Happy New Decade!

06 Wednesday Jan 2010

Posted by cheaterrainier in Antarctic Life, Special Occasions

Tags

2010, Anchors, battles, celebrations, champagne, concerts, Dancing, face painting, hiking, hula hoops, Ice Stock, MacTown, McMurdo, music, New Year, New Year's Eve, ninjas, Ob Hill, parties, photography, robots, toasts, Wino Thursday

New Year’s Eve was on a Thursday this year. I don’t know if you are aware, but Thursday is Wino Thursday. (I know I’ve mentioned Wino Thursday in past posts, but I don’t think I’ve really explained it.) Every Thursday, my group of MidRat friends gathers at the Coffee House, we pool for some bottles of red wine, and we spend an “evening” (in the a.m.) sipping wine, nibbling cheese (if somebody thinks to stash cheese from Sunday brunch), and partaking in stimulating conversation (we’ve had lenghty discussions on sharting… among other things). It worked out great that Marty’s half-birthday and my real birthday happened to fall on Thursdays, and as such we were set up to celebrate since everybody would be at the Coffee House anyway. But this was New Year’s Eve. We had to do something special. We knew we – as nightshift workers – would be working through the actual counting down of the new year, so we had to celebrate during our standard Wino Thursday time. We couldn’t just sit inside some dimly lit, dilapidated building – ambient though the Coffee House is – to welcome a new year and a new decade to the coldest, driest, windiest continent on the planet. No, this called for something epic. Did somebody say outside Wino Thursday??? OKAY!

The six of us with backbones (yes, that’s a dig at all you who didn’t show up…) – Ian, Brett, Ned, Sharon, Marty, and I – purchased some champagne and set off for Ob Hill. I hadn’t been up Ob yet this season – there wasn’t a lot of motivation since I’ve been up so many times, and they’ve made it less accessible by making you walk around instead of using the path directly up the hill – so it was really nice to see the station and the surrounding scenery from that perspective again. No matter how many times you’ve been up Ob, you still find yourself standing on top of that pile of scree, gazing out across the frozen bay toward the majestic Royal Society range and its plethora of gleaming glaciers, saying to yourself, “Holy crap, I’m in Antarctica!” It’s a good feeling. It’s nice to be reminded just how special this place is, regardless of how mundane the day-to-day becomes…

Ian, photographing Antarctica from the top of Ob Hill, New Year's Eve.

Marty, gazing across the sea ice toward the Antarctica continent proper (cross on Ob Hill reflected in sunglasses).

So anyway, there were the six of us wondering if we were even supposed to be hiking Ob because we had heard the road up to the first plateau on Ob was closed for demolition work on the old buildings up there. But we checked with the Firehouse – the de facto station police – and they said we were clear for recreation, so off we went. Because we’re BAMF. Don’t forget it. We scrambled and slid, clawed and crept our way to the top to be greeted by a beautiful, warm day (relatively – remember our locale) and dramatic cloud-shadow patterns all around us on the sea ice. We poured some champagne into fancy blue Galley cups and toasted the new year. Epic.

Ned pouring some champagne for Ian.

Chilling on top of Ob Hill, McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

On the way back down, Mt. Erubus was really smoking, and the smoke was lazing off horizontally since there wasn’t much wind. Pretty cool effect:

The smoke was gently drifting off...

That p.m. I got to the MidRats meal (“lunch”) a little early and filled a bunch of glasses with grape juice – the closest we can get to champagne while on shift. I gathered up some of my MidRat buddies and we counted down the new year on the big Galley clock, tried to sing “Auld Lang Syne” (does anybody know the actual words to that?) but ended up humming it, and shared our New Year’s resolutions. It was really mellow, but pretty special in its own way.

We got a two day weekend after New Year (Friday night and Saturday night for nightshifters). That Saturday, January 2, was ICE STOCK!!! There were 16 bands performing this year – recipe for FUN. Of course, they tried to spoil it for us… In somebody’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that noon to 6 p.m. was the ideal time for the outside stage performances. Thus, any MidRat (like my friends and I) who wanted to partake in the event had to stay up all night long. Noon to 6 p.m. is the equivalent of midnight to 6 a.m. for us. Well, what can I say? I’m a trooper. I took a 2-hour nap in the a.m. and then prepared myself for a loooong night. It was worth it though. Rock, bluegrass, acoustic, funk, novelty… GREAT! Some bands have their own material, others do covers, but it’s all a good time. They had the stage set up outside 155 and there were a bunch of dive huts set up in a semi-circle around it. One hut was the grill, where they were doing burgers and chili; one hut was the “Ice Stock Store,” with buttons and t-shirts; the Carps set up their annual “Sawbucks” coffee stand; and one had face painting. There were hula-hoops being passed around the crowd, lots of crazy dancing, and at one point there was even a robot-ninja showdown! Ahhh, these are the days of our McMurdo lives…

My shark, courtesy of Chelsea.

The robots came out and danced to the music, until...

...they were attacked by ninjas!

Cameron, Sharon, and I - three of the four Anchors! We're pretty BAMF.

Robin with the hula hoop at Ice Stock.

You know how you sometimes laugh at people in Florida putting on sweatshirts when it gets down to 70 degrees, or people in Seattle who break out sundresses when it gets up to 70? Yeah, I think down here we take the cake:

It's 35 degrees?! Break out the tank tops! Robin and Eli.

Check out Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedartree_13/) for more Ice Stock!

Sadly, that was the last two-day weekend of Mainbody. If I ever manage to get a primary winter contract, I hear we get a two-day weekend each month, but who knows at this point if that’s going to happen. I keep hoping, but I’m not counting on anything.

I hope all of you back home had – if not as epic an experience as I had – at least an okay New Year’s Eve. May the coming year bring you nothing but the very most wonderful things.

Love and peace,
Ceds

The Most Wonderful Time of the MacTown Year

30 Wednesday Dec 2009

Posted by cheaterrainier in Antarctic Life

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Tags

Antarctica, birthday, Carp Shop, Christmas, Coffee House, holidays, MAAG, MacTown, McMurdo, parties, presents, Wino Thursday

Again. It’s come and gone again. It’s amazing how fast time flies. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Eli and I were just arriving for our second season on the Ice and joking about how fast it had come back around, and he made the comment, “And before you know it, we’ll be sitting around saying, ‘Wow, the third season’s already over?!’” How right he was. Not that the third season is over yet, but there are only two days of 2009 left (the first decade of the new millenium already over; man, when I was 10 I didn’t even have a concept of that kind of distant future) and redeployment meetings start next week. That’s right. In one week’s time, we are going to be handed pieces of paper asking us the date we’re shceduled to leave the Ice, what hotel we want to stay at in Christchurch, how we want our return plane tickets handled, how much time we need to travel. People are busy making plans to whisk away to Australia, Papa New Guinea, Thailand… tropical places where frostbite is completely unknown and a fresh avocado won’t start a stampede. Of course, I’m still holding out hopes that I’ll be able to stay the winter here; but as of yet I do not have a primary contract, so I will be attending the redeployment meetings with the rest of them and filling out those same forms in the semi-pretense that I too will be lying on those tropical beaches.

What a state of limbo if I’ve ever been in one.

But at least there are the Holidays to distract me! And what a holiday season it’s been… and it’s not over yet! We still have Ice Stock coming up this weekend in celebration of the New Year. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll talk about Ice Stock once it’s happened. Right now I’d like to focus on the wonderful Birthday and Christmas I celebrated here in MacTown.

The Holidays are pretty funny in MacTown. The place still looks like a muddy mining station, but a few decorations pop up around town. I think there’s a Grinch somewhere and some various other wood cut-out figures. Inside the buildings it’s even funnier. A lot of the decorations have been around for a while – it’s not like we can run to the nearest Target and refresh the stock – and are a little run down. We WOPRs took over the responsibility of decorating Central Supply… and it sort of looks like Rudolph puked on it. I mean it’s not terrible, but there’s an awful lot of old tinsely things hanging from the ceiling. Jim, our team lead, put out these two figurine things that sing poor-quality Christmas carols, and he delights in playing them at the same time. What a cacophony. At least we don’t spend much time in the office as we’re out playing with propane torches on heavy-duty shrink wrap (on a side note, I singed the ends of my braids; I really need to get my hair trimmed).

Every department (or at least most) does their own little holiday celebration, usually reserving some big space that it can be held in. Supply reserved Hut 10 for the Wednesday night before Christmas, and they went all out. There was all kinds of food made from ingredients sent down especially for the event. There were lemon tartlets (I baked the shells for them!), california rolls, summer sausage… delicious. I went down to help them cook, which means I only managed about 3.5 hours of sleep that day. Our boss donated three days off as “door prizes,” so we had some games to determine the three lucky winners. Alas, I was not one of them…

The next day, Thursday, was of course Wino Thursday – as it is every week. But it wasn’t just any Wino Thursday. It was MY BIRTHDAY!!! It was pretty freaking awesome. Marty was tending the Coffee House that day, and he decorated the whole place with streamers and balloons. Sharon and Will made me a Wino Thursday t-shirt: they turned a “Race for the Cure” shirt inside out and stenciled “Wino Thursday” on with something that strongly resembles spilt wine, and then drew Olympic rings on it. It’s pretty much totally BAMF. PMFTA. There were an assortment of other wonderful gifts: Will gave me a chocolate chip glitter cookie (literally, a cookie in an envelope full of glitter); Cameron gave me a beer-goggle straw, a tube of glow sticks, a glow sword, and mardi gras beads; Nancy gave me a handmade snowflake; Zak gave me a wine glass, organic chocolate, and a bowl of fresh strawberries; Bama gave me a fresh avocado; and Ned – who came strutting into the Coffee House wearing a santa hat tilted cockily into his eyes and a red, velour zip-up sweater, zipped down to about his belly button and “I <3 Cedar" written on his chest in permament red marker – gave me multi-vitamins, a log of dry-as-sawdust Copenhagen chew, Listerine, a packet of Pop Rocks, and a condom. It was AMAZING. There were also leis and birthday hats for everyone to wear. Best birthday I've had in ages.

This was the outfit Ned wore to Wino Thursday to deliver my birthday presents. Priceless.

After I got a little sleep (3 whole hours), it was time to wake up, get all dressed up, and roll to the station holiday party at the VMF. There was real egg nog (yum!), caroling, pictures with Santa, swing dancing, and all sorts of merriment. Good times.

Sharon & I all dressed up for the station holiday party at the VMF.

The next morning (the end of my night), Rebecca invited no less than 22 people over to her tiny dorm room to open presents. She gave me a beautiful purple scarf. One can never have too many scarves…

My pretty new scarf, even if it's not the prettiest picture of me.

I managed to get a little more sleep (5 hours) and then I got all dressed up again to go to the 7:00 p.m. Christmas dinner in order to share in some holiday festing with my day shift friends. After that first dinner, it was the annual MAAG up at the Carp Shop. (MAAG = McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery.) It seemed like there were altogether fewer exhibits than last year, but there was a lot of interactive stuff which made it really fun. There was a camera obscura upstairs, and you could see little light people walking around on the ceiling. There was a giant see-saw and a Newton's cradle made out of bowling balls outside.

Boys will be boys.

I was having such a good time at MAAG that once I finally looked at a clock it was 5 minutes to midnight and the MidRat holiday meal! I had to run down the hill, strip off the warm clothes I'd put on for MAAG, throw my pretty dress and heels back on, and run over to dinner. I was doing really good crossing the gravel in my heels until somebody yelled at me and I looked to see who it was. Fell on my very next step. A little scraping and bruising, nothing I'm not used to. Dinner was wonderful: lobster tail, prime rib, french onion soup, eggplant "caviar"… le delicious.

We had a relaxing night of movie watching afterward – I'll admit I passed out for "The Graduate," but I caught "Wrist Cutters." It's dark and funny; I recommend it. I meant to get a good "night's" sleep (during the day, of course, as I'm a Day Sleeper), but there was so much merriment… my roommate and I ended up having an "after party" in our room until late in the afternoon. So I only got 3 hours of sleep, giving me a grand total of 14 hours over the course of 4 days. Ouch. Needless to say, I've spent the past few post-Christmas days trying to recover my sleep schedule. I think I'll be back to normal just in time for New Years and Ice Stock…

Here’s a small gallery of pictures in an attempt to highlight some of the special moments of the Hurricane of Holiday-ness I have just described. More pictures can always be found on my Flickr page.