Morale Boost

So the post-holiday bump in morale didn't last as long as hoped for, so I'm going to try and recapture some of that goodness here in photo form.



Running across the sea ice for the Turkey Trot 5k, Ice Runway in the background.



Core samples and analysis equipment at the field site from the ANDRILL tour.




Glory shot next to a really big drill. If not for the shiny new hard hat you might think I was a driller and not a janitor.



Don't I keep lovely company down here? These two, Maria and Taryn are two good friends that go along way to maintaining sanity on a harsh continent. As for the scruffy look, I entered the beard growing contest, so will have to endure some grungy looking photos until IceStock and the judging around New Years.

Turkey Stand-Down

AKA Thanksgiving.

We celebrate ours on a day more convientant to Raytheon and the National Science Foundation, so instead of the normal one day off, this weekend we had two, with Thanksgiving dinner (Turkey Stand Down) on Saturday, after a 5k Turkey Trot Fun Run from the Chapel down to the ice runway and back.

Also went skiing, then had a tremendous feed put on by the Galley, turkey, pumpkin pie, the whole nine yards, with plenty of wine, but not so much champagne. I tried to remedy this for my part by mixing savigon blanc with Sprite for that bubbly effect, but the results were not sufficent to win many converts. Then after supper we had a block party in my dorm, two halls over. The fellow that is in charge of the green house brought a bag of fresh mint and we made mojitos, which were a hit. One astute commentator said it was likley more people got mojitos than flu shots when the clinic set those up for free as well.

Today I slept in and had a leisurly bruch; it was wonderful having two amazing meals back to back like that. Then I won a drawing for a trip out to the ANDRILL drilling site, where scientists are drilling through the ice shelf and past the sea water below to get the first mineral cores of Antarctica dating backl millions of years. You could say that today I was one of the first pairs of eyes ever to see roack that old (about 3.5 million years) come from Antarctica. And then after supper tonight is a movie being screened by guest grantee artist Werner Herzog, the famous movie director, who gave us the world public premeir of his newest film, Rescue Dawn.

So in short, the long (two day) weekend has been wonderfully refreshing and I for one will be in a better state when it is time to again put mop to floor and kick mud-season ass. Because it has now gone above the freezing point for the first time in about 9 months and we are living in a dirt town now



Hey, in this shot it looks like I am winning the race. Never mind the 20 or so people in front of me.



Running the 5k on the sea ice.

Happy Camper

Every once in a while, we get a "Morale Trip", in NSF-speak. We call 'em boondoggles. A trip on a helo to Camp Royds, dive tending a sea ice hole, sea ice training, or more comonl Happy Camper School, aka Snowcraft and Survival School. Well, on monday my name came out of the hat and tuesday morning I was in class learning about cold injuries and prevention before heading out to Snow Mound City on the Ice Shelf. We spent two days learning how to set up the Scott tents, build ice walls and snow caves and survival trenches, set up stoves and melt snow, use the VHF and HF radios (we actually called South Pole Station on HAM radio to get a weather forecast just for practise. It was -42 C with 30 knot winds), and search for a missing companion in condition 1 (simulated by puting a bucket over our heads and not being alllowed to speak as we tried to move as a team out of the fish hut and across the ice to the out house).

That night I slept in a Qunizy, a snow cave made by piling our gear and then heaping snow on top of the pile about a meter thick, and then hollowing it out. Our was styling, so big on the inside you could have a dance party and with an arch over the entry way built from carved snow blocks. Anyway, it was alot of fun and some good training. It is required for parties going into the deep field or just leaving station more than a few miles, but for those of us whose jobs won't take us to scu exotic locals, we get the training when space in the class comes up at the last minute, as part of the whole morale treatment. And it worked, I can feel my morale increasing as I write this.



Eating dehydrate beef stoganoff in the snow kitchen



Our Scott tents set up, with hauling sleds in the fore ground and bamboo poles to the side. We had to set these flags between shelters and the kitchen and the latrine, in case of a white out.

Penguin!!!

I saw my first penguin last night. I have been leading recreation trips to Cape Evans, about 15 miles from the station over the sea ice, in an effort both to get of station for a few precious hours once in a while, and also in the hope of seeing penguins. I was on my way out last night on just such a trip, when we saw a little Adeladie penguin right outside the station. I mean, so close, you could throw a rock from the waste water treatment plant and hit him. Not that I recomend that, being against the Antarctic Conservation Treaty and all, the NSF looks down on that sort of behavior. But it was funny, to be going all that way out on the ice looking and finding one so close to town, the drunko's in the bar could staggar down to oogle.



The helipad is in the background, and those orange pylons are there because he is on the road to the ice runway. So why did the penguin cross the road? To avoid being run over by the big-ass truck barreling down on him.

Antarctic Sun

I saw my first skua today. They are a large (huge!) bird that scavenge on seal afterbirth, penguin eggs, and McMurdo garbage. I've heard stories of skuas swooping down and plucking the unguarded sandwhich from a persons hand walking from building to building. Some unscrupulous persons have even been known to duck tape a piece of bread unto the back of the hood of a friends parka, only to be dive bombed by a squadron of fierce, 4 foot wingspanned, hooked beak menaces when that person flps up their hood when going outside.

The scavenging nature of the skua has lent itself to popular usage among McMurdites as both a noun and a verb, as well as an adjective. I was always hazy on adverbs, but it may well find use there as well. To skua somethig is to find it in a community area designated for skua, that is unwanted items such as alarm clocks, shoes, bath robes, shampoo, books, silly costumes, outdated travel magazines, half consumed bottles of wine, etc. Most ofter things are left be residents leaving for another station or redeployment back to the World who are over their weight limit or other wise have no need for a giant paper mache palm tree back home. Lucky for me, as a janitor I have early access to most in coming skua and often get oick of the litter. Really it would be possible to come down with little more than a carry on bag and outfit oneself completly in skua. More than one person has done it anyway.

We are in the middle of a warm spell, 23 degrees above this afternoon and the heat was oppressive. Snow is sublimating off the roads at a disturbing rate, yeilding mud where a week ago was snow and ice. Unlike snow and ice, mud does not evaporate when tracked indoors on a freshly mopped floor.

The building I live in has holes in the roof. Counter intuitivly, this is not a problem in the winter when fine particles of snow blow in the holes and sit undisturbed in the crawl space. The problem comes round mid november when it warms up and this snow melts, through the roof tiles and onto my bed, as it is now. I have an elaborate hammock of garbage bags and paper towels in place now, and an even more elaborate plan to reroute the leak in mind.

Oh, and this friday I'll start my first full radio show as a DJ for 104.5 ICE Radio. I play every other friday from 8-10 pm and my show is "Coconut Telegraph: Music from those little lattitudes, for a warmer state of mind" I'll play salsa, merenge, tango, and of course lots of Jimmy Buffett.

Lastly, an interesting artical ran in the Antarctic Sun, the newspaper here on station that is also circulated in class rooms around the world. Check out the news paper here, with an interesting artical on page 12 here.

Search and Rescue Tryouts

I was selected to try out for the Search and Rescue team down here, so on thursday go to go out and play in the snow.