A day in the life of Greg-O

So after much heckling from someone whom i won't mention, MOM!!! I have decided to continue writing in here again. But unfortunately not today, as I am short on time and must go to work. But stay posted for some of my post ice experiences and current events, to include some of my most terrifying experiences and memorable times in my life thus far after coming off the ice.

This will be quick.... I'm done!!!! I never thought I would see the day. I have heard the term used so often, "it is bittersweet" and it truly is. I am going to miss this place, not sure if I will ever return, I almost want to stay, it would be easier. But now I am packed room is cleaned and all I have to do is leave. According to doughnut of misery i have done 417.5 days, and only have .5 days left. I cant make myself believe that I will be in Christchurch tomorrow. It is like when a kid knows he is going to disney land in the summer and seems like it will never come. I'm out, I'm out im out im out im out, I'M OUT!!!!!!!!

I love day bar. Not really, it is a great ruin-er of a perfectly good day. But sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I had been heckling people day in and day out for the last week to come to what is hopefully my last day bar experience. Down here during win-fly and summer they have the bar open in the mornings to accommodate the night workers. Well having our 24 hour shift at the firehouse allows us to go to day bar if we so chose. Day bar is not that great though, you always end up with a hang over and waste an entire day no matter how hard you try. But none the less I had to go one more time, and this saturday was the last chance I could go with Pete, so go we did. Day bar is quite the experience, it is in southern (our smoking bar) and only essential lights are on. So when you first walk in you have to blindly stumble through the dark and hope you don't run into anyone or anything. And if on your way in you open both doors (the outside door and inside the vestibule door) at the same time and happen to let some light in you will be met with several vampire like stairs and hisses. Then from there if you are lucky day bar dave is bar tending and has pink floyd or zz top videos playing on the big screen all morning. He is also the only bar tender I have met ( i have not met many mind you) that will buy rounds for the house and partake in those rounds himself. Awesome pretty much describes it. This time around the big screen was broke so no pink floyd, but there were steaks and tortilla chips, perfect to go with that early morning whiskey.... Much to my surprise though many of the people I heckled actually showed up to include the captain, andre, moose, greg,poobaka,dan, geniveve and pete did make it despite going to the winter over party the night before. It was a great last day bar hoorah. Not surprisingly after closing down the bar at 1pm, I woke up on my couch in my room around 4pm showered had dinner and went back to the bar for the music festivities that were going on that night. Day is already ruined might as well do it up right. When in Rome right? essentially i closed down the same bar twice in one day! Day started with wake up call in firehouse at 7am, drinking commenced at 8am, and basically ended at 230am the next day. This is what Antarctica is like. I don't want to give the wrong impression though, this kind of thing only happens on special occasions.... I will have to see if genevive has any pics to post, later maybe.

So it has been a while since a post.... and I still don't really know what to write about. This, that, I don't know...Life lately has been kind of a blah. The new guys are all good guys, and I am actually enjoying training them. It is kind of odd to me, I can remember reading Mcpenguins journal a year ago when I got here where he was talking about getting here and knowing nothing, and after his year being the pro. It is kind of true, i have learned so much in the last year. For example this is my first fire job, and I am already teaching part of the driver operator class! Back home I still would not be allowed to sit in the drivers seat.

I have learned that the fresh fruit is really not a blessing but a curse in disguise. All the fresh food has been a curse in fact. It all tastes so good, but my body is so used to the preservative loaded frozen entrees that I have been eating for the last 6-7 months. I will save you the bowell talk but lets just put it this way, all the fresh food makes for an unhappy muffins shortly after meals.

Oh I got to drive a tucker the other day!!! One of my final conquests on ice. Tuckers are these old tractors that they used to use for the South pole traverse, and are still used now around town and out at field camps for grunt work. They are just really cool old looking trucks, like what you would expect to see in Antarctica. In fact there is one in the x-files movie towards the end I believe. Anyway I got to drive it out to turtle rock, where I did my overnight camping trip earlier in the season. It was a freakin blast, closest thing to driving my jeep that I have done since arriving here.

All in all I have been in kind of nostalgia mode lately as I will be leaving all this, and this beautiful place soon. I talk to some of the people that are just getting here about my experiences, knowing they wont really appreciate what I am telling them until they do it themselves. One person in particular, Geniveve, our dispatcher is just starting a 14 month contract like the one I am finishing. Good luck Geniveve I am sure you will have just as unique of an experience as I have had.

Here is my hero shot next to the tucker we took out


And here is another for good measure

Ok ok, I don't really know what to write, I just had to make an entry. I SAW THE SUN TODAY!!!!!! probably the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. It was quite unimpressive to the new firefighter that was sitting in the truck with me that I was unconsciously ignoring completely cause I could not stop staring at the giant orange ball. I just stared at it, ok it hurts stop staring, ok look back, ouch stop, ok look back. I stared so much both with my sunglasses on and off, that when the captain said we could stand down from our hard stand positions i had to stop for a minute (after putting the truck in reverse and giving it some gas) because I flat out could not see. We were probably careening towards something or someone but who cares, I got to see the sun. Last sighting was April 19th, I thought it was gone. Now I feel that I have wintered. I think I am doing well so far with the new guys, when I have had enough I just walk away for a bit, no big deal. ok I have a lot of things going through my head (like alot, not like before when a lot was thinking both about what was for dinner and what day it was) and can't decide what else to write right now, so bye

Alright well I am sitting here just like on all previous overnight dispatch shifts, but this one is different as it is my last. Tomorrow the first flight of winfly will be coming in and bringing along with it 137 new faces and taking out with it 13 (or so) of my fellow companions. This time tomorrow they will be sitting in christ church drinking fresh beer, eating fresh food and enjoying many of the things they have been deprived of for the past 6 months or so.

The first official sunrise was today, all 14 minutes or so of its glory, but imagine this we are in Antarctica and the weather did not cooperate so I didn't get to see it. I am hoping when I work the second flight on wed it will be a clear day. If my memory serves me correctly (which it probably does not) I haven't seen the sun since April 19th or so, and we haven't had a flight since February 24th.

In all the grumbling and bitching and general grumpiness that is winter I leave it with only fond memories of hanging out in my room with my closest friends telling stories, drinking ocasionally, and having a good time. Even the things that vexed me most of winter seem funny now and will become those "remember when" stories later on. My room here is sort of a transient hang out room. There are the regulars that can be expected to be there, but I also get a lot of wanderers that stop by on occasion. That has been my favorite part about the winter, just hanging out and learning things about people and hearing their stories as many people down here have led very interesting lives. One thing I have noticed though is that no matter how varied their upbringing or where they are from so many people share so many similar childhood experiences and memories. We are all a little alike.

Well enough of the corny nostalgia talk, soon it will be winfly, I am excited, scared, indifferent, anxious, and happy all at once and know that my last few months down here will be just as fun and interesting as the previous.

I do have an antarctic service medal now though with the cool
little "wintered over" pin that goes on it, nah nah nah nah nah!

Oh and countdown to a year on ice is less than a day. Not sure why I think that is so cool, many people have done it, many more will, and it is nothing super special, but I think it is cool.




And here is a pic of some of the runway lights out at Pegasus

So again I have been slacking on the journal entries, but here is another. A lot of cool things have happened since my last entry and it all started with a clear forecast. I think it was two weekends ago now me and a friend from the sar team set out for an overnight trip to learn how to deal with the elements a little. We have tried several times this winter to do one of these overnights, and every time bad weather has come in. Now I know should we get called out and have to spend a night or two out it is probably going to be bad weather so poor excuse right? Well yeah but also if we are going to get a call out it is going to be during that bad weather and we should probably stay close to town and ready as well. Earlier in the season they made it out for one overnight trip but unfortunately I had to work, so this was to be my last chance and we got a clear forecast for the entire weekend, actually supposed to be great weather. The whole trip out and the time it took us to set up our tent was actually very nice, not really cold and no wind to speak of. Camping out in around -20f weather is actually quit fun, but requires a little more work than just regular camping. That night was pretty windy all night and we had to dig out of the tent the next morning due to all of the blowing snow. Not exactly what I call clear, but hey no worries yet.

After digging out of our tent we start the generator to warm the Hagglund up, and start building a snow wall for the tent should the weather get worse as we were planning on coming back that night to stay again. Well Around nine or ten we get a call from the firehouse saying it is about to go to condition 1 out on the sea ice (a bit surprising but it had been a bit windy all morning) so we start deciding if we should bunker in and finish the snow wall or pack our things and head back to town. Tough decision actually as it would be just as fun to stay and tent it in condition 1 as it would be to try to drive back to town in condition one. We had plenty of supplies and or equipment to do either, but never having really used our gps and radar on the hagglunds in real time situation we decide to pack it up and head home.

Just as we get out of the hagglund and start to pack up the tent it hits us. I had to lay on the tent and inch up as Brion rolled it up to keep it from blowing away. Now that we have our things gathered it is time to start heading back. Using a combination of our radar to find the flags on the road and the gps to routfind we begin our 6 hour 7 mile trip back home (that had taken us about an hour the night before) We would spot a flag and drive towards it until we passed it and then just drive by electronics till we could see another flag. The first half of the trip was slow but not to bad. We finally came to the castle rock loop trail and decided to sit and take a short break. Once we decided to start moving again we discovered the shifter had frozen into the "N" position. The shifter in the Hagglund is inside the vehicle and sits right next to the isolated engine, but the air flowing through the intake had frozen it into neutral! After taking some things apart and pouring some warm water on the mechanism we were off again. By the time we made it down to the sea ice the weather was at full bore. It got to a point where we could not even see the ground or anything past the 8" or so nose of the hagglund. At one point I had to say "STOP those are black flags" signifying a crevasse or other sort of danger. At another point we almost ran into a large wood post sticking out of the ground. At this place in the sea ice all the flags have been removed so there is nothing to pick up on radar,and there is absolutely zero visibility so we were strictly driving by looking at the GPS screen. Once we got near the Transition to get back onto rock at scott base we could no longer trust the GPS so there was no other choice than to get out and tie off to the Haggy and lead it. I was the first one out. My goggles iced over almost immediately so I pulled them down to see. I was taken to the ground a few times due to the strength of the wind. After a short time the area where my goggles were had formed a sheet of ice as well and I could not see so I had to get back in. The weather died down a bit at this point and Brian lead us the rest of the way to scott base where we were advised by McMurdo station management to stay and wait it out. An awesome trip. The Storm wreaked a little havoc in town as well pushing a few mil vans around (those big metal containers used on cargo ships), throwing dumpsters everywhere and tearing enough siding and parts off of dorm 209 to see the interior walls and studding.

I also got a chance on another training to rappel down into this huge crevasse that we found, and then for another training I went back in and reclaimed all the rope and ice screws we had left behind, the pictures will tell the story here.

We have 4 more days till first sun rise in which I will be helping to lead a boondoggle out to the pegasus plane to watch the sunrise, pray for clear skies. We have only 5 more days till the first flight of Winfly. I am both excited and scared for all the new people to be arriving. Well this is getting fairly long, so laters for now

Here are the criteria for different weather conditions here in McMurdo
*Severe Weather Condition 1
Issued when at least one of the following conditions is occurring or imminent:
Sustained wind speed greater than 55 knots
Wind chill temperature colder than -100°F (-73°C)
Visibility less than 100 feet

*Severe Weather Condition 2
Issued when at least one of the following conditions is occurring or imminent:
Sustained wind speed 48 knots to 55 knots
Wind chill temperature -75°F (-60°C) to -100°F (-73°C)
Visibility 1/4 mile to 100 feet

*Severe Weather Condition 3 (or normal weather)
Issued when all conditions exceed criteria for Condition 2

And here are a few pics of the Crevasse that the SAR team found and trained in

This is a picture from the end of the 100 meter rope line we set up


Here is me about to ascend out at the entrance


And here is a view from the "Cathedral" just inside the entrance

So I never really thought I "missed" the sun. I mean of course it would be nice to see daylight again, but it is just dark all the time and I never really thought about it. But Seeing the light from over the horizon and seeing the color actually gets my heart racing. So lately I have been looking up pictures and videos on the internet of the sun and sunrises, and every one makes me skip a breath....

So the sun has begun its long journey back. The world didn't end while I was down here, there is still hope. Hope in the form of beautiful reds/oranges/and blues that light up the horizon signifying the return of the sun. And the sun returning means my time down here is also coming to an end.

I still have a couple months, but time has flown so far this winter and it is about to get busy with the hustle and bustle of getting ready for the new guys and our new chief. I think that my crusty-ness peaks when thinking about the new people coming down and invading my life. They will be taking up space in the room I have had to myself for the past few months, using the bathroom during my "time slot" in the morning, getting in the way in the galley, and asking stupid questions. Basically they will be spitting images of me when I first arrived here in McMurdo last August.

It is very hard to believe I have been here almost a year, August 20th will be a year and there will be celebration. In all reality though it will be nice to get new excited tanned faces here to provide my rotting brain with some stimulation.

Travel plans are also starting to come together, as well as the gear I ordered for my trip on the way down to the ice. All and all very exciting.

I also got to be the patient in our last SAR training. It was one of the best trainings that I have done.

Here are a few pics of the like 30 minutes of hope we get every day, and it is getting longer, with the first official sunrise coming sometime late in August.







And here are a few shots of Brian and I on our last training









Whoops... how did that one get in there, well that is what winter will do to ya...

Alright here is the moment you have all been waiting for.... I have finally procured the photos and video from my day at the waste water treatment plant (refer to the entry "Just another day on the job" or somthing along those lines)

Here is "Poobaka" (Mark Scowdin) taking a sample


Me ("Honorary Poobaka") Holding the tools I needed for the job


And Here is the Video taken by my friend Andrew Calhoun, a fellow fire fighter, on one of the days I was working down at the Poo Plant (Waste Water Treatment Plant to be politically correct)

Writing in here is becoming more and more difficult. it is not that there is nothing to write about, or that I don't want to write. It is that every time I come up with something I want to put in my journal, or a whitty way to write about something, by the time I am in dispatch again I can never remember what I wanted to put in here. That or as soon as I begin to type all my thoughts leave my mind. That is the way things have been going lately. Even when I am talking to people lately, I will come up with the words I want to say to someone and then when I speak something totally different comes out of my mouth. I will think the word sometimes and say always, I can't figure it out. This is what happens without the sun I think.

People are getting a little cranky as well (as am I). It is ok though because everyone understands, someone blows up for no reason, no worries, just leave them alone for a bit. Someone is complaining a lot, just listen to them let it out.

It is all ok though only 6 more weeks till winfly when all the new shiny happy faces arrive. I have it coming to me, I bet we will get one of the most bubbly excited happy to be here eager to please and learn and wide eyed person ever. I look back at how excited I was to be here and full of questions I was when I first arrived last winfly and can't believe I made it through alive. Now I will get to see it from the other side of the fence. I have already been having dreams of people getting here and meeting our new chief. Lets just say I hope it turns out better in real life than it has in my dreams.

Enough of the negative stuff though, this past friday we celebrated the 4th on the 6th. It was a very fun time. I am always amazed at what the people in this town can pull together to make it just as fun as home. There was a dunk tank, live tarot readings, face painting, good BBQ, frisbee toss, and a guess booth. We had everything but the fireworks.

I have also ordered my tent and pack for the traveling I plan on doing off the ice, I am starting to get excited about that too.

So although I live a rather boring and uneventful life down here over the winter, every once in a while something quite unexpected happens. (or I do something unexpected, but that usually ends in a lot of weird looks in the galley the next morning). But anyways, I never know what the next day may bring here at the AFD. For two days this week I was proudly bestowed with the title of honorary poobaka! Poobaka is the name that we have given to our friendly neighborhood waste water treatment plant operator, and I got to lend him a helping hand for a few days. If you have ever seen the show dirty jobs where the host gets to help changing a pump at the bottom of one of the waste tanks, then you already know what I a talking about. Now the tanks and facilities down here are not as large, and i didn't have to change a pump, but I did get to aid in some annual maintenance of the tanks. Now in case you are not quite with me, that means dealing with shit, quite literally. Every year a few of the tanks have to be "drained," cleaned and inspected. Now I say "drained" because there is still about 6-8" of standing "sludge." Poobaka (or Mark as the laypeople call him) has to go down into the tanks via a ladder tied off to the railing around the tanks and inspect/maintain them and the diffusers that run air to the bottom to keep everything mixed up and moving around. As you can imagine these diffusers can and do get clogged. The interesting part is what they get clogged with. I know you are thinking poo, but lets be mature here, they get clogged with hair. Lots and lots of hair, I could not believe how much hair came out of the bottom of these tanks. There were also bunches of it (like 5 gallon bucket fulls) all tangled on the masticater. (this big propeller thing that churns it all up) This is where I came in, once mark filled this gigantic bucket with the gobs of sloppy soaked fecal matter and hair and sludge from around the diffusers he would clip the bucket to a rope and up I would haul it up. I got to haul poop (and hair) for two days!!! From there I would pour it out of the bucket into a bag lined trash can and then send the bucket back down for another fill. You can imagine the attention to the tools he took down with him was great. Don't want to drop anything down there. But, it happened, and a screwdriver had to be rescued. Mark had to muck around the tanks anyway to search for foreign debree so sloshing around he went, moving his feet back and forth through the sludge. The tanks are about 60-80 feet long and you can see the trail where mark walked through the sludge the entire way. It was quite the adventure. There were some pics and videos taken, but I have to procure them, so they will come later.

On a brighter.....wait warmer....no happier....no not that either, on another note, it has been getting colder down here. Finally I am experiencing Antarctic weather. This summer was quite mild, as expected, but so has the winter. Overall I have been disappointed in my "Antarctic experience" because of how mild the weather has been. don't get me wrong, an average of probably -15 ambient is not warm, but it is hardly harsh. But lately the temps have finally been dropping. Just the other day the ambient was down near -40 and the windchills dropped to almost -70. Now if we could just get one really good storm!!!!

I am also reaching the 100 day mark. The countdown started at over 400. I can't believe I have been here that long! I estimate getting home early to mid November. Well for now that is all, but who knows what tomorrow could hold....

Here is a shot from an impromptu photo shoot the other day with Tanker 3 and I


And here is a teaser of the shots from the poo plant, more to come...



Oh and here is another of me with tanker, look how happy I am when I am with her....

Allright, so here is the down and dirty since last entry.

Mid Winter dinner and festivities... awesome, amazing, one of the most memorable moments down here and probably one of the best meals I have ever eaten.

Sandwich's b-day, ice b-days are always cool

Waste Freakout party. didn't make it, I was on duty and otherwise unmotivated.

and... I finally did my winter polar plunge, the mid-winter polar plunge. I said I would do one in the summer and one in the winter. It is quite cold as the water is below freezing due to salt content and outside wind chill was -40. But, as bad as it sounds it is not all that bad. It is over quickly. But on the other side of it, I do not enjoy it all that much. It is damn cold, and now I have done it once in the summer and once in the winter, now I am done.

Ok, so it has been a while since I have posted, and I have defineatly missed a few dispatch shifts. It is a bit hard to find something to write about when all the days run together do to being the same. The only difference for the most part from day to day is what I eat. Such is the motivation for this entry.

The other day our entire fire crew was invited to the kiwi base for a tour of their supression systems (I know boring) and lunch. The food was very good, probably the same to them as our food is to us. There is just so much you can do with frozen food and no new shipments for 4 months. But needles to say a different flavor was very good, and they are only cooking for 20 instead of the 120 our galley prepares for so their food noticabely has a little more love poured into it. On the downside when we went outside to the truck to leave the transmission was overheating. Whenever we go anywhere we have to leave the truck running to operate the pump so the water does not freeze. Well it being winter and T3 has set in I did not leave the truck in the proper gear causing the overheating tranny. No big deal though just sit for a bit to let it cool, no worries....WRONG. Upon moving the truck a bit we noticed probably several gallons of tranny fluid spiiled in the snow. Again you might think not a huge deal, the truck will make it home, and the fluid will need changing, but still not a huge deal. But for those of you who have been here before and know what a spill means here, it turned into a huge deal, going all the way up to denver and back and forth with piles of paperwork needing to be filled out. The fact that it was at Scott Base made it international. I caused an international incident, sweet!

Next food topic, tommorrow is the mid-winter dinner. A tradition carried on in Antarcticas since the 50's. All the stations invite each other to their respective festivities, knowing no one can show up but it is tradition. I am pretty excited for it the food should be awesome, and it signifies being about 3/4 of the way done with the contract.

It is also prepetually dark now, no glimmer of hope to the north around noon anymore, completely utterly dark. It will be that way till about august I guess when that glimmer will slowly turn into the glorious day when I stare at the sun till my eyes hurt.

I have also started challenging myself to see how long I can really sleep. I am quite impressed with my abilities so far. staying in bed through lunch on most days off after passing out the previous night just after dinner. I think I am slipping into hibernation, and it passes the time.

Oh and for others who have been here before the biggest drama lately has been the frosty boy machine being out of order, holy cow is that a big deal for some folks. I say they are better off without it.

We have also recently been given the opportunity to reply to some middle school children's letters from a teacher who is a former ice person. The kids letters tell about the summer time back home and have a few questions for whichever winterover they reach. Let me be the first to say that those kids be smart. And then there is me, the crusty winterover who has been here for about 10 months, again t3 well worked in. I don't think I could write to their level right now....

Well anywho untill next time, hopefully next dispatch shift...

Another pic of me from the summer becuase, well... all the pictures of the dark look the same!


oh and a little known fact, the word arctic comes from the greek word artik, or bear, therefore the name antarctica actually litterally means no bears, there are no polar bears here!

I have started looking at the countdowns I promised myself I would never look at. Nine months though, I am in the home stretch.

Things that I look forward to back home...
1.family
2.my car
3.home cooked meals
4.lots of restaurants to chose from
5.my own bathroom
6.spending money
7.green grass
8.fresh beer
9.The Rocky Mountains
10.Driving my Jeep just cause

Things I will miss from the Ice
1.my "ice family"
2.free gas
3.free food
4.the leftover fridge, again free and always stocked
5.not having to clean my bathroom
6.saving money
7.although there is no green down here, there are also no bugs or snakes or other creepy crawlies
8.cheap beer, actually who am I kidding I probably won't miss mcmurdo beer, but maybe the people I drink it with
9. The Royal Society
10. Driving engine down to the wharf every day just cause


I love putting in pictures that have nothing to do with my entry, this is why we call one of our airfields down here "Pegasus Airfield"

I almost did not post an entry tonight due to lack of enthusiasm/motivation/not knowing exactly what I wanted to write. But I just got back from another amazing saturday night dinner at the galley which inspired me to write. Now had I not been working tonight, dinner would have lasted potentially hours as it is what we call "family meal" (at least among those of us who sit with our group on these nights). Saturday nights we are allowed to bring beer and wine to the galley and enjoy it with dinner (usually italian). There is usually several hours of people coming and going and story telling and laughter, the whole bit. Tonight was spaghetti and meat balls (the meat balls are to die for) and for dessert were these amazing cupcakes. I called them death in a paper bucket because of how good they were. All in all dinner made me happy despite eating alone....

Which brings me to my next topic. Lately I have been becoming a bit more reclusive, eating in my room, hiding after work, sleeping a lot more and so on. Now some might label this as S.A.D. (standing for Seasonal Affective Disorder, which just makes me laugh) It is said to be caused by not having daylight for long periods of time causing sleep irregularities, social withdrawal, and just overall crankiness. There have been studies on it and using light therapy and so on to "cure" it along with helping the affected person to be more socially active. What better place than down here to study it? I have decided to conduct my own studies using myself as a subject. No really I am feeling fine, and although I joke it is a real thing, but we just had a small lecture on it as part of our station wide safety stand down today. The safety stand down was just a way to heighten safety awareness and give people a break from their usual 6 day work week so as to relax a bit. I will have to write more some time on the studies they do down here on us, like vitamin D studies, reduced core body temperatures, among others.

Generally though most recently people have seemed more relaxed due to the fact that our MCI drill is over (Mass Casualty Incident) that they conduct down here every season. It is just a drill that is conducted should something go wrong and medical/us at the firehouse are overwhelmed with patients, and the whole town participates. Some are stretcher bearers, some people have medical skills that are utilized, some people simply record what is going on, while others act as a security team. It is something that everyone just wanted to get over with so they could stop worrying about it, and now it is over and it is as if a weight has been lifted off of everyone's shoulders ( I say worrying about the drill induces S.A.D.ness ).

I also just recently had another one of those "f@^#$* Antarctica" moments as I like to call them. Moments where I just go wow at something I see or experience that is just phenomenal. So I was sitting in my room the other day (once again being reclusive) "watching" a movie (sleeping on my couch with a movie playing) when I heard the "Attention station 1, Attention station 1, please respond to building 147 for a master fire alarm" over the radio I keep in my room. That is what our tones go out like, and spring into action I did. We don't get many calls down here, and just like usual it was a false alarm. Well false alarm of sorts, this time it was not a malfunctioning alarm device, but a truly overheated building. The greenhouse to be exact, which we would not want to lose. That is all besides the fact though (the greenhouse was fine) the real wow part comes next. So as the building is being cleared myself and a fellow firefighter noticed it looked like the auroras, or southern lights, were out. Sure enough after clearing the scene I decided to take the truck a little ways down the road to scott base to get out of town a litte where the light pollution from town would not be as bad. Now I have seen auroras before over winfly, but never like this. They are almost like a presence in the sky, these huge green clouds whisping through the night sky. No where else in the world (that I know of) would I be able to be driving home from a call and stop to see the auroras, truly breath taking. F!@#$% Antarctica!!!!

Wow long entry,
to conclude maybe I am perfectly happy being S.A.D.!!!

Weather forceast for tomorrow - COLD, look at the windchill.

It is funny down here over the winter how much it takes to feel accomplished, or like you really did a lot in a day. Example: yesterday I did laundry, and went to the gym.... that is HUGE! at the end of the day I could sit there, ok lay there on my couch exhausted and think to myself, "man I really got a lot done today." And this was a day off so it is not like I did this after work or something, that was the whole day. Ok I mean I did more than that. For instance I managed to slip in reading an 8 page chapter out of my EMT book in between all the ruckus of the day. Oh Oh and I even did a little bit of partying at the end of the day, whew, rough day! It was Moose's birthday party, a week late to surprise him. Moose is a very large man, probably tips the scale at just over 300 lbs, and that is not exaggerating. After paging him to get him to leave the radio station with the efforts of probably 20 people he was taken down, hog tied, loaded onto the lift gate of a truck, and then driven to the SSC where he as molested with make up and a tiara. From there it went to the bar, and then it was just like any other night at the bar where a lot of people drink a lot of boos.

In other news I have decided to quit fire fighting and become a full time pinsetter. Now I pinset all summer and did not particularly like it, but the benifits were not as good as the winter. lets just say that between tips and wages I made more pinsetting in three hours than I ever will as a firefighter. Wait back up, I guess a lot of you may not know that we do have a two lane bowling alley down here. It is a little old though, and the pins have to be reset "manually." They just have to be manually loaded into the machine that sets them into place and the ball has to be rolled back. There has been rumor that brunswick wanted to donate two brand new state of the art bowling lanes to McMurdo in exchange for the old ones so they could put them in a museum. Nostalgia ruled that out though and instead of retiring them and putting them into a museum we will just keep using them.

Here is a picture of me in action at the bowling alley

Hello! So today we had a town wide power outage. No worries the power is back on now, but it was a bit eerie. When you live in a place that is draped with darkness for months on end and too cold to sustain life, then a power outage can be a very serious thing. This one happened to be because of a simple mistake, where all the towns power was momentarily running off of one of the three generators that it normally takes to run the town. This of course overloaded that generator causing it to shut down. Now even if the power plant did go down many of the buildings on station have their own generators so it would not be the end. In fact there is a huge generator in building 155 (the building I live in, and also houses our galley among many other things) that is said to be able to run the town on its own, limping of course. The firehouse is also self sustaining along with our medical building each having their own generators. But none the less, when the power went out I headed to work (whenever there is even a partial outage, we get alarms from all affected buildings that we could potentially have to run on, and this one being a town wide outage, there were probably upwards of 200 alarms coming through our monitoring device in the firehouse) The walk from 155 to work was a very eerie one, with all the lights in town out, all the smoke stacks from the builings absent of the steam from furnaces, the noise of the power plant gone....it was a very wierd feeling. There is an expression down here that "we may as well be on the moon" because the possibility of anyone coming down here or any of us leaving is so dim. Now there have been instances of emergency medivacs and such mid-winter in the past, but the amount of money and man power it takes to get just one person out of here is astronomical, and can not happen in just one day. Sometimes I forget where I am, I live here with near the ammenities of home, and in relative comfort. But then I remember I am in Antarctica and it is a harsh continent, another phrase used often down here when something simple happens like someone's watch breaks, "it is a harsh continent" so it takes a comical tone, yet so true.

Here is a picture of McMurdo from the air during the summer...

And here is a picture of some of the "natural lighting" we have down here behind Ob Hill

So I wake up this morning, much as I have many times before, somewhat unaware of where I am and how I got there. This morning it was to this egh egh egh egh egh egh egh, ok thats my alarm clock, I will just roll over and turn it off. WHAM thats the floor, apparently I am not in my bed, but instead on the ground next to the couch that has stolen countless hours from my life. So after I get the coordination to get up and silence the alarm that has managed to live this long through many unhappy awakenings and the thrashings that ensues, I inspect the room for clues as to how the previous night went. Not surprisingly sitting there on the coffee table looking at me is one opened but untouched beer. Seems that every night of drinking ends for me exactly the same, I open that one last tasty cold can or bottle of golden drink and sit down on my couch only to wake up anywhere between 2 and 8 hours later to discover one now warm stale smelling can or bottle of golden drink. Last night as many of you may know was cinco de mayo, and believe me when there is any reason to drink in McMurdo, especially if that reason happens to fall on a saturday night, shenanigans will ensue. It was actually a tame night, but i was introduced to the corner bar. Anyone reading this either in mactown, or previous residents of mactown, know exactly of what I speak. A friendly place for all. This bar is funded by cursing, as if you curse you owe money to the pot in the middle of the room. I don't know why I have never been to this place before, but it won't be my last visit.

It is finally dark all the time, and this ugly muddy little town has turned into the beautiful white "paradise" it was when I first got here last August. I am so glad the snow is back. I still can't get over the fact though that I missed out on probably the largest blizzard back home since I have been alive. And I wasn't like on some beautiful vacation, I was in antarctica experiencing the 45 degrees that the summer offered walking around in the mud. Although now all the beutiful landscapes are gone from sight and it is as if the world is no larger than this little town blessed by darkness for the next few months. Despite this though I really like it now, it is cold dark and windy just as I imagined Antarctica would be.

Latest rumor is that the galley staff has been working on some ice cream, real ice cream made with whatever can be scrounged up. You see since i have been here all I have had in the way of ice cream has been frosty boy (soft serve) and the occasional gift from my kiwi neighbors. Don't get me wrong frosty boy is amazing, and there are many ways of enjoying it, but REAL ICE CREAM. I can't wait. Probably 90 percent of all conversations had with my buddy pete are centered around some sort of food that we love/miss from home. I am getting hungry typing about it, so I better leave off here....

Saying: we are who we protect, just thought I would throw that in there.



I leave you with another random picture from my Antarctic experiences. This is from one of the many hardstands I did over the summer for flights.

Hey how goes it? Hope life is going well for all who read this. Life is good on this side. Last saturday we had the firewood party. It was a party put on by the one carpenter on station and various efforts of us (the firehouse) hence the name firewood. Unfortunately there was and can be no fire, any open flames are "illegal" down here, probably for the better. But, it was a good time never the less. We had live music all night. I was totally amazed at the tallent the people that are here this winter have. That is the thing about this place, I don't know what is more incredible... the land or the people. I have met some amazing people down here from many places and aspects of life. It seems that every one down here brings something to the table. Many have traveled the world over and the only thing they have to call home is a sorage garage, or here. Many of the people travel all over the world both for recreation and work while in the off season, or in their "real life" as it is referred to on the ice. I amlost feel as if I don't deserve to be down here among some of these people, but then I realize many of their interesting journies started off coming down here just as I hope that mine might. There is a saying here that the first time you come down is for the adventure, the second time is for the money, and the third is because you don't fit in anywhere else in the world. So true, so true. To truly understand this you are just going to have to come down and see it for yourself. Yesterday I had my once a month D.A. duty, known also as dining assistant. Because of the budget cuts and personell cutbacks there is only one paid D.A. down here and that is not near enought to get all the dishes and various cleaning around the galley done. I thought that I had cleaned my last food service tray a while ago when I quit my job at good old Krispy Kreme, little did I know that I would be cleaning more as a firefighter in Antarctica. Funny how things turn out in life. It is good though because everyone does one shift a month, from us here at the firehouse, to our doctor over at medical to the station manager. Additionaly every work center on station has house mouse duties, varying from vacuming the dorms, to taking out trash, and cleaning lounges. Sometimes when I look at this place it makes me think of this episode of the simpsons where you live in this town "owned" by the company, and you report to your workcenters, and everyone eats at the same place. Big brother is watching you (Raytheon and the good old NSF), makes me laugh. Well I really could not think of what I wanted to write about tonight and have just been rambling so I think I am gonna call it here tonight, if there is something you would like to hear about you are just going to have to ask me.

Random picture for a random entry, I love you Tanker 3