Friday marked three weeks to the day since I left Denver. It feels more like three months to me. It also marks exactly two weeks until I’ll be back in Denver. We’re on the home stretch now; the end of this long, amazing journey is within our sights. We were initially scheduled to redeploy on 5 December but requested to leave on 2 December instead. Assuming we get out on that date we’ll have two nights in Christchurch before heading back to the US. While we lost Halloween on the way out here we’ll actually return to Denver *earlier* than when we leave Auckland. If we have a 7:00pm flight out of Auckland we’ll be arriving in Los Angeles at approximately 10:30am on the same day, so we’ll essentially go back in time about 8 ½ hours.
In the latest chapter of the POLAR ICE saga, we have our SSL certificate installed and working properly. We’ve asked the Denver Tech Ops guys to post the latest database backup on an FTP server so that we can pull that down, restore it, and be ready to roll. This should be a drastic improvement for everyone and will hopefully reinforce the notion that the POLAR ICE team is customer-focused and solutions-oriented. How’s that for a corporate pitch? :-)
The soft serve ice cream machine has been the death of Josh, Scott & I since we got to McMurdo. It’s just so delicious, so tempting sitting there begging for us to come get a bowl after lunch and dinner. I’ve tried to resist, I honestly have, but free delicious cream is just too much. I try to use the “I need calories to stay warm” excuse but that’s a bunch of bunk. Since we’ve been eating it so regularly we’ve all become partial to particular flavor combinations. Scott always gets twist cream with chocolate sprinkles. I always get chocolate cream with Butterfinger, and Josh always gets vanilla cream with about 32 different toppings. The POLAR ICE team is diversified in every area; cream is no exception. To mix things up a little bit we talked about having a cream flavor randomizer so that we’d be forced to try different flavor/topping combinations. I took that as an action item and came up with a quick & dirty web-based randomizer application. We tried it out at lunch, and I ended up with vanilla cream with chocolate sprinkles. Scott had chocolate cream with marshmallows. We both agreed that the concept is good, but that we’re happy enough with our favorite selections.
At 1:00 we were scheduled to meet with Michael Davis, the manager of the USAP cargo operations. When we showed up he asked us if we could reschedule since he didn’t have much to show us on this slower-than-usual day. We chatted for a few minutes and made a date to get together later in the evening to hang out. Michael and Scott are good friends, having played on the softball team together for the past two summers, and Josh & I have gotten to know him pretty well, too. He’s one of those guys that talks smack constantly, and is just as good about taking what you can dish right back at him. It’s always fun to hang out with Mr. Davis.
Josh & then I decided to do a quick hike up Ob Hill since it’s right behind the cargo building, and I just happened to have my GPS receiver with me. I shattered my previous record, ascending the hill in 10 minutes, 15 seconds. According to the GPS, the summit is 785 feet high, and the path is a little over half a mile long. It seems longer, but is a good workout regardless.
It was a clear day, and I always have my camera on me, so I decided to try and take a 360-degree panoramic photo from the top of Ob Hill. The camera doesn’t have a pano setting; I just took a picture, spun a few degrees, and took another. I did this for a full circle, but when I tried pasting them together I noticed that my angle had gone up a little bit as I spun. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting photo, now available in the photo album, and I added some descriptive text to point out some of the things I’ve discussed in previous posts.
After dinner we headed up to Michael Davis’ room. He had called it the Bamboo Club, and when we got there we saw why. The flags that mark the routes around town and on the ice are attached to bamboo poles. Michael and his roommates have completely covered their walls in these poles. There’s not a spot of wall color coming through. They’ve also been coming to the Ice for about eight years, and have amassed a huge collection of DVDs, video tapes, video games, a large TV, a fully-stocked bar, glassware, couches, etc. His room is something else. He shares it with two others, and there are three signs on the door: “The Man,” “The Myth,” and “The Legend.”
We watched the remainder of Bad Boys II (or is it Bad Boyz II?), and then headed over to Gallagher’s. Michael started talking some smack about how he is the world’s greatest dart player, so the four of us started into a game of cricket. Throughout the game, we’d take turns sneaking away and calling his pager number while he was throwing. He kept getting paged, and when he called the number left on his pager, nobody would answer. We were leaving our room number, and obviously nobody was there to answer the phone when he’d try to return his page. This went on for a while and Davis was getting more and more frustrated, until he caught Scott red-handed.
The smack talk was flying left and right, but I ended up winning the game of darts. He quickly shut up and suggested we move on to shuffleboard. Josh & I took on Scott & Michael, and they won two games. This gave Davis even more incentive to talk a little trash.
During our game of darts, I should also mention that the bar played another Ween song. This time it was the most popular tune from 12 Golden Country Greats. That makes three Antarctic Ween encounters.
My dad e-mailed me and said that at least a couple of his students are submitting answers to the extra credit question I posed last time, “How did Scott & Amundsen figure out exactly where the South Pole, 90 degrees south, was located without the use of a GPS given that the magnetic south pole and the geographical south pole are so far apart?” Here’s the answer, from Kelly Brunt, the GIS specialist and holder of a masters degree in geophysics:
From Amundsen's book, 'The South Pole' (online at http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03/7tsp1210.txt), he had only 2 instruments at the pole:
"We have thus taken observations as near to the Pole as was humanly possible with the instruments at our disposal. We had a sextant and artificial horizon calculated for a radius of 8 kilometres."
From here they set up an artificial horizon, measured where the sun was in the sky (above the horizon) using the sextant, and then continued measuring for 24 hours or more; Amundsen actually measured for 24. Your expectations are that the sun won't 'move' up or down from this position over the course of the day.
In general, Amundsen's book goes into greater science detail than any of Scott's notes. I have also heard that Scott spent far less time at the pole. Consequently, it is assumed that he wasn't as close to the goal as Amundsen.
To see this visually there is a time-lapse video of one day at the South Pole at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/southpolediaries/images/mpg/anim.mpg. Notice how the sun never goes up or down, it’s always the exact same distance above the horizon as the earth spins over the 24 hours.
