Day two in Antarctica broke very windy and very cold. The station has a few television channels with scrolls, much like the information channel at most hotels or public access networks. The scroll informed us that the current wind chill was 45 below zero.
That being known, I decided my big heavy parka was the way to go today. Our dorm is about 40 yards from the front door of the galley, building 155, where we eat our meals. The walk to the galley took several minutes as it was straight into the wind. Scott was supposed to be leaving for the South Pole at 7:30 but we all wondered about the likelihood of that happening. His flight ended up being delayed until 10:00, then again until 3:00, then cancelled all-together as the weather didn't let up all day.
The sun that we've become accustomed to didn't shine much at all today, as it was very overcast, cold, and windy. I'm pretty sure I've never experienced 45 below zero wind chill before. Within 5 seconds of being outside you know which areas of your body aren't quite as protected as others. I had my fleece-lined stocking cap on and the wind was penetrating through to the point that my scalp was getting cold. This was within a minute of leaving the galley, probably 20 yards into my trek back to the dorm.
For the most part, the day was somewhat uneventful compared to what we've done up until now. I spent a lot of the day working on benchmarking network issues and settling in. The performance issues that POLAR ICE users are seeing down here is absolutely directly related to the bandwidth. I was running some traceroutes and pings that would drop consistently. Dropped packets = no response. No response = unhappy users. All the users know is that they're trying to access the application and it's either non-responsive or insanely slow. It makes us look bad even though it's not at all our fault. How slow is it, you ask? It took me 6 minutes and 25 seconds to log onto the network. That's how long it took to load my profile and map my drives. I started a chat session with John, the POLAR ICE support person, and it went nowhere fast as packets were dropping like Enron stock. I have a full working copy of POLAR ICE on my laptop so I got that up and running and sent Mike McClanahan, the assistant science support supervisor, an email asking if he could try hitting my machine. Later on he came back with a response that the application was very fast on my machine, so we're going to see if we can find a spare box around here on which to install a local mirrored copy of the app.
Sorry, enough tech talk again. At lunch Jim Scott, the station director, sat with us and shared some anecdotes about the station and life on the Ice. When he found out that Scott was scheduled to go to Pole but had been bumped he mentioned the time that he thought he'd be at Pole for 2 days but ended up being stranded for 12 days. The weather here is fast and furious, and it drives everything that goes on. Jim is a big cyclist, and we did a lot of riding together this past summer. A good number of our Courage Classic riders are on station and Jim mentioned that everyone was meeting at 8pm to go over team jersey design concepts.
I wouldn't be able to make the meeting, however, as today was the day we were going to get to go to Cape Evans, where Robert Scott's Hut is located. With the weather being as nasty as it was we thought there was a good chance that the trip would be cancelled. Scott called recreation to find out, and they said it was still on at that point but to check the board at 5:30. We showed up then and they were posting a sign that said it was still a go. After a quick dinner we rushed home to throw on our 20 pounds of ECW gear and then showed up at the meeting place.
After a few minutes of safety information we loaded onto the Delta. The Delta is an old Navy transport vehicle that is essentially a passenger monster truck. The tracks left by the tires are three feet wide each, and the tires stand 5 1/2 feet tall. The Delta weighs 42,000 pounds empty, and we piled 19 people into it to start our 13-mile journey across the sea ice to Cape Evans.
The road to Cape Evans is marked by red and green flags. Without them, disorientation would be a given. On the sea ice, if the visibility is at all reduced, you have no idea where you are or which direction you're facing. All you can see for miles and miles is blowing snow and ice. After about 30 minutes of driving on the ice the Delta came to a stop. The driver radioed back to the passenger area that the visibility was so poor that we were turning around. We were boomeranging! Everyone was a little bummed but certainly understood. Visibility at that point was only about 3 green flags in front of the vehicle.
The driver recruited three passengers to help act as spotters while he turned the Delta around. It's a little crazy, the ice goes on for miles and miles, but outside the flags is all unknown. We couldn't just pull a "U-ey," or we might find ourselves breaking through. So, with the aid of spotters, he three point turned the Delta around and we headed back towards McMurdo.
In the passenger area we were bumming, and then a woman opened her backpack and pulled out a bottle of Cuervo. She made a comment about how even though we're boomeranging we might as well still have fun and proceeded to pass it around. A bunch of us got pictures taken sipping from a tequila bottle, in the back of a 1977 42,000 pound Delta transport vehicle, on the frozen waters of McMurdo Sound, in the middle of Antarctica. Going through the motions of daily life you can forget that you're IN ANTARCTICA! Every day I look across the bay and just can't believe I'm here. How cool is this place?
By the time we got back it was about 8:00, so I was able to join Jim and the rest of the cyclists after all. They were meeting at The Coffee House, which is the wine bar I mentioned earlier. I got myself a glass of McMurdo Pinot Gris, which is made in New Zealand specifically for the station, and sat down with the crew. Several of us had proposed jersey designs, and since mine was the only one done digitally I was tasked with coming up with some ideas that incorporate everyone's designs. I'm to build different color pallettes and design ideas for our next meeting. I don't know how I'm supposed to do that, if there's one thing I'm not it's a fashion designer. I told them I'd give it a shot, though. I'd love to have an Antarctic-themed cycling jersey.
After the meeting I went back to the dorm, watched a bit of that submarine movie with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, and then hit the sack. It's been a hectic week, and I still feel like it's only just begun.
