Conan!

I've been back in the (mainland) states for a couple of days now. I'm spending the night in Sheridan, WY, now, after picking up my best bud in Helena. Conan has been patiently waiting for me while I've been working and traveling abroad. This our third reunion. He always is very glad to see me, but not particularly surprised. It's literally like I just left him for the weekend, and is quite happy to resume our routine of hiking around dog parks. I still have my wee house in Livingston, MT, though I haven't actually lived there in a long time. They have the BEST dog park there. Bounded by the Yellowstone river and Fleshman Creek, with nice woods. As a matter of fact, we had to stop using the park a couple of years ago because a bear took up residence in the wooded part. Nice views of the Absaroka and Crazy mountains from the park. On the way back to Colorado-- should be hangin' at the Louisville, CO dog park tomorrow.

Travelling Back to the Real World

Now I'm back in the states. My travels took me to New Zealand, Australia, Tazmania, and the big island of Hawaii. The end of my travels was a little weird. Hawaii is not really geared toward economy travel, in my estimation. The resorts are definitely not my style, so I found my own way. I stayed in hostels, but was driving a red Mustang convertible (the only rental car available with I landed there). I learned that a traveller in a hostel with a car is a very popular guy, especially in Hawaii, where you really need a car to see the sights. I travelled around the island with an Italian tourist and a Japanese woman, splitting the gas and negotiating our travel plans as we went. I dropped of Daniella at the airport a couple of days before my departure, and ended up spending my last full day on Hawaii in the company of two Japanese travellers with limited English. We ended up going down to Kalapani at night, where you can see the lava glowing from the last eruption. All in all, it was a good trip. I was dying when I realized that I lost all photographic record of my adventure, including some really cool photos from Tasmania. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to go back there again.

Photo Nightmare, Drama

I'm just now getting ready to leave Hilo after about a week on the Big Island. Most of my travels here have been very positive, with some huge exemptions. One day after arriving here, the big earthquake hit in Chile, and we were evacuated for the pending huge tsunami. Much of Hilo was wiped out by previous tsunamis, and they take it very seriously here if there is a large earthquake that might inundate the town. I was staying in a mixed (co-ed) dorm at a hostel here in Hilo when the tsunami sirens begun to wail. It was about 5:30 in the morning. A dorm-sharer got a phone call from the states that there was a huge earthquake in Chile, and there would be huge tidal waves. Shortly after that call, loud tsunami sirens went off in Hilo. I dragged out of bed and went to my rent-a-car. I drove to a spot about a hundred feet above sea level, and just waited in the car until the authorities gave the all-clear about 1:00PM. There was no tsunami at Hilo, but such a huge earthquake in Chile could have easily taken Hilo off the map if conditions were right. People were scared. I was disoriented, being awakened so early in the morning, and misplaced my main rain shell that I had been using. It wasn't particularly raining the day of the "tsunami", but I probably took it with me, just in case. We had good weather for a few days, and it wasn't until two days after the "tsunami" that I realized that I no longer had posession of my trusty jacket. Turns out I had put the SD card out of my camera in the jacket pocket, and hadn't gotten around to backing up those pictures to my laptop or hard drive.

Now, the jacket is gone, and all record of my vacation, including leaving the ice and the work I did there, is gone. I have pictures of working on the icebreaker, the fuel tanker, and the container ship, all gone. Tasmania: gone. New Zealand: yep. I guess I've learned my lesson, but it was a painful one.

Redployment, Travels

I'm in Hobart, Tasmania now. I left the ice on the 11th of February, so I've been on the road for almost two weeks now. I got to be among the first folks to fly north on the Royal New Zealand Air Force 757. It's just like a commercial airliner, but the flight attendents wore camouflage. It took a long time to get us and our luggage loaded, but once that was sorted, the flight was uneventful.
I hung around in Christchurch for a couple of days, soaking up the humidity and warmth, and hanging around with southbound and northbound ice folks. Flew to Sydney, and hung around there for a couple of days. Next was Hobart, Tazmania. I ran into a fellow traveller who had a very similar agenda to mine, and we decided to team up for a tour of Tassie. Rented a car and headed up the east coast, checking out Wineglass Bay and miles of beaches. We made our way up to Launceston, and spent the night at a great backpacker there. I've been feeling a bit off for the last couple of days-- I think I got ahold of some questionable chow at some point, and have been in distress, making it hard to go on any major adventures. Best to stay close to the facilities, if you know what I mean... I also seem to be picking up a cold. After Launceston, we drove west to Cradle Mountain, and walked around a little bit there. Yesterday was a huge driving day, and feeling lousy made it worse. I felt completely whooped when we got back to Hobart. I returned the car this morning, and I'm going to be just hanging around in town, reading in the sun. Sorry about the lack of pictures. I need to find a suitable computer where I can get them off my camera and post them.

Changes

There have been a lot of big changes this year on the ice. The galley (building 155) has been painted bright blue, from the foundations to the chimneys. It's crazy. The old T-site building has been torn down, the bowling alley has been torn down, the old buildings up on Ob Hill have been wrecked, as well. (Those buildings are frequently referred to as "the old nuclear power plant", but I think the actual power plant was removed along time ago. The remaining buildings on the hill are B-87 and B-126, an electrical warehouse and the old water plant. Just the bare frames remain now. Old T-site is in the cleanup stages, and where the bowling alley once stood, there is a vacant lot. Kind of sad to see the old buildings go. On the other hand, there are some positive changes. Three huge wind turbines are up and working above T-site, at the foot of Crater Hill. Another milestone of change is the arrival, unloading, reloading, and departure of the vessel. Our crew went out to the ship this morning and removed the radio telephones and wireless internet gear we loaned them for the brief time they are in port. They should be setting sail as I write this. Watching the cargo ship steam away from the ice pier is part of the official winding down of the summer season. A lot of my winter friends are coming in now. It's a bittersweet reunion, since I'm about ready to leave. I figure that I've spent 19 of the last 24 months down here. That'll probably do for now.

Pole Boondoggle

Yesterday I got a chance to make a quick trip to the south pole. Every department gets a few seats on these "sleigh ride" trips, to pass around to the folks in the group. In our department, the trips were prioritized by time on ice, so the highest likelihood of a trip would be to someone who has been coming down for a long time, and has never been to pole before. I'm in my 32nd month on ice, so I'm kind of a medium-timer. I went to pole to work back in 2000, before the new station was built. The old dome was still there, and was one of the wildest places I've ever been. Now the dome is gone, the new station is finished, and it's quite a different place from before. Since I had been to NPX (as the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is known), I was out of the running for a sleigh ride. At the last minute the guy who was scheduled to be the group leader bailed, so they called me. I guess my previous pole experience somehow qualified me to be the leader.

The pole station receives most of its fuel by air. New York Air National Guard LC-130s take off from McMurdo fully loaded with fuel, and offload a bunch of it when they get to pole. Some flights, like the one I was on, carry no cargo and very few passengers, serving strictly as a tanker. I talked to the pilot a little about it after we got back, and he explained the sleigh ride phenomenon. If the plane is completely full of fuel and there is still a little bit of available weight to take, they take as many people for a ride as they can, as a morale trip. Of course, very few people on earth get to go to the pole, so it's a real treat.

We loaded up on a Delta, and headed out to Pegasus. Everything moved pretty quickly-- we got on the plane shortly. There were nine of us on the trip, from a broad cross-section of the McMurdo population. Two of us were from IT, one from supply, one from the galley, a heavy equipment operator, a Kiwi scientist, an FEMC GA, a mechanic, and a cargo guy. The trip down was uneventful, and we got to see some fantastic scenery on the way. We even got to take turns going up into the cockpit. I went up there just as we approached the Beardmore Glacier. The picture that is taken straight out the front is of the Beardmore, though it's so huge and white you can't see it well. The picture just below the photo of me looks like it's nothing, but it was a really cool sundog that followed us. As the shadow of our plane moved across the tops of the clouds, it was surrounded by a bright rainbow ring. I guess the speck of our plane caused the light to refract around us like a prism.  It took us about three hours to get to NPX, and everything was rushed. The plane sat in the fuel pits with props turning, offloading 60,000 pounds of fuel while we were on our boondoggle. They told me to have the group back to the plane, ready to board in 25 minutes. Considering all nine of us would want to have our pictures taken at the ceremonial pole and the actual geographical south pole, and get at least a brief look at the inside of the new station, 25 minutes was pushing it, to say the least. Luckily the pole is less than a quarter of a mile from the plane, and is pretty close to the station. I cracked the whip, and tried to get them to stick together and move along. (The picture of me at the ceremonial pole didn't turn out well, but others got pictures of me that I haven't received yet.)

The sleigh ride before ours had really angered the Guard guys. They had diddled around too long, and made the plane wait, which is a huge no-no. The plane offloads as much fuel as they can, leaving just enough to safely make it back to McMurdo with a little reserve. If they have to idle on the taxiway for any time, waiting for the boondogglers to return, they could actually have to refuel the plane to take off, which would enrage them. They warned us not to be late like the last group. There was even talk of ending the sleighrides due to their recent bad experience. I did the best I could to nag and cajole the wide-eyed sleigh riders back to the plane. We were a couple of minutes late, but they weren't tapping their toes and looking at their watches yet.

To me, the most incredible part of the trip is flying over the Beardmore Glacier. It is unimaginably huge-- something like a hundred miles long, and four or five miles wide in places (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardmore_Glacier). That's the route Robert Scott took when he made it to the pole (but not back) in 1912. To fly over that massive river of ice, knowing that men dragged heavy sledges loaded with supplies over it-- incredible. The cravasses and seracs are pretty much continuous for mile after mile, and are so huge that we could easily see them from 20,000 feet above. Wow. The Transantarctic Mountains are just amazing, with huge ice falls, cravasse fields, and valley glaciers. The plateau above is a featureless expanse of white, clear to the pole and beyond. The ice sheet below and the Ross Ice Shelf beyond that (heading back to McMurdo) are pretty much flat and white, too. That is until you get to the strange lump of Ross Island, with it's huge volcano, and Home Sweet Home on the end of Hut Peninsula.

Tanker

Our fuel tanker has come and gone over the last week. In its first attempt at docking, it pinched too much ice between its hull and the ice pier-- it took them about a day to get it docked right. It brought in five million gallons of fuel, which was offloaded through a mass of big fuel hoses. Our Comms department put wireless internet and two radio telephones on the tanker for their use over the couple of days they were here in port. The icebreaker continues to cruise around in the turning basin and the shipping channel, making ready for the American Tern, the huge cargo ship that's coming to bring us more stuff, and take away our junk and trash. Ship offload is a big deal here-- it's a crazy time with trucks running night and day, and supply people running around like chickens. My department will be really busy, too, but for other reasons. We are starting to fly out to round up all of our repeaters from mountain tops, and other gear from field camps. Never a dull moment.