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)