Waterblogged

I got tapped for jury duty while I was at the South Pole. I made a phone call (yes, from the Pole) to the jury commissioner and explained the situation, and she happily rescheduled the service to May. It seems my chickens have come home to roost…

Last week the trial was canceled and I didn’t have to go in. This week no such luck — I had to show up promptly on Monday morning. I was trying to think of excuses to get out of it, but “Your Honor, I have to caulk my bathroom window and then go scuba diving” didn’t seem like it would fly. So, much to my dismay, I missed-out on a good dive and went to the courthouse instead.

The judge said the trial was to be about fraudulent use of a credit card. Oh goodie. But by 9:15am the defendant, who had been released on bail, had not shown up. The judge, clearly angry, issued a warrant for her arrest and released the jury from duty. Yeeeha! I scampered out of the courthouse with gleeful visions of caulking guns and latex gloves. Driving down the street I realized I had left my coffee mug beneath a chair just outside the courtroom door. In the country’s current state of uber-paranoia, they tend to frown on such things. So I turned around to go back and retrieve it.

There on the second floor of the courthouse was my coffee cup, undisturbed. Beside it was the deputy bailiff, putting the cuffs on a crying blonde chick and saying “you’re under arrest.” It was the woman who was absent from her trial. Huh, I guess you can be busted for being a ditz.

I scooped up my mug and left.

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Time for a bit of a tirade…

I don’t get it.

A Coeur d’Alene, Idaho newspaper columnist has been publishing a series of editorials disputing global warming. Fine. He’s even using excerpts from scientific research papers to prove his points, bueno. But here’s the kicker — the evidence in these papers supports global warming. He’s relying on the fact that his audience doesn’t read scientific reports like this, and he can cherry-pick any evidence he pleases that seems to support his cause and twist it suit himself. In this case, he cited the increased snow along the Antarctic Peninsula as evidence that the climate isn’t warming. (In fact, I’m familiar with the research and it demonstrated that, yes, over the past 20 years it’s snowing more. The reason is that the nearby ocean is warming, causing more evaporation, and it’s falling out on the Peninsula as snow. 1+1=2.) But he didn’t mention this fact, which is especially inexcusable because he’s also the newspaper’s weatherman!

Down the street from me is someone with a sign in his yard that implies Barak Obama is allied with Osama bin Laden. Really? I haven’t heard of any evidence in support of that. Whether you like Obama or not, this is extreme. I guess bigotry isn’t dead.

I just don’t get it.

Maybe people are scared. This would explain a lot of things… All the fear, uncertainty and doubt spread by commentators, activists — and even our own government — feeds it. What ever happened to critical thinking, “live and let live”, and respect for one another? Perhaps it never existed.

I think I’m still going through post-Ice blues.

On the positive side, have you got your DTV converter box yet? You should know that analog TV broadcasts are going away in a year or so, and you’ll have to buy a converter box to receive the new digital broadcasts on your old TV set. (Maybe you already have a new LCD or plasma TV with a digital-enabled tuner, so you’re ready. Can I borrow $2000 for a really nice one? I promise I’ll pay it back.) Anyway, the government is giving out $40 coupons for the purchase of a converter box, most of which cost around $60. I hooked mine up yesterday — really cool! The picture is sharp and noise-free, kind of like having cable TV (which I’m too cheap-ass to pay for). The downside is that, because it’s digital, it’s sort of all-or-nothing… If the signal strength isn’t good enough, you get nothing. I have a good antenna on order, I really want to pick up PBS in Seattle and some of the Victoria stations in Canada.

Here’s lookin’ at ya.

Update, May 9th:

Well, digital TV may be nice but that doesn’t improve the content. The channels we receive clearly are: the Spanish channel (aye carumba!), five religious channels (5!), and [drum roll here]… Fox. Not exactly the most intellectual line-up. I want my PBS!

Oh, and apparently someone wrote a nasty postcard to the bigot up the street. He has it posted on his political sandwich board outside, together with a rant saying something like “if you have a problem with me, say it to my face.” Well alright then. You’re an racist bigot.

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March 2008

It was nine intensive days of fun and hell. Wilderness First Responder (”Woofer”) is a certification for people who may need to treat medical problems in the back-country or any other remote location. Think of it as First Aid on Steroids, or maybe a primer for being an EMT.

I didn’t really need the certification, although that’s a nice bonus. What I really wanted was the knowledge. And for once the course was being offered in town — while I was at home. Signing up was a no-brainer, actually assimilating all the information was another matter. What I wasn’t prepared for was how long, intense, and in depth it was. If they had crammed any more information into my head I think I would have had an aneurysm (but then, I would know how to treat it too). The class was 8 hours a day, sometimes late into the evening, split about half between lectures and outdoor scenerios.

I wish I had taken pictures of some of the ‘moulage’, the fake injuries. They were really impressive. But most of the time I was too busy to take any pictures at all. Just a few of the things we covered:

• CPR
• Setting fractures and dislocations
• Wound care
• Infections
• Spinal injuries
• Head trauma
• Burns and frostbite
• Poisons, toxins, bites and stings
• Lung injuries
• Altitude sickness
• Cardiac, pulmonary, and abdominal problems
• Traction and splinting
• Hypothermia
• Etc…

Yow! I don’t think I’m particularly good at any of this, but it is useful information to know. I just wish I could have had this course before working in Antarctica.

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Holy jet-lag! What just happened? There’s a saying on the Ice: “When you leave it’s like you were never there. And when you come back it’s like you never left.” So true. I feel a million miles away from the Pole right now.

Here it is March already, so I’ll cut to the chase…

They never did find anyone to replace me at the Pole. One was rejected because he didn’t pass the background check (something about flying explosives around Alaska in his small plane without a permit — isn’t that what Alaskans do?). Two more were rejected because they NPQ’d (didn’t pass the physical). And another two were rejected for unknown reasons (probably also NPQ). That makes FIVE attempts to hire someone as the winter Aurora Tech with no success. In the end I turned over “my” experiments to the other two techs and one of the meteorological guys. I trust they’re in good hands, but it would have been better to have a dedicated Aurora Tech.

And it also would have been better to have more turn-over time. I found out about the last guy’s NPQ just four days before station close. What followed was a rapid turn-over to the other techs — but then the station closed a day early so my short turn-over period turned into an impossibly short turn-over. Yikes!

And the next day I was gone. Zoom. I spent one night in McMurdo, and was blessed with excellent weather. I hiked Ob Hill, took pictures around town, and visited with old friends. And then — zoom again — I was in New Zealand. Somewhere along the way I caught the crud, so my time in NZ was fairly miserable. And on top of that, I was also eager to get home. So I went to Kaikoura for just a few days (didn’t dive, as I had planned, because I was still sick) and then headed home.

And here I am.

“Here” is Washington State, a few miles outside of Port Townsend. I really want some warm weather and sunshine but, to my dismay, the weather has been crappy. Maybe I should have gone to Fiji instead?

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks catching up on things, going through mail, and installing a couple new windows in the house. Wheee. This coming week Janice and I will be taking an intensive, 9-day Wilderness First Responder course here in town — I’ve always wanted to take this. Seeing as how we venture to some pretty remote areas, whether hiking, traveling, or working, it seems like a good thing to have. The week after that I start a college course in…. (tada!) … Oceanography. Go figure. It looked like fun, albeit expensive, and should keep me busy until June.

Oh, there was one last thing. A week or two before I left the Pole I was invited to take some aerial photographs of the station, at the request of the NSF. (Several of us did this, I got to do it through dogged persistence.) It was way fun. I’ll try to remember to post some photos. And yesterday I found out that one of my photos is being shown in the Oceanographic and Polar Museum in Monaco. Cewel!

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December 2007

I’m laying on my back at the bottom of the world, flying a kite. Beneath me is two miles of solid ice. Around me it’s flat and white as an empty plate, and cold as hell. My butt is freezing, literally. A short distance away it’s noisy, smelly crowded, and busy: The South Pole. I love this place.

The summer season at the Pole is non-stop activity, reaching a crescendo during a few holidays and community events. There’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, exquisitely prepared by the kitchen staff with help galore. On Christmas day is the annual “Race Around the World”, three laps on a groomed track around the pole marker, each lap about a kilometer long (you’re welcome to run, walk, or ride a piece of machinery, costumes and zany floats are very much part of the event). This biggest shindig of the year is the New Years Eve party. This year we had three bands, I played tenor sax in the largest one. Our songs were all cover tunes from the 60’s through the 90’s. This was possibly some of the most fun I have ever had on the Ice. By the end I was grinning from ear to ear, and it wasn’t just the champagne.

The past year includes a couple minor achievements for me. First, I finally sold some photos (23 to be exact). At the same time, at least one of my photos (possibly more) has made it into a book. And second, after all these years of writing without publishing, I was finally paid a small amount for my writing with a story published in the new anthology Antarctica: Life on the Ice. The story is dink, and I’ve long since moved on to other things, but it is a milestone of sorts. Now if I could just make a living doing that stuff…

Amid all the hubbub on station, there was one opportunity to get away. The Science department requested permission to carry on with a project that lost its funding years ago — our desire to continue the project is due in large part to the adventure it provides. The purpose is to characterize the snow accumulation in the vicinity of the South Pole. To achieve this, lines of ’snow stakes’ were set up years ago, each stake 0.5km apart, with the lines radiating outward from the pole 20 kilometers. I was the organizer for measuring one line, and four of us took snowmobiles out to the end of the line and measured snow depth
along the stakes as we drove back towards station.

For the record, South Pole Station disappears over the horizon when you’re about 10km away or more. From there on out it’s nothing but endless sastrugi (compacted ripples and dunes in the snow). Sometimes atmospheric conditions bend the horizon upwards so that it appears you’re in a vast bowl. Once you shut off the snowmobiles it’s eerily quiet. This was the first time I had been on the plateau without any structure in sight, and it was a magical time.

A couple weeks later I flew four hours from station, several hundred miles to a much more remote site in East Antarctica (Lat 81.6725S, Lon 86.5040E). The objective was to install a seismometer, one of a series of instruments for a project that is trying to learn more about a large mountain range under the ice.

On a remote continent, this is one of the most remote areas, close to the telatively-unknown ‘pole of inaccessibility’. We estimate that no expedition has ever come within a hundred miles of our location, possibly much farther. We were certainly the first humans to ever see this place, although on a featureless ice plateau, millions of square miles in size, there wasn’t anything in particular to distinguish it from any other place.

As you might imagine, for an entire mountain range beneath us to be covered by ice we had to be at a fairly high altitude. The South Pole is at 9300ft in elevation. This area, over the “Gamburtsev” range, is over 12500ft, and that doesn’t even account for the physiological altitude that your body feels due to the low air pressure. On this day the physiological altitude was about 14000ft. My job was to dig a hole for the seismometer. On the flight there we used oxygen; as I was digging the hole I wished I could drag the O2 bottle off the plane and keep using it.

Tomorrow we have the dedication for the new station. With great ceremony, the flag on top of the dome will be taken down and moved to the new station. All sorts of dignitaries are supposed to attend. For us, we’ll be there too, but also glad when it’s all done.

This past week we’ve had visiting congressmen, several private expeditions (including the Irish expedition, following in the footsteps of Shackleton — I met them this morning), and rich tourists from all over the world.

My replacement, the tech who wintered for the past two years and was supposed to come down again this winter, bailed. The company is now scrambling to hire someone else, but time is short. For me, this means I’ll probably be staying until last flight. In some small way I’m glad — that means I’ll get to see the station just before winter sets in.

And no matter how much I love this place, I’m also glad I’m not staying.

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12-26 Nov 2007

Antarctica is the land of intensity.

Time is on a different scale. A year passes like gust of air. Dreams are vivid and punctuated, short bursts of color and action tumbling over one another like the pace of daily life.

Returning to South Pole Station is like coming home. I know the people and the lifestyle, I’m greeted by old friends and busy making new ones. During many meals I retreat to my own table in the galley to avoid the constant chatter and socializing, but lately I’ve been sought-out by others seeking a quiet conversation. This may be counter to what I intended but it’s also gratifying that they enjoy my company, whether I’m cranky or happy.

Most of the time I’m simply content to be here, in a quietly excited sort of way. I think that is true no matter where I am in Antarctica, so long as things are going well and I’m working with friends.

There is one thing that, quite unexpectedly, I found disturbing. Many of the people I’ve known for years suddenly looked very old. Lately I’ve seen more gray hair, weathered skin, and a kind of weathered demeanor on old friends where I’ve never seen it before. What do they see when they look at me? Probably a graying beard too, with laugh lines radiating from my eyes. They’ve all (well, most have) been courteous enough not to comment but it can’t be hidden. We, the previous OAE generation, are being slowly overtaken by the next batch of Old Antarctic Explorers.

Sometimes I wish I could start all over with them and experience it again for the first time. But even though I’ve been here over and over again, every day there’s something that feels totally new. Like I said, it’s pretty intense.

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04 Nov 2007

It’s been a wild ride.

The ship made it back to Chile, no drama this time. Except my return tickets were still screwed up so I spent most of a day either in a LAN Chile office or on the phone with American Airlines “Meeting Services”, which is supposed to arrange for AA travelers to change their tickets. Dealing with them is a nightmare. Based on several years of experience (and this isn’t only my experiences, but also those of my friends and co-workers) there are a few rules about dealing with them:

1. They don’t know where you are, they have no concept of geography beyond their little computer screen.

2. It’s critical to know exactly what you want, down to the flight numbers, before you call them.

3. If you call them three times, you’ll get three different answers.

4. If they offer you an itinerary or a price you can accept, take it immediately. If you call back later it will no longer exist.

The price for ticket changes can swing wildly depending on which agent you talk to. In once instance, I was told I would receive a small refund for a change. Like a dope I counted on them being consistent, and did some more planning before calling them back ten minutes later. When I called back the price had changed to “you have to completely repurchase the ticket, it will cost $1600.” No kidding.

Really, the problem seems to be that the agents at Meeting Services are incompetent, and the airline rules for ticketing are so complex that they have no clue what they’re doing. They appear to be making things up as they go along.

So after all the hassles it was a relief when, at the ticket counter in Punta Arenas, the clerk actually issued me boarding passes. I had translation help from AGUNSA this whole time; I don’t know what other travelers do but if I had relied solely on the information provided over the phone by AA I would still be on a street corner in Chile with a little sign begging for scraps of empanadas.

12 Nov 2007

I’m in a cafe in Christchurch, New Zealand, reading a local newspaper. Tomorrow I fly to McMurdo, or that’s the plan at least.

On the front page of the B section in the newspaper is an article about a local horse race and auction. Splashed across this is a half-page photo of a smiling 17 year old girl, topless, her chest painted sky-blue with large daisies painted on her breasts. Apparently she caused a stir at the show by happily strutting through, baring all. It’s a gorgeous picture, and one that I’m sure would never have been shown in a US newspaper. I love New Zealand.

By contrast, the US is still stuck somewhere in its puritanical past, ashamed of the human body and scared shitless that someone might actually enjoy sexuality and want to talk about it outside the locker room. As always, convenience stores put magazines about guns and killing right out front where the kids can read them while the ones with pictures of pretty girls are hidden behind the counter. What kind of message does this send? It’s no wonder so many people are messed up.

After my morning coffee I head over to one of my favorite spots on the planet Earth. It’s a ring of old cluster pines in the nearby Botanical Gardens, surrounding a raised dais of grass. I stretch out in the sun on the grass, soaking it all in because I know that in a day or two I will be somewhere much, much too cold to do anything like this.

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24 Oct 2007

Peter I island rises suddenly out of the sea, a lonely mountain covered with thick glaciers. At 1640m (5750ft) it pierces the upper winds, creating its own weather and leaving a streamer of clouds that often trails a thousand miles across the Peninsula and into the Weddell sea. The nearest land mass, the Antarctic continent, is several hundred miles away and is so inaccessible that no country has even bothered to make a claim on it. On this “wedge” of the continent there are no permanent stations, very few field camps, and nothing along the shore line — if you could even reach it.

We pulled up stakes from our three-week position on the sea ice and chased our tail around the island. It was a glorious morning, blue skies on the west side with just the right amount of little puffy clouds to make dramatic photos. Dropping the occasional CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth) probe and counting seals, we circumnavigated the island and then headed north.

As I write this we are in the Drake Passage and it’s hammering us with rain, sleet, and white-capped rollers on a confused, slate-gray sea. Occasionally the waves interfere constructively for a larger, scarier monster that slaps the ship sideways, rolling and pitching until anything loose flies to the floor. The stern is constantly awash.

Normally I’d be hating life right about now, except 1) we’re headed home, and 2) the seasickness drugs are working so I’m still functional. If things continue at the current pace we should be at the dock in Punta Arenas for Halloween. I’m not sure if the Chileans celebrate that holiday, but by the look of it most of the crew and passengers plan on going out that evening and getting totally “shit-faced”, which ought to be enough of a costume. (”Hola Amigos, I am a Yankee! Could you tell?” “Siii…”) For myself, I’ve requested FAF (First Available Flight) home. None of us have yet received our flight itineraries, however. We made our requests over a week ago and haven’t heard a word back. FAF would probably mean leaving on the 1st of November, so they have about 3 days to cough up a ticket. Sometimes I wonder how this company manages to keep running…

31 Oct 2007 Post-Script

I just found out that 6 of the 7 people in the company’s travel department all quit at the same time. There’s obviously more to the story but that at least explains why we haven’t received our itineraries. Like I said, this company has issues…

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For the past few years I have had an informal project of observing science events in Antarctica. I think I can now provide some useful advice for incoming grantees who have not been here before.

1. Everything will be late, or early, whichever is most inconvenient.

2. Everything will break. Except the sea ice.

3. If your most important items are packed in one bag, that will be the one lost by the airlines or cargo system.

4. Pack your cargo (incoming and outgoing) as if it will be speared by a forklift, left out in -40C temperatures, soaked in salt water, broiled in a cargo container on a Louisiana dock for a month, crushed by a pallet of anvils, picked-through by customs inspectors with greasy fingers, and drop-kicked by airport cargo handlers.

5. There is no Wal-Mart. Don’t expect the stations or ships to have anything you need. That way you’ll be pleasantly surprised if they do.

6. If you have a device that will be outside, test it before bringing it down. Put it in a freezer for a week and then sandblast it. If it survives, bring a spare. If it doesn’t survive, don’t bother bringing it.

7. Expect batteries to go dead in the cold. That’s what happens to batteries.

8. Your computers will fail. Backup your backups. Of course, that’s a good idea anywhere.

9. No, we’re not going to re-write the device drivers for your gas chromatograph to be compatible with a MacOS-8 RS-232 serial port. You should have thought of that before you left home.

10. The supporting contractor company is not your enemy, no matter how much they act like it. The opposite may be true of the NSF.

11. If you absolutely must be at a certain location at a certain time, it’s not going to happen. Get over it. Bad weather, mechanical breakdowns, cargo issues, holidays, station disasters, Monday night football, and a million other problems will conspire to prevent you from being there.

12. If you’re leaving an experiment running in Antarctica, DO NOT make any configuration changes to your software or hardware just before you leave the Ice. If you do, it will fail the moment you step on the plane north. Watch it run unattended for a few days before you leave.

13. When things get really bad, the best cold-weather lubricant in Antarctica is good Scotch.

14. Be nice to the support staff, they may be able to bail you out when your project implodes. They may need some lubricating before doing so.

15. If your research depends on one critical device operating properly, pack a spare. Or extra Scotch.

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06 Oct 2007

The final GRE scores are in. Verbal: 680 (96th percentile). Quantitative: 780 (90th percentile). Analytical writing 4.5 of 6 possible points. The writing score pisses me off, but I have nobody to blame but myself; I knew I blew it at the time. At least I’m in the top 10% for the other scores. That ought to be good enough for entry into most graduate school programs.

So there. Now what?

There are wheels within wheels here, but lately there’s been some grit in the gears…

Part of the point of going on this ice breaking junket was to see oceanography in action. You know, watch the scientists, see how they work and what they’re doing. Another part of the point was, just possibly, to make some contacts in the oceanography community and use them as references for grad school admissions. That second goal has failed spectacularly for reasons I won’t go into here; later it may become clear. As far as the former goal, watching what they do, I’ve been doing that and — let me tell you — they haven’t made it look like fun. In fact, they’ve made it appear downright miserable. Part of it is because this cruise was cursed to begin with and nothing has worked right. But there has also been strife and discord among themselves. Add to that some tedious, mind-numbing data collection in appalling conditions with recalcitrant devices. You get the idea.

Occasionally there have been some mildly interesting things going on, but nothing that really raises my adrenalin levels. The exciting stuff, for me at least, would be ROVs, underwater observatories, diving, etc. I admit it: I want to do the Sexy Stuff. Jacques Cousteau, Dirk Pitt, Tommy Thompson, Robert Ballard stuff. Things worthy of a deep-sea IMAX film. We had an ROV, a $32000 device that looks like a toy, but it broke the first time they tried to use it. Wheee.

So if I was thinking of going to grad school in traditional oceanography, now I’m re-thinking it. These oceanography programs look about as enjoyable as having a nipple pierced. In fact, I think I’d rather have them both pierced than go through this again.

So now what, indeed.

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