While the sun is back and that is giving a lot of people hope, there are still plenty of people who just want or need to get out of here. Our collection mental health isn't the strongest so I put together a little survey (with stolen Internet artwork) to survey just where folks are.
There are 3 main berthing/sleeping areas on station, A1, A4, and B1. I lived in A4 for 2-3 weeks then moved to A1 as A4 is closed for the winter. During the summer, there is some housing in summer camp (top of the photo above) where they can put quite a few people.
The berthings are simple. They each have an upstairs and downstairs. When you enter, you go to the left or right hallway. Each hall way has 8 exterior rooms and 4 interior rooms. The interior rooms from each hallway overlap like if you press your fingers together from the opposite hands. All the doors are so close, but you can often still hear them opening and closing. It can be tough for the night workers.
When I wintered at McMurdo, I took the time to really dress up and change my room around. This time, I did not do that at all. I was too tired from not sleeping and focused on learning my new job. The one big changed that I made was I took out the two 3-drawer dressers from under the bed and lowered my bed. I did not want a step stool to get in and out every day. It seemed like a recipe to slip and fall when I was tired.
The last major public space on base is the galley. Over the summer, it is divided into a giant dining hall for 150 people and a small coffee bar. During the winter, we only have to sit 41 folks so we divide it in a smaller dining hall, Club 90 South, and the Coffee Bar.
The smaller seating area rarely has more than 20 folks in it. It's a bit like the school cafeteria. Some people sit in the same seats every time. Other folks move around. My favorite part of the seating area is the view outside when the windows coverings are off or the art and photos we have printed on the coverings.
Without a doubt, one of my favorite parts of being down here is not thinking about food. That applies to cooking or to going shopping for it. On Sundays, the kitchen staff gets the day and we all eat leftovers. We have the option to be trained up on using the kitchen, which I happily skipped. I'll just go for cereal and microwaved leftovers on the weekend.
On the way out of the galley, you drop your dishes off. The kitchen staff cleans the dishes during the day, but everyone else takes turns washing the dinner dishes. I spend a bunch of time in here so I can keep my skills sharp for when I move back home. Kin-Ling has to keep me around for something.
My next to favorite spot in the galley is just past the dish pit on the way out, the Pet Wall. Some folks put up new photos every week. I just put up a few of some of my favorite past pups. Sabah and Casper are on right there. The little pick me ups that we hang up around station go a long way for keeping morale up.
This last photo is of the galley all fancied up. The biggest holiday we have down here in the winter is Midwinter dinner. At that point, the sun is as far away as it is going to get. From that day forward, the day the sun is going to show itself again just gets closer and closer.
Today's quick post is about A3, where my office is. My office is in a giant room with a 13 seat computer lab and 12 office cubicles. In year's past, there wasn't wireless so the station computer lab was a major hub of activity. Now that we allow laptops and cell phones to connect, this space is not well used. I am sure it gets a little more action in the summer with the population quadruples.
Just past the campus computer, there are twelve computer cubicles for facilities, waste, food, safety, and fuels departments. Nothing sexy there, just lots of fun and silly decorations.
The last piece of the big room is my office. The network admin sits on the right. As the sys admin, I sit dead center in this photo. During the summer, a PC tech sits just to the right of me. There is an extra squished space for an extra person to the left. It is squished because we installed a 3D printer a couple years ago. It gets a little recreational use, like to print tripod leg caps, but we also use it to print tools for the mechanics or toilet paper holder replacemnts.
Just past my office is medical. They can do all the basic stuff really well, but nothing fancy. They would strongly prefer that we don't hurt ourselves. In between, there is a large hall way with photos of every wintreover crew from 1957 to last year. We just started planning our own photo last week. With folks on various shifts, it can be tough to get everyone in a single photo, let alone dressed in all their gear for an outdoor photo.
I think my favorite spot on station is on the A2 lower level, the greenhouse. Nothing grows outside at the South Pole so the greenhouse is our only source of greenery. Not only that, but it gives us a small source of fresh vegetables. At one point, the greenhouse person was an officially funded position, but it is now all volunteer run. I volunteer there 1-2x a week to make sure I spend soak up some green goodness.
Each day, greenhouse volunteers plant 12 seeds on the germinating tray. The idea is that we always have new stuff coming in as old stuff gets pulled out. After the seeds start to sprout, they get moved into trays attached to the hydroponic system.
After the seedlings are moved into the trays, we spend weeks and months watching them grow and waiting for the goodness. If we are lucky, we get something like the next few photos. If we are unlucky, seedlings don't germinate or things die before they grow.
A chart of all our harvests from this winter
Unfortunately, this year, we have developed a small bug infestation. Bugs??!!? How did that happen? We have no idea. The most likely answer is that they were from dormant eggs that got shipped up in something else. They did not jump from our fresh vegetable supply to the greenhouse because there was a couple month gap between the freshies running out and the bugs popping up. Luckily, we are able to share with the bugs and still get good harvests. We keep the bugs from getting too out of hand by spraying the plants with alcohol. We will have to clean out the entire greenhouse and bleach it to get rid of them at the end of winter. After that, it will take a couple months before the summer folks get harvests, but they should have regular fresh vegetables being flown in.
What the bugs leave for us is definitely appreciated. I can't wait to get back to infinite fresh food at home. Almost everything we have hear is expired. There was a decaf Folgers coffee can advertising that they were an official sponsor of the 1984 Olympic team.
Just past the greenhouse is our post office and station store. The store has basic toiletries, drinks, snacks, and souvenirs, but they definitely don't have everything. I lost my nail clippers and was unable to buy some there. They probably have about a bottle of alcohol per person per week. I think that is what the quota is per person per week. I don't buy any so I don't know. They also have quotas on the most popular snacks and soft drinks so that no one person buys all of them. I know we already ran out of Doritos and folks definitely miss them. As expected if you know me, I stick to the free snacks from the galley or the few I brought from home.
Today's ramble will just walk us down the left side of the lower level hallway of A pod. On the right, A1 and A4 start with bathrooms and then split into two hallways with ~12-20 berthing rooms per hallway. Some rooms are internal with no windows, which some folks love in the summer when the sun does not set. The rest are external rooms with windows. Unfortunately, our windows have to be covered up for about 3/4 of winter so no white light escapes station and throws off the scientific cameras.
The first room of interest in A3 is the Quiet Reading Room or library. There is a great Antarctica history section here and a bunch of other good books. However, some folks just use the room to get away to a quiet space, but station is almost always bustling. In the summer, finding a room to hang with your friends can be tough so folks often end up there.
The next room up is the laundry room. Laundry and detergent are free. We are limited to one load per week.
Just past the Laundry room is the volunteer-run Greenhouse and one of my favorite spots on station. I'll do a separate post on it, the store, and the post office tomorrow.
After those three spots is one of our recycling centers. The US Antarctic Program has an incredibly detailed recycling system. It is one of the most comprehensive on the planet. Everything except human waste is returned via plane to McMurdo Station. The different categories that I can remember are:
Next stop past the recycling center is a set of stairs to the upper level. Past that is our sauna. I don't use it much because I never plan ahead enough to heat it up for the 60-90 minutes before I want to get in. Some folks it almost every night. The last time I did it was around 8pm two weeks ago. After I was done, I had to drink a ton of water to hydrate and ruined my night's sleep by waking up repeatedly to pee. I have to figure out a way to get in a morning sauna session instead.
The last stop on the lower level tour is just another coat room. There are two entrances to the elevated station in A pod, DZ from summer camp and the Beer Can from the arches (B pod just has one, DA). The coat room is an easy place for folks coming into A pod to drop their coats off before heading in for a meal or to their room. The coats are so big they are always in the way if you hang them in your room or from a chair.
Zoomed in and labeled map to help identify things
OK, this will be a quick post about the rest of the B pod. Perhaps the most important and worst thing about B pod is that there is only a single toilet for B2, B3, B4. That bathroom doubles as a janitor's closet. However, it is the only private bathroom on station. Some folks definitely make the trip for some privacy. You can head into the B1 berthing pod to use the bathrooms too. It is just a longer walk.
When you first get to South Pole Station, you walk from the runway to the B3 entrance. You head up some stairs and the first thing you usually see is the coat room. Nothing special there except you see it first and there is a heavily used popcorn maker. We just ran out of the fake butter to flavor the popcorn. Folks are wondering if real butter will work.
The coat room with our all important popcorn maker.
Just past the coat room in the hall way are three glass cases. Two are filled with previous pole markers. They used to be replaced at infrequent intervals, but now they are replaced every year. We are currently planning our own marker and our two machinists will spend the next few months making it. The last glass case is filled with fun South Pole memorabilia.
Just beside the coat room on the lower level when you walk in the door to South Pole station is a closed door. That door leads to the B3 gaming/TV lounge. The bookshelves on the left are filled with games that were bought by the defunct recreation department or donated by past employees. To the right, is a shelving unit filled with 6-7 game systems. Out of site on the back wall are three enormous bookshelves filled with DVDs of TV series from the last 20-30 years. Every Monday, I watch the sci-fi series the Expanse. We are about to start season 4 after being here for ~4 months. Right after, Trashy TV takes over. This week, I think they were watching MILF Manor. This lounge is particularly nice because it is not near any berthing rooms so you don't have to worry about waking folks up.
On the upper level, on the way to the B1 berthing is the B1 pool, dart, and movie lounges. The first room only seems to get used for pool this winter, but during the summer it is a major hang out spot. I've been playing a little pool, but prefer the movie lounge adjacent to it. They have some 1-2 year old theater quality chairs and we have a huge DVD selection in addition to the movies folks brought down on hard drives. At the start of the season, I led a small group in the miserable task of inventorying and labeling all the movies alphabetically so they could be easily sorted and located.
On the lower level in B2, there is a craft room. I don't spend much time there, but some folks have been creating some amazing stuff. I think my only time there has been on the sewing machines to patch up my $5 pants from Taiwan. They are one of three pairs of pants I have for the year. The pockets were starting to tear and I lost a nail clipper through the hole. Unfortunately, they don't sell clippers in the store, but a kind soul gave me their extra pair.
The one big piece of B pod that I did not mention is that the B1 is our 'lifeboat'. The lifeboat is meant to ensure that there is a separate,
protected space that we could use in case of a catastrophic loss of use
of the rest of the station. It’s protected behind fireproof, insulated
doors. In addition to redundant power, the lifeboat contains redundant
heating, water, wastewater, communications, cooking, and berthing space.
It certainly wouldn’t be comfortable, but the entire winterover crew
could survive in the Lifeboat if necessary. During
normal operations, the Lifeboat is just a normal wing of the station,
hooked into standard station infrastructure. But in the event of an
emergency, we could isolate all the systems mentioned above.
