I twisted my ankle Saturday. I am OK, but I will be taking it easy for a few days I am sure.
The culture here is somewhat refreshing. People are polite and friendly and when you are driving around they wave to you. People who don't want to be here are not here. Living in close quarters with something and having much in common (being in Antarctica) allows people to connect better it seems.
The bird is a Skua. http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildlife/birds/skuas.shtml
They can get very aggresive. They will see you carrying food and then attack you. They are a good sign of summer and they are very skilled at getting their way with humans. The other picture was taken at about midnight. That is about as low as the sun gets. It is so weird. We still call it nighttime. I understand what folks say about short term memory loss on the ice. It definately seems to have affected me. We carry small green memo books which we call green brains.
It is the weekend again. The day off tomorrow. I hurt my ankle today. I thought I may had to work on Sunday but I got the job done this evening. I had to get a new type of GPS out of a crawler that it was in for testing. I will be installing the same GPS when I get out to Taylor Dome next week for the lead traverse vehicle. I think it is a Pisten Bully with advanced crevasse radar.
Today I also went up to Mt. Bird (yes, the correct spelling). We got the machine installed, but it was not good weather at its companion site so the system is only part up. It was pretty windy for the ride in the Bell 212. We got blown around quite a bit. But on the mountain at 6000 ft the weather was great. I had to shed a couple of layers after working a bit.
The picture of the rock is Big Razorback Island in McMurdo Sound.
The Bell 212 helo is the twin engine equivalent to the "Huey". I think the Huey is a Bell 205.
Tomorrow I am supposed to got up on top of Mt. Bird. The helo schedule comes out in the early evening. We are headed out to Mt. Bird because there are large penguin rookeries around this area. We are setting up a repeater system on Mt Terror, Mt. Erebus and Mt. Bird for scientists studying the birds. My co-workers are going up on the other two mountains that tie this system together. Just about everybody in my shop will be on a mountain tomorrow. I spent most of today trying to get some NASA equipment working, scrounging parts from other broken gear and looking and digging through specs to see if components will work. You have to work with what you have. Getting parts is too far off. Our deadline for getting material to Port Huneme CA is Dec. 1. Those materials will then come down by vessel (ship) in January. It is going to be so weird seeing ships at the ice pier. It is all ice now. Generally 3 meters thick. We land C-17s and LC-130s on the ice as well as have D8 dozers out there and all that. The big hope is that the sound may break up totally of ice this year. It hasn't happened in something like 5 or 6 years. There was a huge iceburg called B-15 preventing the sea ice breakup and a combination of weather prevented a open sea with floe ice. The Coast Guard cutter has had to work to keep the channel free. We can only hope. Folks are looking forward to the possibility of seeing a liquid McMurdo Sound. It doesn't happen that often.
These pictures are a repeater system on what we call a "Lunar Lander" and a nice shot of one of the glaciers in the dry valleys.
Things are going well. I am busy. Last night I watched the 2004-2005 McMurdo Film Festival Video. Even with all this activity there is time for video production for some folks. Some of the videos were a real hoot.
Today I get my hair cut. Haircuts are free, but getting a appointment can be tough especially if you cannot predict where you are going to be all the time as with my job.
I gave a department presentation on sun protection yesterday. It only takes a couple of minutes to get sunburned down here. It is a great paradox to get sunburn and frost nip at the same time. Did you know that the UVA band starts at 750,000 GHz and that UVC is a concern here since we have no ozone in the atmosphere.
These pictures are of the A-Star helo and a nice shot of the Taylor Valley in the Dry Valley region of Antarctica. It really is quite breath taking.
***I am having problems with my earthlink webmail. If you have to get a hold of me try chazd13736@yahoo.com***
The days are running together. I have to regroup somehow. People all seem to agree that the days are difficult to distinguish one day from another. Perhaps because there is no darkness to demarcate. Also people often talk about the vivid dreams you experience on the ice. I had some very vivid dreams before I had heard about the prevelance of significant dreams here. Someone suggested that since we are so close to the magnetic pole that interferes with your physiology. I don't know what it is, but I dream a vivid dream almost everynight (actually every sleeping period). Being here is still kind of surreal. Which is also a common comment. I can already imagine what Christchurch will be like. What a blast of aromas and organics it will be.
Last night I went to a small open discussion regarding global warming with a whole bunch of scientists. It was interesting to say the least. I have not yet formed many opinions on the subject other than it is clear that we are warming rather than staying the same temerature or getting colder. It is not yet warmer than what we would predict the periodical climate change would suggest. There is a lot more C02 in the atmosphere. Other than that, I am still unsold on anything.
I had fall protection training yesterday (I think it was). I am good to go up towers. The tallest tower on the continent is about 100 feet high. I doubt I will have to climb anything 20 feet high let alone a hundred foot tower. There is a lot of competition to get to do the climbing on something like that around here. I did figure out how my brain plays tricks on me an height. I have to concentrate on horizontal planes rather that vertical ones. Sometimes the vertical lines are obvious and the horizontal ones are hidden.
Tonight was my first "Hut" visit. I walked the 15 minutes over to Discovery Hut with a keyholder to get in and look around. There was a guestbook to sign. What a thrill to sign the book. I feel really accomplished with that one. Such simple events really make an experience. I was there, really there. The following pictures are inside and outside the hut. Scott built the hut in 1901. Shackelton and Scott both used the hut in subsequent expeditions. Rather than go into the back shivering details of these early expeditions I will try and give you a few links. Of course the books and journals are best.
http://www.ast.leeds.ac.uk/haverah/spaseman/scotdisc.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Expedition
http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/scotia/gooant/gooant030201.htm
My impression of the hut was that it was almost new. In thinking about it I realized that 1902 wasn't that old of a house. My house in Victor NY was 100 years older than the hut. As far as houses go the hut isn't that old. Which meant in my feeble ultraviolet bombarded brain that the expeditions of these folks wasn't that long ago. It really wasn't. Antarctica is really terra nova still. The other impression I got was from the smell. It smells of soot and burnt seal blubber. There are frozen seals still in and around the hut. The blubber smell is slightly fleshy, but an oily flesh smell. It is not overpowering, but the smell does turn on the center part of your brain where there are deep feelings that only a smell can conjure. You can hear the coughs of the men and see the smoke and experience what must have been very quiet most of the time.
There are other huts in the area, but they can be a little more difficult to get to and gain access. I hope to get to both Cape Evans and Cape Royds. I have to plan for Cape Evans before the end of November because we can't count on the sea ice being good enough for the traverse after the end of November.
Yesterday and today we are having some significant comms (Antarctica speak for radio) issues to deal with. The diversity of equipment I have to work on is great. Everyday I get to learn about a new radio of some sort. Today I worked on complex NASA equipment for monitoring spacecraft telemetry.
Last night at dinner I was laughed at by a janitor (with a degree) by saying that we are doing all this for science. He thought I was joking. I was not. There is a purpose to all of what is done down here, the dishes, the toilets, the radios, the aircraft are elements of a grand mission of discovery. It is to push human understanding forward. I suppose if you didn't see or appreciate that fact this might be a tough place to work. If you do see it... it is a calling. I spent some time trying to figure out his purpose. Sure the program can not all be perfectly focused on science (no human endevor of science could ever be), but the overall thrust is clearly and sincerely focused on science of many different disciplines. We are here for the same reason we send spacecraft to other planets. This is a special place on earth in this regard. The best place to get the reasons why we are here is the official website www.usap.gov
The vehicle show is a 1957 Tucker Sno-cat. This one unlike the previous one I took a picture of it is fully functional and an original to the program. Much of the stuff here that was brought here since the early 1900s is still here. If it is useful there is no need to retrograde (send back to the US). The other picture shows an exciting sight... Far off on the bulding top there is a bird. This is exciting for experienced people. This is a sure sign of summer. It is a Skua (Skoo UH)
The Sunday night science lecture was about the Andrill project. The "Andrillians" have a drill rig on the ice shelf afew miles from staion. They are drilling thru the ice shelf, than after 1200 feet of water they are going to go thru 1500 feet of sea floor. It is a real engineering challenge to get these geological samples. The ice shelf moves (both with tides and laterally), sea currents and all the unknowns oof what the strata is below. I am planning on attending a "briefing" tonight that has a more informal meeting of interested people. One of the things that makes this project a little different is there is grant money for outreach and education. So they have a wbsite and a means to find out a lot more about the project. www.andrill.org
I had my Matttrack and Pisten Bully training. I have been somewhat fascinated by tracked machines. I don't know why. They are just cool. They aren't very smooth or fast. They can go just about anywhere though. The Pisten Bully is very German. It is remarkably similar to my Holder c500 Tractor. I am all checked out and ready to use these machines to get to some of our radio sites.
