Thursday was technically Thanksgiving Day, but since we’re not observing it until Saturday it was a normal workday for us. However, I was looking forward to this day quite a bit as we were scheduled to go dive tending with Rob Robbins, the USAP Dive Coordinator.

We were originally scheduled to go at 1pm, so I started the morning by finishing up the helo scheduling application I had been working on. However, Rob called and asked if we could go at 9:30 instead. We eagerly acknowledged that we could go whenever he wanted, and arrived at the dive locker right on time in full ECW gear.

There were 10 of us in our party, and we took two vehicles to get to the dive spot. We rode in a Pisten Bully along with Rob, the other two divers, and another dive tender. The second vehicle was a Mattrack-equipped truck with the other two members of the science group and another dive tender. The science group we were riding with consisted of two divers, Tracy and Dan, and two assistants, Lindsay and Leon. They are part of Adam Marsh’s project and are studying sea urchins. We rode with Tracy in the back of the Pisten Bully and she educated us on all kinds of interesting scientific stuff.

Basically, these urchins take six months to reach adolescence here in the Antarctic, yet they take just six weeks everywhere else in the world. Their project is studying why this development cycle is so much slower here. We asked her about a million questions about this and diving in the Antarctic, and she was visibly quite excited about what she was doing and was more than happy to field our barrage of questions. This is her first season on the Ice, and we were embarking on her 23rd dive. Scott asked what was most impressive about diving in the Antarctic, and she mentioned that there’s a huge amount of life under the ice and that everything is so much larger here. There are little critters that are of the same family as head lice that are usually quite tiny, but here in the Antarctic they are the size of your fist. We saw one in the aquarium; they’re like something out of a bad horror movie. She also mentioned that sea spiders are everywhere in the world, but they’re usually about the size of a quarter. Here, they’re larger than dinner plates.

As I’ve mentioned previously, not just anyone can dive in the Antarctic. In order to qualify you must have at least 50 dives under your belt, and at least 15 of those must have been dry suit dives. Once you complete the minimum requirements you must be recommended by your institution’s Dive Safety Officer, Rob Robbins (the USAP dive coordinator), and the NSF Dive Officer. Tracy said diving here is like nothing else; that it’s easily the most beautiful diving she’s ever done and she’d recommend ice diving to anyone.

To dive in the Antarctic you must wear a dry suit, and we asked a ton of questions about how those work. She explained them to us, and once the divers actually suited up it made a lot of sense. When outfitted in a dry suit, the divers stay completely warm and dry, with their face being the only part of their body that gets wet. She said that your lips and exposed facial portions go numb within 15 seconds and you don’t feel the cold. She joked that every time she surfaces they have her recite tongue twisters because her mouth is completely numb and she can’t talk very well.

The divers each wear a jumpsuit made of a Thinsulate fleece liner and nylon outer. Their feet are covered with heavy wool socks and fleece booties. Over top of all this is their dry suit, which looks a lot like a wet suit only much heavier and it’s made of a non-porous rubber so that it’s water-tight. At the wrists and neck are tight latex seals that provide a waterproof barrier once sealed against the skin. On their hands go a pair of liner fleece gloves followed by a glove made out of the same waterproof material as the dry suit. The glove has a piece of latex that goes around the large cuff on their wrist and makes another waterproof seal. On their head they wear a couple layers of latex hoods that are ultra-tight, forming waterproof seals around their eyes and lips. Their dry suit then has another hood that helps form a waterproof barrier with the latex. Lastly, they put on their fins and masks, tanks and weights, and they’re ready to dive.

We drove out onto the ice about 15 miles. The Pisten Bully is a cool ride, though probably the bounciest vehicle we’ve been on since arriving in Antarctica a month ago. It’s a tracked vehicle that looks like a short van with tank treads. The thing is capable of going over just about anything, and once we left the groomed road it felt like we were driving a tank over sand dunes in the desert. Looking across the ice it appears flat and smooth, but in reality there are places with several feet of snow that drift into large waves as high as 4-5 feet. The Pisten Bully just drives right up these drifts and down the other side, tossing the passengers in the back around like ice cubes in a blender.

The dive plan for the day was to go to an established hole, grab the dive hut, and tow it over to a new site, where we’d be drilling a brand new hole. There was a crew waiting for us in a big Caterpillar tractor, and they had already grabbed the old hut. We made our way to Little Razorback Island, not too far from Cape Evans, and found a nice spot right near the island itself. Tracy explained that they like to dive as close to shore as possible because the urchins will usually be on the bottom, and the sea gets really deep really fast. By diving close to shore they’re able to find the urchins on the steep mountainous slopes of the island extending down into the ocean.

All around the island were huge, beautiful pressure ridges that result from large ice floes opposing each other until they both give, reaching up out of the water in an immensely powerful display of natural destruction. Little Razorback Island is right next to Big Razorback Island, which is home to a Weddell seal camp, and therefore there were seals lounging all over the place.

Once we found a good spot for the dive hole, the Caterpillar towed over a ReedDrill, which I first thought was a crane when I saw it initially. It’s actually a huge drill that is used for drilling ice holes, and its bit is about three feet wide with some seriously powerful teeth that cut into the ice. The ice here was about 9-10 feet thick, and the drill took just a few minutes to get through it. It’s quite a process, as the drill goes down a few feet, pulls the shavings up, and continues until it hits the water. There are two people right next to the hole with shovels while this happens. They dig out two trenches in the middle of the pile of ice shavings. This is because once the drill reaches water the entire area floods instantly. I was standing just a few feet away from the hole when the drill reached water, and immediately 28-degree water was covering the ground, halfway up my shins. Luckily my ECW gear is waterproof, and I was extremely glad I had decided to wear my waterproof bunny boots.

Once the hole reaches the water the drill does another pass or two just to make sure it got it all, and then it’s pulled back. The Caterpillar releases the towed drill and then pushes away the ice shavings that are surrounding the hole. Finally, the dive hut itself is towed over top of the hole. Once it is in place, the Caterpillar pushes big mounds of snow all around the hut to prevent it from sailing away in the never-ending wind. I’ve mentioned the wind many times, and it’s ultra powerful out here on the sea ice. At McMurdo we’re protected slightly by the hills behind the station, but on the open ice the wind is constantly blowing anywhere from 20-40 mph. This particular section of ice didn’t have much snow on it, and there were several times that the wind just pushed me right along the ice for a few feet while I was standing still.

Once the dive hut was in place and the snow was piled around it we went inside. There’s a trap door in the floor that is removed and right underneath is the ice hole we had just drilled. Rob lit the propane heater in the hut to give us a little warmth, and that was greatly appreciated after the past 30 minutes of getting blown around the ice. The divers started to suit up, using the technique described above, and soon they were ready to go. They said they’d be down for 30-40 minutes, and then each took a turn dropping into the 28-degree waters of McMurdo Sound. Once the hole was dug the water came right up to the surface of the ice, so even though the hole itself was nine feet deep they hit water right at ice level. After submerging the nine feet to the bottom of the ice they started their dive and the hunt for sea urchins.

Once they were down we decided to brave the wind again and check out some of the seals that were lounging around the island. When I say “island” I immediately think of something lush and tropical like Gilligan’s, but this was nothing more than a big jagged rock sticking out of the ice. There is no shore to it, and even if there was, the pressure ridges circle the entire thing so there would be no safe way to approach the land. Therefore, we wandered around the outskirts of the pressure ridges, being sure to step over all of the many tidal cracks that are in the area, and got some great up-close views of quite a few Weddell seals. The first one we encountered was a juvenile, sound asleep on the frozen ice. I got a bunch of pictures of that guy, then continued on to what looked like a giant sleeping adult. It turned out that on the other side of the adult was a newborn pup sleeping with its huge mother. The mom must have weighed at least 900 pounds, it was enormous. They were also both sleeping, but after a few minutes the mother woke up. She raised her head and looked at us, as if to say “Hi there, this is my baby. If you try to take him you will die.” There’s a rule here in the Antarctic that says if you’re close enough to the wildlife that they react to your presence, you’re too close. This didn’t really count, as all she did was look at us quizzically. Had she started to move, we would have had to back up. We were probably 15 yards away, crouched down taking some great up-close pics of mother and child.

I checked my watch and saw that the divers should be done in about 10 minutes so I headed back to the hut. The two non-diving researchers were the only ones left inside, and we chatted for about 10 minutes before the bubbles appeared, announcing the presence of the divers. They have to do a safety stop at the bottom of the ice for about 10 minutes to let the pressure in their bodies neutralize, and then a few minutes later they popped up out of the hole, one at a time. I helped grab their tanks and weights so that they could climb back up out of the hole, which is much easier said than done, but they’re pros at it and did a pretty good job scaling the ice to climb out.

The divers had a successful dive, with a lot of urchins collected, and after chatting about the dive for a while they asked if there were any plungers in attendance. That’s short for polar plunge, an Antarctic tradition involving stripping naked and jumping in the ice hole, into the 28-degree water. My motto for this entire trip has been to take advantage of every opportunity I’m given, because who knows if I’ll be back here again, and I’m one of the very fortunate few to ever get the shot in the first place. Scott had had the opportunity to do the plunge when he visited Palmer Station in October, but the water there is a balmy 30-degrees. He had passed up his chance and had regretted it ever since, so the two of us decided to go ahead and plunge now that we had the chance. Josh, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with it, so he was one of the cameramen that captured the event on film for us.

Since there were four ladies in attendance that we didn’t know, we both decided it would be ok to plunge in our boxers rather than going full Commando. It’s not like my boxers would provide much warmth, anyhow. I went first, stripping down to my undies and asked the group to give me a countdown. 3-2-1, and in I went. Twenty-eight degree salt water is the coldest water in the world – any colder and it’s ice. In fact, we had to skim some solid ice pieces off the top of the hole that had formed in the interim before we could actually do the plunge. It was cold, really really really really cold. Colder than sleeping in a snow trench, even. However, your adrenaline is running so high that you don’t really notice it until you’re pulled out and standing there barefoot, dripping wet, in your underwear, in a dive hut, on the frozen waters of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Unfortunately we didn’t bring any towels, having not planned on going swimming, so I was forced to dry off with my fleece jacket. Fleece, as you probably know, is designed to wick away water rather than absorb it, so it really just pushed the water around my body more than dry me off. Scott by now had gotten stripped down and followed through by jumping in as well. He half climbed, half was pulled out, and we high-fived, celebrating what is sure to be an experience we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

A few more pictures were snapped of the two of us standing there in our underwear, sopping wet in Antarctica, and then we started getting dressed. Once everyone was dressed and ready we started passing gear back out to the vehicles, then headed back to town. We continued our discussion about Antarctic marine biology with Tracy, and before we knew it we were back home. By now it was about 2:30pm, so I changed clothes and headed back up to work.

After a few hours of normal work stuff we had dinner, went home and watched another movie, then I read some more and fell asleep by 9:30. The polar plunge, while not technically any sort of exercise, seemed to wipe me out. Maybe it was the surge of adrenaline or energy exerted while shivering, or maybe I was just plain tired. I went to bed reminiscing about the fun day we had had, grateful on this Thanksgiving Day for every opportunity I’ve had on this trip, but even more grateful for what I’ll be returning to back home next week.

If you’re interested, there are several new pictures of the event in the photo album.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty basic, straightforward days, so I’ll try to keep this post brief. I’m treating this blog as my own online journal so that someday I can come back and have a nice detailed account of how I spent the trip. The problem with that is it sometimes makes for not so interesting reading for everyone else. However, Thursday’s installment will be a good one, I promise.

As I said, Tuesday was a pretty slow day. I woke up feeling more tired than usual, and that stuck with me all day long. After I posted my last blog entry I checked out the online version of the Antarctic Sun and saw a pretty cool feature that I hadn’t noticed before. They have a section full of movie clips capturing a wide array of topics on the Ice, many of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I haven’t had a chance to look at any of them, but if you’re curious, you can find them at http://www.polar.org/antsun/15SecondFlicks.htm. If you check them out let me know what you think. The connection here is too slow for me to look into them.

Our only meeting of the day was with Michael Gerasimoff, who is part of the Ice Core Drilling Services (ICDS) team. The ICDS is a division of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and they are contracted out by the NSF to handle all ice core drilling duties. I mentioned in my cargo post that ice cores are a huge deal around here. Michael gave us all kinds of good information on how exactly they cut these cores. There’s a project that will be starting in a couple of years called WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) where they’ll be drilling ice cores down 3.5 kilometers to the bedrock. These cores are removed in 1 meter segments, so that’s a whole lot of ice to be pulling out. The biggest issue with drilling deeper than 100 meters is the pressure of the ice and its tendency to crush the holes they’ve drilled. To combat this they must keep the holes full of bentyl acetate? (that might not be right, I haven’t had chemistry in about 9 years, but it’s basically nail polish remover). The reason they use this fluid is because its density is roughly the same density as the ice, so it prevents the holes from being crushed. The drilling mechanism itself is really quite amazing, it’s suspended from a cable and has a whole system for cutting out the cores (usually 4” in diameter), while storing the shavings in a separate compartment and bringing back up the 1-meter long cylinders of ice. We discussed what he needs to be captured in POLAR ICE for any group that will be drilling cores, but mostly got a fascinating lesson on the technology of what it takes to drill a 4” wide hole down 3.5 kilometers. Michael is also on the faculty at UWM, and he knows his stuff.

After that meeting we spent a bit of time doing some gap analysis. A lot of people have expressed desire to be notified if certain sections of the SIP (document that grantees fill out) change after they’ve already seen it. If deployment dates change, for instance, the housing folks need to know, as do the workcenters that are allocating inventory, etc. We drew a matrix of who cares about which sections and began the design process for this auto notification system.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet – just dinner and hanging out in the room watching a movie before calling it a night.

Wednesday was slightly more eventful, as we had several meeting scheduled for our day. We first met with the people in charge of housing here at McMurdo. They use POLAR ICE to find out when people will be arriving on the Ice and when they’ll be leaving to go to the field. This way they can better allocate what precious bed space we have available. We were shocked and amazed to find out that they actually get their data from not only POLAR ICE, but from over a dozen other systems as well. The data rarely “jives,” and their job is largely guesswork and manual data comparison. We left that meeting thinking that something needed to be done badly in order to correct this major issue.

From there we headed to the Science Support Center to meet with Mike McClanahan and his boss, Kirk Salveson. These two guys are basically in charge of all of the workcenters we’ve been meeting with. Our goal for this discussion was to come up with a high-level overview of what they’d like to see in future versions of our application and what their priorities were for the next version. They mentioned that their number one issue had already been solved, with us installing the local mirrored copy of POLAR ICE here at McMurdo. From there we went into all kinds of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” scenarios. Those are always fun, and get my creative programmer juices flowing.

We talked about a lot of features that would simplify the lives of the workcenters and grantees at the same time. That’s what we’re here to do, and we came up with some good ideas. These are two of our most important customers, and they seemed nothing but pleased with everything we’ve done so far. That’s always nice.

I spent my afternoon building a new-and-improved Helicopter Support Request application. I’ve mentioned before that the current web form that people use to request a helo flight on station is sketchy at best. It rarely goes through when it’s submitted, and when it does go through the format is almost unreadable. Since we’re supposed to be writing software to support science I figured this was a great application to take over. What I came up with should hopefully make Monika’s life much easier and provide her with some user-friendly tools for not only receiving these requests, but also the ability to essentially build on-the-fly custom reports about these requests. Hopefully we’ll be able to roll that out in the next couple of days.

After work I hit the treadmill again (I have my legs back and it’s a glorious feeling), then had dinner and went back to work for a few hours. There’s not much else to do here but work and drink, and when I have a project like the helo request form I usually get in a “zone” until I get it finished. I worked until about 9:30 then came home, watched Mystic Pizza, read a little, then hit the sack.

Tomorrow we’re scheduled to go dive tending with Rob Robbins. This will probably be our last venture outside of town before we redeploy, and it promises to be one of the more exciting ones as well. Stay posted..

By the way, there’s a drive on our network here where people can post temporary files to share with others. I peruse it occasionally, as it’s largely made up of people sharing digital photos. One guy had a couple of great water spider shots, and since mine got such a reaction I’ve posted his to the photo album.

Every Sunday that I’ve spent in Antarctica has been pretty lazy, and this past Sunday was no exception. After the big night at the punk fest Scott & I slept in until 11:30, then got up and headed over to the best brunch south of 60.

I’ve been getting better about portion control, so for this brunch I elected to skip the luxurious Belgian waffles. However, I noticed that Jim Scott was one of the two people manning the waffle irons. Jim, again, is the station director, and this was just another example of how everyone here is pretty much an equal; it takes everyone pitching in and volunteering in order to make everything work smoothly.

There is no table service in the galley; everyone is responsible for taking their own dishes to the dishwashers and sorting the silverware, plates, bowls, glassware, and trays into the appropriate stacks. As I performed this routine I noticed that the National Geographic guys were filming me once again. So in 2007, when this documentary is released, check out the guy throwing his dirty fork into the silverware container. That’ll be me. Oh yeah.

We’ve wanted to go check out Scott Base, so we decided to meet at the shuttle stop (aka Derelict Junction) at 3:00. After brunch I thought I’d get in a few hours of jersey design before heading to Scott Base, so I headed up to building 175 to see what I could come up with. I realized I was a few days behind on the blogs and was fresh off the punk night experience so I ended up spending most of that time catching up on blogs and didn’t get any design done at all. This week’s procrastinator’s meeting has been postponed.

Once I was finally caught up on this here blog I met up with Scott & Josh and we hopped the shuttle to head over to Scott Base. This is the New Zealand Antarctic base located 2 miles southeast of McMurdo. Scott Base is much smaller than McMurdo, and is home to about 85 Kiwis. The base itself is a series of interconnected green buildings, set up so that you don’t have to go outside to get from one area to another. After taking a few pictures of the huge pressure ridge in the ice right in front of the station we headed inside to check out the store.

In the lobby of Scott Base is a guestbook with a globe sitting right next to it. We signed in and I played with the globe for a little bit. I’ve always loved maps and globes for some reason, and now that I’ve actually left the US I can appreciate the enormity of the planet a little bit more. I spun the globe around to Antarctica and someone had written “U R Here” with an arrow pointing to our location. I spun it back around to the US and once again realized just how incredibly far away I am from the comforts of home and everything I’ve known for the past 27 years. It’s kind of easy to forget where you are here. Basically everything you need is supplied in this self-sustaining community, and you become desensitized to the term “Antarctica.” Sure, it’s the 7th continent, the coldest, windiest, driest, highest, most remote place on the planet, it’s 10,000 miles from home, all that jazz, but you lose perspective on it until you see something like the globe, showing just how far away you really are from the rest of the civilized world. Check it out next time you come upon a globe. We’re far, far, far away. From anything. And everything.

The Scott Base store has a better selection of Antarctic paraphernalia than does the McMurdo store, so we bought a few things and then caught the shuttle back to McMurdo. By the time we got back it was almost dinner time; late evening in Denver, so I called Sara. It’s always the highlight of my day to talk with her, and we had a nice conversation once again. Our time apart has brought us even closer together, and I can’t wait to see her again. I’m overwhelmingly grateful for this Antarctic opportunity, but on the other hand I’m counting the days until we’re reunited.

After a hearty meal of roast beef and mashed potatoes we met up with Michael Davis at Gallagher’s once again. He had invited us there for burger night; a few nights a week you can go to Gallagher’s and get a burger and fries if you don’t feel like eating galley food. I’ve got no problem with galley food, and it’s free, so I elected not to spend the few bucks on a burger. We still had a couple of beers and played our bar games once again; Josh & I beat Scott & Michael in shuffleboard, then we beat them at pool, then Mr. Davis finally won a game of darts. I’ve noticed that when he loses a game he’s very quick to stop the smack talking and suggest a new game instead. The only one we didn’t play this night was foosball.

That was it for another lazy Sunday. Monday marked the beginning of another workweek, though this one will be a short five-day week. We observe Thanksgiving on Saturday the 29th, which would otherwise be a workday for us. So this is our last full week, then we leave on Tuesday the 2nd.

The first thing done on Monday was to run another report for the Crary Lab and housing folks. Everyone here is liking having the POLAR ICE guys on station, as we’re able to process requests immediately as opposed to having to deal with the time/date difference back in Denver. Once that was done I focused my attention on coming up with a simple installation package that we can use for future POLAR ICE updates. We’re planning on pushing down a fresh copy of the database and any new files about twice a month. The last thing we want to do is add an additional burden to the network ops folks here, so our install package is a simple double-click setup.exe that will take care of installing any new files, updating any existing files, backing up both of the POLAR ICE databases (the main db and the audit db), and then restoring the latest backup of the Denver database. It then restarts (or bounces) the appropriate services running on the machine and precompiles all of the files in the application. All of this is done with a simple double-click and a confirmation “OK” prompt. I think they’ll be pretty happy with this, especially as compared to other legacy systems that require them to do all kinds of manual database synchronization and other time-consuming tasks. The installation package also does a nice job of compressing all of the necessary files, so it’s small enough (even with the two database backups) that we shouldn’t have any problems FTP’ing it down this narrow pipe.

The big event of the day was the solar eclipse I mentioned previously. The eclipse was scheduled to begin at 11:08am and be at its fullest at 12:06pm. Here at McMurdo we were scheduled to see about 75% coverage, while at the South Pole they’d get about 90%. The medical department handed out old exposed x-ray film to use as a viewer so that we could see the eclipse without burning our retinas or having to use the old gradeschool pinhole technique.

This solar eclipse was only visible from the Antarctic, and a few companies around the world catered to the astronomy buffs with special travel packages. Qantas and an airline from Chile offered flights over the South Pole timed for the eclipse, and a Russian company charged $36,000 for a month-long Antarctic cruise onboard a Russian Icebreaker. Meanwhile, I was one of those getting paid to see the eclipse; I felt pretty fortunate once again.

All over station there were groups of people passing x-ray film around and checking out the progress of the shadow over the sun. A few of the lucky ones found welder’s masks, and some discovered that looking through a compact disc worked as well. Not the hole in the middle, but rather through the disc itself, and it only worked with commercial discs rather than CDRs. I attempted to take a bunch of photos by using the above filters in front of my camera lens; some turned out interesting, others not at all.

At 75% coverage the temperature had dropped an easy 10 degrees, and the first signs of darkness I had seen in over 3 weeks made a brief appearance. At 75% coverage it didn’t get too dark, or even dusky, but it was definitely the darkest it’s been since I arrived. All in all it was a pretty unique experience to see a solar eclipse in Antarctica. It’s just another of the experiences for which I remind myself every day that I’m incredibly privileged to have participated in.

Meanwhile, 10,000 miles away, my Broncos were getting beaten by the Chicago Bears. Wha?!?!? I think the solar eclipse must have changed the gravitational pull of the universe or something. I had the misfortune of watching a few minutes of this on the TV in the galley after eating lunch and couldn’t believe what was happening.

I don’t know if that was the main reason or not, but I discovered that from lunch through the rest of the afternoon I was incredibly cranky and irritable. Not wanting to waste a day being in a foul mood, I decided what I needed was to go for a run and get my endorphins flowing. At lunch there was a signup sheet for the Turkey Trot, and I put my name down for this 5K run that will be held Sunday at noon. I figure this week I need to lay off the ice cream, continue portion control, and do a few runs to get my legs back. I’ve also found that some of my best runs are when I’m really in a bad mood, as I push myself a lot more and once the runner’s high sets in my mood has shifted 180 degrees. After work I found an empty treadmill in the workout room and 4 ½ miles later I felt like a new person, no longer mad at the world for no apparent reason.

By then, everyone in my group had long since finished dinner so I ate alone and read the latest Antarctic Sun. There was an interesting article on the new 8-meter diameter telescope coming to the South Pole in a couple of years. I’d recommend checking that out if you’re into Astronomy at all. There’s also a good article on the eclipse.

Monday evening was spent in the galley listening to the second lecture in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration series. Ted Dettmar is our resident Antarctic history buff, and he knows probably as much as anyone else in the world about this continent’s past. He put on an interesting lecture. It was fascinating to learn about the origins of Discovery Hut, which resides just across Winter Quarter’s Bay from McMurdo Station and was the first structure built here. He also shared a story of a group of men on one expedition that were returning to Discovery Hut from Cape Adare and got caught in a storm. One of the men disappeared instantly, only to be found alive a couple days later. He had simply crouched down into a ball when the storm came and let the snow drift over him. The snow insulated him and kept him alive for 40 hours before the storm let up and he was able to stand up, brush himself off, and continue walking to the hut. Those early Antarctic explorers were a different breed.

There are a few new photos with this update, as well.

Saturday morning was spent working on the new diving section that I discussed previously. I put together all of the files for the signoff process required for all new divers that want to dive in Antarctica. Then, at 1:00 we headed back up to the cargo building for our appointment with Michael Davis.

We spent some time going over the process of how cargo gets processed on the Ice. It’s a highly complex procedure; I had no idea it was so involved. Most science groups require a fair amount of cargo to be shipped to and from the Ice in order for their experiments to work. Michael is in charge of coordinating all of this cargo from all around the world and making sure everything gets where it needs to be, and on time. Cargo comes in via airplane and vessel, and once it arrives at McMurdo some of it stays on station, other pieces continue on to the South Pole or other remote field camps. Some of it is specifically “Do Not Freeze” cargo, other pieces must be kept within a certain temperature range, and others can be placed outside in one of the many cargo lines for storage until it is ready for use.

Probably the most complicated piece of the cargo picture is the shipping of ice cores back to the grantee’s home institution. Many groups will take ice core samples, where they drill out a section (core) of the ice, cut it into smaller length pieces, and ship those back home for analysis. Most of the time they’re studying the atmosphere of the earth at particular times in history, and that atmosphere is captured in the ice core. For example, they can tell how old a particular section of ice is, and it may be hundreds of thousands of years old, depending on how deep they drilled. Captured inside that block of ice is a measurement of the earth’s atmosphere at that time – they can tell how much CO2 or O2 was in the air, etc. If that ice core melts even slightly the atmosphere will be released and their samples destroyed.

In order to combat this, there is an incredibly complex procedure involving ultra regulation of the storage of these cores once they’re brought back from the field. If cores are coming in on a flight from Beardmore Glacier, for example, Michael Davis is required to meet the plane on the runway and personally take the samples from the plane to the ice core storage facility. Along the way he has to radio in several times to get the current temperature and other metrics, all of which go into a log file. Once the cores are placed in the storage facility there are four data loggers on each palette, one on each corner. These take the temperature every 30 minutes and that data can then be downloaded. This way they can tell what the temperature is twice an hour on each corner of the palette.

Once the cores are to be shipped back home they almost always go on the resupply vessel that arrives in early February. They’ll go in a custom MilVan, which is kind of like a smaller semi trailer without wheels, and these have temperature loggers on the back of them as well as all of the individual loggers in the cargo itself. The vessel cargo guys are required to report back temperature data at least twice a day as they make their way to Port Hueneme, CA, which is where our vessel cargo center is located. When the boat arrives, Michael will be there waiting for it, having flown back from the Ice already, and he directs the ice core samples onto a series of trucks that will then drive them from San Diego to the grantees’ home institutions. Thousands of pieces of data are recorded throughout this entire process, and if there are any problems with the cores once they get home, Michael can check the data to see where the issues might have come up. Obviously if a scientist is relying on these ice cores to come up with the results of their study, and the cores melt in transit, the entire trip is a wash.

At 4:00 we had an all-hands meeting in the galley. Kirk Salveson went first and gave a pretty cool presentation on the different science support groups and some of the projects being supported this year. He’s a good speaker and his presentation had plenty of pictures to keep the crowd interested. Next was Jim Scott, and he went over some station business including some interesting demographic numbers. The average age on station is 37 years old, the most common male name is David, and we have workers from 49 states (Delaware is the only one missing). Jim mentioned that on Monday we’ll be seeing a solar eclipse that is only viewable in Antarctica, and here at McMurdo there should be about 75% coverage. That should be very cool; I’m pretty excited to see it. He also discussed Thanksgiving dinner, and mentioned that it will be observed on Saturday. That means next week will be a short five-day week, with Saturday & Sunday off, and then we work on Monday and fly back to New Zealand on Tuesday the 2nd. The all-hands was a lot of fun, actually, and just like everything else here, when compared to Denver it seemed much more to the point, relaxed, less corporate, and more unified. It reiterated my feeling of how while I can’t wait to get back home and see my family, going from working in McMurdo to my cube in Denver will be a letdown.

For dinner one of the options was the Antarctic Cod that I previously mentioned was being studied for their antifreeze proteins. I had heard that this was really good fish, so I grabbed a couple pieces of it. It was *easily* the best fish I have ever had. I couldn’t believe how good it was. You know that feeling you get every now and then when you taste something so incredibly good you wish you could eat it for eternity? That’s how I felt about the cod. I actually went back and filled up an additional plate full of the stuff. It was so flavorful, but mild and non-fishy, I just couldn’t get enough. I realized that the two greatest taste sensations we’ve had since leaving the US aren’t available back home – Canterbury Draught and Antarctic Cod.

After dinner Scott and I got sucked into Charlie’s Angels, which was playing on one of the movie stations and then grabbed Josh to head over to the Coffee House. We noticed that there’s a dart board at the Coffee House as well so we got a bottle of wine and played a couple of games. Right now there is a National Geographic film crew on station shooting a documentary about life in Antarctica. They got some film of the bartender pouring some wine and chatting with patrons, and we were right next to them. They also filmed a bit of our game, I believe, so maybe you’ll see us on TV sometime in the future. The darts weren’t flying as well as they had been the night before, and the wine was making me sleepy so I knew I had to move on or go home and go to bed.

We decided to see what was happening at Gallaghers, as it was Punk Night, with three punk bands playing live. Somehow it’s possible to staff three bands in Antarctica and bring them together for a mini music festival. Just thinking about the pain in the butt it was to move my luggage over 10,000 miles made me wonder if they all brought their own guitars and whatnot or if the equipment belongs to the station.

Walking into the bar after being in the subdued atmosphere of the Coffee House was a stark and shocking contrast. The place was absolutely jam-packed, a punk band was rocking on stage, and there was a mosh pit going right in front of them. We stood there for a few minutes in our parkas just observing everything until Crescent, a colleague from Denver, started ribbing us, asking if we were cold. We took off our coats, got a drink, and soaked in the punk fest.

Scott decided we should get a little closer to take some pictures, so he & I moved up to the mosh pit. I snapped a few, realized it was a lot more fun up there than it was in the back, and returned my camera to Josh so that I could take advantage of what may very well be my only ever opportunity to rock out to a makeshift punk band (The McMones), in a mosh pit, with my boss, in Antarctica.

Scott & I became full-fledged members of the pit over the course of the night, and at one point I noticed his sunglasses were missing both lenses and that he had a bloody nose. Aah, life in Antarctica. It was a powerful pit, but very friendly; as soon as someone started to go down there would be three people there to help them back up. The band played mostly Ramones cover songs, but they were really good and we moshed for hours. We took a few breaks to go outside and cool off; moshing in this pit works up quite a sweat, and enables you to go outside in nothing but a t-shirt. In Antarctica. The National Geographic film crew had also made its way to Gallagher’s, and was filming all of the action. At one point I even saw the cameraman, sans camera, moshing in the middle of the pit as hard as anyone else. Crowd surfing was also encouraged, though I wasn’t about to participate in that extreme sport.

The place was packed, and people everywhere were fully punked out, with ripped t-shirts, Anarchy sign fake tattoos, and spiked hair. It was a blast, and the release of moshing in this pit was something I desperately needed. Josh elected to watch all of the action from the back of the bar, but he got a few good pictures of Scott & I in action. It was a good time had by all. Scott is 40 years old, and said afterwards that it had been almost a decade since he’d done shots of Jägermeister and moshed to punk rock. This is a unique environment here at McMurdo station. It’s very much like a college town, only with people that work six days a week, and the average age is 37. Work hard, play hard is definitely the motto around here.

Finally, I have a few pictures of the punk fest, and a few that Scott gave me of past exploits on the Ice. There’s a better picture of the infamous water spider and a picture of me sleeping in my snow trench among others. You can find them in the photo album.

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."

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.

Thursday morning broke cold, windy, and snowy. Visibility was poor enough that the mountains on the other side of the bay couldn’t be seen. It was the first time we’ve had real snow since I arrived. It seems like it should always be snowing in Antarctica, but this continent is actually an frozen desert, where wind and blowing snow are much more prevalent than new snow.

The morning was pretty standard, as we continued plugging away at POLAR ICE version 2 functionality and worked on getting the new local server up and running. Everything is ready to go for the new server except for the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate. This makes the application secure, and since it holds sensitive information it needs to be secured even on the intranet. The network ops guys here and the tech ops guys back in Denver are working on getting us the proper certificate; once that’s ready it will just be a matter of finishing up documentation and announcing to the public that it’s ready to go.

Jim Scott joined us for lunch again, and we had a nice long conversation. As usual, Jim & I talked a lot about cycling and upcoming events. He’s created a spreadsheet of all the rides he wants to do this summer and is sending it around to the rest of the cyclists in the company. He’s set a goal of finishing the Triple Bypass in less than eight hours this year, and I hope to join him in that quest. We also talked a bit about cycling jersey design concepts, and that reminded me that I haven’t done anything yet with the design ideas we discussed a couple of weeks ago. I guess I know what I’ll be doing on Sunday.

The conversation then shifted to the observations we’ve made about the culture of the company here in McMurdo as compared to Denver. Life at the Denver office and life at the McMurdo office couldn’t be more different. It doesn’t feel “corporate” here like it does in Denver; everyone shares the same feeling of excitement, that we’re all in this together, on the frontier of the new age of Antarctic Exploration. That got me thinking yet again about Antarctic History, thus the lesson at the bottom of this post.

The afternoon was fairly uneventful. I pulled some deployment data for the housing folks, and they seemed to appreciate that, then it was time for ethics training. All full-time RPSC employees here on station need to attend Raytheon corporate ethics training. About halfway through it I realized I had already had this training in Denver, but didn’t want to get up and leave so I guess now I’m twice as ethical as I once was.

Meanwhile, Scott did remember taking the ethics training and therefore took a moment to check with the recreation office to see what the scoop is with the band room. Apparently it is already reserved through Saturday night, but we think we might put our names on the list for some evening next week. How often does one get a chance to rock the ice shelf in Antarctica? It’s too bad I don’t remember how to play much, but I’m sure we’ll have a good time. Scott plays acoustic guitar, I dink around on bass and drums, and Josh plays Baritone sax. We’re gonna be huge.

After dinner we decided to attend the Coffee House Cinema presentation of Cannibal! The Musical. The Coffee House has Cinema Night a couple times a week where they’ll play a DVD in a darkened section of the jamesway and it’s kind of a nice break from the constant action of the station. This selection was a project that Trey Parker created while he was attending film school at the University of Colorado. You may know that Trey is one of the South Park creators, and his cohort, Matt Stone, was one of the stars in this film.

The Musical is the true story of the only person convicted of cannibalism in America - Alferd Packer. The sole survivor of an ill-fated trip to the Colorado Territory, he tells his side of the harrowing tale to news reporter Polly Prye as he awaits his execution. And his story goes like this: While searching for gold and love in the Colorado Territory, he and his companions lost their way and resorted to unthinkable horrors, including toe-tapping songs!

It was easily one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen, but there were quite a few good laughs and it was a decent way to spend the evening. For those of you that have seen it, I hope you’re having a shpedoinkal day.

That’s pretty much it for Thursday. Some days we have great Antarctic adventures, and other days are essentially going to the office, only in the cold, wind and snow of Antarctica. To fill up a little free space, here is some more Antarctic history. I’ve gotten some good response back from the history tidbits I’ve added in previous posts, so here is a synopsis of some of the more important Antarctic Expeditions, taken from antarctic-circle.org:

JAMES COOK IN THE RESOLUTION AND ADVENTURE (1772-75)

During the course of this, his second, voyage, Cook in the Resolution with Tobias Furneaux in the Adventure became the first to circumnavigate the globe at high southern latitude and cross the Antarctic Circle; Cook achieved a new farthest south record of 71° 10' S and proved that no previous land sightings constituted an Antarctic continent. He rediscovered, named, and made a first landing on South Georgia and discovered all but three northerly islands in the South Sandwich Islands.

JAMES CLARK ROSS IN THE EREBUS AND TERROR (1839-43)

Ross's Antarctic voyage of 1839-43 was the most important since the circumnavigation of Cook and the discovery of South Shetland by William Smith. Among all Antarctic voyages and expeditions it remains preeminent. In the first season, the two ships Erebus and Terror became the first to penetrate the pack ice engirdling the Ross Sea. The Ross Sea, Transantarctic Mountains, Possession, Coulman, Franklin, Beaufort, and Ross Islands, and the Ross Ice Shelf were discovered, and landings were made on Possession and Franklin Islands. During the second season, Ross bettered his own farthest south of the previous season: 78° 9.5' S at the face of the Ross Ice Shelf. In the third season, in the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula, Paulet, Snow Hill, and Cockburn Islands, and the Danger Islands were discovered. The men made extensive and important magnetic, botanical, zoological, and other scientific observations. The expedition came close to destruction at the end of the second season when the ships, in foul weather during the middle of the night, collided and sustained severe damage to the rigging as they drifted toward colossal icebergs in their lee.

ROBERT F. SCOTT AND THE NATIONAL ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (1901-4)

Scott's British expedition was the most important Antarctic venture since Ross. Members made enormous contributions to every relevant branch of science and produced the first comprehensive photographic and pictorial surveys of the Ross Sea area. Edward VII Peninsula was discovered during an eastward exploration of the Ross Ice Shelf in the first season. The party built a hut at Hut Point in McMurdo Sound, discovered two islands and two peninsulas plus the extention of the Transantarctic Mountains south of Ross Island, and wintered farther south than any prior expedition. They discovered the first emperor penguin breeding colony (at Cape Crozier) and described the species' midwinter breeding behavior. They made the first significant penetrations into the Antarctic interior: Scott, Edward A. Wilson, and Ernest H. Shackleton traveled over the Ross Ice Shelf to 82° 16.5' S; Albert Armitage, second in command, led a party that made the first ascent onto the polar plateau, via the Ferrar Glacier. A relief voyage under William Colbeck in the Morning reached winter quarters during the second summer, but the Discovery could not escape the ice. In the third summer, another relief voyage sailed under Colbeck in the Morning and Harry MacKay in the Terra Nova. The Discovery was freed with explosives and help from the relief vessels, favorable wind, and current.

In one way or another, every subsequent Antarctic expedition during the heroic period owed a significant measure of its origin, design, and inspiration to Scott's expedition. It was the great hinge on which all subsequent Antarctic investigations turned.

ERNEST H. SHACKLETON AND THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (1907-9)

Shackleton and his men achieved a full measure of greatness on this remarkable expedition that was supported mostly by private contributions. The party sailed in the Nimrod. After establishing a base at Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound and constructing a hut, members of the fifteen-man shore party made the first ascent of Mount Erebus, discovered the Beardmore Glacier, attained a new farthest south of 88° 23' on the polar ice cap (an advance that constituted the greatest single gain toward either geographical pole), and were the first to approach the south magnetic pole located high in the Victoria Land interior. In addition, Shackleton was the first to bring motorized land vehicles to the Antarctic, and the men produced Antarctica's first book, Aurora Australis.

ROALD AMUNDSEN AND THE NORWEGIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (1910-12)

Amundsen originally intended an expedition to the Arctic and borrowed the Fram from the great Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. When Frederick Cook and Robert Peary announced the results of their North Pole exploits, Amundsen secretly changed his plan for the South Pole, informing only a few of his party, and telling the rest only just before the final departure from Madeira. All consented to proceed. Science was never intended as part of the program. A base was established in the Bay of Whales, and supply depots were laid in late summer and early autumn as far as 82° S by dog and sledge. After an uneventful winter, Amundsen made too early a start in spring and had to abort the journey.

An ensuing altercation between Amundsen and Hjalmar Johansen caused the leader to cut Johansen and two others from the polar party, reducing its size to five; the three eliminated men were assigned to explore Edward VII Peninsula. Amundsen's party reached the South Pole before Scott, … closely circumscribing the spot from 14 to 17 December 1911. The men arrived back to base safely after a 99-day journey of 1,860 miles.

SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION - THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC (TERRA NOVA) EXPEDITION (1910-13)

Scott once again planned a large-scale scientific expedition with the South Pole the crown jewel. On the way south in Melbourne, Scott received a telegram from Amundsen: a race for the South Pole was on. McMurdo ice forced Scott to select Cape Evans, less favorable than Hut Point, as his hut site. Supply depots were laid in the remaining first season as far as 79° 29' S, while a Western Party explored the dry valleys and Koettlitz Glacier. An Eastern Party, intending to explore Edward VII Peninsula, found Amundsen in the Bay of Whales, and, to avoid the Norwegians, headed for the Victoria Land coast, renamed themselves the Northern Party, and were left at Cape Adare where they spent the first winter doing research. The main party at Cape Evans spent a stimulating winter; during that season, Edward A. Wilson, "Birdie" Bowers, and Apsley Cherry-Garrard accomplished a harrowing sledging journey to Cape Crozier to collect emperor penguin eggs for study.

The southern party-sixteen men, two motor cars, ten ponies, and twenty-three dogs-set out in spring toward the South Pole. Parties of various composition turned north as they were no longer needed; from 4 January 19112, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, "Titus" Oates, and "Taff' Evans went on alone. On 16 January,, they discovered they had been forestalled by Amundsen, and the following day arrived despondent at the South Pole. The journey northward became the final act of a great tragedy as Evans, then Oates, then the remaining three died in turn. Their story was learned only by the good fortune of a search party the following spring. The eloquence of Scott's diary, last letters, and "Message to the Public" assured him legendary status and immortality.

Meanwhile, a second Western Party had been relieved by the ship; the ship's company had taken the Northern Party to Terra Nova Bay to conduct further research, but ice blocked the ship from relieving them. The six men of the Northern Party were marooned with scant food and no winter garb. They survived in a snow cave under appalling circumstances.

ERNEST H. SHACKLETON AND THE IMPERIAL TRANSANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (1914-17)

The South Pole having been achieved by Amundsen and Scott, Shackleton envisioned one great remaining Antarctic conquest: crossing the continent via the South Pole. Shackleton intended that a Weddell Sea party would reach the southernmost recess of the Weddell Sea in the Endurance and that several members would cross the continent by their own efforts as far as the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, after which they would be aided by supply depots left by a separate Ross Sea shore party landed in McMurdo Sound by the Aurora. In the course of carrying out these plans, Shackleton discovered the Caird Coast in the Weddell Sea that linked Coats Land and the Luitpold Coast.

Then, before a landing was accomplished, the Endurance was trapped in the ice: it was eventually crushed, and it sunk eight months later. The party of twenty-eight men lived in camps on the ice for another five months, then struggled at sea in three lifeboats and arrived at Elephant Island. A party of six sailed 850 miles in stormy autumn seas in the open boat James Caird to South Georgia; three of the men, Shackleton, Frank Worsley, and Tom Crean accomplished the first crossing of the uncharted island interior to reach the whaling station at Stromness Harbor. After three unsuccessful attempts to relieve the marooned party at Elephant Island, Shackleton, with the assistance of Chileans in the Yelcho, rescued his men, who by now had been stranded for over four months.

On the other side of the continent, members of the Ross Sea shore party under Aeneas Mackintosh established their base at Cape Evans. The Aurora was stripped of its moorings in late autumn before all supplies for the shore party were landed; the ship went adrift and was nearly wrecked. The ten men ashore succeeded in laying the depots despite deprivations and the deaths of three men: all their efforts were for naught. The Aurora was repaired in New Zealand and placed under the command of John King Davis; with Shackleton aboard, the ship arrived at Cape Evans to rescue the seven stranded survivors.

Looking at my calendar Wednesday morning I saw we had scheduled two workcenter appointments. The first was with Joni English, the fixed wing coordinator. This ended up being a fascinating look into the world in which she lives that lasted well over two hours.

When we arrived at her office for the meeting she was wrapping up some business with the Air Guard, so we chatted with Mike McClanahan, who has been joining us for some of the more important workcenter meetings. He mentioned a few more “pie in the sky” features he’d love to see in a future version of POLAR ICE. As I’ve discussed before, there are all kinds of training classes one needs to take upon arriving at station before certain tasks can be performed. Before you can leave station on a hike you have to watch the Safety Outdoor Lecture video. Before you can drive a truck you have to watch the driver's safety video. Before you can go to altitude you have to watch the altitude safety video, etc., etc., etc. Mike thought it would be great if we could somehow tie these into POLAR ICE, and offer not only streaming video but also have actual courseware with tests at the end so that people could take some of these trainings over the Internet rather than wasting their first few days on station doing the same thing.

This appealed to us a great deal, largely because in a former life Scott was a courseware developer and I used to work for IQDestination. At IQD we built an online Learning Management System component that tied several different types of courseware offerings together. The four of us discussed some potential applications, including tracking the views of the training pieces and the associated test results with the new training database we talked about last week. We came up with what I think are some really good ideas that should really expand the whole “software supporting science” concept and save people down here a lot of time.

Joni was late because of a problem that recently arose that kind of sums up her entire job here on station. Apparently when a plane (bird) flies there needs to be a certain amount of liquid oxygen (lox) on board. For some reason, a lot of the lox bottles have been damaged and we are running very short. If we run out of lox, all planes are grounded, which would be very, very bad. She was shuffling schedules around to free up a plane to go to Christchurch and get some more to bring down. The problem is that the plane can’t also accompany passengers due to some safety regulations, but it can take cargo. However, there’s not any cargo in CHC right now that needs to come down. Does she bump an existing mission to free up a plane to go to CHC, or does she risk it? Just one of the many dilemmas she faces on a daily basis.

Joni is in charge of scheduling all of the fixed wing operations, including ski-equipped LC-130 flights and lighter twin otter flights. A key aspect of her job is figuring out how much cargo and how many passengers (pax) can go on any given flight. Several criteria make the final determination. A plane can only carry so much weight. The most important weight consideration is how much fuel is on board; how much is needed to get from Point A to Point B, with the proper amount of reserve? Next, how much cargo needs to go and how many pax need to go, and what has priority? Which pieces of the entire cargo load have the highest priority? She has a custom spreadsheet into which she can plug the Point A & Point B coordinates and choose the airframe that will be flying the mission (LC-130 or Twin Otter). A formula then calculates the distance between the points and based on airframe how much fuel is needed. She can then play with different combos of cargo and pax to come up with the best load plan for that particular flight. Once the flights are all planned, the schedule goes to the appropriate people and Joni hopes everyone comes through for her.

One key difference between fixed wing and helo is that with helo, everything is handled right there at the hangar. The choppers are literally right out the front door, and the helo staff handles the weighing, packing, and loading of all cargo and pax. They also fly much more regularly, as helos fly shorter distances than the fixed wing flights. For the fixed wing operations, Joni relies on the weather guys, the Air National Guard (which operates the LC-130s), Ken Borek Air (which operates the twin otters), and the Movement Control Center (MCC), which is in charge of building the cargo palettes and getting them down to the appropriate runway. As you can see, she gets blamed when things go wrong but she has to rely on so many people that she has little control. There are always things coming up, weather moving into scheduled landing sites, etc. When there are so many groups involved in a single mission communication is huge. Joni shared the story of an Air Guard scheduler who hadn’t been told that one of their planes had recently gone in for a new paint job and that screwed up all of his load plans. What’s the big deal, you ask? The plane was fine; it was ready to go, but the new coat of paint on the huge plane added an additional 7,000 pounds to its total payload!

After showing us some of her planning tools we came up with a few ideas that could make her life a little easier through software, and then we took a tour of the building. She is in the same building as MacOps, the communications hub, and we poked our head into that fascinating facility again. She also showed us RavenOps, which is where the Air Guard is based, and it looked like a scene right out of Behind Enemy Lines. The meteorology department is also in this building and they have all kinds of cool flat panel monitors that show every possible current weather statistic, from satellite imagery to wind speed and direction. I love this building; I could just hang out here and watch the chaos all day long.

Next we headed to the Crary Lab again to meet with Kelly, the map girl and resident Geographic Information Systems (GIS) expert. We were about 40 minutes late but she didn’t care because she had just gotten back from a mass casualty drill. On station a “mass casualty” is defined as any situation that injures three or more people. There simply aren’t enough resources to handle more than that. Therefore, residents are asked to volunteer for supporting positions should such an event occur. If you’re on station for the entire season you could volunteer for roles such as ambulance driver or security personnel.

Kelly’s section in POLAR ICE is fairly small but highly interesting. Science groups can use a GPS receiver out in the field to take coordinates with accuracy up to a decimeter. Kelly can then generate all kinds of custom maps for the groups. Kelly probably generated just about any official USAP map of Antarctica that you’ve seen. We discussed her section and then she gave us an interesting lesson on compasses and GPS technology at high latitude. Apparently magnetic compasses don’t work well down here at all. I don’t remember all of the technicalities of why that is, but it has to do with the fact that the earth isn’t a perfect sphere, that we’re at the bottom of the magnetic field which is ear-shaped, and that the South Pole actually has a greater influence over the needle on your compass than does the North Pole once you get to these latitudes. In fact, the magnetic and geographical South Poles are quite a ways apart. The magnetic South Pole is in the ocean not too terribly far west of where we are right now. This led into an interesting discussion on how Amundsen and Scott first knew how to find the geographical South Pole, which is exactly 90 degrees south. Obviously their compasses did no good, and in 1912 there was no GPS, so how did they determine exactly where the South Pole was? (Note to physics teachers reading this back home – that would make a great extra credit question). I’ll give you a couple of days to ponder it before sharing the answer.

After dinner I watched a little boxing; the Armed Forces Network was replaying the fight that aired Saturday night on HBO. I don’t remember who it was, but HBO boxing is usually pretty high-caliber, and this was no exception.

Towards the end of the fight Rob came over, and then he, Scott, and I grabbed Josh and headed to the Coffee House for a round of Trivial Pursuit. This time we found the Millennium Edition, which is much more my speed than that old original 1982 version which we played last time. Josh & I teamed up against Scott & Rob in the battle of youth vs. experience (Josh and I were born a week apart). We immediately started kicking their butts, and then Kelly sat down to bail them out. She is a trivia master, and was able to get them to within a pie, but Josh and I came back with a vengeance and won handily. I am still undefeated in my Trivial Pursuit quests on the Seventh Continent :-)

At some point Kelly mentioned that there was a big TV sitting at the end of her hallway. After the game of trivia Scott and I decided to see if it was still there, and sure enough it was, so we hauled the thing back to our dorm to see if it would work in Club 316. We have a small 13” TV, but this thing is a 25-incher, so it makes a huge difference. The only problem is that it’s so old there’s no remote, and each channel has its own big push button that you have to press to tune to that station. It shouldn’t be a big deal since we only have 3 or 4 real channels, and it's kind of a piece of living history. Who knows how that thing got to the Ice or how long it’s been here. It’s archaic to say the least.

Each Sunday a new issue of the Antarctic Sun is published. This is the only newspaper published on the continent, and is also available online if you’re interested (see the link in the Antarctic Links section of the left nav). One of the more interesting stories in this edition described the Polar T3 Prevention project. Here’s a snippet:

A vacant stare. A perplexing midsentence pause. A general vagueness or malaise. These are some symptoms of a problem that used to be known as "winter-over syndrome." Now believed to be linked to thyroid hormones, the disorder is more commonly referred to as polar T3 syndrome. Psychologist Larry Palinkas and a team of others, including physiologist Kathleen Reedy, have been studying the effects of extreme cold on the body for more than a decade.

The researchers have discovered that people living in Antarctica commonly lose one degree in body temperature. They also consume 40 percent more calories and use 35 percent more energy when resting or exercising when compared to their routines in temperate environments. Research has also documented changes in the thyroid system, which is responsible for regulating the body’s metabolism. The T3 hormone and related hormones are decreased in the central nervous system and increased in the muscle tissue. While this extra thyroid hormone in the muscle helps create friction to keep the body warm, the deficit in the central nervous system makes people forgetful, sluggish and even depressed.

The first interesting event of Tuesday was a 9:30 inbrief at the Chalet. The day after a science group arrives on station they will go to the NSF Chalet for an inbrief. At the inbrief, each workcenter supervisor will provide the group with an overview of the support they’ll be receiving and any additional information such as pager numbers, contact information, etc.

There was only one science group at this inbrief; they are studying “Yeasts in the Antarctic Dry Valleys: Biological Role, Distribution, and Evolution.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but they’ll be in the Dry Valleys until February. I’m sure there’s scientific merit in there somewhere or they wouldn’t have gotten funded for this three-year project. I’d be interested to learn what the results of their findings are and how it affects the world in which we live.

The inbrief was the only meeting on our Tuesday calendar, so the rest of the day was spent doing normal work stuff. For those of you following the POLAR ICE saga, we were able to successfully configure our new local server and have everything pretty much up and running. All we need to do now is test it thoroughly and document everything before releasing it to the general McMurdo populous.

One of the big events of the day was the departure of the South Pole Traverse crew. Last season there was a proof-of-concept study done to determine whether it was possible to build a traverse route from McMurdo Station to the South Pole. They determined that it is possible, and this year is the first year that they will make the full traverse to 90 South. The idea is that they’ll build a regular surface route from McMurdo to the South Pole, freeing up ski-equipped LC-130 airplanes for other missions. It wouldn’t be used to transport personnel, just cargo and supplies. Driving directions to the South Pole are simple on paper – head east from McMurdo then angle across the Ross Ice Shelf; jog up the Leverett Glacier and head due south to the Pole. It’s about 1,000 miles one-way, a bit longer than the 825 miles the LC-130 fly, but potentially more reliable and cheaper.

The traverse is a long caravan of Case tractors and Pisten Bullies towing trailer after trailer of supplies and fuel. The trailers are all on skis, and carry huge fuel tanks, portable berthing huts, flags for marking the route, etc. – everything you can imagine that would be required for an undertaking like this. The team will take about two months to reach the Pole and are led by a Pisten Bully that has a long probe coming off the front of it. The probe is a crevasse detector that should (hopefully) detect any crevasses in time for the team to stop and figure out how to pass. During the proof of concept I heard that they found 32 crevasses in one three-mile stretch. I can’t imagine driving 1,000 miles across the Polar Plateau, taking two months to get to your destination, and not having any truck stops or visitor’s centers to stop at along the way. Allen, our Snowcraft I instructor, is accompanying the team to help them set up camp each night. Now there’s an adventure.

After work I called my parents to check in and let them know I’m still alive and not yet frozen. It’s always nice to chat with the family; while it was 5pm on Tuesday here in McMurdo, it was 10pm on Monday back in Iowa. I’m still getting used to that whole time difference thing.

At dinner we ate with Rob, Mike, and Tim Nicoll. Tim is yet another Courage Classic rider (I’m telling you, almost the entire team is here on station; doing that ride was great for my USAP career). Tim shared some stories about a motorcycle mishap he had in New Zealand – the moral of his story being that if you’re thinking about renting a bike in Christchurch you should first be familiar with the New Zealand traffic laws, be comfortable on an 1100cc bike, and have some motorcycle riding experience or bad things can happen.

After dinner Scott was really antsy. He said he doesn’t handle boredom well so we were looking for something to do. I had pulled out my GPS receiver a little earlier and wanted to play with it a bit here in Antarctica. Since we had all had some ice cream after dinner we decided to walk the loop that goes through the station and see if the GPS could track us at the bottom of the world while we burned a fraction of the calories we had just consumed. Sure enough, the GPS worked like a champ and it was pretty cool to see our coordinates, 77° 85’ South, 166° 63’ East. The wind had picked up and we were all freezing our butts off so we elected to stop the experiment once we got near our dorm.

The first floor lounge in our dorm has a pool table, so we played a few games of cutthroat. Meanwhile, on the other side of the lounge, debate night was going on. They were debating whether or not the media is responsible for the problems seen in American Society. I had quite a few things to say about their viewpoints, but I was good and kept my mouth shut.

Scott decided that he was jonesin’ to play some guitar and we remembered that there’s a music room here on station. Not knowing where it is, we grabbed our coats and set out to find it. Luckily we ran into Kelly, the map girl, and she pointed us in the right direction. We opened up the door and the sweet, sweet sounds of “The Blarney Stone” by Ween came wafting out. As some of you know, Ween is the greatest band in the world, but hearing them anywhere in public is a fairly unusual occurrence as they are just about as far from mainstream as you can get. This was actually the second time I had heard unsolicited Ween since arriving – the first time someone played “Dancing in the Show Tonight” at Gallagher’s. Hearing a little surprise Ween action always brightens my day.

Anyway, the music room is basically a music studio with amps all over the walls, guitars, microphones, etc. You have to reserve the space through the rec office, and someone already had it for the night. He did a pretty nice version of the Ween tune, and then Scott and I headed to Gallagher’s to see if we could find Rich (the Aussie). Rich wasn’t there, probably due to the fact that they were having swing dance lesson night, so we checked the Coffee House next. Sure enough, there he was, so we sat down and chatted for a while about the pros and cons of rugby vs. American football. He was flying high on the recent Australia Wallabies victory over the New Zealand All Blacks. I hadn’t heard about that yet and was bummed, as I’ve become a big All Blacks fan since I left the States.

A couple other points I wanted to mention: Sara made a comment yesterday about how she was worried that I’d never come home since I’m having so much fun. It’s true that this is a lot of fun, but it can also get fairly mundane at times. We work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and I don’t write about the times where I’m sitting alone in my tiny dorm room, bored and homesick. Nobody wants to read that, and the last thing I want to do is sound ungrateful for this opportunity. Obviously whenever you spend almost 6 weeks away from your family you’re going to get a little homesick, and the irrepressible wind and cold do start to take their toll after a while. I wouldn’t trade this opportunity for the world, but I am certainly looking forward to getting home and seeing my wife again. Antarctica is incredible, but being away from home for almost 6 weeks definitely takes its toll. I don’t know how the people that spend an entire season down here can do it. Just knowing that this is it, there’s nothing else for over 2000 miles, and that the comforts of home are over 10,000 miles away, can play with your head if you let it. I try not to focus on that and instead want to take advantage of the incredible opportunity I’ve been given.

One other thing I haven’t really mentioned much is the wind chill. While the temperatures here are usually pretty tolerable (most days are in the teens), the wind never lets up. Walking around town, the wind chill usually averages about 20-30 below zero. If you go anywhere outside of town, like on the sea ice, Ob Hill, or Hut Point, the wind picks up quite a bit since you are no longer sheltered by the hills behind the station. The outlying areas around McMurdo have temperatures at least ten degrees colder because of this. Scott Base is less than two miles away but on the other side of the hills and has average temperatures of below zero to single digits. They also get hit with even more wind than we do. It’s always windy here. Just walking from the dorm to the galley – a two to three-minute walk – requires bundling up with a stocking cap, heavy parka, and gloves.

Tomorrow we continue our workcenter meetings, first observing the fixed wing coordinator’s tasks and then we head to the GIS/GPS department. Speaking of which, I pulled down a map of the routes around station that should hopefully give you a better visual of where some of the things I’ve talked about are located in relation to McMurdo and the rest of Antarctica. You can find that in the photo album. I also posted a picture of my wedding photo taken at the South Pole. As I mentioned previously, Scott, my boss, spent a few days there and I gave him this picture to take to the Pole. He had to put the picture between the fingers of his glove (getting frostnip in the process, you should check out his blog entry about that) in order to prevent the photo from blowing away. However, the picture turned out pretty well and is a cool reminder of what awaits me back home :-)

Monday started off with breakfast and some basic work-related activities prior to our 9:30 meeting with Steve Alexander, Crary Lab Supervisor. Steve runs the entire show at the Crary Lab, which as previously mentioned is the relatively new 46,500 sq. foot state-of-the-art laboratory and aquarium facility here on station. The Crary Lab was built at a cost of $23 million and holds over $4 million in capital equipment including hi-tech instruments such as a mass spectrometer, ultra-centrifuges, spectrophotometers, and liquid scintillation counters. Multiple services ranging from analytical chemistry, electronics, and information technology to diving support are provided to the more than 500 scientists who pass through McMurdo each season.

We had met with Steve and his staff this past summer in Denver, but we wanted to touch base with him to see if any new issues had arisen since he got to the Ice. After chatting about POLAR ICE and life as a grantee, Steve gave us a tour of the laboratory stock rooms. Inventory is a large portion of our application so it was really interesting to see all of this equipment in person. Next Steve had Sally, one of the lab staff, explain to us how grantees check out lab equipment. We had discussed the possibility of a barcode inventory management system with Steve, and after seeing the manual checkout process it was evident that something needs to be done to streamline this process.

I elected to skip lunch in favor of calling Sara and doing some work on the diving portion in POLAR ICE before our next meeting. At 1300 we met with Karla, the Berg Field Center (BFC) manager. This is the REI of McMurdo, with every imaginable piece of outdoor gear available for groups going into the field. Along with the lab section, the field support section is very inventory-centric, so it was a real eye-opener to see the massive amount of gear available for checkout.

After getting a tour of the BFC we went next door to the Food Room. When a group goes into the field for 3 months they need to eat. Thus, we have a Food Room, or essentially, a grocery store for grantees. They come in and pull items off the shelves, put them in boxes, and take them into the field. In doing this, they use a barcode scanner application that Josh developed over the summer. In the past every item had to be manually marked down on a piece of paper. Imagine buying 3 months worth of groceries, and writing down each item as you pull it off the shelf. The new barcode system has been a big hit, and Peggy, another Courage Classic rider and Food Room Manager, gave us a demo of how she uses the system. After the demo we headed back over to the BFC.

A science group was in the BFC setting up an Endurance Tent. This looks a lot like a half dome when it’s set up, but it has the stability and several of the same design characteristics as a Scott tent. We watched this process for a while and then retrieved our coats to head to our third and final workcenter meeting of the day.

At 1500 (I'm getting good with this military lingo, huh?) we met with Rob Robbins, the “Dive Boy” on station. He manages all SCUBA and underwater diving operations here. There are quite a few groups that collect samples underwater, and Rob facilitates all of this. In fact, if you saw the PBS documentary, “Under Antarctic Ice,” Rob was shown many times with the documentary team. I worked closely with Rob over the summer to help come up with a process for streamlining all of the permit and diver information forms that must be completed for each science group, and diver, looking to take the plunge in Antarctica. We demoed the new functionality we came up with and Rob was very pleased. The dive coordinator for the NSF was also there, and he also seemed thoroughly impressed with what we presented. In the past there was a manual paper-based system that involved each grantee filling out information, sending it to Rob, who entered more info, who then sent it to Mike at the NSF. Papers and faxes were going all over the place and it was a fairly inefficient process. A late addition to version 1 of POLAR ICE was to pre-populate these forms with data already entered into the system, but the faxing of paper documents was still required. In version 2 of POLAR ICE everything will be done online, thereby eliminating the need for a single sheet of paper or fax transmission.

After the demo we chatted with Rob for a short while and he invited us along to go diving with him later this week. While I won’t get to dive, it should be fun to watch. Not just anyone can dive in the Antarctic; you must have at least 50 dives under your belt, and at least 15 of those must have been dry suit dives. Additionally, you have to have a certain depth certification and have received the recommendation/approval of Rob, your institution’s Dive Safety Officer (DSO), Mike at the NSF, and the DSO at the Smithsonian Institute. They basically acknowledge that you’re a competent-enough diver to be able to deal with diving under a ceiling (the ice), and can deal with the cold 28-degree water.

I can’t wait for this trip, as it will involve trekking across the ice in a Pisten Bully, which is a small transport vehicle that has tracks similar to a tank, and is designed specifically for driving across sea ice. It’s also a very common occurrence for seals to emerge from dive holes, and where we’re going isn’t too far from the ice edge, which means there’s even a chance to see some penguins.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. If you’ve been following the POLAR ICE local mirroring story, we received a call late in the day from Tech Ops that they have a server ready for us, so tomorrow we’ll start getting that ready to roll. After dinner I headed back to the office to finish up a bit more work on the diving stuff, then retired to my room to watch Sea Biscuit and hit the sack a little early.

Another general observation I’ve had thus far is that this place is essentially organized chaos. It’s impressive to see the level to which each workcenter goes out of their way to provide the best possible support to science groups coming to the Ice. In Denver this sometimes just seems like an ordinary job, but down here everyone is 100% devoted to the pursuit of science, whatever it takes. It makes me proud to be part of the program, and has absolutely reaffirmed my faith in what it is I’m doing here, and in my career choice in general. I believe my friend Kevin left a comment on one of my earlier blog posts that said traveling would expand my mind and open me up to other cultures and beliefs. Now that I’ve been gone for almost three weeks I couldn’t agree more. The people in New Zealand were wonderful, but being at McMurdo is a sociology experiment if nothing else. You never know exactly whom it is you might be talking to next. There are PhDs here that are dishwashers. They love the program so much they’ll do anything to come back and support it year after year. The woman who gave the presentation on the AWE Expedition, one of the four women to successfully trek from the Weddell Sea to the South Pole, is a trash hauler here. She just loves Antarctica. The other day I saw Harry Mahar, the NSF’s Safety Officer (a very high ranking person in the program) washing dishes. You can volunteer to help out in the kitchen and he was leading the way. Like I said, being here has absolutely reaffirmed my belief in the program, and it’s so much more than just being a “web developer.” I’m one small piece of this bigger picture that is supporting the science which provides a better understanding of Antarctica and the world in which we live. It’s very impressive and eye opening to say the least.

Now for the history lesson: Yesterday I mentioned that we had hiked down to Discovery Hut. Here’s the background on this structure, straight from the handout we received at the Firehouse:

This hut was built in February 1902 during the National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition of 1901-1904, led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott who later found it a valuable advance staging point for journeys on the “Barrier” during his 1910-1913 expedition. It was also used by Sir Ernest Shackleton during the 1907-1909 British Antarctic Expedition and later by his stranded Ross Sea Party during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. This building was prefabricated in Australia to an ‘outback’ design with verandahs on three sides.

The Hut Point site is one of the principal sites of early human activity in Antarctica. It is an important symbol of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration and, as such, has considerable historical and cultural significance. Some of the earliest advances in the study of earth sciences, meteorology, flora and fauna in Antarctica are associated with Discovery Expedition based at this site. The history of these activities and the contribution they have made to the understanding and awareness of Antarctica give this Area significant scientific, technical, aesthetic, and social values.

As mentioned previously, we work six days a week on the Ice, so Saturday is just another workday for us.

While being in Antarctica is a very cool (pardon the pun) work environment, we do have a lot to do yet before we leave. I know it doesn’t make for the most interesting reading to hear that I went to work, so I’ll try to be brief and just get to the point (something I’m not very good at sometimes).

Our meetings with the workcenter supervisors would continue, as we had scheduled a 10:00 with Jay Ranson, construction supervisor, and a 1:00, or 1300, with Alan Cornelison, Mechanical Equipment Center (MEC) supervisor. Scott was asked to join a 10:30 meeting with the CIO and deputy CIO from the NSF, so Josh & I interviewed Jay on our own.

Jay is in charge of running the carpentry shop, which does all kinds of custom fabrications for science groups. They are also responsible for the entire construction of and putting in of field camps whenever a group goes into the deep field.

POLAR ICE has worked well for Jay, and he didn’t have a whole lot of new functionality he needs or any new data that should be captured. We did come up with a few items, and then took a tour of the carp shop. This is a large building full of every possible tool, saw, and workbench. It looked like Norm Abram would be walking around the corner at any moment.

He showed us the three types of large tents they use for deep field camps, which are Jamesways, Rack-style Tents, and Weatherhavens. The carp shop is also in charge of the fish huts, which go out onto the ice for diving and fishing experiments. There are only 21 of these available, and apparently take months to build. He talked about how the shop has built just about everything imaginable in the past, from custom battery boxes to seal coffins. Science groups are always asking for one-off custom fabrications, and his team of 23 carpenters will almost always come through for them.

After the meeting Josh & I went back to do a bit more work before lunch. Scott was still wooing the CIO from the NSF so we headed to eat without him. A short while later he joined us, saying that his meeting had also gone well. After lunch we met with Alan from the MEC and got a few ideas for ways to better help him and his allocation of mechanical equipment such as generators and snowmobiles.

After working a bit more we had an IT all-hands at the galley. Each manager gave a short talk about his or her division’s current status, and Cleve (the IT Supervisor) introduced us and asked Scott to describe our project to everyone.

Since the meeting was at the galley and it ended just before dinner was to be served we sat around for a while chatting about all kinds of things. I was itching to get some exercise before sitting down to yet another meal so I decided to go hike Ob Hill first. The day before when I hiked it with Josh & Scott they nicknamed me “The Goat” because I have a tendency to hike fairly quickly. They thought I should clock myself to see how long it takes. I thought that was a grand idea so headed out for a quick hike before dinner.

It took me 10:36 to get to the top, but on the way down I was stopped by another hiker for some friendly chitchat. I didn’t want to stop my watch out of politeness, so by the time I got down it was 20:56 total. I know I can do it in 18:00 or less, maybe even 15:00 once I perfect my route. It’s about 750-800 feet high, but I’m not sure how long the path is. I know I’ll be infatuated with this new challenge, so it will be interesting to see how my time improves throughout the next 2 ½ weeks.

At dinner someone mentioned that there were 5 Weddell Seals hanging out down by Discovery Hut so we decided to hike down and take a look. Since the key to the hut is can be checked out we stopped at the Firehouse to grab it. It was available, so after reading the rules of the hut we headed down to see the history and the wildlife. The seals were just far enough off the peninsula that you couldn’t get a very good view of them. We had heard that some penguins had been hanging out here the night before, so that might explain the seals (and lack of penguins).

We entered the hut, and it was like stepping back in time. This was the first structure built on the continent, in 1902. It was pre-fabricated in Australia and brought to Antarctica by vessel to be reconstructed. The sheet we received from the Firehouse has the entire history of the hut; I’ll list that in a future post. The hut is very cool, but not quite as mind-expanding as the hut on Cape Evans. Perhaps it’s because this one is smaller, or that Josh & I were already familiar with mummified supplies from almost 100 years ago. It was still very impressive and made me stop again to appreciate the incredible history of this place. I was standing in the exact spot where Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton had initiated Antarctic expeditions.

Scott wasn’t on our Cape Evans trip so this was the first time he had seen anything like this. He spent a lot of time in the hut, taking upwards of 60 pictures and 3 videos. Meanwhile, I had hiked up to the Our Lady of the Snows Shrine, which is yet another cross about ¼ mile above Discovery Hut. This has a plaque dedicating the shrine to Navy Seabee Richard Williams, who died in 1956 when the tractor he was driving fell through the sea ice. He was only 22 years old at the time, and imagining what he went through at that fatal moment was almost too much to comprehend. One moment he was driving a tractor, the next he was sinking 350 fathoms (2,100 feet) in 28-degree water, trapped inside a tractor. His body was never recovered.

The shrine also had several impromptu memorials set up for others that have given their lives in order to help us better understand Antarctica and the world in which we live. It was a fairly deep moment to think about all of those that have been here, and those that never made it back home, while gazing down at McMurdo Station from up on this hill.

After hiking back to the Firehouse and turning in the key we decided to head to the Coffee House to warm up. The Coffee House serves many different wines and “Java Jolts,” or shots that you can have them put in coffee or cocoa. We got our drinks and sat down at a table with Cleve for some great conversation. Cleve is a long-time veteran of the program, and he and his son were the first ever father-son winter-over team at South Pole Station. I don’t know how anyone can winter-over at the Pole, with its insanely cold temps (Cleve said it hit 117-below one year when he was there), and 24-hours of darkness. I suppose it would be doable with a family member, but I’m still impressed by anyone who winters over at any of these stations. There are no flights in or out, just six months of work in the dark.

We found a cribbage board and Josh, Scott, and Cleve taught me how to play. It’s an interesting game of counting, and I picked it up fairly quickly, though I still have a ways to go. We ended up closing down the Coffee House drinking wine and playing cribbage, and then headed over to Gallaghers to top the night off with some air hockey and shuffleboard.

Sunday morning I slept in a bit, did some laundry, and then headed over to the infamous Sunday McMurdo Brunch. Oh, how I love this meal. After eating more than I needed once again I retired to my room to watch some college football. Yes, we get college football on Sundays here. It’s very strange. Being 20 hours ahead of Denver is just one more oddity of this adventure.

Once Nebraska had been formally crushed by Kansas State the phone rang and it was Curt LaBombard, one of the science planning managers from Denver. He’s in town for just a few days before heading to the Beardmore Glacier Field Camp for two months. Curt has been coming here for a long time, and asked if we were interested in the “underground tour.” We all eagerly said yes, and piled into one of the monster trucks.

Curt first drove us up near the Arrival Heights area where NASA has a giant golf ball of some sort. I neglected to ask what it is used for, as I was captivated with the view. It’s a similar view to the one from Ob Hill, but from here you can see much farther west, out to Cape Evans and beyond. There’s also a big microwave receiver up here that pulls in the signal from Black Island. This is how all of the communications on station (TV, radio, etc) reach Mac Ops, the central hub here on station.

Next he gave us the driving tour of all kinds of cargo and vessel retro staging areas, along with personal antidotes about each. It was really interesting to hear all of the personal stories that he has, this place has been a big part of his life and it’s readily apparent that he loves it here.

Curt worked in the carp shop for seven years, and next gave us an insider’s tour of the facility. There are all kinds of interesting items in here that we hadn’t seen on our tour with Jay, and this was the first tour of the shop for Scott.

Next we made our way to Mac Ops, which is the communications hub of McMurdo Station. There is a dispatcher on duty 24/7 answering all calls from VHF and HF Radio as well as Iridium Phone. Curt radioed the deep field camp at Beardmore, and we all sat back and soaked in the coolness of this room. This is where everything happens. People all over the continent radio in here every day, it’s a highly interesting place to sit and observe. It looks like a control deck out of Star Trek or Apollo 13 or something. There are flat panel touch screen monitors, receivers, lights, meters, buttons, and maps all over the place.

After our tour we headed back to the dorm and ended up sleeping until dinner. The rest of the evening was spent watching Pirates of the Caribbean and Behind Enemy Lines on the two movie channels here on station. It was a nice lazy day 2,100 miles from the nearest civilization.

There are two new photos in the photo album as well.

Friday morning started with Scott and I running late, just missing the hot breakfast food. The kitchen pulls all of the food promptly at 7:30, and as we arrived they were taking it away. I was forced to eat a bowl of Golden Grahams with evaporated skim milk instead of my usual scrambled eggs. I made a mental note to set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier from now on.

Our first meeting of the day was with the McMurdo NOC, or Network Operating Center. Our goal: to figure out a solution for mirroring POLAR ICE locally. They were more than accommodating, and once they found out we didn’t need them to do any application support, just apply an update fix every couple of weeks, they gladly offered the use of one of their servers for this project. We chatted with them for almost an hour, discussing how we could help them with some of their overwhelming support issues. One of the topics discussed was the online helicopter flight request form that Monika could really use. They seemed thrilled that we were willing to look at the code that is currently in place, but doesn’t work. They’re network people, not web programmers, but unfortunately they get hit with all of the web issues that come up. As our primary charter is not just POLAR ICE, but software to support science as a whole, we’re looking to do whatever we can to support the workcenters. Fixing this form for Monika is a small undertaking that will make her life much easier.

Next we headed over to the Crary Laboratory. This is a 46,000 square foot facility that was built in three phases. Karen Joyce, from the Denver office and yet another Courage Classic rider with me this summer, gave us the secret tour of the facility. Every Sunday at 2:00 there is a public tour, but Karen showed us all kinds of nooks and crannies that the general public never sees. This is a truly fascinating building.

The tour started in the CSEC (Crary Science and Engineering Center Library), on the second floor of Phase I. This library also serves as a lounge for the grantees, and has a tremendous view of Mt. Lister and the rest of the mountains across the bay. Trivia tidbit of the day: Mt. Lister is the tallest in the Royal Society Mountain Range across the bay, at 13,205 feet high. It was named after Dr. Joseph Lister, whose research into antiseptics eventually led to what is now known as Listerine. There are quite a few other peaks in this range that are nearly as high, and the fifth tallest peak is named Joyce Peak, after our very own tour guide. Karen has been in the program long enough that a mountain has been named in her honor. Pretty cool stuff.

Near the entrance of the building is a display case full of all kinds of amazing artifacts. There are skulls of many different types of seals, petrified wood from an Antarctic forest millions of years gone, and even several meteorites that have hit the continent. Karen knows a lot about everything in this case and we spent quite a while just gawking at all this cool stuff.

Phase I of the Crary Lab houses all of the science groups studying biological sciences. We were given brief overviews of many of the projects taking place on station and I was fascinated with the quality of science taking place on station. I felt fairly humbled walking through this building, knowing that I was in the presence of some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.

Phase II is home to mostly geological science. The largest project in this sector is the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory and Laboratory (MEVOL). Mt. Erebus again is the southernmost active volcano in the world. It stands 12,448 feet high. Its crater is 900 feet deep by 2,640 feet wide. Dr. Phil Kyle leads the MEVOL project, which has set up a video camera at the summit, peering down into the crater. This video feed is transmitted back to the Crary Lab, where you can watch live footage on a large TV set up in a common area. There are also some video clips on demand of previously captured eruptions. Watching this massive volcano bubbling away was a truly captivating experience. Karen said she often gets trapped here, never wanting to leave for fear of missing an eruption. The project also has placed many seismic sensors on the volcano, which can detect earthquakes anywhere in the world. It even detected when the B15 iceberg broke in two and slammed into Ross Island.

Also in Phase II is an Italian experiment that measures the ozone hole. Whenever you hear any report about the ozone hole you can be assured that all of the data came from the room in which I was standing. They have a giant green laser that shoots up into space, taking constant measurements of the hole. The ozone hole covers a large chunk of Antarctica, which, combined with all of the UV reflecting off the ice and snow, makes this the most marketable environment in the world for Coppertone.

After gawking at all this tremendously cool stuff we headed down to Phase III of the building, which houses the aquarium space. Dr. Art DeVries is one of the most famous scientists on station, as he has been coming here for over 40 years to research why fish blood doesn’t freeze. A while back he proved the existence of an antifreeze protein in the fish blood and has been furthering his research ever since.

For some reason I expected a giant fish tank like you’d see in some snooty 5-star restaurant, but the aquarium is actually just another laboratory with large pools of water. This water is actually pumped in and out of McMurdo Sound, using some fairly sophisticated equipment that goes under the sea ice. The water is the coldest water you’ll ever touch, at 28 degrees Fahrenheit. How is that possible, you ask? It’s salt water; the salt lowers the freezing point a few degrees. Any colder and it would be ice.

Karen explained that just under the ice, right in front of the station, is the richest ecosystem in the world, even more so than the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently the cold water allows all kinds of interesting life forms to thrive in this section of the world, many of which aren’t even documented. Dr. DeVries often goes out and drudges the bottom of the Sound, at 1800 feet below the surface, and brings up new and interesting “critters,” many of which have never before been seen by man. Amazing stuff happens here.

One of the tanks had two enormous Antarctic Cod. These are the fish that Dr. DeVries focuses on, and they are huge. They’re the main source of food for Weddell seals, and the two in this tank had several scars on their bodies. Since Dr. DeVries only cares about some of the internal organs, once he dissects the fish the rest of it is given to the kitchen. Once there is enough fish meat there will be Antarctic Sushi night. Everyone here has told me that this fish is the best fish you’ll ever taste. I hope I get a chance to try it.

Another tank housed Antarctic “water spiders,” which are giant spiders that live in the ocean. Sara, being a major arachnophobe, would have hated this, so I snapped a couple of pictures for her. The spiders are the size of dinner plates and would take more than a tissue to kill if you ever had the misfortune of running into one.

After gawking at the star fish and other Antarctic sea anomalies our tour had concluded. We ate too much for lunch and then hit cubeland again for a routine afternoon of work. We focused on getting everything ready for our new McMurdo POLAR ICE server. Hopefully that should be up and running by the middle of next week.

After work we decided to climb Ob Hill again, since Scott had never been up. I was all for it, as I really need to burn as many calories as possible. There is no “lo-cal” option here, all the food is very calorie-dense. We learned in Snowcraft I that eating fuels your internal furnace, and that the process of metabolizing food will warm up your body. I don’t need that much warmth.

The day was beautiful, except for the irrepressible wind, and the views from the top of Ob Hill were just as stunning as last time. I think I might make this hike a daily activity.

After dinner Scott and Josh went back to bldg 175 to blog, and I went to the Coffee House to see the presentation given by one of the women on the AWE expedition of the early ‘90s. This was the Antarctic Women’s Expedition, where four women set out to trek across the continent by pulling their own sleds and surviving without the help of men or dogs. They made it as far as the South Pole before they had to stop, but their journey was fascinating. It makes my one night of Happy Camper School look pretty lame, but hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?

There are a few pictures of the aquarium with this update.

Wednesday night I slept hard, thankful for my nice warm bed after the long cold night in the snow trench. It took everything I had to get up, but we had to since we were to meet Monika, the helicopter coordinator, at 7:30am.

The goal for this meeting was to observe the helo ops at their busiest time of the day, which is first thing in the morning. To begin their day, Monika briefs the helitechs, a rep from the Kiwi Antarctic Program(me), and the rep from PHI, the contractor that actually operates the fleet of helicopters for the USAP. She goes over the schedule for the day and gets everyone on the same page.

Once that was over she brought us into her office to go over a few of the things that she thought we might be able to help her with. One of her biggest pains right now is trying to coordinate all of the different flight requests that come in. There is no standardized method for requesting a helo flight, so she has a notebook full of emails, post-it notes, and other primitive methods that people have used to request a flight. She also shared with us stories of grantees entering incorrect information that throws off her planning all together. One such example is a grantee that originally entered that he’d need a flight for two people and 200 pounds of cargo. However, when he showed up he had 8 passengers (or pax), and 2000 pounds of cargo. That throws off her whole schedule because it means she now needs to find 2-3 flights to handle the load instead of just the one she had planned for.

The helicopter schedule is probably the most restrictive piece of the whole USAP, and drives how many projects can be supported on the ice. Monika’s ideal goal is to get accurate data up front, when the grantees are using the POLAR ICE application to request the support they’ll need for the upcoming season, so that she can come up with a fairly solid schedule during the austral winter (our summer). The schedule changes constantly, so it’s not possible to schedule accurately that far out, but she at least needs to know when the peak request times are so that she can try and move groups around if they’re more flexible with their helo dates. We discussed a few ways to do this and came up with some pretty good ideas that should help her out a lot.

After that we attended a passenger briefing at the pax terminal next to the helo hanger. A helitech goes over the rules of operations for riding in a helicopter such as never approach from the rear, keep all loose items secured when boarding and exiting the air craft, etc. Monika had a helitech give us an overview of what they do and he answered some questions for us as well.

Next, another helitech took us out onto the helo pad for a tour of a 212 helicopter. The program currently has 5 helos that it operates – two A-Stars, two 212s, and an HNO, which is actually a chopper owned and operated by the New Zealand Antarctic Program. Monika shared that it’s not at all uncommon for the Kiwis to fly USAP participants and for us to fly the Kiwis around. The 212 is the largest in the fleet, with an eight-person capacity. The helitech also explained how the sling loads work, where they suspend, or sling, a 15’x15’ cargo net of “excess baggage” from the helicopter as it flies. They can even sling snowmobiles and other heavier items for transport into the field.

This whole time was a flurry of activity, as the five helos are almost always fully engaged, and since it was the first thing in the morning they were all loading up passengers and equipment, and leaving for the field. We saw three of the five helos take off and head out, and watching that is always fun. It’s amazing how precisely the pilots can control those things, especially on this exceptionally windy area of the station right on the bay.

Next we met with Dawn Needham, who coordinates all of the scheduling for the FSTP program. She actually scheduled us for our Happy Camper class, so talking to her made much more sense now than it may have just a few days ago. She’s in charge of not only scheduling Snowcraft I (Happy Camper), but also Sea Ice, Snowcraft II, Altitude, and GPS training. She also coordinates all of the science cargo needed for resupplying existing field camps. The field safety training section in POLAR ICE is pretty basic right now, and we came up with some great ideas to really streamline this process for her, not only for FSTP, but for all of the other training needs on station. Currently the entire training archive records are stored on one Excel spreadsheet, so by subsuming that with POLAR ICE we can make it a much more user-friendly, and secure, application.

After meeting with Dawn we spoke for a while with Mike McClanahan about what we’d been up to and the progress we’ve made with the local install of POLAR ICE. He seemed pleased to learn we were moving forward with a plan to find a permanent home for the application on station.

After a routine afternoon of work and dinner, we met several other IT folks at Gallagher’s for some darts and drinks (CD, of course). We soon discovered that it was karaoke night, and that there isn’t a single halfway decent voice to be found on this entire section of the continent. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was downright awful. One of the most pitiful sets of karaoke performances I’ve ever heard. At one point a group of at least 40 people marched in wearing togas, sang “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” and then marched right back out. It was very strange. They were running around town in togas. In Antarctica. And nobody seemed to know why.

There are also a few new photos with this update.

I love to camp. Since moving to Colorado almost five years ago we’ve tried to camp whenever possible. Never in my life did I imagine that one day I’d spend a night sleeping in a snow trench on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

Tuesday morning at 9am we arrived at the FSTP classroom in full ECW gear to begin our Snowcraft I course, or “Happy Camper School.” This course is required for everyone who goes out into the field. Since there’s a possibility that we may be able to accompany a science group on a day trip we were told we needed to take this course.

The first part of the morning was spent in the classroom going over some basic survival information along with the risks and possible injuries one might encounter in a survival situation. We discussed the three different stages of hypothermia: mild, moderate, and severe. I diagnosed myself as having mild hypothermia during the marathon I ran on September 14th. I had every symptom, most of which are the “umbles” – mumbling, fumbling, stumbling, etc. Another common symptom is your body seizing up on you. On that day I ran in shorts and a t-shirt when it was 37 degrees outside and by the time I was done it took me several minutes to put the headphone jack into my mp3 player, I couldn’t make out a complete sentence, my legs were one giant cramp, etc. Bottom line for prevention of hypothermia: wear proper clothing, whether you’re running a marathon or in a survival situation in Antarctica.

We then learned what was included in a survival bag, which can be found on just about any vehicle going out onto the ice. A two-person bag weighs about 60 pounds and is designed to support two people for up to three days. The idea is that most Antarctic storms last no more than three days, so if we were to find ourselves trapped somewhere we’d be able to survive with our newfound knowledge and one of these bags. The bags contain a camp stove, two sleeping bags, snow saw, shovel, tent, tent stakes, pots, matches, etc. – everything we’d need to build a makeshift field camp in whiteout conditions. In Antarctica.

Once we were finished with the classroom portion of the morning we loaded up a bunch of gear onto a Delta and headed out to camp. The Happy Camper School is located at Snow Mound City, which is a few miles past Scott Base on the other side of the peninsula, to the southeast of McMurdo, on the frozen glacial waters of the Ross Ice Shelf. This is a glacier that has about 6-9 meters of compacted snow on top of 200-300 feet of ice, floating on 1800 feet of water.

The day had started out fairly overcast and windy, and by the time we arrived at camp the visibility was pretty poor. I was hoping it wouldn’t get much worse, as I was all about the Antarctic experience, but maybe just a tad worried about the potential situation. It was condition 2 all around station, but still fair enough to hold class. After all, the goal of the class is to learn how to survive in a condition 1 storm with nothing more than a shovel, and a survival bag if you’re lucky, so the worse the weather the better as far as the instructors are concerned.

The delta drove us about a mile out onto the ice, where there is a weatherhaven set up. This is basically a portable jamesway, which looks like a tin can cut down the middle lengthwise and then set on the snow to make a half cylinder shape, flat side down. We walked inside the weatherhaven and I was surprised to see how nicely the building was set up. It was heated, which was very nice, and we all grabbed a seat to begin our series of classes.

Our group consisted of 18 people and two instructors. The instructors, Allen and Susan, are full-time mountaineers who do this sort of thing year-round. When they’re not in Antarctica they can usually be found leading expeditions up Denali or the Grand Tetons. The other people in our class consisted of grantees, NASA employees, heavy equipment operators, and fire fighters. We were quite a diverse group of individuals.

The first thing we did in the weatherhaven was to learn how to operate the camp stoves. These are the same sort of stoves found at REI, just a one-burner job that runs on white gas. These stoves will run on any of the fuels found on station, so if you were to go down in a helicopter you could actually use helo fuel if needed, it just wouldn’t run quite as efficiently. After learning about all the parts we broke into several groups and practiced lighting the stoves.

After packing the stoves back into their wooden boxes we walked about 100 yards down to a storage shack to build a sleep kit for each person. We had an assembly line going with some people in the shack stuffing the items into a duffel bag, handing them out to people outside, who would zip them and pass them down to someone loading them into the Delta. Each sleep kit contains two therma pads (a piece of foam about 5 feet by 2 feet by ½ inch), a sleeping bag, and a kozi. The kozi is a fleece jacket for the sleeping bag that zips up and around the bag for added warmth.

Once the sleep kits were built and loaded, the Delta drove about half a mile down to where we’d be making our camp, and we all followed by walking the distance. Walking in bunny boots, in snow and wind, with about 20 pounds of ECW on, is much harder than it sounds. By the time we got to camp we had all warmed up pretty well. We discovered this would be a common theme of the course. The more manual labor, the warmer we’d stay. The whole body heat regulation thing is a major factor when it comes to Antarctic survival. We had also learned a lot of great tips in our morning class, such as if your fingers are getting really cold you can swing your arm around really fast to get blood flow to the fingers, which, in turn, warms them up. This was just one of the great tips we learned throughout the course.

The Delta had stopped at another shack next to where we’d be making camp. Inside the shack were 5 big sleds, shovels, snow saws, two Scott tents, and stakes. We loaded each sled with the gear, including our personal bags and sleep kits, and made several trips out to where we’d actually be setting up camp, about 100 yards away. Another example of manual labor.

Once all the gear was moved we split the class into two groups, one with each mountaineer, to learn how to set up the Scott tents. These are teepee-shaped tents designed by Robert Falcon Scott and used on his Antarctic expeditions. Their unique design characteristics make them great for blocking wind and have worked very well in Antarctic conditions. Once the tent was up our instructor showed us how to stake a tent in the snow. We had brought along two types of stakes, each about 18 inches long, some made out of metal and the others out of bamboo. We first staked each of the four corners with a metal stake just as you would normally stake a tent into the ground. Next we learned how to “deadman” a stake, which is the best way to stake a tent into snow. First you dig down about 18 inches, undercutting the hole you’re digging so that rather than just being straight down it goes down and then under, towards the tent. Once that’s done you cut a little slit perpendicular to the hole. You then wrap one of the tent’s attached ropes around the bamboo stake and drop the stake into the hole, horizontally, with the rope laying in the perpendicular slit. So rather than driving a stake into the ground, it’s laying flat in the hole you just dug. You cover the hole with snow, and then tie the rope to itself using a series of two special knots, making sure the rope is nice and tight. Once the stake is covered back up with snow it’s next to impossible to pull it out, they must be dug out with a shovel. The Scott tents also have a skirt around them that lays flat on the ground. By covering this with snow, and deadmanning each stake, the tent has some major wind resistance. I should also mention that the snow here is very wind-blown, compacted, and dry. It doesn’t pack together well like traditional snowball snow, but if you put two blocks on top of each other they’ll bond together in a matter of hours. It’s a very dense snow with very little powder on top. Even the big metal stakes in the corners stuck very well, and took quite an effort to pull out after they had sat for a while.

While we were finishing up the stakes one of our instructors had taken each sleep kit and stacked them in a pile about 6 feet high, then covered them with a tarp. Each kit was roughly three to four feet long, with the duffel bag about 12” in diameter, so throwing 18 of them into the pile made it fairly large. Our group had finished putting up the Scott tent first, so Allen told us to go ahead and start throwing snow on the pile of bags.

Not knowing why we were supposed to do this, but realizing by now that manual labor would rule the 2-day course, I just started chucking snow. We continued to do this until there was 18” of snow covering the entire mound on all sides and the top. Periodically we’d pound it with our shovels to tamp the snow before continuing to add more. We let that set and then moved on to our next lesson.

Allen had taken one of the sleds, and using a saw that looks much like a regular wood saw, had cut into the snow all around the sled. Once that cut was made he sliced it cross-wise several times, then dug those out in solid blocks. The point of this exercise was to show us that with just a shovel and a saw you could build a snow trench the size of your body that could get you down out of the wind should you get caught in a blizzard. It looked like a coffin to me, but I was intrigued by the idea of cutting out a trench the size of your body and spending the night lying in the Antarctic snow. The blocks he had cut out could be used to build a wall around the trench, or laid over top of the trench in an A-frame fashion to give you a little more wind resistance.

The other point of this exercise was to learn how to cut and build snow blocks. It’s much easier than I realized, you simply slice the snow with a saw and pop the block out with a shovel. (By “easier,” I mean it’s technically not difficult to do. However, after cutting enough blocks for a wall or igloo you’re dead to the world. Those things get heavy) You lay them just like bricks, using the saw to level off each row of blocks once they’ve been set. We learned how to gauge which direction a storm might come from, and how to decide which direction would best be suited for a snow wall that would protect our tent. We started building a long snow wall facing south, since most storms come from the South Pole. The wall was about 30 feet long and slightly curved to provide added resistance from the swirling winds of the Ross Ice Shelf. Once the wall was beginning to be established we set up three mountain tents behind the wall. This was the easiest part of the day, as the tents are very similar to the one I have back home, just a little more weatherproof. Our camp now consisted of two Scott tents, a snow wall, three mountain tents, and a giant mound of snow.

By now, the giant mound of snow had compacted a bit and re-bonded to itself, so we were able to start digging it out. Allen instructed the group to pick a job, either digging out the igloo, or quinzee as it’s technically called, continue building the snow wall, or, if we preferred, build our own trench, and then he and Susan left us for the night. Though I was fascinated by the quinzee, I decided to start on a personal trench, as that seemed the most hard-core Antarctic camping option.

The guys who worked on the quinzee dug out a door, then started pulling the sleep kit bags out. Once those had been removed they lowered the floor a bit, then the door, so that any cold air would sink down into the door and out the quinzee, rather than circle around them. The quinzee ended up being rather large, and slept four members of our team comfortably.

I grabbed a sled and used it as the outline for my snow trench. I convinced Josh & Scott to go for a trench as well, and we all three started digging our trenches pretty close to each other. I cut the blocks out, sat them aside, and then started digging a little deeper. My philosophy was that the deeper the trench the less wind I would get. The trench itself was about three feet deep before someone announced that hot water was ready. With the amount of labor we had done we decided to take a break and have a hot meal of dehydrated beef stroganoff. The wind was rather vicious by now so Josh, Scott, and I elected to eat in one of the Scott tents. As mentioned before, these are great at blocking wind, and over the course of the meal Josh & Scott decided that spending the night in a Scott tent might be a more comfortable option. I was bound and determined to sleep in my trench, though, so after dinner I went back out for more construction.

I originally had planned on building a snow block igloo top to give myself some headroom for sitting up but mostly for the architectural flair of the whole thing. However, the third row of blocks started to collapse upon construction, so I elected to use a sled overturned for the roof instead. It rested on three rows of snow blocks, and I then packed up more snow around the blocks for additional support. Meanwhile, my entrance had a nice step halfway down, and another wall of blocks to act as a wind barrier, with the entrance just about 18” wide cut into the blocks. When all was said and done my trench was about 3 ½ feet below the surface and about 18” above the surface for a total height of about 5 feet. It was about 7 feet long, and I had cut it nice and wide so that I could roll around no problem.

Once I had it built to my satisfaction we took a tour of the camp to see how the others were doing, hit the yellow pee flag, and then had a cup of cocoa in Josh & Scott’s new home, the Scott tent that we had first set up.

After chatting for a bit I headed to my new home away from home, the snow trench I had dubbed “Chateaux d’ Sara.” I laid down my mats and sleeping bag, and then crawled in for the long cold night ahead of me. I slept in everything I had worn that day except for my bunny boots and parka. I took my parka, zipped it up, and slid it over the foot of my bag to give my toes a little added warmth. My leather gloves had gotten completely soaked during the construction of the Chateaux, and by now had frozen solid. I took them off, popped a couple hand warmers into my big bearclaw mittens, and slept with my hands in those.

Once I was finally situated I laid in my trench, unable to believe what I was actually doing. I noticed that I had a clear view of a green flag right out my front door. It was blowing pretty good, but my trench was virtually windless. It was now 11pm at night, but still perfectly light out, so I snapped a few pictures and then closed my eyes for my most extreme camping adventure ever.

The manual labor had knocked me out and over the course of the night I only woke up a few times. I was actually not too terribly cold, with the heavy-duty sleeping bag, fleece cover, and about 20 pounds of ECW clothing on, but it was definitely a bit chilly. Weather overnight at McMurdo reached a –27 degree wind chill, and out on the ice on the other side of the hills, I’d guess it was a least 10 degrees cooler. I had a bottle of water with me in bed, but it was frozen solid when I woke up. By morning I was getting pretty cold, but the thought of getting out of my cozy little snow shelter was too much and I laid there, three feet underground on an ice shelf in Antarctica, in the snow, for another 30 minutes before finally getting up the courage to crawl out of the sleeping bag.

We tore down camp and around 9:00 the instructors met us again to make sure we had all survived. Josh reported that the Scott Tent was cold, but Scott said he had slept pretty well. The general consensus among the group was that everyone had woken up a few times but slept fairly well given the circumstances. I’m convinced it was all the manual labor. After a quick breakfast of expired hot cocoa and instant oatmeal we started the day two activities. I should mention that the instructors left us with two large boxes of food, such as granola bars, oatmeal packets, dehydrated food, etc., but we couldn’t find a single item that wasn’t at least a year past expiration. There was beef jerky in there that had expired in 2000.

The morning weather had cleared up quite a bit from the prior day, and we were greeted with a nice view of Mt. Erebus rising up into the clouds. Across the bay we could make out White Island and Black Island, and Deception Peak among others.

We walked the half mile back to the shack that housed the sleep kits and reversed our assembly line process, this time unpacking them. We continued back to the weatherhaven, where there was warm water awaiting us for hot cocoa and tea. We debriefed the night, each taking a turn to share how they had slept and what they’d do different next time, and then moved into another classroom session on risk identification.

After that, Susan gave us a tutorial on the two types of radios we use – VHF and HF. VHF radios are fairly standard, just like walkie talkies, but I had never seen an HF radio before. These are Viet Nam-era radios, and after a quick tutorial we broke into two groups to take them outside and give them a shot. Scott took the lead in our group and quickly we had communication with the South Pole. The member of our team that actually made the call to the Pole was Robin, who is one of the four TEAs on continent, or Teachers Experiencing Antarctica. The USAP has a special program to get regular teachers to the Ice to share the experience with their classes back home. Robin will be helping a science group in the Dry Valleys for the next fifteen days, and she was obviously pretty excited to have made radio contact with the South Pole.

After that we thought, and hoped, that we were done, about to go back home, but we broke into two groups again for “scenario” drills. First we were given a survival bag and told that we had just set up a nice field camp that had burned down, and all we were left with was this survival bag. We had 30 minutes to set up the tent, build a protective snow wall, make radio communications with someone, and melt some snow for water. In the process, Allen had secretly instructed one of the team members to act hypothermic, and I fortunately remembered the “umbles,” and diagnosed him in time to throw him in the tent, get him some warm water, and wrap him in our parkas for additional warmth. We passed this scenario with flying colors.

We didn’t do quite as well with our second scenario. We had to pretend that we were in the weatherhaven in the middle of a condition 1 storm, and one of our team members had gone out to use the pee flag and hadn’t returned in 15 minutes. All we had was a rope connected to the building, and we needed to go out into the storm and find her. To simulate this, we had to wear white buckets over our heads and figure out a plan of attack. Our plan was to sweep from right to left, with one person anchoring the rope at the doorway. We never did find her, though we were told we had the best communication of any group this season. That was a much harder drill than I had imagined, as the buckets do a pretty good job of simulating whiteout conditions and decreased hearing at the same time.

Finally it was time to head back to McMurdo. However, we weren’t done, as we had to watch a 15-minute video on helicopter safety and learn about the unique environmental restrictions in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The Dry Valleys are an area of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains that are so windy that snow and ice can’t accumulate – it all blows away. They say this area hasn’t had any ecological change for 8 million years. In fact, tractor tracks in the dirt are still visible from a Kiwi expedition in the 1950’s. Due to this, you’re not allowed to urinate anywhere other than a portable “pee bottle,” you can’t step in any water, you must only walk on trails, and vehicles aren’t allowed. It’s probably the most protected ecosystem on earth.

After showing that we could use the seatbelts found on A-star helicopters, we passed the class and could head back home. I immediately called Sara, as I hadn’t talked to her in a few days and had dreamed about her while sleeping in my Antarctic snow trench. It was great to chat with her, and afterwards I took a shower that felt fantastic.

I doubt I’ll ever forget the past two days. Sleeping in a snow trench in Antarctica is something I’ll be able to tell my grandkids about. Every day I think about what an amazing journey this has all been, and I’m thankful every day for the experience.

Some photos of this adventure are now up in the photo album

Yesterday was another routine day at the office. I did manage to hit the treadmill again, though, so hopefully I can keep that up. It’s my only defense against this all you can eat food three times a day.

Scott arrived back from the South Pole around 3:30. He had lots of interesting stories to share about SPSM (South Pole Station Modernization) and the new elevated station that is currently under construction. He also took a photo of my wedding picture on the geographic South Pole marker. I’ll post that once I get a copy from him.

At dinner we met with Pat Smith, the IT director for the NSF, and Scott sold him on the idea of the local mirrored instance of POLAR ICE. I’ve been doing a lot of benchmarking and the data I have clearly shows that a local copy would save a ton of time for the application users on station. It’s a fairly decent undertaking, involving finding hardware, installing all the software (some of which is on its way down here from Denver right now via a colleague’s handcarry baggage), harden the server for security reasons, load current data, test, test, test, and then launch. To complete it in less than 3 weeks, given the amount of additional stuff we have going on, might be a challenge. Cleve, my supervisor on station (Scott’s boss) said he could extend our deployments if needed. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.

After dinner several of us played a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. We found an old copy of the game at The Coffee House, though the board was from Genus IV and the questions were from the original 1982? game. We played two teams of four, and my team won. We had science lab techs, GIS and GPS specialists, security information specialists, etc., playing, and I’ve never seen as many correct answers when playing with that old set of cards. It was fairly humbling, as the only question I answered that nobody else on my team knew was “What was Alfred E. Neumann’s favorite saying?” However, that question was for the win, so I contributed just in time.

This morning broke very cold, windy, and overcast. It’s actually Condition 2 right now (that’s the middle condition, defined by one or more of the following conditions: winds speeds of 48-55 knots, wind chills of –75º to –100ºF, or visibility of less than ¼ mile.) Today is also the day we start FSTP (Field Safety Training Program), or as it’s known on station, “Happy Camper School.” The course is two days long, and I’m to report to the SSC (Science Support Center) at 9am – one hour from now – in my full ECW gear. We’ll spend some time learning the rules of survival in the Antarctic wilderness, and then go out onto the ice shelf and learn how to build igloos, which we’ll then spend the night in. I can’t wait, this should truly be the Antarctic Experience, and if it’s Condition 2 weather out there it will make it all the more realistic.

After a routine day of work Josh and I decided to get a little exercise and go for a hike. We chose to climb Ob(servation) Hill, just to the south of McMurdo.

The hill is supposed to be 750 feet high, though I think it’s actually taller than that. We’re at sea level, though, so I suppose that could be throwing me off. The route up is pretty straightforward; it’s probably a class 2 hike with some scrambling in parts on loose volcanic rock and it’s fairly steep most of the way up. The views from the top are incredible. On the summit one can easily see Scott Base, the New Zealand base a couple of miles from McMurdo; Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world; all three runways used by the USAP – Ice Runway, Willie Field, and Pegasus Runway; All of McMurdo Station; Castle Rock; White Island; Black Island; the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range; McMurdo Sound, and the Ross Ice Shelf.

Also on top of Ob Hill is a large wooden cross, with this description on its plaque:

Cross, Observation Hill
This cross is an historic monument and preserved in accordance with the provisions of the Antarctic Treaty. It was erected in January 1913 to commemorate Captain Scott and his party who lost their lives on the return journey from the South Pole in March 1912

After taking a whole slew of photos, we headed back down and went to dinner. First, however, we had to check back in at the Firehouse. McMurdo Station has its own fire department, and one of their tasks is to keep track of all recreational foot travel. Whenever leaving station for a hike, cross-country ski outing, etc, you must first check out with the firehouse. You let them know where you’re going, how long you plan to be out, and what your contact information is. If you don’t check back in by the time you say you’ll be back they first try to contact you. If they’re unable to they will start the whole Search and Rescue (SAR) procedure. This involves everything from putting a helicopter on standby to alerting the medical department of a potential problem. If you simply forget to check back in and the SAR alert goes out you can get in some serious trouble.

At dinner we sat with Pat Smith, the IT director for the National Science Foundation. He’s intimately familiar with POLAR ICE, being the person who essentially funded the application, and we assured him that our presence on Ice would make for a top-notch product in future versions. We chatted about potential future applications and were generally on our best behavior for this meal.

I watched A Beautiful Mind in its entirety and then knocked on Rob’s door (next to mine) to see if he was interested in going to the Coffee House. There we ran into Mike, split a bottle of wine, and chatted about the lives we’ll be returning to in Denver.

Rob & I then continued on to Gallagher’s, the non-smoking bar a few doors down. We ran into Rich deLore, who is in charge of the communications facilities here at McMurdo. On Black Island, an island across the bay, we have some radio towers and satellites that essentially provide all of our communications abilities on and off continent. Rich runs these and shared some interesting information on how they work. He’s also from Australia, from a town north of Sydney that I can’t remember the name of. I asked him about my new favorite sport, rugby, and he tried explaining the rules to us again. It’s just a much different sport than I’m used to, so I’m still fuzzy on some of the rules. He made a few things make sense, though.

By this time, Josh had joined us and we played several rounds of air hockey. I got killed, as usual, and after a while we decided to call it a night.

Today, being a Sunday, is our day off. Therefore, I decided to sleep in and it felt great. The first thing I did upon waking up was to run to Scott Base, the New Zealand Antarctic Base, and back. There’s a road connecting Scott Base to McMurdo, and it’s only two miles each way – a perfect Sunday run. The weather this morning was pristine, not a cloud in the sky, very light winds, and temps in the low 20’s. The weather has been all over the map since we arrived just under a week ago, so I was glad to take advantage of this beautiful morning. The road to Scott base winds around the backside of Ob Hill, and opens up to a stunning view of the Ross Ice Shelf. This ice is frozen year-round, and is home to one of our runways, Willie Field. This was named for named for Navy Seabee Richard Thomas Williams, who drowned when his tractor broke through the sea ice in 1956. I’m not sure where that happened, though, as Willie Field sits on 25 inches of compacted snow over 200 feet of ice, floating on 1800 feet of water. Impressive, to say the least.

The run itself was more challenging than most four-mile runs in recent memory for several reasons. For one, I’m still working my way back into the running shape I was used to. Secondly, I’m still not quite used to running in Antarctica. The road to Scott Base is mostly dirt, with a little bit of snow and ice on it, but the dirt is volcanic rock. It’s loose, and therefore throws off my rhythm as I slide around on it. The route is also uphill both ways (or it seems like it, anyway), without a flat portion to be found. Not to mention the fact that I’m always overdressed, wearing at least 10 pounds of cold weather gear. I’ve been told there’s a Turkey Trot at Thanksgiving, though, and my goal is to not only be ready for that, but to achieve a good time. I can feel myself getting back into running, which feels great and makes me very relieved. It was the first thing I thought of this morning, which is how it used to be. Prior to running on the sea ice I was Mr. Procrastinator, always finding a reason not to go run. Now that I’m in the zone again, though, it feels fantastic.

When I got back I showered up and flipped through the three Armed Forces Network channels. Imagine my surprise when one of those channels was carrying the Iowa/Purdue game. It’s Sunday here, but Saturday back in the States. Imagine my dismay to see how badly Iowa was getting beaten.

Sunday mornings at McMurdo have a brunch from 10am-1pm. This is the most popular meal of the week, and for good reason. After burning about 550 calories on my run I easily ingested three times that many at brunch. They have everything from quiche to fresh fruit, cheese, made-to-order eggs and omelets, scrambled eggs, sausage patties, bacon, pancakes, French toast, a waffle station, pastries, coffee cake, donuts, and much more. Looks like I’d better start running that route to Scott Base and back a few times a day.

After brunch we chatted with Kelly and some people she introduced us to, and generally enjoyed the laziness of the Sunday afternoon. I was anxious to see the photos I had taken yesterday on Ob Hill so I came over to 175 to offload the camera and catch up on this here blog.

I also wanted to mention just a few things about life at McMurdo Station. It’s fairly deceiving. This is a self-sustaining community, so it’s easy to forget that it’s a 5-hour plane ride (at minimum) to get to any other form of civilization. We’re 2,100 miles away from Christchurch yet we seem to get along pretty well. There are about 800 people on station right now, so it has a small town/college town/mining community sort of feel to it.

One interesting fact about McMurdo, and all of Antarctica, is that due to the Antarctic Conservation Act and Antarctic Treaty, there’s no such thing as a landfill, or sewage area. Every single piece of trash, food waste, and human waste is transported back to the United States via cargo vessel for disposal. Every building has at least one area where you must separate all of your trash into the proper bin for recycling. There are bins for food waste, paper, aluminum cans, clothing, burnables, etc. In our Safety Outdoor Lecture we learned that even out hiking you’re not allowed to relieve yourself should nature call. A yellow flag marks the only locations where you can do that. Seriously. However, I’ve yet to see one. Even out running I’m afraid to spit because it seems like that could be an illegal activity. All violations of the ACA are federal crimes, with penalties of up to $10,000 and imprisonment. So I’ll be sure to separate my trash and not litter.

Life on the Ice is very inexpensive. All meals are covered, as is lodging. Laundry is free. The lounges in the dormitories have free foosball and pool tables. The bars have free games, from pool to shuffleboard to air hockey, darts, etc. Bowling is $2/game. Drinks are extremely inexpensive. The bars charge $2 for everything. Mixed drinks or beer (including CD), it doesn’t matter, it’s $2. I can see how some of these nomads that end up here stay for a while. It’s a perfect chance to save up some cash. After a week on station, however, I don’t know that I could winter over or even do an entire season. It’s a lot of cold and a lot of white (or in the case of winter it would be even more cold and a lot of darkness).

One of the projects right now on station is to construct an ice pier. Down on the ice there are crews spreading dirt over a large section of ice. What ends up happening is that in January, once the ice has softened up just a tad, an icebreaker will come through and drop off a bunch of cargo. About 80% by volume of all cargo on station is delivered via vessel. By spreading dirt on top of the ice it insulates the ice and keeps it frozen when the rest of the sound is breaking up. This way they can use the frozen ice as a pier, hence the term ice pier. It should also be noted that McMurdo is the farthest point south in the world that is accessible via vessel. There’s one major concern this year, however. A huge iceberg the size of Rhode Island recently split into two, and is blocking the entrance into McMurdo Sound. This may disrupt the natural ice flow behavior and not allow the icebreaker to get all the way to McMurdo. If that were to happen it would mean the station would not get 80% of the supplies it needs for the winter and the program could actually shut down. Needless to say, the situation is being watched very closely around these parts.

Every Sunday evening one of the researchers on the Ice will give a presentation describing the project they’re working on and the implications of the science and data they collect. I think I’m going to go to that tonight, it should be fascinating to learn what kind of exploration is being done here. Those grantees are one of the primary user groups for POLAR ICE, so perhaps this will also help give me a better understanding of what I can do to help make their lives just a tiny bit easier when planning for their season on the Ice.

By the way, I uploaded a ton of pictures into the photo album if you’re interested.

Right now it is Saturday morning, November 8. On station we work six days a week, 7:30-5:30. Yesterday was by far the quietest day of this whole adventure.

Upon waking up, Scott checked the flight schedule on TV channel 7, as he’d become accustomed to doing over the past couple days. His flight to the South Pole had originally been scheduled to leave at 7:30am on Wednesday, but he had been bumped six times due to the windy weather that had moved in. The flight had been rescheduled again for 8:30am yesterday morning, and that one was a go. Before he left I gave him a photo of Sara & I on our wedding day so that he could take a picture of it attached to the geographic South Pole.

Josh & I had breakfast and then headed back up to building 175 for a day of work. Anna, a POLAR ICE teammate back in Denver, had forwarded me an email thread where she had asked Steve Alexander, the lab manager here on station, for some input and clarification on a version 2 requirement. He had responded back to her that the application was too slow to be able to go in and see what she was talking about. What a great opportunity to show him our super fast local mirrored copy, I thought. I replied back to him with the URL of our local POLAR ICE instance and the standard disclaimer that it’s simply an experiment and we’re just looking for feedback on the performance differences between this copy and the production copy. He replied back right away that the application was like “greased lightning” and he forwarded the URL to his entire staff – all 12 of them. So now there are about 16 people using the copy of POLAR ICE on my laptop as their production instance.

This is good and bad. Good in that we achieved one of our primary goals coming down here, which was to help them out with the speed issues seen using POLAR ICE from McMurdo. Bad in that now I can’t do any real development on future functionality until we find a permanent local host for this mirrored version. Josh & I met with Cleve, the IT supervisor on station, and two of his network people. They all seemed to have no problem with maintaining a local copy of POLAR ICE here once we leave. When Scott gets back from Pole we’ll continue moving forward with this, hopefully it will make everyone’s lives much easier and make POLAR ICE a more positive user experience. It’s all about the user experience.

For lunch I ate way too much as usual. Today’s selection was kielbasa and roasted peppers. Just what I needed. After work I decided I’d finally get off my lazy bum and work out, but first I wanted to try and call Sara again. There are only 4 external phone lines on station, so trying to place a phone call is much like trying to win a radio contest. It’s taken me up to 20 minutes of constant dialing, hanging up, trying again just to get through to my calling card number. However, for some reason it went through on the first try yesterday and I was able to talk to Sara for a while. It was great to hear her voice and she reassured me that Dexter still remembers me. However, it’s only been a week. Will he still remember his daddy after another month? I hope so.

Walking back to my dorm after work I noticed that the weather had cleared up a bit; the skies were clearing and the wind had died down a fair amount. I had originally planned to run on a treadmill in the aerobics room, but thought since the weather had gotten nicer I might try running on the sea ice runway road.

I layered up and headed out for my first run in over a week. I had been running 40 miles a week in September but since then I probably haven’t even run 40 miles total. Combine that with all the food I’ve been eating and things are starting to get ugly. My “food blister” is getting bigger than it’s been in a while :-( So, I headed out down the hill towards the ice, enjoying the feeling of being out running again. Running on the ice is a unique experience to say the least. Most of it has some snowpack on it, so there’s some traction to be had, but the parts that aren’t covered with snow are the most brilliant blue color I’ve ever seen. The ice is beautiful, and running away from station it gradually got more and more quiet. Looking at the mountains across the bay on this nice, clear day, I was feeling very tranquil and again counting my blessings for the opportunity to run in such a picturesque location. After about 20 minutes I crossed the road to head back to station. Immediately I was met with a blast of wind. While it wasn’t as windy this day as the previous couple, the wind was still probably blowing about 15-20 miles an hour consistently, and out here on the exposed sea ice it had picked up a bit more than it was on station. Running out to this point the wind was helping me along, but now I was running head on into it, and felt like I was towing an open parachute.

After a while, however, I got used to it, and was able to soak in the beautiful views of Mt. Erebus, the volcano to the left of the station, and Ob(servation) hill, to the right of the station. McMurdo itself from a distance looks like a cluster of buildings; it’s hard to imagine how much activity is actually occurring within them.

After returning from my run I took a quick shower and met Josh for dinner. We ate with two other Raytheon people that we flew down with, Rob Mitalski and Mike Hoffman. They’re here on an IT security audit project and we filled them in on the potential poop storm we may have opened up by exposing a local instance of POLAR ICE. Not a problem from a security standpoint or even implementation, just the whole coordination between McMurdo and the Denver office when this wasn’t a planned-for project. I think everything will be fine, though. It’s for the good of the program, and makes our customers, the science planners, much much happier. That’s why we’re here, right?

After dinner I did a couple loads of laundry. Across the hall from the laundry room there’s a lounge with a pool table, where Josh and I played several games while waiting for our clothes. When they were done I took them up to my room and started to watch a movie but fell right asleep. I woke up a couple hours later, about 10:30, and got ready for bed. I slept like a baby and woke up feeling refreshed for the first time in a couple of days.

MCMURDO STATION (most of this pulled directly from the station guide):

McMurdo Station is the largest U.S. research facility in Antarctica. It is located on the southern tip of Ross Island and lies 2,415 miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand, and 850 miles north of the South Pole. The National Science Foundation (NSF), through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), coordinates U.S. scientific research in the Antarctic. Research performed in and around McMurdo includes marine and terrestrial biology, biomedicine, geology and geophysics, glaciology and glacial geology, meteorology, aeronomy, and upper atmospheric physics. During the austral summer the population of scientists and support personnel at McMurdo often exceeds 1,100 people. In the austral winter, the population drops to roughly 250 people.

In my last post I mentioned that I have been writing about the previous day each morning, but that Cape Evans was too cool to not mention right away. Since the Cape Evans trip took about half of my day, not much was left for this blog post, so I’ll try to keep it short. I know I’ve been babbling a bit, but this place is just so incredibly amazing that I could talk for hours.

After posting my blog entries I continued on with my POLAR ICE bandwidth experimentation. Yesterday I had sent the Denver network guys a request to get a zipped directory posted on an FTP server so that I could get all of the uploaded RSP (research support plan) documents on my local instance of POLAR ICE. They came through like the heroes that they are and I was able to FTP down all of those documents. I sent an email to a couple of the POLAR ICE stakeholders on station and asked them to try downloading their RSP requests from our internal mirrored site rather than from the Denver site. Then, it was time for the IT party at Gallagher’s, the local non-smoking bar.

Josh, Scott, and I showed up fashionably late at about 4:30. The shuffleboard table had been converted into a makeshift buffet, with quesadillas, brie, kettle corn, beer, and wine available. I grabbed a couple slices of quesadillas and two of my now all-time favorites, Canterbury Draught from New Zealand. We found a table and started chowing and shooting the breeze. Kelly, the GIS person, or “map girl,” came over to chat with us and after a little while the party was ending. Kelly has been here for a long time, she knows all the ins and outs of the station, and she shared some good stories about life on the Ice. She was the one that originally signed us up for the Cape Evans trip that boomeranged, so we thanked her again for that and shared the experiences of our trip.

When the party ended at 6pm we headed across the street to the galley to eat a little dinner. Tonight’s selection was pork chops and mashed potatoes. It was good, but nothing like the incredible cut I had at Coyote’s in Christchurch. I shall forever remember that as the best pork cut I’ve ever had.

Scott (my boss, remember) had decided that Club 316 (what we had named our dorm room) needed a little life, so after dinner we all hit the station store to see what we could get to liven it up a bit. What could make a tiny dorm room more exciting, you ask? Here’s what: Scott bought a bottle of Absolut Vodka. I bought a bottle of my lovely bride’s favorite, Tanqueray Gin, and Josh bought a case of my new favorite, Canterbury Draught Ale straight from Christchurch. The station store gets military prices, so my 1 liter bottle of Tanqueray, which usually retails for about $30+ in the US, was had for just $15.

Kelly had dinner with us and then came over to Club 316 for a bit to share some experiences of life on the Ice. She told us the story of the time she was on a snowmobile on the sea ice that dumped and she ended up sliding on her back for a long ways before finally coming to a stop. She seems to know a whole lot about life at McMurdo and will probably prove to be a valuable resource before our time here is done.

She had a prior commitment at 8:30 and left shortly before then. I was still fired up from the amazing Cape Evans experience and suggested to Scott and Josh that we do something rather than sit in our dorm room for the rest of the night. We decided to hike over to Discovery Hut, which is just about a mile or so outside of town. It was the first structure built on Antarctica, in 1902, and was used by the Scott expeditions. The log books tell stories of crew members going from the hut at Cape Evans to the Discovery Hut and back in the same day. I think I originally posted that it was 13 miles from McMurdo to Cape Evans, but Kelly corrected me by saying it’s actually 18 miles. She’s the map girl, after all, so I’ll take her word for it. We had driven from Mac-town to Cape Evans in about an hour and a half, but based on the wind we encountered I couldn’t imagine walking that 18-mile stretch there and back in the same day. Those early Antarctic explorers truly blow me away. I will get up to speed on some more detailed history of this area and post it in a future blog. However, Discovery Hut was the first structure built on the continent, and it still has original supplies in it as well, but it’s locked and we didn’t have the key so we decided to come back again another day. I know it’s going to be pretty amazing to see the original supplies intact, but I doubt anything can top Cape Evans.

There are three huts intact on the continent right now. There’s Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans, Discovery Hut here on Hut Point next to McMurdo, and Shackleton’s Hut at Cape Royds. The NSF Chalet here on station has the key to Discovery Hut that can be checked out for a day hike, and I’ve already seen Cape Evans. Getting to Cape Royds is a very rare occurrence, so I doubt I’ll be able to get out there, but I certainly can’t complain. This has truly been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Anyway, back to Discovery Hut. We headed out there at almost 9pm, but of course it was total brightness outside. The wind had picked up again, however, and was blowing at about 40mph. We didn’t have the key to the hut so we weren’t able to go inside but poking our heads through the windows we got a pretty good view of what was inside. There’s yet another cross next to this hut to commemorate even more people that have died on this amazing continent.

During our station store run, Josh had bought a case of our now favorite beer in the world, Canterbury Draught. I had grabbed a few right before we left for Discovery Hut, thinking we could have a little toast out on the peninsula. Josh wasn’t in the mood for a beer, but Scott and I toasted and then started walking back to our dorms. The beer that Josh bought was warm at the station. However, within 5 minutes of Scott & I walking back towards the dorm, the foam on top of the can had frozen. A few minutes later, the beer itself was getting slushy. This place is cold. COLD. You don’t realize it when dressed in full ECW, but it gets really cold. Being able to freeze a beer exposed to the elements in a matter of a few minutes made me realize how cold it is.

We decided that we all had some blogging to do, so we headed towards bldg. 175 to get caught up. That’s where I am now, shielding my eyes to the glare of the 11pm sun and typing out the rest of my day, one of the most amazing days of my life.

I have just a ton of miscellaneous Antarctic facts swimming around in this head of mine that I want to share with you all but I haven’t yet had the opportunity. This is truly an amazing place, like nowhere I’ve ever been, and I hope to get everything down before it’s lost from memory forever. I don’t think there’s much going on tomorrow other than normal work stuff, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to catch up on random observational type things.

By the way, Scott gave me copies of the pictures he’s taken since yesterday. I uploaded a few more, check the photo album to see them.

My routine up to this point has been to write about the previous day’s activities the next morning and post the update as if I was writing it right before bed. However, this morning we did something so cool that I had to make sure I captured everything by writing it all down right now.

Last night when we returned to the galley after our failed Cape Evans mission we noticed a sign for a special trip out there this morning at 7:30am. These sorts of trips are usually reserved for night shift workers who can’t make the evening trips. Scott said he thought it would be good if Josh & I could get on that one since we didn’t have any meetings scheduled for the morning and he was going to be leaving for Pole. Josh & I discussed it and decided that we’d show up in our ECW but wouldn’t bump any deserving night shift workers. The last thing we want to be accused of is boondoggling.

We met at breakfast in full ECW gear and then showed up at the meeting area. The tequila lady from the night before walked by, saw us, and asked if we were trying it again. She said to make sure we had a bottle with us in case we had to turn around again. The thought was fairly repulsive so I immediately blocked it from my mind.

It turned out that there were only 6 people signed up for this trip, so Josh & I made a total of 8. Since the Deltas are designed to hold 20+, we were in for a treat. There are several nice things about having such a small group on a trip like this. For one thing, the driver stopped every 45 minutes to allow two new people up front. The windows in the back frost over very quickly and you can’t see a thing out of them. Up front, however, you get to see the long, endless white of blowing snow, ice, and green flags marking the route. The other nice thing about having such a small group is that at the hut itself you don’t have to wait, and people aren’t usually in your way for taking pictures. The larger trips have to take turns going into the hut. We were all able to get in at the same time no problem.

About halfway to Cape Evans we saw an object on the side of the road that almost looked like an overturned barrel from afar. As we got closer I could tell it was a seal. This was a great stopping point since we were ready to swap front seaters anyhow. The driver stopped the Delta, and I was able to snap a couple photos of the leopard seal from about 20 yards before it started moving. It was interesting to see it go, it looked like it was doing the worm, the old breakdancing move that I’ve perfected at wedding receptions.

Josh was fumbling with his camera and dropped his mitten. McMurdo Station was built at its location mostly because of the protection it receives from the weather. It’s surrounded by hills that block a lot of the wind and elements, but that wind picks up in full force once you get onto the ice. When Josh dropped his mitten it immediately took off, blowing across the ice. I started running after it and remembered the video about not straying from the flagged route. Luckily it was blowing directly down the route so I wasn’t breaking any regulations. There was a momentary lapse of the wind and I was able to dive on it. I, of course, in the excitement of seeing the seal still hadn’t put my gloves on nor zipped up my parka, so when I hit the ice my hands immediately started to freeze. I quickly threw my gloves on and made a mental note to remember that this is Antarctica, and it gets cold. Really cold. And really, really, really, really, really, really, really windy.

We got into the back of the Delta, and compared to the crowded nature of the previous night’s trip we were living large. There were just six of us in the back, and there’s room for 20. We chatted with the others back there and bounced our way on towards Cape Evans. The wind was intense, probably blowing 40 miles an hour or more, and therefore the snow drifts across the ice road had gotten bad. Every now and then we’d slow way down or bounce all over creation as we plowed through the drifts. I figured if any vehicle was capable of getting through snow drifts, it was a 42,000 pound Delta with 5 ½’ tires.

It takes about 90 minutes to drive the 13 miles to Cape Evans in a Delta. We arrived there about 45 minutes after swapping front seat passengers. We all bundled up in the ECW gear we had brought and got ready to get out. For this trip I wore long underwear, my thick lined Carhartt bib overalls, a fleece jacket, my ECW parka, a fleece balaclava face warmer, ski goggles, a stocking cap, gloves, wool socks, and my bunny boots. We piled out of the Delta and the wind was incredible – like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was easily blowing 50mph at this point.

To my left was an enormous glacier, and I recognized it from photos around the office. It’s a truly remarkable sight, arising many stories above the flat frozen sea ice. Directly in front of us, about 150 yards away, was Scott’s Hut. This hut was constructed by Robert Falcon Scott’s crew for use as a base camp during the 1912 expedition to the South Pole, the one from which Scott never returned. It was used by another British expedition shortly after that, but has remained here at Cape Evans ever since.

I can’t stress enough how strong the wind was. As we approached the hut it was blowing directly at us. The wind chill at McMurdo yesterday was 45 below, and here it was easily 55 below. This wind was quite a bit stronger than what we had on station yesterday. The hut was barely visible due to the massive snow drifts that had accumulated around it. We got to the hut and stepped inside the door, glad to be out of the wind for the time being.

The constant cold in Antarctica has kept this hut’s remains fully intact for almost 100 years. Upon walking in you see tools and supplies lining the walls of the hut. Near the front door was a large stack of seal carcasses, still perfectly preserved. Our guide explained that they were used for food, clothing, and the blubber used for oil. Across from that was a basket of adelie penguin eggs. Shovels, horse saddle equipment, and many other tools lined the walls and floor. We first went around the side, which was a stable area used for the expedition’s horses. In here was still hay, horse snow shoes, and many boxes of supplies. There was an open box right in front of me that still had perfectly preserved cheese among other things. The stable area had apparently also served as a storage area, for there were many boxes in here, all perfectly preserved.

From there we made our way back to the main entrance and into the living quarters. This was a truly remarkable experience. The entire living area used by Robert Falcon Scott and his crew was still completely preserved. The hut was split into two sides, with the middle area acting as the dining room. On either side were bunks, tables, work areas, shelves, etc., all completely preserved. I’ve never seen anything like this, it seemed as though we were looking at a museum’s display of what such a hut may have looked like. However, this was the ACTUAL hut and the ACTUAL supplies used by Scott in 1912. I was floored. I can’t describe the feeling I had walking through and looking at this stuff. It’s easily one of the most profound things I’ve ever done.

Towards the far wall was a work table next to the actual bunk in which Scott slept while here. On the table was a penguin carcass, still perfectly preserved. It looked like a taxidermied penguin. Next to it was a copy of the Illustrated London News from February 20, 1908. It cost “sixpence.” The paper was pristine. Perfectly preserved. On the other side of the hut was the laboratory used by the group, and next to it was another group of bunks. I know that some chemistry students from Sioux City East are reading this (go Black Raiders!), so I snapped a photo of the lab for you to see how far we've progressed. Inside one of the bunks was hand-written the names of three members of the expedition that had died. This was all too surreal. I’ve become a bit of an Antarctic History buff since taking this job, and to actually be standing in Scott’s Hut looking at the actual items he used was just overwhelming.

Continuing on we saw the pantry, which was still fully stocked with food. I was snapping pictures left and right, and my memory card was almost full. I figured I’d leave a few for more outside shots, so I put away the camera and just took a few minutes to soak it all in and reflect on what I was doing. When we first stepped off the Delta, got pounded by the irrepressible wind, saw the glacier, snow and ice everywhere we looked, Josh had turned to me and shouted (it was very windy, have I mentioned?) that we were in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t have agreed more. However, we had a heated vehicle waiting for us, knew exactly where we were, and were in full warm ECW. Putting myself in Scott’s place back in 1912 made me appreciate even more how incredible that journey must have been. Seeing the blowing snow and wind on the movies and hearing “55 below” and whatnot is impressive enough, but actually being there, seeing it all, experiencing the same weather, seeing the same supplies, I can’t say enough how incredible it was. I’m not joking when I say it was one of the most profound things I’ve done.

There is supposedly still a dog carcass chained to the hut, but it was buried in the snow drifts. With the way the rest of the supplies and animals were perfectly preserved I'd imagine the dog would look just like a sleeping, frozen dog. I'm not sure I could have dealt with that very well.

After walking back out of the hut we saw a cross up on a small hill nearby. We asked the driver if it was ok to go up there, and he said no problem so we hiked the few hundred yards, into the wind, to the top. The wind was so strong that it literally blew me backwards a few times. The cross was constructed in remembrance of those who had died on Scott’s expedition, and from there the views were remarkable. The orange Delta looked like a tiny matchbox car on a never-ending bed of ice. The glacier was contrasted by a darkening, cloudy sky so that every detail stood out even more beautifully than the first time I saw it. The flags marking the road back to McMurdo looked like tiny green specs against the sea ice, and the top of Scott’s hut was just barely visible. One of the other brave souls who made the hike to the top of the hill snapped a picture of Josh and I standing there and it’s one of my favorites from this trip.

We hiked back down to the Delta and I had Josh climb in and hand me my backpack. I quickly swapped out memory cards so that I could capture a few more photos before the rest of the group got there. It seemed that I couldn’t take enough pictures of this place. There was so much I wanted to capture. The beauty of the glacier; the profoundness of the hut here in this insanely remote, cold, windy location; the vision of the snow blowing across the ice and its contrast against our red ECW jackets; the anchor left in front of the hut by one of the ships used to populate the thing, etc. If I had a video camera with me I’d have a good 45 minutes of footage. I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

Eventually, though, I had to and I climbed back into the Delta. We all were remarking on how incredible the experience had been as we started back towards McMurdo. A few times along the way we’d come to a stop and realize we were stuck. Yes, the snow drifts were so bad on the ice road that we had managed to get stuck in a 42,000 pound Delta with 5 ½ foot tires. We luckily were able to get out of it each time, but at least once we took out a green flag in the process. About 90 minutes after leaving Cape Evans we arrived back at McMurdo. It was around 12:30pm, just in time to grab lunch. However, I wasn’t hungry. I was still too excited and couldn’t wait to post this blog entry to share the experience with everyone back home. However, I still hadn’t written yesterday’s blog so I had to do that first – if it’s a lame entry, now you know why. I’m breaking my posting pattern by actually posting this the same day of the experience, but it was too cool to keep until tomorrow. I’m not sure what the rest of the day holds. Scott is supposed to finally fly out at 1500, so hopefully he’ll be able to make it this time, after being bumped so many times. There’s a little party for the IT folks at 1600, so that should be fun. I have no idea what it will be like, but that right there is the theme for this whole trip, and so far it’s been beyond my wildest expectations.

By the way, check out the photo album to see some photos from the Cape Evans trip.

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.

Breakfast is served from 5am-7:30am, so we set the alarm for 6:00. I slept like a rock and woke up feeling slightly refreshed. After eating way too much breakfast (the free food here is going to be the death of me), we gathered near the handwashing station for Jim's 7:30am walking tour of McMurdo.

Jim took us all over town and pointed out what each building is as well as some history of the area. It was interesting to see the actual structures that we've been coding POLAR ICE to support over the last year. As I mentioned earlier, the piping is all above ground here due in part to the frozen earth and ease of maintenance. At one point we walked over a small wooden bridge that crossed a set of pipes. Jim stopped and mentioned that the bridge crosses the sewage line and had become known as the "Bridge Over the River Poo."

After the tour we headed up to building 175, which is where the IT department is located. They had 3 cubes set up for us in "Cubeland." The PC techs checked out our laptops to ensure that our virus definitions are up to date, etc., and we were then able to get on the McMurdo LAN.

One of the things we're going to look at while on station is ways of improving POLAR ICE performance for the folks down here. We've heard complaints about how slow the application is on the Ice so we're going to see if there's anything we can do about it. We've made some significant performance improvements to the system recently and in Denver the thing is smokin' fast. That leads us to believe that the problem down here is about 99% due to the limited bandwidth.

I can't believe how slow the network is down here. I had heard it was "painfully" slow, but you're not prepared for it until you're actually forced to use it. It's much worse than a dialup connection. At least with a dialup you know it's consistently slow. Here it seems that not only is it slow, but sometimes network traffic just drops off the face of the earth (much like our Halloween). With POLAR ICE being a mission-critical application for a large group of people down here that is a very bad thing. Not only is the bandwidth limited but the network topology here seems to be very slow as well. It takes several minutes just to get logged onto the network.

I have a full working copy of POLAR ICE on my laptop, so we're going to see if it's any faster running it locally rather than the round trip to Denver. It should be, but the network is so uncertain that it might not make much difference. If we can come up with some good benchmark statistics that would justify mirroring the application on the Ice.

Enough techno-jargon. After getting familiarized with the pain associated with everyday computer tasks we headed back to 155 for lunch. I'm still amazed at all the free food being thrown at you constantly. If I don't start running again I'm going to gain some major weight. I'm talking world record gains, going from running a marathon in mid September to being Mr. Roly Poly in mid December. (Sorry Sara, I'll try to curb it before it gets much farther)

On our way back to 175 we ran into Kelly Brunt, who runs the GIS system for the USAP (she's the "maps girl"). She said that there was a signup sheet for a trip to Cape Evans and she put our names on it for us. Apparently when these trips are offered they fill up instantly, so getting on the list is a big privilege. Cape Evans was where Robert Falcon Scott set his last winter camp before the doomed South Pole excursion of 1912. His hut is still there, still fully stocked with all of his original supplies and whatnot. The trip is set for tomorrow night at 6:30 (remember, it doesn't get dark here). I can't wait, it should be fascinating. We'll be riding out on a Delta, which is like a monster truck that has room for passengers. It's about an hours drive across the sea ice to get there, and we're required to wear our full ECW gear (including bunny boots).

We had a meeting scheduled with Mike McClanahan at 2:30. Mike is the Assistant Science Support Supervisor here at McMurdo. He is probably the main user of POLAR ICE, so our meeting was two-fold: to ensure him that we're working on potential solutions to the bandwidth issues, and to get a sense of how POLAR ICE can better suit him and his people. To start towards number two, he took us on a tour of each workcenter.

Jim had given us a brief walking tour earlier in the day, but Mike gave us a detailed workcenter tour, complete with introductions and tours of each building. We started at the helo pad, where we met two of the helicopter pilots. We also chatted briefly with Monika and Patrick, the two Raytheon people who run the helo operations. They were both on the Courage Classic ride as well. I'm starting to think that riding the charity event was the best career move I could have made with this company. Mike showed us how the helo people do their scheduling, the process for passengers going to the field, how they "sling load" cargo to the camps, etc. Sling loads are fascinating. They're essentially just a big net full of cargo that gets "slung," or suspended, from the helicopter. Think Operation Dumbo Drop (I think, I never saw that movie, but it seems like there was a picture of Dumbo being slung from something?) Helo and Fixed Wing are two of the most essential components of scheduling science groups on the Ice. Most of them need to go to remote field camps, so coming up with an elegant scheduling solution for the air transport to those camps is a critical piece of POLAR ICE. To better understand what's involved, Mike thinks it would be a good idea if we can get on a helo flight out to the McMurdo Dry Valleys field camps sometime in the next few weeks. I couldn't agree more :-)

In order to get to the Dry Valleys we first will have to take FSTP (Field Safety Training Program) training. We met Dawn, the FSTP scheduler, and got signed up for a class early next week. This class is a two-day affair, where we'll go out into the field and learn how to survive in the Antarctic Wilderness. We'll be making our own igloos and sleeping in them amongst other things. I can't wait, this is exactly what we came out here for. Scientists have to do all of this to get to the field, and now we'll know what they're going through. It can only help the application, and in the process we hope to do some gap analysis to see where processes could be improved and/or streamlined.

Next we made our way to the dive building. Rob Robbins is the diving coordinator for the entire USAP. Scott & I have worked closely with Rob in the off season to try and streamline the diving request procedure in POLAR ICE. Right now our application will capture diver information such as certifications, affiliations, etc., and based on that and their dive plan will prepopulate any necessary diving permit forms that must be completed. Version 2 of POLAR ICE will have a much improved process for this, integrating the NSF and Smithsonian into the system as well. However, it's still kind of a black box for us, as I'm not a diver and certainly not an Antarctic diver, so I don't really know what all this stuff means. Rob wasn't in his office, but we had run into him the day before at dinner. He mentioned at that time that he thought it would be good if we joined him on some dive put-in camps, so we eagerly agreed. We'll be driving out onto the sea ice with Rob to drill holes, sometimes blast holes with explosives if the ice is thick enough, set up dive tents, etc. It should be quite an eye-opening experience. In order to get there, though, we have to take a sea ice training course. We'll learn how to evaluate cracks in the ice to determine safe routes, etc.

We then moved on to the fixed wing operations. Joni English is the Raytheon person in charge of this division. This building is also shared with the Air Force and Coast Guard. Walking through it it almost looked like a scene from Independance Day or something. There are plasma flat screen monitors on the wall with flight charts, weather reports, all kinds of things. Rooms full of people staring at 5 or 6 monitors of what appeared to be air traffic control type operations. Joni is in charge of coordinating all the different groups that comprise a flight mission, from pilots to cargo to fueling, I was shocked at how much goes on in this building. The weather people are also in here, and they were forecasting some nasty weather patterns that should be moving into McMurdo tomorrow. Joni looked rather stressed, and mentioned that the previous day they had done 7 missions, only one of which had been scheduled. Challenges were arising all over the place, such as a full fuel tanker en route to a fuel cache site that had a broken nozzle on the tanks. Luckily the nozzle was repaired just before the tanker arived or it would have been a wasted, and thus very expensive, mission. I don't envy her, but she seems to have a fascinating job.

Things quieted down a bit after that as we made our way to more workcenters. We stopped in the Crary Lab, a state of the art 4000+ square foot facility that houses laboratory space, computer space, and two large aquariums. Steve Alexander, the lab coordinator, wasn't in his office so we pressed on. I don't think I've mentioned it, but this tour was to show us the workcenters, but also to schedule a time next week to meet with each supervisor. We'll be meeting with them for an hour or more to go over exactly what they do, see it first-hand, and determine how POLAR ICE could be improved to help support what they do. Rather than just talking to them in an office in Denver, we'll get to see how they do these things by observing them in person as they interact with the science groups. It should be extremely valuable.

Next we went to the BFC, or Berg Field Center. Jim had called this the "REI of McMurdo." When a group goes out to the field they get all of their camp equipment from the BFC. We spoke with Karla College, the BFC supervisor, and set up a time to meet next week. We know Karla well from Denver and she's a super nice person to work with. Her facility is fascinating, as it truly is an REI on steroids. I've never seen human waste buckets and giant nancy sleds at the flagship store down the street from our house.

After that we went to the USAP Cargo building to see how our buddy Michael Davis does his thing. Every piece of cargo going in or out of station goes through this facility. Our C-141 was filled with cargo, and it apparently all goes through Mike. He was helping a science group load up a pallette to go out to the field, so Mike Mc. gave us a tour of the cargo facility. There are cages set up that hold the cargo for each science group. Karla will gather all the field camp equipment they need at the BFC and send it over to the cargo building to go in the group's cage. Michael Davis adds any scientific cargo that has come in for the group, and these cages are locked with a padlock. The group gets the combination and can access their gear 24/7.

The Food Room is upstairs in the cargo building, but it was closed. This is run by Peggy Malloy, another Courage Classic rider. The Food Room is essentially the grocery store for groups going to the field. They can grab as much food as they need for their stays in the wilderness (by wilderness I mean in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by ice and snow). Many groups spend several weeks or more in the field, so the food room is imperative to their survival. Josh developed a proof-of-concept for the Food Room earlier this year so we're excited to see it in action. It's a barcode system for checking out food. The groups use a modified PDA that has a barcode scanner on it, and as they grab food off the shelves they'll scan it with the PDA. Peggy then syncs the device and the food is deducted from the inventory database. She can then run reports to see who has taken what food, when, and how much should be left. It's a pretty cool concept that we hope to extend to the rest of the inventory-based workcenters. We've run into Peggy a couple of times around town and she's eager to meet with us, so hopefully we'll get to see the system in action shortly.

From there we continued on to the Carp(entry) Shop. Here is where any custom construction needs are fulfilled. Jay Ranson was in his office and we set up a time to meet next Saturday. (The work schedule here is 7:30am-5:30pm Monday through Saturday.)

We continued on down to the SSC (Science Support Center), where the MEC (Mechanical Equipment Center) occupies the lower level. This is where science groups get mechanical equipment such as chainsaws, snowmobiles, generators, portable heaters, etc., en route to the field. Alan Corneilson runs this shop and we scheduled time to meet with him next week. Mike gave us a brief tour of the facility and it's highly impressive. It reminded me of a rent-all shop on steroids.

That was it for the tour, and after scheduling some more time to meet with Mike again we headed back to 175. First, however, I stopped at my dorm to see if I could get ahold of my nephew Tyler, as it was his birthday back in the States. It's the 4th of November on the Ice, but still the 3rd back in Iowa. Unfortunately I was a little late, as it was 9:30 back home and his 10th birthday party had already ended. However, I got a chance to chat with my parents for a few minutes, and they were pretty surprised to hear from me.

After finishing up a few things at the office we headed back to 155 for dinner. The feeling of being an outsider is starting to diminish now, as we've met more people and the faces are looking familiar. After dinner Scott had a "bag drag," where he has to check in his bags and get weighed for his flight to South Pole tomorrow. He's the only one in our group that is going, I'd love to see it but it's a rare and priviliged occurrence to get to go to the true bottom of the world. Maybe next time, but it's still extremely cold there. Last I saw it was -50 degrees.

Josh and I went to the Crary Lab for the 7:00 Safety Outdoor Lecture. This is required before you can take advantage of any of the outdoor recreation opportunities on station. We learned how to identify safe routes on the hiking trails, and to stay away from the black flags, which mark danger areas. Crevasses are very common, and very deep, around these parts. Several years ago two hikers strayed from the marked route, fell into a crevasse that had been concealed by a snow drift, and died before being rescued. I'll try to avoid making the same mistake.

After class we met back up with Scott and headed over to the bowling alley, where we had made plans to meet Michael Davis. McMurdo Station is home to the oldest AMF bowling alley in the world. It's a two-lane job that has seen better days, as the lanes are smooth but far from level. If you look straight down them you can see arcs and bends, as the wood has been distorted over the years. It's also supposed to be the last remaining manual pin system in the world. Each lane has a guy at the end who picks up the knocked-down pins, re-sets them, and sends the balls back up the lane after a throw. It was highly entertaining, and I got some good video of Josh throwing a strike. Due to the warped lanes, each team swaps sides after each round. We destroyed our competition and headed to Gallagher's to celebrate. There are three bars on station, and Gallagher's is known as the non-smoking bar. There's another bar where smoking is allowed, and then the "Coffee House," which is more of a subdued, laid-back wine bar that's popular with the scientists.

Josh and I lost to Mike & Scott in a series of foosball games, got a ton of crap from them, and then called it a night. We walked out of Gallaghers, which is lit up just like any other bar back home, very dim atmosphere, and the brighness of the 11pm sky blew me away. Here it was, 11:00 at night, and the sun was still high in the sky. It won't set until April or so, when the cold, long, dark Antarctic Winter begins. A helicopter carrying a sling load was landing at the pad, so we watched that process, soaked in the beauty of frozen McMurdo Sound, and then headed up to call it a night. The tour that Mike gave us was invaluable to our mission, and I felt like it had been a very good day. This place is great, I can't wait to see what the rest of the trip holds.

The bandwidth at McMurdo Station is extremely limited. The pipe is very narrow to begin with, and about 75% of it is allocated for science data and VOIP. The remaining 25% is rougly equivalent to a small town all sharing one DSL connection. So while I'll try to upload photos as I can, there won't be as many as I'd like and they might need to be compressed into a smaller size. When I get back I'll post everything. In the meantime, here are some from the big day on 3 November.

The three-mile ride from the ice runway to McMurdo Station gave us a great view of Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world. There's a puff of steam coming out of it right now and I was reminded of another grantee's description of his project. They're putting a "triple teflon coated prison riot camera" down into the volcano to take and send back photos of the thing. Amazing stuff is going on down here.

Ivan dropped us off at the NSF Chalet on station, where we had yet another briefing. Next the NSF Station Director spoke a bit more about safety and SOPs, and then we were split into two groups. Us Raytheon people went into Jim Scott's office while the grantees stayed put for even more briefings. Jim is the Raytheon McMurdo Station Director, and I know him well from all of the cycling he & I did together this summer. It was good to see him again and after the briefing he gave us he told me he'd like to get together for a beer soon.

As we exited the chalet the housing coordinator gave us our dorm room assignments, and we walked the short distance to our rooms. I had gotten in building 209, which is the closest one to the bay, but unfortunately my room wasn't bayside. I guess you can't expect everything your first time down :-)

TVs and refrigerators are luxury items in the dorms, but my room had both. I also didn't have a roommate. However, about an hour later one of the PIs (Principal Investigators, or a lead on a science project) showed up. He's a super nice guy from Carbondale, Illinois named Mike. Scott, Josh & I met up again to go get the rest of our bags from the supply center, and Scott mentioned that he didn't have a roommate either. We took our bags back to our rooms and I started to unpack. Josh called from Scott's room and said that the Vikings game was on, so I went over to watch with them. The station gets about 4 channels from the military networks, so we were surprised to see that the game was on in real time. Hopefully the MNF Broncos game will be on as well.

Scott still didn't have a roommate, so I called housing and asked if it would be ok if I moved in with him. They had no problem with it so I went back to my room, re-packed my things, and moved in with Scott. This will be best for everyone since the PI had a grad student that he had requested to live with which can now take my place in that room.

Once the Vikings blew the game we headed over to building 155 for dinner. That is the main social area on station, and houses the dining facility as well as a few of the offices. One thing that really surprised me about this station is that everything looks very old and run-down from the outside, but once you walk inside the facilities are very modern. This was originally a Navy base, so the architecture of the buildings is far from interesting. Most buildings are reminiscent of tin-sided storage barns and buildings you see on farms. Quite a few are also converted janesways, which are rounded buildings kind of reminiscent of a greenhouse, only made out of tin. The station has powerlines running through it and above-ground piping, but sitting against the backdrop of frozen McMurdo Sound, Mt. Erebus, and an Antarctic mountain range, everything looks incredible.

Back to dinner -- they serve three meals a day on station, and it's a lot like a Vegas buffet, only not as big or good. Don't get me wrong, the meals are actually really good. Sally Ayote is the cook. She was also on my Courage Classic bike ride, and if you've seen Harsh Continent on CNN, she was the one in the greenhouse at the South Pole. With this free all you can eat food, I don't see how it's possible that I won't gain weight during my stay here. The dining facility was hustle and bustle, but we luckily found an empty table. The people next to us were celebrating someone's birthday, and it seemed everyone else knew everyone on station. We all three felt like outsiders, and I think Josh put it best when he said he felt like a freshman in college on the first day of class.

We ran into quite a few Denver-based Raytheon people over the course of the rest of the day and that helped ease the feeling of being an outsider. Scott called Michael Davis, the cargo coordinator, and he invited us to someone's room where they were playing a board game and being generally merry. Everyone was very friendly and that also helped ease the feeling of not fitting in. After an hour or so we headed back to our dorms and hit the sack, anxious to start our first real day on station tomorrow.

A few McMurdo observations:

I awoke at about 4:00am and knew there was no chance of me falling back asleep. This was the day I had been anticipating for a long time. In just a matter of hours I would be in Antarctica -- the highest, coldest, driest, windiest, most remote place on earth. Was I ever excited. How many people ever get to do something like this?

I showered, dressed, packed up, and checked out. The shuttle arrived right on time and we headed to the airport. We arrived at the CDC and found our bags waiting for us. We're required to wear a full set of ECW gear on the plane so that if it goes down we'll be able to stay warm for a little while before we die, apparently. There is a limit of one carry-on bag per person, and it must meet the same restrictions as commercial aircraft. In this bag should not only be even more ECW but also a change of personal clothing and any personal items one might need just in case the plane has to boomerang. This is an all-too-common occurence where bad weather will roll into McMurdo after the plane has already left CHC and it must then turn back, or boomerang, and try again tomorrow. Earlier in the season a group got stuck at CHC for seven days while bad weather had hold of McMurdo.

Once our ECW was on and our bags packed, we headed into the Antarctic Passenger Terminal to go through security. There were three lines, so I got in one and at the front met a member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. He asked if I had any hazardous materials on my person and whether I was carrying any sharp objects. He checked my departure card and passport, and then let me through to the security screeners. They weighed my bags, sent them through x-ray, and then had me step on the scale. The Air Force needs to know exactly how much weight is going on board, even down to everyone's carry-on. I was given a boarding pass, released to breakfast, or "brecky, as the Kiwis say," and told to report back at 07:15 for briefing.

Across the way is the International Antarctic Centre, which has a cafe serving a pretty decent breakfast. We ate our final meal in New Zealand in full ECW gear (minus the parka), then headed back for our briefing. A member of the RNZAF went over a few housekeeping items, then a USAF loadmaster went over the safety procedures, very similarly to on a commercial aircraft. We then watched a short video about safety (a very common theme in the USAP), and then proceeded to the X-Ray machines. The USAF had bomb sniffing and drug sniffing dogs run through our bags, and then they were placed on the conveyor belt. We walked through the metal detectors and once we passed we boarded two transport busses to take us to the tarmac.

On the short bus ride to the aircraft the radio was playing "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," which I thought was extremely fitting. After being dropped off on the tarmac we grabbed a huge sack lunch from the catering truck and within a few minutes were told to board the Air Force C-141 airframe.

Josh, Scott, and I were among the first on board, which turned out to be a good move. This is an Air Force cargo/transport plane, so the amenities are non-existent. There are two columns of seats, so four rows of people run vertically along the plane, if that makes sense. The plane is very much like one you'd see in any movie about Paratroopers, and our seats were made of nylon netting. They crammed us in there, we were spaced 20" apart. The people across from us were staggered so that our legs were interlocked. Once everyone was on board they passed around ear plugs, shut the doors, and started taxi'ing (is that a word?).

I had thought that with the smaller-than-normal load of passengers we might have a little additional room, but I was wrong. Seven or eight participants from the Kiwi Antarctic Program joined us, and the rest of the plane was packed to the brim with cargo. Once we got in the air I could see why we had been given the ear plugs. I took one out for readjustment and couldn't believe how incredibly loud the plane was. It was so loud that you had to shout into the ear of the person next to you in order to talk. Needless to say, there wasn't much talking going on. By the end of the 5-hour flight we had gotten pretty good with hand signals.

After about an hour we started getting up out of our seats and moving around a bit to stretch our cramped legs. The lone urinal on board was right next to me (I luckily got an end row seat), and consisted of a barrel wrapped in a shower curtain -- no joke. Scott got a picture of it, I'll have to post it for you to see. There was one lone window on the plane, on the emergency exit door just a few feet down and across from me. I looked out of it and saw that we were over water that was just starting to be sprinkled with small ice floats.

After a few hours the scenery dramatically changed, and soon we were flying over solid ground. The white and snow was everywhere you could see, and we got some good views of the Antarctic Mountains. Unfortunately there was just this one small window, and everyone on board had to wait his turn to peek out and take pictures. About 4 1/2 hours into the flight the captain came over the loudspeaker and asked us to all get back in our seats and prepare for landing.

The landing was the smoothest one I've ever had, and after a few minutes of taxi'ing (there's that word again), we came to a stop. The doors were opened and we started piling off the plane. The contrast from lush New Zealand was immediate. The cold hits you right away and all you can see for miles is snow and ice. The runway on which we landed is the ice runway, which is literally a runway on the frozen waters of McMurdo Sound. The ice right now is about 13-14 feet thick -- apparently thick enough for a full fleet of tractors and heavy equipment, not to mention an Air Force C-141 jet. This runway is only in use for another month or so, when it becomes too soft for the planes to land. We boarded "Ivan the Terra Bus," which then transported us to McMurdo Station.

(continued in part 2)

After getting up to date on emails, blogs, and photo uploads, we headed back towards the main CHC terminal to pick up a shuttle back downtown. As we walked past the USAP hangar a cab stopped and yelled at us to get in, he'd give us a discount. $30 kiwi normally, but since we're with the program, only $25 for all of us (that's about $17 US).

We hopped in and Mike, the Samoan driver of Cab 98, gave us the "Tiki Tour" of Christchurch. He very eloquently expressed his opinions on the war protesters that surfaced shortly after we invaded Iraq, the local Kiwi girls, the difference between African-American and Caucasian Americans, and several other topics. He went out of his way (no charge, of course) to show us the lone Denny's Restaurant and Manchester St., which apparently is home to the "Manchester Street Girls." Mike was an interesting fellow to say the least, and we're supposed to call for Cab 98 next time we're in town. I highly doubt that we will.

We had hoped to go to Lyttleton to see if the NBP was in port but decided that it would be too much running around on our last night so we decided to stay in CHC and watch some more rugby. We wandered around for a bit looking for a restaurant and settled on Coyotes, right on the Avon River (I found out that's the name of the scenic waterway). I ordered the something Hog, which ended up being the biggest, juciest, most delicious cut of pork I've ever had in my life. I even took a picture of it beforehand, it was that impressive.

After dinner we made our way back to Bailies to have some Canterburys and watch the World Cup. It turned out most of the other USAP participants had the same idea. We played a few rounds of pool and shot the breeze with a couple of grantees. One of them is on the Ice Cube project at the South Pole. This is a next-generation subatomic particle telescope designed to be implanted deep in ice at the South Pole. It will measure and chart the path of neutrinos, the smallest particles of matter, as they pass from space through the earth. It's made up of 4,800 glass optical modules on 80 strings buried .8 to 1.5 miles below the ice -- effectively converting a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into the world's largest scientific intstrument. Hearing the grantees talk about their projects reminds me why I'm here. Our mission, first and foremost, is to support science on the Ice, and we're doing it through software.

The New Zealand All Blacks are my favorite rugby team :-) and they had the bejeesus scared out of them by Wales, but were able to pull it off at the end. They're one of the favorites to win the Cup this year, so I'll be pulling for them. The game started at 10:30pm so I watched it from my room, in bed, getting rested up for our big day on Monday. I have a wakeup call scheduled for 5am, the shuttle arrives at 6, and we'll leave this continent by 9:00.

When the phone rang this morning at 8am I barely heard it. I was out cold, trying to get my body back to a normal state of rest and routine. It was Josh, asking if I wanted to meet him and Scott at Starbucks across the square. After some coffee (I got the Americano like always, but it felt strange ordering it this time), we did a little more sight seeing and had a nice breakfast. There was a gathering of Jaguar (actually pronounced jag-you-ah in this country, not just on the commercials) on Cathedral Square so we gawked for a bit. There was a Dexter dog sitting next to one of them and it made me miss my little man back home even more. We walked around a bit more and then went to get everything ready for our 1:00 appointment at the Clothing Distribution Center.

When we arrived at the CDC we saw that the manifest for tomorrow's flight has just 29 people on it. Hopefully that will be good, we're taking a C-141 so we should have more room than normal. The 141 is a jet, which means the flight down should only take about 5 1/2 hours. I saw it sitting there as we pulled up to the CDC and it got me pretty excited. I've only seen pictures of these around the office, but there sits the one on which I'll be flying to Antarctica tomorrow!

When you walk into the CDC there's a wall o' ECW on your left that shows you everything available. It's amazing how much cold weather gear is stored in this place. It's like a free shopping spree at REI, only better. There was also a picture of Bill Clinton wearing an ECW parka during his visit in 1999. Of course I snapped a picture of The Man ;-)

At the CDC we watched a brief video and then were given two bags of ECW gear. We have to try everything on to make sure it all fits. I put everything on and my body temperature instantly started rising. They're not messing around with this stuff, it is seriously warm clothing. (check the photo album to see me all bundled up). I don't have the actual list in front of me, but we received a heavy duty parka, a wind jacket, two pairs of long underwear (one lighter and one heavier), fleece pants, a fleece jacket, 5 or 6 pairs of gloves & mittens, from liner weight to leather fur-lined heavy duty weight, Carhardt lined bib overalls, lined nylon bibs, 4 pairs of wool socks, a balakava (sp?), fleece neck gaiter, fleece lined yazoo hat, ski goggles, sunglasses, and "bunny" boots. The bunny boots are waterproof boots that are supposedly so warm that you are only supposed to wear one pair of socks with them. There's a little valve on the side that you can open and close, and the only time it should be left open is when you're airborne.

We're supposed to wear more than half of this gear on the flight tomorrow, just in case we go down and have to survive in Antarctic weather for a few days. That should be highly uncomfortable, but it's all part of the adventure.

After we finished trying on our ECW we walked next door to the travel office, where there's a computer lab with free high-speed access for USAP participants. That's where I am now, uploading photos and getting the blog up-to-date.

Tonight we're planning to go to Lyttleton, about 30 minutes away on the coast. It's where the Nathaniel B. Palmer Research Vessel is in port, and we hear it's a crazy little town with a good nightlife. We can't be too wild, though, as we have to check in at the CDC tomorrow morning at 6:30am.

Once we got to Christchurch we were met by a representative from the United States Antarctic Program who gave us a quick brief on where we were needed and when. We are to be at the Clothing Distribution Center tomorrow at 1pm to pick up our Extreme Cold Weather gear and make sure everything fits. With that, we hopped a shuttle and headed to our hotel, The Heritage, in downtown Christchurch. I thought we were going to die most of the way because I can't seem to get used to driving on the left side of the road. Every time we turned I thought we were dead, as it looked like we were turning right into head-on traffic.

The first thing I did once I got into my room was to call Sara. I had been traveling for about 26 hours and wanted to let her know I had made it, but I mostly just wanted to hear her voice. Unfortunately the phone system in the hotel is a piece of garbage and we had a short conversation due to the long delay lag and distortion. I'll try again tomorrow from the CDC, where I also hope to finally post this monster of a blog entry.

After showering up, swapping contacts, and changing clothes, we headed out to grab some lunch. Don Ravenscroft, Scott's boss, came wandering in about that time so he joined us. First, however, Josh had to show off his multi-floor suite complete with kitchen that he somehow ended up with. It's bigger than most peoples' apartments, I'd imagine. After strolling through downtown Christchurch for a while we landed at The Loaded Hog, a brewpub. As soon as I walked in I saw a big painting of George Dubya holding a bottle of Loaded Hog Dark so I snapped a pic (see the photo album). We got some beers and ordered some snacks. Scott got some potato wedges (back in Iowa we call them "Savory Wedges") and when they arrived they had to have had at least 2 cups of sour cream on top. We were all giving him crap about that when Josh's nachos arrived with the same amount of sour cream. I had gotten an omelete, which came with about half a stick of butter on top. I absent-mindedly started spreading it around like on a pancake before I realized the absurdity of the situation. These New Zealanders know how to eat, but they all look pretty fit and healthy. What gives?

After lunch we strolled through town a bit, and happened upon a young girl, probably 10-12 years old, playing flute in the pedestrian mall. We threw the Kiwi change we had into her hat along with a couple American $1 bills and her resulting smile more than made up for the 26 hours of travel time we were all suffering from. She was playing from a book, "How to Play the Flute," and was obviously thrilled to death that some Yankees stopped to listen and gave her some money.

Josh had a couple of things to take care of back in his room so we decided we'd all take a break and meet back up at 5:00. Josh & I showed up, but by 5:20 Scott was still nowhere to be found. We called his room but no answer, so we went up and knocked on his door. Sure enough, Scott had broken rule #1: Don't sleep until it's nighttime, no matter how tired you are your first day in CHC. He had fallen hard asleep. We continued our sight-seeing, but Scott was still half-asleep so he ended up going back to his room after about 45 minutes. Josh & I continued on and came across the river running through town that gave us a plethora of photo ops (see the photo album). I don't know what this river is, but it's lined with weeping willow trees that supposedly came from weeping willow cuttings taken from Napoleon's grave on the island of St. Helena.

On our way back to Cathedral Square, which is where our hotel is located, we stumbled upon the statue of Robert Falcon Scott, the great British Antarctic Explorer for whom the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is named after. It reminded me that there's another huge part of this journey yet to come. Getting to New Zealand seemed like all of the focus of the past couple of days, so it's kind of hard to believe I'll be in Antarctica tomorrow.

Josh & I were starting to get hungry again so we went to Bailie's, an Irush pub right next to our hotel. It's Rugby World Cup time, and if there's one thing I've learned about New Zealanders it's that they love their rugby. We watched a match and a half over some Canturbury Ales and were able to figure out some of the rules. It's a highly entertaining game that combines the best of soccer, football, and hockey all into one.

After spending the evening watching rugby and observing the local customs we decided to call it a night. I slept like a baby, it had been almost 48 hours since I had gotten any real rest.

Some random New Zealand observations: