Ceremonial and questions from Aunt J

My camera finally unfroze, and on another weekend walk, got this picture of me (not that you can tell, but it really is me) at the ceremonial pole. That's the station in the background. So there you go.

In other news, I got an e-mail from my Aunt J in Ithaca, NY, that included the following: "I want to know such things as where your poop goes, how do you get exercise, are you teaching yoga, what are the other people like, what are you eating.  You know . . . All the nitty gritty."

Well, J, let me tell you:
1) Poop: there is regular-looking indoor plumbing here on this very comfy station. Unfortunately, answering where the poop goes is tied up with where we get our water from. But it's not as bad as it seems. As I understand it (though I probably should have asked the station engineer to write up a more accurate blurb), here's how it works: To get water at Pole is pretty easy since we're surrounded by snow that, when melted, gives us such incredibly pure water that they actually have to add minerals to it before we can drink it. To create the melting, they use a machine that I don't really understand but that is called a Rodwell; it heats the snow in a downward tunnel, and the resulting water is pumped out until the "well" gets too deep for the Rodwell to continue to operate. Then they start a new Rodwell system somewhere else and start filling the empty well left by the previous Rodwell with all the human waste created at the station. Which soon freezes solid and remains here forever. Gross. They're currently on the third Rodwell, and filling the well left by the second one. The first well of poop is pretty close to the "Beer Can" part of the station  (a cylindrical stairwell area with nearly 100 stairs connecting both levels of the station down to the vehicle maintenance and storage areas alongside/beneath the station) and creates an unholy stink in the Beer Can.
2) Exercise: Lots of people who work here work outside much of the day doing manual labor and get more exercise than they ever wanted--and we're all able to walk around outside the station whenever we want for some fresh air and exercise. There are also cross-country skis available, plus a little rock wall for climbers in a satellite building. But for those who want indoor activity at the station, there is actually a gym ("designed for all sports so perfect for none of them," I've heard said) and a weight room (plus treadmills, a rowing machine, etc.) that are available for everyone to use, 24/7 it's pretty great. And almost every night, there is an activity available to everyone, from volleyball to soccer to yoga. Which leads me to....
3) Yoga: I am teaching. Twice per week. So far it's been really fun, with 10-20 people attending the classes I'm teaching on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights. There's also a guy here who has been working South Pole summers for years and has long been teaching a Thursday night class, so I can also TAKE a yoga class once per week. Sweet!
4) The other people here are pretty darn fantastic. I cannot say enough about the galley staff that I'm working with; I'm having so much fun with these very interesting, funny, caring people. It's also fun to have people on base with such diverse skills/experience: cooks and scientists and heavy equipment operators and IT experts, all hanging out together three times/day for meals in the galley. Probably most of the people here are pretty atypical in their lifestyles and priorities compared with people who have more "stable" lives in the States or elsewhere, but of course this is right up my alley, and I love that you can sit down with any one of these people and probably be entertained with fantastic stories about life experiences, travels, etc.
5) If I tried to pretend that I am being deprived of anything, food wise, while I'm here, I would be mostly lying. Our galley staff of five chefs plus a baker take such good care of us. There are three hot buffet-style meals per day (yesterday, for example, there was Indian fare--chick pea stew, saffron rice, chapati, and so on) with left-overs available at all times in a communal fridge, fantastic eggs from New Zealand, "freshies" (fresh produce) coming in once per week or so by plane, and 24/7 juice, coffee, tea, cereal, toast, cookies, and more available to everyone. The freshies aren't always available, but there is also a greenhouse on the first floor of the station, so in another few weeks we should be starting to get some greens from there.

More soon, and feel free to post any other questions you want answered, o blog readers!

Thanksgiving

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving Stateside, South Pole celebrates Thanksgiving. Most of the station had the day off, and it was quite the festive weekend. A few days in advance, everyone who wanted was welcome to participate in making a couple dozen pies, which definitely helped to set the mood.

 

 

Then, the day of, a gaggle of other volunteers got the galley transformed with shocking speed. My favorite part is that all of the windows were blocked out so that we could pretend it was not broad daylight as always, and a video of a roaring fire was played on the info scroll screens.

 

With so many people to feed and the need for volunteers to serve wine and pie and bus dishes, there were two seatings.

And the food was pretty darn yummy.

That night, some of the rec volunteers even organized a dance in the gym, South Pole-style.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The South Pole...S

Did you know that there are multiple "South Poles"? It's kind of confusing. First, there is the ceremonial South Pole, which can be seen from the windows of the galley (dining hall) in South Pole Station.

Then there is the geographic South Pole, which can be seen out a different window from the galley. This pole shifts slightly each year since we are on a moving ice sheet. Each New Year's Day, as I understand it (I will post about it when the time comes!), there is a ceremony that everyone here participates in wherein the new geographic pole is marked with a new marker that was designed by the previous year's winter-over crew. (About 40 people spend the winter at South Pole each year; fewer people have done this than have climbed Mount Everest. Seems like it would be an amazing experience.)

There's also a geomagnetic South Pole, which is hundreds of miles away and all wonky. I don't even understand that.

So on my first day off (I have Sundays off this month; things will shift as my job responsibilities rotate; more on that later) a bunch of us bundled up (it was about -40F, with a windchill of about -60...so, cold!) and went out to visit the two poles that are right here at the station. The pole in the ground is the actual geographic South Pole as it was on January 1, 2014.

This shows the Pole marker with the elevated station that we all live in in the background.

And then we walked over to the ceremonial Pole. I don't have any pictures other than this because at this point my camera froze. It started working again about an hour after I came back inside and it thawed out! Will have to keep my outdoor photo opps short and sweet, I guess!

My room

Oh my goodness. I have been trying for a WEEK to log in and make a blog post, but the internet here is severely troubled and this is the first time I've actually been able to access the blog. Miracle! When we arrived at the beginning of the season, we had 14 hours of satellite internet coverage per day thanks to three satellites that are in range at various times. But there have been technical issues with one of them, making it not an option for the past week, which gives us 10 hours of very very bad, slow internet per day, half of which is in the dead of the night anyway. Sheesh! We're also losing the best satellite at the end of this month. A couple other fun telecommunication facts about life at South Pole:

 

- We have satellite phone access, and can call as if it is a free, local call to Denver area codes...but only when one of the satellites is in range and actually working.

- The vast majority of bandwidth available here is used to send the scientific data collected here off the continent; this is only fair, since the science is the whole reason for being of the USAP; but as a consequence, there is no type of streaming--so no Skype or YouTube or Netflix--allowed for casual use.

 

Anyway, before we lose coverage again, let me make this quick and just post a picture for you. This is my room in the station. Such a treat to have my own little cave to retreat to whenever I want to.

 

 

More soon, satellites willing!

 

South Pole Station

I am having great fun exploring this amazing, $150 million facility where the 150 summer residents of South Pole all live (and most work). If you're curious about the station, I really recommend the virtual tour of the station provided by this video on YouTube. It does a way better job than I could through pictures of giving you a sense of what the station I'm currently calling home is like.

I did, on my first weekend here, enjoy both a casual visit to and a formal tour of the "beer can" (see the video for context) which stinks horribly of the human waste that is buried not too far away. We also walked outside via the tunnels (where vehicle maintenance and all kinds of other work goes on) and explored the -60F (it was warmer outside!) gasoline storage area, which was completely covered in intimidating frost. No worries about a gasoline explosion, at least!--at those temps, there can be no gasoline fumes, which is the part of fuel that actually burns. And my final picture here is of one of the typically inexplicably weird things you might find down here. I don't know how or why people put pigs heads down in the storage areas under the elevated stations, and I'm learning not to bother to ask about the crazy things like this that tend to happen here when people get bored due to the isolation.