing, guided more by practical concerns than by other people's notions of style.

Generally, you believe that you control your life, and that external forces only play a limited role in determining what happens to you.

If you want to be different:

Try applying your creativity to more artistic arenas, and letting your imagination take less practical forms.

You are Benevolent

You are a great person to interact with—understanding, giving, and trusting—in a word, BENEVOLENT

You don't mind being in social situations, as you feel comfortable enough with people to be yourself.

Your caring nature goes beyond a basic concern: you take the time to understand the nuances of people's situations before passing any sort of judgment.

You're a good listener, and even better at offering advice.

You're concerned with others at both an individual and societal level—you sympathize with the plights of troubled groups, and you can care about people you've never met.

Considering many different perspectives is something at which you excel, and you appreciate that quality in others.

Other people's feelings are important to you, and you're good at mediating disputes.

Because of your understanding and patience, you tend to bring out the best in people.

You do your own thing when it comes to clothing, guided more by practical concerns than by other people's notions of style.

Generally, you believe that you control your life, and that external forces only play a limited role in determining what happens to you.

If you hold the mouse over the colors on this chart it will show you how I rate in certain areas from trust to feminity. Clicking the link at the bottom will let you take the test for yourself

Benevolent Inventor

Adam 2

2006-12-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

I'm in hour 11 of my first 12 hour shift as the power plant Operator.

The power plant is staffed by at least one operator 24 hours per day to make sure the six diesel generators are well behaved and the lights stay on. During the day a mechanic and electrician are around doing maintenance but at night the operator is the only one here.

Six weeks ago one of the operators, called Adam 1, got sent to the Pole to replace a "toasty" mechanic that had been there for 15 months. His absence meant the station was one operator short. The electrician filled in for "a couple of weeks" and Adam 1 recommended me to take his place. Six weeks later the paperwork has gone though, my title has changed from General Assistant to Power Plant Technician.

Me putting generator #2 online, the syncroscope is over my right shoulder

As crazy as it may sound these old gens really are a lot of fun to play with. The control room is a big wall of switches and dials that look impressive. The generators themselves are geriatric. They're going on 30 years old with over 100,000 hours on their clocks so they need babying, including "diaper changes" to keep the oil off the floors. Getting them synchronized is done manually with luck, practice and a crazy-looking "syncroscope" made of two lights and a dial.

The control panels are the same sort of thing my dad used when was in college. There is no computer in the original system so everything is controlled by relays which makes a lot of satisfying clicks and clunks when things work properly.

The generators all have their own quirks and personalities with lots of fun little bugs and I can't stop smiling.

The generator room: generator #4 is being overhauled so it is in pieces,
the biggest piece of #4 is on the right. (click to enlarge)

The new power plant will be online in a year or so and give these old gens a rest but I'm glad to have the chance to work with them.

Green Up

2006-12-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

It's been around freezing here for the past week. The sun gets highest in the sky at local noon so there is a little more solar energy during the "day" than at "night." The difference has been enough to melt some snow during the day and freeze over the tops of puddles at night.

The melting snow means there are several streams running through town. Luckily all the buildings are on stilts (for a number of reasons) so there hasn't been any flooding. It also means that the snow banks are disappearing and revealing the trash they covered during the winter.

I spent some time yesterday gathering the pieces of shipping crates that got hidden from the snowplow in the snow and picking up the construction debris that littered the road. The odd thing about picking up trash down here is that while there isn't snow on top about half of it is still frozen to the ground. So there is a lot still to pick up but I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for it all to warm up and come loose.

Fixin a hole

2006-12-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

One of the things we did here before all the painting was to dig a hole for a "platform" foundation. It looks like a deck or a porch to me but it's made of steel so it needs a more macho name. :)

This platform replaces a temporary one that got put in over the winter. The door with the sign on it in the picture allows people to go into the new radiator room where extra heat from the new generators gets sent.

Pretty much the entire station is run off JP-8 jet fuel which is similar to diesel. All of the generators on station and heavy equipment are run with standard diesel engines that have been "derated" meaning they don't work quite as well or provide as much power as they would with normal diesel fuel. This is a trade off but with 60% of the fuel on station being used by aircraft it makes sense since only one type of fuel needs to be brought in on the yearly tanker ship.

So in the old power plant about 18% of the energy in each gallon of diesel is turned into electricity is turned into electricity and the rest becomes "waste" heat. This seems horrifically inefficient but it's pretty standard for diesel engines, especially diesel engines that were built the year my parents got married.
This "waste" heat isn't all wasted, however. The Glycol (antifreeze) that is pumped through the engines here dumps the waste heat into another giant loop of pipe which brings the heat around town to the dorms, the galley, and the work centers. By using this heat the buildings have to run their own boilers (like the one I cleaned last week) less and they save enough fuel to make installing the system cost-effective.

Our new power plant's engines have better controls and 28 years of better engineering in them so they are about 24% efficient. Waste heat is going to be collected from the engine coolant like in the old power plant but also from the exhaust which will mean that much more "waste" heat can be harnessed to heat the town.

So getting back to the picture. The radiator room has two large radiators not unlike the one in your car that will cool the engine coolant if there isn't demand for enough of it in town. During the winter all of the waste heat will go toward heating town but when we get into the "warmer" summer months all the heat from making the electricity on station will be more than enough to heat all the buildings hooked up to the waste heat loop.

Installing the platform meant we had to take out the old one. Which meant I was driving a pickle (forklift) to hold the old platform up while my fellow GA Matt used the cutting torch to cut through the supports.

For the next two weeks we dug a hole for the concrete footings that you see at the bottom of the picture. Digging holes here goes slowly because all the dirt is frozen into place so we had a big heater to melt the ice. We would set up the heater to run for a few hours then run outside and shovel as fast as we could before the dirt refroze. We could usually get up to six inches deep before we had to set the heater back up and reheat the ground. Finally a crane came in to drop the footings in and some welders put the new platform together. It's a lot of work considering nobody should need to go in the room when everything is working. But with the thawing and freezing of the ground around here we have to make sure the footings go deep enough to not shift the building.

Film Crews

2006-12-03T16:01:00.000-08:00

There are no less than four film crews on station right now. Two are filming documentaries about living in Antarctica and two are reporters working on stories about climate change.

I've gotten used to walking around corners and staring into the lens of a camera but one of the reporters from MSNBC committed a bigger sin in the eyes of the McMurdo community a couple of days ago: he published a whiny article.

You would think this would make us feel proud, he described the hardships we have to go through to get here which should impress the people back home right? Well actually, he came off as whining about the little stuff and not realizing he was getting the chance to see one of the last frontiers on earth. Sure people lose luggage on airplane flights and there isn't a movie on the military transport but YOU'RE IN ANTARCTICA!

The article got printed out and left around the galley where many people read it and everyone talked about it. He has since apologized for writing while he was so grumpy but before his apology the other reporters' reaction was priceless. The two documentary crews have been here for a couple of weeks so people know who they and they were safe but the other crew of PBS reporters who came in on the same flight with the luggage-loser were looking very sheepish around the galley and could be heard saying "We're not them!"

I made a sign for the PBS guys that the camera man ended up wearing on his back which said in huge letters:

We're with PBS

NOT MSNBC

They were very thankful when I gave it to them. We are generally a friendly bunch down here who will go out of our way to help people when they need it. Most people here know, however, what we go through isn't anything compared to the explorers of the Heroic Age (1902-1922) and trying to impress people with stories of your "hardships" doesn't win you many friends here who are quietly working to get through just as many problems with equipment and bureaucracy so the science can continue. Publishing your troubles in a national news source is right out

The articles have gotten better and while they aren't totally accurate do give a reasonable idea of how life is down here so now I'll share the link to the article you've all been waiting for.

This is one response to the article published on Big Dead Place which is a site run by an old disgruntled employee who knows the cynical side of Antarctica. It's witty.

Chim Chiminey...

2006-12-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Me after I had scrubbed of a layer or two of soot

The Utilities Technician or UT shop needed help cleaning boilers this week so I got volunteered. It was actually a welcome change for me since I have spent all of the last few weeks in the new power plant. I came home covered in soot and looking like a coal miner or chimney sweep but I had fun seeing people's reactions.

The UTs are a fun group who do a good job of keeping the aging equipment on station running. The head of the shop is an amazingly nice guy who speaks with a thick Czech/Russian accent. His kind demeanor is even more impressive in light of his menacing tattoos and all the legends about him like his being drafted into the Soviet army to fight in Afghanistan and his escape to America.

After two days of cleaning boilers I spent a day working for "The Legend" checking furnaces in the huts out at the Ice Runway. (the ones I shoveled the snow out of two months ago) The ice runway can't support the weight of planes landing any more and all the huts are all being moved so I had to work fast.

While I was off cleaning boilers one of the painters got shocked by some half-installed electrical wires hanging from the ceiling. The painter managed to get herself off down from where she was working and is fine but it startled all of us who work down here. I had been painting around them a couple of days before and had been treating them as if they were live -which turned out to be a good thing- The whole project got shut down for a couple of days while there was a safety review going on. I don't know what is going to officially happen. There are a lot of what if's and should haves in everybody's mind. I'm less concerned about the fact that it could have been me and more angry at myself for not asking my boss to have an electrician come down and check the wires.

The painting has been a nightmare of working around all sorts of stuff. The construction schedule didn't allow for painting because "more critical" things needed to be put in to try and get the project done on time. Now that the plant didn't get done on schedule and the project's officially on hold there's time to paint AROUND everything. Half the time there hasn't been a good place to stand and I've had to squeeze myself into all sorts of odd positions.

I'm amazed that with all the safety training I've had to go through, with all the weekly safety meetings, with all the signs around that say "work safe" and even with a boss that is very approachable I got so focused on trying to get the @#%$ing painting done that I didn't think it was worth waiting a while to have a circuit checked. It bothers me that with all this emphasis on safety I didn't push back more and say the painting job was unsafe. I'm surprised by how much pressure I felt to get the job done when nobody was really putting any pressure on me. I guess I was just trying to be a good first-year GA.

Enough of that for now. It's a nice day out, the temperature's getting up toward freezing and the sun's really warm without that Ozone layer getting in the way. It's Sunday so I think I'm going to go enjoy my time off and play outside.

Frozen Turkey Trot

2006-11-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

The starting line at the Turkey Trot

Yesterday was our Thanksgiving celebration here in MacTown. The celebration is delayed until Saturday so we can get a two day weekend. For many of us it has been the first two day weekend in three months. After having yesterday off I woke up several times last night realizing I didn't need to go to work today and happily rolled over to go back to sleep.

One of McMurdo's annual Thanksgiving traditions is a 5K race called the Turkey Trot. The race starts at the chapel, goes up the main station road, then down a hill, out to the ice runway and back. About 250 people signed up to run and many more came to watch.

I had been running 3.2 miles on the treadmill in just over 30 minutes so I was hoping with the cold and the hills I would be abe to finish in under 35 minutes. My time was 27:29 so I made that goal comfortably coming in 85th overall.

Me at the finish line. Outside temperature was 25F
so half of the race was on mud the other half on ice.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and having an awesome meal with linen tablecloths in the galley. Thanksgiving is as close to a formal event as we get here, quite a few of the men (including me) were wearing ties for the first time in months. There are three seatings for Thanksgiving dinner and I was at the latest. I hadn't eaten since 9 am before the race so I was pretty hungry when 7 pm rolled around.

Today I'm enjoying a second day off and will be going to a lecture in a few minutes that one of the documentary filmmakers on station is giving. It will be nice to hear what this guy with a camera is trying to capture.

Happy belated thanksgiving to everyone back home!

Donut of Misery

2006-11-19T23:04:00.000-08:00

Today I'm roughly half way through my time on the ice. If I'm an intentured servant I just paid off my passage here and now I'm working to pay off my ride home.

I came in before the main crew during "WINFLY season" so for the first six weeks I was here I spent most of my time around people who had wintered-over. The winter-overs were getting pretty "toasty" after having spent 6 months in total darkenss so in my first week here while I was all excited to be in Antarctica they showed me one of the tools they used to keep sane.

It's an Excel spreadsheet that calculates the amount of time you've been here and the amount of time left until you leave the Ice. There's a nice donut of a pie-chart showing percentage of time done vs. left. Most people call it their "Donut of Misery" but I wanted to put a positive spin on it so I renamed mine.

A picture of mine follows.

Dude, It's like snowing and crap

2006-11-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

Today it's snowing for the first time in almost two months.

Things have been hectic down here. I've been putting in a lot of time as a volunteer tour guide: I've led 3 4-6 hour trips this week in my time off.

For the week before and after the election I was spending my free computer time obsessively reading the news to see what was going to, and what did, happen.

I've also been taking some time to get cross trained on the power plant operation so I can fill in for an operator if one goes down sick or gets called out to one of the other stations.

My room mate just got back from three weeks out at one of the field camps. He got to live in a 8-foot plywood cube where the temperature was 30-40 degrees colder than it is here. He's a 19 year old competitive XC skiier who is always outside. We call him "Mittens" because he got second degree frost bite on his hands earlier in the season. Luckily he managed to make it through his time at the field camp without any lost digits.

The arrival of the snow means the weather is gettin warm. It's reliably been above 0 for a couple of weeks now and we're pushing +20 today. I've stopped wearing gloves when walking to work. My hands have blue spots on them but that's from the painting I'm doing and not from the cold.

A time to volunteer

2006-10-30T00:53:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days have seen me doing a lot of volunteering. I'm writing this post from the librarian's desk since I'm just about to finish up my 8-10pm shift in the library. Before that I was helping to scrub pots in the galley from 6-8 and yesterday I was giving a tour of one of the historic huts about 1.5 hours away from the station.

Many of the part-time positions that keep the station recreation department running are paid: bartending, pin setting at the bowling alley, flipping burgers, checking out gear like skis. Some of the more relaxing/interesting duties like keeping the Library in order and being a tour guide are strictly on a volunteer basis. Time in the library keeps me reading and guiding tours helps me scratch my itch for history.

Volunteering in the galley is neither relaxing nor lucrative but the Dining Assistants (DA's) need as much help as they can get. The DA's and Janitors make the least of anybody on station and don't get any overtime for working a 54-hour week. As a General Assistant I'm on the same pay grade but I do get outside occasionally and change jobs from time to time which are both plusses. A large number of the DA's have advanced degrees in humanities fields since they don't have many practical construction or longistical support skills. DA's GA's and Janitors often will be promoted into other jobs in following years that nearly double their salaries.

Despite the usual drudgery scrubbing pots in the galley the DA's are also shorthanded right now. The weather at the South Pole has kept flights from going there for over a week which means there are a bunch of "Polies" taking up beds here that are meant for more relif DA's. Since I live near most of the DA's in FNG (New Guy) housing and have been hearing about the problems goign on I volunteered with my room mate Sean to scrub pots, which is fun when you know you won't have to do it again tomorrow.

In other news, the weather is getting warmer. (high of 4F today) and last week I did a 2 mile hike over to the New Zealand base to visit for "American Night." The person I walked over with handed me a drink as we left McMurdo and it was frozen solid after about 10 minutes of walking.

Where has all the paint gone?

2006-10-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

After fruitless searching for paint yesterday we spent the morning in a warehouse that reminded me of the last scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The DOS based inventory software was designed before the Berlin Wall fell and was never intended to keep track of a large project with supplies spread through 50 odd shipping containers and 4 storage buildings. After being fed up with the computer's lies and runarounds Matt (the other general assistant) and I decide left the power plant with a pickup truck and some tin snips to start opening boxes.

It took us a surprizingly short amount of time to find the paint. Luckily the Department of Transportation requires boxes filled with paint and paint thinner be labeled as such to warn firefighters if a truck carrying them gets into an accident. We started by opening anything that said "Paint Inside" and after a couple of hours had found everythign we needed.

This of course left us with a small problem. We had been budgeted the entire day to find the paint and we had it found, loaded in the truck and unloaded at the power plant by 10am coffee break. Our new boss is an easy-going guy in his late 20's but he's getting a little sick of us finishing stuff in 1/4 the anticipated time. He was happy to hear we found the phantom paint and told us he didn't have anything other than dusting for us to do for the rest of the morning.

We took a little detour on the way back to dusting. Matt had SKUAed a cable so we can now plug our iPods into the DeWalt jobsite radio and listen to music while we clean. While we are dusting, however, there is no safe surface to put the radio on. Solution: use Unistrut racks for hanging electrical panels to hang the radio on the wall. Which is exactly what we did.

I'm off to do some data processing for the digital controls this afternoon. Lots of moving numbers around on a spreadsheet but the winds are gusting to 30 MPH today so at least I'm inside for the time being.

Little things

2006-10-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

A not so little generator.

Things changed a couple of weeks ago with the departure of the winter crew. The most noticable in the powerplant upgrade project is that nobody is there anymore. Our new boss came in a couple of weeks ago and while he is getting up to speed he doesn't have a lot of projects for me or the other general assistant to work on. We finished the clean-up from the winter in the first week (it was supposed to take a lot longer) and installed most of the trim on the roof that was left to be done. The painters aren't ready to start painting the floor and structural steel yet so we have pretty much been dusting and sweeping...all week. We're getting to the point that a wild goose chase all over station for a bucket of paint is exciting. (rather pathetic)

The new powerplant will have two 16-cylinder Caterpillar generators which turn at 1800RPM and put out about 2.4 MegaWatts of electricity each. I got a very good appreciation for the size of these things when I was assigned the task of dusting them. (that was a big pile of rags)

The floor in the powerplant is never clean. Nobody walks into our section except the two of us but we can sweep all day and the floor still looks dirty. We have a 5 gallon bucket that we are starting to fill up with all the sweepings to prove that it will be dust-filled by the end of the season. Feeling like some greek tragedy character destined to roll a stone up a hill forever I decided to bring my past experience to bear on this sweeping/dusting problem. iRobot has released a robotic shop vac so I ordered one that's on its way down. Hopefully I will have a present by Christmas time.

While work isn't progressing very quickly my time at the gym is showing results. When I weighed myself yesterday I had lost 9 pounds since arriving here working out to a little more than a pound per week. That puts me at 19 lbs (or 9%) less than my weight at graduation. My Carheart work pants aren't fitting very well anymore and I will probably have to trade them in for a smaller pair soon. Another few months of this and I will be in better shape than when I was playing football in high school.

Remember to close the door behind you

2006-10-11T00:10:00.000-07:00

One of the linemen went home early with an ankle injury so I spent today helping the one remaining lineman on station get the power lines up for the NY Air National Guard buildings out by the airport.

This, of course, meant I was back out on the sea ice today. The high winds out on the ice blew up snow in a haze that made it hard to see farther than a few hundred yards around but when we looked up we could see blue sky. At one point the sun lit up all the airborne snow and the entire sky was gold. With my amber sungoggles on the white sky over and piles of snow made by bulldozers looked reddish like pictures from Mars.

When the lineman was getting ready to connect the last cable he had me go into all of the buildings and make sure the breakers were all off. Simple enough task. Simple, that is, if there hadn't been a blizzard last week that blew fine particles of snow through any crack in the buildings.

One building had its entryway completely filled with snow through a crack above the door. To get in I had to throw all my weight against the door several times, stick a pry-bar in between the door and its jamb and then scoop out the snow from behind it a spoonfull at a time. (I keep a spoon sticking out of my parka's sleeve pocket so I can tell which Big Red parka is mine on the coat racks) In all I spent two hours opening the door and cleaning out the snow from inside.

After that I found another building with a huge pile of snow in front of the breaker panel. Foutunately that one had a back door and I could climb around the snow to get to the breaker. (Picture above)

Happy Camper School

2006-10-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

The weather was bad on Wednesday and Thursday’s forecast had called for bad conditions so the flight schedule was pushed back 48 hours. Luckily for me this meant a lot of people didn’t come in on time and there was a free slot in the Friday-Saturday Snow Survival (aka Happy Camper) School.

Since class only started at 9am I got to sleep in a little on Friday. Sleep was a good thing since I had been out late Thursday playing shuffleboard in the smoking bar with my winter-over friends who were about to fly home. The morning was mostly classroom sessions talking about hypothermia and keeping warm in general. Most people don’t realize hypothermia most commonly kills when the weather is 50 degrees and raining.

After class we got to the fun stuff. The 36-ton Nodwell tracked vehicle is out of commission after it’s “incident” at Happy Camper School last week so we used three Piston Bullies to get out to camp on the ice shelf. The weather was spectacularly clear and after a brief introduction to the mountain ranges we could see we were making camp.

There were two kinds of tents used at happy camper. One called the Scott Tent has been used in the Antarctic since the “heroic age” in the 1900’s. The others were basic four season mountain tents very similar to what I use backpacking in Vermont. The Scott Tent weighs nearly 80 lbs, has double layered walls and thick metal tubes to make a pyramid shape. It’s designed to hold up in 80+ mile-per-hour winds, sets up fast and can squeeze in 10 people if the weather gets to condition 1. (it only sleeps four) You can stand up in a Scott Tent and the cotton walls breathe well enough to cook over a coleman stove with the door closed. Double layered cotton keeps it warm but would be useless in the rain. Luckily it never rains here.

The mountain tents weighed only about 10-15 lbs so even with extra tie-downs they can’t take as much wind. To keep them from blowing over we built a wall out of ice blocks as a wind break. We cut the blocks into the ground with hand saws and then wedged them out with shovels. We did a really good job considering the ice was either too soft to stay together or too hard to saw most of the time. Some of us put a lot of effort into sawing. Some of the people I was with seemed to have super-human endurance.

After some wall building I volunteered for cooking duty so I stayed up late and made sure everyone got fed. The side benefit was I got to stay in the Scot Tent with the stove running and stay comfortably warm. The low humidity meant vapor from the boiling water was everywhere and the kitchen felt more like a sauna. People were glad to come in and warm up before spending a night on ice 600 feet thick.

The next morning the piston bullies we had kept nearby had a dead starter so we pulled a lot of our gear back to the instructor hut by sled. After that we had some radio training where we learned how to use an HF radio “designed to be used by an 18 year-old marine in the jungle of Vietnam.” They take a bit to put together but they are bomb-proof and work long range. I was on the radio when we managed to get through to the South Pole Station. It’s odd though, when you have South Pole on the phone what are you supposed to ask? I managed to find out the guy there enjoyed the cereal he had that day for breakfast and it was -85F and clear outside.

Class finished up around 1 on Saturday and my boss gave me the rest of the day off. I changed out of my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear and started my laundry before running into Etosha in the hall. Etosha and I had graduated from Olin together back in May and she had come in on the latest flight while I was out on the ice. Now we officially have 2 of 66 Olin Graduates in Antarctica.

Official Summer

2006-10-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon the wheels of the first summer flight touched on the new Ice Runway and summer season officially began on station. The weather was beautiful and clear while the plane was landing. Four hours after it took back off we were in a condition 2 blizzard. McMurdo Station has three runways. The Ice Runway was built over the past six weeks by a crew that came in with me during WINFLY. (Winter Flights) The Ice Runway is for wheeled aircraft to use from October until November when the ice melts. At that point all of the wheeled aircraft (and all the lights and the control tower) are moved out to Pegasus Field. Pegasus (where I flew in) is on glacial ice that never melts but it’s an hour drive from the station.
The third runway is called Williams (Willie) Field and it is a "skiway" for the planes with skis that fly in and out of South Pole station. South pole can't support aircraft with wheels because the heavy equipment needed to build a hard-surface runway don’t fit into the planes with skis on them. Last winter, however, a convoy of Caterpillar tractors made a round trip between pole and McMurdo. This was the first "overland traverse" to ever make it back to McMurdo: the last attempt was Capt. R.F. Scott back in 1912 whose party froze/starved on the way back. With traverses running the needed equipment could drive to Pole and there may be a hard-surface runway for wheeled aircraft in the near future.

Combine a hard-surface runway at Pole with the new C-17's that can make it all the way from New Zealand to Pole and back to New Zealand without refueling and McMurdo may have a lot less air traffic in the future. (One of the favorite pass-times at McMurdo is speculation and rumors, this is a good example) For the moment it’s a little exciting to see 125 new people on station, though it’s getting harder to find a seat in the galley at dinner time. The winter-overs are much more excited by the prospect of going home than by new faces. I'll be excited when the plane comes in with 8000lbs of "freshies" I don't think I've ever been this excited by fresh fruit and salid in my life.

Note: The picture is from a friend who was out on the sea ice during the landing. I was technically “at work” so I couldn’t stray too far from the power plant.

Antarctica on video

2006-10-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

A Kiwi who works in the IT group here at McMurdo took a bunch of time lapse videos over the course of a year here. There's some pretty cool shots involving frost and some everyday type stuff. The video can be seen online at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TemK6CF6lF0

This and that

2006-10-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

Things are getting exciting here on station. Tomorrow the first flight of the summer comes in. There haven't been any flights in or out for the last six weeks while the summer runway has been built out on the sea ice so we have gotten used to the same 390 faces around. Tomorrow's flight brings in 125 new people and takes about 25 of the winter-overs off the ice. Most of the winter-overs are ready to head home or travel for a while. All of the 100 or so winter-overs still on station have been on station since at least February some for a year or more. By the end of the five flights this week we will have 500 new people on station. Even with a large number of the winter-overs leaving the population here in MacTown will double by Friday.

The weather has been clear and the sun has been out for four days now. After a week of blizzards last week I'm not sure what to do with myself.

The days are getting longer here too. Last night I walked out of the windowless library at 9:30pm to see the sun about to set. Someone at lunch told me they saw it at 3:30 this morning. Last weekend was also the start of New Zealand Summer time so we all "sprang forward" our clocks. The station manager had given us two hours off on Saturday afternoon to give us all a rest before the flights come in and to make up for the hour of sleep we were going to miss. It was much appreciated and I celebrated with a nap before my evening work-out.

Working out has been going well for me. I've taken off a couple of pounds since I started and my over-sized work pants are getting obnoxiously large. Hopefully I'll still be able to find a spot in the gerbal gym when the main crew gets here.

Last week we all got a jolt when there was a vehicle crash just off station. One of the big, old tracked vehicles was carrying 14 people back from a survival excercize and lost its power and brakes before rolling off the road and down a 60 foot cliff. Luckily an empty fuel pipeline kept it from falling down a bigger hill and rolling onto the sea ice. Nobody was majorly injured: one sprained ankle a strained back and a few bruses were all that came of something that could (some say should) have been much worse. I heard about the accident but didn't get any news about my roommate sean who I knew had been on board until dinner that night. It made for a very tense afternoon. The day before I had been trained as an emergency medical tech for large accidents and I was glad we didn't have to be called out with the stretchers and triage tags. The whole "incident" brings home the fact that this is a dangerous continent that puts a lot of strain on people and equipment. All the crosses around that are memorials to dead explorers are a little more chilling now.

It's the end of lunch now so I'm heading back down to work. Most of the winter-over tradesmen down there are leaving on Friday and the rest head out next week. The project is officially on hold aside from some small jobs for me to work on over the summer so it's going to be a big change from the last six weeks.

Flagging

2006-09-26T01:16:00.000-07:00

"Use of a vehicle in Antarctica will be strictly for business purposes in support of the mission of the National Science Foundation" -paraphrased from the U.S. Antarctic Program's participant guide

Needless to say it's not easy to get a trip off station without a ride. The hiking trail system is the best on the continent but the only way to get far out onto the sea ice near the wildlife where you can get a true sense of the emptiness down here is to get lucky and go on some sort of "work trip."

I got lucky on Saturday and got to spend a day putting up flags to help scientists find their way home in storms. The flag poles are made out of bamboo so they will biodegrade if the wind breaks them appart or if the ice melts out from under them before they can be retrieved.

We started off the day loading up a Ford pickup that had tracks instead of wheels. Every 150 feet along our route one of us would drill a hole a couple of feet deep into the ice, place a flag into it and pack the snow around the flagpole.

The drill we were using had a chainsaw engine and a three foot long auger bit. A second bit could be added to the end to in order to drill through the sea ice and check its thickness. (there was ocean about 5 feet under our feet for the whole day)

The drill did a good job for most of the day until the starter cord froze and broke. After that I was nominated to use the old-school hand drill and find out just how tough sea ice can be. The ice is dense enough in some places that all of the air bubbles are forced out and it has a very deep blue color.

Flagging was a good change from work but the best part of the trip was getting a chance to experience the vastness of the ice. The sky was white and the snow-covered sea ice was white. At one point I could look in any direction and only see white. When the clouds lifted the sky was still overcast but I could see glaciers rising out of the sea miles away.

It's easy to go overboard when describing nature but there is no way to capture what it felt like to see so much white punctuated by sheer black volcanic cliffs. I did post a couple more pictures on my website to give you an idea.

One of the routes we flagged was to a place in near an island where seals spend time on the surface. The ice pushes up against the rock forming "pressure rigdes" or mountains of ice. As the pressure ridges rise gaps form in the ice where seals can chew their way through.

The seals looked big and lazy but they are protected from "harrassment" by international treaty so we kept our distance.

The day was a truly awesome change of pace. Lots of people who come to McMurdo never make it out of town so I am feeling quite blessed to have seen what few humans have, or ever will, see.

Keep Warm

Frustration

2006-09-25T03:40:00.000-07:00

I just hit the wrong button while trying to spell check a very nice detailed post of how things are going down here. Which means, of course, that the post is entirely gone. (Thank you very much public computer that only runs Internet Explorer)

I went to a travel lecture tonight given by someone who spent their time off the ice in Tibet. She had great pictures and it was something to do on a Monday evening. Attending the lecture followed by an hour of fruitless typing means it has gotten late here so I don't have time to re-create what I just lost.

In the meantime you're going to have to amuse yourself with a picture I took around station a while back that reminds me of home.

Can anybody tell me what year this Deere was built?

Woopie Pickle OR International Talk Like a Pirate Day

2006-09-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

In honor of ITLAPD (Sept. 19th) I've decided to post a photo of a vehicle sporting a Jolly Roger from yesterday.

This is one of the U.S. Army M4k forklifts known on station as a "Pickle." I got trained in operating the Vietnam-era piece of equipment last Friday and spent a good chunk of the morning moving heavy things around.
Pickles are perfect for our supply operations here because they can move over snow with their relatively big tires but bend in the middle so they can fit into tiny spaces: like the shipping containers everything comes in down here.

The last functioning Pickles in the world were brought to station around the time I was born so they need to be baybied to stay alive. This means each has its own personality and name.

Since the CASE company brought them into existence, most of the pickle names involve the word case. "BASKET CASE" and "HEAD CASE" are a couple of examples. The one in the picture is called "Que Sera Sera." I can only guess at what it did to get the name but the old Doris Day song was stuck in my head the entire time I was driving it.

Another entertaining fact is that these things don't have much of a muffler on the 30+ year old diesel engine so they are LOUD! The heat inside doesn't work either so I had to keep the hood to big red up to ward off the -20F temperature. The only option to protect my hearing was to put the ear protectors over my hood. I was warm but I felt like Mickey Mouse.

Look Closely at ye picture me harties. Ye will see the mark of Piracy upon her. Yar!

P.S. I e-mailed the guys who started ITLAPD to tell them it was being observed here in Antarctica. Apparently a few Polies were also celebrating down at the South Pole too!

Picture(s) of the Day

2006-09-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

Nice to know the scientists down here still have a sense of humor. I saw this on a tour of the lab building yesterday.

The laser helps scientists learn about Ozone depletion. On clear days it shoots 30+ miles up into the air to try and hit ice particles in the upper atmosphere. When it hits ice particles some of the laser beam bounces back and is collected in a telescope. The more laser that comes back the more ice is in the upper atmosphere. The ice clouds are important because they provide a place for ozone-depleting chemicals to react with the ozone. More ice clouds in theory means more ozone depletion.

So far the sun has been low enough behind the hills and I'm wearing enough clothes not to have to worry about wearing sunscreen. Give it another week, though and I'm going to be slathering it on my cheeks.

I spent Saturday evening over at Scott Base. (which is full of Kiwis, not Scotts) Our friends from New Zealand were hosting a "P" party where everyone supposedly showed up in a costume of something that began with the letter P. There were a couple of penguins, pirates, priests and princesses. My personal favorites were the Pringles can and the panda using earmuffs high on the head as ears. The most original was probably "partly cloudy with a chance of showers" who had cotton balls attached to a blue shirt and a spray bottle. Biggest cop-out was the "procrastinator" who showed up late without a costume. I used my leather-patch elbow sweater, reading glasses, and large brandy glass to be a professor.

The weather just went to condition 2 again which suspends travel off-station. The powerplant is only a couple minute walk down the hill here so I won't be getting any time off because of the condition 2; it will just give me a bit more adrenaline knowing the weather is quantitatively bad. It was condition 2 most of yesterday too which kept me from feeling guilty spending most of the morning in bed and the rest of the day watching a movie and reading.

I finished reading "Dune" so I decided to check the movie out of the film library. I can't say I liked the movie all that much but I should have expected strangeness since it was done by creepy-confusing director David Lynch and it was the beginning (and end?) of Sting's acting carreer. Sadly even Patrick Stewart could not save the over-the-top campy portrayal of a book which is quite subtle.

Back off to work. This afternoon's task is figuring out where all the heat recovery pipes in the new 16-cylinder generators go. Wish me luck.

My face went bald

2006-09-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

Today was respirator training day. No big deal except I had to show up to work clean shaven. Since I was shaving my beard off I decided to go for a haircut too and I’ve been getting shocked looks all day. (My boss didn’t even recognize me when I saw him in the hall)

It took a long time for all of us in the class to have our respirators checked which involved “breathing normally” while we had smoke that induces coughing blown in our faces. The theory is that we won’t cough if there is a good seal on the respirator.

Getting out of work late means I didn’t have time to make it to the gym before bowling. The navy built a bowling alley back in the day and it has one of the last functioning manual pin-setting devices in the world. The company that made the pin-setter has offered to buy this one off us and replace it with a state of the art system but everyone here wants to keep the old one. It may be the socks that the pin setting people get to wear while they are working.

Yesterday I got out on a hike to try and see the Southern Lights. The sky was clear and there was an awesome view of the stars but no aurora. Hopefully there will be another chance before the sun is up all night. There is still orange visible from sunset at 9:30pm.

Work is going well. I’m working on a control panel under a heating vent so this week I have the warmest job on station. I’m also getting trained to drive one of the forklifts on Friday which should be fun.

In other news I put my super Antarctic sunglasses on for the first time yesterday because it was so bright. Summer is definately on it's way.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

2006-09-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday was the first meeting of the McMurdo Biggest Loser Club. The name is based on the TV show of the same name. Essentially the person who loses the biggest percentage of their body weight wins a prize which down here will be nearly $1000. I'm not competing but have started working out more.

The food here is similar to Olin's dining hall: for the most part it's good but they find ways to put fat and calories into things that shouldn't have them. The desserts are also quite good. The average person working outside will burn 30% more calories than someone in the States because the body has to work harder to stay warm.

A lot of the station, however, does not work outside. For them the high calorie meals mean weight gain. The guy running the club has four more inches on his waist and 50 more pounds on him than when he started coming down. The club is his way of making sure he will stay health conscious and lose weight over the season.

So you may be wondering: "Isn't Adam working outside shoveling snow? Shouldn't he be getting plenty of exercise?" Well it turns out one of the electricians at work (who is also from VT) found out about my degree and robotics experience so he has me installing digital controls in the new power plant. This has gotten me inside more which is more comfortable and interesting but it also means I'm getting less exercise at work. This week I started working out in the gerbil gym each night.

It's Sunday now which means it's the day off for most of us on station. I took advantage of being able to sleep in today before Sunday Brunch. I'm probably not going to hike today since the weather was bad last night and isn't looking great right now. So I'll probably hang around and read before heading to the library to volunteer tonight.

The library here is a sizable 50'X75' room with a big collection of Antarctic books. There is a shelf of rare Antarctic books, some of them first edition publications written by the early 20th century explorers themselves. The library is in the process of filing the non-fiction books on the Dewey Decimal System and there is a big collection of fiction books for pleasure reading along with a couple of shelves of travel books to help people decide where they will go after their time on the ice. The 10'X10' entryway to the library also has its walls lined by shelves filled with paperbacks. It has a good collection of comfortable furniture and fake plants which make it a cozy place to read.

Thanks for all the comments and e-mails that have been coming my way. I'm glad to hear people are having fun reading this. I'm not going to post my e-mail address here because it's too easy for computers to pick it up and start sending SPAM but if you do want to hear more about something specific you can click on "comments" at the bottom of this post and leave a post anonymously. (though I do prefer if you at lest sign with a first name)

New Pic

2006-09-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

Quick note before I head back to Saturday afternoon at the power plant:

There is a new picture up in the Antarctica section on my website.

The view I see every clear day on my way to work.

Dude, it's like snowing and crap!

2006-09-04T17:44:00.001-07:00

It snowed last night. Which apparently doesn't happen much here.

The snow was definitely different on the ground as I walked to work today. Normally it is a hard Styrofoam like substance that is easier to break into pieces and throw than it is to shovel. Today the snow was soft underfoot and felt like, well, snow.

Most of my morning was taken up with a scaffolding training classroom session. In about 15 minutes I have a "practical" test that will make me a "competent" person in the eyes of OSHA and Raytheon to handle scaffolding. (OSHA doesn't officially have jurisdiction over Antarctica but the National Science Foundation tells Raytheon it has to follow OSHA rules if it wants to get paid)

I'm getting into the routine here. Every once in a while someone learns I have an engineering degree and asks me a question along the lines of "so why are you a General Assistant?" My boss (who previously worked on nuclear submarines) is planning to go back to school for engineering when he gets off the ice so I guess I'm a little over-qualified.

Then again over-qualification seems to be the norm for most of the first-season people down here. The electrician apprentice working on my project has a masters degree in sculpture and the head of the dining assistants has her degree in English Literature.

There's a film maker down here shooting a documentary on scientists on the ice. She would probably have a more interesting film if she focused on the other people down here. (we do outnumber the "beakers" by over 25:1 right now)

Pictures!

2006-09-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

The higher-ups in Denver have a four day weekend for Labor day but for those of us on the ice Sunday is our only day off. (I can see why people in Denver might get the impression some people on the ice are bitter or unappreciative with them)

After sleeping in until 10 I had Sunday brunch and got ready to hike Observation hill to get a better view of McMurdo and the surrounding land. Ambient air temperature is -27F and there was a 30+ knot wind at the top of the hill so the cold sapped the power from my camera batteries almost as soon as I pulled it out of my parka.

The pictures I did get are posted on my website along with one of the pictures from arrival. Hopefully I'll have a little more time tonight to pop more pics up.

SUN!

2006-09-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

The sun came out today!

I was told to prepare for being blinded with light when I got to Antarctica but until today all I had seen was the gray, overcast late winter sky. Today was perfectly clear and while I wasn't in the right place at the right time to see the actual sun today there was a great pink sky around sunrise and sunset.

Lots of odd tasks today to keep me busy. A 6-foot tall ventilation hood got misplaced in one of the orange shipping containers that seem to be everywhere on station. It got narrowed down to a row of about 20 or so but there was a lot of shoveling to get the doors opened and look inside each of them. From there I got sent up to "the pass" to bolt some covers onto the openings of a couple of large heat exchangers in storage for the new powerplant.

"The Pass" is between two 1000' tall hills and has a road running along its base. It is between the American and New Zealand Antarctic bases and on the American side it has been widened so cargo containers can be stored there. Needless to say the wind can get moving quickly through the pass. I got back from working up there for about an hour to hear the windchill had hit -80 which is probably the coldest I have ever worked in. I was surprized I didn't feel colder but my government issue big red parka (known on station as "big red") seemed to keep me warm.

The most surprizing thing was seeing how fast my goggles froze up. They were good for the first 10 minutes or so but then I saw an ice crystal in front of my eye and within a minute they were opaque. I'm also wishing my thick work gloves had a little more dexterity in the fingers since had to take them off from time to time and could see the hairs on the back of my hand white with ice before I put them back on.

I may be crazy but for some reason I love the cold, especially the feeling I get once I come back in from it and realize how cold it really was. One electrician down here was working outside on the runway lights today and said his electrical tape would shatter if he tried to cut off a piece. He had a huge grin on his face while he was talking about it and mentioned while he could be comfortably back in the States he loves all the little adventures that happen while he's down here.

Maybe that's part of it... For now I'm going to get some hot chocolate, read a bit and call it an early night. Work will be starting up tomorrow (Saturday) at 7:30 like it has since Monday. It's been a good week but a long week and I'll be glad to get my day off on Sunday.

SKUA

2006-08-30T00:47:00.000-07:00

Three days already since I last posted.

I haven't been crazy-busy but I have had things to occupy my time. I've gotten back into reading and have volunteered to be the librarian for a few hours per week. Last night was the outdoor safety lecture so I am now able to go out on hikes. (which I may try this weekend)

My job has me working at the powerplant at least for the next few weeks. The winter crew is finishing up their work on an upgrade project and will all be leaving in October. I'm not yet sure what I'm doing after that.

So far at work I've been doing everything from shoveling snow to bolting things to the floor to tracking down shipping containers out in the field behind the station. I have more safety training tomorrow. It seems like most of my time for these first few days is spent in training.

Work ended early today because of an "all hands" meeting were everyone on station got together to hear updates on various projects both scientific and otherwise. The meeting got out at 5:00 so we had the last half-hour of the day off.

I spent it taking a walk to Skua central: a shack filled with stuff left by people who have gone home. Skua is pronounced SKoo-AH and is named after the Antarctic version of the seagull that seems to eat anything left outdoors. Many of the veterans down here say they hardly pack anything anymore because anything they need for work is usually either issued or can be found in Skua.

I found a pair of sneekers that fit in Skua and from there I went over to the "gerbel gym" which is an old building filled with treadmills, bikes and other cardio equipment. A half an hour on the treadmill had me feeling better and I took a shower before heading off to dinner.

The food here is good heavy comfort food that warms me up after being outside. Unfortunately it also does a good job of packing weight on most people around me. I'm still hoping not to gain weight here so I will likely be making a habit of going to the gerbel gym.

With the Merino wool hat I bought in New Zealand and my pair of Carheart work overalls I'm starting to look like pictures I see of fishermen from northern maine. It's interesting to see a different me in the mirror.

I think I've seen all of the different types of door handles and latches on station. There are some interesting ones designed to be easily opened with mittens and there's no predicting which ones you'll see where or which direction they need to be moved.

Lots of new things going on here with every aspect of life if anyone wants to know about something specific let me know so I can bring it up.

Smells

2006-08-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

The cold air here seems to kill many of the bacteria that produce smells. I'm used to air this cold carrying the smell of smoke from fireplaces but here there isn't even that.

The result is that every smell is magnified. The vanilla in kitchens, chocolate from the coco machine, or the smell of cigarettes all linger in the air.

Another feature of the dry Antarctic air is things burn really well in it. When a fire breaks out it has historically led to a total loss. This means there are strict rules on the station about smoking. There are only four places indoors where one can smoke. If anyone smokes outside they have to collect their butts under penalty of the Antarctic treaty but that is a different topic.

The previous occupant of my room didn't really respect many of the rules about fire. My room reeked of smoke when I opened the door and I noticed the smoke detector was hanging from the ceiling at an odd angle.

I exchanged the comfy chair for one in the lounge hoping the smell was trapped in the chair but it didn't help. I looked for the fresh air vents I heard hissing in the ceiling to see if they were blocked but the sound of the air seems to be coming from the light fixtures. (odd)

Today my roommate and I vacuumed the floor and found a clever way to hold the door to increase ventilation without much result. Eventually it was decided that the window must be opened. The window has two latches on it; one is about 20 years older than the other and opening the window required a lot of banging to knock the ice off of the outside and move the sash that was frozen to the sill. Despite the blast of cold air it was a welcome change and we kept it open for a good half hour to change the atmosphere.

Hopefully the stench will go away in a few days. Having a window is a coveted luxury for first-timers on the ice so we will try to make due and find some dryer sheets or something to cover the smell. (The can of "odor eraser" reeks of aerosol and is almost worse than the smoke) "Air freshener" may become use 1002 for my Dr. Bonner's Peppermint soap.

On the Ice

2006-08-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

I am now officially in Antarctica.

The day started at 3am when I got up and made my way to the airport for a 4am check-in. After pulling on several layers of cold weather gear I went through the "bag drag" and checked 75lbs of gear. (cold weather stuff plus my luggage)

After a quick breakfast the hundred of us getting on the flight had a 5am briefing and put our carry-on bags through the X-ray before stepping through a metal detector. (amusing when you have eleventy billion snaps and zippers on four layers of clothing.) The carry-on bags were especially important since "checked" bags are shrink-wrapped onto a cargo skid where they stay until we either make it to the ice or have to turn around three days in a row. If the plane didn't make it to the ice today all we would have for the next couple of days would be what was in those carry-ons.

We crammed ourselves into a couple of busses before being driven out to the C-17 transport jet. Just before getting on the jet I was handed a big bag of food and a pair of earplugs. There had to be enough food in the bag to last me for 10 hours in case the flight needed to turn around and head back.

The inside of the jet looked huge since there wasn't any division between the cargo and the bolted-in seats. I took a seat with my back to the airplane's outer wall and spent a good amount of the flight looking up at the wiring and ductwork clearly visible 20 feet over my head.

An interesting side-effect of not having a ceiling is there is no place for oxygen masks to drop from. A portable oxygen system was stowed under the seats in a green pouch. It was effectively an oxygen canister attached to a plastic hood. Something seemed funny to me that if I couldn't breathe the Air Force would expect me to pull a plastic bag over my head. The life jacket was a little more useful during the flight since it doubled as a lower lumbar support in my seat-back.

Landing was scary. Not because I thought the plane would crash but because I was afraid we would have to turn back. The pilot got on the intercom and told us all that the approach wasn't looking good so we would have to go around a few times or possibly boomerang back. I wasn't sure if I dreaded the idea of spending another five hours on that flight or having to get up the next day at 3 again more.

The plane touched down a couple of times before it finally landed. Without windows in the back it wasn't clear if we had landed or not. I kept hearing and feeling the wheels hit only to feel myself pushed around by the plane accelerating and climbing a few seconds later. I wasn't really able to relax until the door opened letting in a blast of sub-zero Antarctic air.

The cold air was welcome since I had been sweating in my gear. A short walk later I was on a bus heading toward McMurdo Station. A couple more briefings and lunch were all that separated me from moving in to my new home.

CDC

2006-08-24T18:42:00.001-07:00

I spent the morning at the Clothing Distribution Center (not the Center for Disease Control) where I was issued 42lbs of extreme cold weather gear. It all amounts to about two sets of clothing that would be warm enough for me to go skiing back in VT at -30 without flinching.

After an 8am briefing I walked into a basketball court-sized room and picked up two large army duffel bags which, instead of being colored the usual olive drab green were bright safety orange. The next couple of hours were an exercise in checking zippers, snaps and buttons to make sure they all fit and then putting on layer after layer to make sure I could still move in my insulated Carheart bib overalls.

I traded in my pair of white "bunny boots" for a bigger and more comfortable pair of "Baffin" boots. Most of the veterans tell me the bunny boots are generally only worn twice: on the way in and on the way out. They are solid rubber impregnated with Thinsulate and double the size of my feet. I felt like Goofy while wearing them. Since they are so air tight there is a valve to let the pressure out of them so they don't pop on the plane and anyone who wears them for more than a couple of hours gets wet feet from the sweat that can't escape. The new boots are a little less watertight but hopefully they will keep me comfortable while it's cold outside. By the time the weather gets warm enough for there to be puddles of water around I will be able to wear the waterproof gore-TEX steel-toed boots I was issued back in Colorado.

No major other changes to my gear except getting a larger hat for my freakishly big head. I also got an extra pair of polypropylene longjohns to supplement the set I brought from home and the one I bought yesterday. Hopefully this will all keep me nice and warm on the ice.

I'm in an internet cafe across the square from the Christchurch Cathedral. (which I think was the source of the city's name) The rest of the day is probably going to be walking about and enjoying the unseasonably warm temperature of 40 degrees. It's actually quite nice out with a lot of sun and barely any wind. Like most places in New Zealand there isn't central heat so there isn't much of a shock in temperature when one goes outside. I may even get some tea and sit outside for a while reading to get my body clock used to the time zone.

The 14 hours of sleep I got last night did me well and I'm feeling much better. It'll probably be an early night tonight too since I have to meet my ride to the airport at 3:30 am. With any luck the weather will be good, my plane will be able to land and by this time tomorrow I will be in Antarctica.

Christchurch

2006-08-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

I made it to Christchurch today in one piece. The flights were uneventful other than a little iced tea spilled on me by a flight attendant. (it soaked the poor guy next to me 20 minutes into the 12-hour flight)

It felt good to see the skyline of Auckland again on my way in this morning. Walking around the city and shopping for a hat felt surreal, almost like a dream because I knew where shops and streets were even though it's hard to believe I was here before.

The dream metaphor could also have something to do with my not having slept much since Tuesday. (it's Thursday afternoon now) I'm trying to stay awake long enough so I can sleep though the night.

Safety Training

2006-08-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

I'm in the hotel lobby waiting for the 7am shuttle to bring me to my second day of orientation. I think I'm getting used to the local time because getting up at 10 til 6 was harder today than yesterday.

There are about 75 of us here for orientation. Between half and 2/3 have been down before. about 1/3 are women. My roommate grew up in Mexico and there are a couple of people wh have Asian heritage but aside from that we are a pretty white bunch.

What there isn't in genetic diversity there is in geographic diversity. So far I've met people from Oregon, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada and California to name a few. Most people do seem to live in the cooler lattitudes of the U.S. when they aren't on the ice. Wonder why? :)

Yesterday started off pretty well when I was handed $100 cash as travel money. Right after that I was directed to the parking lot where there was a truckload of boots. I got fitted with some insulated steel toe boots and went on to standing in all sorts of lines for Human Resources. From there we were greeted by the new head of the Raytheon Polar Program and after lunch we had a 4.5 hour safety class. It was pretty similar to most of the lab safety classes I've had before but this guy was a little more energetic and understanding than Bobby McC. He at least recognized that it would be a good idea to give us 10 minute breaks every hour.

I went for a swim when I got back to the hotel, had Mongolian Barbeque with my roommate for dinner and went with him while he bought a new camera. After that I went out with a couple a few years out of college who have worked in Alaska and are going down to wash dishes and heard a few good stories.

Bus is here now so I'm off to training, then the airport, and then New Zealand.

Denver, CO

2006-08-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

There wasn't much sleeping on my part last night.

I had been packing for a few days so I was confident I had everything but I had trouble sleeping. It was like trying to sleep before the first day of school

I checked in just before 7 for my 8:20 flight and was through security about 15 minutes later. My parents had driven me to the airport and were waiting on the other side of the glass to see me off. There was a bizarre feeling of being on display while I ate a Pop Tart from my bag. (feeding time at the zoo?)

The rest of the trip was uneventful until I got to Colorado where an airport shuttles driving made me fear for my life more than any airplane turbulence ever has.

I've been checked into my hotel since 2 central time so most of the afternoon has been spent watching the discovery channel and more or less being a vegetable since I got up at quarter 'til some ungodly hour this morning. I'm trying to stay awake long enough to be able to sleep through the night before my 6:30am breakfast tomorrow.

Dale Ernheart, the airport shuttle driver, told me there were 45 people coming in today to attend Raytheon training tomorrow. So far I've only met one: they guy fresh out of the NAVY who I'm sharing a suite with. If he's any indication of things to come it should be a good time. :)

Farewell Boston

2006-08-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

Music: The Weakerthans "Our Retired Explorer" (thanks to Debbie C)

It's been a while since I've done nine hours of driving in one day. I had a meeting in Boston yesterday afternoon so I managed a quick stop at Olin on the way down and caught up with a few Olin people. (I guess I can say Alumni)

The kind people in Admission gave me a stuffed penguin so if I still have some room left in my bag he may be posing in front of the places I visit while I am gone.

Even with all the summer students gone there was still not nearly enough time to see everyone at Olin and catch up properly with them before I headed off. As poor of a substitute this is for anyone I missed I hope you all have a great semester and a great time while I am on the Ice.

Send me your address if you want me to mail you a post card from you know where :)

Reality has hit...I'm going to Antarctica

2006-08-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

A week ago I posted my car on Craig's List. By the end of the week I had sold it and was running around to get all the paperwork done and by Friday I had cashed the check, delivered the car, taken off the plates and handed over the keys. I sold it to a really nice couple in Burlington who work on international development projects. They were replacing an older Toyota they had donated to an awesome organization that fixes old cars and give them to families in need called the Good News Garage.

My mother was volunteering in Burlington that day so I walked from the buyer's house to get a ride home. On the walk it hit me that I was really about to leave. The last time I sold my car was just before I left for New Zealand so I guess I've gotten used to "not having a car" meaning I am about to go for a flight over the Pacific. Living in the woods and not having a car also means I get reminded that I don't have a car anytime I want to go anywhere.

Yesterday I fixed a broken paper shredder that had been dropped off at the thrift store where Mom volunteers so I spent the afternoon having an Enron party with old bank statements and notes from school. I'm still cleaning and re-cleaning my room but with just a few days before I leave the only thing I really have to do is pack my gear for the Ice. My departure finally seems close enough to start packing.

I'm ready to go. I've had a relatively relaxing summer and enjoyed the time I've had outside but it's time to move on. It's hard not to live in the past when I'm living at home. As great as Vermont is, I'm ready to get on with my life.