Trapped at the Bottom of the World

One month into the Antarctic winter and life has changed a lot(Oh yeah, for those who didn't know, I decided to stay for another 8 month contract, instead of leaving in February after the summer season)! Last month, we watched the last plane to leave McMurdo Station fly north back to Christchurch for the winter season, until at earliest, middle of August. Since then, the runways have all been deconstructed and put to rest for the season. The plane left behind some things though, mainly 153 people, myself being one of the few to have the experience I am enjoying thus far. And, I know that some of you are curious as to the ratio of people that are down here, so I will tell you right now that out of the 153 people, 37 are women. So, obviously with the population changing from an average of 900 people every day for the past 5 months, to a constant 153 people every day for the next 5 months, a lot of things have changed. First of all, it has made work different for everyone, especially myself. It is nice now to not have to be cooking for so many people, and being able to spend more time trying to make the food taste better. At the same time though, everyday that has gone by, we have less and less fresh produce to use, since we don’t get any more deliveries in. In fact, as of right now, we only have carrots, onions, apples, cabbage, garlic, pumpkin, and some newly discovered oranges in our “freshie box” that need to last until August. Aside from the food supply, one of the changes that I have welcomed considerably is that now I, along with everyone else, have a room to myself. So, now I don’t have to worry about someone bothering me on my day off, or disrupting my sleep, and I can have the room set up any way I want, which I must say, is set up quite comfy! It is also nice to walk around the base or the buildings and not always run into people or have to wait to use a computer, or wait in line for food or to get a drink at the local bar.
With the changes around the station, there are some things that could be viewed as being negative, and that is the lack of time that is comfortably spent outdoors. As of now, the temperature has been hanging around -15, give or take 20 degrees, which is much cooler than the summer was! And, right now, we are currently lucky enough to have some of the gorgeous Antarctic sunsets and sunrises, which is a nice change from a month ago when we had 24 hours of daylight every day. But everyday that goes by, we are losing about 30 minutes of daylight, which will very soon enough leave us with no daylight 24 hours a day for a few months. So for that reason, it leaves it a bit difficult to do things outside and be able to see some things. At the same time though, we will be lucky enough to see the Austral Borealis, or the Southern Lights! But, until then, I have been lucky enough to get out and do some things around the station as well as get off the base for a fieldtrip, this being my first time off the base in about 3 months!
My first adventure took me back to childhood when all childhood boys want to be a fireman. I was lucky enough to spend a little time with the local firefighters of McMurdo Station and ride around shotgun in the fire truck! It’s not a long ride, but we took a drive around town so that the firefighters could inspect a fire hydrant and basically to give the fire truck a little driving time and make sure it was all in order. We then drove up the Ob Hill Road to where it overlooks the whole station, and while up there, I was able to test out the siren and light system! I really did feel like a kid riding around in that big truck!

My next fieldtrip was last week when I was able to leave sight of McMurdo for the first time since December! The fieldtrip was going out to one of the two runways on the ice shelf to see a plane crash. The plane was known as the "Pegasus", which is what the runway is now called, Pegasus Runway. The plane crashed while an attempted landing in 1970 in a bad snowstorm when a wing was torn off. Luckily, of the 80 passengers, only 5 were injured. In the report though interestingly enough, the plane was reported as broken up at McMurdo, but was actually just drug a little further away from the runway. And, so now the plane sits in the middle of a field of snow, sometimes covered a lot, and sometimes, like the time we last went out to see it, was maybe half covered, able to see the whole tailfin and the top of the plane and some of the front nose. We were able to crawl around the whole plane which was pretty fun to do and see inside the tailfin. It is also apparently a tradition to carve something onto the plane, which I did on the side of the plane – “DAHMES w/o ‘09”, (w/o meaning winter-over). After crawling around and admiring the sunset, we headed back into town to warm up. The fieldtrip may not seem like the most amazing daytrip, which actually only lasted a few hours, but when you see the same square mile of land every day, it is nice to get out and see something new and interesting, along with being out on the ice shelf where it was silent, not having constant machinery around!
So, I guess we will see what the remainder of winter brings me as the time of complete darkness approaches. So far, there has been a lot of video game conquering, relaxing with friends, card playing, and watching TV shows and movies. And, in the future, I suppose those activities will keep up!

Safety Is No Accident

That is what you are met with when you first walk into Building 155 of your first day on the ice. It is that time of the season where everyone is looking for something to complain about because they are getting homesick or just restless from being in the same building for 4 months. I am not complaining because this is a carefully thought out thesis. Well, it might be a bit of a rant. I work for a large corporation that is a weapons manufacturer. It seems when we have meetings and with all the signs around the building that the number one thing, which is in fact what they tell us, is our safety. I find that a bit humorous. I have worked for an evil organization before that I will not name, but starts with Macy'_. They where also concerned for everyones safety and maybe you work somewhere where they might be annoying about the safety at times and have you do things you deem unnecessary in order to finish the job. For example, when I am cutting anything in the kitchen, I have to wear kevlar gloves so that if i do slip with the knife, or get shot in the hand, I will not be injured. This at the same time makes cutting more difficult because I can not really feel the food and it sometimes is prone to slipping more
One thing that I do not always like, and working in the kitchen business am not used to, is taking mandatory breaks! To this day, I am still not sure what breaks I am supposed to take and how long they are supposed to be, but if it goes noticed that I have gone a few days without my "15 minute stretch break", my supervisor may mention it to me and force me to leave my work behind to go to stretches that are supposed to help me do my job. How about I just stay here and work 15 minutes more, that would help me do my job more efficiently! While on the subject of breaks, one thing that is a little backwards is our work schedule here. Most everyone has grown accustomed to it, but it seems a bit odd that making us work 6 days a week, 10-12 hours per day is the safest thing to do. I have noticed that many people by day 6, are a bit slow and unfocused and ready to be done for the day, with safety maybe not the first thought in head.
Meetings. Every job has meetings, some that are necessary and some that are just boring and will put you to sleep and is something more to maybe cover the companies own hide. Well, every Thursday, our department has a "Safty Meeting". This is where we all take 30 minutes and go sit down and listen to our boss talk about things that relate to safety from the past week or upcoming week. For example, some past discussions have been how to mop properly, how to sort our trash, how to carry things(Don't forget your neutral wrist'!!), and playing jeopardy for what food was served the year before for a holiday. All important things, I'm sure. Then again there is the talk of brute force in which last year, someone was forced to talk to people about why you should not use brute force, as he was an example and had earlier pulled a rack out of a hot oven, hitting himself in the face with it, and burning himself. I only speculate that he was told that he would be in more trouble, maybe even affect his bonus if he did not give the speech. Everyone's favorite and least attended meeting is the monthly "All-hands" meeting, which everyone on station (population 1000 at times), is supposed to congregate into a room that is meant to seat maybe 300 people (fire hazard?). Again, in this meeting, they talk to the whole community, but not just about safety topics, often including them though. Shortly after I first arrived here, there was one of these meetings because in the previous 30 hours, there had been 3 accidents on the base. Now, this is not a good situation, and they reassured us all that we should be careful, take our time, and if someone needs something wednesday, they will still need it on thursday! The next week, we had another safety meeting and the subject that upset people the most was the subject that because we were apparantly behind in work for the upcoming groups on their way in, no one would be getting the much anticipated 2-day weekend coming up. End result was people taking half-days on their own and the flights that were supposed to be coming in were delayed because of weather for a week. My personal favorite was a meeting that occured last season, of which I was not part of. The meeting subject was an emergency meeting to talk about fire safety. Little did everyone in the galley know that at that same time, there was a hut burning to the ground on the ice but no one knew since they could not see or get to the building. Many instruments and probably the whole building would have been saved if the "emergency" meeting had not been called that day.