Weekend shenanigans

Well, the big fun last night was a viewing of the documentary filmed here (I believe by National Geographic) about the new station's construction during the last season or two. It was fun seeing familiar faces and taking part in all the cat-calling, cheering, and (a few times) booing the screen. Everybody got a kick out of how the program tried to dramatize routine things like vehicles not starting right away due to the cold. It was neat to see the station how it was not too long ago, and to see folks a little bit younger.

I also went and hit the weights for the first time last night, and taking my shower it felt great to be so sore again that I could barely raise my arms to shampoo my hair. Stuff like that always reminds me of high school, and how much time I used to spend lifting to keep in shape for football and track.

The first of two chances to go out and camp happened this weekend. There were going to be three weekends of it, but weather last week was bad and they couldn't go out. It was probably a pretty cold night for folks, as we had ~14 knots of wind and the windchill was down in the -50sF. I may try to go next weekend, but don't know exactly how my science tech stuff and firefighting responsibilities will be covered.

Today, Sunday, we're having another facilities tour of the main power plant and elevated station for the fire brigade. They're both really critical facilities, so I hope everybody shows up to learn about what obstacles face us should we have any major responses in either building.

Tourists

Yesterday we had the first of our non-government activity (NGA) visitors show up at Pole for their 3-hour tour. They came through the science lab, and we talked to them some about what science is going on here. I think the biggest hit with my stuff was showing them the Very Low Frequency receiver and turning on the speaker so they could hear all the pops and hisses as we monitor what are essentially all the static discharges (i.e. lightning, mostly) on the planet from this one location.

I found myself glad that I came down here the way I did: as an employee that gets to stay for 13 months and thoroughly get to experience the place for what it is. It seems like such a short visit after such a long trip would have left me wanting more. It would have been like me arriving at Easter Island after spending all that time sailing there this past year, and then just hopping on a plane as soon as I got ashore. Sure, you'd get to see the few moai right by the port, but there's so much more the place has to offer.

Ditto for Pole.

Weeks like water

It's starting to get kind of scary how fast the weeks are flowing into the past. I haven't had too much "Groundhog Day" Syndrome yet, since things are still pretty new. It's amazing how quickly the season jumps up to the end-of-year holidays on the Ice, and then January and February are gone in a snap too. Summer is fleeting, but winter will definitely endure.

I held a little volunteer firefighting practice session last night, and had a couple guys show up. We donned bunker gear as fast we could, both setting up for immediate use of SCBA to enter a scene and also with our SCBA mask and regulator tucked inside our coats to protect them should we have to travel very far outside in the cold. We just use standard firefighting gear down here, and it's not really designed to operate in temperatures down to and exceeding -100F. There is not much of a market for that capability, so we make due with what we have. Next, we did some patient carries and drags for both firefighters and non-firefighters. When you have a downed firefighter you can use their SCBA backpack and straps as good handholds to pick them up or drag them. Extracting unconscious patients that aren't wearing this type of gear can be tricky since they get all floppy and hard to hold onto, but with a little insight and a few tricks it can be done without too much frustration. It also helps to be in decent physical shape, especially here where our physiological altitude is regularly over 10,000 feet above sea level.

Work on the arches for the new logistics facility continues to remake the face of South Pole. The entrance to the Dome is now gone, which in a way is a little sad. I haven't heard whether progress on the project is meeting scheduled goals, but it has drastically changed in the nearly two months since I arrived.



One of the guys who works out at ARO for NOAA has had a little art project he's been working on over the last couple weeks. It was fun to see it gradually emerge from the leeward drift of ARO. It's too bad that nobody else was out at ARO to stand by the carving to give it scale, but believe me it's big.





When I was down here last year they had carvings from blocks of snow that had been cut and placed out near the ceremonial pole marker. It's amazing what snow this dense and dry can be shaped into, and how walking on it usually sounds exactly like you're walking on Styrofoam.

Donnie Darko

So, yesterday was fairly unremarkable. I did my work. I ate a few meals. The London Broil for dinner was excellent. But, then I watched a little movie titled "Donnie Darko" with a couple friends, and totally had my mind blown. I don't know if it's because I haven't been watching many movie or TV DVDs and am getting overly sensitized to external media stimuli, but this flick absolutely blew my socks off. The whole film did a great job of building tension, and it all culminated in a really haunting ending sequence. The musical score did a terrific job of dovetailing with the images and dialogue to heighten the feelings that the film makers intended you to feel. I had heard for a long time that this was a really good movie, but was not at all prepared for my viewing experience last night!

One interesting thing I did do yesterday was get the training session to serve as a tour guide for NGA (Non-Government Activity) groups that show up at Pole. This could be anybody from people that have skied here from the coast to folks that have paid upwards of $30k for a 3-hour fly-in visit to 90 south. That's right, I can brag that I've given tours that cost $10,000 per hour! There are all sorts of rules and guidelines that must be observed when people outside the U.S. Antarctic Program show up here, but it still should be interesting to meet some of these folks that have either gone through great physical and/or financial exertions to get here. It's a nice feeling to know that I get paid to be here, and that my stay is "significantly longer".

Later this week the fire brigade will likely be getting tours of the main and emergency power plants, so I'll probably get some pictures posted from those facilities.

fire drills & warming planets

Well, after many delays and much preemption, I finally got to run through my communications drill with Team 2 last night. It went pretty well, but like always we had issues keeping our radio channel open. Some people's radios didn't work correctly, so it seems to be a perpetual struggle against our infrastructure is something we have to accept. I guess I was expecting more enthusiasm after the drill completed, but suppose people might have just been still processing all the information that had been thrown at them pretty quickly.

After the drill was over there was a presentation put on by a visiting scientist from McMurdo. He was one of the folks trained by Al Gore's organization to give the "An Inconvenient Truth" presentation about global climate change that won Gore the Nobel Prize. It was all interesting, but not too much of it was new to me: a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club.

Fun Sunday

Well, despite having to work for the 49th consecutive day, I had a really great time on Sunday. I finally bought a couple postcards to send to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Yeah, those two guys, because they're making a new Indiana Jones movie, and I want to see it sooner than when I get off the Ice. Hopefully dropping the A-bomb (i.e. mentioning Antarctica) will get some attention.

In the afternoon a group of uninhibited folks gathered out at the Pole, marked out their spots in the snow, and took turns donning a Jedi robe and wielding a light saber. The individual pictures are all going to be stitched together into a group shot in Photo Shop, so that should be a lot of fun to finally get to see. I think the woman, Mary, who orchestrated the whole thing is going to submit it to Star Wars Insider magazine to beat the previous "southernmost" claim for a Star Wars costume picture at another non-U.S. base. It'll be interesting to see if it gets published. I have naturally requested my light saber to be green. Anything else would be uncivilized.

The highlight of the evening was hosting the trivia contest last night. We had three teams, and it was a raucous good time. The categories I had for the main part of the competition were: Rock & Roll History, World War II, Geography, and (a video category) Star Wars Weapons. I also put together a fifth category on Rocket Science, since last week when I'd volunteered people made a semi-joking big stink about me not making the questions too hard in all the categories. The questions turned out to be just about the right mix of fairly easy to real stumpers. I'd definitely host again, but figure I better let other folks take a turn.

Back in the dish room

I got to do a stint yesterday in the dish room here at Pole. The food services folks got a day off, since they'd worked (extra) hard on the Thanksgiving holiday. I kept myself away from the food preparation end of things and just focused on my old digs in the dish room. I could have taken care of the workload solo, I've done it before, but we had more than enough people to make it really a breeze. Thanks to Carla Appel for the picture of me being reunited with my erstwhile stomping grounds.



I had a really low-key evening hanging out with several friends that were playing the "Axis and Allies" board game, or about as low-key as you can make world domination. I didn't get done with work in time to actually play, but it was fun to just watch, and there was plenty of colorful conversation. We discussed some of our ideas for making a pared down version of "The Empire Strikes Back" as an entry into the South Pole International Film Festival (SPIFF), and have some pretty funny ideas, at least funny for people that are both Star Wars fans and have lived/worked at Pole.

I'm working today, of course, but hope to still have a few chances for fun. I'll fill you in on them later.