James Brown Bingo and more

Last night was the first James Brown Bingo night of the season. It was a nice change from the usual Saturday night parties in summer camp. James Brown is one of the chefs here, and while he's no King of Funk (picture a short, buzzcut, tightly wound white man in chef's clogs- he kind of reminds me of the crazy Vietnam-vet chef from Wet Hot American Summer), he makes a great bingo caller. I've never played bingo before, but I had the impression it was the domain of grandparents gambling away their social security checks. Not at the South Pole. For only $1 per card you can buy into a fiercely competitive game with great prizes like cash, gift certificates to bars in Christchurch, and outdoor gear. Since it was Saturday night, the crowd worked their way into inebriation and got progressively more crude and more loud. I didn't win any prizes, but I'll definitely play again.
Today I am playing the first round of a Scrabble tournament. The only people who signed up for this tournament are the serious Scrabble players, so it should be very competitive. My opponent, Laura, is good. But if I lose the first round, there's a chump bracket too. After our game, I'm hoping to write some postcards, perhaps go skiing, and generally relax.
It's been a good work week- I am feeling a lot healthier. We have worked a lot for the Ice Cube project, laying the cable that connects their underground sensors with their lab and computers. This involves pulling the cable off of a gigantic spool and dropping it into a 8" wide and 4' deep trench, and then shoveling snow back into the trench to cover it up. It's always cold over at Ice Cube, since they are more exposed to the wind, but I really like getting to see how they set up their system. Their research is studying a subatomic particle called the Neutrino, by burying photosensitive sensors in an array under the ice.
In other exciting work news, yesterday all the GAs got trained to drive the shuttle van, which I will be doing once a week for the rest of the season. I also learned how to drive a snowmobile, which turns out to be entirely idiot-proof. Not surprising, when you consider the population of drunken rednecks who enjoy snowmobiling (that comment is for you, Uncle Paul).
One of the most exciting moments of the week is when the mail arrives. It usually comes once a week, and everyone envies the people who receive mail regularly. So, if you are inspired, I would love to receive mail of any sort, and will definitely send back a postcard with a penguin stamp. The address here is:
Molly Anderson, RPSC
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400
APO AP 96598

Happy Thanksgiving!

At the South Pole, we celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday instead of Thursday. It's one more way for Raytheon and the NSF to squeeze more work out of us, but everyone is pleased because it means we get a 2-day weekend instead of the usual 1-day weekend. The kitchen staff and a group of volunteers did a great job making a special occasion out of the day. They decorated the galley with Christmas lights, real linens, and candles, and make a fantastic meal. We started with appetizers and wine and live music in the hallway at 3:30, and then ate a great Thanksgiving dinner in the galley. A number of people volunteered as wine stewards and came around to each table refilling wineglasses as soon as they got low, and bringing slices of pie and whipped cream towards the end of the meal. Dinner was served in three sittings to accommodate all the shifts. After dinner, some friends and I took a break to digest while watching Elf and drinking the complimentary sangria, after which we played pool, went sledding on the "hill" made out of snow that the heavy machinery operators have piled up, and hit both of the dance parties. It was a great night- not your usual celebration with family, but a lot of fun.
Today (Sunday) we have scheduled a photo shoot out by the pole marker for the NH contingent (there are somewhere between 15 and 20 of us here). I met a guy who went to ConVal last night at dinner! He lives in Peterborough, although I had never met him before. After the photo shoot, I'm hoping that I will have the energy to go out skiing- although it's much more likely that I will fall into my Sunday habit of watching movies, reading, and spending all day sitting around talking.
The Internet has been very slow lately, and my laptop is having problems, so I apologize for not doing the best job of posting pictures. I will get some up soon.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!

South Pole, Week One

So much has happened since arriving at the South Pole almost a week ago. It feels kind of like college, living in close quarters with a lot of other people, seeing friends at every meal, catching new gossip every day- but instead of going to class and studying, I spend nine hours every day working, and try to move as little as possible in the evenings. There are quite a few things I could write about, but since it takes up most of my time and I’ve gotten so many questions, I’ll start out with what I do at work.
Every morning, the six general assistants meet with our supervisor to get our assignment, which can be pretty much anything. Most days, it involves shoveling. We work for the FEMC (Facilities, Engineering, Materials and Construction) department, and each day we might be working on a different aspect of that.
My first day (Tuesday), I shoveled for Ice Cube on the berms, but we only worked probably four hours. Ice Cube is one of the research projects here. I’m a little unclear on what exactly they are doing, but I know it involves drilling deeps wells into the ice and studying the samples they pull up. Most of the Ice Cube staff just arrived this week, so they are just getting started for the season. Shoveling on Tuesday was exhausting, mostly because I was having a really hard time breathing. The station here is at over 10,000 feet of elevation, so the first few days everyone is very out of breath. The first hour of shoveling, I remember struggling to pace myself by inhale:scoop, exhale;toss, pause, repeat. I’ve already gotten much better at figuring out the most efficient way to shovel (mostly by kneeling down, so that I am working at my waist level or above) and figuring out what shoveling does and doesn’t need to be done.
The next day (Wednesday), four of us GAs got farmed out to the electricians. We spent all morning over at Ice Cube helping them to wire three different generators, in three different buildings, by unspooling and stretching out giant cables for them to connect. These cables are probably 4" in diameter, and weigh about 8 pounds per foot (the 150 foot spools weigh over 1000 pounds). When you cut a cross section of them (which we did later in the day) there are four separate thick bundles of copper cable. Anyway, it is incredibly strenuous to drag these cables around, and it was –70 with the windchill. The fun part was seeing how the different buildings linked up, and how logical it was. The not-fun part was being cold, not knowing what to do, and the fact that the electricians apparently don’t take a morning break! After lunch we went back to the electrical shop and found out that our assignment for the afternoon was to cut up the old cables that we had removed into 3’ lengths so they could go on a pallet for recycling. It was just the four of us GAs in the shop and we had a great time playing music, using the portable bandsaw, and appreciating how much easier it is to work in a heated shop.
The following day (Thursday) all of the GAs were assigned first thing in the morning to shovel out all the outdoor fire exit stairwells for the main station (there are 5). It was really fun, because the snow was so light- we joked that a broom would have been more appropriate than a shovel. After we finished that, we shoveled down below the elevated station. The heavy machinery crews were working on grooming the snow that had drifted between the columns over the winter into a smooth, tightly packed surface. They had us shovel out right around the columns, where they can’t drive the machines. That was pretty satisfying, since we could see results right away. After lunch, we went out to the berms and shoveled, uncovering the loads and loads of construction-related crap that it appears Raytheon has been storing for decades. After about an hour of that, Joe came over and asked me and Lauren to come help one of the electricians. She was un-wiring and scrapping all the pieces of a modular shed that I guess had previously been some kind of electrical transfer point- there was a transformer, a couple circuit breakers, a lot of the same cable from yesterday, and some other mysterious-to-me stuff inside. Lauren and I went to work with the bandsaw, the saws-all, and a couple screwdrivers taking things apart and cutting them down to scrappable size. After stripping all the copper parts out of the transformer, I got to put it back together (well, screw the sides and top back on), which was fun. I learned the names and uses of a bunch of new tools. Cara, the electrician we were helping, was really patient and great at explaining both the big picture of what we needed to do and the details. We were also out of the wind, right behind the science carp shop, which was nice because we got to chat a bit with the carpenters (who, incidentally, are almost all from NH).
On Friday, when we shoveled, shoveled, shoveled all day long.
On Saturday, I shoveled for a couple hours in the morning, spent an hour in the FEMC office cataloging a bunch of drills that were recalled by the manufacturer and need to be shipped back to the US, and then spent the afternoon in meetings and on a tour of the station with our supervisor. He took us down into the ice tunnels underneath the station, where it is always –65. We also got to see the power plant, the fuel tanks (if I remember right, they have storage space for 450,000 gallons of fuel, and they use jet fuel instead of diesel for pretty much everything because it has a lower freeze point), and some of the construction projects.
Last night was the first Saturday night of the summer season. Yesterday we all sat through a few lectures yesterday about making sure that nobody got themselves in trouble by drinking too much while our bodies are still adjusting to the altitude and climate. I took it easy, watched a few episodes of Arrested Development in the station, hung out with Lauren, and briefly stopped in at the party in the summer camp lounge, where it appeared that most people had not heeded the advice about overconsumption of alcohol. Today (Sunday), I’m planning to get this blog post up (the internet is only available from 5am until 2 pm every day), watch some more AD, do yoga, and generally relax and enjoy not having to work.
The pictures below are from the flight in to the pole. I haven't had time or energy to take pictures here yet, but I will.

McMurdo

Most travelers to the South Pole stop at McMurdo station on the way. It's the largest US base in Antarctica, with somewhere between 1000 and 1200 residents for the austral summer. I spent two days in McMurdo on my way to the pole. We flew there from Christchurch on a giant military jet. Everyone is required to bundle up in their cold weather gear, in case of an emergency landing, but the plane was actually quite warm. It's very different from a commercial flight - they outfitted the plane with passenger seats (and a lot of legroom!), but we were in the same compartment as all the cargo, and even with earplugs in it was pretty loud. I slept most of the way, but woke up to go up above to where the pilots were to look at the ice (see pictures).
My time in McMurdo was kind of a whirlwind of getting adjusted, meeting a lot of new people, worrying a little about the trip to pole, and trying to get out and see as much of the area as I could. I took the walking tour of town, visited the coffeehouse and greenhouse, and went hiking and skiing. There are well-maintained trails to several points near town. My new friend Lauren and I hiked Observation Hill, and went for a short ski on the trail to Castle rock.
I also attended the Sunday night science lecture, which is a weekly event. This one was on the Weddell seal population in McMurdo Sound, and featured many cute pictures of seal pups. The science talks at pole will all be about astronomy, ice, seismology, and other branches of science that don't involve cute animals.

Christchurch

Hello beloved readers,
I will be spending the next three months or so at Amundson-Scott research station, at the South Pole. I am working for Raytheon Polar Services, a contractor which provides the logistical support (construction, maintenance, food service, etc) to the scientific community in Antarctica. I'm starting this blog to keep friends and family updated on what I'm doing. My job title is General Assistant (GA), which means that I have a kind of entry-level position doing whatever needs to be done. There are 10 GAs going to the pole for this season, the austral summer. Rumor has it that we will be spending a lot of time the first month or so shoveling snow to clear out equipment that got covered by snowdrifts over the winter. Beyond shoveling, we should get to help out with a variety of projects around the station. I'm excited to pick up some new skills. The other GAs are all youngish folks from the US with a variety of backgrounds- recent college grads, professional travelers, and seasonal workers. I've spent the past few days attending an orientation in Denver with them, and so far have really enjoyed getting to know everybody.
Our training in Denver was two days of learning about Raytheon's role in the Antarctic. It was a bit corporate, as you might expect, but also kind of interesting. I did have time one night to take the light rail into downtown Denver and walk around, which was nice. Also, Raytheon put us all up in a decent hotel out in the suburbs, and I realized how fun it is to have a hotel room all to yourself! I think the only time I have ever had a room to myself before was in Mexico, and it was certainly not so clean or spacious.
After Denver, we all flew to New Zealand (via LAX), the next stop on our voyage southward. It took about 16 hours of travelling to get here, but I managed to sleep through most of my overnight flight. The planes that Qantas airlines uses for that flight are enormous, with a second story of first-class seats upstairs (I didn't get to see those). They do have a little extra leg room in economy, which I appreciated. Qantas earned my undying love by serving crispy fresh New Zealand apples and grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches for a mid-morning snack on my last flight. As I was savoring the last bites of my sandwich (it was on fancy whole wheat bread, with warm and gooey cheese), the flight attendant came back around with another tray of seconds. I have certainly never gotten seconds on food on a plane at home.
We crossed the international date line at some point, so we left the US on Monday, November 3rd in the evening and arrived in New Zealand in the morning on Wednesday, November 5th. So we completely missed election day! I did catch the results on TV in a bar later that day.
Christchurch, New Zealand is the launching point for the US Antarctic Program. It's a small city along the coast on the South Island of New Zealand. I'm staying t the YMCA, which is right across the street from the Botanic Gardens. This morning I woke up at 5, thanks to the time difference, and went for a nice run through the gardens along the Avon river. It reminded me of the Smith campus, being underneath these enormous trees on wide open green spaces. It's spring here, so the trees have new leaves and the rhododendrons and roses are blooming.
This morning we went to the clothing distribution center to receive all of our extreme cold weather gear. I now have two big orange duffel bags full of layers of fleece, long underwear, hats, thick socks, and so forth. The outside layer is a gigantic red down parka that must weight five pounds. Underneath that, I will wear insulated Carhartt bibs, and under that I can wear up to three layers of fleece and long underwear. I also received ski goggles (the sun is up 24 hours a day, and the reflection off the snow is very bright), thick rubber bunny boots to keep my feet warm, and several pairs of gloves. We all tried on all of these assorted items, which took a couple hours this morning. Luckily, they keep the clothing distribution center pretty cold, so it felt good to put on warm layers.
After I was done with the clothing distribution, I decided to rent a bicycle and go for a ride, since I figured there won't be any opportunities for biking at the South Pole. I found a nice friendly bike rental shop and got outfitted with a nice hybrid for a reasonable sum, and cruised out to the coast in New Brighton, riding along a bike path that goes along the river Avon. It was a lovely ride through Christchurch's suburbs, and I saw a wide variety of unknown birds. At the beach I ran into two guys who are also going to the ice, and we wandered around the little town and hit up a secondhand store for costume clothes- I hear that costume parties are big at the pole. We all rode back into town together and then I wandered around for a bit, breathing in as much as I could of the sweet, humid, warm New Zealand air and soaking in the city feel that I won't be around for a while. I'm so excited for the flight tomorrow, and finally arriving after months of waiting and wondering about this trip.