The Global Guy

Hello everyone!
 
Here’s hoping that all of you have managed to hide your misdeeds from Santa this year so that you end up with more than just coal in your stocking.  Today is Christmas day at the pole, and it’s been very cool.   The station has been decorated with holiday stuff, presents have been exchanged, Christmas eve dinner was served, and the race around the world was held today.  In fact the only bad thing that’s happened is that we haven’t actually gotten our presents from home yet, but that’s not that big of a deal.  In fact, rumor has it that the first flight tomorrow will have four tri-walls (huge cardboard shipping containers) full of packages, so that’s welcome news.  It’ll actually be Christmas day where you guys are, so I guess they’re technically not late.  The reason for this being an issue at all is the crazy Antarctic weather.  Two weeks in McMurdo base, the temperatures got up to 45 degrees F.  That’s 45 above zero!  The people in that base are just way too spoiled!  Anyway, the warm weather brought in winds of about 80 knots.  That’s hurricane strength, and it lasted about three days.  It took the runway crew two more days to move all the snow drifts off the runway to make it usable for flights.  We were already pretty far behind on flights, and that knocked us down about another 25 flights.  Somehow the powers that be decided that fuel for the station was more important than package mail so the last couple of days before Christmas were mostly tanker flights.  I supposed I can’t argue with that logic, as I’ve become quite addicted to heat and lighting. 
 
Lots of things have happened since the last time I wrote.  I’ve settled into a nice routine of work and play, with a few surprises in between.   I’ve discovered that I really enjoy my job, and that there is going to be plenty to do to keep me busy throughout the year.  We’ve got several major projects finished, with lots more coming up.  Since I’ve been here, I’ve done a fairly major security audit, replaced several servers that were at the end of their life cycle, deployed a wireless network on station, plus all the little things associated with keeping a major network with satellite connectivity up and running.  One of the coolest things that I got to do was last week.  We have a remote field camp about 5 miles out of the station that’s drilling holes down in the ice to place seismometers for earthquake detection.  They’re going down nearly a mile or so, which means that the ice that they are bringing up was frozen around the time the pyramids were being built in Egypt.  We like to take the ice from the holes and use it in mixed drinks.  There is so much pressure on the ice that all the air bubbles that are normally in ice have been compressed to over a hundredth of their normal size.  When the ice melts in your drink, the bubbles kind of explode out making for a very effervescent beverage.  Anyway, getting back to the field site,  the original plan was to run a fiber optic cable out to the camp from the dome along with a power cable so that they didn’t have to use generators.  But, the power cable never arrived on station, and there wasn’t much point in spending the time and effort to dig a trench just for a data cable.  Instead, we used a Cisco wireless bridge with a couple of super directional antennas, and established an 11 mbps connection out to them.  Three of us got to take snowmobiles out there, zooming down the groomed road at speeds of up to 50 miles an hour.  Talk about fun!  On the way back we cut across the plateau, catching air off the snowdrifts, and trying to hang on the machines without falling off.  It was one of the best days I’ve had here so far. 
 
 
I’ve also had my first taste of cooking for a huge number of people.  The Sunday after Thanksgiving, the IT/Comms department decided to take over the kitchen for the cooks.  We spent about 7 hours cooking chicken marsala for the station, and I had my first taste of trying to cook pasta at high altitudes.  Water boils at about 198 degrees here, which makes cooking rice, pasta, or anything that needs boiling quite a challenge.  I think I cooked about 100 pounds of dried pasta, which took nearly 6 hours to get done.  The food was incredible though, and the kitchen staff even told us we did a great job.  I’ve got nothing but respect for those guys who have to do this four times a day!
 Let me tell you guys a little more about Christmas at the South Pole.  Of course everyone hear misses their friends and family back home, but we tend to band together and become a huge extended family.   We had Monday and Tuesday off this week, but in order to get that kind of time off we had to work a seven day week last week.  This week we’re only working three days, and we’ve got next weekend off for New Years.  Yeah, that’s right…we’ve got the weekend off instead of the actual New Year’s eve, and New Year’s day.  I have a feeling that that will change though…people are already grumbling about it. 
 Anyway,  we had our traditional gift exchange on the 23rd of December.  Everyone brings a white elephant gift that they’ve either bought or made, and we take turns seeing who gets to pick a present from under the tree.  When it’s your turn, you can either pick an unopened present, or you can steal a present that someone else has already opened.  If your present gets stolen, you then have the chance to go again.  Each present can be stolen a maximum of three times, and you can’t steal back a present that has been stolen from you.  It’s a lot of fun, and we spent about three hours hanging out having fun.  The next day was Christmas eve, and that’s where we traditionally have a formal sit down dinner.  This year we had beef Wellington and lobster tails.  It was fabulous!  In order to feed the entire station at a formal setting, we have three separate seatings.  I ate at the second one, and volunteered to act as a wine steward for the third seating.  Afterwards people ended up going to any one of several parties on station.  I ended up hanging out in 90 South, our main bar till about 4 in the morning.  It was a great evening of drinking and talking with good friends. 
 
Today we held the traditional race around the world.  This is a 3 lap race on a mile long course around the geographic and ceremonial poles.  People can go one any form of transportation they want.  We had bikers, runners, people being dragged on couches by tractors, and even some people on barstools being pulled in a sled by a snowmobile.  It’s a lot of fun, and we all got T-shirts to commemorate the event. 
 
The next few weeks will be super busy.  It’s hard to believe it, but there are only about 6 weeks left until the station closes for the summer, and there will be just 50 of us left keeping it going thru the long winter months.  In that time we’ll have New Years with the annual moving of the geographic pole, I’ll be going to McMurdo for a week’s vacation, and I’ve got about 50 projects that have to get done before then.  It’s going to be a busy end of season, but I can’t wait for winter to start. 
 
Updates will be on the web page in the next week or so.  I’m about to go to bed for the evening so I won’t have any new pictures up, but with the two day weekend coming up, I’ll have plenty of time to update that.  In the meantime, have a great holiday season, and I’m missing each and every one of you. 
 
Staying warm at 90 south,
Henry
 

Howdy to everyone back in the states!  Wow, I hadn’t realized just how long it’s been since I last sent out a dispatch.  Since the last time I’ve written, we’ve had an amazing Halloween party, the station population has exploded to near full capacity, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I’ve been quoted in the Antarctic Sun newspaper twice.  I know I promised to have new pictures up about three weeks ago, but I mean it this time!  They’re not up yet, but my project for tonight and tomorrow evening is to get all the pictures I’ve taken sorted, labeled, and put up on the web page. 
 
So let me tell you about some of the events we’ve had down here.  Myself, along with the IT/Comms department ended up sponsoring the station’s Halloween party.  One of the differences between Spole, and the big stations like McMurdo is that we don’t have a dedicated recreational staff.  Any big events that happen are due to people’s time that they volunteer after working their full normal day.  I asked our assistant station manager about a week before Halloween if we were going to have a party.  She responded, “That depends, when are you going to organize it?” Well, I’ve certainly never had a problem with throwing parties, so I got my entire department involved to help.  I have to admit I really underestimated the spirit that is on this station!  Once we posted a few flyers announcing the party, I was completely surprised by the offers to help that we received!  In no time at all, we had four different live music acts booked, people volunteering to DJ, and all the beer we could possibly drink!  The party was a HUGE success.  The party was held out in Summer Camp’s non-smoking lounge, and I didn’t think it could look that good.  Kat and I went up to the top of Biomed, where all the holiday decorations are stored, and found a bunch of cool decorations from previous years.  We added a few touches of our own, and the place was transformed.    All the music acts were amazing, but the highlight of the evening was a 4 piece band calling themselves “Funkytown”.  These guys played some great cover tunes that just had me blown away.  You’d never believe that they’d only been practicing for about two weeks.  It was the first live music I’d heard since I’d left Austin, so I was in heaven.  The other impressive thing was the creativity of the costumes that people had.  We had all kinds, including the first polar bear in Antarctica, a doctor drinking his own urine samples, superheroes, and even a dead Elvis was spotted.  I can’t figure out what I actually was…I combined several things and just changed hats thru the evening as the mood struck me.  I’d brought down a book on how to make balloon hats, so I made a few of those in advance and passed them out to people without costumes.  Pictures of the evening will be up on the web page in the next day or two.  The best costume award of the night went to Dean Klein who had just finished his winter over as a PC tech. He went as Ms. FEMC, in a scary red wig and the only pair of cutoff Carharts that should ever exist.  
 
The month of November just shot by…we’re now at a station population of about 220, and we’re getting about 3 to 4 flights a day in.  We’re still behind in flights, so personal packages are hard to come by.  Letter mail is getting in fairly quickly, but all packages are just piling up in McMurdo.  Sometime in the next few weeks they should do a “Santa” flight where they’ll fill a C130 up with nothing but packages for us, and get them all here in time for Christmas.  I got a letter today that just cracks me up.  Sometime last March when I made my road trip to California, I got caught in Nevada doing 110 in a 65 zone.  I kind of ignored the ticket and last week the great state of Nevada sent an arrest warrant to my parent’s house.  They forwarded it to me, and I got it today.  I have no idea what Nevada expects me to do about this.  They won’t accept credit cards, and will only take a cashier’s check or money order, both of which are pretty hard to come by down here!  I think this is one of the funniest situations that I’ve seen.  I really don’t think they’ll believe me if I call them, so I guess I’ll just wait for the statue of limitations to expire before I head back to Nevada. 

Well, life is starting to settle into some kind of a routine now.  I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable with the way that turnover is going.  There is a huge amount of information to absorb, but luckily my predecessor is staying a few days later than she originally intended.  I’ve pretty much taken over the day to day operation of the network, plus I’m starting on a few projects that should improve communications with the outside.   I really don’t think I’ll ever be able to work in a normal office after this again!

 As a winter over, I’m part of the fire brigade on station.  We have three teams that have different jobs when the fire alarm goes off.  Team one is made up of the first responders.  Their responsibility is to get to the alarm site as quickly as possible with portable fire extinguishers and to try to contain any fire before it spreads any farther.  The second team, which I’m a member of, is supposed to report to the fire site after donning full bunking gear, including breathing gear and air tanks.  We’re supposed to actually go into buildings that may be on fire, or filled with smoke to conduct rescue operations, and extended firefighting with larger chemical extinguishers.  The third team is supposed to keep us supplied with fresh bottles of air, and fresh extinguishers. 

 The day after we officially took over fire duties from the old winter overs, we had our first drill.  Luckily for me, it was under the dome where I live, so it took me about two and a half minutes to get downstairs from my server room, to my dorm upstairs in the same building, to the fire scene right behind my building.  Talk about easy!  Anyway, we had a good drill, and we learned where our weak points lay.  I’ve got to practice with my flame hood, and air mask a little more before I’ll feel 100% ok with using them together in an emergency.

 This morning we had our first real emergency.  During the winter two of the three new generators that were installed last summer failed for reasons unknown.  That’s not a big deal, because we still have one new generator which we’ve been running the station off of, plus the old power plant, and finally the emergency generation out in summer camp.  Well, today the third generator died (just try to get on site warranty service down here!), and we lost power to the entire station for about 30 minutes while the engineers got the old power plant back online.  That made things pretty interesting in my area while I tried shutting down all our systems before my battery backup ran out.  Anyway, we’re still running on the old power plant, until a Cat rep gets down here sometime in the next week.  He was actually scheduled to be here anyway to fix the other two generators, but this just made it even more important. 

 Life here isn’t all disaster planning and recovery though.  There is a tradition on Friday nights where the atmospheric scientists throw a slushie party in the clean air building.  The clean air building is located upwind of the station, so the wind blows all the exhaust and other atmospheric pollution away from this sector.  This leads to the snow being extremely pure and unpolluted.  Slushies are alcoholic snow cones made from the cleanest snow in the world.  The scientists bring in huge buckets of the stuff inside, and we mix it with our choice of alcohol that is donated to the station by the residents.  Yummy!  Walking back to the dome after a couple of those can be quite a challenge!
 Anyway, my predecessor leaves on Thursday, so I’ve got a lot of studying and reading to do before then.  Have a great Halloween back in the states, and I want to see pictures of any embarrassing stuff that happens! 

 

Well, it’s been a long couple of weeks since I’ve last written you guys, but it’s been quite eventful.  I think I last said that I was about to go to the McMurdo station bar, and celebrate my 28th birthday.  Well, I did, and I had a blast!  I’ve known most of these people for only a few days, but that didn’t matter at all. There is a bond between people that’s amazing.  A few of the polies got together to get me a card, and a bunch of little presents that really meant a lot.  Once we were at the bar, and people found out that it was my birthday; shots just started appearing in front of me left and right.  Even in Austin, I don’t think I’ve had that many strangers buy me drinks. 
Surprisingly, I felt awesome the next day, and I ended up taking about a two and a half mile hike to the New Zealand base.  Kat and I got there about 30 minutes after the store there closed, but it was an awesome hike over the sea-ice.  McMurdo is at the base of an active volcano, Mt. Erebus, but there is a hill blocking the view of it until you get right outside of the base.  It was beautiful, with a cloud of steam and smoke rising from the top, blending into the deepest blue sky I’ve ever seen. 

I spent the next few days doing a combination of work and play.  I got to know all the McMurdo IT guys, but they were all so busy doing their own projects that I ended up just getting in their way.  That meant that I had about a week to explore the area.  I went to an outdoor training lecture, got certified in the rock climbing gym, worked out a few times, and took several trips off base.

The most amazing of these trips was going out to see Cape Evans, and the nearby ice caves.  The main attraction of Cape Evans is a 90 year old wooden structure that several of the early polar explorers used as staging camps during the initial exploration of the continent.  The air here is so cold and dry that the huts are exactly the way they were left.  There are even perfectly preserved penguin carcasses, and piles of 90 year old seal blubber that they used for heating and cooking.  After we spent an hour poking around the hut, we went to some ice caves that had formed in a nearby glacier.  I wish I had the soul of a poet so that I could describe just how beautiful the formations were inside.  I’ve got some pictures up on my website, but they really don’t do justice to the place. 

Later on that week, Kat and I rented cross country skis, and skied the two miles to Scott Base (the NZ base).  Thursday nights they open their bar to Americans, and we took full advantage of this!  Another planeload of polies had just arrived from Christchurch, and a good many of them were there.  Needless to say, we ended up taking the shuttle back, instead of skiing the way we came. 

Daylight is now 24 hours.  It was weird the first couple of days, but you quickly adjust.  In fact, it seems so normal to have the sun shining all the time, that memories of going out at night start to seem strange.  I’ll be curious to see how I feel in six months, when the sun never rises, and we have 24 hour darkness. 

We were supposed to leave for the Pole on the 22nd, but due to weather and mechanical problems, we didn’t actually depart till yesterday, the 24th.  I was lucky enough to be on the first plane down here, and that was quite an experience.  We were the first people that the current winter-over population has seen in nearly 7 months.  They are acting a little odd towards us, but it’s nothing hostile.  It’s got to be weird to have your cozy society disturbed by the arrival of so many people.  With the first three planes, we’ve quadrupled the station population!  I’ll be in their shoes in a year from now, so I can’t be critical at all.  

Adjusting to this environment has been quite a challenge.  When we got off the plane, we immediately went from sea level to 10,000 feet.  We also went from the plane’s temperature of 65 degrees to a -53 degrees!  Trying to drag my luggage about 500 feet from the plane to the entrance of the base felt like I was running a marathon.  Luckily the polies took pity on us, and had motorized sleds to carry our baggage.  They remember what it was like for them a year ago!    Most of us felt lousy all day yesterday.  We had headaches, shortness of breath, and mild to severe nausea.  Today I feel a whole lot better, and they tell us that we’ll be fully acclimated after about 10 days, with about 90% acclimatization happening after 3 or 4. 
 I don’t know how I lucked out here, but I’ve got an awesome room.  Of the station population of about 175, only 27 get to live in the dome.  Since my position involves rapid response in an emergency, I got one of those rooms.  My room is small, but it’s mine.  It’s about 9.5 by 4.5 feet, and one of the previous occupants made a full size bed, instead of the standard twin.  I’ve got posters up, a Texas Tech flag hanging on my wall, and all my books and movies fitting nicely on a shelf.  I even have a phone, and internet connection in the room.   Compare this to the Jamesway’s, which are Korean War era canvas and wood tents out in the snow about 700 feet from the dome.  They’re cold, have no bathrooms, and only canvas curtains for walls.  I really appreciate how this has worked out, and I’m trying not to brag about it too much.

 Speaking of bragging, I’m enclosing a picture with this dispatch.  I know that I’ve been accused of having a big ego by some of you before, but I finally have proof that the world really does revolve around me!

Hey guys, I’ve finally arrived in Antarctica! The plane ride down here was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been on, but it’s all worth it when I look out the windows at the Trans-Antarctic mountains. The weather here is surprisingly warm. In fact yesterday when I went to the storage depot to pick up my luggage I was wearing nothing more than long underwear, jeans and a sweater. This is a huge change from the weather down here a couple of days ago. The day before I arrived, the winds here were so strong that they blew the tail of one of the LC-130 aircraft 30 feet during a refueling operation! 

Winds here make a huge difference in the perceived temperature. When it’s still outside, it’s actually pretty pleasant. In fact, sitting in the galley drinking coffee reminds me of sitting in a ski lodge in the states. The fact that we are wearing huge bunny boots (air insulated rubber boots) just adds to that feeling.

 The guys that are working outside all the time tend to dress warmer than I do, so I’ve taken to wearing just long underwear, jeans, a sweatshirt and my parka with a hat. The parkas are pretty cool. The people at McMurdo are issued red parkas which are older, but the people who are going to the south pole are issued these cool green parkas. They are newer, but some say that they aren’t as warm. So far it’s been plenty to keep me happy. We do have to watch out for them, as I’ve been told that anything associated with the pole station is considered a great souvenir.

 I started my first full day yesterday by taking a walking tour of the station. It’s not nearly as big as I thought, but it’s easy to get dis-oriented because all the buildings tend to look alike from the outside. Later on I met all the McMurdo IT people, and spent some time hanging out with them. Last night I went to the climbing wall with Katrina, and we got certified to climb there. We finished up at around 10 pm, and when we walked outside the sun was still shining brightly. Sunset is around 10:50, and sun rise is about 4:10 am. The times are changing each day about 10 minutes, so it won’t be much longer before we have 24 hour daylight. Tonight I think I’m going to go to Gallagher’s, the non-smoking bar, and celebrate my 28th birthday today!