Monday October 27, 2008 Differences and Similarities in Antarctica, DJ writing

Relative to the last few days, today has been relatively mild in the excitement category. It is probably an exciting day for Stacy, who is diving in an ‘air from the surface’ full face mask in the contaminated waters of Winter Quarters Bay. Unfortunately, she is not writing today. Also, the last few days have been pretty exciting for me. Yesterday included lots of morning work at the Cape Armitage dive hole site as well as a half a day off in the evening. My half a day off allowed me to write some post cards, send a few emails, make a couple phone calls, visit the historic Scott Discovery Hut from 1902, climb Observation Hill just outside of town, and end the day with a nice gym workout. The day before was even more exciting when Stacy and I essentially fought a blizzard all day in order to save the progress that we worked so hard to achieve in trying to get a diveable hole through 32 feet of snow and ice around Cape Armitage. We fought 40 mile an hour winds of blowing cold and snow, poor visibility, a failed generator and an insanely deep sea ice formation to finally win out over the storm! Our efforts paid off as the next 24 hours of effort only required various teammates to go out and refuel everything. As bad as it may sound it was actually quite fun and also very satisfying to not let the harsh Antarctic continent win. But alas, on the day of the storm it was again not my day to write the daily report. So here I will just show you a few photos of the storm, a few photos of the visit to the Discovery Hut and of the view from Observation Hill, as well as some other interesting things around town. Since today is a relatively standard day of building and testing SCINI, I decided to focus my blog a little differently. I think it may be interesting to others to learn a few of the things that are so different about this place as well as some of the things that are the same. Let’s see what all comes to mind… in no particular order.

1. There are no paved roads here, most of the roads are on either sea ice or permanent ice shelf and the remaining roads are volcanic dirt and rock because this area is essentially an extinct volcano. A large portion of our vehicles use rotating tracks to propel them, as opposed to tires. There are lots of heavy equipment type vehicles including bull dozers, large track vehicles, huge wheeled people movers, and a host of ice and snow specific people and cargo transporters. Sleds are also very common here of all different shapes and sizes.

2. Unfortunately, there are no children here. There are also no animals here except the local wildlife. One may get to see seals, penguins, skua birds, whales and other sea life in the aquarium, however, you won’t find any dogs, cats, bugs, spiders, cockroaches or rodents. Everyone here has passed a rather rigorous physical and dental examination that even required a flu shot.

3. You never have to pay for any fuel here, you just pull up to the fuel bunkers and fill-er-up. You have a variety of fuels that you may need, including: diesel, gasoline, gas mixed with oil, kerosene, JP-9, jet fuel, and white gas. Of course the fuel is not really free as the Antarctic Program does purchase and ship it here, but we never have to pay directly with money out of pocket. We are required to plug in all vehicles’ engine block heaters when not in use to keep them from getting so cold they won’t start. Special brakes are used to secure the vehicles because the brake fluid can freeze and vehicles can roll down slopes upon which they are parked.

4. All our meals are prepared for us by a very hard working crew at the galley. They do an amazing job with what they have, limited fresh vegetables and fruits, sometimes limited ingredients, and occasional ‘long time frozen’ items. They even do all our dishes and also hold meals for us when we are in the field. Because we don’t have to cook or do dishes it lets us focus on our science and research. The galley folk from the highest chef to the dining assistants are very much appreciated here.

5. We are a relatively small town of approximately 1000 people, however you will find everything here that a large city has, including an airport, complete fuel operations, cargo facilities, waste management operations, electrical power plants, water plants, sewer plants, computer technicians, communications experts, you name it, they are here. Everyone has a job here and every job is very important. Everyone is on station because they chose to be here and we all form an integral part of the puzzle.

6. We recycle almost everything here. The united Stated Antarctic Research Program has one of the highest recycling percentages of waste of anywhere else in the world. All the trash is shipped off the continent and either recycled or disposed of properly. There are approximately 20 recycling categories here and all the waste must be separated appropriately. Some of the categories are aluminum, cardboard, electronics, metal, food waste, glass, mixed paper, hazardous waste, plastic, paper towels, and wood. We are all very conscious of everything we throw away and we do everything we can to avoid generating any extra unnecessary waste.

7. The water here all comes from filtered sea water from the reverse osmosis fresh water system. Antarctica is by far the driest continent so there is almost no precipitation or snow to gather for drinking water. The salty water from the ocean must be filtered for drinking water. It is so dry here that it makes your skin crack if you do not use moisturizer. The good thing is that your laundry dries completely overnight if left hanging in your dorm room.

8. Almost no one here commutes to work, almost all of us live within walking distance to our primary job locations and to the galley. Many people need to drive around for their jobs, such as heavy equipment operators, folks that work at the airports and other local out of town locations, but almost everyone here walks to and from work.

9. The power plant has a waste heat recovery system that uses heated glycol from the diesel engine generators to heat many of the buildings in town via heat exchangers. The base makes every effort to be as efficient as possible with double doors into almost all buildings and even freezer doors on many buildings.

10. We still have many of the same things that you would find back in the states, including, telephones, the internet, bank machines, pagers, televisions. We use a microwave tower to transmit communications to a nearby location which then communicates with the rest of the world via satellite. There are two local radio stations that are both run by volunteers. There is a Church of All Faiths, a bowling alley, a weight room, an aerobics work out room, a basketball gym, a climbing gym, a coffee house, a library, a small station store, a bar, a greenhouse, and a HAM radio shack, just to mention a few.

11. I don’t think I have ever been bored here even for a short while. There are science lectures, community movie nights, outdoor walks and treks, artwork in many unexpected places, a gathering with appropriate parties for all the holidays, a New Years Day music festival, historic Antarctic explorer huts to visit, just to name a few. However, almost all of our spare time is devoted to the unending task of making our science program successful.

12. Our freedom is limited as this is a dangerous place where weather can pick up unexpectedly. During severe weather conditions we can not even leave the building we inhabit. There are several outdoor recreational loops that people are welcome to hike, however, the longer ones require checking out with the fire station and require at least a group of two. Scientists are given extra freedom of movement in order to perform their research and science, but we must always officially check out of town. Checking out of town involves communication with McMurdo Operations with radios to tell them, what vehicle we are in, who the driver is, which science party we are, how many people are on board, what time we will be returning, who our in town contact person will be and a phone number for them. If we exceed our return time, an emergency search and rescue mission is immediately dispatched. Obviously, you never want to forget to check back in to town or the consequences could be very bad. Other folks will be risking their own safety to come rescue us so we don’t want that to happen unless there is an emergency.

I hope this blog was interesting to folks that have no idea what life here in McMurdo Antarctica is like. I wanted to do something different from the normal ‘what we did today’. I thought that a ‘what is it like to live there’ blog would be a nice change of pace.