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!