A year in the "real world"

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

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.