Medevac

We're about 3/4 way through Winfly now. For those unfamiliar with the Antarctic program, an advance group of people come down in late August while it is still winter, to get the station ready to officially reopen. In between the last flight of Winfly and the first flight of Mainbody, the station is technically closed-- no flights in or out. Unfortunately, one of our Winflyers took ill, and a medevac was ordered. A Kiwi Herc (C-130 cargo plane) landed out at Pegasus field yesterday, and spirited the sick folks away. I happened to be out there at the time, and got to see the plane take off and land.

There were also some Aussies out there, working on their UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). I stopped in the hut they were working out of, and got to talk to them for a bit. They had three UAVs in the shop, and were rigging them up with electronic instrumentation. It's really fascinating-- the little planes have a wingspan of about nine feet, and are only about six feet long, weighing thirty pounds. The can fly them in hurricanes, though, and have flown them clear across the Antlantic ocean several times. They are equipped with Iridium phones for guidance, and regular radio remote control for when they are within fifty miles. They have GPS on them, and telemetry to track various functions of the engine, etc. The group lost one on the sea ice a couple of weeks ago. They knew from the telemetry data that it had lost fuel pressure. It's sitting out on the rough sea ice, miles from McMurdo. They are going to leave it out there, because it's just too hazardous to land a helo out there to retrieve it. The guys said that with out any special instrumentation, the bare planes go for about $70,000US. They don't have any landing gear, so they launch them from a special rack on the back of a pickup. The science group is studying sea ice. Instruments on the little planes measure light and radiation reflected from the ice between here and Terra Nova Bay, the location of an Italian base a couple hundred miles north of us. I don't know much about the grantees on this one-- I'm going to be looking into it.

Hack! Plague!

Well, it was just a matter of time. Some tanned, loud-talking Winflyer must have breathed on me just right, and now I have the dreaded McMurdo Crud. Right after dinner a couple of days ago, I got that distinctive itch in the lungs, with the scratchy throat and woozy head. The germs were burrowing in. I e-mailed my boss to tell him that I might be sleeping in and a little late for work if I woke up feeling like death the following morning.

Morning came, and I was feeling pretty rough, but not close to death, thankfully. Congested head, itchy lungs, sore throat. Not bad enough to miss work, but not the pink of health, either. I've been drinking as much water as I can stand, loading up on vitamins, and sleeping as much as possible. I took a couple hours off of work today, and took the nap of a lifetime. Crazy dreams in my delirium-- kind of fun, actually. Playing hookie and letting my immune system do its job. I feel a lot better now. Hope I get those germy little gunk monsters on the run!

(Photos by Holly Troy-- no plague connection.)

BRRRRRR! Plague!

This week we had the most heinous weather I have ever experienced in my life. Wednesday morning started cold and windy, and it got worse for about 48 hours. The worst wind was 52 MPH, and the worst cold was -51F. If those had happened at the same time, it would have been a wind chill of -104F. As it was, it got down to a WC of -95F. The wind chill stayed below -75F all day long, and was in the -80s for most of the day. Yikes. We were in severe weather condition two all day both days (meaning travel and work outdoors is limited, due to weather). In a typical trip just from my room to the galley, I would wear long john top and bottoms, fleece vest, huge "big red" parka, neck gaiter, big fur hat, warm glove and my hood up. I still froze in seconds, and all my gear would stay freezing cold for hours after taking it off. I put my big red back on after lunch, and it felt like I was taking it out of the freezer. The farthest I ever have to walk between buildings is about a quarter mile, but I froze badly out there. No real frostbite, but some painful frostnip. Any exposed skin will freeze almost instantaneously in those temps-- it's miserable. Today it has been around -25F, and the wind has stopped blowing (thank God!). I've been walking around town considering a t-shirt and flip-flops. Seriously, -25F feels like Florida after that weather.

Since the invasion of the Winfly workers, us winterovers have been dreading getting sick. We passed around any germs we had at the beginning of the winter, so it was literally impossible to catch a cold or flu for the last five months or so. The arriving people all just went through New Zealand, which is in the peak of their swine flu epidemic right now. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are in a perfect set-up to all get sick now. I imagine our immune systems are compromised, too. Bad food, no sun, no germs to keep us tough. We're sitting ducks. I know a lot of us have been keeping a sharp eye out for anybody coughing or sneezing. So far, nobody is obviously sick-- that's good. However, one of my coworkers went home to find his new roommate home sick with a sore throat. I dread what comes next. The management has been nagging us nonstop to wash our hands a lot, especially when entering the galley. Truth is, not everybody does it, so the managers decided to appoint some "hand washing cops". Departments must send four people at a time to stand between the hand-washing sinks and the galley entrance. They monitor who isn't washing, and nag them into doing it. Personally I don't mind someone watching me wash my hands if they feel like it, but I am infuriated to be "volunteered" to be a cop. Luckily, my manager took pity on us poor leftover winterovers and didn't put us through the humiliation. We've been through enough, he said. Grown adults nagging other grown adults to behave like grown adults against their will-- it rubs a lot of us wrong. I think the managers finally got that-- there haven't been any cops out for the last few meals.

Think I'll throw on some flip-flops and go for a stroll...

Nacreous Winfly

We are well into Winfly now. We have had four flights come down, raising our population from 153 to over 500. It feels very crowded and crazy now, though I have to keep in mind that the McMurdo population can top 1200 in the summer. Yikes.

If it weren't for the freshies, it would be tough. We've had fresh salads, pineapple, bananas, and kiwi fruit. I've been gorging on it after seven months of frozen yuck food. I feel healthier already.

Along with the "orange people" (winterovers' term for the loud, tanned invaders) and freshies, we've been having some nice nacreous clouds lately. I took these on a trip back to Mac Town from Pegasus, where I was installing a new antenna on one of the air traffic control buildings. It was -47F out there at the time, and a little breezy. I ended up having to fiddle with some cold metal hardware for a long time, and I got really cold. It took me hours to thaw out. I froze some more today-- NOAA is having problems with some of their satellite equipment, and I had to go up on top of a building to check it out. It was -20F and HOWLING wind. I got an "ice cream headache" just from the wind on my forehead. I have about five weeks left on the ice, and I'm hoping I don't have to get that cold again.

Sun and Freshies!

Yesterday I went out to Pegasus to finish up some work on a radio antenna. Day before yesterday was the official first sunrise, but it was very overcast on that day, so nobody saw the sun. Yesterday I didn't get out to the runway until after 2, and I didn't even bring a camera. I didn't think I'd get to see the sun that late. Turns out it was still up, and I got to see it again-- the first time in four months. I got these pictures from Chad Carpenter, an electrician working on the power plant project. Awesome.

The flight, after being delayed for two days due to weather, got here at 12:36 today. I scored three bananas and an apple! After months and months of every day being the same, we now have some new inhabitants. Ten people left on the flight today, and about 130 new ones came in. It's going to take some getting used to. We joke about the "invasion of the orange people", but in reality it is nice to see some new faces. I lucked out and didn't get a roommate yet. That's going to be the biggest bummer after having a single room all winter. Six more weeks, and I'll be flying the friendly skies again!

Black Island, Winfly

It has been a very eventful week. Last Monday I got to go on a traverse to Black Island. The BITF (Black Island Telecommunications Facility) is our satellite earth station-- our link back to the real world. McMurdo isn't a great place for a satellite station, due to Mount Erebus blocking our view. BI has two "golf balls"-- big kevlar geodesic enclosures for the satellite dishes. There are a few small interconnected buildings, including a bunk house, kitchen, equipment room, and generator room. I had never been there, so it was a nice road trip. I went with my coworker, Antz Powell (http://antarcticimages.com/), a mechanic, and the safety guy. We took off from McMurdo about 9AM in two Pistenbullys.

Black Island is only about 20 miles away as the crow flies, but it is a six hour journey in a Pistenbully. The ice shelf is badly melted out on the "front side" (facing north, toward McMurdo), and is unpassable. We had to go between Black and White islands, around the back of Black Island and up to the station over land. Pistenbullys are designed for grooming ski areas, and are not at all suitable for long trips over rough ground. The driver's seat has a shock absorber, but (my) passenger seat is rigidly mounted. Riding in one is rather like falling down the stairs for six hours. Ouch.

On our trip around BI, we turned into the sun, and were driving into one of the most incredible sunsets I've ever seen, for hours. This time of year we basically have six hours of sunrise, six hours of sunset, and twelve hours of darkness. As of this trip, the sun hadn't broken the horizon yet. There is a phenomenon called Fata Morgana, caused by atmospheric layers on the ice. Objects are stretched and distorted vertically, so that an island might look like a mesa in Monument Valley. The Fata Morgana I saw during that long sunset were incredible. Islands on the horizon were stretched into mesas, then into rabbits and dragons, geysers and clouds. (No, I haven't lost my mind yet-- it really is that wild.)

BI is one of the windiest places on Earth. We have a monitor in our shop in McMurdo that displays environmental data and various measurements of the equipment there. The station is unmanned in the winter, so we need to be able to keep a close eye on the empty station to make sure everything is functioning properly. I frequently look up at the monitor to see that the winds are over 100MPH there. Luckily, the weather was good for our trip. When we arrived it was about -20F and calm outside, and about -30F inside the bunkhouse. Antz lit the Preway (heater) and we had the place reasonably warm in a few hours.

Once we got the place warm, it was a nice cozy spot. Both of the nights we spent out there, I slept great. I was just out there as more of less a 'safety buddy'-- I didn't have much work to do there. I haven't been reading much here in Mac Town, but I took that opportunity to get caught up. I devoured a thriller/mystery book called Oblivion by Peter Abrahams. A gripping read.

Tuesday afternoon Antz and I took a Pistenbully down to the 'front side transition'. That's where there is a road that comes straight from McMurdo to BI. It is so extremely windy near the island that gravel is stripped away, blowing out onto the ice shelf. In the summer the sun heats the dirt and gravel, causing huge melt pools. There are holes four or five feet deep, and ice blobs that are as big as twenty feet high.

The Pistenbully ride down to the front side transition was brutal. It was only about three or four miles, but the road is bad, and the Pistenbully transmits every pebble right up your spine. I took a few pictures down at the transition, and hiked back up to the base, leaving Antz to drive back alone. It was about -30F out, but I was hiking hard, so I was toasty warm. My glasses frosted up at one point, so I took them off. The plastic frames were so cold that they snapped in two. Thank God for some Super Glue back at the BI station, or I would have been in fuzzyland for the rest of the trip.

We had an uneventful trip back, except for six more hours of spinal compression. Yesterday was supposed to be Winfly, the first flight into McMurdo for six months. The flight had a 24 hour delay, and was delayed again today. We've lived without fresh veggies and mail for that long, so a lot of people are looking forward to the flight. There also is a lot of dread of the massive influx of folks were are getting. It's a hard adjustment from living with 153 people you know well, to 550 tanned, talkative newcomers. Stay away from my coat hook!

Final Radio Darts

Sunday now, getting caught up on my blogging. Friday was the final night of Radio Darts for the season. It's a tradition that goes back a ways, from what I understand. The idea is, a crew of us yanks heads over the hill to Scott Base every Friday, playing darts with the Kiwis. The South Pole station plays us, and gives us their scores over HF radio. The Pole folks haven't shown up for darts this year, so we've just been playing the Kiwis.

I'm a mediocre dart player at best, but I still have a good time. Now that Winfly is almost here, we're putting an end to darts for the season. It'll leave an empty place on Friday nights, but I'm sure there will be other things to do. I'm never at a loss for things to do here.