IceStock - Take 4!

Tomorrow is the big day - live music from 10:45 to 6:00 pm, a chili cook-off and the judging of the beard growing contest. This wonderful festival is called IceStock and is always my favorite day of the season. This will be the 4th IceStock I've performed in and it is forecasted to be the coldest one yet. With a high of 27 degrees F (-3 degrees C) and a potential wind chill of 9 degrees F (-13 degrees C), we are planning appropriate (full body coverage) costumes.

Playing in 2 bands this season has taken up a lot of spare time, but the big pay-off is when we get to perform for very appreciative crowds.

Today, a large part of the community is preparing for the event by erecting the stage, getting the containers (milvans) in place for each chili cook-off team and getting the dive shack prepared for its annual role as "Sawbucks", the coffee house run by the Carpenter Shop.

Here's a photo of Sawbucks:



Stay tuned for photos from the event!

Pinsetting

This season, Michiel decided to try out something new - manual pinsetting at the McMurdo bowling alley. The bowling alley is one of (if not, the only) remaining manual pinset system in the world. On each alley, a pinsetter waits for the bowler to throw the ball and (hopefully...) knock down some pins. Considering that the lames are totally warped, knocking down pins is more a question of luck and power than finesse.

Once the pins have been knocked down, the pinsetter jumps off his/her perch and puts them in the rack so that they are out of the way. The ball is then placed into the chute for return to the bowler and the pinsetter jumps up onto the perch out of harm's way.

Bowling tournaments and games usually involve some drinking so the pinsetters wear bright pin-striped (naturally!) socks so that the bowlers can see their legs when they are working.

Pinsetters have the optional responsibility of jeering, cheering or harassing the bowlers with cymbal playing, boos, comments, etc. One pair of pinsetters even pre-prepared cut-out pictures and comments from magazines to stuff into the finger-holes of the balls before returning them to their bowler friends.

Bowlers also have the option to go Cosmic style and play in black light. Did you know that under a black-light, tonic glows fluorescent green? Very cool

Here are some photos of the bowling alley and Michiel at work:

Jah Chant Goes on TOUR!

The reggae band that I play drums in, Jah Chant, was invited to play our first international gig this past Saturday night. The New Zealand research station, Scott Base, had a big beach party and what better way to feel "irie" than to have live, original reggae music. Here are some photos from the event and of the band and our wonderful groupies. What about the tall dude with the dreadlocks - He looks familiar, mon!

Donut of Misery

Things are rolling along here at McMurdo. The warmer temperatures are starting to turn the roads into muddy streams and the temperatures are approaching the 30s F (just below 0 degrees C). It feels warm and pleasant when the wind isn't blowing and we're trying to spend more time outside.

The station celebrated Thanksgiving this past Saturday with a two-day weekend and a giant, fancy meal in the Dining Hall. We celebrated with some friends, including Antz and Christine. Christine introduced me to the Antarctic Program in 1999 and encouraged me to apply (so I can alternately blame and thank her :) They mostly do winters these days so we don't get to see them very often, but they are here this summer on an Artists and Writers grant from the National Science Foundation.

Antz is known for his incredible time-lapse films of Antarctic landscapes, wildlife and people. You can see several of his videos on Youtube if you search for Antzarctica. His wife, Christine, is also incredibly creative and very amusing in the video about Condition 1. Their goal is to gather enough time-lapse footage during their 6-week stay to put together a full length film. Their website is: www.frozensouth.com

Prior to the eating-fest, we ran in the 5K Turkey Trot race. It was pretty windy so I needed to supplement my gear with handwarmers, but we both finished and Michiel did well enough to win a great t-shirt. The top 50 runners were rewarded with a shirt. You'd think that it would be easy enough to place in the top 50, but the running crowd is exceptionally competitive and the turn-out was excellent (maybe 100 runners???). I just missed being in the top 50, but I scored a shirt from a guy who couldn't wear a Medium. (It's good to be small!)

Now that the Thanksgiving weekend is behind us, the holiday season will fly by, but still...at this time of the season, people start to think about the travels after the ice and the free time and travel opportunities that are the main reasons why people keep coming back to the ice year after year.

In order to keep track of how much time we have left, someone created the Donut of Misery. The donut is a famous (around here, anyway) Excel spreadsheet that calculates the time you have remaining on station based on your contract start and end dates. Here's a screen shot.

The donut is particularly popular with people who are doing a year-long contract. They might lament that they are only at 28% when the rest of the summer population is at 48%.

I recently received a copy of an updated, slicker version of the donut, called the Penguin Timer. Here's a screen shot:

A Month Already

Views from the plane were good this year.

Welcome to McMurdo. I still find it incredible that such a big plane can land on ice.

We’ve been in McMurdo for almost a month now. The time goes incredibly fast here and before we know it, it will be time to make plans for after the ice. For now, though, we are working 6 days a week, 10.5 to 11 hours per day. I am playing drums in two bands, one original reggae music, the other a funk cover band in which my stage name is Peaches Delite. Both bands will surely play on the New Year’s Day outdoor music festival, IceStock. I am also volunteering as a medical recorder for any Mass Casualty Incidents. We’ll have a drill some time soon and my job is to stay with one patient and write down vital signs, symptoms, treatments, etc. Michiel is volunteering as a stretcher bearer.

Sheri, quarantined in her room, watching tv.

When he isn’t working, Michiel is again training for the marathon and is working a small side job as a pin-setter for our manual bowling alley. More on that in another post. This past week, he had the very unenviable job of bringing me my meals in the room as I have been quarantined with the flu. This year, there is a near epidemic of both kinds of flu despite the massive effort put into getting all of us vaccinated. It is very tricky to figure out how to appropriately vaccinate all of us since the flus and flu seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres are different and almost all of us travel through both hemispheres to get here.

Clipped Wings

The next day, after a beautiful run in the Botanic Gardens, we reported to the US Antarctic Centre for clothing distribution and learned that our plane was broken. We would be notified at our respective hostels if the flights would be going the following day. We spent the afternoon doing a little shopping, enjoying the gorgeous blossoms and greenery of spring in Christchurch, walking around the city and eating ethnic food, though we were incredibly saddened by the fact that our inexpensive Asian Food Court was be remodeled for another use.

That evening, we learned that our plane would not be repaired in time to fly the next day so we made plans to go to a little ski town with Hot Springs. Though Hanmer Springs is a very commercialized establishment, it was wonderful to leave the city, not think about the Program (sounds like a cult, doesn’t it?) and soak in some very warm water….especially since the weather had turned nasty. The pools were wonderful in the downpour. The pattern of the raindrops on the steamy surface was mesmerizing and the low cloud cover swirling around the mountains made the whole scene kind of dreamy.

We spent several hours getting pruny and then the skies cleared and we walked around town under bright blue skies. We drove back to Christchurch in a lazy daze, much to the sadness of our shuttle driver, who wanted to make jokes with “Kittens” and his harem of 2. The company’s dispatcher had told the driver that he had a party of three under the name Gitzels, but to the driver, all he could figure out was Kittens. So Michiel, our friend Jeri and I became the Kittens party.

Upon return to the hostel, we saw that our flight was on for the next day but we had a nice, late check in time. We enjoyed a fun evening out at one of the US Antarctic Programs’ favorite hangouts, Dux Delux and poured ourselves into bed.

Deploying Together

Deploying together for the first time….it seems like a small thing but considering that we have to move out of our cabin in Hope, get ourselves to Anchorage (1.5 hours away) and then get ourselves on an early morning flight to Seattle, it is so much easier to only have to make arrangements to do it once. It was also nice to be able to share without abandon our disgust at the lousy set-up of the security check point in LAX airport and to be able to share the events that ensued. (Michiel doesn’t stop muttering: “amateurs!!”)

The Qantas flight from LA to Auckland is always long and uncomfortable but ours was quite a bit longer than expected. Amongst our deployment group was a new South Pole doctor. She had heard about the program from the book written by another South Pole doc who had done her own breast biopsy one winter. This new doc was inspired by the tales of camaraderie and the bravery of all the people at the Pole who worked together to help the sick doctor be evacuated during a time of total darkness when no planes fly to Antarctica.

This new doc, Pat, didn’t have to wait long to have an opportunity to prove herself. Not more than 3 hours into the flight, one of the flight crew requested medical assistance from any certified medical professionals. We didn’t know at the time that Pat and one of the McMurdo firefighters had volunteered their expertise but several hours later, when the pilot made an announcement that we were, regretfully, making an emergency landing in Tahiti, we learned that the two of them had spent the night awake with the patient who had taken a turn for the worse. An ambulance was waiting at the airport in Tahiti to get the sick patient to better medical facilities.

We landed in the dark and descended down the steps onto the tarmac, greeted by a humid tropical breeze and tall women in floral dresses and fresh flowers in their hair. We spent the next hour and a half in the small airport, watching the sun rise and talking amongst ourselves about how great it would be to have to stay for a day or two. Pat told us how the patient might have experienced a heart attack and the medical experts in Phoenix (or wherever they are) advised the pilot to get to the closest country with a hospital. Though Tahiti was 3 hours out of the way, when you’re in the middle of the South Pacific, there aren’t many countries to choose from.


We did eventually arrive in Auckland and all of us had already missed our connecting flights to Christchurch. Qantas frantically struggled to get us on Air New Zealand flights. You can imagine the chaos….a whole 757 plane load of people, many of whom were flying elsewhere in New Zealand or onto Australia, who needed to be rebooked.

We survived the lines, the security, the wait and the last flight for an uneventful trip to Christchurch where we met our shuttle drivers (who had practically taken over the Meet and Greet on which the company economized), drove into town, checked into our hostels and went out for Greek food.

Not deported!

Yesterday, just one day before leaving Alaska before heading south again to Antarctica, Michiel and I had our dreaded interview with the Department of homeland Security/Department of Immigration for our "Marriage Fraud" interview. Any couple who request a green card after 2 years or less of marriage receive only a conditional permanent residence status. This was the case with us. Michiel received a 2 year green card and, believe it or not, it is time for renewal. (at least for us the time flew by)

We applied for removal of conditions on his residency in January and have been struggling to coordinate the interview appointment with our travel schedule (as you can imagine, explaining that you can't be at an interview in Alaska because you are in Tanzania, Iceland, the Netherlands, etc., etc. is something you can only do once.) We begged the office by US post and phone calls to schedule the appointment before Oct 3, received an appointment for Oct 11 and then finally got our appointment for yesterday.

Over the past 3 months, we have been collecting any evidence of a "real" marriage that we could gather - joint bank statements, beneficiary statements, letters from friends and families attesting to our relationship, photos and joint tax returns, but we were called in for investigation for a fraudulent relationship because we didn't have any of the big items.....mortgage, children, you know....stuff that responsible adults have :)

The interviewer, JR, was a surprisingly atypical federal employee...friendly, helpful and he went above and beyond by doing his background investigation and making a determination DURING the interview rather than afterwards. He appreciated that we were on our way to Antarctica and did everything to be sure that we could leave today.

So you're wondering if he asked us about favorite colors, leaving the seat on the toilet up, which leg he puts into his pants first? He didn't ask any of those things. He DID videotape us, but that was so that his supervisor could evaluate his performance.

He asked us about where we have been in the last several months, why I called from Denver last month, how we met, what we do in Antarctica, what we do in Hope and basically had an easy conversational style that made it easy for us to talk about ourselves.

The real clincher, though, was this weblog. Once we could show real documentation of all the travels we've made together (with photos), he was convinced that we couldn't live this kind of life if we didn't love one another. He also had me translate some of the Dutch on the weblog. When I was able to do that for him, I'm sure he figured that no one would bother to learn Dutch for a "fake" husband!

The result of this positive news is that Michiel will get a 10 year residence permit which allows him to live and work in America. Yahoooooooo!

Tanzania - Chillin' on Zanzibar

With the budget savings accrued over the course of the month, the team decided to fly from Kilimanjaro International Airport outside Moshi to Zanzibar for 4 days of total relaxation on the east coast of the island. Our headquarters was the quiet beach town of Jambiani at the Red Monkey Bungalows. This part of Zanzibar was known for their population of red colobus monkeys, which are not found anywhere else in the world and we were fortunate enough to have a resident family at the bungalows.



The white, sandy beach in front of our hotel disappeared twice a day when the tide came in, but when the tide was out, the water was a gorgeous turquoise.



The view from the dining room at the Red Monkey Bungalows. One of the students getting a henna tattoo. The local women made money by hounding the beach tourists to buy tattoos, hair braids, massages, pareos, shirts, etc.

Jambiani

We left the peacefulness of Jambiani for a Spice Tour and a visit to the historic Stone Town. Zanzibar has long been known for its cultivation of such spices as nutmeg and cloves. Spice tours are a very common way for visitors to learn about how these plants are grown and harvested and, of course to give us a chance to buy souvenirs!

Zanzibar used to be a colony of Oman and, later, Portugal. These influences are evident in the architecture, Islamic religion and conservative culture of the people and the food of Zanzibar and especially in the main city of the island, Stone Town. Stone Town buildings have an incredible variety of hand carved wooden doors and the narrow passageways between buildings make the city a wonderful place to wander aimlessly.









The Old Dispensary (1885) - now the Cultural Centre and the Old Portuguese Fort


Fresh fish, crab, lobster and shark kebabs for sale at the Forodhani Night Market


Faced with years of drought conditions and increasing difficulty maintaining their traditional way of life, many Masaai warriors now come to the cities to sell jewelry and sandals made from tire treads.

Tanzania - Safari Time!

Having survived three strenuous weeks of working, sweating, hiking and food denial, the team started week four of the expedition with a 2 and a half day safari to Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara National Park.

The students chose the safari company and negotiated the price per person. As the Lonely Planet suggested, you do get what you pay for and our budget-priced tour also included the headaches of haggling over extra costs, poorly maintained equipment, disgruntled and unknowledgeable guides (our guide didn't know the difference between a monkey and a baboon) and an itinerary that included a visit to Lake Manyara at a time of day that was not conducive to seeing the majority of the animals.

We were there in the hot, dusty time of the year so the photos are grainy and brown, but you can get a sense of the type of wildlife we saw. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see rhinos or leopards, but the kids were satisfied with the proximity and quantity of critters we did get to enjoy and even with the headaches, they all agreed that they did not regret their choice of safari operator given that the next lowest cost operator would have cost them $56 more per person - money which went towards the purchase of air tickets to Zanzibar (versus a day-long bus ride, then ferry trip to the island).


Lion and lioness



Safari vehicles

Hyena




Pregnant zebra


Wildebeest and zebras often travel together in a symbiotic relationship


Traffic jam


Hippos and flamingos at Lake Manyara. Wish I had a better zoom lens.


Thompson's gazelle


Ostrich


Baboons


Impalas


More elephants


Giraffe