Weekly snapshot #9

Another windy morning turned gorgeous day for this week's snapshot! Is this starting to get monotonous? The summer season is more than half-way over, now, so in another couple months we'll be starting to get into sunset pictures. But in the meantime, I'm really enjoying this beautiful weather.

Merry Christmas from the South Pole!

Being away from my family at Christmas (and other family get-togethers) is definitely the worst part of working in Antarctica. Still, it was a festive holiday down here and I really appreciate everything everyone does here to try to make it a nice Christmas. We had 12 nights of Christmas-themed movies leading up to Christmas, a couple of people got together and made Christmas cards for everyone on station, my friend J the baker hung baked goodies from the frames of some of our doors on Christmas Eve night (when there was a (false) fire alarm at 7am on Christmas morning and we all stumbled out of our rooms to muster for our Emergency Response Teams, we ran right into them), and so on. 

Last year, the store manager organized a Good Santa/Bad Santa Mall Photo session on Christmas Eve and people really seemed to enjoy that, so I did the same thing this year. I even managed to coerce SR into being in a picture. We didn't get a very good one, but it's better than nothing!

The South Pole tradition is an annual race called "Race Around the World," which starts and ends right by the geographic pole marker but does a 2-mile loop around the base and technically goes through every time zone on the planet, which is crazy to think about. People dress up in costumes to run/walk/snowmobile the circuit and it was great fun to help the people doing the timing at the finish line and see people coming in in their crazy get-ups.

My favorite costumes that are on the station are a polar bear costume and a penguin one. We all think these are hysterical because neither polar bears (North Pole only) nor penguins (need water, and we're not on the coast) exist here. But we like to set up weird pictures with both of them, such as this one where a polar bear is devouring its penguin prey, perhaps for the first time in recorded history.

And then in the evening of Christmas Day, there were two seatings of a special Christmas meal, which they manage to make really special despite the fact that it's in the same place as all of our other meals always are. Blocking out the windows, adding festive lighting, candles, wine stewards, and so on really makes it a nice night for everyone.

Merry Christmas!!

Weekly snapshot #8

Another completely gorgeous day of clear skies, planes coming through as scheduled, and low wind.

Fun to have caught some action headed out to the Dark Sector Labs (no radio use allowed out there around the telescopes!) -- a tractor pulling a bulldozer? Not sure what was going on, but helps to bring something different to the weekly snapshot. Enjoy!

Man-hauling

One of the things I love about my job this year is that I get to go outside more. There's a heated storage area for booze and other retail overflow a few minutes' walk from the main station, so at least 3 days/week I like to suit up, go out there dragging a banana sled, load it up with things to restock, and drag it back to the station to carry up the stairs and into the store. It's great exercise that has a practical purpose, which I love. And even better, other people like to help out for the field trip and the exercise. On this particular day, I had two volunteer helpers and I was just walking along behind the sleds, feeling pretty spoiled and unencumbered, as they did the pulling back to the station. Great photo opportunity, though!

Weekly snapshot #7

Last week's heat wave has subsided, though it's still really nice out.

If I'd been 10 seconds faster in getting outside to take this picture, you would be able to see a snowmobile of scientists headed out to the telescopes. As it is, they're just a little dot way down the path, already having crossed the skiway (aka plane runway)--sorry!

Knit at Pole

My amazing, generous mother and her amazing, generous friends sent me off to Antarctica with boxes of supplies following me via the mail: specifically, knitting supplies!

So once the craziness of the start of the season faded, I started a weekly knitting night in the Quiet Reading Room of the station. Before that even started, my friend C (of frozen eyelash fame from last year's posts) found this orangey ball of yarn in the craft room that PERFECTLY matches her jacket, and I coached her through making a headband, about which she was crazy excited.

Shortly thereafter, I convened a Monday evening knitting group. Our first meeting, 10 people showed up, including 4 men, 3 of whom already had experience knitting. I was really impressed at the turn-out and how quickly the beginners caught on (including the guy in the upper right of this photo, who had to spend the first 10 minutes just trying to find an end in a very confusing ball of yarn). We had a great time and I'm hopeful Monday night knitting will continue and flourish through out the summer season--and maybe the whole year.

Weekly Snapshot #6

It's a heat wave at the South Pole! I'm pretty sure this is warmer than it EVER got last summer (I think our high was -9). And someone told me that overnight (which doesn't mean much since the sun never sets these days) it was at one point -0.7 degrees F! I think the highest temp ever recorded at South Pole was +9 degrees, a few years ago. I definitely don't hope we break that record. Just seems wrong. In the meantime, we're enjoying the balmy temps and uncharacteristically volatile weather. A few hours before I took this pic, it was very windy and the skies were white with blowing snow and clouds, and as I type this it's back to that...but the window during the picture was gorgeous! And there was even a scientist walking back to the station from South Pole Telescope, to give you some perspective and a splash of red in the photo...

Running around the world

So, if you run a circle around the geographic south pole marker, you're technically running through all of the time zones that exist and therefore technically running around the world. Here is SR completing that AMAZING feat on a gorgeous South Pole day. 

Weekly snapshot #5

What a totally gorgeous day. No wind, "warm" temps. Heaven. I took a long walk out to the "End of the World"--the spot a mile (? so hard to judge distances here) out from the station where the heavy equipment operators haul all of the snow that they clear out from around the station. But before that I dashed out onto the observation deck without my extreme cold weather gear to snap this photo. Last week when I did the same, the wind was cruel and I couldn't get back inside fast enough. This week, I was tempted to linger out in the sun despite my lack of hat or gloves. Just gorgeous.

Hello to my munchkins

You'll have to take my word for it that this is me standing next to the ceremonial South Pole marker with this message for my nieces and nephews.

SR (more recognizable and apparently less afraid of the possibility of frostbite) also wanted to say hi from the geographic pole marker.

Hi, Lovebugs!

Weekly snapshot #4

It's "warm" out, but man, is it blustery! I can't believe the photo of the view toward South Pole telescope turned out as clear as it did, because today's flight was cancelled due to the windy weather. This year continues to surprise with its varied weather, wind, overcast days, and even some snow falling, all of which is (as I understand it) unusual in a place where it's typically clear blue skies all summer long. Makes things a bit more interesting!

Golf at 90 South

SR found a set of golf clubs in a closet of recreational equipment that he sweetly took it upon himself to clean out and organize. So of course we had to go out and have him hit a golf ball at the South Pole. Which turned out to be easier said than done. (Dad, he requests that you not watch the first video, in which he both whiffs and somehow lets go of the club on his follow-through. The second video = success.)

Weekly Snapshot #3

A bit cooler again this week, but really, to me it's impossible to tell much of a difference between -28 and -14. As long as the wind isn't blowing and I'm bundled up properly, it's nice and comfy out. And today we got a plane in for the first time in nearly a week! There were five scientist winter-overs, some of them now here for more than a year, who had been scheduled to leave on Thursday and watched flight after flight get cancelled. I think by the time a plane was on the ground tonight, there was no more bitter left in the bittersweet of saying goodbye to South Pole!

Elephant Man

The Air Force is responsible for flying USAP participants in and out of Antarctica, and part of their contract is that a professional fire crew must be on hand at all times when a plane lands, is on deck, and takes off again in case of fire. So South Pole has a fire crew of at least a half-dozen people who have nothing official to do when there are no planes landing or taking off, which can happen for days on end. Lucky for the rest of us, our fire crew is an amazing group of people who go above and beyond to help out in any way they can when they are not on duty. This has been pivotal for me as I've been trying to get a grip on store inventory and moving things--especially heavy things like beverages--from one place to another. And there is some rearranging going on in the station, so that the largest storage place for store merchandise is turning into a maintenance workshop. I'm trying to move a ton of merchandise either into the store or out of the station, into the out-building pictured here. It's called the Booze Barn. :) At the same time, we're receiving our first of three big orders of the year, which arrives to the Booze Barn a couple of tri-walls at a time, needing to be unpacked and sorted.

So one day recently, a few of the firemen agreed to come out, helped me unpack a couple of tri-walls, and even brought the "Elephant Man"--the vehicle they use to go out and monitor the Air Force planes when they are here--over so I could take a ride in it back to the station and haul a bunch of merchandise back with us.

Only in Antarctica.

The Store

I'm still enjoying the relative warmth and humidity of the South Pole dish pit at lunch and dinnertime two days per week, when this year's stewards have their days off. But this summer, the majority of my work time is focused around this room, instead: the South Pole station store/post office. This first shot is the view of the store from behind the counter...

...and here's one looking back at my workspace from the back of the store. (That's outgoing winter-over M sitting at the store computer, trying to get me set up to update the recreation schedule on the overhead scrolls in the galley, as coordinating rec at Pole is also part of my job this summer.)

The store is open for 1-1.5 hours, five days/week, and on two of those days, right after the store closes I get out all of the post office materials and the PO is open for an hour. So the actual opening times total less than 8 hours per week--but it's amazing how the rest of the week is sucked up stocking, organizing, etc.

We are going to have to do some major reorganizing in the store this summer, as we are losing some of our already-precious storage space and will need to be able to keep more inventory actually in the store rather than in closets. So maybe I will have to post some "after" pictures at the end of the summer. But for now, you can imagine me tooling around in this room for a good chunk of most of my days, which so far is great fun.

Weekly snapshot #2

It's gotten dramatically warmer this week (yes, -14 degrees does start to feel warm!)...

...but it's been very windy with terrible visibility, which in my limited experience is unusual for South Pole. Last year I think I could easily count on one hand the number of days we had that look like this. But we've had a week of it now. This picture is taken from the same place as last week's picture, so you can really tell how terrible the visibility is in comparison. The distant buildings on the right are South Pole's traditional telescopes and the building on the left is the Ice Cube facility.

 Guess we'll have to wait and see how it looks next week!

Our room

It's pretty sweet having SR here with me this time, for many reasons--one of which is that we get a double room. And this double room has a loft bed, which makes it feel ridiculously spacious compared with the single rooms.

I love my little desk space next to an outside window. We have to board up the window at night to be able to sleep, since the sun never sets (for now). But with the usually-sunny weather shining in on me by day, it's a cheerful spot from which to compose these blog posts.

Weekly snapshot #1

It's hard to believe that now that I'm at South Pole, unless there is some sort of unexpected emergency, this is exactly where I will be for an entire year, now! Luckily, I have a long list of projects I want to work on while I'm here.

One of those was to take a picture every single day at noon, with a little sign in the corner saying the temperature and date, so that at the end of this year I'd have a record of what it looks like here at the same time every day throughout the year. But almost as soon as I got here, I realized that is probably not realistic, as work keeps us all really busy and I was certain to miss many days here and there. So then I decided I would do it once a week, which seems like an attainable goal. Though right off the bat I got tied up with something and missed my noontime appointment with myself. And then when I did go to take the picture, I realized it's impossible to photograph a legible date/time/temp marker in the corner of a picture of something much brighter and farther away. So after all this compromising, here is my offering to you for this week. That's the South Pole telescope in the background. I'll try to do a similar pair of shots, with the same vista, once/week for the rest of the year so you can see how the light and the temp changes as we go.

Back to the bottom of the world...

It was a long but lovely process to get back to South Pole, this time for an entire year. Surprisingly, all travel plans went as scheduled with no delays anywhere along the way (unlike last year's trip south). But it was a long process because of staying for an entire year this year. This meant two weeks of training specific to those who will be part of our 45-ish wintering crew. We all convened in Estes Park, CO, for a week of team-building in the first half of October. What a gorgeous setting, with the elk rutting literally right in front of us. Some days it was difficult to get to breakfast because they were so close to the sidewalks we would have to take long detours.

Then, for a second week of training, half of the crew went to fire school, as they will be our resident fire-fighters once the station closes for the winter (around Feb 15)...

...and the rest of us stayed in Estes Park and took a NOLS Wilderness First Aid course, as we will be supporting the doctor and the PA that will be on station for the winter as the medical/trauma team, plus serve on the trauma branch of South Pole's Emergency Response Team for the upcoming summer season. Aside from a CPR class in college, I've never done any sort of first aid or medical training before, so this was a really great learning experience for me--plus lots of fun when it was my turn to play the patient and get gruesome'd up in fake injuries.

After training, it was finally time to start flying southward. Commercial flights to Christchurch, New Zealand (so fun to return there and have it feel like a familiar place), picking up all of our extreme cold weather gear at the US Antarctic Program center there. And then, after just a couple of nights in NZ,  we boarded a US Air Force C-17 for the five-hour flight to McMurdo station, on the coast of Antarctica. Kind of disconcerting to take my seat directly in front of this beast, and I was a little relieved when the load master had me move about 30 minutes into the flight.

Such a joy, toward the end of the flight, to see Antarctica out the window once again.

Last year when we were delayed in McMurdo for about 5 days, it was not super-fun; the place felt alien, I wasn't feeling well, we were getting up very early every day in anticipation of flying, only to have the flight cancelled and then have to report to the McMurdo galley to help wash dishes for the day. I didn't love it.

But this visit to McMurdo was completely different, and so much fun. We were scheduled to stay for 5 days, so I was expecting it. The base already felt somewhat familiar, which was nice, and it's shocking to me how many people I know after just one season on the Ice. Fun to see acquaintances. Then, on top of that, my job is different this year, so instead of working in the galley the whole time, I had freedom to go information-gather from my counterparts in McMurdo and try to learn as much as I could about things that will affect my job running the South Pole store and post office this season. It was great fun to explore more of the base and meet so many more people.

Also, I was feeling well, had more free-time, and knew enough about the base to have a mental list of things I wanted to do while there.

One day, a group of us from Pole went over to the hut that Antarctic Explorer Captain Scott built on Ross Island in 1902, during one of his expeditions to the continent. The men on that expedition slept on their ship (which was iced in) and just used this cabin for cooking and storage. There are still petrified seal carcasses in and around the cabin (which gives it a very interesting smell), and it was amazing to see all of these long-ago, intrepid explorers' left-behind supplies sitting everywhere and imagine them walking around in that exact spot, but without the benefit of all of our synthetic cold weather gear, and having sailed there rather than arriving by plane. Incredible.

Not far from Scott's Hut, we paused for quite awhile on that day of BRILLIANT weather (zero degrees F, sun warming our backs, sky clear and gorgeous) to watch some Weddell seals struggle, one-by-one, to worm their way out of a hole they'd somehow made in the sea ice, skooch up onto the surface of the ice, and roll around basking in the sunshine. Beautiful.

Another night, with two other winter overs, I finally climbed Observation Hill, right alongside the base, for a lovely view of the McMurdo itself and a peek (not pictured) of Mount Erebus rising into the clouds about 40 miles outside of town.

Then we walked a few kilometers down the road to Scott Base, a Kiwi station, which hosts American Night every Thursday at their station bar. You can't really tell from this picture, but it's a really great station, so clean and bright, and all the various buildings are actually connected internally so once you're inside you can roam the entire place without going back out into the cold.

The Kiwis have a gorgeous view across the sea ice to Mount Discovery...

...as well as some pressure ridges building in the ice just offshore from their station.

Finally, nearly a month after I left Wisconsin, and so content with all of the great experiences that brought me this far, about 35 of us returning and newbie Polies boarded a C-130 from McMurdo to South Pole and safely landed, on the first try, at the bottom of the planet.

More to come! (And P.S.: I got this picture from someone who had just finished wintering at Pole when I arrived for the first time, right around this time last year. He is the one who guided in the first flight to land that summer, and this is a picture of him doing so...which means that I was actually on the plane in this photo!)

Returning to the Ice

It's now been about 2.5 years since I quit my job in Denver and resumed a life of vagabonding. What a privilege it has been to visit friends on the East and West coasts and everywhere inbetween, drive cross-Canada, explore Nicaragua, take campervans around Australia, spend a month in NYC, see New Zealand from north to south, hit amazing tropical islands like Bali and Fiji, spend these past couple months in Europe, and--between every adventure--get extended quality time with my family and friends Stateside.

The travel coffers that I filled via my job in Denver are not quite empty, and lucky me, I got to refill them a bit with my stint working at the South Pole last November to February. But that experience in Antarctica only made me want to return and see what it would be like to spend an entire year on the Ice, including the five-month darkness of a winter at South Pole--so different from the eternally sunny summer I spent there last year. And it never hurts to add more money to the future-travel bank.

So I might be crazy, but I've signed on to return to work at the bottom of the planet for an entire year, starting in late October. I'll definitely be posting on the blog while I'm down there, though probably not as often as I usually do while traveling, as I'll be in the exact same place for an entire year! If you're a newer reader and you want to catch up on the basics of life at South Pole (including the process of getting down there), click here and work your way toward newer posts. I'm not planning to repost about any of the same stuff I described last year.

Some of you have sweetly asked me to pass along the address at which I can receive mail at South Pole. Luckily, an Antarctic posting is a government job and the address is an APO address, which means things can be sent in either direction at U.S. domestic mail rates. From mid-February through the long South Pole winter, there will be no planes to the station which means no mail. So any flat letter mail needs to be sent by the end of January at the LATEST. And packages need to be sent no later than early January 2016 to ensure they'll make it to South Pole before station close. If you want to label something for me to save until later in the winter, I promise I will wait to open it per instructions, but it still needs to be mailed by the beginning of January, even if you don't want me to open it till July.

ANYWAY, here is the address:


(my name), Winter-over, ASC
South Pole Station
PSC 768 Box 400
APO AP 96598

That's it! In any case, I'll see you back here come November when there's something new and different to report from WAYYY down under.

Milano

Final stop on this European Adventure 2015 was the bustling northern Italian metropolis of Milan. Like most of the other stops we've made, this location was chosen because I have a friend living here that we could visit. M has this sweet apartment in a building on Piazzale Loreto with an inner courtyard that I just love and that she says is typical of Milanese apartment buildings. On the ground floor, there was a bakery and a barbershop. What more could you need?

On the final day of validity of the Eurail pass that we've been using for the past month, SR and I decided to milk it for its final worth and we took a daytrip by train out to the town of Como, on the lovely lake by the same name.

The view of the lake and the town from the mountaintop (there's a funicular that runs up from along the waterfront) was even better.

Rail pass finally expired, we spent time exploring Milan itself. I loved this "vertical forest" progressive apartment complex.

We made and ate a bunch of delicious meals with M, who generously took time away from her busy PhD studies to hang out with us.

And M even took her Saturday to show us around the city.

The fun continued when SR got the two of us tickets to a soccer game (when in Italy...). We really lucked out, as we were in town for a match between the two rival Milan-based teams. The stadium was filled to capacity with 80,000 people and the noise was like nothing I've ever heard before in my life.

I don't know much about soccer, but as a cultural experience, this was completely fantastic.

Also, we found out when we were already on this trip and had already scheduled this stay in Milan that the city happens to be hosting the 2015 World's Fair (Expo) right now. So SR and I took the metro out to the outskirts of the city and spent a day exploring the whole world via the fair. The topic was food (of course, since it's being hosted by Italy!). My favorite part of the experience was seeing the interesting architecture of the buildings that were built by the various countries to house their exhibits.

But it was a little disturbing to know it is all going to be ripped down in another month when the fair ends. And to be honest, I was a little disappointed by the quality of most of the exhibits, as far as content goes. World food production is such an important, interesting topic and it's exciting that there was this forum for bringing essential issues to the foreground in a context that reaches a lot of people. But at most, it seemed like just lip-service was being paid to these issues and the real point of the fair was commercial/profit rather than an exchange of innovative ideas, which is what I thought Expo was supposed to be. Also, we were there on a Monday after school is back in session in most of the world, and it was still CROWDED. Not as bad as the 4-hour lines to enter some exhibits that we heard horror stories about before coming here, but still--after one hour-long line, we decided to visit just the exhibits that didn't have lines. Which were maybe some of the less exciting ones. Which was maybe part of my disappointment. Still, I'm so glad to have had the experience and know what a World's Fair is like.

There was much more sightseeing around Milan itself and time with M (and, of course, gelato), but I think this draws my picture-sharing of the Europe trip to a close! It has been such an amazing time here, and I'm planning to revisit all of these experiences in memory during the unusual isolation that the next year is going to bring for me. But that's the topic for the next post...