Entertainment at 90 South

It occurred to me that probably at no point in my entire life up until now have I stayed within a 5-mile radius of the same place for more than three months. Since I like to travel so much, you'd think that being still for this long would bother me, but I really cannot explain to you how busy things are here. There is really never a dull moment. First and foremost, we all work 10-hour days 6 days/week. Then there's sleep, and meals, and occasional showers (2 two-minute showers per week allowed) and laundry (one load per week allowed). That leaves maybe 4-5 hours/day of recreation time, which is crazy easy to fill...and then some, making it difficult to get enough sleep! With getting exercise, watching movies in the lounges here, card and cribbage games, guitar lessons, teaching yoga classes, making things in the craft room, reading, and trying desperately to snag a few minutes of internet time while a satellite that actually works is actually in range, we are BUSY down here.

Plus, there are the special events. Since I've been here, a galley staff friend has thrown a "mustache party" in one of the Jamesways in the backyard (if you can't grow a mustache, you had to make one to wear to the party or put one on at the door)... 

...and open mic talent show in they gym...

...a cribbage tournament, a MARATHON (I mean, for god's sake; and this was not a joke), a "race around the world" (you do a several km loop that encompasses the station and geographic pole, which means you've gone through all time zones during the race), and we're gearing up for this year's South Pole International Film Festival, wherein people make their own short film to submit for everyone to watch. Plus people are always organizing movie nights, sports nights, and anything else you can think of. So if you wondered what the heck we're doing down here in one of the most isolated places on Earth, I can tell you: we're just trying to find enough time to get our beauty rest!

The Russians are coming

Well, by the time this post goes live, this is old news, as they have already come and gone. But one of my janitorial tasks in the early weeks of the season was to (with the help of some fabulous volunteers)...

 

 

...go out to "summer camp"--an area of additional housing in the backyard of the station where there are several hypertats set up to accommodate overflow when the 150-person capacity of the main station is exceeded (yes, that's an outhouse you see on the left side of the frame)--

 

...and make up beds for half-a-dozen Russian millionaire oligarchs who were transiting through Pole on their way to the Russian station Vostok (where the coldest temps on the planet have been recorded), which they are considering investing in rebuilding. I was actually pretty impressed with how clean and cozy the inside of the hypertats are, but I doubt it was up to oligarch standards, even though I left cookies on their pillows.

And then after they left, I got out one of the sleds that are kept under the stairs of the main station and used it to haul the dirty sheets back to the station for washing. Who needs sled dogs?!?!

Hippocampus travel piece

I'm super-excited to have a piece I wrote (long ago after a vacation I took from Madagascar when I was living there) published in this month's issue of the online magazine Hippocampus. Please check it out if you have the time. I'm embedding live links to the magazine homepage, and also to my article in particular.

Thanks for reading!

Skiing and ARO

Over the years, the program has brought down quite an impressive collection of cross-country ski equipment. How could I turn down a chance to ski at the South Pole? It took me awhile to get adjusted and get my act together, but in early December, with a couple of others, we got ourselves outfitted with skis and set out to explore the base a bit.

One of the people I was with is a Research Assistant this year and had to check on some experiments that day at ARO (the Atmospheric Research Observatory). That is one of the science buildings I hadn't been to before, so we set off skiing in that direction.

It's a very cool-looking facility, with atmospheric experiments all over the roof, and is one of six NOAA stations around the world. It's located in the "clean air sector" of South Pole, which means it's upwind from all of the human operations and is said to have the cleanest air in the world, as the wind blows past it across the Antarctic plateau.

Inside, we got to see all of these iconic atmospheric experiments. The electronics you are looking at here have been tracking atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons since they were determined to be a concern for the ozone layer. The poster in the background shows, on the left atmospheric levels of CFCs as they escalated, and then the sudden drop-off when they were banned. The four graph trends on the right show the rise in the hydrochlorofluorocarbons that replaced the banned CFCs. Pretty amazing.

People also like to visit ARO to pick up the fun souvenirs they offer: you can go out on the deck and then seal a bottle full of the cleanest air on Earth to take home with you.

And finally we got to check out the experiments on the roof. I don't even understand what most of them are doing, but wow.

And then we skied back to the station. I'm keeping the skis I chose at the back exit of my rooming hallway, so from now on I can just head out and ski around the station anywhere and anytime.

The view

Not the television program, but the view out the window from South Pole station. It looks pretty much like this, 24/7. You'd think it would get dull, but it's always strangely beautiful!

 

Sometimes there's a faint fog on the horizon, and I hear sometimes it gets socked in, but really, this has pretty consistently been it. Antarctica is the coldest, highest, and driest continent. So especially in the summer, it really doesn't snow much here. That's hard to believe when all you can see in any direction is snow. But when it does snow, it NEVER MELTS. So it just keeps building up, year after year. Pretty incredible.

Speaking of a TV show, though, let's take a question from the peanut gallery:

Q: From D.L. (Savannah, GA): “Is there satellite TV available at the Pole?”

A: Nope. There are TONS of DVDs, plus VHS and even Beta tapes here and two big screens in lounges to watch on, plus old TVs you can take to your room or plug in elsewhere to watch what you want, but no live TV available. Someone organized an "NFL night" on Friday nights where they show old games (not sure how he gets them), but that's about as good as it gets as far as current TV!