Of Loaders and Pickles and the BBC

Tags

Antarctica, BBC, Cat loader, Elvis, Frozen Planet, Jeckle, MacTown, parties, pickle, Sea, Season 3, sunrise

What’s happened since I last wrote?  Let’s see.

We’ve been getting in loader time just about every night, which I love.  Friday night I got to drive Jeckle and Elvis (Elvis is a pickle, a military forklift that’s impossible to see out of, but it’s got low clearance so it can get inside milvans and other areas where the loaders can’t go).  I did have a momentary moral crisis where I thought I might be cheating on Jeckle by driving Elvis, but I decided that since I wasn’t choosing to drive Elvis over Jeckle but rather just had to use the vehicle most appropriate for the job, it wasn’t cheating.  Jeckle will understand.  I hope…

Me & my baby, Jeckle.

Me & Elvis the Pickle

I’m finally on the day sleeper schedule, managing to get eight hours of sleep during the day and making it through a night shift without issue.  It’s interesting waking up and having dinner be my first meal.  They typically put out “breakfast food” for night shifters at dinnertime, but it’s inevitably dried out and less than ideal.  I’ve actually settled into a regular breakfast of green salad and toast – thank goodness for my Goddess dressing. J  Zach (Sprockets) and Kevin (Skippy) have been working a night fuel shift while the FAA are here doing flyovers of the runway, so I’ve had regular (albeit somewhat vulgar) company at MidRats.  Danny has been very consistently sitting with me at Dinner and Breakfast, and his creepy attempts to pet my hair and talk of cutting off my braids in my sleep is as endearing as ever.  I’m getting slightly sick of having breakfast for dinner every day – I mean, once in awhile it’s nice, but all the time is a bit much – so morning Burger Bar was a welcome treat yesterday (Saturday).  I was just about to sit down and bite into that cheesy, grilled-onion-and-mushroom-y pile of goodness when I realized that a morning science lecture had been scheduled and it was being given by the BBC.  I couldn’t miss that!  I packed up the burger and curlies and got my butt over to the Coffee House just in time.

A crew of BBC filmmakers is currently down here working on their upcoming sequel to Planet Earth, or more accurately the final installment in the Earth trilogy (after Blue Planet and Planet Earth): Frozen Planet.  The series is scheduled to be released in 2011, I believe, and will be focusing on the two poles.  There should be six episodes (just like Planet Earth): the first will give a general overview of the polar regions, outlining general principles such as the sunrise-sunset cycle and how the seasons play out; the next four will each focus on a season (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) and how that drives the life cycles of polar wildlife; the final episode will focus on “Man in the Poles,” with features on native cultures (obviously in the Arctic) as well as scientific research (both Arctic and Antarctic).  They said they are also going to choose two animals from each polar region that will be focused on in more depth, sort of key characters whose stories can be followed and encourage emotional attachment.  It’s looking like the polar bear (of course) and wolf for the Arctic, and the Adelie penguin and orca whale for the Antarctic.  The footage that those guys manage to shoot still blows my mind every time I see it – for those of you who haven’t seen Planet Earth, get busy, because it’s some of the most amazing stuff ever put on film.  It’s pretty awesome to get to talk to the guys working on this stuff, seeing the “Making Of” as it’s actually being made rather than on the Special Features of a DVD.  The clips they showed us of their new material for Frozen Planet promises more amazing stuff.  There was one clip where they had hidden cameras inside the den of a polar bear and her newborn cubs (obviously in captivity – that’s the only way they could have gotten that particular footage); it was one of the most precious things I’ve ever seen.  I’m not gonna lie – I cried a little bit.  There was also an amazing clip of orca whales swimming side by side to create waves in order to break up an ice floe on which a seal (dinner) was laying.  Apparently, this particular behavior has been witnessed and documented, but never before filmed.  Amazing.  Some stuff is definitely hard to watch, though.  Watching a polar bear swimming off into the distance with no foreseeable end in sight because of all the ice that’s melted is pretty depressing.  But at least the Earth series are bringing these issues to light in a high-quality format that’s reaching millions of people.  At least.

After the BBC presentation I went to day bar and finally made friends with some other MidRats.  I’ll finally have friends to hang out with!  I went to sleep for a bit, and then met up with Robin, Eli, Zack, and Michael in the galley to watch part of the Warren Miller film they were showing.  It was pretty cool, but really long, so we left after the intermission.  There was a big carp shop party going on, so we wandered up there.  I don’t know what the band’s name is that was playing when we got there, but they were AWESOME!  They played a great mix of covers – 99 Red Balloons, Mr. Brightside, Spiderwebs, so on – and we were all dancing and singing like crazy.  The carps being the awesome party hosts that they are, they have also built a McMurdo-themed putt-putt golf course and a special Antarctic pool game to add to the existing plethora of games and activities to be had at the carp shop.  That really is the best department on station, plus they’ve got THE prime location on station.  That view is spectacular, especially as we were leaving the party and the sun was coming up.  This place never ceases to be beautiful.

Sunrise seen from the Carp Shop.

Pink light from sunrise on the Royal Society mountains.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  Until next time, chaps, I remain your semi-faithful correspondent,

Ceds

P.S.: Jeckle sends his love.

A Welcome Home Non-Party

Tags

Antarctica, Cat loader, Christchurch, Condition 2, Denver, Deploying to Antarctica, hockey, Jeckle, MacTown, New Zealand, Purcy the Pug, Season 3, Spokane Chiefs

After the long silence of a summer spent unemployed at home (hey, I deserved a break), here I find myself again in McMurdo – on the Ice with a big, capital “I” – and feeling obligated to update my blog so that the few of you folks back home who give a rat’s patella what I’m up to have a way of finding out.  (Wow, that was a run-on; I love those.  And semicolons; I love semicolons   So, as I have promised in the past and have somewhat delivered, I will try to keep this blog updated on a quasi-regular basis.

To catch ya’ll up:

I was scheduled to leave home on Saturday, October 3, but Mom and I drove down to Spokane the night before to catch one last Chiefs game before I left.  (On a side note, they lost, but it was a HECK of a game – good fighting!)  Mom bought me a Chiefs jersey for my birthday (or was it Christmas?) present, so now I have that to wear around as a souvenir of home.  People keep asking me “What team is that?” and I delight in telling them about our boys, our Memorial Cup win of 2008, and our close run last year… sorry, I’m getting sidetracked.

Chris Bruton after the Chiefs won the 2008 Memorial Cup (from http://afterthewhistle.wordpress.com)

So Saturday morning I flew Spokane to Denver, checked into my lush suite at the Staybridge (a 2-bedroom suite complete with kitchenette and a sitting room, 3 beds and 3 TVs in all – I almost felt a little lost), and hooked up with Eli and some other Ice-bound folks for a beer.  Orientation the next day – 5 hours of repetitive blah that I can almost recite by heart now, but some interesting info on the status of the contract rebid - and then off to the park so the boys could toss a Frisbee and do some slack-lining while Michael (FNG GA – great guy) and I enjoyed our last chance to sprawl in the grass.  Eli and I grabbed dinner at Robin’s parents’ house and played with Purcy (what a ham) and Zeke, and then off we went to see Toy Story 1 & 2 3-D double feature!! It was great.  Really, really great… Next day we wrapped up orientation and while everyone else was herded onto busses and shipped to the airport to sit around for hours on end, Eli and I (since Eli had Robin’s car) went and hung out with Cary for a bit, and then Robin’s mom took us to the airport.  Made for much less sitting around time.  Then it was Denver to LAX to Sydney to Christchurch, complete with a jump over the international dateline.  RIP Tuesday, October 6, 2009 – for those of you who lived it, I hope you lived it to its fullest.

photo by Elisfanclub (http://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/)

Flights to McMurdo had been piling up in Chch prior to our arrival due to mechanical problems with the C-17 (something with the deicers I’ve been told, but who knows if that’s just part of the McMurdo “rumor mill”) and I was hoping for a delay with some extra per-diem, but I guess I don’t get that lucky two years running.  We had exactly the two scheduled nights in Chch, which we passed by strolling along Sumner Beach and going way overboard at the Indian restaurant (seriously, there was hardly room on the table to fit all the stuff we ordered).  We bumped into a number of returning winterovers, and their stories have me excited for my potential overnighter.  (Oh yeah, did I mention I’m gonna try to winter this year?  Hence why I deserved the summer of unemployment before a year’s worth of 54-hour workweeks.)  It was sad that I only got to see Roo Roo for a couple hours, but hopefully he’ll be back down for this coming winter.  Firday, October 9 (that was Thursday, October 8, for all you people stateside), we landed at Pegasus.  I stepped off the plane, took a big, deep breath, and all the hairs in my nose froze stiff.  Welcome back to McMurdo!  Thus began Season 3 of Cedar on Ice.

I’ve been here almost two weeks, but work’s been slow.  The first week was a lot of sitting around in various trainings, although I did get to do loader training (FUN!).  I’m gonna be driving a big CAT 930 around station – everybody better run for the hills.  I’m working as part of a 4-person special project, which – in classic McMurdo fashion - has a catchy acronym: WOPR (pronounced “whopper”), or Warehouse Optimization PRoject.  It’s basically a sort of musical chairs in which we’ll be juggling materials between various warehouses in order to get some old buildings emptied so that they can be demolished, and to get some stock to more accessible locations.  Since we’ll need to be using the loaders and forklifts a lot, they’ve put us on nights to stay out of everyone else’s way.  Thus, we had two days of transitioning to the night shift last weekend.  Getting on a day-sleeper schedule is not easy, especially over a weekend when everybody’s out socializing on Saturday night and then tromping around the dorms all day Sunday.  I have so much more respect for day-sleepers now and so much guilt for the errors of my past ways.  Okay, not really… but a little.

So Sunday night was our first night shift.  We got to drive the loaders around for a few hours – mainly practice since we’re by no means experts yet – which was a lot of fun, but towards the end of the shift I started feeling shifty.  I thought it was just from lack of sleep after transitioning… but a couple hours later found me on my knees in the Highway 1 bathroom puking my guts out, so I guess it was a bit more than fatigue.  Of course, the tiniest little thing is wrong and you HAVE to go to Medical – you can’t figure out on your own that you’ve got a flu bug and you should go to bed and take the night off.  Joy of joys, I got the good ol’ 10-inch long Q-tip shoved up my nose and into my brain (my past DA comrades – you know the misery to which I’m referring).  Gotta run tests and make sure it’s not swine flu!  Anyway, I spent most of the next 24 hours sleeping, slept right through my sister’s birthday (sorry, Rhe!), but was feeling 100% the next day and went right back to work.  I was excited to get back on the loader (that baby is SWEET – his name is Jeckle, and I think we’re in love – pictures forthcoming), but the weather took a turn for the worse and we were driven indoors.  Temperature only got down to about -28 F, but wind chill was down to -50 F and possibly lower.  So it was inventory time…

When we got to work tonight it was still Condition 3 in town (of course – I’m reminded of the Zim Brothers song), but it was Condition 1 everywhere else.  Part way through the shift they called Con 2 in town (still Con 1 everywhere else).  So it was looking like more inventory.  But, as weather in McMurdo does, is quickly shifted gears around MidRats time, temps went up and visibility improved, so it was loader time.  Me and Jeckle, together again!

Anyway, that’s your up-to-the-minute update.  I’m on break now.  Hope all are well.  Hug a tree for me, would you?  Until next time, I remain your faithful correspondent on ice,

Ceds