Well hello again...

Oops.  I’ve been TERRIBLE about updating my blog!  Luckily, its actually a blessing in disguise – or something like that!  I have been so busy that the blog has once again taken the back burner.  Definitely a good thing in my mind!  If I was bored, I would not be having such a good time down here. 

I actually can’t believe we are already over a quarter of the way through June and less than two weeks from mid-winter!  The time down here is going unbelievably fast!  Some days of the week seem slow, but it seems like Saturday comes more and more frequently – definitely a good thing!  So some of the things that have gone on since April…

Darkness!

Its dark now!  When I checked this morning, the sun was almost 22.8 degrees below the horizon.  For those of you that don’t remember your Earth Science, the tilt of the Earth is about 23.3 degrees.  What that means down here is that the maximum degrees the sun will ever be above or below the horizon is 23.3 degrees.  The apparent motion of the sun overhead is a sine wave – for us this means it appears to rise or sink fastest when it is crossing the horizon, and seem very slow when we are near the peaks and troughs.  Right now is one of those slow times.  It will take another 13 days for the sun to sink the remaining 0.5 degrees below the horizon.  On the solstice we will be at our lowest point and begin to rebound.  Amazing stuff.

In the meantime, this week is about as dark as it is going to get all winter!  The sun is lowest, and there is no moon.  For having absolute darkness, it really isn’t all that pitch-black.  I had imagined that I would navigate mainly the sound of the flags flapping along our flag line, but this is certainly not the case!  The starlight and auroras are actually quite bright.  On most days, I can ‘clearly’ see the station from ARO, and vice versa.  And when I say ‘clearly’, I mean that there is a black smudge in the distance that can only be the buildings.  The darkest days are when we have clouds and wind obscuring the sky.  Then it’s a bit dark.  Still, navigation has been much easier than I would have thought.  Luckily, I have ‘laser eyes’ and my night vision was not affected by lasik over a year ago.  Some eyes don’t adjust well to the dark here, and many of the station crew use head lamps with red lights to navigate.  We can’t use white light because some instruments would be impacted by the entire spectrum.  It turns out red is a pretty good color (except for an instrument or two on top of ARO) and it allows your eyes to stay mainly adjusted even with the light being used. 

It is beautiful here in the light, but I think the real beauty of the South Pole is the night sky.  Unlike every other part of the world (other than the North Pole), we see the same stars all day and all night – nothing rises or sets besides the moon, sun, and planets.  Going outside several times per day, you really get to know the sky.  For the first time, I am able to pick out several constellations.  I only recognize one constellation from home, and it is only partial.  We Orion down here – usually I can pick out the three stars which make up his belt, but down here they aren’t visible.  Instead, all we see is his legs sticking out of the snow.  Its actually quite funny.  The most prominent and easily-recognized constellation is the Southern Cross.  It’s the constellation I use to navigate from time to time if the flags are difficult to see.  Its almost directly overhead and points in the different directions as the day progresses.  I have fallen in love with the Southern sky.

The auroras are INCREDIBLE!  WOW.  We had several amazing shows last month overhead.  I had only seen faint auroras in Alaska before – now I laugh at how excited I was to see the faintest hint of glowing green in the sky.  Our auroras are ‘full-on double rainbow’ auroras!   You just want to should into the sky, ‘What does it mean?!?!’  I can totally relate to what the Double Rainbow Guy felt during that hilarious YouTube clip.  (If you haven’t seen it, check it out ASAP.)  Most of the time there is at least a faint aurora streaming overhead.  Every once in a while it gets very bright and energetic.  The auroras vary in their intensities over a time scale of seconds.  It literally looks like a green glowing river flowing through the sky.  Sometimes when they are realllly energetic, red or purple is visible.  For several auroras, I saw streaks of purple flowing through the bright green auroras.  They move and vary so much that I always expect to hear a sound associated with them!  The crazy part is how low the auroras appear – this phenomenon actually occurs hundreds of kilometers above our heads and can be seen from space, but they appear to be hundreds of feet above our heads!  I am in awe every time I step outside here.  Just seeing the auroras makes the whole winter experience worth it.

In contrast, when the moon rises (the moon spends two weeks up, two weeks down), it is freakin’ bright!  I haven’t cursed the moon’s brightness since it used to wake me up shining in my window at home, but WOW it is bright here!  I get a little bummed because it completely washes out the auroras.  It is nice, however, to be able to walk from building to building seeing your footing, your path, and the actual destination clearly.  In the darkness, you end up stumbling a lot over new snow drifts that appear overnight – and sometimes you end up wandering off the beaten path as well.  I actually ran square into a flag the other day.  Its hilarious.  The moon eliminates these problems.  And we can perform some readings on the total column ozone that can’t be completed in the darkness.  The moon has its plusses and minuses. 

Station Events

Club Deep Freeze – in an effort to throw awesome dance parties, a few us organized ‘Club Deep Freeze.’  We essentially took one of the TV lounges on station and pimped it out with great lighting and sound.  On the club nights, we have great speakers, a designated DJ, a mini bar, black lights, laser lights, strobe-ish lights, and a disco ball set up.  Its wicked awesome.  The first Deep Freeze night had a 90’s dance music theme.  The second was funk.  The next party is going to be 80’s, right after mid-winter dinner.  Love it!

BF5K – This past weekend the station participated in the 7^th annual BF5K, a 3.1-mile race through the station.  The catch is that it was a costumed race.  It was hilarious!  You could either race as an individual or as a team.  My team all wore lovely dresses, our competition wore matching ‘Life is Good’ garb, the women’s individual competitor went as the Log Lady from Twin Peaks, and the sole male individual runner started off as a valkyrie (I apologize for my spelling!), changing mid-race to a cheerleader.  All-in-all, it was a blast.  A good-sized crowd came out to watch and cheer on the runners.  I’m glad I was part of a team – running 3 miles in the station is brutal!  To start off with, you’re at about 10,000-11,000 ft physiological altitude, there is essentially 0% relative humidity in the station, and the floor is not forgiving.  After the race, I was coughing up a storm and I could feel my usual foot problems starting to come back.  Rawr.  I miss running outside! 

ARO Movies – I started ARO movie night back up last month.  I got a little burnt out my weekly ARO movie night this summer.  It was lovely having a break.  Now I’m holding it every few weeks, which is much better!  So far the movies have had a Soviet theme going.  Our first movie, by request, was ‘Red Dawn’, and the second requested movie was ‘Hunt for Red October’.  I think for the next movie, I’ll probably move on to a different genre.  Who knows!

Twin Peaks – About 10 of us have been watching Twin Peaks every Sunday night.  The lovely Ashley, our amazing host, has also been making pie, coffee, and home-made donuts for the show.  Its incredible!  I remember seeing the Sesame Street parody of Twin Peaks, ‘Twin Beaks’, when I was little.  Its very interesting watching the real series.  Its seriously messed up!  Just when you think you understand something, the whole situation changes and you’re left completely in the dark again.  Our little group has gotten really into the show.  Its not uncommon to hear someone mention Laura Palmer, Bob, or the one-armed man during week.

P90X – We have graduated from Power 90!  We completed our 90 days and moved on to P90X!  I’m reallllly glad we decided to finish Power 90 first before starting the next set of ‘Tony’ DVDs.  P90X is significantly more difficult.  If we had jumped into P90X, we would have either died or quit.  It is great though – you’re in pain most days, but it’s the good kind of pain!  The bad thing about this new workout plan is that we need to start at 0500 instead of 0530.  Its amazing how much of a difference 30 minutes makes!  I think its completely mental as well – there is just something wrong about waking up at 0430-0440 to work out.  I firmly believe that if the time of day has a 4 in the beginning of it, I should be sleeping (using military time here, people).  The three of us are now halfway through the third week and still going strong – that’s a good sign!

Knitting – Although this may not sound particularly exciting, I finished my first knitting project!  Instead of ending up with a normal cowl, I’m calling it a ‘sneed’ (Lorax reference).  Its HUGE – I can wear it as a cowl, hood, dress, skirt, you name it!  Hahaha.  I think it will be great for just keeping in the car.  You never know when you’ll get a chill.  It can probably even be a lap blanket.  I’ve learned my lesson – always test your gauge when knitting to see how many stitches you need!  With that lesson in mind, I have started my second knitting project, which is significantly harder.  I’m making a hat now – I can’t give too many details because it is a Christmas present, but it is comprised of two new stitches and actually has a real pattern to be followed.  So far I’ve started the test patch for my gauge twice and am now working on my third row.  Hahahahaha – this one project is going to take the rest of the winter!  I have been doing crochet projects on the side to keep myself sane – Christmas is pretty much completed except for this knitted hat.  I’m also starting to run low on my nice wool yarns.  It’s a good thing we only have five months left on the Ice!  I need another trip to Knit World in Christchurch!  If it is still standing, I’m planning on stocking up on my nice yarns and sending them home.  I’ll probably find a nice little project to work on during my 24 hours of flight time home too.  Ugh.  That’s too far in the future to start planning!

5 & 1 Pizzeria – Twice since the station closed, a group of 6 of us have run a pizzeria on days the galley crew has off.  Its been a blast – we start early making the dough and then reconvene after lunch to create about 25-30 pizzas, to be ready by 1800 dinner.  We are starting to get it down to a science.  Last time the pizza-making coincided with a ‘drive-in’ movie night in the gym, so we did pizza delivery to the movie-goers in the gym.  We had our awesome machinist create a rack for the bike and then attached a decorated box to carry the pizzas.  We’re a pretty serious operation, ya know.  Unfortunately, most of the audience was actually eating pizza in the galley, so we delivered to about 5 people, but we had a blast doing it!  Maybe next time… 

Life is good at the South Pole!  Sorry to everyone about not keeping in contact well these past two months – our satellite window has shifted and now I will either be calling the States super early in the morning, or super late at night!  And it’s the same here – when I call I either have to get up BEFORE P90X to catch the window, or stay up waaaay late past my bedtime!  It will be better in a month or two – I’ll be able to call everyone again!  I miss you all!  Thanks for all your support! 

Auroras and Iridium Flares

Okay, sunset and the green flash were cool, but can you guess what is way cooler?  The auroras!  I saw my first Aurora Australis (aka Southern Lights) a few days ago!  On my way back to ARO from lunch at the Elevated Station, I passed Johan.  He alerted me to keep my eyes to the sky – he had seen faint auroras on his walk to the station.  Auroras!?!?!  This early?  Amazing!  It took me FOREVER to walk my way back to ARO – just imagine me walking in the dark, looking up at the sky, stumbling over sastrugi and snow drifts, nearly running into our flag line, and trying not to fog my goggles.  It must have been hilarious.  My awkward walk was fruitful – I saw my first auroras!  It took me a few moments to figure out that what I was seeing was an aurora and not a cloud.  With it being still fairly light outside, the green auroras are very faint and don’t appear very green.  I knew I was seeing the aurora because it was oriented in the opposite direction of the rest of the clouds.  Also, it was moving.  Also, its brightness changed over seconds.  Definitely auroras. 

I was so excited to see a faint green ribbon of atomic oxygen giving off visible light hundreds of kilometers above my head that I screamed.  Literally screamed.  At this point I was extremely excited, but also a little worried that someone had heard my excited squeal and misinterpreted it for a scream of fear, pain, or general distress.  If I heard someone screaming outside, I would probably be forced to activate the ERT team, or our Emergency Response Team (the ‘T’ is redundant when you’re speaking in acronyms, I know).  So worried that all my peers would come running outside to rescue a fellow Polie in distress, I quieted down my excitement and joy associated with the first real auroras of the season.  Throughout my walk to ARO, the auroras danced overhead.  It was pretty amazing. 

Last night I saw a phenomenon called an ‘Iridium Flare’.  There is a comprehensive constellation of Iridium satellites overhead that provide a 24/7 voice and very limited data connection to the real world.  It’s basically our satellite phone connection.  We had Iridium phones on RAINIER.  They never seemed to work very well, given the mountainous areas we usually surveyed.  The little portable phones were more of a hassle than a help quite often.  Regardless, there are a lot of Iridium satellites up there.  As the satellites are orbiting the Earth and are overhead, the sun sometimes hits them at the correct angle, reflecting sunlight that is visible to a viewer on the surface.  These reflections are bright!  The Iridium Flares are very predictable, as we know the orbits of these satellites very well.  When they are visible, like they were last night, you can see an Iridium Flare every 9 minutes and 10 seconds.  What you actually see is a ‘star’ that’s moving at a decent clip through the sky.  As it reflects more sunlight toward the surface, the ‘star’ gets brighter and brighter, until it’s a ‘flare’.  It stays very bright for a second or two, and then fades back out.  It’s very cool.  Not as cool as the auroras, but I like them because they are so predictable and easy to spot once you know what you are looking for.  I have to get a shot of this phenomenon as well at some point. 

Yesterday we also had a momentous event at ARO – we made it officially winter.  “How can NOAA employees influence and control the seasons?”, one may ask.  Simple!  We brought in the last of the summer solar instruments from the roof yesterday.  Once they are safely inside, basking in the warmth of the building and settling in for a 6-month hibernation, we hit the ‘Winter’ button on our data acquisition system, ceasing the recording of non-existent data and causing the winter to officially begin.  It was so exciting – I had heard about this button MONTHS ago and was super stoked to push it.  It was even more of an event than imagined.  Although I was feeling sick yesterday, this brightened my day just a bit.

Stay tuned for pictures of the auroras and iridium flares – once I figure out how to work my camera in the dark and cold with a tripod without freezing my fingers off, I will be sure to post a few photos!

Sunset and Such

Okay, yes.  It has been a while since I last posted… and a lot has happened!  The last time I wrote we were having our sunset dinner.  Well since then the sun has set!  What a dramatic event!  We were very lucky – the weather gods smiled upon us and granted us clear weather to view the sinking of the sun below the horizon.  I love all sunsets, but this one was particularly spectacular a) because I haven’t seen a sunset since January, b) because it takes several days for the sun to actually leave, and c) we saw the Green Flash!

The Green Flash is a brief ‘flash’ of green or blue light seen on the top of the setting sun.  Its rare to see – you need a clear view of the horizon.  It is often seen from aircraft, high altitudes like mountains, and at sea.  The green flash occurs because of the refraction of light through the Earth’s atmosphere.  Light is curved going through the different densities of the atmosphere.  Green and blue light curves (refracts) more than the reds and oranges – you end up seeing these colors being bent as the other colors have already sunk below the horizon with the sun.  (That’s a very basic explanation – there are better explanations available on the interwebs)  Because the sun sinks so slowly here, the Green Flash persisted for HOURS, not seconds.  It was fantastic.  I literally took hundreds of pictures when the sun was ‘flashing’ and I actually got a few decent shots.  So lucky!!!

Each day is getting darker now.  Although the sun is gone (it actually popped up above the horizon a few times after it set), it is still fairly light outside.  We are now in civil twilight.  In a few weeks we’ll leave official period of twilight and just be in plain old night.  That is very exciting.  We are starting to see stars and planets – Venus is very bright, as are Serius and Canopus.  That’s about the extent of my astronomical knowledge.  One of our awesome scientists is teaching an astronomy class, so he points out the stars to us.  I’m slowly picking it up.  Very soon we should start seeing the auroras!  That is what I am really excited for!  I’ve seen the auroras twice in Alaska and they were so faint that they looked the looms from a large town or city.  I knew it had to be the auroras because we were sailing in the middle of NOWHERE.  No towns for hundreds of miles.  Bring it on!

Things are starting to settle into their winter schedules.  Many departments have been working extremely hard getting things winterized and finished outside before it gets too dark and cold outside to stay out for extended periods of time.  There’s been a lot of trash and refuse moved and contained, lots of inventorying outside, and getting vehicles ready.  Here at ARO we have started bringing in our solar instruments.  We brought in four right after sunset, and next week we will bring in the rest that get to hibernate inside.  A few instruments just get to hang out in the darkness and chill until the sun rises again.  Its also gotten colder.  We’re averaging in the -70F range.  Yesterday the temperature dipped around lunch time – we hit -87F.  Later in the evening it hit -90, which is the coldest we have seen so far.  So close to the 300 Club!  I still haven’t brought out the Big Red jacket (except for an emergency drill outside and walk to the Dark Sector, which is farther than I usually walk – I was dying of heat on both occasions I wore the jacket).  Hardcore!!!!!

We’ve had a few events on station.  One was Bingo night – if you came dressed as a pop culture icon, you could play with 4 boards instead of 3.  Well, I wasn’t too into getting dressed up as anything until I thought of the perfect costume – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Oh yeah.  So I was making my costume in the arts and crafts room, happily cutting away at some scrap felt I found, when I had another turtle join in my idea.  I ended up making two costumes, while my turtle friend made our weapons.  We were so awesome!  We both had green shirts and sewed some ‘turtle abs’ I constructed out of felt and markers, bandanas which had eye holes, arm and knee pads in the appropriate colors, and weapons our characters always used.  When we were done, we spent some time sneaking around the station like ninja turtles trying to test out our outfits.  Unfortunately it was a quiet night and there weren’t many people around.  We managed to sneak up on three people, giving them all a start.  The costumes were a hit at Bingo – we had our arch-nemesis, Jean Claude Van Damme to battle.  Also in attendance were Dolly Parton, the Swedish Chef, Luigi, Gigi the Giraffe, and Sherlock and Watson.  Fantastic!  Bingo aside, we had fun in our costumes.

We also had a night where we played Paper Telephone – it’s a South Pole Summer classic game where instead of whispering phrases around a circle, you draw them.  Every player gets the same number of pieces of paper as there are players.  On your first sheet of paper you write down a common phrase – one of the better ones from the night was ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’  From there, you put the paper at the back of the pile and pass it on to the next person.  That person looks at what you wrote and then has to draw it.  The next person it is passed to only looks at the drawing and writes what they think the phrase was.  Depending on how many people you have and what their drawing abilities are, the results can be hilarious!  By the time all the piles of paper reach their original owners, the drawings are ridiculous and the phrases are completely wrong or make no sense.   It was another fantastic night at the South Pole.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet.  There are more events on the horizon which will spice things up, but I’ll cross those bridges when I come upon them!

Stay warm back home… or cool?  Spring is here!

Sunset Photos!

Here are a few photos I've captured of our sunset over the past few days.  More will be uploaded over the next few days, and definitely more on facebook!

Frosty Station

Station and sunset as seen from ARO deck

Sunset seen from one of ARO's Dobson windows

View from the 'front stoop' of ARO

Super Moon, MAPO, and Ceremonial South Pole

ARO and Super Moon

 Station and Super Moon

Sunset Dinner cocktail hour in the galley lounge

Sunset Dinner table in the galley

Our amazing Sunset Dinner main course... beef tenderloin, lobster, pumpkin!

Baby, it's cold outside!

-86F – It keeps getting colder and colder! I love it! I really hope once the sun sets we’ll hit our -100F quickly, much like what happened down here last year. Our facilities engineer thinks he’s jinxed because the two previous winters he’s spent here have been warm – the Pole never reached -100F. I’ve had some friends from home suggest that we kick him out of the station when it gets near the century mark so that his bad vibes don’t affect us, but I’m not sure the weather gods will be fooled. -100F is so special because it is the temperature when you can become a member of the 300 Club. Much like Mount Washington’s Century Club, where they need to survive 100mph of wind, we need to survive -100F… naked (on MWN, they are fully-clothed). So where does the 300 come from? Welllllllll, we heat up the station’s sauna to 200F first, stay in there as long as possible, then toss the clothing (except for the essentials – foot covering, probably glove liners, and a neck gaiter for your face? I need to check my details and rules.), run down the ‘beer can’, out the door, and make a loop of the geographic South Pole before returning to the warm station, and most likely the sauna. We’re lucky this year. The geographic Pole moved about 30 feet closer to the beer can door, making the ‘run’ slightly shorter for us. Believe me – at these temps, every second counts. I’m psyched! Sorry… I will NOT be posting pictures from this event!

In my last post I explained how I hated the Big Red jacket and how I’m planning on holding out as long as possible – today may be the day I actually break it out. Rawr. I’m not enthused, but its becoming necessary. The soft shell I wear over my down layers is really not the right piece of equipment for these temperatures. I nearly broke the zipper this morning taking it off when I reached ARO. I was only outside for about 15-20 minutes, but the zipper was completely frozen and stuck. I definitely struggled getting out of it. The zipper is sealed to prevent water from getting in at temperatures where liquid water actually exists. Apparently this rubber-ish gasket-like seal doesn’t like temperatures over 100 degrees below the freezing point of water. Oops. When the wind blows, the down layers are not going to be enough to keep me warm. Plus, when I put on about 20 layers of clothing to avoid the Big Red, I feel like the little brother from ‘A Christmas Story’. Yiiiikes.

Tonight I am going to attempt to learn how to knit. One of my many projects down here for the winter is making next year’s Christmas presents for friends and family (at least until I run out of supplies). On R&R in Christchurch I spent a long time at Knit World, the most amazing yarn store in the world, picking out the perfect yarns to go with projects for family. I picked up crochet when I was home last Christmas (wow – two Christmas’ ago? Where does the time go?) and have already finished my sister’s presents. Now I have a great knitting pattern I want to try and make for my brother. If I can become a proficient knitter, so many doors will open up for me, as far as online patterns go. There are a ton of crochet patterns out there, but about ten times more knitting patterns than crochet! Verrrrry exciting! So tonight is the weekly ‘Stitch & Bitch” meeting, South Pole Chapter. The other Polie, who is the host of the event, is a knitter. She has made some beautiful items, including her own amazing socks out of merino wool. Sooo nice! So I’m going to corner and have her start to teach me. My first project is going to be something very easy. I’m planning on knitting a neck cowl – yet another layer I can wear when I go outside. It is like a neck gaiter, but very loose. It’s a nice layer to accompany more low-cut shirts (not that I’m wearing low cut shirts down here, but I’m talking about any shirt that isn’t a turtleneck). This project involves basic stitches and basic principles. I think it’ll be perfect to get my feet wet. Plus its something that I can use down here. Then I’ll continue to tackle Christmas! I’m very excited about my yarn purchases and can’t wait to give out the finished products!

Happy Stitching!

A Quick Note on ECW

First of all, Happy Pi Day!  Gotta love the ol’ 3.1415926…

Second of all, this is the coldest day I have experienced on station so far!  We have officially hit -81F!  Wow!   At these temperatures there are very few vehicles we can actually use outside, and your soda is chilled pretty quickly sitting on the deck.  I have had several friends from home asking how you can possibly stay warm at these temperatures and how long you can safely stay out.  Hopefully this posting answers some of those questions…

ECW.  Those three letters are ingrained in every Polie – Extreme Cold Weather… gear.  When we pass through the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) on our way through Christchurch, New Zealand, we spend a lot of time getting our issued cold weather gear (ECW).  Everyone is required to pick up a basic number of items, ranging from rubber ‘bunny’ boots, ski goggles, and thick socks, to the classic and iconic ‘big red’ down parka.  You can spend hours trying on clothing items, checking zippers, and looking for other sizes.  Depending on what job you have in Antarctica, how long you will usually spend outside, and how long you are staying at your station (summer vs. winter vs. short visit), you are issued different items.  Since I’m a winter-over, I got it ALL.  Also being a winter-over, we are issued at least two of everything.  We have an emergency cache of ECW that is stored away from the station just in case (heaven forbid) the station burned down with all of our gear inside it.  If you came to the Ice without any of your own personal gear, you’d be perfectly warm and happy.  Snug as a bug in a rug.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of some of the gear that is issued.  Being a bit of a gear fanatic (and snob, I may add – hey, don’t judge), I brought down a lot of my own cold weather items.  And I’m pretty glad I did – you can never have too much ECW down here.  I came prepared with my own long underwear, fleece layers, hats, glove liners, gloves, balaclavas, neck gaiters, goggles, winter boots, socks… can you possibly put anything else on your body?  Now I wear a mix of my own gear and the issued gear.  Here’s how a normal trip outside goes:

First, I put on a pair of medium-weight long underwear, thick socks, and a t-shirt.  Next is my insulated pair of Carhartt bibs.  These bibs are serious – I highly recommend them.  I am actually going to invest in a set when I get home.  They are heavy-duty, warm, and have a million pockets.  They would be great for hanging around outside in the winter – I’m thinking ice fishing here…  The boots are next – I bought a pair of Sorel boots rated to -100F before I came down here – they’re a life-saver.  The boots we are issued (bunny and FDX boots) don’t have great ankle support and tend to have slippery soles in cold weather.  I loveeee my Sorels!  Next comes a fleece hoodie and a medium-weight down vest.  Before I zip the vest, I put on a wind-stopper fleece balaclava.  Zip!  The bottom of the balaclava gets snugly sealed into that first layer of warmth.  Next comes my medium-weight down jacket (that I got from Patagonia – I swear I’m not getting paid to say this, but it’s the best jacket I’ve ever had.  If you are looking to invest, this is the jacket for you.) and a fleece neck gaiter.  I have a black gaiter I brought from home, but I like to wear one I purchased in the store here at Pole.  It’s green, has gold decorative stitching, and clear sequins.  You’ve gotta feel like a girl every once in a while, right?  It might as well be when you’re headed outside.  After the gaiter, I put on a beautiful wool and fleece hat my parents gave me right before I left for the Ice.  Then my hood comes up, keeping the wind from sneaking down my neck, and my dark-lens goggles over it all.  The goggles I brought are pretty much worthless down here – they fog up so fast!  I have put duct tape on the bottom foam of my issued goggles to try and keep out my breath, but it’s not perfect. Lastly, the hands.  I’m still working this situation out.  I have several different kinds of glove liners, gloves, and gauntlets.  Today I wore a pair of fleece wind-stopper glove liners and my huge ‘bear paw’ leather insulated gauntlet gloves.  I used to wear just the glove liners back in the summertime when it was -20F.  It’s amazing what a different 60 degrees makes!  I think when it gets really cold (we’re talkin’ -100F here), I’ll probably opt for a pair of wool and possum liners I bought from Scott Base (Kiwi station near McMurdo), the insulating layer from another pair of mittens, and my bear paws.  And maybe hand warmers if I’m planning on staying out longer than my usual walk to ARO and tour of the roof to check instruments.  Today I actually added a soft shell jacket to my normal ‘ensemble’ to try to keep a little more of my heat from escaping.  I think it works, but the funny thing is that soft shell material sounds like a crinkly plastic trash bag at these temps.  Weird.

How long can we stay outside?  I’d say at these temperatures, a normal person should probably stay outside for about an hour before coming in at least for a few minutes to warm up.  Our Materials folks are mainly working outside on the berms, where things that aren’t currently needed are stored.  They dress a lot warmer than I do because they are out there so long.  You could stay out longer if you had to, but you would definitely need hand warmers and foot warmers!  And move around a LOT!

It’s funny, because once you reach cold temperatures, it doesn’t feel much colder, even when the mercury drops.  The main difference is that you get colder faster.  Earlier this morning I ran out to the roof of ARO to check on some instruments in just a fleece and Crocs before checking the temperature.  Sure, it was chilly, but it didn’t actually feel different.  I was amazed at how quickly I felt the cold, and then knew something was up.  Over the summer I could stay on the roof for several minutes at a time without a jacket, hat, or other ECW.  I would even go out in a t-shirt! (I know I’m crazy though – the temps were still well below zero)  Now I at least make sure my face is covered.  Air this cold is horrible for the lungs – you can damage the tissues by breathing it, giving you a horrible cough for a month or so.  Balaclavas are your friends!  I’m much more careful going outside these days.

Speaking of going outside, I’m headed back out to work on the Skua Shack, continuing to move clothes, random appliances, shoes, and costumes (we found a gorilla mask last week) into the station for the winter.  Since the Skua Shack isn’t heated and I’m planning on being out for a while, I’m definitely going to use hand warmers! 

Stay warm at home J

Fire Extinguisher Fun

Today it really does feel like the sun is setting!  There are clouds on the horizon, obscuring most of the direct sunlight.  No real sunset colors yet, but you can feel that those are just around the corner.  The wind has also returned, thank goodness – for the past few days it has been too light for me to complete my scheduled air sampling.  It is very frustrating waiting for conditions to change!  Every morning at breakfast for the past few days I look at the weather displayed on the scroll, sigh, and wish for wind.  This is counter-intuitive for most people.  Wind equals cold, so why would you want wind?  Sometimes I feel a little bit backwards.

By the time I'm at ARO I'm a little frosty.  And I'm only outside for 10 minutes!

It has been a fairly uneventful week, as far as life in the station goes.  Everyone has played it pretty low key.  Yesterday the fire team had equipment training – we went over how to operate the O2 sensor (used to see if we have an atmosphere that can support breathing during drills and events) and fire extinguishers.  Before this training, I completed a good deal of research on fire extinguishers and learned some interesting things.  Did you know that the first patent on a fire extinguisher was filed in 1723 by an English chemist?  I bet you didn’t.  This first fire extinguisher contained gunpowder and a fire-extinguishing fluid.  To work the extinguisher you had to light a fuse – the gunpowder explosion scattered the liquid out of the extinguisher and onto the fire.  Its just my opinion, but I think it’s a little counter-productive putting gunpowder near open flames.  I wonder how many additional fires this started compared with the amount that it actually extinguished.  But I guess if you already have one fire, what’s one more?

Tonight we are having a double-feature at the ‘drive-in theater’, aka gym.  The matinee is ‘Tron’ and the real feature (at least in my mind) is ‘Black Sheep’, the New Zealand zombie sheep movie classic.  ‘Black Sheep’ was a hit at ARO this summer, with a record amount of viewers flooding the lab.  We even had to pull out a mattress to put on the floor.  And people sat on our wicked hard wooden bench.  That’s dedication right there. 

There’s some weather moving in, so no real opportunities to take photos for a few days.  Hopefully when it clears I will get a few good shots of where the sun is so you have a better idea of what I’m actually talking about!  Stay classy, non-Polies!

Polies Donate to NZ Red Cross... and other station happenings.

As some of you may have just seen from Facebook, the South Pole’s contributions to the New Zealand Red Cross are now officially $10,000!  For many Polies Christchurch is like a second home, and it was devastating watching another crippling earthquake hit the city two weeks ago.  One of our crew here collected donations, found a donation-matching opportunity, and got our total contribution up higher than I would have ever imagined!  $10,000 is small in the big scheme of things, but every little bit helps.  It felt good to contribute something to the disaster, given our huge distance and inability to help with relief.  We are also considering shipping a large quantity of lightly-used clothes to the Red Cross in the spring from our ‘Skua Shack’.  That’s a long way off though…

Things have continued as usual at the South Pole.  The biggest thing happening on station is the imminent sunset.  Only about two weeks away, the sun is verrry low on the horizon and is very noticeably sinking each day.  Its fun to sit at breakfast and have the outside look like a sunrise.  The same is true at night – it looks like a normal sunset.  The strange thing is having the sun setting mid-day.  When I walk back to the station for lunch around 1200, I always think I’m walking in for dinner and wonder where the day went.  It is an odd feeling.  The fact that the sun is departing for six months is really starting to sink in.  We will have several weeks of twilight before it actually gets dark, allowing us to adjust to walking around at ‘night’ and without the light to guide us.  Just crazy.

Another big highlight (other than the setting sun) of last weekend was the crepe extravaganza.  Two of our wonderful crew took all their practicing and made the crepes a reality on Sunday night.  Wow.  I have to get the recipes!  They made both sweet and savory crepes to order.  It was amazing.  I had the vegetarian savory crepe to start with, which was a crepe filled with cooked spinach and portabello mushrooms sautéed and reduced in white wine.  The crepe was then topped with a reduced red bell pepper sauce and pine nuts.  (I think this was the filling and topping anyway – I may be getting some of the details wrong!)  Simply heavenly.  The dessert crepe was a crepe made with a yeast batter, giving it a slightly fermented flavor which complimented the Nutella and pureed banana filling.  We are so spoiled down here!

For the most part, everything is running smoothly at ARO, giving me time to dedicate to other things such as planning fire team training and cleaning out the Skua Shack.  When all of the summer Polies left and donated items to Skua, there was absolutely no organization.  Literally, everything was piled up on the floor of the small wooden shack on skis.  What a mess!  This past weekend a few of us hauled out about 8 garbage bags worth of items.  Most of them were worth keeping, but many items had to go.  I’m going to be continuing this process for the next two weeks.  At sunset, Skua gets dragged out to weather the winter months with the other small mobile buildings at the “End of the World”.  All of these buildings get moved downwind of the station and stored in a row to minimize the amount of drifting we need to shovel out at the beginning of the season.  Why make several large drifts when you can just make one really large drift? 

We have made it to three weeks of our 2-a-day workouts and we’re still going strong!  One additional person has joined our little group, making a support group of three encouraging eachother daily.  Its great!  Its amazing what 1-2 hours of exercise makes daily!  I think next week we are going to try moving on to Level 3-4 of Power 90.  It should be interesting.  Also a good thing.  We know all of Tony’s quirks on the first DVD and I’m not sure how much more we can make fun of the people demonstrating the workouts.  Doing the workouts everyday, we can recite the dialogue along with the DVD.  At least we have added our own music to our workouts.  Freija and I have compiled our most trashy workout music possible – we have a lovely mix of 90’s club music, Dutch rap, and just plain terrible modern pop.  Love it.

Tours and Crepes

Two days ago I got to take a tour of the entire station and surrounding areas with our facilities engineer, Weeks.  It was an excellent tour!  It was advertised as a ‘3 hour tour’ (I know – very Gilligan’s Island), but it actually went to almost four hours.  And on top of that we skipped the Dark Sector and other outlying science buildings.  The tour started out going through the station – mainly the rooms we don’t normally have access to, and special features of spaces we occupy all the time.  We were able to poke around fan rooms, electrical rooms, the emergency power plant (EPP), subfloor (the space under the floor where the pipes for our utilities run through), etc. 

After thoroughly roaming through the station, we proceeded down the Beer Can to the New Power Plant (NPP).  We saw where our water gets treated – the water we are currently drinking is melted ice from around year 100 or so.  It is extremely clean.  It is actually so pure that the water is caustic and needs to be treated – we add chemicals to regulate the pH so it doesn’t destroy our pipes and literally leach the minerals out of our bodies.  It is amazing.  We also saw the ridiculous amount of CO2 we have for the power plant fixed fire suppression system.  If all the CO2 was released at once, it would fill all the spaces at that level to 6 ft – this includes the power plant, ice tunnels, LO arch, and garage if it was open.  How would we ventilate all those spaces?  Good question!  Moving on, we saw all the generators – we have 4 in all.  Three are large generators that we normally run off of (one is running, on is standby, and one undergoes repairs at one time), and a smaller generator that is known as the ‘peaker’ or the ‘kicker’.  If we draw more power than our normal generator can handle, the little guy kicks in and provides the difference.  If we run over the capacity of those two generators, non-essential things get turned off.

From there we went into the LO, the Logistics Arch, where all of our food and materials not outside are stored.  We proceeded to the Fuel Arch, which holds 450,000 gallons of fuel.  The walls of the arch are covered in beautiful ice crystals.  The emergency exit from the back of the fuel arch is a spiral staircase which goes up to the surface.  This space is also encrusted in ice crystals.  It is just gorgeous – I need to go back there and get some good shots with my big camera…

We jumped in an LMC after going through the garage, and Weeks took us around the rest of the station – through Summer Camp, to RF where our satellite dishes are located, the fuel pits, the Otter pits (where the twin otters park), the berms, cryo, and the rodwells.  I could explain more about these places, but it would also take three hours!  I’ll explain a little more in later blogs…  It was a great tour!

Yesterday was a typical day.  I have been waiting for the wind to be from the right direction and the right speed for flask sampling for two days now.  First it was too light (under 5 meters per second), then it shifted out of our Clean Air Sector, and now its back in the right direction, but too light.  I just can’t win!  Hopefully this afternoon it will pick up a bit.  Or at least tomorrow. 

Last night was wonderful – Freija, Susan, and I did an hour of yoga.  From there I went straight to the sauna and then to the shower.  Wow.  I am going to be so spoiled when I leave here.  I may need to find an apartment when I get back to the States that has a sauna.  After that I ate dinner, watched a movie, and passed out at 9:00.  Just lovely.

This morning at breakfast there was a group making crepes.  They were testing out their recipe and technique today in anticipation of making them Sunday night for dinner and dessert.  The dessert crepes were AMAZING.  Wow.  Just as good as the crepes we always ate in Seward, AK.  Very, very goooood!  The savory crepes were more of a challenge.  I asked to help and they let me try my hand at crepe-making.  This is definitely a skill I am going to bring home with me next November…  Needless to say, I’m looking forward to the weekend!  Someone is taking it upon themselves to make brunch on Saturday and we have crepes on Sunday.  Is it the weekend yet???

The rest of summer -and- 'I Think We're Alone Now...'

Okay continuing with the summer…

New Year’s was a LOT of fun at the South Pole!  A few days before the end of the year, the Austrian/Norwegian ski race made it to the Pole.  This was a huge event – the whole unsupported cross country ski race from the coast to the Pole was filmed for an Austrian documentary.  The documentary support vehicles arrived at Pole a few days before the skiers and set up camp.  The skiers made it just a few days before the holiday.  The Austrians won – Hermann Maier, the world-class retired downhill skier was on this team.  It was pretty neat hosting a celebrity here!

For New Year’s Eve, there was a large party at the Austrian/Norwegian camp, which was about a half mile from the station.  The weather was beautiful – a crystal clear evening with light winds.  We got so hot walking out the camp that the ladies and I that were hiking there shed most of our layers down to long-sleeve fleece.  What stellar weather!  At the party, one of the vehicles was running and had Bob Marley music pumping out of the speakers.  The two teams and Polies mingled, hearing about the race across.  I got to speak with one of the drivers of the vehicles.  He said it was a great drive until they came to an area where they needed to steer 12 hours out of their way to preserve scientific data and clean air.  Upon further questioning, I discovered that he was talking about the Clean Air Sector, which is the ‘wedge’ of clean air I sample from and protect here from ARO.  I thought that was hilarious.  I definitely thanked him for going out of his way to keep my data clean!

We didn’t stay too long at the party – I wanted to see midnight at the geographic pole.  So the ladies I arrived with and I had our obligatory photo with the awesome arctic trucks and then made our way back to the station.  Back in the elevated station there was much merry-making occurring before the turn of the year.  I hung out with my friends and waited for midnight. 

A few minutes before midnight a large group of us ran out to the Pole.  It was a little odd celebrating the new year in the middle of the night with the intense sun shining.  It was an experience.  We counted down the new year in front of the geographic South Pole marker and cheered when we hit midnight.  Very cool!  There was much kissing, hugging, and photo-taking.  I must say it was strange celebrating New Year’s very much ahead of the United States.  When it was midnight here, it was 6:00am on New Year’s Eve at home.  Strange, but overall a great time! 

Because New Year’s was technically on a Friday, it was a work day and our party was postponed to Saturday evening.  During the day on Saturday the gym was transformed to a concert venue.  It was amazing – I didn’t recognize it when I walked in during the evening.  It was better than a high school prom that transforms their gym.  (Okay – I may be biased.)  An elevated stage was set up at the far end of the gym with a full setup for the bands – a professional setup for the instruments.  A professional sound system was also constructed and a killer light system.  There were professional lights suspended from the ceiling (spotlights, lights projecting patterns, etc.) that really set the mood.  Christmas lights were hung around the perimeter of the gym, sparkly décor, and a curtain on crepe paper that covered the door.  Mike from Ice Cube created a bar that was a table suspended by two carved wooden penguins.  It was amazing – I am totally commissioning him to build me a penguin table when I get back to the states!  There were snacks, Mardi Gras beads, hats, and tiaras outside the gym for people to grab on their way in. 

Three bands played during the evening for us: a bluegrass band, a Grateful Dead tribute band (Cold Dead Polies I think?), and a band that played rock music.  As the crowd grew, the dancing started and lasted all night.  Even when the bands were finished with their sets, we switched to music mixed by our awesome IT staff.  That lasted well into the morning.  I think I called it quits around 2:00 or 3:00am.  After dancing all night and staying up late the previous night, I was exhausted.  It was a great New Years!

The rest of the Summer flew by.  I’m not actually sure where the time went.  The highlight of the remainder of my summer was my trip to Christchurch, New Zealand for R&R.  USAP likes to give their winter-overs the opportunity to get off the Ice one last time, rest up, soak up the sunshine, live in humidity, and eat real food before settling in for 9 months of winter and isolation.  It was a lovely getaway.  I literally did NOTHING.  I left January 19^th with five others going on R&R.  Unfortunately, we got stuck in McMurdo for 3 days waiting for a C-17 to transport us to NZ.  We waited anxiously for three days, seeing delay after delay and eventually cancellations.  It was okay though – I got to do some hiking, saw penguins and seals, visited with friends in McMurdo, caught up on my sleep, and toured the icebreaker that was in port.

New Zealand was beautiful.  It was surreal stepping off the C-17 into a downpour.  It was about 55 degrees, wet, and full of sounds and smells I hadn’t experienced in 4 months.  I experienced a little bit of culture shock.  I can’t imagine what its going to be like in November… crazy.  After clearing customs into New Zealand, we dumped our winter gear at the US Clothing Distribution Center and then made our way to our respective hotels.  I stayed at the Crowne Plaza, which was a great 80’s upper-scale hotel.  Concierge and everything.  I chose this hotel because I heard it had a great bathtub.  While I was there, I took at least one bubble bath everyday.  It was wonderful.

I spent the week wandering around Christchurch seeing the sights, eating excellent food, drinking excellent coffee and chai tea lattes, and generally relaxing.  The Paralympics was in town, as well as the International Busker Festival (street performers), so there were TONS of people hanging around and tons to do.  I didn’t leave Christchurch, which was just fine.  If I couldn’t walk there, I wasn’t going.  I’m actually glad I stayed in CHC and experienced the city, considering the earthquake the devastated the town on February 22^nd.  It will be strange going back in November and seeing a completely different city.

Returning to the South Pole was like going home.  I was relieved to return to my routine, my work, and my friends.  The next few weeks flew by even faster than those between New Years and my trip.  Everyone not spending the winter had major senioritis.  All we could talk about for weeks was what they were going to do in New Zealand, where they were going to travel, what foods they would eat first, where they would find dogs and kids to play with, and their plans until they would return to the Ice next season.  It was a very exciting time.

In the blink of an eye, the middle of February arrived.  Within a week, the station went from a population of over 200 people down to 80.  On February 14^th, Valentine’s Day, I got to marshal in a C-130 (basically park the plane).  Since it was V-Day, I waved huge hearts to bring the plane in to their correct position.  I was so giddy to bring in the C-130!  It made my day.  It was incredible standing directly in front of the gigantic plane skiing directly at you.  I watched the fuelies to take my cues and finally stopped the plane at the fuel pit.  Very very cool.  I was buzzing the rest of the evening from that experience! 

And suddenly it was February 15^th, the day of station closing!  How did that happen?  Two planes were scheduled to bring us a little more fuel and take away the last of the summer folks.  The first plane was loaded with our galley staff and other support staff.  It was difficult saying goodbye to my good friends!  I was very excited for them, though.  They were all so happy!  When the plane departed, the turned around and did a low fly-by almost directly over us.  Verrrry cool!  At airshows you see the fly-bys, but this was a LARGE plane and it was LOW.  Amazing!  The second plane was much more difficult for me.  It was my very best friends leaving.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry.  Luckily I was prepared with tissues.  Unfortunately at -45 F, your goggles fog and freeze very quickly when you cry!  My goggles were pretty much useless.  I hugged them all a million times and finally had to watch them walk over the fuel line, in front of the last C-130, and then out of sight as they boarded.  It was completely surreal.  Then winter-overs brought in the remaining equipment, and the plane taxied (or skied, rather) away.

We all looked at eachother and basically had the same thoughts outloud: Well, we’re stuck with eachother now!  There was a lot of joking, laughing, and jumping around when the plane started its takeoff.  By this time, the visibility was reduced, so we didn’t actually see them takeoff at the end of the skiway.  There were a lot of cheers when we saw the plane emerge from the blowing snow on the ground and bank right.  It took a while, but we finally saw them returning far on the horizon.  This time, they came in low and fast and made a HUGE turn right over us!  These pilots are awesome.  You would never see a plane in the US do that!  They were only a few hundred feet above the ground, making an extremely steep turn.  Later I heard from my buddies who left on that flight – they said it was one of the best roller coaster rides they had ever been on!

When the plane was out of sight, we all wandered back inside.  At that point we had been outside almost 3 hours and were FREEZING.  I went back to my room, crawled into bed and warmed up before returning to work.  It was funny because seeing the planes taking all our friends away was extremely surreal, but as soon as they were gone we all jumped back into the routine.  It felt very natural.  Although the station was now deserted, it felt as if this was the way it was supposed to be.  The summer was the exception to the rule.  In a way it is.  For only 4 months, there are 250 people on station.  The rest of the year the population is under 50.

That night we watched ‘The Thing’ in the gym.  I must say that it was an extremely stressful day, so I was exhausted.  I fell asleep near the end of the movie (Kurt Russell version) – right when they were exploding everything in their station.  I must have been tired!  I woke up for the credits and hauled myself back to my room.  The original ‘The Thing’ was played next, but there was no way I was making it through that one!  Oh well – I’ll have to rent it at some time from the store this winter and finish them both!  All I can say is that this station does not have a flame thrower.  I think this is a huge oversight and I’m not sure how we will make it through the winter without at least one for our defense against malicious aliens.

The station has been officially closed for two weeks, but we are already into a great routine and almost settled in for winter.  There has been a lot of effort put into closing the station thoroughly.  We cleaned out Summer Camp, got the rooms completely ready for next season (linens and all), and winterized the Jamesways.  The fuel line was pulled in from the skiway in only four hours (a record, I hear), and our maintenance folk are still working hard to winterize the outbuildings before the sun sets. 

On a personal level, we are starting to set up winter non-work activities.  Freija and I have started a great workout routine: in the mornings we get up at 5:30 and do Power 90.  In the evenings we do yoga.  We’re eventually going to work up to P90X.  Its amazing how much more difficult working out is here.  Combining our altitude (feels over 10,000ft) and lack of humidity, an easy workout at sea level is a killer one here!  Its great!  Other than working out, we have our crochet and knitting sessions (called Stitch & Bitch), Thursday Comedy TV nights with Rachel and Rob, astronomy lessons every Monday, Ladies Night monthly, and parties every weekend.  My social calendar is packed.  Literally.

We had our first fire drill yesterday morning.  We simulated a fire in our emergency power plant (EPP).  The EPP is in B-Pod, our emergency pod on station.  There is a fixed CO2 system, throwing some interesting complications and solutions into the mix.  With a fixed CO2 system, if the CO2 is released, you cannot enter the space where it was released for 20 minutes.  This gives the CO2 a chance to completely smother the fire before it is dissipated by an open door.  However, if a door is open to the CO2 space or if there is a leak in the door, CO2 is hazardous in the quantities we use.  It displaces oxygen, causing someone exposed to high levels to feel woozy, drunk, and eventually pass out and suffocate.  We take huge precautions with CO2 releases in our enclosed station.  The 20 minutes is nice because it gives us a chance to assess the situation, turn off power and heat to the space, and prepare our firefighters for entry.

For our first drill, it went very well.  There were three people ‘tagged in’ to the EPP, meaning we potentially had three victims trapped in the space.  When it was ‘safe’ to enter, firefighters were sent in to look for victims and any fire that wasn’t extinguished.  There was a smoke machine inside the EPP that was supposed to completely smoke out the space, but since power was cut to the pod early on in the drill, it was free and clear.  Lucky for us!  Muahaha.  The fire did a great job making sure the fire was out (it was) and bringing out the two victims we discovered.  Overall, all teams did well working together to handle the emergency.  Almost half of our team was brand-new, since the summer people had left and many winter-overs hadn’t spent the summer on station.  I think we are going to have a great response team this winter!

The sun is now very low on the horizon.  Its just under 9 degrees above the horizon.  If you take your hand, hold it out at arms length, and hold your hand out horizontally, the sun is about 4 finger-widths above the horizon.  Its insane.  Sunset is only three weeks away!  With the sun at such a shallow angle, very little solar energy is making it to the surface to warm us up (plus the snow reflects 90% of sunlight anyway) – its getting a little chilly here!  Today the temperature is -64F.  With an 8 knot wind, the wind chill is -93F!  I think that’s just a little colder than it is at home.  Its not so bad walking outside in these temperatures.  I still get overheated walking to ARO from the station.  The difference now is that no skin can be exposed.  I wear a balaclava, neck gaiter, hat, and goggles everytime I go outside.  I also wear two sets of mittens and a pair of liner gloves.  I can no longer completely remove my gloves to adjust and maintain my outside instruments.  If you touch something metal, you will immediately get burned and probably leave some of your skin on that piece of metal.  Everyone has to be careful about how they are dressed when they venture outdoors. 

We have also all put up our flag lines that will guide us to our laboratories when it gets dark outside.  Our flags out to ARO are spaced about 15 paces apart.  Its important to know the distance because sometimes in the dark when the moon isn’t out, you navigate by sound.  The flags flapping in the wind (its almost always windy here) are a good guide.  If you know your number of steps and listen for the flags, you’re good to go.  Apparently its also good to navigate by the stars.  The Southern Cross constellation is right above us, spinning around itself during the day and night.  If you know what direction you need to go and glance at the Southern Cross, you can maintain that direction during your walk and not get turned around.  There are a lot of tricks to learn!

Hopefully this blog post makes up for my lack of writing lately!  With less going on here during winter, I’m trying to write more often!  Stay classy in the Northern Hemisphere, friends…

Back on the Bandwagon?

Okay.  I have definitely fallen off the bandwagon, but I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth!  I can’t believe I haven’t written in almost two months!  The time has absolutely FLOWN here!  My New Year’s resolution was to keep my blog up to date this year.  Well, since that didn’t really work, I’m making that my ‘winter resolution’.  Winter, when the station officially closes, is going to feel like a completely different year, so I’m making resolutions for that instead.  I can’t make up for two completely silent months in this blog, but I’ll do my best to write the gist of what has happened here during the second half of the summer at South Pole…

Air Drop

About a week before Christmas the annual air drop took place.  The Air Force gets to use South Pole as a guinea pig for new supply air drop procedures and inventions.  They also get in some good training.  This year, sixteen pallets of food were shoved out the back of a C-17.  About a week before the actual event we began the preparations.  Since I am on the winter air drop team (just in case we need emergency supplies in the winter, we have a team set up to lead the ground logistics), I got to help with preparations and learn the differences between summer and winter air drop procedures.  The winter team went out the day before the drop and planted flags at the corners of the winter drop zone where we would place burn barrels to mark the area in the dark.  Although the winter drop zone was in place, the Air Force wasn’t authorized to drop a package there – the winter zone is directly on the skiway – I’d hate to see a pallet crash land and put a huge crater where our planes land everyday!

The actual air drop was amazing.  The summer drop zone is almost two miles away from the station,  near the ‘southern’ end of the skiway.  The day of the drop, the skies were clear, but there was an abundance of ice crystals precipitating which created the most amazing halos and other optical displays.  At one point, there were two halos, prominent sun dogs, and several other points of light shooting out from the sun.  The optics made for some dramatic photos, but the ice crystals obscured the view of the air drop from the station.  In fact, the C-17 first did a low and slow pass right over the skiway where the winter drop site was located and the ground crew couldn’t even see it!

After the first ‘buzz’ of the station, it was drop time.  The plane had some mechanical issues which delayed the drop for several minutes, but they finally got it together and made the approach.  Because of our close proximity to the drop site, the direction and speed of the wind, and low altitude of the C-17, it looked like the aircraft dropped the packages right over the top of us!  It was amazing.  Eight pallets were deployed at a time.  During the first pass, two parachutes became tangled around eachother and did not fully deploy.  Pallets weighing several hundred pounds without parachutes drop like rocks!  While the other packages with parachutes experienced a slower descent and relatively ‘soft’ landing, these two crashed into the snow, creating huge craters!  The second pass went better – only one ‘chute failed to deploy.  That one again rocketed out of the sky and made contact with the ground in a cloud of snow, deeply burying itself.  Once the two passes were completed, it was time to get to work.

Parachutes attached to packages are dangerous on the ground.  They are HUGE, heavy, and can remain ‘inflated’ on the ground in the wind.  It is important to remain safe and recover the parachutes quickly.  Luckily, by the time we arrived at the drop zone, all the parachutes were completely deflated and were patiently waiting to be recovered.  Folding a parachute is a job which takes several people – these chutes have a lot of fabric and cord, so they weigh a lot!  The fabric is ‘cigar-rolled’ and folded around the parachute cord, which is first ‘daisy-chained’,  which is pretty much a chain stitch in crochet (nerd alert!).  It was easy to recover the parachutes which deployed, but those which didn’t were thoroughly buried in the snow.  When the packages landed, they didn’t land upright and the parachutes were wrapped around and pinned underneath the boxes.  Ugh.  It was too much work to do by hand – heavy machinery was brought back later to dig out the doomed packages. 

A few goodies were dropped down to us from the C-17 crew – on the first package we recovered, a large stuffed-animal penguin was attached!  We named him ‘Winchester’, after the term used by the Air Force to indicate an aircraft has dropped its entire load.  At our second pallet we recovered, we found a pair of ski goggles that were accidentally dropped.  We were able to give these back to the two C-17 crew members who were on the ground with us to assist with operations.  It was pretty funny.  All of the boxes that were dropped were left in the snow for the night and were recovered later on.

Christmas

A few days after the air drop was CHRISTMAS!  Since I have never been away from home at Christmas, this was definitely an experience for me.  The week leading up to the holiday brought many preparations.  Christmas Dinner is one of the biggest events for the galley, so there was much food prep.  We had potato peeling parties, bean snapping parties, brie-making parties, cookie baking parties, etc.  Lots of food parties!  On top of the food, the ‘Race Around the World’ is traditionally on Christmas Day, so there was much prep to do for the 5K race around the station.  Although I am a runner, I decided to ‘ride’ in this race.  My best buddies at the Pole, the fire fighters, operate a large tractor called ‘Elephant Man’ and use it as their fire truck.  With a name like Elephant Man, what else are you supposed to do besides dress it up like an elephant for Christmas?  This might seem like a strange way to ‘run’ a race, but this race is special.  You can run, walk, ski, bike, ride, slide, or any other possible way of propelling yourself around the station.  I thought it would be fun to do it in style!  A few days before the race, Jason and I spent a few hours creating our elephant.  We took some extremely heavy-duty cardboard and cut out gigantic ears, eyes, and a trunk.  We then used construction paper and watercolor paints to complete the elephant look.  The day before the race I sewed a gigantic tail to affix to the ‘rear’ of the elephant.  It was awesome.

The day of the race we got up early and created our elephant.  Jason got the rig running (not always easy when its chilly outside) while I started dressing our elephant.  We used twine to attach all the parts.  It worked out really well, except for the fact that its quite difficult tying knots with gloved hands.  Brrrrr!  An hour later, our elephant was complete!  (photos to follow when we have more bandwidth!)  We picked up some green and red flags from the Carp Shop, grabbed another fire fighter, and proceeded to the starting line. 

We weren’t the only ones riding in style in this race – there was an assortment of motor vehicles at the starting line.  The Ice Cube van, a van with tracks instead of tires, was pulling a huge Roman chariot filled with Polies wearing Roman helmets.  There were several snowmobiles pulling some fantastic sled ‘floats’.  One snowmobile pulled a snowboarder.  There were several other vehicles sprinkled into the decorated rigs.  On the runner side, a huge crowd showed up to participate.  One of our Polies is a professional runner, so he took the lead and was the front of the pack.  Most runners were out for fun, not polar PRs, so there were many costumes and fun accessories.  The best outfit was a complete body suit of white sparkly spandex.  This brave runner wins for that in my book!  He blended in pretty nicely with the snow…

The race was a blast – when they started the race, the runners and skiers took off, and the drivers and riders sprinted to their vehicles.  Unfortunately it was really only a race for the runners and skiers.  It’s a little too dangerous racing huge bulldozers, tractors, vans, and snowmobiles.  We had to stick to the 10mph speed limit, so it was more of a parade for us.  It was so much fun!  The course for runners ran right next to the vehicle course, so I spent most of the ride yelling out the window at the runners – encouraging them, of course!  It was also a lovely tour of the station, going to some of the outer areas that I don’t usually get to see or drive by.  At the end of the race, we parked at the finish line and cheered on the runners and skiers.  What a wonderful way to spend Christmas morning!

Immediately after the race, it was brunch – easily the best meal at the South Pole.  The galley went all out with the food – delicious!  After eating brunch with friends, I ran out to work to complete my normal daily tasks and calibrations.  As soon as I was done with work , it was time to run inside and get ready for Christmas Dinner.

Dinner was amazing – even better than Thanksgiving!  We had beef wellington that was to DIE for.  After dinner, the evening was pretty chill.  There was a large dance party in the galley, but I didn’t attend.  Instead, I spent the evening in the lounge playing pool and visiting with friends.  It was a lovely Christmas!

I’ll write more later… running out of interweb time!