Antarctica. Srsly.

Figured I should post this

2009-10-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

I was going through old videos of mine, stuff I'd taken when I was on the ice, and I came across this. It was a video I made of myself walking around Palmer Station and doing the daily rounds, sometime during the winter. Of all the videos I took, I think this probably gives the best feel and look at what the station was really like, inside and out. I really miss that place, in all it's six-feet-of-snow-in-one-day weirdness.

Ice/Land/Waterscapes

2009-04-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd posted these at some point, but looking back through my posts, it appears I didn't. So here's some nice Ice/Water/Landscapes that I took while I was down there. If these are a repeat post, sorry. :)

Ha, betcha thought I'd vanished, huh?

2009-04-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

Well, vanished from Antarctica, yes, but not from the world. I haven't updated this because, well, there's not been anything Antarctic-related going on in my life. I spent a few months living in India, and recently have been crashing in Chicago.

That's not to say I don't have adventures planned. From May through September of this year, I'll be living off my motorcycle on a 25,000 mile road trip around North America, camping and living as cheaply as I possibly can.

I'll be blogging about that as well, and have created another blog just for those adventures. I welcome anyone who's found this, and wonders what a rootless vagabond does when he's NOT freezing his ass off, to check out my new blog, at: http://vagrantbiker.blogspot.com

Enjoy. :)

And yet again, penguins!

2008-12-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

Just a quick hello to those of you who've found this blog from the "Happy Gentoo" video that I put on youtube :) I'm always surprised when people comment on this blog; I always assume that no one besides my grandmother reads this, so when people leave notes, it's a bit of a happy reminder that there's someone else in the world that thinks Antarctica is awesome. Hello world!

So, without further ado, I present you with what you undoubtably came here for; more pictures of penguins :)

I took these actually a day or two before I left station (a month and a half ago, or so), so in the commotion of getting packed, getting these sorted didn't take very high priority.

Sadly, penguins are not usually this clean and pretty. With summer coming, and the snow melting away, they spend most of their time on land lounging around on rocks, mud and piles of penguin poop. So most of them end up with fairly dirty bellies.

And, in the case of this guy, finding the tallest pile of rocks he could, so that he could stand on top of them and look sullen. Sort of reminds me of a grouchy old king or something.

God they're funny looking. These are the smaller Adelie penguins, they've got a slightly different head shape that gives them a sort of cross-eyed look when you're looking at you straight on. I happen to think they're a bit cuter then the Gentoos, at least up close.

It really is amazing just how many of them there were, and how they just seemed to come out of nowhere. One week, there were just a few, then the next, we had hoards.

There were no penguin babies yet, not nearly. This was still find-a-partner and build nests time. And while their version of a nest is just a pile of stones they've arranged into sort of a doughnut, they do take the most amazing care and put lots of precision in it. For creatures who on land seem so un-coordinated and goofy, the delicatness with which they select, pick up, and place the stones for the nests is very suprising, and in a way, very sweet.

Nomrally, when they're walking around, they waddle about at a slight-slower-the-frantic pace, bumping into things and falling over a lot. When they're carrying the little stones, though, it's like they're moving in slow motion. It's actually very neat to watch, just how important this next building seems to be to them.

Of course, occasionally this leads to fights. Probably over who's got the nicest-looking pile of rockts to lay on or something. Usually, these fights just involved them squaking and jawing at each other a bit, but sometimes they get really into it and start running around and smacking each other with their little wings. It's just about the funniest thing to watch ever.

Anyway, yeah. Penguins! More videos coming in a bit, so check by in a few days.

Why I quit the world

2008-12-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

At this time last year, almost exactly this time, in fact, I had an apartment, three cars (although one of them was in many parts), multitude of powerful computers, all sorts of expensive little toys and gadgets, full-time job, and a long-term girlfriend. Well, sorta. That was always complicated.

And now I've got roughly two duffel bags worth of clothes, a laptop, and . . . that's about it.

Some people will never be able to understand why I did what I did. They're the same people who asked "Why the heck would you want to go to Antarctica?!?! Isn't it cold and horrible!?" (to which I'd reply "Well, yeah.") The people who have to ask that question, they could never understand the answer.

But I had my own reasons for it. And it all started one day when I took a shower.

I've always been a skinny guy, my whole life. Anyone who knew my in high school remembers how rail-thin I always was, at one point I was six feet tall and 112lbs. Of course, being a guy, I don't keep a scale or really have any idea of how much I weigh day-to-day or even year-to-year. But one day, when I was taking a shower, I looked down, and I realized I couldn't see part of my feet.

I was getting fat. I was getting the little skinny-guy pot belly. My girlfriend confirmed this.

To me, someone who's been a scrawny guy since always, this was just . . . this was shocking to me. And in that instant, I realized that everything I was doing was wrong. Sure, I hated the idea that I was getting fat, but more then anything, the getting fat was a symptom of all the wrong choices that I was making. This wasn't the life I wanted. The life I was living wasn't making me happy. At least, it wasn't fulfilling. Everything I had, everything I was doing, the way I was living, it wasn't what was important.

Well, that and I'm shallow and vein, so being fat sucked.

But scarier then that is that in that instant, I could also see where it was going. And I could understand exactly how, and why, people get stuck in dull little suburban lives, how people never leave the town or city that they grow up in, and not notice it until it's far too late, they're too deeply entrenched to get away, and they have a mid-life crisis and buy a sports car or something.

It's not a decision that they actually made. It's the lack of making decisions that left them there.

And it was where I was headed.

The next day, I started working out again, and paying a little bit of attention to how much and what I was eating. But also, that night, I logged onto Raytheon's website and started applying for jobs on the ice. The rest is . . . well, you know.

Do I miss what I had?

Well, I miss the girlfriend a good bit. And often, I miss the convenience of a highly tweaked home network with a bunch of specialty systems, and a reliable, fast internet connection. But save for some bright spots, I don't miss that life. Sometimes it's temping to go back. Maybe I will someday, but . . . not now.

I suppose I was lucky. I was able to get out. I have a skill set that's easily marketable, I realize what was wrong before I'd put down roots, before I'd gotten too attached to anything.

But it was close. Another couple of years, and I don't know if I'd have been able to leave.

Polar Plunge

2008-11-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

Traditions are a funny thing. They make otherwise sane, healthy, normal people (or at least as normal as you find on the ice) engage in activities that don't make a lot of sense. And of all of the traditions that exist on station, none is nuttier then what happens every time the ship leaves.

Actually, it happens more frequently then that. People do this to celebrate their birthdays, or other people's birthdays. Or in mourning, or on a major holiday, or . . . well, for any reason they possibly can, really.

So when the ship pulled out in September taking half of the winter crew with them, people . . . well, they did what they do.

Keep in mind that this water is about 29 degrees, as salt water has a lower freezing point then fresh water.

One of the things you have to be careful of when jumping after the ship is to wait until it moves away enough from the pier that you don't get caught in the prop wash. If you do get caught in the wash, you get pushed way up the inlet, and face a long swim back to the ladder. Even without the prop wash, it's still not totally hassle-free. You can actually see Waslo getting pulled under the pier bumper by the surge, and had to grab Wally's arm to stop from being sucked under the bumper.

Oh, so THAT'S how it's done

2008-11-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

Ever since I got to station, my friend Sean and I, as well as other people on station, had posed the question; "How on earth do penguins mate?". Given their odd stature and physiology, we couldn't imagine any sort of way that it could work. And, of course, we were far too lazy to just google for it, or something.

But, a couple weeks ago, Sean and I were out hiking on one of the nearby islands when I noticed this. And it took me a couple seconds to figure out what the heck was going on.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how penguins mate. Mystery solved.

Update

2008-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted in a while, and to be honest, that's because I'm no longer on station. I ended my contract early, and left station on the October boat. After a rough five-day Drake crossing, and a day in PA, I got back to the USA on October 30th.

I'm not out of stories and photos of Antarctica yet, though, so expect more posts in the future of things that I'd always meant to write about, but never got around to.

Penguins, again.

2008-10-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm talking to anyone back in the states and mention that I'm in Antarctica, the first question is usual something about polar bears. The second question, inevitably, is along the lines of "Do you have penguins there?"

During the winter, "Maybe" was the best answer I could give. We saw some, but they were fairly few and far between. But now, spring is here, and the silly creatures are coming back. In force. It would be fair to say that we're almost over-run with penguins.

In less then three weeks, we've gone from being exited if we saw five, to being almost indifferent to them. When we're out boating, it's a case of "Oh, yeah, there's a few hundred penguins over there. Meh."

One of the problems with penguins, though, is that they've lived for a long time in an environment with relatively few sea-based predators, and almost no land-based ones. To them, being on land is their safe zone. It doesn't seem to occur to them to be afraid of anything on land. They're a bit skittish, as most birds are, but they seem to regard humans and our detritus as oddities, and maybe even slight curiosities.

That is to say, they wander around our station like they own the place.

And according to the ACA (Antarctic Conservation Act), they do.

So, they wander around station at will, sliding down rocks and poking at basically anything that tweaks their interest.

I wonder if he thought he was going to fix the cables or something? Like most animals, they explore the world and everything around them with their mouth, not really having hands. So while it does look funny, them pecking at something is just their way of trying to figure out what it is, and basically, if they can eat it.

Of course, when they start wandering around the station's road (we only have one. If you could call it a road) and pier, inevitably there's going to be a few of us out there taking pictures of them. And I they seem to view us with the same sort of bemusement that we view them with. By official rule, we have to stay at least 15 feet away from them, unless they approach us. In which case, as long as we don't antagonize or provoke them or anything, we don't have to actively try and get out of their way.

And that means that they get absurdly close to us. And I'm the idiot sitting there with a 400mm lens when these guys are just a few feet away.

These are Gentoo penguins, significantly smaller then the Emperor or King penguins that live farther south, and in the areas around McMurdo.

Penguins have recently been pretty popular in the last few years in pop culture. March of the Penguins, Happy Feet being the big two penguin-focused movies. But of all the various portrayals of penguins in the media, I'd have to say that the penguins in "Madagascar" are probably the closest to reality. Not that penguins are actually para-military, but that they're just a little bit psychotic, and it seems like they're always scheming or planning something. They'll be standing around looking bored, and then all of the sudden they'll start squawking loudly and running around, and all head off in one seemingly random direction, heading over a few hundred feet . . . and stopping again to stand around and look silly.

And of course . . . yes, they really are that goofy. They look absolutely ridiculous waddling around, they frequently fall flat onto their faces, either on accident or just so they can toboggan along on their belly. They're not like cats, where they do something incredibly silly, then immediately stand up and shrug it off and pretend it never happened.

No, they seem to be perfectly content with the fact that they are some really strange little creatures.

Prints for sale!

2008-10-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

(This may, or may not, be influenced by the release of this.)

Over the last couple of months, I've had people ask me how or where they could get an actual print of some of the photos I've shown. And while this whole concept of an actual hard copy is quite foreign to someone raised on digital like me, I've finally gotten around to setting up an online ordering site, which can be found here:

http://backprint.com/antarctica

I've uploaded a small selection of my images to the site already, but if you're looking through my blog archives and see a specific image that you'd really like a print of, just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail, and I can get it uploaded ASAP.

The prints are good quality, and have a variety of different finishing and framing options, if you were interested. If you wanted any of these in an ultra-high-quality art print, send me a note and I could set it up (costs for these large, archival-quality prints can often run over $100, though).

So take a look through the site, let me know what you think, and thanks for reading :)

WTF Moments

2008-10-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

When you're driving a zodiac boat through large swells, weaving in between bergy-bits and full-sized icebergs, pushing through brash ice and trying to stay warm, you don't have time to think about how strange it is that you're in Antarctica.

When you're wandering around on the islands around station, and a group of penguins waddle up to you, squawk curiously, and waddle off, you don't think about how strange it is that you're in Antarctica, you're too obsessed with the cute and silly.

During the workday, when you're walking around station fixing things that are broken, or preventing things from breaking, you're mostly just thinking about how long it is until lunch, or if the weather will be nice enough to go boating after work, or just hoping that the wind doesn't pick up.

When you're trying to walk from building to building in 60mph winds with frozen sea spray getting ground into your skin, it's pretty obvious that you're in Antarctica, and you don't really think about it, you're too busy holding onto the railings and trying not to get blown away.

The times that it hits you, really hits you that "This is nuts, I'm in Antarctica" is at the most mundane and random times. When you're walking up the stairs. When you're sitting on the toilet. When you're standing in line for dinner. When you're just laying in bed at night. The more typical and generic the task that you're doing is, the more likely that something taps you on the inside of your head and says "Hey! You're in Antarctica! What the heck are you doing in Antarctica?" It's when you're doing the most normal things, in the most abnormal environment, that you just notice everything. The wear patterns on the floors where so many other slightly toasty and bewildered people have walked, that one little bolt on the Bio-Lab stairs that isn't quite straight, the clean and almost clinical cleanliness of GWR vs the older, but slightly homier feel of Bio-lab.

It's those little things, tiny things, that make me sit back and realize how lucky I am, and how strange this all is.

I can't be toast yet! I've still got four months to go!

2008-10-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was sitting down at dinner, trying to cut my chicken breast, and was very confused at why the heck my knife wasn't cutting through this damn thing.

Then I realized I was holding a spoon.

Toast

2008-10-12T14:49:00.000-07:00

Toast
Pronunciation:\ˈtōst\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English tosten, from Anglo-French toster, from Late Latin tostare to roast, from Latin tostus, past participle of torrēre to dry, parch — more at thirst
Date: 14th century

transitive verb

1: to warm thoroughly
2: to make (as bread) crisp, hot, and brown by heat
3: the unique sort of insanity caused by spending far too much time in Antarctia

Being toast, toasty, toasted, or however you want to put it, is at it's core an extreme version of cabin fever. It's a very special version if it, though, and while it manifests itself differently in all people, there are a lot of fairly universal symptoms.

In all reality, we don't have as much of a problem with it here at Palmer as they do at the other US stations, McMurdo and South Pole. We have mostly regular resupply ships that bring in freshies, and contact with other humans outside of the 20-40 that we're locked up with here on station. And in the summer, cruise ships stop by, giving us a break from the day-to-day of work, and interaction with people who somehow manage to exist in the real world.

The other two stations, though, are cut off for the winters, no physical contact with the outside world. McMurdo is usually open for 6 months of the year, but South Pole can only be accessed for about 4 months per year, sometimes even less. So people doing a winter there are mostly locked in a single building for 8 months on end, with the same 50 people. It's dark for six months (well, twilight for two, fully dark for four), the freshies run out after a few weeks, it's -80 outside, you have very slow internet for only 12 hours per day.

It gets to people.

You just end up getting more and more removed from the world, and living deeper and deeper in your own head. People end up walking around in sort of a perpetual daze, like they never really wake up in the morning. Sometimes, someone will be telling a story, and just stop in mid-sentence and stare off into space, having to be snapped back to reality by someone poking them, having completely forgotten the last half-hour or so. People have described in to me as that you don't have the ability to concentrate on very much. If you're lucky, you'll have just enough concentration to get your job done, but after that, you just don't notice the world around you.

A few years ago at Pole, a bunch of guys buzzed another guys head in his sleep as a prank, and he didn't notice it until someone pointed it out to him . . . three days later. There's a myriad of other stories like that, people completely disconnecting. People walking into the wrong bedroom, undressing and going to sleep in it, not noticing that it's not actually their room. People going to the galley, eating lunch, but if you grabbed them walking out and ask them what they just ate, they'd not be able to tell you, if they could recall eating at all. Someone here related a personal experience to me of simply not being able to remember anything he'd done for days at a time when he was wintering at Pole.

Toastieness can get worse, though Very frequently, I'm told, you'll see people randomly start crying, sometimes mid-sentence, for no particular reason at all. There's plenty of stories of random people walking into the galley, getting a plate of food, sitting down alone at a table . . . and just sitting there for half an hour quietly crying, not touching their food. When lunch is over, they get up, take their untouched plate of food to the garbage, and go back to work.

It can also give people a very quick temper. A majority of the emergency medevacs from McMurdo and Pole over the winters are injuries due to fights; our current doctor here on station has worked a while at Pole, and had a number of broken jaws, hands, and a lot of other fight-related injuries. There's more stories then I could remember of people completely flying off the handle for the most comically minor of reasons, like the cook putting too much cheese in the lasagna or something.

Some of the more extreme cases of toast would be hilarious if they weren't so indicitive of something really wrong in these people's brains.

The most famous incident was a couple years ago at McMurdo, a guy bashed in the heads of two other guys with a hammer. A few people here with me at Palmer now were at McMurdo when it happened, and while the back story is complicated, it wasn't a drunken brawl or something like that. This guy had just been here WAY too long, had been trying to leave for a while, but was in a fairly important roll and they didn't want to do without him. As a result of this incident, there were rules put in place stating that if someone wants to leave, you HAVE to let them, ASAP, no exceptions. But this guy simply walked into housewares, checked out a hammer, walked into the gally, gave each of these other two guys a single good swing to the head . . . walked back to housewares, and turned the hammer back in. Some guys found him half an hour later wandering up and down one of the dorm hallways singing "Mary had a little lamb" quietly over and over to himself. The guys he attacked with the hammer both survived, and he's doing time in Hawaii last I heard. But from what I'm able to gather, the people directly involved in the incident were surprised he had to do any time at all. It was a complicated situation.

There's been quite a few people who've tried to leave Pole. Keep in mind that South Pole is something like 750 miles away from McMurdo, across the windiest and coldest and most barren land on the planet.

A few years ago, one guy decided that he had to leave pole, and tried to ski to McMurdo with nothing but a tent and some Hersheys bars. He made it 11 miles before people realized he was missing. Pole is completely flat for 500 miles in all directions, so all they had to do was go up onto the roof and look, and say "Oh, over there". He'd set up his tent to take a nap in, they went out on snowmobiles and brought him back to station.

One guy did try to leave on a snowmobile. He strapped a couple jerry cans to the back, and just left. He didn't dress properly, though, and kept getting cold, so he had to stop every so often to warm his hands back up, that was how they were able to catch up to him and bring him back.

This other guy decided that he was leaving, and was going to walk home. He cleaned out his room, packed his bags, said goodby to everyone . . . and went to the gym, got on the treadmill with his bags sitting on the floor next to him, and started walking. It took the doctors like three hours to talk him down.

Will I be that crazy by the time I get out of here? Probably not, but depending on who you talk to, I was crazy to begin with. But you could say that about almost everyone on station right now.

I think it's why we're all here.

2008-10-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

And here we have a couple videos that I shot last weekend when we went out rec boating. I'm sort of low on energy and ambition right now, so I'm not bothering to write any captions or something about them.

But yeah, this is what rec boating is like on nice days. This is what we get to do for fun.

So, what exactly am I doing down here, anyway?

2008-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

One of the (many, many, MANY) strange things about this continent, and this program, is that they actually PAY US to be here. They don't pay us that well, but magically, every two weeks, a small number of dollars is deposited into my bank account. Of course, in exchange for these dollars, they seem to expect me to actually do some work.

My official job title here is "Carpenter's Helper". At least, it was until September 24th, when my old contract ended and my new contract started, which has now given me the title of "Utility Technician's Helper". Which on this station, is the exact same job.

Basically, I am the FEMC (Facilities, Engineering, Maintenance, Construction) department helper, as well as occasionally functioning as a helper for whomever else on the stations needs a hand to do something, or just someone to carry heavy things from point A to B. My job description is quite vauge, and can be summed up as "Do whatever other people tell you to do".

**Term you'll need to understand this next bit: PM/PMing. Preventive Maintenance, or the act of doing preventive maintenance.

In the last month, some of the things I've done would be:
-Help the plumber in the GWR sewer line replacement (being the guy who cuts the pipe and hands him parts)
-Shovel snow
-Replaced air filters and did preventive maintenance (Known as "PMing") on all the air handlers on station
-Shovel snow
-Changed the oil in one of the large Caterpillar generators
-Gone crawling around under the Bio-Lab and the deck to insulate the glycol heating lines run to the chemical storage milvan
-Gone crawling around under the Bio-Lab and the deck to help the electrician run conduit and pull wires for the chemical storage milvan
-Cleaned and PMed all the exhaust fans in Bio-Lab, replacing belts as needed and replacing a burned-out/seized motor
-Shovel snow
-Re-banded the sheet metal coverings on the large water lines that run between the buildings
-Helped inventory the dry food storage milvan
-Replaced a flange and wax ring on one of the men's toilets in GWR
-Chipped a walkway through the large ice berms that have formed in front of the HazBarn and Milvan Row
-Patched the filter housing for the hot tub
-Shovel snow
-Helped the electrician test the various fire detection and alarm systems in the buildings
-Melted and chipped the ice off the evaporator coils in the freezer milvans
-Fix a broken spigot on an eye wash station
-Measured the water flow in the aquarium tanks
-Shovel snow
-Helped with cargo ops on the pier with the logistics team (moving big stuff on and off the ship, -like full milvans and things)
-Shovel snow
-Pull an old, unused vent hood off the side of Bio-Lab, patch and re-insulate the wall
-Helped remove the oil boiler stack from the powerplant
-Do PMing on all the gym equipment
-Insulate and weather-seal cable penetrations in the VLF electronics hut
-Help the boating coordinator move boats around, break ice out from under the floorboards, and other various boating-related activities
-Shovel snow

The other two stations, McMurdo and South Pole, each have small armies of "GAs". General Assistants, people who are paid very poorly to do the lousiest work on the station. When a sewer line under the galley at McMurdo Station burst in the middle of winter, due to the cold everything just froze solid under the building and wasn't noticed for two months. When it finally WAS noticed, it had formed an enormous "Glacier of piss and sh*t", as it was phrased to me. And who was it that had to get under the building and chip away two months worth of mostly frozen, but starting to thaw raw sewage? That would be the GAs.

Palmer isn't big enough to warrant any GAs, but in essence, I fulfill that roll (although I'm paid a good bit better). The more unpleasant or tedious a job is, the more likely I am to be the one to do it.

That being said, I am under the control of the FEMC department, so the vast bulk of my time goes to them. I do all the daily maintenance rounds, going around station every morning and checking various equipment and machinery to make sure everything is still within normal parameters. I also do my best to take care of as many of the routine PMs that I can. Most of the equipment on station, everything from the seawater pumps to the generators to the stoves and kitchen equipment, has various preventive maintenance steps that should be done on either a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis. Most of the time, this involves giving the equipment a thorough inspection, sometimes disassembling and cleaning various components, greasing bearings or moving parts, checking belt tensions, etc.

This week so far, I've done quarterly PMs on the large mixer in the kitchen, the steam sanitizer in the scullery, finished quarterly PM on all of the exhaust fans in the Bio building laboratory, did a monthly PM on the masticators, monthly PM on most of the gym equipment, quarterly PMs on all the air handlers (big fan units that heat the air and move it through the heating ducts in the buildings), and a bunch more that I can't remember. You get the idea, though.

In terms of pay, and rank, I am the lowest rung on the station. But due to the small size of this place, and how shared all the duties are, there really isn't any sort of caste system here, like there is at the other bases (although officially nothing like that exists, I'm told that in reality, you'll rarely see the scientists sitting next to janitors or GAs at lunch at McMurdo)

But I, and actually, most of the people on station, agree that while I don't have the cushiest job, I might have the most interesting. Because my roll is so loosely defined and I don't have many specific responsibilities, I've got a lot of flexibility and am often doing completely different things every week. And while sure, a lot of it is grunt work, I'm never the only one doing that grunt work, I'm helping someone else who's just as involved in it as I am.

When one of the drain pipes froze and burst under the aquarium, sure I spent 7 hours wedged under a building in slushy, dirty snow and rocks, but the plumber and electrician were right there with me.

Even more penguins

2008-10-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, it was so nice out that we ~~canceled the station meeting~~ had a slightly shorter station meeting focusing on safety and ~~rushed through Housemouse~~ did a clean and efficient, but expedited Housemouse so that we could all get off work and get out and enjoy the weather. Eight of us piled into an over-loaded zodiac and headed out to one of the closer islands, where we found . . .

MORE PENGUINS!

A new sort of penguin, even. Mostly Adelie penguins, as opposed to the Gentoo penguins that we've seen so far. Adelies are just a touch smaller, and Gentoos are a bit more bold, and have the bright orange beak and feet. Adelies have the little white eye ring, as you can see.

So, without further ado, PHOTOSPAMMING! Most of these are fantastically sharp, I was tempted to upload the native res images, but we're pretty limited on bandwidth. Still, though, view these at full res, even shrunk down with aggressive compression, they look very good, so click on them!

We saw these next guys just after they'd gotten out of the water. They all stand there for like twenty minutes preening their feathers/fur after then get out, it's pretty funny to watch, like a little penguin preening session. It's pretty clear that these guys don't have any land-based predators. They were completely unconcerned with us less then 30 feet away, just took there sorting their feathers out, then waddling right by us, less then 10 feet away with barely a glance in our direction.

Strangely enough, in this whole group of Adelies, there was this one lone Gentoo penguin.

Okay, that's enough for now. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some of my nice boring landscapes/icescapes/waterscapes, instead of cute silly amianls.

It's a harsh continent

2008-10-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

Living and working here is hard, grueling, and exhausting. You're always cold, sore, and too tired to ever have any fun, or even smile. You'll never make any friends here because everyone is too burned out and grouchy to have a laugh of mess around or be silly. There's no creature comforts and never any time for relaxing or enjoying the environment. And the powers that be would certainly never let us lounge around in a hot tub and watch the sun set! What do you think this is, Pamper Station!?

Yeah, that entire paragraph above might have been a lie.

And we get a whole new type of penguin!

2008-10-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

More pictures and videos coming soon. In the mean time, be amused with these little guys.

Final cut-off date approching

2008-09-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hey, just FYI to all. The cut-off date for larger packages and things has already passed, but the "silver trunk" is still open. This is for flat mail (padded envelopes and such, anything that you would put into a blue postal drop-box) only, it's put into a big silver trunk and hand-carried down from the Denver office.

The cut-off date for getting stuff into this trunk is OCTOBER 8TH. So if any of you felt sentimental and sending snail-mail, it has to BE IN DENVER by October 8th.

Address is:

Brendan Pope
Palmer Station
C/O Raytheon Polar Services Company
7400 S. Tucson Way,
Centennial, CO
80112-3938

Blah Blah Blah

2008-09-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm too lazy to actually write much right now, so here's some more video of me being boring and talking. And yes, I know I look and sound like a dork. I am a dork. We all know this. So, uh, yeah. Click play.

Wreck of the Bahia Paraiso

2008-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

During the summer, a whole myriad of ships will often stop by our little area. Not only just the cruise ships and private sailboats, but the Argentinian and Chilean Navies will often poke around in the area, if not just to maintain a political presence.

Back in 1989, the the Argentine naval ship Bahia Paraiso was in the area doing something, and tried to head out between Janus and Litchfield island, dispite warnings from the station personel that the waters there were not very deep. The captain, going off outdated charts, insisted that it would be fine.

He was wrong.

For the full story of exactly what happened, you can read about it here. The wreck has been slowly rotating over the years and slipping a little deeper under, and now only part of the bottom of the hull is visible at low tide.

The divers often like to go out here, as the unique shapes and overhangs created by the ship house corals and underwater flora that are normally found at much deeper depths. The ship is almost completely upside down now, on calm days when the seas are flat, you can see the propellers ~40 feet under the surface.

One of the long-time scientists at the time was watching the ship leave when the whole thing happened. He was standing in the galley windows, watching the ship pull out, when he saw it stop suddenly and take on a very serious list. He immediately turned around and hollered to the cooks "Three hundred for lunch!"

More photospamming

2008-09-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

Sadly, the weather today is too lame to go boating, so I figure I'd use the downtime to finally get around to getting some photos up.

A few days ago, we took a day trip out to Dream Island. Dream Island is about 8 miles away, well outside of our boating limits, but we have an emergency supply cache on the island in case someone gets blown out there. Also, later in the summer the birders will spend a few days camping out there and playing with the penguins. So it was sort of an excuse for a boondoggle, for us to get off station (and avoid work) for half a day, and see a little sliver of our area that we'd normally not get out too.

Sadly, there wasn't much wildlife out there, it's still a little early in the season for the large numbers of fauna to start coming back. But we did find this guy napping about 20 feet from the supply depot. He raised his head up, looked as us a bit, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

An elephant seal, male, but fairly young. Best guess is that he was only around 800lbs. Full grown, they can get over 10,000lbs and 20 feet long.

That one needs a caption.

On the way back, we ran into another raft of Gentoo penguins.

I'm especially happy with that one

Anyway, yeah. Animals. And I've actually got a whole mess of photos I need to get up, so there might be a bunch more posts from me today.

How to make a Legolas costume out of nothing in two days

2008-09-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

Kristina's assumption, that I'd had someone make me a Legolas outfit in the states and then was silly enough to bring it to the ice with me, simply isn't true. The getup that you saw me wearing in those photos I posted yesterday was all made by me, over the course of two days, from whatever I could find around the station. Which turned out to be an awful lot.

For some of it, I was able to use clothes that I already had. Some gray long underwear made good leggings, and one of those slippery undershirts from REI made a perfect undertunic shirt, even had that sort of silvery, shimmery appearance. A green bedsheet gave up it's life to be my cloak, and (although I actually wore my regular work boots in those photos) the removable liners from some cross-country ski boots made a good lower half for my Elvin boots.

The "jerkin", I guess it's called, the tunic thing that he wears, I had to make.

I started with a lab coat that I stole from the beakers, and removed the exterior sewn-on pockets, buttons, collar, and cut the sleeves off at about my bicep. I then died it first a pale green, but I wasn't too happy with the color (it was a bit too neon), and dyed it again with a brownish tan, ending with a really nice early clay color that's slightly darker then in the photo, and with a hit of green.

I then took it in by six inches just above the waist, to give that tapered, sleek look, and to generally make it fit me better and not be all billowy. I hemmed all the cut edges, and affixed a strip inside the middle seam with Velcro to hold it closed.

The "leather" shoulder covering was a bit harder. The material actually came from the cover from our old BBQ grill, it's not pleather, but it is vinyl with a slightly leathery texture and feel that actually worked damn well. It's a very dark brown, almost black. I made it in three pieces, one single large pieces goes across the back, over the shoulders and down the middle, and then the little bits over the arms are separate. It was VERY fiddly to make, and I had to enlist the help of Katherine, a girl on station who has almost the exactly same build as I do (skinny), as a fitting model. Once I got it mostly pinned in place, I put it on and had Webster do the final adjustments to that the material would actually lay flat, figuriing out where to take out some material and things. I then hemmed it, and sewed it to the lab coat. The silver decoration is paint marker.

The other stuff was made much the same way.

Those two oval things were my boot wraps; they wrap around my shins and affix to themselves with Velcro. The arm bracers sitting on top were the same deal, nothing fancy, just paint marker for the decoration. They were made from the same material as the jerkin top, cut from the old BBQ grill cover. The belts and strapping were made from some scraps of actual plether that I found in the Skua aisle, I think it was scraps left over from fixing or making the hot tub cover. I just cut some strips off, hemmed the edges, and threw a buckle on it. I actually DID make a quiver, out of a mailing tube wrapped in the brown pleather, but didn't end up using it, as the cloak just looked funny with it underneath.

As I mentioned before, when I first made this costume, for boots I used some ski boot liners with the wraps over them for my boots, which was fine walking around indoors. However, running around outside on ice like a fool, I figured I'd end up hurting myself, so in the pics yesterday, you can see that I'm just wearing my work boots, with the boot wraps over them.

It took a quite a bit of doing, and a lot of trying it on, seeing how it looked, making minor adjustments, trying it on again, etc, but it turned out really well. I actually made all this for a costume party we had a couple weeks ago. All this effort won me the prize for "Best Costume", as voted on by the whole station. The original prize was supposed to be a bottle of vodka (booze is sort of the default reward for winning just about anything here), but given that I don't drink, they had to come up with another prize. So I was presented with . . .

A Triceratops pinata!

....

I really have no idea how a dinosaur pinata appeared down here, but I've given up questioning things like that. I think we're breaking it open tonight (I'm told there is candy and little plastic dinosaurs inside!), in celebration of . . . uh, it being Saturday.

The ship arrives, to be greated by . . . Legolas?!

2008-09-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about not having any dignity, nor the ability to take anything seriously, is that you've got no problems making a complete fool out of yourself in front of the entire station for a laugh.

And if that involves dressing in a Legolas outfit and greeting the ship with shouts of "We seek the ring! The ring of power! Do you have it, the one ring to rule them all?!?!", then . . . well, who am I to turn that down?

More Pictures!

Me, standing there hollering up at some very amused and slightly bewildered people on the ship. I've actually worked with one of the guys coming in before, he was here when I got here. I'm told that our incoming station manager turned to him and said "Who on earth is that?!", to which he replied with a sigh "That . . . would be our carp helper".

Paul was the only one who happened to have his camera out for this, he was on the balcony outside the kitchen with most everyone else, falling over themselves laughing. After I was done running around outside, I went up there for some hero shots :)

Don't ask where I got a bizarrely detailed Legolas outfit; I'll go over that in a future post.

The LMG docked yesterday, bringing with it most of the summer crew, and will be taking the majority of our winter crew away on Tuesday when it leaves. I, of course, am staying for another five months, but the majority of our personnel are being replaced by people that came in on this ship. Some people are staying only until the October boat, and while the station population isn't rising by that much, we are loosing some couples, so we might need to have room mates again. Not sure yet, but we'll see.

And I did get my silver trunk stuff, thanks to those who sent stuff! I already <3 my 20mm Sigma lens, and am still really pmad at this broken Tamron. I still need to write some e-mails or make some phone calls to see what can be done about this.

And again . . . PENGUINS!

2008-09-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

You know, given that we're all living down here for months on end, and that most people here have spent at least a few seasons on the ice before, you'd think that we'd all be used to the wildlife, or at least tire slightly of it.

Nope.

Friday, when we were having our end-of-week station meeting in anticipation of our two-day weekend (:-D), someone was talking about something, when someone happened to glance out the window and yell "OOOOOOO, PENGUINS!"

And, like FNGs, we all immediately jumped up and looked out the bay windows to see yup, a small raft (a group of penguins is called a "raft", apparently) of penguins porpoising around in the harbor right off the pier. Probably the first raft to actually return this spring. The weather was too lousy for the rest of Friday to go out boating, and for most of Saturday morning, but it around 3pm Saturday it cleared up and the winds died enough to get out in the boats.

Sean, Waslo (not his real name, but . . . well more on that later) and I took a zodiac out and headed for the nearby island of Torgesen, where later in the summer a penguin rookery will form. It's a popular island for both penguins and seals, as it's got a lot of large, flat areas for them to hang out on, and relatively shallow approaches to the ocean. So we got to the island and start motoring around, trying to see if there's anything living on it, when . . .

That would be Sean swearing a bit, and you can barely hear me in the background. I was driving the boat at the time (as I almost always am, because it's fun), so I didn't get any photos of them in the water, but we headed after them, giving them a wide berth so as not to disturb them, so that Sean and Waz could try to get some shots.

Given our luck, we decided to land on the island and go for a bit of a walk. We headed over to the south side, and upon coming around a peak, we saw, off in the distance, more wobbly little silly creatures! So as we all excitedly pulled out our cameras (My with my Canon 30D, Waslo with his Nikon D80 and Sean with his Pentax K200), the penguins noticed us as well (hard to miss us in our bright orange survival suits). And to our surprise and delight they flopped onto their bellies and . . . headed straight for us?

I'm not kidding when I say that I think they were just as curious about us as we were them. The instant they noticed us, they really did make a beeline directly at us. When they got closer, I think their excitement waned a bit, as they realized that we didn't have any fish or krill treats to feed them. Still, though, they didn't seem to mind our presence at all. They don't have any instinctive fear of humans, only recently have they been exposed to us and because they're a protected species, they have little to fear. They're a little skittish around us, as any animal would be when confronted with another animal that's about 6 times larger then they are, but as long as we stayed 20 feet away or so, and didn't make any really sudden movements, they ignored us.

Of course, that meant that we could sit down and proceed to take an obscene number of pictures of them. Which I will now bombard you with. My problem is that I'm pretty lousy at picking out the really great pictures from the simply good ones, so now I'm offloading that task onto you! Click the images for a larger version, of course.

I think these next two need some sort of a silly caption. Something like "Aw, dammit, I stepped in dog poo!" or something like that.

These guys were jawing at each other a bit. Maybe arguing over who got the best bit of rock to stand on, or something.

And in the category of totally-un-smooth-moments, we have this little guy. Who, when trying to waddle over some rocks, did an absolute face-plant into the snow. Which, of course, I captured on camera for all his penguin buddies to laugh at him for. I should put these next three together in a gif or something

Aaaaand, butt flopping straight up in the air! Needs a funny caption. I should have used a faster shutter, but I actually think I like the motion blur.

Of course, like any self-respecting but ultimately silly animal, such as cats, he immediately picked himself up and waddled off, as if to say "What? I meant to do that!"

Even penguins do yoga, apparently. I think this pose is "downward facing chuck norris" or something.

Well, I figure that's enough photospamming for now. And of all the good-quality pictures I took, these are probably only half. If you're curious to see the rest, follow the links through the pics to my photobucket and you can dig through them there. Mostly, it's a lot of fairly similar pictures, I just tried to post one of each set here.

But don't think that's the end of these. Oh no. We went out boating again today, and found . . . MORE PENGUINS! I'm sorting through them now, so expect another deluge of photos in the next couple days.

They're baaaack!

2008-09-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

Oh yes. Spring is here, and that means . . . PENGUINS!!! :D

Sean took that vid, that's him speaking. We found these guys today when we were out boating, and of course . . . assaulted them with our clicky-clicky boxes of expensive. Pictures will be coming soon, and we're going out again tomorrow to try and get more.

On a slightly related note, I'm having a REALLY REALLY hard time not ordering this.

My current tele is a 70-200 f/2.8, and while I do have the 2x teleconverter for it, I've found that it sacrifices a good bit of sharpness, especially at the extremes of the range. It is fantastic for what it does, I will say that I absolutely adore it, but I do want something longer, and given that I'll mostly be using it outside during the day, I don't need something as fast as my 70-200.

Someone talk me out of it! If I order it by Monday, I can still get it onto the October boat.

Cut-off date approching for packages

2008-09-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

So, I know everyone back in the states misses me terribly and desperately wants to send me old-fashion letters and packages and things. So if any of you want me to have something for the summer, you best be getting it sent soon, as there's only one more ship before the summer, getting here in mid-October. After that ship, there's not another boat until January.

We actually do have a ship arriving in a couple weeks, but there's no way to get anything on that ship.

Larger packages, up to around 30lbs, can be sent through the NSF cargo network. THE CLOSING DATE FOR THESE IS SEPTEMBER 20TH. So if you had something you wanted to send down, it needs to get to the NSF BY the 20th. And probably a couple days sooner. Basically? You'd need to get something sent like now. If you had something like this that you wanted to send, it would go to an address in California.

If you're using UPS, Fed-Ex, or DHL, send it to:

NSF Contractor Representative
Building 471 North End
USN – CBC
Port Hueneme, CA
93043
Forward To:
Brendan Pope
Palmer Station

If you're using the postal service, send it to:

NSF Contractor Representative
P.O. Box 338
Port Hueneme, CA
93041
Forward to:
Brendan Pope
Palmer Station

Flat mail, padded envelopes and things, you still have a couple of weeks on, I think the closing date is October 1st. They should be mailed to:

Brendan Pope
Palmer Station
C/O Raytheon Polar Services Company
7400 S. Tucson Way,
Centennial, CO 80112-3938

2008-09-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

My footprints are on the right, and Wally's footprints on the left.

People complain that going hiking with me is very annoying, not only because of my long strides, but also because I often won't break through the hard-packed snow that other people post-hole through. So they follow my path, thinking from my shallow footsteps that it's good, solid snow, only to go crunching through. Most of the hike last weekend, the others were cursing my elvish powers.

I laughed :)

We are really, really spoiled

2008-09-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

One of our cooks ran a bakery in her previous life, her specialty was as a pastry chef. And while her other food is really good, her baked goods and deserts are . . . a force to be reckoned with.

During the day there's batches of fresh cookies coming out of the oven like clockwork, and her breads are to die for. She makes this naan that just . . . omg. People look forward to Indian food nights almost just for the naan.

But of course, dinner is where she pulls out her big guns.

The theory right now is that her end-of-contract bonus is based on the cumulative weight gain of the station population.

The worst part them is that she's turning out this amazing stuff EVERY SINGLE DAY. These sort of things aren't like a special Saturday thing, they're constant! There's no getting away from them! Every night at dinner, without fail, there's some sort of calorie-laden desert of awesome . . . awesomeness that's full of awesome, slathered with suburb and drizzled with fantastic. It's all made from scratch. All of it. And it's all FREE! That's the weirdest thing about it all still. There's this desert that you'd see at a bakery or something for some painfully high price, and you probably end up forking over lots of money for them because you KNOW it'll be so good, but the cost sort of helps keep your consumption in check. But not here. Have as much as you want, whenever you want.

Even with all the working out and running that I've started to do at our well-equipped gym, I've put on a not-insignificant amount of weight. And I blame our cook.

Hooray for electricity!

2008-09-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

So, because our mechanic is an apparent work-a-holic who never needs a break, he managed to get the #1 generator, the one that was in the middle of it's rebuild, back together in about half the time that the book said it should take. So we were finally able to shut the leaky one down, so we can start tearing into it to find out exactly what's broken. For those of you who aren't familer with engines, oil leaking into the coolant is a very bad thing, although slightly less bad then coolant leaking into the oil. It's sort of like having blood in your poop. It's a sign that something is very wrong, but it's a little better then poop in your blood. Man, my analogies are so awesome.

Today was a beautiful day here. Crystal blue sky, no wind to speak of, and perfect temps, it hovered around 10 degrees all day. It's currently 2 degrees, with no wind at all, so I'm thinking I might go for a hike up the glacier tonight. Have to take advantage of the awesome weather while you can. The temp is almost irrelevant, it's the wind that is the real killer. So basically, any day with no wind is a beautiful day, no matter what else the weather is doing.

On another note, I've been playing far too much Guitar Hero. My left hand is cramping up from too much rapid mashing of fret buttons. But I can pretty reliably get 140,000+ points on "Stricken" by Disturbed on Medium, which is a big improvement for me. Star Power is still a pain in the butt, though. More often then not, when I activate it, the process of activating it screws up my note streak.

Anyone under the age of 30 knows what that means. Everyone is is probably scratching their heads.

While were at it, does anything else feel like breaking?

2008-09-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

Fantastic. Now one of our generators is crapping out.

Background:

Our station gets it's electricity from two old straight-six Caterpillar turbo-diesel engines, each able to put out up to 250kw, although we generally draw around 150kw. We typically run one generator at a time, alternating them every week or so as maintenance demands. We also have a smaller emergency generator, also a Caterpillar, rated at 100kw.

Early today, alarms sounded in the power plant to alert us that generator #2 was dangerously low on oil. We hurridly put more in, only to discover that it was loosing oil at a rate of about five gallons every two hours (they hold a total of 24 gallons). So where was this oil going? There weren't any obvious leaks anywhere, and there's no way that much could be burned off.

It's going into the coolant. Yeah.

In an effort to explain this situation, here goes another question-and-answer session

Q: Why don't you just switch over to the other generator, #1, and fix the leaky one?
A: Because the other generator is in about ten million pieces all over the garage, in the middle of its once-every-two-years rebuild.

Q: Can you shut down generator #2, and run the station off the backup generator while you fix it?
A: That's one option, but there's a few problems. Number one, is that the GWR building is heated from the waste heat given off by the generators. So shutting down the main generator would shut down heat to the GWR building (Bio-lab, the other building, is heated with oil-fired furnaces). The other problem is that our emergency generator can only put out 100kw, max, and we usually need around 150kw. We do have load-shedding plans that can get us down under 100, but it involves shutting down a lot of things, including all the ultra-low scientific freezers and incubators. Shutting them down for more then an hour would destroy all of the scientists samples and things. Also, we'd not be able to do any cooking, or laundry, as all the stoves and dryers are electric

Q: Surely you can do without laundry for an hour! How long would the generator take to fix?
A: 48 hours. If what's wrong is what we think is wrong. It could be something worse.

Q: Oh.
A: Yeah.

Q: How long will it take to get the other generator back together?
A: About 40 hours, assuming our mechanic never needs to sleep or eat.

Q: Surely you must have been worried about this happening! How long have you been rebuilding the other generator for?
A: Almost a month

Q: But leaving the station with only one generator is so irresponsible, it's just begging for a near-disaster like this! Why isn't it getting rebuilt faster?
A: We were supposed to have two mechanics on station for the rebuild. One to focus just on rebuilding the engine, and the other could concentrate on the normal operations of the station, fixing the Skytracks, end loaders, chainsaws and whatever else breaks. But then money got tight, and the second mechanic got canceled. So we've had one guy trying to keep up with the maintenance of all the station's equipment, as well as do the rebuild.

Q: Does the GWR building have a backup heater in case that generator does crap out?
A: It did. It crapped out two years ago, and only last week did we actually pull it out. The new one hasn't gone in yet

Q: Wait, so the backup heater died TWO YEARS AGO, and only last week did you guys only get around to pulling it out!?
A: Yup. Budget cuts prevented us from getting a new one down on station until very recently, and then the engineers in Denver deemed that getting it replaced was a low priority, so they wouldn't authorize any work on it, saying that we had more important things to work on.

Q: What are you doing now?
A: Right now, we're nursing the leaky generator along, doing round-the-clock shifts to put in more oil, and try and separate most of the sludgy oil out of the coolant so that it doesn't cook the engine. We've got enough oil on station that we can run it like this for about two days, assuming the leak doesn't get worse.

There's a couple options:

1: Have the LMG come back on station, shut down the leaky generator, run the station off the emergency generator, and have the ship tie in to our power grid and try and supplement our generating capcity with theirs. Then we could devout all our resources to trying to get the leaky generator fixed.

2: Nurse the leaky generator along while our mechanic works as fast as he can to try and get the other generator back together and running again. This is probably what we're going to do, as long as the oil leak doesn't get worse, and the coolant doesn't get too sludged up.

When it rains, it pours . . .

Last week sucked

2008-09-01T07:47:00.000-07:00

Man, this last week has been just . . . blarg. I don't even know how to begin this post, I've been just too busy to actually write, and now there's so much to say that it's hard to find the motivation. So this post is just going to be a lot of boring text. I have taken pictures aplenty, as has just about everyone else on station, but the task of actually sorting through them all and figuring out which ones best convey a story is a bit daunting right now. As it is, this whole thing is one long, rambly mess. There's just so much that's happened and I don't know how to break it up to make it more readable.

Last I actually wrote, we had a fishing line stuck in the ice off the pier, and the LMG had just done a port call via a zodiac boat pulled across the ice. It left to do some fishing, and we continued the task of trying to figure out what to do about that line stuck under the ice. I think the LMG did that funky port call thing two Thursdays ago, on the 21st.

So, over the weekend, after many more meetings, head-scratching, calling Denver, etc, the word from on high was passed down; "Get that damn line out any way you can"

Monday the 25th:

A plan was devised. It involved a hell of a lot of manual labor and a comically large chainsaw. Basically, we were going to cut a channel through the ice and pull the line up through it (it was actually way more complicated then that, and involved threading some retaining lines under the ice, with some buoys and weights and this whole complicated system that no one understood, so I won't get into it). We'd have two or three people out on the ice at a time, one with a chainsaw cutting a channel, and two people with breaker bars/persuaders to bust up the ice enough that the line could be pulled up through the slush. One person would stay on shore manning the radio and safety lines. We were to work around the clock in shifts of two hours each.

As with any plan, anything that could go wrong, did. Mostly this involved the chainsaw(s) acting up and being very flakey and unreliable, tools being lost through the ice, and general exhaustion. When out on the ice, we were wearing immersion suits, which are basically loose-fitting drysuits, you can be submerged in the water up to your neck and still stay dry (at least, that's the idea). Which is good, because when you step on a crack and fall through the ice (which happened to everyone at least a couple times), you can just pull yourself back out and go back to work. And really, the cracks were pretty narrow, most of the time you'd just suddenly sink down to your hip with one leg, rarely would you go through with both legs, and even then there was enough slush in the water to prevent you from going more then chest-deep.

But the suits are bulky, and hard to work in. And when you're busting ice out there, you're generating a huge amount of heat, which just gets trapped by the suits. You'd end up taking off as many layers as you could, and in some cases leaving the suit unzipped. There's only four of these suits on station, and with people sweating in them around the clock, they were . . . pretty rank, to say the least.

Tuesday the 26th:

We'd worked thought the night, and we were making slow, but steady progress. I was on the 6-8 shift (meaning I worked 6pm-8pm, then 6am-8am, in addition to the regular workday). But I didn't get a full nights sleep, because at 4:30am . . .

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

The fire alarms went off. I don't think I've ever gotten dressed that quickly. In less then 30 seconds, we did get an announcement over the PA system that it was a false alarm; someone's toast had gotten stuck in the toaster and set off the smoke detectors in the kitchen (seriously). But my room mate Sean is the station electrician, so he and I were the ones that had to run down to the fire panels and silence the alarms. So by the time we got everything sorted, it was 5:15 or so . . . and I had to be out on the ice at 6am. So hell with going back to sleep, I just went to work.

By the time I came out for my morning shift, we had about 200ft of the 900ft of line up, and although there had been some backtracking due to the line getting snagged on an iceberg, it was coming along.

And then around 1pm, the word came that we needed to do an emergency medevac. (to be honest, almost everyone on station already knew by the time it was officially announced. You can't keep secrets here)

One of the beakers, who'd been feeling poorly the last couple days, took a turn for the worse. Intense nausea and lower abdominal pain that wasn't getting better, and was getting worse. Ultrasounds and x-rays were inconclusive, but the worry was appendicitis, all signs pointed to it, and after some medical teleconferences with hospitals in the states, it was agreed that this person needed to get back to civilization, NOW.

The LMG was about 12 hours away, and rushed back to station, getting here at around 6pm. We planned on doing another zodiac-towed-over-the-ice port call, but in fact by now the ice had solidified enough that it could be safely walked on. So some cargo was still pulled back and forth via the Zodiac (mostly some 5 gallon buckets with live fish that had been caught), but personnel just walked out to the ship over the frozen sea. It was one of the more amazing things that I've seen on station, to be honest. The weather was MUCH nicer now, no snow, hardly any wind, and mild temps (between 10 and 15 degrees)

The plan was that the LMG would head straight back to PA at full speed, which would take around three days. By now, they were already halfway through their planned stay here, and the powers that be said that it would be pointless for them to come back down again just to get ready to head back north, so now, everyone who was planning on leaving at the end of this cruise, had to leave now. It was a minor bit of chaos around station as 10 people who'd thought they were leaving in two weeks were told that they were leaving in 6 hours. It did move a bunch of people off station, though, meaning that everyone gets their own rooms again (although I did have to move back into the Bio building).

So, at around 10pm on Tuesday night, the LMG departed Palmer Station for PA. Now that the LMG had departed station, presumably not going to return for a few weeks (September 19th was the next scheduled port call), we discontinued the 24-hour work on getting the line up, electing to work on it only during work hours. This decision was greeted with much . . . sleeping.

I don't think I've ever been as flat-out exhausted as I was at the end of this day. I'd been hauled out of bed by fire alarms at 4:30am, and didn't stop until just before 10pm when the ship finally left. This was a 17-hour day immediately after a 12-hour day, both days spent mostly outside doing hard physical work. I promise you that even waiting tables isn't this exhausting.

Wednesday the 27th:

Victory! We pulled up the last of the fishing line at 2:50pm! The peir was safe for ships again!

Unfortunately, our patient's condition had continued to deteriorate. Painkillers weren't working, she couldn’t keep down morphine and vicodin. The LMG stopped at the Argentinean Frei base on King George Island, where there is an airstrip big enough to land a C-130. From there, a Twin Otter (small-ish two-engine prop plane) flew her to PA, where she's doing well. Of course, this meant that the LMG was no longer a five-day trip away. So the decided that they'd come back to Palmer.

This decision was greeted with . . . no enthusiasm at all. We were all tired as hell from line work, and stress of an emergency medevac, and long workdays. The prospect of having the ship coming back, and the extra work that it entailed wasn't exactly what we were looking forward to. But hey, this is what we signed up for.

Friday the 29th:

The ship did arrive about mid-day . . . but still couldn't tie up. The sea ice had solidified to the point where the ship couldn't just back into the icebergs by the pier. It had to start doing some fancy maneuvering to first break up all the sea ice and icebergs that had collated right off the pier, and they somehow get them out of the way so it could actually dock. These maneuvers were . . . . doing doughnuts in the harbor.

I'm serious. We have a time-lapse of it. (and yes, Sean and I both tried screwing with the video, but the guy making the video decided to be a spiteful dickhead and turned off the camera when we were out there having silliness. Seriously)

These ice-clearing maneuvers ended up taking a long time. Night fell before the harbor was clear enough for the ship to tie up, so it headed back to deeper waters for the night, to resume clearing at first light

Saturday the 30th

The ship was able to dock by around 3pm. We did a hurried exchange of people (some people who had thought they were getting off station early got to come back for another week or so, and some other scientists went on board), and around 5pm, the ship cast off. It'll be back on the 3rd, stay here for a couple nights, and will head back to PA on the 5th.

In exchange for our troubles and extra effort, our station manager has seen fit to give us Monday off (HOORAY!). So, maybe if I find some motivation, I'll go thought all the photos of this stuff, and try and put it all together in a non-completely-disjointed way.

I will say that this week has left me pretty tired. It's not just the physical work, although that does wear on you. It was a lot of mental stress of having someone very sick on station, trying to get done in 6 hours what you thought you'd be able to have two weeks to get sorted (cargo things packed and sorted, mostly), while still trying to keep the rest of the station functioning.

That's it for now. Hopefully in the next few days I'll find the time/motivation to get all the pictures up.

How you make carpenters happy

2008-08-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

These got sent down on the last ship, under "Recreation supplies". What is it? Really, really nice hardwood. Those four planks on the left is a wood called Purpleheart, for obvious reasons. That's not stained, or painted at all. That's the wood's natural color!

The two tall planks on the right are Black Walnut, the pale shorter plank is African Mahogany, and the short brown one, I can't remember what it's called, but it's beautiful and I'd never heard of it before.

Is this their way of apologizing for forgetting to order our plywood . . . ? We had no idea this was coming, but now we're all trying to figure out what to use it for. I think I'll make some USB flash drives out of some scrap bits of it.

SNAFU! Part Duex

2008-08-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

When we last visited our intrepid heroes (You know, us), they (we) were collectively standing around scratching our heads and wondering how the heck the ship was going to make a port call with that bit of fishing line in the way.

The ship had now been hanging out off the point for the better part of 48 hours. The people who were on the ship who were coming to the station desperately wanted off, and the people on station were anxious to get at the red, green, yellow, orange, and brown gold stored in the ship's hold; FRESHIES!!!

Eventually, we all put our heads together, and came up with a plan. A few problems stood in our way, though; Mostly, the weather was deteriorating. Temps were holding steady at 10f or so, but the wind was creeping up to 45mph sustained, gusting over 55mph, with snow still coming down pretty heavily. Combine with all the sea spray, any exposed skin feels like it's getting sandblasted with ice and snow being driven into your pores by the wind.

The first step of this plan, was for the LMG to get as close to Gamach point as it dared, which ended up being a few hundred feet off.

And then, we needed to somehow get a rope from the LMG, to the people standing on the point. No one can throw a monkeyfist (a large knot at the end of a line, often with some lead shot or rocks woven into it for weight) three hundred feet in 45mph crosswinds, let alone with that much line attached to it. So how do we get that line across?

With a rocket.

They missed by, quite literally, a mile. The rocket followed the angle of elevation perfectly, and left 2,000 feet of line dangling into the sky. The wind grabbed all of this line and carried it way down Hero Inlet, with the spent rocket landing just a few hundred feet from our fuel tanks. It turns out that no one on the ship had ever used one of these before, so they had no idea how much it needed to be elevated, or how much to compensate for the wind, etc. That first video was actually taken by our Carpenter, Graham. These next vids, of the second try, were taken by Sean and Carla.

Their second try, they were much more accurate. At this distance, the rocket didn't need to be elevated much, and keeping it lower meant less wind correction was needed. It wasn't perfect; you can see at the end of the video that the line got snagged on the weather station antenna. But we cut it down, and all was fine. We still have the rocket; we plan on making a plaque for it and mounting it in the bar.

Now that we had a line across, the boat attached a pulley and loop of rope to the rocket line. We pulled it over, and attached the pulley to one of the bollards (the big stump thing that we attach the ship's mooring lines to).

So now, we had this loop of line going between the ship and us. The ship then took the motors and equipment out of one of their Zodiac boats, tied it to the line, and used it as a big sled that could be pulled back and forth over the ice.

It actually worked pretty well. The line was hooked up to a winch on the ship, so while it wasn't fast going, it wasn't wearing us out. This did give us a lot of "stand around and be cold" time, though. But when you put a bunch of stressed-out people on a point out in the ocean in a snowstorm and tell them to stand around for a while, they'll find ways of amusing themselves. This involved snowball fights, silly pictures, and a lot of Shackleton jokes.

(yeah, that's me in the middle there, sitting down. Just in case it wasn't already clear, I didn't take any of these photos or videos. Various people did, including Graham, PQ, Liz, Waz, and Carla)

The first things that came across were some humans, and a couple crates of science gear. After that, the most important cargo of all; FRESHIES!

The Zodiac was unloaded via a human chain, and piled everything sort of on shore.

From there, though, it was still a thousand-foot walk along the point back to station. I'm honestly surprised no one broke an ankle or anything, as it's VERY uneven rocks and boulders, covered by three feet of fresh snow. There wasn't much way to tell if where you were about to step would send you sinking down to your waist, or would be firm footing (or worse, the edge of a rock that would send you sprawling). Most of the freshies made it over okay; a we had a potato blowout and the peaches froze (but still made a good pie). There were a couple people who came off the ship, as well as a few boxes of critical stuff, and the silver trunk ((containing a package from my dad and a letter from my Grandma. Thanks!).

There was no way we were getting the heavier cargo off, and by this time it was 8pm, so the LMG left to do some fishing a few hundred miles to the south. It's supposed to come back tomorrow, though, with a load of fish . . . and we still have no way to tie it up. I have a feeling it's going to be a LOT of 5-gallon buckets with fish in 'em being hand-carried.

I'm trying to think of a good way to wrap this up, but words are kinda failing me. So just enjoy the pictures, and, um . . . yeah. I'm goin' to bed.

SNAFU!

2008-08-20T20:11:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, this station is resupplied by the LMG, the R/V Lawrence M Gould, a 230-foot icebreaker that ferries people and cargo to and from the station and Punta Aranus, Chile. It generally visits once a month or so, to bring in new people, take off other people, resupply us, and often putter around for a few weeks doing 'Science!' in the waters up and down the peninsula.

Well, the ship did arrive, as scheduled, on August 18th, at around 15:00. But we couldn't tie it up to the pier. This is as close as it would get (maybe 500 yards away);

I've tried to figure out the best way to explain this whole situation, and I've settled on a "Q & A" method. Whereas I propose the questions that you no doubt are asking, and then answer them.

Q: Why couldn't the LMG tie up?
A: Because there was a rope in the way.

Q: Huh?
A: Last week, one of the science teams decided to lay a 900-foot line out into the harbor, tied off to the peir. This line has, scattered along it's length, about 50 fishhooks and traps, with various sorts of bait on them (or something). The line is weighted at various points so that the hooks are at various depths. It stretches out to sea for most of it's length. Of course, they didn't ask the station manager, or boating coordinator if they could do this, or even tell anyone about it until the day the ship was going to try and dock.

Q: Okay, so why does this mean the ship can't dock?
A: As you can see from the first time-lapse video I posted, the ship has to reverse up to the dock. This would probably get this fishing line tangled in the ships propellers.

Q: Won't the massive props make mincemeat of the little fishing line?
A: It's not your average fishing like. It's braided high-strength nylon with a 1/8" steel core. Strong stuff. And while this line would in no way damage the propellers, it would get wrapped around the prop shafts, and could/would get ground into the shaft seals and bearings. Which is very, very bad.

Q: Why is that so bad?
A: Well firstly, ships are expensive. But also, we're 700 miles away from the nearest dry dock, across the roughest seas in the world, in the dead of winter. If something like that went wrong, a shaft seized or a seal gave way . . . it would be bad. Very bad. Thta isn't something you fix with a torque wrench and duct tape.

Q: Okay, so . . . why can't you pull the line out of the water?
A: Because within the last week, the wind has shifted to come out of the west/southwest, and blew a ton of sea ice and icebergs into the harbor. And then it got cold, we've been hovering between 5f and 10f most of the week. And the wind hasn't dropped below 35mph for a week, and at times has pushed 60mph. Long story short, the line is completely ice over. Like, four feet of ice.

Q: Can't you get in those zodiac boats and pull the line out from the other end?
A: The whole harbor has actually frozen solid. All the sea ice and icebergs that got blown in have solidified into mostly solid mass.

Q: Can't you get the ice out of the harbor somehow?
A: The LMG tried turning around and using it's propwash to break up the ice, but the wind just blows it all right back into the harbor.

Q: So what have you been doing?
A: Standing around and waiting, mostly.

The ship got in on the 18th. And for most of that day, it simply sat a few hundred feet off the pier, while communications went on between the ship's captain, engineer, our station manger, our boating coordinator, Denver HQ, the boats owners (Raytheon doesn't own the boat, it's leased from the owners), and the Prime Minister of Argentina. Okay, I lied about the last one. But everyone was talking to everyone, and therefor, nothing got accomplished. By the end of the day, the decision was made that the ship would pull out into deeper waters for the night, and we'd deal with it the next day.

The next day came (August 19th), and still, no one had much idea what the hell do to. A station meeting was called, and we all put our heads together to try and determine a course of action. Pulling the Gould up to the peir just isn't going to happen while this fishing line is in the way, and we have shit that needed to get off the boat, and people that needed to get on (science stuff). Including freshies. We ran out of lettuce and fresh veggies a few weeks ago, and have maybe two days worth of milk left.

To top it off, the weather took a turn for the worse. It stayed cold (7f) and windy (35mph sustained/50mph gusts), and added a little bit of snow. And by a little bit, I mean three feet. Literally. It started snowing at around 4am on the 19th and still hasn't stopped at the time of this writing (although it has lightened up some).

It is getting late, though. I'll continue this tomorrow with heroic tales of what we eventually did. (Hint: it involved rockets)

2008-08-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, the same guy who'd made the time-lapse video of the LMG docking and unloading decided to make another video, this time of us using a skytrack to move a new milvan into position. Unfortunately, he made one critical mistake; he told me that he was making it beforehand.

And given that I have some sort of inability to let someone take a picture or video without messing with it in some way, I cannot be held responsible for my actions in this.

(That's Webster who actually came over to me as I was doing that skating thing just before I turned to the camera, she asked me what on earth I was doing hopping around on one leg and holding some weird pose for ten seconds at a time. No one else really noticed. I think they're used to me doing strange stuff at random times)

Employment

2008-08-13T18:59:00.001-07:00

This post is intended to be a sort of "fill-in-the-blanks" article, about the nuts-and-bolts of how this whole system that I've managed to get tangled up in works.

As everyone knows, I'm working as a Carpenter's Helper at Palmer Station, in Antarctica. This station is one of three year-round United States stations on this continent, the other two being McMurdo Station (south of Australia) and South Pole station (at the geographic South Pole).

All three stations, as well as a couple of research vessels and some temporary bases, are part of the USAP, United States Antarctic Program, which is funded almost completely by the NSF, the National Science Foundation. And while the NSF provides grants/pays the scientists, it doesn't directly handle the actual grunt work of building, maintaining, and running the stations. That's farmed out to a defense contractor, in this case, Raytheon. They're the ones who actually hired me, and who I get my paychecks from. Or, more specifically, a tiny division of Raytheon, the RPSC. Raytheon Polar Services Corporation.

The majority of Raytheon people here on the ice work on contract basis. We're hired for a specific amount of time, typically between 4-8 months, to do a specific job, and that's it. However, many of us sign up for contract after contract, with short breaks in between. This isn't the most stress-free employment. It's basically a job where you have to re-apply, re-interview and be re-hired a couple times a year. And because the name "Raytheon" is the epitome of a hulking, huge, clumsy and mind-numbing corporate bureaucracy, this isn't as simple as you'd think. I won't get into the details of Raytheon's hiring system, all you need to know is that it's insane, absurd and pathetically inefficient.

Contract lengths vary based on season and station. Here at Palmer, we have year-round access, so contract start and end dates are very flexible. Most contracts are either short-term (1-2 months) or for a season (6 months). Because we're not a large enough station to justify having some specialties (like a plumber, or refrigeration specialist, or welder, or fire systems tech) here full-time, when projects need a specialist, they're hired for just a month or two at a time. Most contracts though are for either a winter (March-September) or a summer (October-February).

The other stations are a bit different. South Pole can only be accessed for a narrow part of time, from about October through February. So summer contracts are about 4 months, and winter contracts are 8. Some jobs, higher-level supervisor positions, are sometimes hired for 12 month contracts, doing a summer, then a winter. This is to give the people a good idea of how things work there over the summer before they're sealed in with little to no outside assistance for the winter.

McMurdo station is often accessible from early September until late February, so the contract lengths there are a bit more even, summer vs winter.

This sort of flexibility in work is offset by the obvious lack of job security, as I recently found out. It makes it very hard to make long-term plans.

But for all the floybles, a heck of a lot of people come back season after season. Some only do one stint here, true. Typically it's the people with the really horrible jobs, DAs (Dining Assistants. Dishwashers, basically) have very low return rates. But it tends to suck many people in. This strange place, it leads to a life that has a good bit less stability, any a lot less sanity. It seems to have turned a lot of people here into nomads, wanderers, and severed their connection to reality.

But if someone really wants to work down here that much, it's doubtful they had much affection for reality in the first place.

Again . . .

2008-08-12T19:29:00.001-07:00

IMG_6091 (Large), originally uploaded by tsaven.

Anyone reading this is probably going to get really bored of the constant posting of sunrise/sunset photos.

Just for the record, this image is not edited or retouched in any way. That is really what the sunrises look like here. That strange sort of half-rainbow thing doesn't last very long, and it's actually harder to see with the naked eye then with the camera. But it sort of moves across the sky over the course of a couple minutes, we only get it when the sun is at just that right angle behind the glacier.

Hiking

2008-08-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

On days off, or just whenever you happen to have free time during the week or whatever, one of the ways that you can get off-station for a while is to go for a wander on the glacier that sits behind our station.

Our station is on the tip of a peninsula, and about a 1/4 mile walk east through and area of rocky hills and small ponds nicknamed "the backyard", you'll get to the base of the glacier, which at that point just looks like a massive white hill. Hiking about half a mile up gets you high enough that you can walk around a large section of cracks and cliffs, and head down onto another peninsula just across the bay from our station, Bonaparte Point.

So, this Sunday, I packed up my camera stuff, dressed warmly, and headed out for a hike with Sean, our electrician, and Amber, our instrument tech.

That's Amber and I, I'm in the tan. I think this was after we'd gotten to the top of the glacier and were headed downhill to Bonaparte. Most of the pics here I took myself, obviously the ones with me in them, Sean or Amber took.

The line of black flags are the limits of where it's safe to go on the glacier. Every few months the GSAR (Ground Search And Rescue) team goes out with sounding equipment and things and searches for any new large cracks or crevases, and moves the flag line.

This was after we'd made it down onto Bonaparte, we hugged the glacial wall heading down to where the sea was frozen next to the glacier. We had a specific destination in mind.

An ice cave. The size is very hard to convey; my widest lens is only 17mm, and on a crop-sensor camera such as mine, that gives and equivalent focal length of 28mm (Full-frame digital SLR cameras are still in the $2200+ range).

But if you ever need something that makes you feel really, really small, this is a good place to come. The lip of that cave measures almost three stories above the surface.

We would have wandered in farther, but we weren't exactly sure about how solid the ice was.

Looking out of the ice cave. Um, actually, we never went into the cave, if anyone asks.

After we had enough gawking at the really big hole in the really big chunk of ice, we wandered down to the peninsuala.

That would be home on the other side of the harbor.

And, after a little bit more wandering, we found a couple people asleep on the ice. These people were just like us. Only a bit fatter. And lazier. And they had fur.

This would be a Crabeater seal, I think.

Eventually, we got to the point, or as close as reasonable. It put us directly across the harbor from the station. So close, yet the end of a roughly 3 mile hike.

We figured it was a decent time to take a break. So a sit, and some munching granola bars and drinking water. God, I feel like such a dirty hippy.

And, of course, taking what we call "Hero Shots". Which are the pictures we show to people back in the states that make us look way cooler and braver and more awesome then we actually are. Such as this:

Me, the cool hardass antarctic explorer! Really, I think it's just that anyone looks cool with a sash or something going diagonally across their chest.

This is Amber doing what we call the "Antarctic Ninja" look, with the neck gaiter and hat pulled together to leave only the eyes.

Anyway, eventually we heard on the radio that one of the rec boating teams had dropped off Diane, our cook, a little west of us on the point, so she could hike back to the station. We hung out for a bit longer, and eventually, we spotted her off in the distance, and we all headed back to the station together.

Looking back at the ice cave where we had initially been. That little black dot at the top of the glacier is someone skiing. This place is big.

Walking back, we came across yet another seal. And I had to take a bunch more pictures. Because he was really cute.

For the most part, though, we were a bit quicker going home. The wind was starting to pick up, and we were heading into it. Me having the long legs and endurance, I quickly started to out-pace the others, especially when we started heading back up the glacier. So of course, I took a couple shots of the others in comical fight-off-the-wind poses.

I'll wrap this annoyingly long post up with a couple pictures looking back at the station from up on the glacier.

Yeah. Those cluster of dots left of center is our little bubble of civilization.

This place is big.

And we are really, really small.

Pal-Mart

2008-08-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

I know I've mentioned it before, but one of the factors that helps mitigate the paltry salaries here is that you don't have to pay for much. Almost everything is provided for you; food, cold-weather clothing, work gear, tools, housing, transport, etc. For the few things that the USAP doesn't provide for us, though, we have the station store. Affectionately nick-named "Pal-Mart"

It's generally open for an hour in the evening on Wednesday, and then an hour in the late afternoon on Saturday. The store is staffed by voulenteers, and the book keeping and such is usually handled by the station admin, or the station manager if we don't have an admin.

It's divided into two parts, the main room, which has tee-shirts and coffee cups and stickers and other touristy sort of stuff. And then a back room, which is that door on the right, which we leave closed when the tourists are here, that sells booze and shampoo and things like that.

Besides all the silly tee-shirts, the store does have some clothing that is VERY nice. Almost everyone on station has at least one of the SmartWool zip-up turtleneck fleeces that we sell; I've bought two. They're very thin, INSANELY warm, and have high collars that are fairly tight against your neck, making them a godsend as a layer under a jacket. Also, there's the navy blue beanie hats that many people wear, including me (you can see me wearing it in the videos I posted a while ago). Many people also have the pull-over hooded sweatshirts, but they're like tents on me, so I haven't gotten one. Outside of tourist season, though, the majority of the shop's trade is booze.

Not being a drinker, I don't know how much booze costs in the states. But from what I'm told by the people here who do drink, our prices are fairly in line with our salary; 1/2 to 1/3 what they would be stateside. I don't think you can make our the prices in these pics, but just to give an idea, a liter of Jack Daniels is $14, and a bottle of Captain Morgan is $9. Recently, they've been selling cans of Guinness for $0.50. This is a bad place to come if you're battling a drinking problem.

Thankfully, with a few notable exceptions, there isn't much of a drinking culture here; people don't drink with objective being just to get smashed. There are some stories of some people (young guys especially) who get here and go nuts their first weekend, but most of them learn their lesson fairly quickly. It's harder for guys who have worked at the other stations, McMurdo and Pole, I think. Just from what I gather, there's much more of a hardcore drinking culture over there. Access to booze is more restricted at those stations (not allowed in the dining areas), it's much more expensive (to try and prevent abuse), but just for whatever reason, the a lot of the lifers who are doing their first stint here at Palmer after working for 5-10 years at the other bases seem to mostly be functional alcoholics. No one gets wasted or anything during the week, but on the weekends, there's a few people who hit the bottle pretty hard.

Freakishly, while booze is quite cheap, they screw us non-drinkers on soda. It's $0.50 a can, no matter how much you're buying. This means that a 24-pack of Mt Dew is $12. WTF?! I've actually given up soda (mostly), though, because . . . I dunno, because I'm really cheap?

2008-08-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

So, just after I got here, I made up some small care package full of silly little trinkets and kitchy postcards and stickers and other silly little tourist stuff that they have at the store down here, and sent them off on the ship that brought me in.

This was back in May.

Northbound mail is put into a big silver trunk, and is hand-carried north to PA. From there, that silver trunk is shipped via DHL to Denver, where the packages are taken out of the trunk and put into the USPS system. At least, this is the way it's SUPPOSED to happen, this is supposed to take no more then a few weeks.

Obviously, this one took a little bit longer. From what I've been able to gather talking to logistics, the Silver Trunk's path was something like this:

1: Left the station on the LMG near the later half of May. Got to PA five days later.
2: Someone forgot to give it to DHL, so it sat in PA for a month.
3: Someone got sick of tripping over it, or something, and decided to send it north as a hand-carry (Someone who's going north brings it as a piece of their luggage). It gets to Santiago, then to Miami
4: For reasons that NO ONE can figure out, it was sent BACK to Santiago once it got to Miami. It then sat in Santiago for three weeks.
5: It was finally put into the DHL system, but they sent it surface, so it took another three weeks for it to get to Denver
6: It got to Denver, and was finally unloaded, and the packages were put into the USPS system.

So, it was all supposed to be a lot faster then that. But hey! You got antarctic schwag.

Dates

2008-08-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've gotten the details on my summer contract.

As I said last post, my title will officially be a Utility Technician's Helper. My current title is Carpenter's Helper, which is ironic because I've had to do little to no carpentry at all since I got here. I've actually been functioning as . . . a Utility Technician's Helper.

So, all this means is that I'll actually be called what I am. The weird downside to this is that UT Helpers are actually paid a bit less then Carp Helpers. So even with the small percentage pay increase that I get for it being my second contract, my actual pay stays almost the same. I will be making exactly $2 more per week. Aw yea, I'm rollin' in the dough now, boyeeeeeeee.

The current schedule has me leaving on the February boat, and getting back to the USA on or around the 15th of said month. So, sliding right back into the middle of a Chicago winter. All told, this will end with me having spent ten consecutive months on this little rock. Lets hope that when it's all said and done, I'm not too fried.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW YEAH!!!!!!

2008-07-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

Long story short: I'm staying at Palmer for the summer!!!

A bit more info: My last post, about how I'd lost my contract at the South Pole, wasn't exactly fresh news. I found out that I'd lost my summer contract almost a month ago, and have spent the last month e-mailing everyone and anyone I could to try and find another job. I wasn't having much luck, but didn't feel like posting about it there and then, as . . . well, maybe that if I didn't tell the world about it, it wouldn't be true? Or that I didn't want to admit to myself that I might actually have to go back to the states for the summer? Can't say for sure. But I wasn't having much luck with the trying to find another contract. There were a lot of other people who'd lost their jobs, and Pole had to accept a lot of the over-hires from McMurdo who had more ice time. No matter who I spoke with, it was just about the same story; they were hired up, or I (legitimately) wasn't qualified for the positions they still had open.

My posting was, more then anything, almost an admittance of defeat of sorts, admitting to the rest of the world that my plans for an ice life weren't working out exactly how I'd hoped they would.

But being, as I've said I am, the lowest rung on the ladder here, I wasn't privy to some of the string-pulling that people have been doing back in Denver. They'd already hired someone for my position over the summer, as they really don't like keeping people at Palmer for more then six months if they can avoid it. But, unbenownst to me, that person had backed out of their contract. And some people (both in Denver and here on station) were pulling whatever strings they could, on my behalf.

This evening, I got an e-mail from HR asking me if I'd like to sign a new contract, as a Utility Technician's Helper, for the Austral Summer at Palmer Station.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had to re-read the short e-mail a couple of times before it actually sunk in.

Summers here are . . . unique, fantastic, and awesome in all ways. Wildlife comes back in full force, WAY more so then the occasional seal of penguin we see now. The penguins come back in hoards, taking over all the islands and making little penguin babies (which at some point you get to go out and play with), seals make little seal babies, and whales will often sleep in the harbor (you can hear them breathing, I'm told, from half a mile away). And while it gets pretty rainy, it's mostly quite mild, sometimes gets up to like 50 degrees. And because the sun is up the better part of 18-20 hours per day, and there's no sea ice, you can go boating almost whenever you want.

There's also, I'm told, a fairly active tourist season here. Cruise ships stop by a lot, as do private boats. Some people regard them as a big pain in the ass, but I'm looking forward to it. Often the ships will let the station people come on board for a day or so, have a little mini vacation of sorts.

Anyway, right now I'm still all hyped up and bouncing off the walls about this. I'll try to write more later once the dates are finalized and I have a bit more info.

But I don't want to go back . . .

2008-07-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

Crap.

I might not have a contract for the 08-09 Austral summer.

Long story short, the NSF, National Science Foundation, the people who pay for all the research stations and things down here, is $17 million dollars short on next fiscal year's budget, mostly due to fuel costs. Because of that, a bunch of things have been cut, some large science projects have been downsized and construction projects put on hold or canceled. That means that they over-hired for staffing, and had to cancel a bunch of contracts.

My contract was one of those.

Crap.

I've been e-mailing everyone that I can, trying to find a position, any position, that's still open, but this late in the game, so soon before the summer, it looks very unlikely. Most other divisions also had to cut people they had initially hired, and even if they didn't have to cut staff, they're hired up for both primary and alternate positions.

So I might have to come home at the end of this contract, at or around the beginning of October.

At which point, I'll have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. I'm not going back to my old job, I don't want anything to do with my old life. I'm done with that. But I've only been a carp helper here (read = not high pay), and there's no way I've made enough money to support myself, even living like a dirty dirty hippy in a tent somewhere, for much more then a few months.

So, yeah. I don't know what to do.

(And I would like to point out that while the NSF can't get another $17 million to cover it's rising costs, we're still okay with spending $720 million PER DAY[!!!!!!] on the Iraq war)

Sunset, again

2008-07-28T12:49:00.001-07:00

IMG_5973 (Large), originally uploaded by tsaven.

Yup. It's another sunset.

Pardon the flare

2008-07-28T10:50:00.001-07:00

IMG_5950 ed (Custom), originally uploaded by tsaven.

When you're pointed directly at the sun, a bit of flare is hard to avoid. Still, I think this came out neat. The wind has picked up a lot, and is blowing a lot of the fresh snow off the glacier to the north, creating this cool fog-like effect.

Maybe if I try to get pictures up soon after I post them, I'll avoid this massive backlog of images that I'm often stuck with.

Birds and stuff

2008-07-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated or done a photo update in a long time, so this is going to be a lot of disjointed pictures from the past like, month. I like taking photos, but actually dealing with them and organizing them on the computer . . . arg. They're a chaotic mess right now.

The last couple weeks here have been beautiful. This high pressure system has hovered over us almost constantly, giving flat seas and almost no wind. We had ten days solid of sub-10mph winds, and a lot of days where it never got above 5mph. Barely a breeze. It's really the wind that saps the heat from you, way more then the cold. I've been working outside for hours on end in jeans and a couple of shirts, when it's been 15f air temp, and been just fine because the air was so still (the fact that I was carrying heavy things from one place to another helped too).

Of course, the downside to the stillness is the ocean has started to freeze over, making boating problematic. But it hasn't been cold enough to actually solidify, just form sheets of pancake ice. It's pretty thin, thin enough to push through in a zodiac as long as you go slow. And the last couple of weekends we've gone out boating, to find . .

More penguins!

And yes, I know the framing on these could be a bit better, and the focus is often a bit off. And I know the color really needs to be fixed on a lot of them as well. Keep in mind that I was shooting at hand-held at 400mm on a crop-sensor camera (Equivalent to a 600mm field of view to those of you used to 35mm SLR cameras), while trying to steady myself in the bow of a zodiac at full speed. The stabilization in the lens helps a lot, but at these focal lengths, just keeping the damn subjects in frame is hard, let alone make sure the auto-focus points are on birds for the split-second they're out of the water. And it was pretty dim out, fully overcast for a lot of these, so I had the aperture all the way open, resulting in a DOF of only a couple feet.

I took close to a thousand shots, and the majority of them are out of focus, or are of the splash from where the bird just was. Thank god for digital.

That's sort of what they do when they're just in the water and hanging out, trying to figure out where to plop off to next. Just poking their heads up, looking around, probably wondering why those strange orange creatures in a big noisy black iceberg keep following them around (which we'd never ever do. That would be in violation of the Antarctic Treaty!)

Dunno what was up with this guy. Maybe he was like, the Brendan of the flock? He was way off on his own while the rest of them were off hanging out off frame. Maybe he was just enjoying the view. Or he was being all emo because the other penguins just didn't understand him.

This was the rest of the flock. Flock is the right word, right? They are birds, after all. Those are fur seals in the backround. Fur seals eat fish, not penguins, so they tend to be pretty amicable to each other. If those were leopard seals, you wouldn't see any other land-based animals within sight of them.

These look a LOT better with the color fixed. But I've already uploaded them, and going back and deleting them, editing the group, the re-uploading is just like . . . too much work. So if you want to know how good the picture could look, throw it into pshop and do the "auto color" thing. Looks holy crap better.

Just a wider shot of the same flock

Just for the record? Penguins really are that adorable and goofy in real life.

We'd cruised around the island a bit, and came back later to find that the flock had moved up to the ridgeline. Better view, I guess.

A Blue-Eyed Petral, I think their name is.

Antarctic Tern, I think.

So, yeah. Uh, those are birds. We've got a lot of them down here. I feel like I should put something witty or insightful here, but right now, I'm just tired, and glad that I finally got this post up, that I've been meaning to do for like two weeks.

OHMIGAWD THERE'S ANOTHER X-FILES MOVIE

2008-07-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know being at the bottom of the planet leaves me out of touch with a lot of things. But I live on the internet!!!!! How did I not hear about this!?!?!? Last I'd read was rumors that Chris Carter was working on it, and it was all just speculation!!

HOW THE HECK DID I MISS THIS?!!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbB1078qrAE

2008-07-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't been very good recently about giving posts with much real substance. And while some of it is lack of time, a lot of it is that I'm simply overwhelmed when trying to talk about everything that's here. I could EASILY do a post a day about some aspect of the station, or of life here, or just the strange things that we take for granted (like how quickly you adapt to cleaning you dishes with a toilet brush).

I mean, I never even got around to doing the posts about the big events here, the weird parties we have had and such. I mean, there's the smaller ones, like when we celebrated Sinko Di Mayo, and the larger, more official celebrations, such as the solstice. This winter has been pretty active, I'm told, there's a lot of science going on here this winter, which is rare.

We actually just got another couple groups of beakers on station, so we're back up to 36 people, and the people who don't have much ice time (like me) have to have room mates again. I moved back in with my previous room mate, because at least we already know that we work well together. And this time we got a room in GWR instead of Bio, which is a bit more convenient.

That's also sort of why I haven't been posting many pictures, even though I PROMISE that I've been taking a lot. It's just that the task of sorting through them, picking the good ones, tweaking them if they need it, then uploading and integrating them into a post, it . . . well it all gets really time consuming.

And while it's not like I'm SHORT on time, it does go by pretty quickly. Work starts at 7:30am every day, and goes until 5:30, Saturdays included. And if there's a catastrophe of some sort, or if the boat is coming in at a funny hour, you can bet you'll be working past those hours. Like this most recent weekend when the drain pipes under the aquarium building decided to freeze, and burst. You can bet that I was the one crawling around under that building for 11 hours that day getting that shit fixed (to be fair, most of the FEMC crew was there with me, and the plumber that got here the day before everything broke really had his trial by fire).

But by the time 5:30 rolls around, all you want to do is eat dinner and sit still for a while. So I'll generally eat quickly, then head up to the lounge and bar, hang out with people for a while, and then head to the gym around 8pm. By the time I'm done working out, and showering and things, it's getting late and I'm tired. Even writing this post took a bit of effort, and my eyelids are closing.

I will be trying to write more in the future. I owe a bunch of people e-mails, I know. I can promise a deluge of penguin pictures in the next couple of days, though.

2008-07-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm a huge dork. But I don't see Michael Flatly around to inject some humor into this station. And really, what else would you do if you found yourself on top of a couple of milvans?

A real "Carp Helper" task

2008-07-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

Six months ago, I was making $40/hr to sit in people's heated or air conditioned houses, in their comfy office chairs, and the hardest physical task I'd have to do would be to fish some cables behind someone's desk to hook up their printer.

Today, I'm making what works out to around $6/hr to spend four hours elbow-deep in the most rancid slime you can imagine.

When the grease trap for the kitchen drains is clogged and needs to be emptied out, guess who gets that job? That's right, the "Carpenter's Helper". Otherwise known as the lowest notch on the totem pole. Me.

Imagine the smell of a McDonalds dumpster on a hot, sticky day. Now seal it up, let it sit for six months, and run hot water through it a few times a day. Complete with bits of rotting vegetables and meat and whatever else gets stuck in there. You get the idea.

Eric, one of our cooks, describes the smell as "sick puppies". When Sean (who took those pictures) walked into the room to do something unrelated, his comment was "What the F*CK". When Diane, our other cook, heard that I was going to be cleaning the grease trap, she just got sort of quiet and said "Oh . . . poor guy". Paul, one of our sysadmins, made the suggestion of smearing some Tiger Balm on my upper lip, which actually did a VERY good job of masking the smell. After a few minutes, my smeller was fairly numbed and I couldn't smell much of anything.

It was so gross I couldn't do much besides just laugh as I was scraping this smelly goop out with a putty knife.

Anyway, after that, I deserved some candy. I think I was hunting for another Twix bar. Again, picture taken by Sean, who seems to get a kick out of following me around with the camera to document all the stupid or unpleasant things that I do.

Now, another random picture of me putting my scrawniness to good use; changing a ballast for a flourecent light in a ceiling crawlspace that was obviously designed by people who never had to actually work on what they built. You know the Hazard Course in the video game "Half-Life" where you have to go over one pipe, then under the next, then over the next, and sorta snake your way between two others? That's what it was like, sort of, but you have to keep yourself braced up above the surface you're crawling on so as not to mess up any of the valves or motor controls for the glycol heat system or sprinkler system.

So, in conclusion, I'm very happy down here.

2008-07-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful day here today, so here's just another video of me blabbering a bit.

Thinking about going to India when I'm done on the ice for this year

2008-07-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

So, over the last couple days, a very interesting prospect has been mentioned to me, brought about by a conversation I had with our network guy about his various Microsoft certifications. Microsoft (or M$ as they're often abbreviated) has a whole slew of different certifications you can get in various aspects of their technology, most focused on enterprise level and developer areas. Because of that, I'd never really bothered with them, as they didn't offer much that was relevant to my previous career as a consumer-level PC Tech.

But given where I am, and where I hope to be for the next five years or so, having those additional higher-level skills would probably prove to be more and more useful, so I've been tinkering with the idea of spending a lot of money for a bit of paper that says I know how to work one of these magical internet boxes.

The most useful, and most common certification is the MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). In the states, the courses for these usually run between $6,000-$8,000, take a couple months, and cover the things needed to set up, run, and manage medium to large size networks (Active Directory, domain controllers, Exchange, etc).

But, of course, like everything else, it's cheaper overseas. The network guy who's currently here got his training through a company in India, that offers all-inclusive packages in all aspects of the M$ certs. And the freaking part is that they're all VERY cheap, in US terms. And by all-inclusive, the only thing that you have to pay for is getting your butt to New Deli. Everything else, accomodation, food, transport, local guides and translators, etc is provided.

There's a few variables involved in the cost, mostly how long you want the courses to be (they have fast-track classes which are shorter, but assume more previous knowledge), and which location you want to use (Deli is the cheapest, but is hot and in the middle of a big dirty city, while Shaimi is a few bucks more, but is located up in the foothills of the Himalayas). But even with the most expensive options, the courses are MUCH cheaper then in the USA. A few of our IT people here have gotten their certs with a specific company over there, and have nothing by praise for them, not only in how well they treat you, but in the quality of the classes and instructors.

So, two options:

-Spend $6000 or so for a 6-week(ish) course in Chicago to get my MCSE cert

-Spend $3000-$4000 for a 50-day all-inclusive course in India, in Shimia. located in the foothills of the Himalayan mountians, or in the beach resort town of Goa, to get my MCSE cert.

. . . GEE, I WONDER WHAT THE BETTER OPTION IS?!?

Even if I was still in the states, figuring in airfare, it would still be cheaper to go to India. But given that I'll hopefully be ending my next contract in New Zealand, I should be able to use my travel credit from Raytheon for a huge chunk of the flying, and my frequent flyer miles should fill in the rest. At maximum, I might need to shell our a few hundred bucks in airfare.

The company that I'm looking to go with is http://www.koenig-solutions.com/ , Raytheon uses them for most of the training they give to full-time staff, and the people here who have been there say it's absolutely amazing.

So, yeah. Sorry for this disjointed post, but I think I'm going to India early next year.

Epic win, or massive fail?

2008-07-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

"We're either the pinnacle of success, or the rock bottom of failure."

-Eric, current station manager

The usual addage is that you don't come to Antarctica for the money, and if you compare the weekly wages on a dollar-for-dollar basis, that's pretty true. The general rule is you will make about 1/2 to 2/3 here as compared to what you could make in the USA doing roughly the same work (especially given that we work 54+ hours per week, that would factor in a lot of overtime)

But that's not really the whole picture. True, if you have a family, a house, mortgage, possessions, a solid life with roots put down back in the states, it would be very hard to support that with your average Antarctic salary.

The flipside is that most people here DON'T have roots down anywhere. And since everything sans booze is provided for free to you down here, you're not spending any money while you're here to support yourself. The most that some people have to pay is a fee for a storage locker back stateside, if that. So the vast majority, if not all, of the money that you make here just goes right into your bank account, where it just sits there and collects dust.

Which means that at the end of your contract, most people are just dumped into South America or New Zealand with a big wad of cash . . . and absolutely no obligations, commitments, or responsibilities to anyone, anywhere. Some might call that the pinnacle of success.

On the other hand, we also have no job, no home, no safety net, and for most of us, no possessions but a couple of duffel bags of long underwear and sweatshirts.

I guess if that's a success or failure depends on your outlook on life.

The weather

2008-07-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

Guess I shouldn't have even tried talking at the camera when I was outside. I think I was just saying stuff about how I was walking from Bio-Lab to GWR, or something like that. But yes, before I went outside, I did say 50mph SUSTAINED winds, gusting up to 65mph. It's like standing in front of an industrial fan, or in back huge jet engine. A very cold jet engine. I mean, we've had strong winds in Chicago and stuff, but there's enough trees and buildings and things around that at least for the first ten or fifteen feet above the ground, while there are some strong gusts, it's pretty sporadic and spontaneous. This is anything but, it's just an unrelenting force that is trying desperately to push everything that's not tied down into the ocean. It's completely different then any wind I'd been in before.

Contrary to popular assumption, though, it's not actually THAT cold here. And especially when compared to the other stations, this is downright balmy. Palmer Station is north of the Antarctic circle, and being on the ocean and very close to the water currents coming down from South America helps keep the temperatures relatively mild. Most days have a high of about 25 degrees so far, and it doesn't often drop down that much at night. We've had a few days were it's flirted with single digits, but not many, and a few where it's risen above freezing. There are plenty of states in the USA that get much colder temperatures then we do.

What we DO get, though, is a hell of a lot of snow, and even more wind. It feels like a belt sander on your face when you're outside, especially when the wind is coming in off the glacier across the bay, as you get all the frozen sea spray ground into your skin.

I generally spend at least a few hours a day outside in this sort of weather. It does suck, I will say that, but . . . well it's not as bad as you would think, but I can't say exactly why. Being dressed properly helps a lot. I can't really explain it, though, exactly what it's like. I mean, yes, it's windy as hell, pretty cold, and the snow is blinding and harsh and you really dread going outside in it . . . But then you just go do it anyway, because . . . well, it's got to get done, and if you don't, no one else will. So you either bitch about it, and then do it, or save some time and skip the bitching, and get right to doing it.

(and I KNOW my dad is probably gloating like crazy and remembering all the times when I was growing up that he had to put up with an hour of my complaining about having to do a fifteen-minute chore)

Earlier today, when I was doing station rounds, I was walking from the boathouse to GWR, and having a hard time of it. I was shuffling up the road in a 50mph+ headwind, leaning over into it to an absurd angle, with ice forming on my glasses and snow drifts taller then my waist, getting pelted in the face by snow and frozen sea spray, trying to hang into the clipboard and my bag of tools while holding up an arm to sheild my face a bit from the wind . . . when it hit me.

. . . this is awesome. I'm in Antarctica.

The stuff that nighmares are made of

2008-07-05T08:01:00.001-07:00

The stuff that nighmares are made of, originally uploaded by tsaven.

I'm not sure how this happened, or when. but a couple of nights ago, I took the lens off my shelf to show someone, and upon taking off the lens cap, saw one of the scariest things ever.

The few of you who are photo nerds reading this know exactly what that lens is, and exactly how expensive it is. For those of you who don't know? It's a lot. Many, many many dollars.

The good news? It was just the $30 UV Haze filter that was shattered. It did it's job and protected the lens itself from any damage. It had evidently taken a hell of a hit, as the filter was slightly bent out of shape, and was now jammed onto the front of the lens SO tightly that I had to use a large pair of channel locks and a bench vise to get it off.

So the lens itself is fine, and after taking the filter off to find the lens glass unscathed, I'm feeling a lot better myself.

Who we are

2008-07-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

"We are the people who weren't very firmly attached to the rest of the world, and all fell to the bottom."

-Unknown, someone from McMurdo

Asking people here "Where are you from?" will often get you a confused look, or at best, a sort of glance off into space and the start of a complicated answer. A lot of people here are no longer 'from' anywhere, in the typical sense of the word. Often, the best answer you can get is "Well, I have a storage locker in . . ."

It's not that we're the rejects of the world. We've just rejected the world.

Slang

2008-07-03T19:23:00.001-07:00

I know I haven't updated in a while, mostly just due to lack of energy and time. The work is long, as always, and while we don't specifically have any big projects going on, something is always breaking. And the LMG is here now, but only for two days, so it's been a hectic rush to get all the stuff unloaded and loaded.

So instead of trying to recap all the events of the last few weeks, I'll just do another silly post not about specific events, but more about this place in general.

So, I present, Antarctic Slang. You've probably heard me use these terms before, or if not, you will.

PA - Punta Aranus. The town at the southern tip of South America that we fly into, and where we board the LMG for the ride to PS.

LMG - The R/V Lawrence M. Gould. The icebreaker ship that ferries us back and forth from PA to PS, as well as doing sciency stuff in the Antarctic peninsuala region

PS - Palmer Station. Where I live.

Bio - One of the two main buildings that makes up Palmer Station. It has half of the dorm rooms, the kitchen, gally, admin offices, IT stuff, and all the science labs

GWR - The other main building on station. It stands for, creatively enough, Garage, Warehouse, Recreation. This building has the other half of the dorms, the bar, lounge, garage, powerplant, storage warehouse, and logistics offices. As well as our little medical clinic.

Toasty - A specific sort of craziness brought on by being on ice too long. I'll do a post on this later

The Ice - Antarctica. Whenever someone says "heading to the ice" they mean they're going to Antarctica, or when they mention their "ice time", it's how many months they've spent in Antarctica

Cheech - Christchurch, New Zealand (CHC). This is the jumping-off point for the C-130 and C-17 cargo planes that keep McMurdo and Pole supplied and functioning.

Beaker - A scientist. Technically, the politically correct term for all the various science people and NSF people is "Grantees". But the only time they're actually called that is in the official correspondences. Supposedly, the term originated in McMurdo, as sort of a negative title. And while it's sort of a sketchy term to use over there, here it's more a term of endearment, or it's just easier to say "Yeah, he/she's with the beakers" rather then "They came down with, or are assisting the grantees". Or "Yeah, put that over in the beaker milvan" rather then "Put that in the grantee storage locker". Basically, 90% of the non-raytheon people here are either beakers or with the beakers. At the other stations that have a lot more people, there's more slang nicknames for other people based on their job (Wastie, fuelie, etc), but we don't really have enough seperation of responsibilities at a station as small as Palmer to have nicknames for individual departments.

NSF - National Science Foundation. They pay for all this.

GASH - The after-dinner kitchen cleanup. I did a post on this a while ago. Stands for either "Gally And Scullery Help", or "Garbage And Sh*t".

Milvan - One of the large shipping containers that we use to store stuff in around station

Backyard - The area of jagged rocks and small hills in between the station and the base of the glacier behind the station.

FSM - Flying Spaghetti Monster. The most-worshiped deity of Palmer Station. (If you are a fellow Pastafarian, you'll find this funny. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, smile and nod and move on)

PQ - Physical Qualification. A single term to describe the wide varitiy of medical and psych testing we're required to undergo before deploying to the ice. You generally need to re-PQ every year.

Coffee - Expresso with a shot of Baily's Irish Cream. Very popular morning drink here, especially with the beakers.

Mac-town - McMurdo Station, the largest station in Antarctica, and the jumping off point for many of the other bases on the other side of the continent. Population of up to 1200 summer/125-250 winter. South and a little west of New Zealand.

Pole - South Pole Station.

Herc - A C-130 Hercules cargo plane. We don't have an airfield here at Palmer, but they use 'em on the other side of the continent.

Fingie - FNG. Flippin' New Guy.

Ice Shock - When you get back to the rest of the world and realize that no matter how insane Antarctica is, the real world is FAR nuttier, and that you can no longer function in it.

You got:: A chunk of ice!

2008-06-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

You can set it to + and use it with B!

(this all makes sense as long as you look at it and listen to this)

We generally use chunks of glacier ice that we pull out of the ocean for making drinks and things in the bar. On the deck outside the bar doors, we have a big tray with a couple hammers and ice picks, and whenever you want some ice for your drink or whatever, you go out and break off a few chunks.

Sea ice, of course, is salty, and generally cloudy or white, as it's just formed from frozen seawater. but the ice that falls off the glacier into the ocean is fresh, quite literally thousands of years old, and has been under many tons of pressure for that whole time. Which makes it perfectly clear, because there's no air bubbles or cracks in it, and also makes it last a lot longer in a drink. Or at least that's what they say. Really, I think people just like mixing drinks with thousand-year-old ice.

Rec boating

2008-06-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

Yet another upside of being at Palmer Station is the ability to go boating recreationaly. And really, their requirements for it are pretty loose. Has to be at least two people who've taken Boating I and II, and the boat coordinator has to feel comfortable with them going out. As long as that's all good, it's just a question of free time and weather.

Boating time is from half an hour after sunrise to half an hour before sunset, and as long as the wind is under 20 knots. Unfortunetly, this time of year there's only a couple hours of sunlight, and the odds of the wind being under 20 knots during the middle of the day on on of our very few days off is pretty rare.

However, last saturday, all the planets aligned and someone did a good-weather dance, and we were able to get out for a spin. It was I, the electrician, one of the beakers, the admin person, and one of the logistics girls. I coordinated and orginized the whole thing as . . . well because I'm enthusiastic to the point of idiocy about getting to go boating. We drove around, took some pictures, and just enjoyed being out in the ocean and getting cold and wet.

Given that I was driving, I didn't get many chances to take pictures, and the few I got weren't very interesting. But some of the others snapped a few of me when we were out, and when I was picking the boats up out of the water with the boating coordinator.

Wow do I look like a dork.

When I go boating, I generally wear the following

Feet:
-Thin socks (almost like dress socks)
-Chemical warmer stuck in between the thin and thick socks (can't have them directly on skin)
-Thick wool socks
-My (waterproof) boots

Hands:
-skintight glove liner (basically a very thin stretchy glove)
-chemical warmer
-medium-thickness polyester glove liner
-insulated dish glove

Head:
-Fleece baclava
-suit's hood (if it's windy)
-Would be nice if I had a mask, but the one they issued me has tinted lenses, and it's way too dim here this time of year for them.

Legs:
-Boxers
-skintight long underwear
-thicker long underwear
-sweatpants

Torso:
-tight fleece tee-shirt
-long-sleeved slick undershirt (dunno what the material is, but it's slippery, which is good, prevents it from bunching up)
-long-sleeve thick-ish shirt/thin sweater
-possibly a Polar fleece (depending on how cold it is)

On top of all that I wear a full-body Mustang Suit, which is that bright orange thing that you see me wearing. They are AWESOME. They're really thick, wind and waterproof, and they're designed to float, so they act as a life preserver. And the padding is thick enough that when you slip and fall on your ass, it doesn't hurt. And they're surprisingly easy to move in, and have a lot of adjustability to create a good fit, I like them a lot. Some people wear just the Mustang coat, but I prefer the full-body ones.

One of the things you sometimes have to contend with when you're boating is "brash ice", which is a big stream or area of small chunks of floating ice. It's not a big deal, you just have to go really slowly (idle speed generally), and have a couple people leaning out over the bow with paddles to push the larger chunks out of the way. Which is what I and the beaker were doing in this picture (I'm on the left).

BTW, that little black smudge near the left edge of the picture at the foot of the glacier, right on the water? That's our station.

Unfortunetly, the wind started to pick up while we were out, so we had to head home. And given how unlikely it was that anyone would be going boating later in the day, I helped pick the boats up out of the water.

(I'm the guy still in the boat)

One person stays in the boat and holds it against the rocks with the engine to let everyone and their stuff out, and then one of the people who's jumped out grabs the bow line to help stabilize things. The person in the boat then backs off the rocks, and the skytrack guy extends the boom to the boat, so the person in the boat can reach up and clip the cradle lines onto the hook. Once the boat is clipped onto the skytrack, it's not going anywhere, so the guy in the boat gets the engine shut down and jumps out, so they can then lift the boat up and carry it to where ever they're going to put it.

And now, just some random pictures of me doing this stuff. I actually needed to help bring in two boats, because as long as there's any other boats out, the OSAR (Ocean Search And Rescue) boat #7 has to be in the water, prepped and ready to go in case of an emergency. So we needed to pull in our boat, and the OSAR boat. Pulling in two boats involved a lot of tricky jumping from boat to boat to get stern lines unhooked and untangled and things, but no one got pics of that.

Hrm, another photo where I look like a dork. Maybe I should admit that I almost always look like a dork. Whatever. The paddle on my lap was what I was using to try and push that chunk of ice out of the way so that I could get to the stern line rope to unhook the lines.

Unhooking the stern lines of the OSAR boat

Me maneuvering the OSAR boat in around the sea ice so it can be picked up by the Skytrack. That white rope going across the frame is the stern line, where we'll usually tie the boats off to if we're leaving them in the water.

Me climbing out of one of the boats after I'd finished hooking up the lift cradle, and shutting down and locking the engine. That's one of the beakers holding the bow line so that I can get out of the boat without dieing. (the eagle eyed of you will notice that I'm getting out of a different boat then the one I'm in in the other pictures)

That's the boating coordinator in the skytrack, letting us know where he's going to be putting the boat once he lifts it out of the water (so that we know where to stand with the guide lines)

Anyway, yeah, so that's rec boating. It's wet, it's cold, it's windy, bumpy, often seasickness-inducing, and totally awesome in all ways.

The FEMC crew

2008-06-23T20:56:00.001-07:00

FEMC crew, originally uploaded by tsaven.

This is a shot of our FEMC crew for this winter, taken with the IR camera that the engineers were using to find sources of heat loss in the buildings. It's pretty easy to tell which one is me, I would think.

This is one strange place . . .

2008-06-20T12:10:00.001-07:00

Suit 2, originally uploaded by tsaven.

Apparently, I now own a suit.

I'm not sure exactly how, or why, but the network engineer who just left had brought a suit down with him that he'd had made for himself in the 80s. He's been in the USAP for like ten years, and had left this suit here over the years, and finally realized that he no longer fit into it.

By some absurd, freakish chance, it fits me perfectly.

My ex-GF back stateside looked at this photo and said that I look too rigid and uptight in it. My response is "Well, duh, it's a suit, you're supposed to be uptight and stiff and formal!"

Click the photo to go to my flickr page for a couple more pictures of me looking like a snotty British banker.

Dive tending

2008-06-20T09:45:00.001-07:00

Dive tending, originally uploaded by tsaven.

As I've said before, Palmer Station was built where it is because it's a hotbed of wildlife, most of it in the ocean. Most of the research done here is marine biology, although there is some atmospheric stuff. And to access all of this wildlife, we maintain a small fleet of zodiac inflatable boats.

First, a word about the boats; they're fAWESOME. And shockingly expensive. The ones that we have, the top-end Mark 5 boats with the hard floor and kevlar-reinforced tubes and stuff, are over $20,000 sans engine. But they're also very, very rugged, versitle, reliable and flexible (in the sense that they have so many uses). But after my experiences with them, I'd FAR rather own one of these, then own a small fiberglass-hulled boat of some sort. As an example, if a standard boat breaks loose from it's moorings and gets tossed against the rocks, like what happened to boat 99 a few weeks ago, it would be totally written off, destroyed and at the bottom of the ocean. That zodiac, that was crushed and half deflated that I posted pictures of? It's all fixed and back in service.

Anyway, here we use them for just about anything you could imagine needing them for. The main intention is of course so the beakers can go out to the islands around station and collect samples of penguin poop or whatever, or more recently, for Scuba diving.

I've mentioned Dive Tending in posts before, and basically what it involves is going along with the scuba divers and being "the guy that stays in the boat" while they dive. And yes, the water here is below freezing, and they wear heavy drysuits with thick underwear and fleeces, along with chemical warmers. As long as the weather cooperates, there's a dive almost every day, they're doing a lot of algee and coral and seaweed collections for sciency-type stuff.

A typical dive will consist of four people; two divers, both of whom are beakers, and two tenders; a beaker and a volunteer from the general station population. While the divers are getting suited up, the tenders will get the gear together and load it into the boat. We don't let the divers do any real work before the dive, as you can VERY easily get too hot and start sweating when you have the drysuits on, and that's a bad thing, as it means you'll be cold as hell when in the water.

Loading the boats is tricky, as there's no proper boat ramp, just an area where they've tried to move some rocks around to make it as accessible as possible. And given that these guys are diving in salt water, with very thick drysuits and lots of insulation, they need a LOT of weight to maintain neutral bouyency. Even using steel tanks, m Most of the guys wear at least 40lbs of weight on their belts, plus another few pounds on their ankles and wrists. So, for the record, hoisting a 45cu steel tank w/BCD and regulators over icy, uneven and jagged rocks with a powerful surge tugging at your ankles is quite a challenge sometimes.

Anyway, after everything's loaded onto the boat, the divers will come out, get in, and we head out. The first time I went out dive tending, as we were casting off, the beaker tender said "Hey Brendan, you wanna drive?" . . . . the fact that they even needed to ask astonished me. Driving the zodiacs is a BLAST, even moreso if the seas are choppy. You stand at the stern of the boat and hold onto the tiller with one hand (it's a twist throttle, like a motorcycle) and generally hold onto one of the ropes run along the side of the boat with the other, and . . . well, just hang on and try not to fall overboard.

Once you get to the dive site, we'll do a "leprechaun" (lep recon, Leopard Seal Recon), which consists of driving around a bit, making sure there's no leopard seals taking naps on any of the rocks nearby, and hoping that there's none in the water (other seal types we don't worry about). The divers will put on their tanks and BCDs (which they actually don't use as they inflate their drysuits to control bouyancy), their head gear, and then I and the other tender will have to put their gloves on for them (it's impossible for them to do themselves). They head down to between 80-120 feet, depending on the location, and will be down for anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes. During this time, I and the other tender just hang out in the boat, and follow the diver's bubbles around.

Once they surface, they'll take most of their gear off in the water, clipping it onto lines that we've tossed to them, so that we can haul it into the boat. Most of the time, they'll only do one dive, so then we head home, unload the boats, and help them carry in whatever samples they've pulled up. If the weather will be turning nasty later, or if we won't be using the boats for a couple days, we'll pick the boats up out of the water using one of the Skytracks.

Now, maybe I'm strange, but I think dive tending is awesome, I sign up for it at every chance I can possibly get. I can't fathom the people here (and they're in the majority) who refuse to go dive tending. I jump at every opportunity . . . although that's mainly because I like driving the zodiacs. And just generally being out in them, it's . . . hard to explain why it's so great. You're sitting in this little inflatable boat, the air is generally around 20f, water isn't much warmer then that, you've got no protection from the wind or sea spray, which is relentless if the seas are choppy. And the job basically can be summed up as "Carry heavy stuff from point A to B. Sit around being cold for an hour. Carry heavy stuff from point B to A", So by all definition, it should suck. But it's totally sweet.

On our days off, the boats are available for recreational use, assuming the weather cooperates. You have to have at least two people who've completed the Boating II class, and as long as the boating coordinator feels that you're not a complete idiot and are vaugly responsible, off you go. Sadly, most weekends so far have had winds that were much too strong for "rec boating".

This photo was snapped by the beaker tender last time we were out dive tending. The weather was . . . well, look at the picture. It was perfect. Once the divers were in the water and I had some time to sit and think, I had yet another "WTF . . . I'm in Antarctica" moments. If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be driving around the Antarctic Ocean in a zodiac, avoiding icebergs and brash ice while watching out for leopard seals, helping scientists scuba dive for coral samples amd watching the sun rise/set over a massive glacier, I'd have never believed you.

Sky

2008-06-16T21:32:00.001-07:00

Sky, originally uploaded by tsaven.

For the love of god, view at full size)

Clear nights here are fairly rare, especially at this time of year. We're at the convergance of a few different ocean currents and weather patterns, so there's almost always some sort of clouds hanging around.

But a few nights ago, it was one such night, brilliantly clear and cold. And on nights like that, this is what the sky looks like. The whole sky. Horizon to horizon.

At around 11pm, I strapped on all my camera gear, bundled up in as much clothing as I could, snagged some chemical warmers for my boots from the divers, and took a walk to the east, up the side of the glacier.

I could try and describe what it was like, but nothing I say can do it justice. I could try and describe feeling like you're the only thing alive on the whole continent, of realizing just how small and insignificant you really are, this tiny black dot on an immense expanse of ice and snow. Of looking up and being slightly confused at the thin cloud that stretches across the whole sky and looks like it's behind the stars, then realizing that I was seeing the Milky Way for the first time in many years. I could try and describe the solitude of plodding along slowly up this massive plane of white, looking back and seeing off in the distance this little bubble of light, our station, a minuscule blip of civilization on this harsh continent.

But no count of my words could possibly bring to accurate fruition the experience in your minds. Whatever you're thinking it was like, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere close.

So I do my best to try to capture the experience in pixels, and while you may look at the image and say it's neat, I promise you, it's far more incredible in real life.

Even so, I wasn't able to capture it as well as I'd liked. My only fast lens is the cheap 50mm f/1.8, and to really capture this place, I need something wider (especially on a crop-sensor camera), but my only wide lens is my 17-85 f/4-5.6, and even with 30 second exposures it wasn't capturing nearly enough light. And my hands and the camera started to get cold VERY quickly. Hiking up there I was fine, but standing around waiting for 15 second shutters gets you cold pretty quickly.

Very, very happy penguin

2008-06-15T20:59:00.000-07:00

This video was given to me by Chef Vova at the Ukrainian station, Vernadsky. I'm not sure exactly when it was taken, or who took it, but it was in the waters around their base.

Penguins aren't really afraid of people. During the summer here, you can walk through flocks of them, and sometimes they barely even acknowledge your presence. They've only had contact with humans for the past couple hundred years, not enough for them to instinctively fear us as predators. And now, they're a protected animal, so they've got nothing to fear from us.

Killer Whales, on the other hand, see penguins as lunch.

2008-06-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is a time-lapse video taken a couple days ago after the Gould got back to Palmer after a short fishing trip, of it just coming in, tying up and offloading some crates of fish. It was put together by a guy here whom everyone just calls Waslo, for complicated reasons.

I am in the video, briefly. Just after the middle of the video, when one of the Skytracks picks up the Zodiac that's on the ground and puts it into the water, there's one guy in an orange suit helping to guide the boat with a rope, and I'm the one in the bright orange suit standing there watching, then sitting on the snow next to the water for a while while the divers get ready, and then leaving on the zodiac boat.

The credits are basically a huge line of inside jokes about Palmer Station and the people here. They called me what they call me because I sign up for dive tending at every single chance I get, and in the couple of months I've been here, I've been out dive tending more then anyone else.

Personally, I think the video would have been better with "Yakety Sax" (Benny Hill music), but the guy who made the video vetoed that idea.

Housemouse, again!

2008-06-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

As I've posted about before, we don't have janitors here, so every week, people draw chores out of a hat to see who cleans what.

I'm pretty sure I never thought I'd hear myself say "Sweet, I'm on bathroom duty again!"

So, what did you do on YOUR weekend?

2008-06-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

Me? I spent my weekend seeing stuff like this:

(And to think, some people actually have to ask why I came down here)

Remember that thing I said about the sunrises and sunsets lasting all day long? (Best viewed at full res) I'd like to mention that the above shot is not post-processed AT ALL. That image is directly off the camera, that's exactly what the sky looks like here. It really is that intense, as the air is fantastically clear so you don't get any atmospheric haze diluting the colors. (That and my camera kicks ass. And I actually read the manual and know how to use it. Sort of)

Anyway, last weekend, we took an overnight trip to Vernadsky, the Ukrainian station that's about 90 miles south of us. We left Palmer Station at around 4pm on Saturday, and got to Vernadsky at around 11:30am Sunday (Icebreakers aren't exactly built for speed) . The scenery on the way there was . . . something else entirely.

Yeah, that little black dot in the foreground? That's a whale. They were ALL OVER the place, eventually the ship slowed to a crawl to avoid accidentally hitting them or something.

Sadly, I had my camera's settings completely wrong when I took the above photo, it took a fair bit of post-processing to get it looking good, but it did leave it looking a little . . . grainy or blasted out, sort of.

And of course, the best for last . . .

PENGUINS!!!

Gentoo penguins, specifically. When we were zodiacing back from Vernadsky to the R/V Gould, this flock was running parallel to our zodiac for quite a ways, they seemed both curious and freaked out. I did what had to be the fastest lens change I've ever done (taking off my 17-85 and throwing on my 70-200) while sitting on the bow of the zodiac, trying not to fall overboard as we were bouncing all over the place at almost full throttle, following these guys as they were porpoising along.

Out of the hundred or so shots I took following these guys, those two shots above are the best, IMO. My camera's settings wern't QUITE right for the situation, as this was really one of those OMFG GET THE LENS ON AND POINT IT AT THEM AND PRESS THE BUTTON I DON'T HAVE TIME TO MESS WITH SETTINGS!!!!! Fortunetly, I wasn't that far off, although the ISO was higher then I would have liked and I was on the wrong focus mode.

I think these below are pretty cool, although not print-worthy.

Alright, sorry for the deluge of pictures, but hey, it's better then a rant. That's it for tonight, in the next couple days I'll get up pictures of the actual station itself, instead of all the neat stuff we saw going to and coming from the station.

John Lawrence Brendan Pope, February 16, 1918 - May 7, 2008

2008-06-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

Just a few weeks after I'd gotten down to the ice, I got word from back home that my grandfather was very ill. A few days later, he passed away. He'd battled Parkinson's for quite some time now, and while we all know these things are inevitable, it doesn't make them any easier.

While I'm sorry that I wasn't able to be there, I know that he'd be very proud of where I am and what I'm doing. He was in the Army and had been stationed in the Pacific at Guadalcanal during World War 2, and always had a bit of wanderlust/travel bug in him. Maybe those sort of things are hereditary.

So this photo is dedicated to him. So long, Poppa.

Food-related entry

2008-06-07T08:45:00.001-07:00

Gally, originally uploaded by tsaven.

If I had to make a list of everything that's suprised me on my travels down here, the quality of the food would have to be pretty high on the list. I was expecting a food quality somewhere between MREs and high-school cafeteria food. Boy, was I ever wrong.

The food is is GOOD. Like, really good. And there's so much of it! It's actually a problem. I'm a scrawny guy, always have been, used to eating only once a day out of shear laziness. And now I get here, where they're throwing hot meals at you five times a day!

Breakfast is from 6:30-8am, and consists of something baked, like french toast, or pancakes, or english muffins, or something like that. There will also always be something egg-related (scrambled, fried, etc), something potato-based (often hash browns or grits or a green/yellow peppers and potato scramble), as well as breakfast meats and a pile of various sorts of fresh fruits (which are abundant here, thanks to the monthly resupply). And of course, there's a ton of different cerals and bagels and breads for toast and coffees and teas and etc.

We'll have our first break at 10am, and often the cooks will make some sort of a coffee cake, or put out the leftovers from breakfast, or some smoothies and other snackfoods.

Lunch is Noon-1pm, and varies every day. Sometimes it's deli day, with a huge selection of cold cuts, cheeses, veggies, and everything else that could possibly go on a sandwich. Or they'll pre-make hot sandwiches of some sort, or have soups and stews, as well as salads and other rabbit food.

Second break is at 3pm, and again, they'll make some sort of snack foods, often fruit and veggie platters, or fresh breads and cheeses, etc.

Dinner is from 5:30-6:30, and again, is something wilding different every night. Few nights ago was mexican, so it was a make-your-own-tacos-and burritos, and recently we had tuna-noodle casserole, and last night was psudo-thanksgiving, with those two big turkeys, and mashed potatos, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie, green bean casserole, etc.

I'd say the most problematic part of this whole thing is the deserts. Diane (our cook, in the picture) ran a bakery for a while, so every night, there's some sort of new cake, or pie, or zucchini bread, or a big pile of cupcakes sitting out.

And almost EVERYTHING is from scratch, hardly anything is frozen, it's all fresh (at least, right now it is, as the resupply got here last week). I mean, even the buckets of whipped cream served next to the giant tubs of ice cream is made from scratch.

In normal life, not Antarctica, you're always constrained by SOMETHING in relation to food. Either it's not very good, or it's too much of a pain in the butt, or it's too expensive, or there's not enough. But here? It's all there, it's zero-effort, it's all absurdly good, and it's all free.

Most of that is the advantage of being at Palmer Station, which at a maximum capacity of 40 people (and we're at around 38 now), can have much more varied, unique, and better food then South Pole (up to 300 people) or McMurdo (up to 1200 people).

There's downsides to such a small station, though. Like that there's no dedicated kitchen cleaners. So everyone, at least once a week, takes turns on GASH. Officially, GASH is a Navy term meaning "Gally And Scullery Help", but the more common translation here is "Garbage And Sh*t"

Every night, there's between 4-6 people on GASH duty, which basically involves cleaning the kitchen and dining area, helping with the pots and pans, sweeping, mopping, putting away leftovers, etc. Generally takes around an hour or so, depending on how many new people who haven't done it before are GASHing. I've been on GASHes where it takes upwards of two hours (like on cross-town dinners, where the ship's crew comes over to eat).

It's not too bad, though, because everyone, without exepetion, does it at least once a week, station manager included. And people do their best to liven it up, they always put on music, and sometimes with some, um, assistance. There's a group of guys here that do what they call "Tequila GASH". Which basically means that every time a song comes on that referances, or is about tequila, they do a shot.

It started to become clear that they might have a problem when they started stacking the playlists with every tequila-related song they could find, by the end having a whole playlist with only tequila songs on it. It got even worse when they started editing themselves into normal songs to make them tequila songs, such as:

"Wastin' away, again, in TEQUILAvill . . . looking for my lost shaker of TEQUILA"

"Bye, bye miss american pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry, them good ol' boys were drinking TEQUILA and TEQUILA singing this 'ill be the day that I TEQUILA"

"Aaaaaaaand IIIIIIIIIIII, will always, loooooove yooooooooouuuuTEQUILA"

"There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is TEQUILA, and she's buuuuuuying the stairway, to TEQUILA"

Lets just say that they normally run out of tequila well before they run out of songs, thankfully. But by the end, they're all usually quite hammered.

Leopard seal attack

2008-06-05T15:55:00.001-07:00

IMG_2951 (Large), originally uploaded by tsaven.

Okay, as much as I'd love to tell some amazing story about how I and some others were out boating, and we got attacked by a leopard seal, and the seal did this sort of damage to the boat before Chuck Norris and I fought it off with our bare hands and saved the lives of everyone, that would be a little bit of enhancement. Although reality isn't that much more boring.

For the last week or so, we've been getting POUNDED by storms, bringing with them some harsh winds, sustained wind speed of 40mph, gusts to 60mph. When this goes on for days at a time, the seas really get rough, and the swells were getting serious.

A few nights ago, sometime after 11pm, one of our Zodiac inflatable boats was ripped from it's mooring lines by the storm. The swells and wind were so strong that they ripped the line anchors out of the boat, and then the backup mooring lines snapped against the force.

We discovered it missing the next morning, and found the boat half a mile up the inlet, getting banged up against some rocks, flipped over, and half crushed/deflated. A couple of guys took one of the other zodiacs out and towed it back to shore, where we discovered that it was missing the secondary engine, and the boat box (the boat box is a watertight box that is kept in each boat, containing search & rescue gear, along with emergency stuff and navigation electronics).

One of the scientists and I took a couple of the SCUBA divers out in our remaining boat, and spent about an hour searching the area between where the boat was found and the dock. By almost dumb luck, we did find the missing engine, in about 30 feet of water. The divers attached a lift bag to the engine to get it to the surface, where the scientist and I were able to haul it into the boat. The boat box was found later in the day, floating about a quarter-mile out to sea.

In reality, the damage isn't as bad as it looks. Zodiacs are absurdly tough boats, we should be able to get this all fixed. It's got two of the five cells punctured, and some of the metal decking is bent up and the motor mount for the emergency engine is cracked in half, but the engines should be fine, as it wasn't running when it was submerged.

Why we're here

2008-06-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

As I've spent a a month or so here getting to know people, hearing about how they ended up down here, I'm struck by how similar many of the stories are. Many of us have roughly the same history; Had a really well-paying job, nice house/condo/apartment, nice cars/bikes, very comfortable life. Good careers, with good job openings in the future and long-term stability,

Then we decided that it all sucked, sold all our possessions, and moved to Antarctica.

Our power plant/ATV/heavy equipment/everything mechanic was previously a field mechanic for Caterpillar, specializing in power generation. Just for the record, those guys make BANK. He was working on, fixing and installing huge generators, some in the 2.5 Megawatt range, all over southern California. He was making a lot of money, living a very cush life in San Fran, had a nice truck and a track racing car, the works. Then he realized that a life with that much stuff sucked. So he got rid of all of it, and moved to the South Pole. Now he's here.

Our electrician had a job at a hospital. For an electrician, it's a cush as hell job. Pay and benifits were great, and working in a hospital, he got to work on and mess with a lot of very high-end and specialty equipment that's way more interesting then what most residential electricians will ever touch. He's a biker, had a couple of nice dual-sport bikes that he does long road trips on, living in a really nice house way up in the mountains of Vermont, living on 75 acres of heavy woodland. A truck, two bikes, big dog, etc etc etc. And then he realized that a life with all that stuff sucked. And moved down here.

They say that the first time you come to Antarctica, it's for the experience.

The second time, it's for the money.

And the third time, it's because you don't belong anywhere else.

IMG_2883 (Large)

2008-06-01T10:48:00.001-07:00

IMG_2883 (Large), originally uploaded by tsaven.

As everyone knows, the problem with being the photographer is that you never have any pictures of yourself. Fortunetly, enough other people were out taking pictures of the seal that I actually have pictures of me. So here you can see just how close I actually was to the elephant seal who's pictures I posted a few days ago.

The camera that I'm holding is a Canon 30D and a 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens, with the 2x extender (making it effectively a 140-400 f/5.6)

This photo was taken by Jill, one of the beakers.

Seals, seals, and more seals!

2008-05-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, I was in the process of doing building rounds, and when I wandered out of the aquarium to head down to the pumphouse, I realized there was something very large, very fat, and very lazy blocking my path.

Here's a more zoomed-out shot so you can get a better idea of exactly where this guy was. That little building is the pumphouse, where I was heading to do the daily maintenance checks. That didn't happen today, as I found this guy at about 10am, and he was still there at 5pm.

Now, the more eagle-eyed of you will notice something in that above photo. The fat elephant seal wasn't the only seal laying around at that time. See that black thing in the upper left? That's a fur seal.

Some people describe these guys as "dogs of Antarctica", as they do act very similar to dogs, in the way they roll around, and their playfulness and curiosity. Unlike the elephant seals, though, these guys can move surprisingly quickly on land, and occasionally have been known to be sort of aggressive (unlike elephant seals, which on land aren't capable of doing much more then barking at you).

A shot from the far right with both of them. Next to the elephant seal, who is shaped like a big ball of fat, the fur seals look positively elegant. And from talking with the divers, fur seals are FREAKISHLY nimble in the water. Elephant seals are, well, basically just a big blob of fat. Underwater they can move alright, but mostly they rely on being fucking big as a defensive tactic.

Eventually, the elephant seal woke up and pointed it's face in our direction. This one was very young, judging both by it's cute babyface and small size. Fully grown, the males easily push 5,000lbs and 18 feet long.

It's really strange how close you can get to them without them seaming to care that much. Then again, they were probably just trying to nap, and then all these stupid humans keep pointing these big tube things at them that make these loud clicky noises. The elephant seal would generally follow me with his eyes for a minute or two at a time, before deciding that I was boring and going back to sleep.

He seemed pretty content using this rock as a pillow. Looked very comfy.

That seal off to the left was a fur seal. He was actually a lot more interesting, as he would actually move around a bit, but he was far less interested in the silly humans then the elephant seal was, I don't think he ever looked in my direction. He would occasionally get up, flop his fins around a bit, stretch, roll over, and go back to sleep. Was awfully cute to watch, though. I think I'm going to make some short animations of the rapid-fire stuff I got of him shuffleing around. I think this photo below seriously needs some sort of capition, like "Awww, mom, I don't wanna go to school today!" or "ow, sunlight is bright". Something like that.

This guy SERIOUSLY reminded me of a dog. Just in the way that he rolled around on the rocks and things, in the way that dogs do.

Anyway, that wasn't the end of the seal appearances for the day. A leopard seal floated by, asleep on an iceberg. Now, if you're going to be afraid of any animal in Antarctica, it's going to be leopard seals. They are SERIOUS predators, and have been known to attack humans, as well as just about anything else that swims. They're VERY fast, both on land and in the water, and are massively strong with huge teeth and a jaw that fits around just about anything. And they have very few natural predators themselves, Orcas are just about the only thing that they have to be afraid of. Fortunetly, this guy seemed more interested in napping on his nice little floating bed of ice. He was on this 'berg for at least a few hours, floated all the way from one side of the station to the other, and barely acknowledged our presence.

And finally, here I managed to get all of them in the same shot:

And this was just a cool lucky shot. A bit under-exposed, as the camera was calibrated for the seals, but maybe I'll lighten it up some in photochop. Looks WAY better at full res.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll put more up later.

Elephant Seal

2008-05-25T08:38:00.001-07:00

I can has tissue plz?, originally uploaded by tsaven.

I'll post more pictures as well as the story behind this later. In the mean time, just be amused at the absurd amounts of cuteness.

Uh, what?

2008-05-23T19:47:00.001-07:00

Uh, what?, originally uploaded by tsaven.

I'm not actually sure what's in this barrel, and from what I've been able to gather talking to people around station, no one is really sure what's inside it, where it came from, or how long it's been here.

And actually chipping away all the ice and opening it would just destroy the fun of it all, now wouldn't it?

So we leave it there.

The people here have a very strong sense of nostalgia for the station. A good number of years ago, some new station manager went around and took down all the old announcement and sign-out chalkboards and replaced with with nice, new, modern white boards. The day he left, everyone took down the white boards and put the old chalkboards back up, where they still are today.

And two years ago, the company offered to put in a satellite TV dish, giving us free Direct TV. The whole station voted unanimously against it.

I has sleepy

2008-05-22T17:59:00.001-07:00

I has sleepy, originally uploaded by tsaven.

This place has active days, lazy days, and then days like today where stuff never stops going wrong.

Okay, it wasn't actually that bad, our fire alarm system did go on the fritz for a while and the sprinklers freaked out (didn't trigger, but close), but I didn't have a whole lot of input into that.

My problems were caused by mother Raytheon's infinite brilliance, and being the model of efficiency; someone up in corporate decided that it would be cheaper to buy our bi-annual lumber re-supply in the USA and send it down from California on a cargo ship, rather then buying it in Chili and just having the Gould bring it down like normal.

Nevermind that doing that means we won't get new lumber until August.

*headdesk*

So I and a couple other guys spent the majority of the day outside in the scrap wood shipping container, breaking apart used shipping crates and pallets for the 2x4 and 2x6 boards, as well as whatever 1/2" plywood we could get.

We're down to six 4x8 sheets of 1/2" ply, and four sheets of 3/4, and a couple sheets of 3/8. We're completely out of fresh 2x2, 2x4, and have maybe thirty feet of 2x6 left. We've got a good supply of 2x10 and 2x12, and we're going to have to rip it down if it turns out that we have something critical that needs to be built or fixed.

I will admit that the physical work is kinda nice. You don't really feel the cold, as you're moving around so much, and are dressed for it. It does sort of leave you exhausted, though. So you sleep when and where you can. My room mate snapped this picture of me and our mechanic crashed in dining room.

Moon over Mountians

2008-05-20T18:56:00.001-07:00

Moon over Mountians
Originally uploaded by tsaven

I've quickly become the go-to guy on station whenever there's anything really neat that needs a good photo taken of it. Yesterday, an someone stuck their head into the workshop where I was working, and told me to get my camera and come outside.

Well, this was why.

The glamorous Antartctic life

2008-05-17T13:08:00.001-07:00

House Mouse
Originally uploaded by tsaven

This will probably make my dad howl with glee . . .

Palmer is small enough that there are no dedicated janitors. Every Saturday, the station shuts down early and everyone (Everyone) draws a chore out of the hat. This is called "House Mouse". This was my chore for today.

(Truth be told, this is actually one of the better jobs to get. If you don't dawdle, you can knock it out in about twenty minutes, while kitchen duty can take upwards of an hour).

Sunrise, Sunset

2008-05-16T20:02:00.001-07:00

Sunrise, Sunset
Originally uploaded by tsaven

Palmer has a couple of problems that McMurdo and the South Pole don't have. Leopard Seals are one problem. Penguin poop is another. But one of the biggest productivity killers has got to be the view.

You see, Palmer is actually north of the Antarctic circle, so it does have (some) sunlight year-round. Of course, at this time of year, it doesn't get very far above the horizon, so sunrise/sunset lasts a majority of the day, and we're getting to the point where it IS the entire day.

And they are spectacular like I can't even explain.

Almost every time you set outside, you have a "wow" moment and inevitably end up standing their and gawking for a few minutes. Especially on very clear days like this, there's perpetually a few people standing on the walkway by the sauna and hot tub just staring.

Apparently, you don't ever get used to it. There's guys that have been coming here for twenty years who still go running for their camera ten times a day.

This photo doesn't do them justice, but you'll get a decent idea at full res.

Antarctica. Srsly.

2008-05-16T03:57:00.001-07:00

Antarctica. Srsly.
Originally uploaded by tsaven

I took this picture when I was out on that fishing trip last weekend. The wind died completely for a short time, turning the whole ocean into a sheet of glass. It was pretty stunning.

You really need to view this pic at full resoultion to appreciate it. Would probably make a good large-scale print.

Mailing addresses.

2008-05-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, if you want to send me stuff, you have three options:

Small stuff: For flat mail and very small packages (under 2lbs, and pocket-sized, unless special arrangements are made in advance), they can be sent to the Denver headquarters, where they are then put in a big silver trunk and hand-carried down as luggage by whomever is headed down to Palmer that month. The mail should get to the Denver office at least a week or two in advance of the Gould leaving Punta Aranus, which happens generally at the end of every month.

It is possible that this mail can be delayed if there's no one going down with extra baggage room, or the trunk is full, or whatever. So don't send anything perishable or time-critical.

Send this stuff to:

Brendan Pope
Palmer Station
C/O Raytheon Polar Services Company
7400 S. Tucson Way
Centennial, CO
80112-3938

Big Stuff: Larger packages have to be sent via surface ship, and have generally a 6-8 week transit time. To send a larger package via U.S. mail through the U.S. Antarctic Program cargo system use this PO box address:

NSF Contractor Representative
P.O. Box 338
Port Hueneme, CA 93041
Forward to:
Brendan Pope
Palmer Station

To send a package via a common carrier (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) through the U.S. Antarctic Program cargo system use this street address:

NSF Contractor Representative
Building 471 North End
USN – CBC
Port Hueneme, CA 93043
Forward To:
Brendan Pope
Palmer Station

Big Stuff Quickly: Now, if you REALLY really want to, you can send me larger packages quickly, but it's at your own expense. You can ship stuff directly to the Raytheon office in Punta Aranus, and it'll go out on the next cruise down to Palmer (Again, once a month, somewhere between the 25th and 2nd). Again, though, this can be really expensive, and a pain in the ass in terms of customs and whatever (as my dad just found out trying to ship stuff to Canada).

Letters and packages would have to be sent via common carrier (Not USPS) directly to the husbanding agent (AGUNSA) in Punta Arenas, Chile.

The address is:

Brendan Pope
Palmer Station, Antarctica
C/O AGUNSA
Depostio Franco Antarctico
AV. Independencia 772
P.O. Box 60-D
Punta Arenas, Chile

Some notes on sending me stuff: Anything that comes to Antarctica, has to leave Antarctica. Our trash is packed into a couple of big shipping containers and carried out once a month on the Gould. The point is, don't send any silly or pointless kitchy stuff (Amy, I'm looking at you), or if something comes with a lot of packaging, get rid of the packaging and just send the item itself.

Antarctica is also a protected and isolated environment, which hasn't had much historical exposure to the outside world. Bacterium and things can wreck havoc on the ecosystem here, so make sure there's no dirt or plant material, bugs or things like that in whatever you send. And definitely no foods or anything perishable, as there can be very long delays. Personal mail and packages has the lowest priority in terms of cargo, so if space is tight on the ship, it gets left in PA until the next month.

Nice day here

2008-05-14T09:04:00.001-07:00

Nice day here
Originally uploaded by tsaven

This is the view outside my bedroom window. It's an unusually clear day here, at least for this time of year. Palmer is right on the edge of where a few different air and ocean currents converge, so it's very frequently overcast, or foggy, or raining/snowing/sleeting.

But this is just one of those nice days with very little wind, few clouds, and *gasp* sunlight! Of course, the sun hides behind the glacier for most of the day, leaving us in shadow, but at least it lights up the mountains nicely.

Gone Fishin'!

2008-05-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Over last weekend, I managed to snag a spot on the Gould to tag along on a fishing trip as a deckhand. A bunch of the "Beakers" (the generally accepted nickname for members of the science team) are collecting a few specific types of fish for some sort of researched, and we did a four-day or so trip doing both trawling, and crab pot fishing to get some of the specific fish they were looking for.

It was hard work, there's no doubt about that. The ship is 12-on, 12-off work shifts, and it's pretty grueling. I spent the majority of the time on deck, carrying around heavy things, sorting the catch, rigging lines, winching in the nets, baiting the crab pots, basically all the lousy jobs that the lowest rung of the ladder ends up doing. I've got a bunch of blisters on my hands from all the line handling, and I must have coiled a mile of rope (That actually might not be an exaggeration, now that I think about it). And the trawling is hard, because it's half an hour of intense work, and then about 45 minutes of sitting around. Basically, enough time to really get tired, and maybe ALMOST fall asleep . . . before you have to get up and go haul in the net. I slept when I could, made a 'bed' out of a few sheets of bubble wrap and a rolled-up jacket, laid out on one of the lab benches.

All in all? It was totally great.

I'll have some pictures up in a few days, hopefully.

Well, here I am. This is Antarctica.

2008-05-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Welp, I made it.

For the last week or so I've been on a ship ride that some people pay $8,000 a ticket for.

Sunday, Day 1: Left Punta Aranus, Chile at about 1pm, spent that day and evening navigating through the islands and passages at the tip of South America. Fairly uneventful, smooth seas, a few birds. The gentle rocking motion of the ship puts you to sleep alarmingly quickly.

Monday, Day 2: Still smooth seas, going down through the Straights of Magellan. Sea birds seemed to like riding the air currents off the ship, so most of the good bird pictures I took on this day. Finally started to get into the Drake Passage at around 9pm that night, and . . .

Tuesday, Day 3: Utter chaos.

Backround info: Most ships have a full keel, their hull come to a wedge shape underneath the waterline, which helps the ship cut the water, and gives it lateral stability. But the Gould is an icebreaker, and as such has a flat bottom so that she can slide up onto ice sheets and break through them. Of course, that makes rough seas . . . interesting.

Not only does it pitch quite a bit, the yaw angles are crazy as well. But the weirdest part is that the ship slides around laterally, and that's the hardest to get used to and compensate for. Because it's not just the deck tilting, the whole ship just suddenly slips 15 feet horizontally to the left or right, and then there's Newton's first law . . . basically, you need to hang on.

We were in the Drake Passage all of day three, and from what I'm told by the crew, it was a relatively calm and easy crossing. Again, relatively. Winds were 30mph, seas 20-25 feet. Given how loaded up most people were on Dramamine, the majority of them spent the day in their bunks, doing their best to sleep. Which is actually quite hard, as you're constantly getting tossed about in your bunk, and either getting slamming into the bulkhead, or trying not to fall off the edge. Taking a shower requires some careful planning (They gave a quick briefing on how to take a three-point shower. Always be holding onto something with one hand, basically). By the end of the day, most of our shoulders were sore from constantly being tossed into the walls and things. All of the passageways have railings and things, and you almost never let go of them.

The majority of people got some motion sickness, I was one of maybe ten that had no issues at all. Nearly everyone else was loaded up on Dramamine, in addition to wearing the patches behind their ears. There weren't very many people showing up for meals, as the idea of food was quite unappealing.

Me? I was having a blast. It was like a roller coaster ride that lasts all day! :D

Wednesday, Day 4: Got out of the Drake sometime early in the morning, and people started timidly eating again. Heavy fog most of the day, although the crew said we were only a few miles from land, you couldn't see more then thirty yards off the ship. It cleared up later in the day, just in time for (dun dun dun) Science! The ship had made a short detour to the northern side of King George island, so a bunch of the biologists on board could do some trawling/fishing. From what I could understand, their doing protein research on extreme-ophiles, fish that survive in extreme environments and things. They were trawling around 1000ft, and deeper and the water starts to get warmer. Took a couple pics, then went inside, as . . . well, science is pretty boring. Lots of standing around.

Thursday, Day 5: Ice. Which I've been told their is a lot of down here. The ship had to slow down for about 18 hours to push through some pack ice. I was sitting in the lounge going over my photos, and someone wandered in and said "Hay, y'all seen the icebergs?" So I poke my head outside and had one of those . . . "What the heck" moments, as the ship was cruising by a wall of ice roughly the size of a small planet. It was dark out, and the ships lights didn't penetrate very far, but I did what I could with the camera. Snapped some pictures, but mostly just bundled up and stood around on the bow for around an hour, watching the ship crack through sheets of ice the size of football fields.

Friday, Day 6: Um . . . so, yeah, I'm here. Got in around 4pm, went ashore to dinner at the station, but still spending tonight on the ship while they get people ready to move off the station.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll update in a day or so with pictures, and more details and things.

Huh, weird. Still have tubes.

2008-04-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

You know, I didn't think I'd really have this much internet access down here. It's surprisingly connected. But the Santiago airport had a plethora of free wi-fi, the hotel here had free wi-fi, and the Raytheon terminal here at the port has computers for use as well (which is where I am now). And just about every single little shop and store and wherever has free wi-fi, just wandering down the street, my ipod is constantly chirping with new networks found. In some ways, it shows just how relatively un-wired the USA actually is, for all of our first-world status.

But in a way I'm almost a little disappointed. Staying connected to my tubes makes this whole thing feel like a bit less of an . . . I dunno. Less remote and less strange. It stays as my connection to reality. And in all actuality, I was sort of looking forward to being cut off.

The ship will have no internet, that's for sure. I'm going aboard in about ten minutes or so, for a tour and safety thing and whatever. I know we leave tomorrow morning, but I'm not sure what goes on until then.

Sorry about the spamming of posts in the last couple days, but I keep thinking I'm finally out of contact, and then discovering "Oh, wait, no, I've got a signal here"

So this might be my last post for a week, but probably not. No more pics yet, as my camera is in my luggage. I really should have brought a point and shoot.

2008-04-25T22:36:00.001-07:00

Alright, so I'm sitting here at my hotel in Punta Aranus (PA) now. I've spent the last day and a half or more sitting around airports and it airplanes and on buses and shuttles, and it's amazing how tired that makes you. So I'm keeping this short, maybe I'll flesh out the events more later.

The flight from Santiago to PA was beautiful, absolutely amazing views. Chile is a very, very bumpy place. And of course, there I was twisting around like a pretzel in the economy cabin trying to wrestle around my camera and swap lenses and not lose anything. I think I did get some good pictures, but I don't have the time or energy to go through them right now, I'll sort through them and post the good ones when I can.

I'm in this hotel for the night, then tomorrow at 10am we're issued our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear. Then we board the ship (the Gould) at 2pm, have the safety briefing and orientation, then spend the night on the ship, and sail the next morning, hopefully getting to Palmer by the 1st or 2nd. PA is a funny little place, it saw it's heyday as a port town, a stop for most all shipping lines, but fell apart when the Panama Canal opened and ships no longer needed to go around the tip of South America. It's on it's way back, mostly as a tourist stop and for a lot of ecological and marine research and baseing, but there's still some remnants around of what it once was.

Anyway, just a couple pictures that I've snapped while on my way down, click them for descriptions:

Santiago

2008-04-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm delayed a bit in Santiago, but I'm not sure sure for how long. I guess there was an airline screwup and a couple of guys reservations didn't get booked for the flight down to PA. I think they're going to put us on a later flight, but no word on how much later. Weirdly, there seem to be a ton of free hotspots at the airport here. I'm typing this all on my iPod, given that these are open, unsecured networks, and who knows who's out there sniffing packets and trying to do drive-by installs.

The nine-hour flight down from Dallas was bumpy, but pretty sweet. I had three seats to myself, and a power outlet under my seat. Spent most of the flight watching Dr Who.

No idea how long I'll be here. We're all sitting in the Raytheon guys office, can't really go a anywhere as we're waiting on word from the airlines or something. I'll try to update when I can.

Only now is the strangeness of this whole trip rreally starting to sink in.

And now the real journy starts?

2008-04-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I'm sitting here at the RPSC (Raytheon Polar Services Corp) headquarters waiting for the shuttle to take me to the airport to being my trek down to Palmer.

The last couple days have been the usual sort of corporate stuff that you go through getting hired at any company, nothing bad, most people seem pretty good.

They did go over, in detail, about what sort of things are and aren't allowed on the internet connection down there. It is technically a US Government connection, and they're pretty bandwith-limited (although I haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone on exactly what the connection is like), so they have a whole list of specifically banned apps.

At the top of the list is:

-Skype or any other VoIP services
-Any P2P services, they mentioned KaZaa and Morpheous by name, but basically anything on that gnutella network, and probably bit torrent as well
-Online and network gaming, so absolutely no TF2 :(
-No streaming video (Specifically, no Youtube, or watching any streaming TV shows, even legally, off broadcaster's sites)

iTunes and other legal services they did say are okay, but they also stressed that due to how limited the bandwith is, they ask people to limit their DLing to off-peak hours and not do massive bulk downloads at once.

So given that I won't be able to download TV shows the usual way, anything new that I want to see will either need to be DLed by someone here, and mailed down once a month on some DVDs, or bought on iTunes. So I think I'll be asking for iTunes giftcards and things (electronic ones) if anyone wants to show how much they miss me by heaping monetary gifts my way.

As for if you want to mail stuff to me, I STILL haven't gotten a straight answer on exactly what the mailing address there is for larger packages. But I think flat mail and very small packages can go through the RPSC headquarters here in Denver.

Again, this is FLAT MAIL AND VERY SMALL PACKAGES ONLY! Basically, letters or padded envelopes of 2lbs or less. I THINK that very small boxes might be okay as well, as long as they're small enough that, say, you could fit them into a pocket or small purse.

Anyway, send to:
Brendan Pope
Palmer Station
C/o Raytheon Polar Services
7400 South Tucson Way
Centennial, CO
80112-3938

The mail is flown down to PA at the southern tip of Chile, and then goes to the station on the monthly supply vessel. So we only get mail once a month down there. The resupply ship leaves from Chile at the end of every month, and they say that to get your mail on that ship, you should mail the package at least two weeks in advance of the sailing. And even then, mail is pretty flaky and can be unreliable. So don't send anything time critical, and ABSOLUTELY no foods and stuff.

Anyway, I'm probably going to be out of touch for about a week, maybe a bit more. I've got a day of traveling to get me to PA, where I MIGHT have internet. But after that it's 4-10 days on the USS Gould to get down to the station, depending on weather and sea ice conditions (the Gould is an icebreaker, but breaking through sea ice is very slow). And even then, it'll probably be a couple days on station going through orientation and training before I can actually get online.

So, you may not hear from me for a bit, but I'll post and update when I can.

Here I go!

2008-04-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

So, this morning (technically yesterday), my dad and Bri dropped me off at O'Hare for my flight out to Denver. So far, this whole thing doesn't quite feel out of the ordinary yet. It's only a couple months ago that I was living my dull little life, answering the phone and helping people with their computers, but now here I am, on my way to the ice. It still seems a bit distant.

The traveling was okay. I mean, it's traveling. The usual mess of annoying people and cramped seats and waiting around and various mess-ups.

Tomorrow, the 23rd, I've got a bunch of stuff to do at the Polar Services headquarters, including the long and absurdly boring psych eval. On the upside, the hotel that they're putting me up at has free wi-fi, and doesn't seem to have blocked the ports for BitTorrent, so I've got another 36 hours or so of downloading that I can do, should at least allow me to finish up Dr Who and Torchwood episodes.

Anyway, here's a lame little arms-length shot of me at DIA waiting for the shuttle.

Travel timeline

2008-04-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so just FYI, here's what the travel week will look like for me:

-10:45am Tuesday, April 22nd - Fly out of O'Hare

-Get into Denver, CO, and get picked up at the airport and go to the Raytheon Polar Services Corporation (RPSC) headquarters, where they'll set me up with travel funds and things. Free hotel for the night

-April 23rd - Spend the day filling out paperwork and going through various corperate initiation in Denver, including the mandatory Psychiatric Evaluation to make sure I'm not going to go all Jack-Nicholsen-in-The-Shineing on people

-April 24th - Fly out of Denver at 3:45pm. Get into Dallas at 6:20pm for a three-hour stopover, and fly out of Dallas at 9:30pm for an over-night flight to Santiago

-April 25th - Get into Santiago, Chile, at 8am. A Raytheon guy meets me there and walks me through Customs, then I get on a 10am flight for Punta Arenas, getting in at 2:15pm. Again, greeted by a Raytheon person, who takes me to the docks where I meet people, and we all go out for dinner.

-April 26th - Spend the day in Punta Arenas, getting all my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear issued to me. Spend the night on the USS Gould, the icebreaker that takes me down.

-April 27th - Ship departs at 8am, and then it'll be four days on a flat-bottomed ship through some of the roughest seas in the world. I should get into Palmer Station by the 1st or 2nd of May, but probably won't have time to actually get on these tubes until after I've been there a couple days and gotten situated.

FAQ

2008-03-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

So, a lot of people have been asking me a lot of questions about my upcoming move to Antarctica, and in general it's a lot of the same questions. So I figure I'll throw up a FAQ here to get most of them out of the way so I can stop having the same convo.

Wait, what's going on?

It's called a quarter-life crisis. Instead of buying an expensive sports car, like you do in your mid-life crisis, I simply quit my job, sold off almost all my possessions, and moved to Antarctica.

Why do you want to go to Antarctica!?

If you really need to ask that question, you're not going to understand the answer.

When and where exactly are you going?

I'll be putting up a detailed itinerary in a couple days, but the short version is that I fly out on or around April 24th (At least, that's when they say they start paying me). I will be in Palmer Station until September (roughly), and then transfer to either McMurdo or South Pole station from September through Feb/March of 2009.

What are you going to be doing down there?

At Palmer, my official title is "Carpenter's Assistant". Which basically means "guy who does the lousy jobs no one else wants to do". It's sort of like being a General Assistant, only with a few more specific skills and a little better pay. Work is 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. Expected work week is 54 hours, more at Palmer because there's so few people.

After my stint at Palmer, I'm looking at some IT/Computer jobs at McMurdo and Pole, that will pay much better.

The pay must be really awesome!

Not even close! You don't go to the antarctic for the pay, it's pretty poor. Maybe 1/2 to 2/3 what you could make stateside. The upside is that all the housing and food is provided free, so as long as you don't have financial commitments back in the states, you can't really spend any money. You come back and almost all your earnings are sitting in your bank. As long as you don't have a family, or mortgage or something, you can actually make a pretty good life working six months on/six months off.

Who are you working for/How can I get a job there?

I'm employed by Raytheon, they're a defense contractor and pretty much the epitome of the military-industrial complex. The provide all the support services for the three US bases in the Antarctic region. Getting hired is much easier if you have some sort of technical/trade skills, or a background in mechanics or construction of some sort. There are unskilled labor jobs aplenty for those who have no particular skills that are useful down there. Most common first-time jobs are DA (Dining facility Assistant, washes dishes and mops up), GA (General Assistant. Shovels snow, does grunt work), and Janitor.

To apply, you can give their slightly convoluted web-hiring system a shot at http://rpsc.raytheon.com/ , but the best bet is going to their annual Polar Services job fair, which is held once a year in Denver, CO. This year, it was on Friday, March 28th, from 10am to 6pm at their headquarters in Denver. The real trick is to be ready to take whatever work they have openings for, and be ready to work some really lousy jobs for a while.

Do you have internet down there?

Yes, Palmer Station has a dedicated T1 line for 20 people, so the internet is quite reliable there. McMurdo has I think one T1 for the whole 1100+ base, so while you can get online year-round there, it's not as speedy. South Pole has internet for 12 hours a day, due to satellite coverage, and bandwidth is limited.

Aren't you worried about Polar Bears/Will you see any Polar Bears/blah blah Polar Bears blah?

Polar Bears live in the Arctic, at the North Pole and surrounding area, not in Antarctica. Probably why there are no penguins up there.

Take lots of pictures!!!

I'm spending over $3,000 on camera equipment, including a 70-200mm f2.8 IS "L"-series lens, with a 2x teleconverter. My total kit will be my 30D, a 17-85 IS USM lens, the 70-200 L lens, the 50mm f1.8 "Plastic Fantastic", as well as a storm hood, tripod, and other assorted gear. I think I'll also get a cheap point-and-shoot that can take short little movies and casual pics. So, don't worry. There will be pictures aplenty.

Is there booze there?

Oooooooh yeah. There is a lot of drinking that goes on down there, from what I've read. I guess it's needed to deal with the harshness of the job and climate. The little company store sells shampoo and booze, and the booze is cheap. Like $5 for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Will you see penguins?

Probably, although given that I'll be there in the winter, not that much. Palmer is where it is because it's in the middle of the breeding grounds/feeding areas for a LOT of marine wildlife, so it's a hotbed of marine biology research. Lots of different types of penguins, seals, sea lions, whales, etc. And it's near where two major ocean currents come together, so it's a hotbed of undersea life, huge variety of underwater plants and animals.

That's it for this edition of Tsaven's Big Antarctic Experience. As people keep asking more questions, I'll post new answers as time goes on.

Antarctica. Srsly.

Figured I should post this

Ice/Land/Waterscapes

Ha, betcha thought I'd vanished, huh?

And yet again, penguins!

Why I quit the world

Polar Plunge

Oh, so THAT'S how it's done

Update

Penguins, again.

Prints for sale!

WTF Moments

I can't be toast yet! I've still got four months to go!

Toast

More penguin videos!

So, what exactly am I doing down here, anyway?

Even more penguins

It's a harsh continent

And we get a whole new type of penguin!

Final cut-off date approching

Blah Blah Blah

Wreck of the Bahia Paraiso

More photospamming

How to make a Legolas costume out of nothing in two days

The ship arrives, to be greated by . . . Legolas?!

And again . . . PENGUINS!

They're baaaack!

Cut-off date approching for packages

We are really, really spoiled

Hooray for electricity!

While were at it, does anything else feel like breaking?

Last week sucked

How you make carpenters happy

SNAFU! Part Duex

SNAFU!

Employment

Again . . .

Hiking

Pal-Mart

Dates

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW YEAH!!!!!!

But I don't want to go back . . .

Sunset, again

Pardon the flare

Birds and stuff

OHMIGAWD THERE'S ANOTHER X-FILES MOVIE

A real "Carp Helper" task

Thinking about going to India when I'm done on the ice for this year

Epic win, or massive fail?

The weather

The stuff that nighmares are made of

Who we are

Slang

You got:: A chunk of ice!

Rec boating

The FEMC crew

This is one strange place . . .

Dive tending

Sky

Very, very happy penguin

Housemouse, again!

So, what did you do on YOUR weekend?

John Lawrence Brendan Pope, February 16, 1918 - May 7, 2008

Food-related entry

Leopard seal attack

Why we're here

IMG_2883 (Large)

Seals, seals, and more seals!

Elephant Seal

Uh, what?

I has sleepy

Moon over Mountians

The glamorous Antartctic life

Sunrise, Sunset

Antarctica. Srsly.

Mailing addresses.

Nice day here

Gone Fishin'!

Well, here I am. This is Antarctica.

Huh, weird. Still have tubes.