Memorandum, Lunch

Food
-Vegetable couscous (with green beans, tomato, black olive, zucchini, mushroom, leek, and carrot) (?)
-Fried white fish filet with tartar sauce
-Potato chips, one small plate
-Special K cereal
-Bosc pear

Beverage
-Water + Orange Juice + Cranberry Juice

It's all going to the same place anyway.

MCM
USAP
28 Dec 07

When All is Said and Done

Problem One
Boxes piled in Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) blocking lower-level thoroughfare.

Solution
Move boxes to storage shed.

Problem Two
Boxes, tools, and equipment secreted behind water basin in Water Plant (WP) contravene WP storage regulations.

Solution
Move boxes, tools, and equipment to newly freed WWTP thoroughfare.

I am part of the solution.

Come 3:30pm, attended a computer training class on the old DOS based CTS (Cargo Tracking System) and learned how to learn what is in transit to McMurdo.

Today followed standard protocol. But yesterday?

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to participate in what the Raytheon Corporate Overlord terms a 'boondoggle.' I was given the opportunity to attend a Sea Ice Training class, though I had no reason to be there. Unless I am the last living soul on McMurdo, I won't be on sea ice. I nonetheless got to spend the day on McMurdo Sound, past Castle Rock near a place called Hutts Point.

It started in a Haggland—two snowcats coupled together, the front one towing the rear. Seven of us, including the guide, drove out of town to Scott Base. At Scott Base we primed snowmobiles, loaded them up, filled them with gas, then drove off with a strong wind at our tail, thick fog and snow. We came in view of Hutts Point within ten minutes. Over the sea ice were Turtle Island, Big and Little Razorback, a few other rocks breaking through the ice. Most impressive was the Erebus Glacier Tongue. Off of the volcano flows a glacier, and where this glacier protrudes from land into the water it is called a tongue, rising perhaps fifty to a hundred feet above the surface, cragged, broken, blue and white, sheer and dangerous-looking walls. We dismounted the snowmobiles alongside the tongue and walked to a melt pool where three seal pups played in the water. The mother lay to the side. Every now and then she raised her flipper. The pups exhaled loudly through their noses. The storm persisted with strong winds and the far side of McMurdo Sound, the continent proper, showed rocky ten miles distant.

We drove off again, looking for a pathway to Turtle Island to hike up top. So late in the season, the pressure ridges were no longer passable. Melt pools and widening cracks blocked access. We stood among perhaps seventy seals. And then Keith, a cook in the kitchen, spotted a penguin far off beyond all the seals. He was hardly visible through the blowing snow. He squawked over and over, eying us, then he waddled our direction. He jumped and paddled on his belly. He swam across a rift in the ice. He climbed up on our side and continued waddling. It was an Emperor Penguin, and he came within about forty feet, stood there curious, squawking still and looking over the group. We spent a long time watching him watch us. When we finally walked off, he followed, and then when he was tired of following us he stopped and watched us get set on the snowmobiles; he turned ninety degrees and wandered off alone past seals toward water. He was turning about in small circles when we moved off.

We drove in train toward land, returning to McMurdo Station. I was a passenger with the guide, sitting on the back of the bench seat. We came across a depression in the sea ice that marked the edge of a perennial and infamous crack. The guide stopped the train of snowmobiles and walked ahead twenty feet until his foot punched through the snow. He jumped back and his windpants glistened. He waved us in, pointed to the crack: open water about two feet down. We were going to test the sea ice for safe crossing. This involves drilling and measuring. If the ice is thicker than 75 centimeters, then light vehicle traffic is safe. If it is not thicker than 75cm, then the section of thin ice must not be wider than one-third the vehicle track length. Snowmobiles are six feet long, so two feet is the maximum allowed width of thin ice patches. We took measurements. Our guide handed me a shovel and asked I shovel a trough ahead of the drilling team, save time. As I walked out my foot also punched a hole in the snow and I rolled forward onto sea ice, my windpants glistening, my heart loud and fast. The guide looked up and walked over. “I often start with step seven and forget one through six,” he said. That took care of that.

We found a navigable route, touched back on land and hauled back to camp, refueled the snowmobiles, reloaded the Haggland, returned to McMurdo. It seems to me that yesterday validated the eight weeks I'm contracted down here—whatever comes next, that's okay.

It is snowing now, and it is 11pm in the cafeteria, and I can't find it in myself to resist a bowl of Special K cereal. Bon appetit.

And miles to go before I sleep

I learned today from a carpenter that one of the field camps is taking core samples of the earth to study magnetic residue from millions of years ago. From what he's heard, there is fairly sturdy theory that the magnetic poles switch places every so often, north switches to south, and south to north. It begins with infinitesimal changes, millimeters, centimeters. Like the sliding of a fulcrum, the change comes faster. At a certain point, then, the switch comes like a tablecloth pulled out, a moment of rapid disturbance (on a geological scale). And during that disturbance all sorts of changes occur in the atmosphere. This may be one explanation for mass extinction.

I hiked to Castle Rock this afternoon with a British fellow, Simon. It is a nice loop with views across the sound to open sea and north to Mt. Erebus. The caldera was smoking today, and the sky deep blue, so the smoke drifted up then angled south in the wind. The space between my hat and my sunglasses got sunburned. We snacked at the base of the rock on bagels and fruit, all in all a hike of about four hours, and afterward I napped until the Christmas Eve dinner at seven. A few townfolk dressed in suits, the tables were draped in white, people opened wine bottles and Christmas tunes were played through the cafeteria's sound system.

A few days ago my first storm hit—a light snow and strong winds—hung about town for 30 hours then limped off, weakened, over open water. Storms tend to arrive from the south. There is a notch between two icebound islands in the distance where you can spot incoming storms. They roll through the gap, packed closely on both sides by banks of land, then spread and stretch gathering height across the open ice shelf. I stood behind the chapel on a low bluff and watched the stormfront charging silently toward town; the wind increased as it neared. I ducked in for dinner and when I was finished the snow was falling and the wind had sputtered out. The town was quiet and the sun hidden for the first time in ten days. On the continent's mainland, over the Transantarctic Mountains, clouds so dark blue they seemed black sprouted upward and slid southwest out of sight behind the peaks. We are a tiny and insignificant spot of civilization on a continent larger than the US, and these storms offer the same humility as starry night sky or rough surf crashing on rocks.

We have two days off work this week, the 24^th and 25^th, then go back on Wednesday. I have the fortune of attending a sea ice course on Wednesday from 10 till 5:30, missing most of work to learn about the ice that freezes across McMurdo Sound. I think we will operate an ice drill, which should be interesting. I have once been in the freezer where Andrill, the continent's primary drilling project, stores its core samples. Wood boxes labeled with ice depths were stacked against the wall. I flavored one sample with a lime Italian soda syrup and ate it for dessert that night, then left an apologetic (and sarcastic) note in the box. Inside of the core sample was a wishbone from an ancient fish, now extinct, and when my roommate and I split it for luck the big piece went to me. That's a score.

Finally, before each day begins we read a page or two on a safety topic. We have covered latex use, carbon monoxide toxicity, a few others. On Saturday we discussed the importance of stretching, warming up prior to any physical labor. Just as athletes stretch before their event, the essay explained, you should stretch prior to working. Consider yourself an industrial athlete. And so I do. I am down here, down in Antarctica, and I am an industrial athlete, and I will be safe on the job. I will be a paragon of safe industrial athleticism.

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Burrito Contretemps

With wild exhilaration and abandon I made my lunch burrito, stuffed it too full, and was unable to wrap the insides with the tortilla. This is a mistake I have made many times before. Like Sisyphus, I see myself doomed to repeat.

Excursus on the making of a burrito does not belong in a blog about Antarctica...Or does it!?

I took a tour of the Pressure Ridges last night. This is over Observation Hill at Scott Base (New Zealand), where the Ross Ice Shelf collides with the sea ice of McMurdo Sound. The sea ice is anywhere from twenty to forty feet thick (and rapidly thinning). The ice shelf is about 300 feet thick. The collision drives ice up into a spine that serpents over an otherwise flat plain. (My last entry gives a mistaken explanation – sea ice pushing against the shore.) My camera battery unfortunately ran out halfway through, but I still got a few pictures. The light was quite nice, as it was evening going on night (8:15-9:15); we saw four Weddell Seals from a distance; it was much colder than town out on the ice, exposed to the wind. Ob Hill protects McMurdo. At Pressure Ridges, wind blows directly from the south across a huge ice shelf and into the poor suckers touring about. At the end of the tour we all stood in silence – fifteen of us – and it weighed as the eerie silence of a cave weighs. The bitter cold made that silence almost malevolent.

That remains the highlight of the week. I have otherwise been unloading old junk from a cargo container then reloading the container with other old junk that has been inventoried and sometimes organized in bins. Aspects of it are actually enjoyable. I get to move around, lift things up and put them down. It's physical labor, and refreshing in the way all physical labor is. We are above town in the relative quiet, an unobstructed view of the mountains. We work seven days this week, Monday through Sunday, and then get two days off for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There is a banquet, I think some kind of concert. Living at McMurdo is like returning to college. Some of you may find this enviable. Well, now you know.

The NSF is always seeking support staff for grantees.

My dinner was not as noteworthy as lunch, nor was breakfast, though I had oatmeal for the first time. On top of my oatmeal was brown sugar. On top of my brown sugar were raisins.

And if this blog were a tortilla, well, my experiences...

Found a Cigar

The library has a disproportionately large section of Lonely Planet guides and a hot chocolate station up front for all of your hot chocolate needs. (Also, tea bags lie up front, disorganized, for all of your tea needs.) There is a good range of books in the subjects you might expect, and even perhaps in some subjects you might not expect. There are also, in the library, printed pieces of oversized paper that hang on the walls and say, in red ink, “YOU ARE BRILLIANT AND BEAUTIFUL AND I LOVE YOU” I would guess these come from the winter folks, the Jack Torrance type.

Work continues in the cargo container where a great deal of unloading, reorganizing, auditing, and inventorying remains. Today a coworker and I needed to move six wooden boxes from the front of the container to the back. Four of them were about fifteen feet long and large enough to hold a wide loaf of bread. The other two were smaller. We moved the two small ones quickly to the back. The first large box was exposed, and on top it said “Steel Shaft,” which, indeed, was held inside, and a steel shaft of that size, let me say, is heavier than you might expect. I don't know what it is used for. Perhaps it was placed in storage because nobody else knows what it is used for—one of those classic mix ups, the kind upon which great stories are built.

I hope to hike out to Pressure Ridges tomorrow, a place on the sea ice near Scott Base (New Zealand, two miles away) where the ice is pushed against rocky shore, where it cracks upward and folds upon itself. The results are supposed to be quite beautiful.

And the weather has been more than agreeable, usually peaking around 40 degrees in the afternoon. I work in an alcove of shipping containers, wind is blocked, and the metal reflects heat. My little workspace, outside anyway, must jump into the upper forties. I have still not grown accustomed to daylight at all hours, but the temperature does in fact fluctuate by time of day. The sun drops lower at night, light is more orange, the temperature falls into the twenties or teens. Wind is constant, katabatic I think, flowing down like water from the elevated center of the continent. The mountains are still an impressive sight.

In a way, blogging about Antarctica so far seems much like blogging about the inside of a cargo container full of old lost metal and plastic machines in need of rediscovery. My daily routine has little to do with the continent on which I live. Weekends provide opportunity for hiking, cross-country skiing, a few tours. I'll see what I can do to jazz up this soporific blog.

Then again, it's in the little things, it's all in the little things...

“I don't understand it,” Hans Castorp said. “I never can understand how anybody can not smoke – it deprives a man of the best part of life, so to speak – or at least of a first-class pleasure. When I wake in the morning, I feel glad at the thought of being able to smoke all day, and when I eat I look forward to smoking afterwards; I might almost say I eat only for the sake of being able to smoke – though of course that is more or less of an exaggeration. But a day without tobacco would be flat, stale, and unprofitable, as far as I am concerned. If I had to say to myself tomorrow: 'No smoke today' - I believe I shouldn't find the courage to get up – on my honor, I'd stop in bed. But when a man has a good cigar in his mouth – of course it mustn't have a side draught or not draw well, that is extremely irritating – but with a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him – literally. It's just like lying on the beach: when you lie on the beach, why, you lie on the beach, don't you? - you don't require anything else, in the line of work or amusement either. - People smoke all over the world, thank goodness; there is nowhere one could get to, so far as I know, where the habit hasn't penetrated. Even polar expeditions fit themselves out with supplies of tobacco to help them carry on. I've always felt a thrill of sympathy when I read that. You can be very miserable: I might be feeling perfectly wretched, for instance; but I could always stand it if I had my smoke.”

Death of a Memoirist

My current project is unloading, auditing, reorganizing, and inventorying shipping containers kept above the center of McMurdo. It's mind-numbing, but the manual labor is gratifying, and outside the container is a view across McMurdo Sound to the Royal Society Range. The days have peaked around 40 degrees, which is warmer than Chicago. Today clouds rolled in after noon and the wind picked up, volcanic particulate blowing like snowfall over ridges, things cold more than warm.

First impressions are all I ever care for; it is far, far better to make general presumptions that are incorrect than measured and considered judgments that are accurate. I have been at McMurdo three days and there is something depressing about how all of the work done here stays here. The geographical disconnect from the world above converts naturally into a relinquishing of responsibility and wild immaturity. The community is oddly immaterial, obsessed with itself. What's even odder is how people seem to embrace this.

But, hey, it's still an honor and a blessing to get time down here. Though something in the community comes off as a bit acrid, the landscape and work never fail to impress. Consolation.

I do enjoy talking with a British guy who works in the wastewater treatment plant. This evening we had some tea and he told me about time spent in Norway as a special ops soldier in the British Special Services. They wore what were called "white silks," thin white camoflouage jumpsuits to cover parkas and such. He described having to go to the bathroom - "take a dump" - while suited up, how the suits would sometimes blend with the snow as you squatted, how you couldn't see well while wearing such bulk and how you sometimes dumped accidentally directly into your suit, zipped back up, felt the waste slide down about your ankles where it sat above the elastic band. Sad story.

(That's the best I've got?)

I plan on hiking this Sunday and posting more pictures, which are of far greater interest than a personal blog. These entries are trying--for you, I assume, as much me. Good night.

Sky Captain and the World Beaten Barren; Forklift

Today I reported to work. It began with a meeting and department-wide stretching. Then I participated in a powerpoint course on driving trucks and light vehicles, then I took a test, then I participated in another powerpoint course on driving forklifts, then I watched a movie on the supply, use, and storage of pressurized gas tanks, then I took a test. All of that took me from 7:30 to 10:30. I walked with my supervisor to the division where I am working for the next two months.

I am in Supply. Supply is spread throughout McMurdo, small offices in most of the buildings. So, for example, there is a Medical building. Supply has an office in there. Whenever the EMTs need something, they talk to Supply in Medical. The Heavy Machine shop has its own Supply division, so when they need some big tire, or some big engine piece, or some small bolt, they talk to the Supply office stationed within the building. I'm in Supply in the building where the science takes place. It's called Crary.

I arrived Crary at 11, met my boss, my coworkers, then counted plungers and separated them into zip-loc bags. Lunch runs 12-1. After lunch I met with my boss and we did the hands-on portion of the forklift training. I spent the rest of the day driving pallets around with a small, green, articulated forklift called the M4K, nicknamed the pickle, for its greenness. I am no pro, and I don't know I could spend 10 hours a day with the forklift, but I could easily spend every afternoon forklifting pallets here and there, a worker ant, ear mufflers mandatory.

I hiked Observation Hill (Ob Hill) this evening after dinner, about 8pm, with a friend from orientation, Will, a university student from Puerto Rico who had never seen snow before stepping off the plane. It isn't too long a hike, four or five hundred vertical feet. We got to the top via an access road around fuel storage tanks. There were views of McMurdo, views to the south across the expansive intersection of the McMurdo ice shelf and the Ross ice shelf. To the north is Mt. Erebus. The cross on the top commemorates the deaths of Sir Scott and his crew during their return trip from the pole in 1912. The cross is an original, erected in 1913 somewhere in the footprint of McMurdo Station.

I'll soon post pictures mostly online, and that way label what they depict, or signify. Until then, the format below will have to suffice, without explanation. Have fun. I did. (I just previewed the post, and what I see isn't what shows up in the text window. Uploading takes too long to do again. Click on the images if you want the real picture.)

Lord Master

I had very limited time in Christchurch, and a portion of this time was devoted to a fitting at the Raytheon Clothing Distribution Center where we received our cold weather gear. I had the chance to speak with a few Kiwis, and they were extraordinarily friendly. We departed the Christchurch Airport this morning on a US Air Force C-17 and the Kiwi military guards monitoring our embarkation referred to the pilot as Lord Master.

We landed on Pegasus, an ice runway about ten miles from McMurdo Station. The flight took four and a half hours. The passenger seats ran along the side of the fuselage, which was a big, open, ribbed tube. Like the belly of a whale. The bulk of the space was loaded with cargo latched down with heavy chains. There was a bulldozer on a pallet. Prior to descent the few windows afforded a view of the continent.

The landscape is utterly alien. It is endless white, rugged like nothing I've seen before. It is difficult for me to wrap my head around the desolation, and it is unrealistic if you expect me to offer adequate description. I can post pictures. That's what I can do.

I have traveled more than some, less than others, but landing in Antarctica and deboarding the plane offered something unique. I would say that most of our experiences are things that we collect, and then later refer to, describe, commemorate, relive. But from my very green perspective the experience of stepping off the C-17, of looking to the north where snow and nothing else stretched flat to the horizon, to the south where a low range of mountains sloped up to the dominating Mount Erebus, that was an experience which may very well become a lens through which I understand. It may not be so much an experience collected as an experience used.

And so, if you expect adequate description, then that is an unrealistic expectation.

I have two roommates, one who works night shifts with heavy machinery, and one who works on the high-power lines that run between buildings. They are gruff, friendly, tired, and blunt, so it seems. They enjoy coming off work and drinking beer with the TV on. Sean and Matt. It's nice, in a way. Their size and nature--they could be whalers from the 19th century.

I report to work tomorrow at 7:30, and then it all begins. Pictures will be up when my schedule settles down.

A Fistful of Dollars

Today seven of us attended the first day of orientation at Raytheon Polar Services, Centennial, Colorado, fifteen miles outside of Denver, a barren high-plains landscape clustered densely with townhomes and office parks, none of the buildings older than a decade. The van service dropped another hotel guest at her destination before taking us to Raytheon. We pulled up in front of a tall, reflective glass cube with desks and paper rolls discernible through the windows. We drove around the building, fully, and nowhere was there indication as to what went on inside. The woman we’d deposited had certainly been inconspicuous, of average height, dark-haired, bright lipstick, a suit, black pumps. Unassuming. Perhaps that was the point.

Orientation presented little of note. We received a wad of travel funds, we visited IT and established internal accounts.

There was an HR video on harassment. It’s Not Just About Sex Anymore: the film’s title, the film’s message. Dramatic reenactments of workplace harassment were split with a serious and pithy businessman strolling the halls of his building. He wore a tan suit, his hair combed neatly, always carried a black leather satchel in his hand. His scenes were short, perhaps five or ten seconds - checking binders, filling coffee, opening doors, turning corners - and in every scene he quipped smartly about what we, the audience, had just witnessed: “You think to yourself, ‘That can’t possibly be harassment’? Well think again.” Or, “A joke or two, only having fun. Well this time you crossed the line.” And, always, this man would walk in view from somewhere off-camera, then exit (with gusto and attitude) off the other side of the camera.

This and that, the day passed, I dined with the three other employees staying at the hotel. Two of them swapped naval stories from the 1980s. It was only as dinner wound down that I noticed one of the men has the hands of an eight year-old choir boy, so small, so smooth, as though sculpted of marble.

And retirement comes late in the night, a stiff anxiety over tomorrow’s flight to New Zealand.