When penguins attack . . .

Normally, I try to stick to posting about things that I've experienced myself, but this was too priceless not to share. I have two roommates as firefighers and part of their job is runway safety. Apparently, it isn't safe to have penguins on the runway so sometimes it is their job to chase them away. Normally, no one is allowed to interact with the penguins at all. You can be still and watch them walk by, but if you effect their behavior in anyway then you are breaking part of the Antarctic Treaty.

An Adelie penguin putting a firefighter in his place.

So whereas I haven't seen a single penguin yet, my roommates are called out to see them and chase them away. Maybe, I have the wrong job. They also work more hours that everyone else on base (72 a week), but also have more days off. I think they work 24 hours on and then 24 hours off, but while they are doing their 24 on they aren't actually working the entire time.

Rad - Antarctica Style!

Antarctica is supposed to be a harsh continent and it is, mostly. However, the Navy did a great job of building in some of the comforts of home and over the past few years we've been able to find a few of our own including a fleet of bicycles.

Our brand new fleet of mountain bikes.

Sure, the longest trail we have is 10 miles, but why should that stop us from getting out and having a little fun. Saturday night things got started with a screening of the BMX classic movie Rad. Sunday, we got down to business which included our own BMX cyclocross race! Three heats of gear mashing goodness. One for the ladies and two for the men.

This is probably Annie's tenth athletic activty of the day. Renee, you should compare me to her if you think I to do too much.

Audrey Mills, Shuttle Driver extrodinaire and shortly after this photo was taken superstar of McMurdo of cyclocross.

There were 8 ladies in women's division. Costumes were encouraged but not mandatory. A lot of people signed up last minute and didn't have one, including myself.

The start of the ladies' heat.

The course was a pretty short course - right about two miles. We ran down from the main dorm to the chapel and back. Then you got on your bike, crossed a bridge on bike, dismounted, climbed a flight of steps, and then went back down a flight on the other side, after that you mounted the first smaller hill. After ascending that hill, you did a big down hill cruise back towards the main dorm and lowest part of the base. Once there, you went all the back to one of the higher parts of base. At the top, you did push ups and then went right back down the hill to the most famous part of the race - Suicide Gulch. The rec department recommended that people dismount their bike, but plenty of people chose to ride it.

Unfortunately, the winner of the women's division was not one of those people. She cited some kind of intelligence like not having a helmet. Audrey, however, was told by the crowd that every woman had done it when in reality none had. She ended up being the only woman to do it and will probably be remembered where the winner of the race, Kelly, may slip into obscurity - like Kevin Costner in Tin Cup. Lindsey Paige, whereever you are, I have no doubt you would have won the girls race and beat plenty of the boys too. This was definitely right up your alley, definitely a kick!

Audrey Mills making the first women's ascent by bike into Suicide Gulch.

The boys race offered more of the same goodness. Lots of costumes, lots of noise, and cold weather. A lot of the women complained that their lugs were hurting after the race.

Daryl, or his brother Darrel, or this Darryl, or maybe his cousin Jethro.

Kevin Rice, ex-mountain bike racer.

One of our Kiwi neighbors found this outfit over at Scott Base.

More great costumes.

The first men's heat took off and it was clearly moving at a much faster pace than the women's. Some guys clearly wanted it. Others were just there for show. However, the guys who wanted it are what the crowd wanted it? What crowd? The crowd gathered at suicide gulch waiting to see who would mach-schnell (That one is for you, Son) the stairs. Fortunately, the racers didn't disappoint.

Video of my roommate's, Chris Cavanaugh, dismount and the crowd.

Kurt had a rough race. His chain popped after the first obstacle and it ended like this.

That's me chasing down backwards man, Ben May.

All the male competitors.

I ended up finishing sixth in the race. I took third in my heat, but had a blast. That was my first bike race ever. I might have to do more when I get back home.

Still no penguin sightings. I was pretty close to going on the last Cape Evans trip before they close up the road, but decided to pass because others haven't had a chance to go. It turned out to be a good move because I'd already seen the hut and they didn't see a single penguin.

Fun with work toys

I've been trying to get a picture filled post up from this past weekend, but the Internet has been so slow that I can't upload any pictures. It's painful. 1,100 people use the same Internet connection that you have connected to your house. Luckily, we'll be tripling our bandwidth to three houses worth this season sometime. Woohoo!!

Instead, we'll talk about new work toys. On Monday, I did something I haven't done in almost three months. Drive a car. Boo to that. It was a V8 pick up truck that I'll be using through out the season if I need to haul a lot of equipment somewhere. I prefer to just call our taxi service. They prefer it too because it gives them more to do. It was weird to be driving again and really weird when my boss told me not to use blinkers. It is a good habit to have and now I'm being told it is an unneeded one.

Finally, the newest and greatest work toy is a text pager I have just been issued. I had no idea they'd have pagers when I came down here and normally pagers suck, but I figured this can be a fun way for you guys to get a hold of me if you want me to call you. I can't guarantee that I'll call you back, but if you are thinking about me I'll know it without the work of a long e-mail and then I'll probably be thinking about you and all you have to do to make it happen is send a e-mail to my pager (you don't do it through cell phones).

Long story made short - just send me a text page me if you want me to call you or just want to say hello. Phone numbers and available times can be very help information for calling you back. We are 6 hours behind east coast time. I sleep from 10pm-6am. If you page me during those times, you'll greatly decrease your chances of a call back. :-)

Two points in the game of Life and maybe a special prize to who ever sends the first page that makes me smile.

-Brody

Technical details:
E-mail this address: 350@pg.mcmurdo.usap.gov
The message can be a maximum of around 240 letters and numbers long.

More Turkey Trot photos

Over the weekend, someone put up some more Turkey Trot photos that show the race in all its splendor. Great stuff. I don't know who this person is, but their photos are some of the best I've seen yet.

Milling around before the race in front of the Snow of the Chapels.

The start of the race. I'm behind the green or red coated photographer.

Just a little farther on at the start of the race

Coming down the first big hill. I'm 2nd from the left.

Leaving the transition (from road to ice) and continuing out to the ice runway.

Heading out to the ice run way with the LC-130 Hercules and the Royal Society Mountain Range in the background.

Me. Tired. Running into a head wind and getting more tired.

Annie Farris is a stud. She had already run the race course once that day and probably did 10 miles after it.

Some people got dressed up for the big race including Spiderman, a Kiwi firefighter on station

Turkey Trot!!

Last weekend, I ran my first 5K race in the form of a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot. Our race course would start at the Chapel of the Snows, go up the road past the dorms, down to the transition from road to ice, out to the ice runway, and then back to the Chapel again.

Race volunteers out on the ice runway.

That morning, I hopped outside in my pajamas to see how warm it was. It seemed so warm that I planned on going with the bare minimum of layers. Luckily, I had time to change my mind and my clothes after I actually spent some time outside. Away from my dorm, the wind was gusting and putting the chill on anyone silly enough to run with only a few layers. However, that didn't stop a few people from running in shorts all the same.

Pre-race milling around in front of the Chapel of the Snows

I've never done a 5K and really didn't know what to expect. My goal was to be closer to 20 minutes than to 30. I usually train at 8 or 9 minute miles so I figured 24 minutes was a realistic goal. Unfortunately, none of the people I run with run that speed in a race so I had no idea who to follow to pace myself. I resolved to get in front so I didn't get stuck behind slow people and then just try to keep up and slow down as necessary.

At the starting line, I'm on the left side of the first or second row

Out of the blocks, I did alright. I stayed in the top 10. As we turned down the first hill, I surged to the front because I figured I might as well use the hill to my advantage. At this point, I was running in the top three which was kind of surprising. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to maintain it. As we each meandered horizontally down the course trying to find solid snow, I slowly slipped away to 6th place. Once there, we turned to come back and were running directly into an awful headwind. It made breathing hard, gave me 100% cotton mouth, and just generally made running stink.

I got passed by one more guy after the half way point. He continued to pull away to about 50 yds. After that, I held with him the entire way back to town though and clawed myself up behind him on the final hill to about 15 yards away and a quarter mile from the finish. At this point, I could no longer see the leader. I imagine he had turned the last two corners on his way to a 19:46 finish.

The winner in 19:46 or so...

The final haul to the finish was short, downhill, and with the wind. I was able to open up and finally pass that one guy back. That felt good. Sprinting felt good too. The only sprinting that I have been getting is an hour a week in ultimate. I might need to change that up. Anyway, my final surge put me across the line in 6th place at 20:50 (7ish minute miles) and an incredible urge to puke. I held it in though.

Me, about 10ft from the finish

I'm REALLY surprised with myself. I never would have thought that I would have run that fast. Another guy, who finished two spots behind me, said that he normally runs mid-18's so I might be able to expect the same off the ice. That would be incredibly fast to me. I always considered 2 miles in 12 minutes to be in shape when I was training for ultimate. However, I didn't use that as my gauge for the past three years and figured I was losing it. I just didn't test it so I don't know if I was capable of it or not. I have never done three miles in eighteen minutes. Who knows if I could back home anyway. It does make me wonder.

Gretchen and Ben finishing up their Turkey Trot.

After I finished, I grabbed my Turkey Trot t-shirt that only the first 50 finishers got and cheered on my friends. That took a while because some people only went out as walkers.

The shirt we were all racing to win.

When enough people finished up, I grabbed a radio and checkout with the firehouse to do my actual distance run for the weekend. I had 2 more hours to do so we did the race course again and then went over to Scott Base via Armitage Loop. 11 more miles in two hours. Not a fast pace, but it was tiring because it took so long and half the Armitage Loop was directly into that ridiculous head wind. Boo to that, but even more boos to the strained tendon or muscle in the outside arch of my left foot. I ran again the day after the Trot, but haven't run since. I guess I'm well rested, but I'd prefer to be running.

This weekend I'm hoping to run the Grand Slam which is every trail that we can do on base.

When Skuas Attack . . .

Skuas are probably the most seen wildlife on McMurdo base and they rule the joint. According to the Antarctic Treaty we aren't allowed to touch or harass them no matter how pesky they can be. Just the other day, I was walking with hot tea to Hut 10 for a party. Someone told me I should pour tea on the skua to get it moving. I figured he must surely be joking because birds usually fly away when you get that close. It just continued to sit on the ground about a foot from my shoes as I walked by. I easily could have introduced it to the simply pleasure of Earl Grey. Even if vehicles come by, the skuas won't always move.

The dreaded skua

Skuas were here first and like any animal they adapt to their surroundings. For the skua, that meant recognizing new food sources when humans came to town. When I was in the carpenter shop a couple nights ago, a skua came down to try and sample our beer.

mmmmmm, beeer.

The culmination of the skuas adaptability is in their ability to dive bomb us for food. They often glide in so that the unsuspecting victim has no idea they are coming and then suddenly, they are attacked. Earlier in the year, someone had a large bandaid on his ear and he was telling people it was from a skua attack. It wasn't, but it was likely enough that a lot of people didn't question it. The dining assistants are told to beware of wearing their blue uniforms outside because the skuas have learned to associate the color blue with food because we use blue trays to carry our food.

An actual skua victim, Jane Jo

A close up of the carnage

BIRTHDAY!!!

After 48 hours of birthday goodness, I'm 30 by date in my time zone and time lived. Normally, I'm not a huge celebrator of my birthday. I enjoy it, but don't like getting carried away. It is really just one more excuse to gather a couple good friends up to hang out. Last year, I think I laid in bed because I had just had surgery on my finger.

This year, I was aiming for hanging out with a couple friends in the Coffee House on Monday, the 26th. I figured no one would be up for much more because we were coming off the holiday weekend (our first two day weekend of the season to celebrate Thanksgiving). However, the Coffee House is closed on Monday. Instead of declaring shenanigans or resigning myself to hanging out in my dorm room, I started plotting how I could get around this little hurdle. So Sunday morning, I started sniffing around and found out that I could rent out one of the three bars for a private party. The only one available was Southern Exposure, the smoking bar, which I wasn't interested in. I found out who had the Coffee House and Gallagher's and starting a full day of wheeling and dealing. The people in Gallagher's were willing to wrap up a little early and then let us in for a birthday party romp which gave me about 24 hours to get everything ready.

Lots of paperwork and shopping later, I had a party planned and some people to come out and play. It was a good, quiet time. Shuffleboard, pool, air hockey, Foosball, music, a video game machine with 20 old school arcade games on it, and about 25 people to play them all. Normally, all the games are hard to play because it is crowded, other people are playing, or there just isn't room. One guy game and set the high score on Ms. PacMac in one try. He said he was the champion of NE Alabama in his youth. The rest of us settled for lower scores and a long night of gaming and talking. I was home and getting ready for bed by midnight. When I got home, I got to see my birthday present from one of my roommates which was to decorate my side of the room. I didn't have anything up so he rectified that with the only thing he had - porn. Other people gave me coupons for massages, chatting, advice, special chocolate, a dozen fake mini-roses, and a fish magnet.

After another sleepless night, I was up for another tired day. Instead of getting birthday wishes from all over station they came pouring in over e-mail and facebook. Thanks to all of you who sent some love my way. I really appreciate it.

The goodness culminated after work about 6pm. After work, I headed home for a quick nap. My nap was interrupted by the mail room calling me to come and pick up my mail. They said to bring a friend to help and to get a taxi. Normally, they don't call but I apparently had SO much that it was taking up too much room. I had ELEVEN boxes. Apparently, all the mail that was sent 6 weeks ago or two weeks all came at once. It made my day. It made my night. It is going to make my week. Thank you all very much!!

All of my unopened mail in the hall outside my room.

After a quick trip to dinner and then down to the Coffee House for an Oregon Chai, I headed home to see what kind of goodies you guys had sent my way. I can't say how much fun it was to dig open and get so many ordinary items from home. It is amazing how the normal things from home mean so much more when you can't get them. It was interesting to see what ordinary items each person would choose to send as well.

My birthday presents!!!

In that pile of stuff, there was granola bars, rice, Thai Ramen, gummy fish, jelly bellies, a slinky, a penguin snuggle buddy, a CD of fabulous music, Oregon Chai, sour patch kids, trivia cards, candy and more candy, protein shake mix, unopened x-mas presents, a reading lamp, books, trail mix, girl scout cookies, and countless other yummies. On the walls, you can see I left up my roommates decorations. I'm excited that he did it because now I have thumbtacks to hang up my own pictures. We have thumbtacks all over base, I just haven't gotten any yet.

After a long winded late night fabulous call to Denver, I was closing out my b-day on the bottom of the world. Thanks to everyone who helped make it great. I slept better last night than I have any other night in a couple weeks.

It's turkey day!!!

Today is turkey day!! However, we are working right through it. Instead, we'll have get the day off on Saturday to celebrate. This will be out first two day weekend of the summer season. I'm pretty excited, especially since I've gotten a little sick over the past week because I haven't been able to sleep well. Other people are excited because they are going to consider the next three days as Thanksgiving and eat accordingly. Today is the official day. Tomorrow, they'll call home and eat some more. Saturday, we'll have our feast.

Our feast day will start out with a 5K Turkey Trot. I am tentatively going to run it. I've never done a 5K before. After that, we can choose from four different dinners. You can only sign up for one though - 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, or midnight (for the night workers). You head in, BYOB, eat a lot, drink a lot, and enjoy your new friends and family. I was in the kitchen yesterday and they are already thawing out a ton of turkeys. However, I've heard that the Antarctic edition of the Thanksgiving includes the Antarctic cod. It is a 200-350 lb fish that one researcher catches for us to eat.

After dinner, what you do is up to everyone. My group of ten will probably be going sledding and then heading out for game night. I'm excited for it. Other people may drink themselves into a stupor. Some might watch movies and sleep. It should be a great two day weekend no matter what and I am looking forward to it.

Earlier last week, I would have sworn we would not be able to sled near base because so much snow has melted over the past week or two from here. However, a couple days ago we got some snow. I'm pretty excited about it. Officially, we'll only get 10-20 inches of snow down here all year. The reason we have so much overall is that once it snows, it doesn't melt. Our snow in town only melts because of all the human activity around it. I'm thankful for snow today :-) but still miss rain. The last good rain I rememer is the one I caught biking in with Sam Geboff. Good times. Denver times.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!

SNOW over Observation Hill!!

John Bain, this one's for you!!

You can move far away, but no matter how much things might change they also stay the same.

This photo was taken in the men's firehouse bathroom.

I thought you might appreciate that one, JohnBain. I hope Osceola is still treating you, Cecilia, Tim (?), and Nala well. By the way, I met a Cecelia down here who spells her name differently. She taught my Happy Camper school and guided my last Cape Evans trip.

The firefighters either have the best or worst schedule on base. They work 72 hours a week. Almost everyone else works 54. However, they are on duty at the firehouse for 24 hours straight and then have a day off. I'm not sure if this schedule is different from in the states. Because of the number of days off, then often get labeled as rabble rousers because they can go out and play (i.e. drink) a lot more than others. I'm sure it is just a few who give the rest a bad name.

As I understand it, when they are working 24 hours straight, they aren't always working. They are sometimes just on duty at the firehouse in case something happens. I'm not sure when our last major fire was, but because it is such a dry continent when things go they go up in a hurry. To keep things from going up in a hurry, they have two or three full size fire engines which must have come down on the yearly resupply vessel. We always have at least 100,000 gallons of water for them to use in a fire. We use about 72,000 gallons a day on base. Our holding tanks carry around 205,000 gallons.

One last thing. I didn't do a good job of getting contact information from people before I left. Please e-mail me your addresses and phone numbers.

Cape Evans ski trip

Yesterday was a rough day. I went out to Cape Evans again. People have been seeing a ton of penguins out there so I figured it would finally happen to me and took my heavy zoom lens, a decision I would grow to regret.

This trip was a special trip because instead of taking the Delta out and back, we would get to ride out and ski, run, or walk the 15 miles back. If you weren't done by a certain time, then the Delta following everyone would pick you up. There were two runners, two walkers, and eight skiers. It looked like it was going to be a great day. The sun was out. There wasn't any wind which was really important and it was pretty warm.

I started out in the usual gear as all of my outdoors runs - top and bottom tights, wind pants, capilene shirt, fleece top, one set of gloves, eye protection, and headware. I tried using a neck gator as headware the same way that Gift does. Great idea!! It keeps your skin covered, but lets the majority of your heat out of the top and you don't get nearly as sweaty.

One of our first time cross country skiers, Travis, working on step 1 - where are the skis . . .

One of our most experienced skate skiers, Kurt.

I took a bunch of pictures at the start of the run, but I didn't take the time to set up my camera properly and the pictures showed it. They are all over exposed. I need to get better at paying attention to the details, especially when every picture is getting twice as much sunlight. So there were something interesting formations, including an iceberg, at the beginning of the run, but you don't get to see those. Instead, you get my first look at live wildlife (outside of the Skua birds) since I got down here. SEALS, or maybe better put SEAL!!

About five miles into the run, there was a seal hole beside the road. I'm not sure how it got there, but I heard the Weddell seal before I ever saw it. The sound reminded me of the heavy breathing of someone who just jumped into water that is a little too cold or that just over exerted themselves. The same seal, I believe, just kept going under and kept coming back up to the same hole.

Seal

Same Seal

Same same Seal

I'll call this seal Andre. Extra points for anyone who knows the reference who isn't in my family

After we passed the seal hole, we continued on past a couple islands and even a sign that pointed towards the penguin ranch. Apparently, they go to penguin rookeries and put garbage cans over penguins heads and then transport them to the ranch. They used to try other means of capture, but apparently the dark keeps them calm. John Bain, you should try that with Nala instead of the crate that she could see out of it, but you better get it made out of adamantium.

I'm not sure exactly what they study at the ranch. It has something to do with penguin diving. There is only one penguin hole out there for them to use. A penguin can go in the water but it is too far to any other holes so they always come back to the same hole which allows them to have a contained environment to study them in.

I think it was somewhere around the penguin ranch that I ran into a really large wall compliments of the pack I was carrying. That pack included my zoom lens which also let me get some great pictures of the seals, but the total pack ended up weighing 13 lbs. Normally, I run with 3 lbs. I had been able to keep up with the leading skate skiers until this point and then I just crumbled. The last 5-6 miles were just brutal. When I was finally done with the run, I felt worse than I did after my marathon. I think there were three reasons for this: the heavy bag, soft snow that I kept sinking into, and getting a ton of sun exposure. I'm pretty sun burnt today.

I'm glad I did, but I won't be doing it again which might mean no penguin pictures for you readers at home, at least not from Cape Evans. On the other hand, I did get my camera adjusted right and eventually made some pictures worth taking a look at. Keep in mind that all of that flat area in these photos is sea ice and should melt in the next two months. Our major supply ship will cut across between where I am running on the sea ice and those mountains.

Mountains.

More mountains.

Castle Rock is the tallest rock in the picture. We can hike there from base.

Food for thought. We take pleasure in seeing the seal. Assuming that it was laboring for breath after coming back up to the seal hole only made the scene that much more dramatic. It is similar to a professional athlete in agony. We love the extremes and turn it into tourism of a sort. We might have been doing it to this seal. I saw a documentary about the rise of corporations that hit on a point similar to this. As first world travelers, we go to third world countries and turn their suffering into a sort of tourism. What they call life and may or may not enjoy, we go to explore because we can. However, we can always leave. Big difference.

An Accident in Antarctica

I haven't posted for a few days because I've been super busy. For the past three days, I've been working on the science buildings key card system. The software is from 1992-93 and the hardware may predate that. It was a painful process and I'm glad I'm done. I actually still need to go back to touch a few things up there, but the bulk of it is done.

There were a couple advantages to being over there though. The most interesting one is that I found out pretty quickly about an accident that happened out on the ice. A vehicle , a MattTrack, caught fire out on the ice and they had to send out SAR and HAZMAT teams to complete a rescue and clean up. Luckily, no one was hurt and they were able to clean everything up.

Initial view from an arriving helicopter

Burnt out MattTrack skeleton

I can't tell you how many times I have heard the word safety since I have been here. I guess normally there is 1 injury per man working hour a week or some weird statistic like that. Here, we average 17 normally. Again, I'm not sure what the official stat is, but there is a great disparity between home and here. Is it the attention to detail that gets lost when you are bitter cold and just want to head in? Are the weather conditions causing unpredictable working conditions? Are we just too tired after working 54 hours a week with only a day off? I have a 9x6 schedule. Others have a 12x5 with two days off, but the two days aren't together. Are we just a reckless lot who are willing to be shipped off to the windiest, driest, and coldest place on earth? I don't know.

After getting everyone out of the MattTrack safe, they had the HAZMAT team do a clean up. I'm not sure of the standard protocols for HAZMAT teams, but down here they don't leave anything behind. They try to recover every last bit of non-native substance whether it be liquid or solid.

A HAZMAT team member

HAZMAT shovelers cleaning up the last of the debris and a non-burnt MattTrack

I'm amazed by how much they were able to clean up. As far as I can tell, that last picture is the last few shovel fulls of the clean up. I doubt anyone would be able to even tell there was an accident in the area.

I'm also amazed that a full scale vehicle fire would not render the ice unsafe. The ice is averaging around 7 feet think right now and I'm sure they tested it to be sure it was safe, but I'm still amazed. I guess the wind would get rid of a lot of the heat in a hurry, but certainly not all of it. After the clean up, the MattTrack was towed back to base where our resident cataloger of everything, Ken Davis, wonders what someone did to his truck . . . .

Ken Davis wonders how to inventory the new and improved MattTrack

On a personal note, it is finally warm enough for me to trying running outside. I did two hours on Sunday, 80 minutes last night, and 60 more today. I wore wool socks, tights and wind pants on my legs, more tights, a long sleeve wicking shirt, and a fleece on top, two layers of gloves, a facemask, goggles, and a hat to stay warm. Today, I wore just a t-shirt and a fleece. If there was wind, I probably would have frozen. I'm using a combination of roads, trails, and sea ice to get outside. The trails are extremely loose and rocky - ankle sprain city. I already had one twist yesterday and expect more.

Tonight, I'm off to Scott Base for American night again and tomorrow I'm hoping to get into a super competitive game of Sorry. Sunday, I think I am going to get my second trip out to Cape Evans where more and more people are catching sight of Emperor penguins. Hopefully, I'll have a photo of a live penguin for you sooner than later. It should be a good couple days.