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!