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!