Kiwi Land

After leaving the South Pole, I spent almost two months in New Zealand. It is an amazing country, with so much to do and see- incredible hiking, kayaking, wacky wild plants and animals, and 4 million sheep on the south island alone! I spent the first week driving around the coast of the south island with my friends Grace, Trudy, Chad and Jeremy. We rented a camper van and had a great time camping in quiet spots all over. After that, I spent a few days in Christchurch, just relaxing and greeting more friends who had just returned from the Ice. I stayed in a hotel that had pretty nice kitchens for the guests, so we went to the farmers market and bought all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables (which we had desperately missed while in Antarctica) and did a lot of cooking.
My favorite part of NZ was the backpacking- I did three trips, and each one was fantastic. I started out with the Queen Charlotte Track, which follows along the coastline of the Marlborough Sounds. The trail climbs up and down a ridgeline that often has water on both sides and great views. After that hike, I took the bus over to Nelson and met up with Travis, Trudy and Storm for a week of sea kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park. The paddling turned out to be pretty easy, so we had lots of time to explore, watch the seals, and lounge on the beach in the sunshine. After kayaking, we decided to go down to Hokitika on the West Coast to the annual Wild Foods festival. I also hiked to the Welcome Flat Hut, home of a delightful hot spring with mountains all around, and then the week after that I hiked the Travers-Sabine circuit in Nelson Lakes. The Travers-Sabine is an 80km loop that goes up and over two gorgeous passes. I enjoyed the perfect weather and was just awed by the scenery, and how few people were out there!
In between the hiking and paddling there was a lot of reading, sitting around with good friends, and general relaxation. We all felt that we deserved it after working so much.

As you've likely figured out, keeping a blog updated is not one of my strengths. There are many excuses for why I haven't put anything on here in four months- sporadic and slow internet access, too much traveling, and laziness come to mind. But since I've been getting emails asking if I'm still in Antarctica (I'm not), I thought this might clear things up for some folks.
I left the ice on February 9th, bound for New Zealand. The last month of my time there was quite busy as we rushed to finish our work before the season ended. Looking back on that time, I don't remember a whole lot clearly other than being exhausted by the end of each week.
The crew I worked with spent most of the season building a new Cargo facility. This building, commonly known as the LO, will be home to supplies like food, building materials, new pillows, and all sorts of other things that are currently just stored outside. The LO and its two storage decks are all underneath a gigantic steel archway/tunnel that keeps the snow off. Ideally, once the LO is in use it will save a lot of work every year for the GAs, who won't have to spend all their time shoveling the berms every single year.

I mostly worked on the back deck, which is an enormous expanse. To build the deck, we started out by pouring water into plywood forms to make ice platforms. Back in the USA, a project like this would probably stand on a concrete foundation, but here ice serves the same purpose - providing a level, stable base that won't sink into the snow over time. Or so we hope. On top of each ice platform (we made 21 for the back deck, each around 3' by 19') we brought in a steel footer, and then connected each of those with a grade beam (a long steel girder, bolted to the footer below). On top of the grade beams, we put down a network of steel deck modules. The deck modules were one of the many frustrations with the project. The plans we had indicated that the footers and grade beams each had predrilled holes that should line up with each other so they could be bolted together easily, but in fact the holes were all about 4" off from where they needed to be. So a couple guys on the crew spent a lot of time with the acetylene torch cutting hundreds more holes. Once the deck modules were in place, we had to drill around 50 holes into each one so that we could screw the plywood decking on top. The plywood decking, which was 2" thick, needed to be screwed on from underneath so that there wouldn't be holes in the surface. In order to do that, several of us spent the last couple weeks crawling around on the snow in the dark underneath the deck and lying on our backs to hold the drill up over our heads. Those were some long days.

We would have had the project completely done by early February, but the South Pole with her tempestuous ways thwarted us. As we were moving the plywood decking around with the forklift, we discovered that we were 6 sheets short. This isn't any ordinary plywood, but 2" thick sheets milled to be 6' by 21 1/2" - not exactly a size you can just pick up at Home Depot. Besides, the nearest Home Depot is thousands of miles away. We did an exhaustive search of the storage berms, looking for the missing wood, but it couldn't be found. It might be buried under the snow somewhere, it might still be at McMurdo...nobody knows. But the deck won't be done until some more wood shows up, so we weren't quite able to finish it during our season.

Around mid-January, the daily dinnertime conversations around the stations switch from their usual topics (work, gossip) to the important question of "What are you doing in New Zealand?" For most Polies, spending a month or several in New Zealand with airfare home prepaid is one of the biggest perks of the job.

Happy New Year from the South Pole!

New Year's Eve seems to be the biggest holiday of the season here. Everyone has been living hard for the past two weeks, with three big parties packed into two work weeks, and TWO days off instead of one each week. In true Antarctic style, each one involved beer, dancing, and unexpected outdoor sports.
The first party of the holiday season was the FEMC barbecue, two weeks ago Saturday. FEMC stands for Facilities, Engineering, Maintenance and Construction and is one of the biggest departments here, and the one I work for. The party was hosted by the science carpentry shop, which is in one of the Jamesway tents. The carpenters carefully locked up all the sharp and dangerous tools, spread out a tablecloth with a fine spread of munchies, and invited all 50-100 people who work for FEMC.

Right outside the party was a large-ish pile of snow that the heavy equipment operators stacked up as they were removing snow from nearby buildings. As the evening progressed, quite a few partygoers dragged sleds amd even a sofa up the hill, only to tumble back down. I took a few runs, since you're never too old for sledding.

In the pictures above, you can see some sledding action, and one of New Hampshire's Finest South Pole Science Carps, the esteemed Chris Rice, parading through with some bloodied steak, fresh off the grill.

Four short days after that night, we celebrated Christmas Eve. My shift took Wednesday and Thursday off, and ate our fine Christmas dinner on Wednesday. The galley served beef wellington and lobster tails, and like Thanksgiving it was a fancier event that everyone dressed up for and enjoyed.

For New Year's, the gym here was transformed into a stage and dance floor and decorated. Several bands played a variety of music, including bluegrass and some danceable favorites from the 70s and 80s, and a good number of people got creative with their costumes. I had a great night mingling on the dance floor and getting to see some good friends on the day shift, who I no longer work with.

I hope that everyone enjoyed the start of 2009 as much as I did.

I have some great pictures of all these events, but the computers are acting up. Stay tuned for visual aids another night!