Oktoberfest

Our token Germans put on a little Oktoberfest celebration on Saturday. They decorated the galley with Bavarian flags, made huge pretzels and we had brats for dinner and a couple cases of beer:



At least some of us have some festive energy left (and no, that mug is not full of beer, however, I'm sure Robert suffered just as much after drinking 4 mugs FULL of apple juice... maybe more:


We poke fun of our 'foreigners' quite a lot, but they sure add a lot to this place and most of them have called this place home before any of the Americans on station.

(Pictures from Heidi and Steffen)

Hmm, what else is new... nothing. Just counting the days. Oh yeah, we set a record low for October the other day when it reached -97.4F (or something very close). Not too shabby, but not low enough to satisfy some who are still hoping for a chance to do the 300 Club.
This is our last week (if flights go as planned) by ourselves. I did an overhaul of my room yesterday and I was informed today that I've got to pack up and move out of my office. Everyone's got spring fever.

October?

The troops are coming back to the continent. McMurdo kicked off "mainbody" yesterday bringing in 140ish people followed by more and more and more. My sister, Andrea, flies in today. My office is near our communications center so I'll be able to hear if/when she lands over the radio.

My only worry is that all these punctual flights are really going to mess up our opening. Station openings always have their weather dealays, mechanical problems, etc that keep the schedule ever mutating. If McMurdo's flight plan goes smoothly, we certainly must be bound for disaster. I'm also realizing why it took an extra two weeks to open the South Pole last year. I mean, the sun is up, the weather should be getting warmer, but here we sit for over a week at -80F which is much colder than it was most of the winter. For our opening we are supposed to get a series of Basler flights in carrying the supervisors and key station openers. Its a new thing and they are calling it a "soft open". The Baslers have a slightly lower temperature constraint (-54C/-65F) than the C-130s (-50C/-58F) so the idea is that they will be able to get in earlier, bring us the people we need to get the summer rolling, and then it will be warm enough by October 29 to bring in the rest of the summer crews and get the winter overs back to warm air and fruit excellence. I'm due up to leave on November 3 with short weekend layover in McMurdo. I'm trying to remain optimistic about the flight schedule but it seems like the more seasons people have worked here, the more skeptical they are about seeing any tan faces around here before the end of October.

Happy travels, Andrea!

Albino

I guess it isn't really fair to say that I'm grumpy and then not write for a week. In some ways we are all doing better, since we had to turn our redeployment form in today which decribes when we were leaving the Pole, when we'd like to fly out of New Zealand and which hotel/hostels we'd like to reserve while we're there. Just one more concrete concept to get our minds thinking past this place... hopefully not thinking past work too much, since there is still much to be done, but.. yeah, ok, we're thinking past work and onto the beach nearly every waking moment these days.

About 2 weeks ago we finished up our 9-Ball tournament. It was a lot of fun, but it it's also nice to have Tuesdays and Thursdays free (for all those projects I meant to finish before winter was over). I started strong, then fell back and ended up in the championship game in the loser's bracket. I choked big time though and Jordan swept me 4-0. But, that's ok, he can be the winner of the losers. Brian, with only one season loss and Jason, the up and coming superstar, met for championship face off. They both were smokin' but the title went to Jason at the end. Michael spent a lot of time and effort setting up the whole league and it was a nice distraction to have around for several weeks:



Then the sunrise. I should have been more on top of this one: it's the first sunrise in 6 months afterall, but it really was pretty anticlimatic. People are tired and the venue for the event changed several times, and ended up in about 4 different places. Dinner was a less informal than our previous events and people are tired. Dainella, Liz, Bruce and I all spent some time on a little project that we presented in the windows that evening. Katie had found some old medical bottles while cleaning out the old dome, and we were trying to think of something to do with them. We ended up making a sandblasted bottle with WO'07 and each person initials on them. I think they turned out pretty great, and just when we were getting sick of the monotanous work and even looking at those bottles, we got a lot of great feedback from everyone.


Also exciting for me: Derek finished and presented the pole marker that I designed that will be switched out with current marker on New Year's. I don't know how to say this without bragging, but... it looks fantastic! I had an image in my mind of how it would look, but now that it is in polished brassed it looks way better than I had hoped. Derek did an awesome job and I can't wait to show it to everyone, but we aren't allowed to share pictures until it's officially presented.

So, where did I watch the sun rise (a little past due at around midnight)? From behind my big pile of chips in the "smoking facility". Thankfully, even the smelliest place on station still has a window. Here's a view from there shortly after the sun made it's appearance, plus some other people's photos from the last few days:






Pictures from Sven & Heidi

I'll catch up on the pool tournament and the sunrise weekend in a bit.

Right now I seem to be a bit grumpy. Maybe it's the end of the winter, maybe it's because I worked late last night because of my own procrastination, maybe it's because I forgot I was on dish pit today (our 'freebie' day to sleep in til 10:00am). Anyway, no matter how much I'm seething, it's nice to have a nice office view which is keeping me sane right now:


If the sun isn't on my side of the building, the moon might as well be!

BBIA

Periodically throughout the season Michael has put together the 'BBIA' (Biggest Breakfast in Antarctica). It comes complete with just about anything imaginable, except for things with fresh veggies and real eggs, but most importantly, the best cinamon rolls ever (sorry Mom). This Sunday Michael outdid himself and created a 'Restaurant Style BBIA'. We all came in and sat down and were catered to by a rather spirited set of servers:

Awwwwww, so precious Neil and Sven!:

Some of the guys enjoying their sit down meal:

On the line:

Man of the hour:


(Pictures by Heidi)

Also, it would appear that our SUNRISE celebration tomorrow might be lacking the sun. We'll see, but it has been stormy and cloudy and generally everything is just all one tone of 'blue'. But, you know, I could care less: I just bought my ticket to Costa Rica.

Camping "Trip"

Last weekend we decided to celebrate all the September birthdays at once and have an 80s themed birthday party:

We had chocolate cake, good costumes, stylin' hair, a highly decorated Game Room and Lynette's eyelashes:

Then Brian and I went out to the Pole to camp overnight. A couple guys set up a Scott's tent several weeks back and since the winter is nearly over, we'd thought we'd take our chance while it was still around:

It was -87F when we went out and warmed up to -83F by the next morning. By the time we finally got out and settled in it was nearly 1:00am and it was easy to fall asleep:

There was only some snow accumulation in the tent, but it doesn't really matter how much snow is in there, because it certianly isn't going to melt:

What did I bring on a near -90F camping trip?
3 sleeping bags (one as an insulating 'mat' and one inside the other to sleep in)
3 water bottles filled with boiling water... oh so nice!
2 hand warmers for the morning
1 thermos of hot chocolate and an emergency Snickers bar
1 boy

To Sleep In:
1 pair heavy weight long underwear
1 pair fleece pants
1 long underwear shirt
1 Primaloft jacket
2 pairs of thick wool socks
1 neck gaitor
1 wool hat
1 thin pair of gloves.


I actually stayed quite warm, but if my face ventured near the opening of the bag my nose and cheeks started to sting very quickly, so I spent the night burrowed in as far as I could get. In the morning, the inside of my bag near the opening was pretty wet from condensation and my sleeping bag was completely white with crytallized snow from our breath. It definitely took more motivation to get out of my bag than it did to get in it.

Looking Out My Backdoor

Hooray today, not only is it the weekend again, but we got to take the covers off our window. Still pretty dark out there away from the sun's horizon. Here's the view from my office so far:

But out the backdoor in my hallway the sun is about to blast the rest of the stars out of the sky. (The southern cross only has 3 stars now).

Sensory Overload

Today was beautiful, although extremely cold. Brien called into today to say that there were good auroras out, so I went out on the deck into quite the sky show. First off, the sun light was glowing orange out by the berms and fading slowly into a dark night sky that still houses several bright stars. Directly opposite is a full moon, which is preparing for an eclipse tonight so that was lighting up the other half of the sky. Then from end to end, directly from the glowing horizon to the moonlit sky was a long green/pink/purple stream of auroras that was so powerful and excited that it steadily flashed and weaved across the sky. Truly awesome, especially at this point when we aren't sure how many more auroras we'll get to see.
Here is one of Jason's pictures of it, although that hardly does the scence justice, especially taking into account that light has been sparce for 5 months:


And we got a great view of the eclipse after all. Here is Robert's photographic rendition. How late did you stay up to finish that one? Turned out awesome!

Lighting Up

My spirits have been up, probably due to the sun coming back most of all. We also had a two day weekend which went way to fast, but it sure makes a difference for morale.

On Friday we had our 'Mass Causualty Incident Drill", which basically is a practice for an event in which a handful of people are injured. This one took place in the power plant and Dainella did a great job prepping Dan, Paul and Dave who were all injured or unconscious in the smoky power plant:

All I had to do was "man" the control room, since Dan, the Power Plant Supervisor was one of the victims. That made for a pretty relaxed drill from my end of things, plus we had a great view of the power plant floor and the fire team extracting the victims:

That evening we had a 'Ladies Night' and Travis and Richard chivalrously delivered us dinner in the lounge the farthest from the galley. It was almost like being at a restaurant, but we didn't have to pay. Lots of fun and laughs talking to all the women. (Yes, those are real flowers on the table that Terry grew in the greenhouse):

Here is some proof that light is returning to our neck of the woods. Dainella and I stepped out on the deck real late on Friday and were completely floored since the clouds were completely gone and you could finally see the sunrise getting started.


Pictures by Robert, Heidi and Dainella

Lost Time

Generator Chaos
We had a few hiccups with our power early on in the winter, but it has been rather quiet the rest of the season... until last Saturday. Generator 1 busted a cylinder lining and spewed glycol and vapor all over the power plant just before work started that day. With only 54 people on station, it took nearly everyone to get the assess the situation, get the mess cleaned up, get other equipment up and running, get food, check people in and out of the power plant, etc. The whole event went rather smoothly, probably because many of us had deja vu from the summer season.

Tuesday morning, however, brought more drama, when Generator 1 went down again from some strange control issues. We spent the next several days looking at the programming, fault logs etc to trace back the problems to the origin. I certainly don't mind having something new to learn at this point to keep my mind on the sharp side.

Fundraising Party
Travis organized a party to raise money for 'Save the Children'. The galley was decorated up once again:

People donated gift certificates, chores, outings, flags and Robert's pictures for everyone to bid on:

Brian and I ran the bar, which was quite a bit of fun, and everyone was having a good time despite having to actually pay for their drinks.

Travis said we pulled in a couple grand, so that was pretty successful. We were asked to dress up a bit, so we had some color on the dance floor:

-99.9F
Every winter the station has been here (except for one) it has reached -100F or lower. July is usually the time for this since it's in the dead of winter, and we have been waiting all season for the occasion. On August 14 we nearly made it. In fact, the guys at AERO got below -100 for a couple minutes, but since it is the meteorological department who keeps the official temperatures we only got as far at -99.9F. Well, that is about as close as you can get. As I write this we've had a couple of days where it has consistently been in the -90s, so we'll see if we can make another run for it before it's gone forever.

Birthday Events
I'm officially old. I round up to 30, my bones ache and my eyesight is fading. Actually, it is pretty hard to feel old around here since I am the second youngest on station. It has certainly been different hanging out with a crowd of friends who range from about 5 to 30 years older than myself, but its funny to think about how many friendships I would have missed out on if I was around the same demographic as back home.

For my special day, I got breakfast in bed, got to go to work all day, and got some great gifts that consisted of a lot of sugar (no problem!). My sister sent my email address to loads of friends from McMurdo and even people I had never met before, so all day long my inbox was flooded with messages from far away which was a nice change. We watched a Harry Potter movie (uh, not sure which one that was....) that evening with an awesome carrot cake that Francie made:

On Sunday, Brian made a fajita dinner outside on the grill which were amazing. We made tortillas the night before, but its tricky to perfect it in the high and dry atmostphere, but I think we did pretty good:


Color in the Sky
No denying now that the sun is on it's way back up. There were clouds in the sky for a few days, so all we saw was a faint orange strip below the clouds, and now that it is clear, it's quite light on the horizon.

My 9-Ball Demise
The Queen has fallen in the 9-Ball League. I won the first 3 games and soared to the top of my conference, but after losing the next 4 in a row I'm near the bottom already. I'm suprised I even got this far.

Blurry

So this is sort of weird. Another physical effect of this place, besides dehydration, feeling dizzy when you work out, and seeing your veins through you're white skin: I had Heidi do an eye test on me since things have been getting a blurry lately. I have attributed this to the fact that I simply don't use my long distance vision anymore. Rarely am I looking more than 10 ft away from me, unless I'm going down our long hallway and sometimes if I'm outside. But even if I'm outside it's so dark that you can't really focus on anything far away or you'll trip on a drift. Anyway, I still tested 20/20 with my right eye, but I couldn't even GUESS at "Line 8" with my left eye, leaving with 30/20. That's a real shame. I can't really read the scroll on the TVs in the galley anymore. I assume it will come back, but I'm thinking Heidi should do a documented test so I have proof that I went down hill while I was wintering. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Thankfully it's not so bad that I couldn't see the auroras yesterday which finally came out again. It looked just like a green ribbon trimmed with light pink, streching and scrunching up across the sky. Not to bad to have to take a break from work and see a light show.



(You know you are a Harry Potter geek if you looked at this picture and thought "Dark Mark")

Photo by Emrys

One More Down

So, I made it through July, the darkest, and [supposedly] coldest month. Three months left. Things haven't really been that boring, but when half my family is climbing Mt. Hood today, it makes this place seem pretty confining. Here are some recent tidbits:

Jamie took my undefeated title last night in the pool tournament. I suppose it was just a matter of time and my lucky streak buckled on the first shot of the first game.

Some of us dyed our hair this past weekend, which was going to be a subtle change for me, but I ended up throughly blonde. Not sure how I feel about it, but who really cares at this point. Ironically I think I look even more pale now.

Heidi got us various prodeals from several companies, so shopping has become everyone's vice. Too bad I can't even remember what I DO have at home anymore and I have to keep reminding myself that everything must fit in my car.

We finally got 4 on 4 for full court basketball again, and we are all paying for it. I think it'll be another 3 days before my legs are back to normal.

I made one phone call to the real world last week. Pretty good, huh?

Today it's -74F, 13 knot winds, -113F windchill, tacos for lunch, striploin steak for dinner, and poker at 7pm if you can make it over the mountainous drift that the 'lounge' has created.

Breakdown

I suppose it was time for a breakdown, however, not of the emotional type. The gear box for the satellite dish that serves two of our three satelites bit the dust last week and we aren't able to fix it with out spare parts from the states. I say, it's time for an airdrop, but others don't share that opinion. Ironically, the one full satellite pass that we do have also took a turn for the worse today with some problems in New Mexico, so internet time has been few and far between lately. Today the broken dish was fixed in one location as to get us the most coverage possible for the rest of the winter, but we are still down a several hours in the morning. Oh well, I suppose we'll find better things to do.

Before I forget and my title is snatched this evening, I better announce that I am the current leader in my bracket of the 9-ball pool tournament. I won my first two series and tonight I play Noah, who will likely sweep me in all 5 games. Thankfull 9-ball involves plenty of luck, so I still have a slight chance.

"Summertime" in July

Seems like mid-July should be a good time to do an update on June. Weather has been weird. July, which should have the thermometer dropping like a rock, has brought us weather all the way up to -45F. Truly amazing. I think the first day I arrived at Pole in late Novemeber it was -40F, so in some since we've been having a taste of summer weather (minus the sunshine). Yesterday when I walked out to SPT there were some long faded auroras along the horizon and my first thought when I stepped outside was "Hey! I can see some sunlight again!" We'll have to wait another month for that yet, but in the meantime the weather hasn't been all bad.

June, however was pretty much terrible weather. The average low temperature was 6 degrees above normal, but the average wind was 17 knots which is enough to make any trip miserable. A couple days broke their wind records, getting up to 40mph. We had only two officially 'clear' days. The average temp for June (-61.6F) broke the record of -62.7F from 1965. It was also the cloudiest June on record and we had the most snow accumulation (2.5 inches in June) recorded as well. I guess we'll see how the rest of July treats us and if we get down to -100F, although today we are back at -80F already.

Half Done... or Half Left?

Midwinter was officially last Friday, which means our winter season is half over and the sun is on its way back up. I sent out a bit of an update via email, but here is how the weekend went:

Prior to the weekend, we took our Midwinter picture which is sent to all the other stations around the continent, inviting them to our midwinter dinner. It was fun to see who and where everyone else is and how diverse this continent is. Some pictures we received had grass and water, another was of the residents in a snow cave, one of four very odd looking men and a giant frog, McMurdo opted just for an aerial shot of town, and in Palmer's picture people were playing in the dusk-lit snow in hooded sweatshirts (you're weak Dan, very weak). We took ours in the Old Garage and Shops arch which was demo-ed this year, and it turned out great once the fog from our breath rose:

Friday night, we had an all-hands meeting in gym (we look like quite a few people all spread out like that) and then got ready for our midwinter dinner. While we were all ironing our clothes for the first time since the States, the cooks were slaving away in the kitchen whipping up an incredible meal. Francie, Neil, and Michael got quite the applause for this one:

Our four course meal:

So, what is there to do after midwinter dinner? Absolutely nothing. At least at the sunset dinner we could watch the sun go down, but now we can only watch eachother, so we all just sat around and talked until bedtime.

And, just like every occasion, we took an all girls picture:
So, that's half the season. It doesn't feel much like half, since I have already stayed the summer and I think the last 4 months are going to go by very quickly. On Monday morning when we showed up to stretching, Lynette, our safety coordinator gave her safety talk on how rough July is for people in Antarctica regardless of location or stint of their contract. Something with the dark season and depression that go so well together. It wasn't the best way to start 'Part 2' of the winter, but I suppose its good to know what we're up against. It seems like I will be up against a lot: the phrase 'Cry in July' has been coined for next month, and somehow I am the prescripted target of the most nortoriously insensitive tactless antagonists on station. We'll see how it goes. I'll take it as a compliment insult that I must appear stable, confident and cheerful weak and therefore, pose the biggest challenge to them the easiest victim.

(Pictures from Robert and Sven)

Backtracking to the Beach

Oops, Midwinter came and went, and I'm a bit behind. So, to backtrack a bit to the weekend before when we decided it was time to celebrate some birthdays and also time to go the beach: Travis' mom sent him a bunch of tropical decorations and we brought in lights, surfing videos, and I made up some fake palm trees:

It was Bruce, Katie and Andy's birthdays that week, and somehow we managed to pull it off as a surprise.

It turned out great and was a lot of fun for everyone. Andy has been teaching salsa dance lessons on Tuesdays, so we played a chunk of salsa music and it was nice to dance 'for real', instead of for practice. Paul and Kari dancing:

I think it was a welcome opportunity for people to wear their Hawaiian shirts and sandals for a change.

(Pictures from Robert)

Well, I got to hand it to my mom. She told me how to fix the heavy duty sewing machine here and moments after I did what she said, I was back in action. After awhile I tried a leather glove, and the machine didn't like that. After several attempts my patience wore thin, and I had to walk away. Anyway, pretty good, mom, for troubleshooting it 10,000+ miles away.

And speaking of my mom, I guess some of her creativity spilled over, since my design won for the South Pole Marker Contest. Each year the winter-overs make designs for the post that will mark the Geographical South Pole for the following year. The station votes on them, and then it is made by the machinist, Derek, and then presented on January 1st. Here is the lastest version of the design I submitted. Have fun, Derek!

Trash Day

I emptied the trash in my office today... finally.

Considering that the bottom layer was paper towels from when I cleaned my office when I first moved in (in February), it was rather like going through a time machine.

From my archeological research, I had the following eras this winter:

First, my powdered Gatorade phase (Lemon-Lime and Riptide Rush only, of course). Then the Diet Coke phase, from back when there was some decent diet sodas still around. Then a layer of microwave popcorn bags. An astonishing amount of Go Fast, followed by a time when I must have not drank anything at all, because I had so many Kleenexes stacked up. All my wire clippings and other work debris had fallen into the bottom and obviously my means of reminders is Post-it Notes, because there was plenty of those. And then a huge amount of hand and footwarmers from our day outside in the dome.

Since we organize all of our trash by certain categories, to get the motivation to go and sort it into burnables, non-recyclables, mixed paper, batteries, food waste, etc. takes about.. um... 4 months.

I also managed to go through 3 tubes of chapstick (nearly unheard of anywhere else) and a heck of a lot of German candy.

Hmmm.. interesting material today, Laura. Maybe I'm just getting bored. I had a nice restful weekend, but for the first time I found myself walking the halls yesterday, thinking, "Wow, it would really be nice to 'go do something'." I also picked up my New Zealand Lonely Planet guide for the first time since I got the Prime Minister to sign it in January, and read up on some places I've thought about surfing or hiking. It's going to be a while yet though until I get out of here with time on my hands and money in my pocket.

Horseshoe Tournament

Last weekend we had a horseshoe tournament and bar-b-que in the Garage and Shops on Saturday. It was interesting to see the wide range of horseshoe skills. Thankfully I had a bit of a leg up on the rest since I've actually played in the last year in Canada. Our foreigners faired the worse, since they don't play much in New Zealand, Sweden or India, although they have their own random yard games. Our shining star was Jamie, whose played his fair share growing up in Arkansas.

Our fearless grillers, Tim and Dan P.:

No ringers for me. But a few solid tosses:

Horseshoes = Great Idea
BBQ Indoors = Not Such a Great Idea

A good afternoon overall, and a nice events for our two day weekend. Next up: midwinter. Lately everyone keeps saying that the "J's" are coming up. No, not Jack, Jim and Johnny, although maybe some will be turning to the bottle soon. The J's are 'June and July' and from what I gather (and am feeling) they are tough ones to get through, especially once we pass the Mid-winter mark in a couple weeks. I think the following picture catches the atmosphere around here lately:

Picture credit to Terry E, Dan M, Terry and Dan P.