Krissie's Blog - 11

Aug 9, 12:17 AM

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I know, I know. It’s been a while. I assure you, I’ve been busy. July was full of miles and a milestone. On my 30^th birthday, I WON the 840-mile Race to McMurdo, after exactly 5 months. We’ll continue the Station tour where this took place.

This is our nifty deck weight room, on the second floor of the Station, overlooking the gym. That chart on the left wall is where you log Race miles. The rules are that you can row, walk, run, stair-step, and ellipticize mile for mile. If you bike, only one mile in three counts on the chart. When I decided to finish the race on my birthday, I knew I was in for a battle, as I was 231 miles behind Brian, 182 miles behind Ross, and 13 miles behind IceCube Erik.

But after about 4 hours a day for 2.5 weeks, I finally slew the beast. It only took me 20 elliptical miles, 39 walk/run miles, 139 rowing miles, and 1,926 bike miles, for a total of 2,124 miles.

For good measure, I sprinted across the finish line to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” I had a rowdy cheering section in my friends Jeremy, Keith, Dave, Ross, and Marc. Not the best picture of me, but I was running 7 mph and laughing.

They made me write “#1.” With all those bike miles, I nearly bled that poor pink marker dry. I’m very glad I finished it. It consumed my life in July, and I would often lose sleep planning my strategy for overtaking Ross and Brian in the previous months. As Ross, Keith, and I will tell anyone who will listen, “Don’t start; it will ruin your life.” I had considered racing back to the Pole, since I’m not sure anyone has ever done it before, but Ross reminded me of the sweet non-racing life I would be missing out on. Ross and Brian are still dueling for second place. Ross plans to finish on his birthday as well.

My birthday was great. It lasted for two days, since I celebrated in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Right after I finished the Race, I beat Marc, Ross, and Jeremy in pool – the pool tournament champion and two other guys who were in the winner’s bracket of the tournament.

I also took a tour of the Station subfloor earlier in the day. The Station Engineer let me tag along, looking for leaks under the greenhouse. The reason I’m a little yellow in the picture is because I’m sitting in front of the greenhouse. I was very excited to be doing this. I had always wanted to go in the subfloor.

It can be a little tight under the Station. So it was a busy day, for sure. Chef Keith made me a Magnum, P.I. birthday cake. That was in honor of the Magnum, P.I. birthday party Jeremy and I threw on my stateside birthday the next night. MUSTaches were required. We provided Hawaiian shirts, paper mustaches, drinks, cake, wigs (mostly women’s), and 80’s music. There are too many adjectives to describe that night, but it was the best party I’ve ever attended (excluding weddings), let alone thrown. One of the reasons I wanted to winter-over was so that I would turn 30 down here. I don’t remember my 10^th or 20^th birthdays, but I’ll always remember this one. This place has changed my life for the better in every way, and I’m so very glad I came.

Okay, so back to the tour. Across the hall from the weight room is the Large Conference Room. It is used for video teleconferencing and…large conferences. This is where I attend the weekly safety meeting and where the Trauma Team usually meets on Tuesdays.

The Small Conference Room is for game night.

Comms is Air Traffic Control in the summer. They track every American flight on the continent. The radio traffic from the Emergency Response Teams goes through the Comms radios, as does the American radio flight traffic across the continent. This corner office offers a fantastic view of the skiway, or the north and west sides of the Station. In the summer it is staffed by 4 people, around the clock. Since the Met office is also staffed around the clock in the summer, they call us to babysit the radio so they can use the bathroom or grab a meal. There is no Comms in the winter, but it becomes the center of communications during an emergency. If a smoke alarm goes off, or a pull station is pulled, the enunciator panels on the left of the picture show where the alarm was activated.

As you walk out of Comms, which is behind the conference rooms, you will walk down Mahogany Row, which is where the summer management offices are. In the beginning of winter, they were up for the taking for people who wanted a little more privacy. Our local big boss, the Winter Site Manager, has his office here. At the end of the hall, you can see my office’s black cabinets and my green parka.

This is a Mahogany Row office. The pano picture makes it look larger than it is. So the four walls and a door allow for more privacy (and the ability to jam to music) than a cubicle in the computer lab.

If you turn half-way down the Row, you’ll end up in Kinkos. It’s just a typical office supply center, otherwise known as heaven to me. The drawers are full of riches and treasures beyond imagination, aka Post-It Notes, Sharpies, pens, pencils, colorful tacks, staples, paper clips…oh I could go on. What’s missing from this picture? Office doughnuts.

The door to the Row is behind those paper boxes on the right. If I were to turn around, I would be facing what the Cargo crew calls “The Matterhorn.” It’s quite a large office space. This is where the Inventory Control Specialist, the Materialsperson, and Senior Materialsperson work during the winter. (In the summer they have three buildings in the cargo field behind the Station.) You can come here if you have lost ECW clothing or something doesn’t fit. They very nicely gave me a new goggles lens this week.

As we travel farther east along the Station, you’ll find the main reason we are here: Science. This is the B2 Science Lab. As I’ve labeled, this lab space houses my department, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the South Pole Telescope, the Aurora technician – who monitors many different experiments such as seismology to the auroras, and the Cusp lab – which studies space weather. I took this picture from the mezzanine, which is where some of the aurora and Cusp experiments are housed. It also doubles as storage.

This is the office where Lance and I work. The computer that has Cully’s Station picture on it is where we enter all of our observations, monitor and process the balloon flights, and record climate data. The one with the blue screen is where our airport weather software is. This is the one that constantly monitors the weather and records our one-minute data. It’s a pretty cozy office. The knick-knacks and toys accumulate quickly in the winter.

This is my desk. So from left to right, atop the speaker sits the textbook for beginning EMTs that I borrowed from Medical. I haven’t read past chapter 3 since I got crazy with the Race. Necessary Viking helmet. Stamps for stamping the observation forms. A barograph – the old fashioned way of recording pressure. Stereo speakers. I try not to annoy IceCube Erik. “I was told I could listen to my music at a reasonable volume...” Palm tree, which was moved for the Magnum, P.I. party, along with a few of the other Station palm trees. Under the plastic desktop are cloud types by height. I printed out all of the cheat sheets I use to do our daily check of everything we write down on the observation forms. Yes, my desk always looks this tidy.

If you walk out of the easternmost door of the lab and walk across the hall, you’ll be in the B1 berthing pod. I mentioned before that there are fewer bedrooms in this pod because of the emergency power plant downstairs and the lounge upstairs. This is the lounge/emergency kitchen. That big wooden box covers the emergency stove and oven. This room is used for pool, foosball, and houses the second, smaller library. The cabinets behind the pool table contain board games, puzzles, and crystallized Play-Doh. If you look to the right of the bookshelves, you can see an open door.

This is the B1 theater. There are still streamers and balloons from Ladies’ Night last Friday. Our power plant tech Lee had it decorated very prettily. I don’t usually watch movies in here. Once you go projector, you can’t go back to something as small as a 54” flat screen anymore.

The computer lab is down the hall, past the horizontal link. Left of me is two rows of cubicles. In the summer, many of these cubes are full of FEMC people, or construction and maintenance. There are 20 PCs and 4 Macs for personal use. At the right of the screen you can see green lockers outside. On the other side of that door jamb is where the IT office is. This is where the Help Desk (Ben), System Administrator (Tripp), and Senior PC Tech (Jeremy) worked in the summer…if you’ve been following the characters in my blog.

When you turn left outside of the computer lab, you will pass the winter-over wall. Ever since the Pole has been continuously occupied, starting in 1956, the winter-over photos and names have been framed. Only a few years’ photos are missing. Another reason I wanted to winter-over was to be immortalized on this wall. It’s quite a thing to be a part of. I spoke with the McMurdo weather observer earlier this week, and we guessed that maybe about 10,000 people have ever come to the South Pole. Fewer still have wintered-over: 1267. More people have summited Mt. Everest. I am the 1257^th winter-over .

Here is the first crew of wovers in 1957. Many of us are jealous that they had a dog. This was before the Antarctic Treaty, which has banned non-indigenous animals. Look on the top row, second in from the right. That’s Paul Siple. Although the name probably doesn’t ring a bell, everybody uses his “invention.” He came up with the concept of and the first mathematical formula for wind chill.

I’ve shown you much of the cushiness the Station has to offer. These guys had it 100 times tougher than we do. They had to build their winter-over facility in the summer of 1956. They slept in tents, and couldn’t really ever escape the cold. I had the opportunity to be part of a conference call with a bunch of Old Polies, and we found out a lot about the conditions down here. A few of them have permanent frostbite injuries. I was lucky to only have two numb fingers for two weeks. I can’t imagine still having numb fingers and a numb cheek 50 years later. We get annoyed about only having 6 good internet hours a day. These guys could only sometimes talk on the HAM. One of us asked, “What did you do to pass the time, for entertainment?” The guy answered, “We worked.” These guys are/were amazing and are the toughest dudes ever.

At the end of the rows of photos, you’ll be right near the entrance to Medical. I’ve split the main room in half with my panos. The northern half of the room is a dental facility. Starting on the left, you can see a video teleconference camera setup. Since we don’t have surgeons down here, the doctors can be aided by George Washington University, should they need to perform surgery. On the desk is a set of radios just like the ones in Comms. The Trauma Team lead can communicate to the doctors directly during a drill or incident, and we can also monitor the traffic of other teams this way. The dental stuff is in the middle of the picture. The medical supply cabinets start on the right side of the picture. The big silver cabinet thing on the wall is an oven-like appliance. Bags of saline are always being warmed in there.

Turning around, we see that same warming cabinet. Oxygen tank and a respirator. More medical supplies. An ultrasound machine. More cabinets. A machine that administers drip medication. A machine that takes vital signs. An x-ray machine sits over the bed. Dr. Ella was kind enough to stage this for my picture-taking. This is where we on the Advanced Trauma Team meet on Wednesdays. All the Trauma Team members are also Advanced Trauma Team members this winter. More on that later.

Down a short hallway from this room is where patients would recuperate. There are certain conditions that can only be handled with best rest. If someone breaks his/her neck, they would have to lie flat on the bed until a plane comes a month or more later. If someone breaks a femur, same story. Those kind of surgeries cannot be performed here. This room has a great view of the Ceremonial Pole in the summer.

The next stop down from Medical is the galley. Because this place was largely Navy when it began, we still keep some of the jargon. This picture of the galley was taken from the eastern end of the Station, facing west. We are near the Geographic Pole and the Beer Can. During the summer, the entire galley is full of tables. In the winter, we don’t take up that much space during meals.

The ping pong table was moved here a little bit before Easter, so people could practice for the tournament. The middle section is where we eat. The far end of the galley is now a lounge. In the summer there are four meals a day. The fourth meal is called Midrats (midnight rations). In the winter, there are three meals a day Monday through Saturday. The chefs cook an excess of food and put it in the leftover fridge for Sunday.

This is the kitchen. It’s commercial grade and a bit intimidating to cook in…at least I think so. The chefs work wonders in high altitude cooking.

The last part of the tour is the dish pit. In the summer there is a staff of people who wash dishes and prepare the galley for every meal. In the winter, it’s just us.