With so many global catastrophes, how does one choose who to donate money to...or whether to donate at all? I guess it all boils down to which causes pull the hardest at your heartstrings. If the Christchurch quake has touched you and you wish to give, here are a couple of options:
1. Go to Gallagher's bar in McMurdo right now (Feb 28) and tip your bartenders generously. All of their tips are going to the New Zealand Red Cross.
2. Wait for Jay Fox and friends to put together an Antarctic musicians benefit concert in Denver.
3. Go to The New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Appeal website and donate online.
4. Donate to the NZ Government's Earthquake Appeal Fund
From those of us who consider Christchurch to be our second (third??, fourth??) home - THANK YOU!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
The Week of February 19
February 19: Poor weather delays our departure from McMurdo Station to Christchurch. We're all exhausted after a ridiculously taxing season and don't mind getting paid for hanging out one more day. Besides, the open water, whales, penguins and seals are enough to keep us entertained during the day.
February 20: A warmish, wind-free day that brings our Australian-manned Airbus to whisk us away in the comfort of business class and incredible views of the open water, ice tongues, tabular icebergs and a mosaic of floating ice bits. We spend the night in the Hotel Grand Chancellor in the city center of Christchurch.
February 21: We leave the city center to travel out to the suburbs to stay in the house of our good ice friends, Christine and Antz. We take a long walk on the beach and start to decompress.
February 22: I take a bus into the city center to get a massage that was to be paid for by the gift certificate Michiel won for winning the Men's 40 years and over marathon at McMurdo. I'm in a small stand-alone home on the north edge of the city center trying to will the giant knot in my right shoulder to dissolve into the hands of my therapist. She's working hard when the quake hits and my wheeled massage table flies across the room. Glass knicknacks on the shelves crash to the floor and my masseuse struggles to stand upright. The shaking is violent and abrupt and seems to go on for minutes. In my relaxed state, it takes me a while to figure out that I should get on the ground and cover my head. I don't remember if I was thinking "this is the worst massage ever." By the time I'm off the table and in the doorway, the shaking has almost finished. I hear a little girl screaming - apparently the daughter of one of the clients and several of the other therapists pop their head in to see if we're ok.
I dress quickly and make my way through the jumble of beauty products to join the other clients and staff in the parking lot where the therapists gather together to say "Fucking Hell" or "Holy Shit" or anything that can even come close to express the enormity of their fear. This was way stronger than the one in September, they tell me. The other clients seem fairly unphased, at least until one beautician realizes that she's left a leg with the wax unremoved. She runs back into the salon to get the tape to remove the wax around her client's kneecap who is busy trying to get cellphone reception. The ladies at Total Body Concept are nothing if not thorough.
They all attempt to reach someone on a cellphone and I am offered a phone to try to call Michiel back at our friend's house, but no one has reception. I thank my massage therapist, who apologizes profusely for cutting things short (again, so very professional) and I head out onto the road to decide what to do next.
The main bus station was back in the city center and for some reason, I turn that direction to start down the street. The scene is something out of a Hollywood movie - crowds of people in business clothes rushing towards me and beyond, gray billows of smoke and an odd smell of fire and other things I can't identify. I stop at a street corner, avoiding a puddle of brown mud (liquefaction). Two young businessmen are discussing what to do and I decide to stop and ask them for advice. They looked, I don't know - nice.
One of them offers to give me a lift out of the city center to see if I can catch a bus further out on the bus line. (OK, we are all still in denial. Of course, there would be no bus service that day - or for the next several days.) He drops me at a bus stop on a main road. Shortly after, a lady tells me that she had been on a bus when the quake happened and was quite sure that no buses were running.
I stick out my thumb and almost immediately get a ride from a former nuclear engineer who had been working towards going to Antarctica to do aging on ice cores. He had never gotten to go and was pretty excited that he had gotten as close to Antarctica as chauffeuring someone who'd just come from there. I probably shouldn't be so "interesting" because it is hard for him to concentrate on his driving which was challenging as it was (deep holes, deep water, huge gridlock, chopped up pavement).
He takes me as far as he can and I trudge through a combination of liquefaction (water churned up through the soil as a result of the earthquake) and probably sewage. A blonde lady runs by with a big bottle of sanitizer and asks everyone "are you ok?" She is running from downtown out to the same suburb I was heading to in order to get her kids. She insists on holding my hand through the deep sludge and I try to oblige except that I am carrying a big bag of cold weather clothing that I was planning on mailing at the CDC later that day.
I take note of the impressive effects of pure adrenaline and keep slogging through the muck. Groups of people are parked on the side of the road and a yound Maori boy yells to me, "Are you okay, ma'am?" "Yes, I'm fine. Are you okay?" His brave efforts cheer me.
I am joined by an older lady who was working very hard at staying clear of the power lines; she laments the fact that she had just yesterday shined her shoes. After chatting for a while, she points out that it is strange that I am smiling. I hadn't realized....
After yet another lift, I run into sanitizer lady again, who drives me the last mile or two towards the house (I thought about the sewage and took a good dose of sanitizer). Michiel is not at home but he is good enough to leave a note on the door telling me that he's out walking.
He had done some cleaning up of broken glass around the house and was checking on things in the neighborhood. He'd viewed water spouting up from under the soil all across the estuary and had been served tea by a neighbor. From this gathering, he started to assemble information about the severity of the damage to the city center and I'm sure he was worrying about me but I'll let him share his perspective in another post (if he wants).
The after shocks that night are strong, frequent and severe. You never do really get used to the feeling of some giant shaking the house from side to side but the home had done beautifully during the quake and sustained very little damage so we felt essentially safe.
Thankfully, our friends had left behind some food, a battery-operated radio (our only link to the outside world), a big bottle of water, and candles.
February 23: We venture out to find a phone to notify the US Antarctic Program and Christine and Antz that we are ok. We ask them to send word to the family, but I'm sure that the prior 24 hours were a hell of waiting and worrying. We're very sorry that they and our family and other friends had to go through that.
February 24: We'd learned the day before that the airport was re-opened and that our Antarctic friends had all been evacuated out to the Antarctic Clothing Distribution Centre (CDC) and we were eager to lay eyes on the people we'd been worrying about. Some of them had horrifying tales to tell of watching people getting crushed by awnings in Cathedral Square and many of them had sad stories of how they'd lost everything in their hotels - passports, clothing, etc. but there were hugs and tears of relief that no one was injured.
We walk over the airport to get onto our scheduled flight to Sydney. Qantas opted to send a much larger aircraft than planned in order to evacuate as many people as possible. We hear more sad stories in the check-in queue that many of them had lost all of their luggage but just wanted to be anywhere other than Christchurch. On the plane, the flight crew acknowledge our difficult days and pour the alcohol freely. The Australian guys sitting next to us are Earthquake Inspectors and they had been doing 3 week stints in New Zealand since September's quake. They are trying to put on a brave face but I think they are shaken up by the damage of February 22nd's quake at least if the amount of booze consumed was any indication. I can't blame them, though. It takes us a couple of glasses of wine (and whiskey for Michiel) before we are able to breathe again.
Feb 25: We're in Perth, Australia. We've put a huge distance between us and the after shocks - at least physically. We're finally seeing photos and videos of the damage and feel, again, that we were so very lucky. You just never know what the results of your seemingly arbitrary decisions will be.
February 20: A warmish, wind-free day that brings our Australian-manned Airbus to whisk us away in the comfort of business class and incredible views of the open water, ice tongues, tabular icebergs and a mosaic of floating ice bits. We spend the night in the Hotel Grand Chancellor in the city center of Christchurch.
February 21: We leave the city center to travel out to the suburbs to stay in the house of our good ice friends, Christine and Antz. We take a long walk on the beach and start to decompress.
February 22: I take a bus into the city center to get a massage that was to be paid for by the gift certificate Michiel won for winning the Men's 40 years and over marathon at McMurdo. I'm in a small stand-alone home on the north edge of the city center trying to will the giant knot in my right shoulder to dissolve into the hands of my therapist. She's working hard when the quake hits and my wheeled massage table flies across the room. Glass knicknacks on the shelves crash to the floor and my masseuse struggles to stand upright. The shaking is violent and abrupt and seems to go on for minutes. In my relaxed state, it takes me a while to figure out that I should get on the ground and cover my head. I don't remember if I was thinking "this is the worst massage ever." By the time I'm off the table and in the doorway, the shaking has almost finished. I hear a little girl screaming - apparently the daughter of one of the clients and several of the other therapists pop their head in to see if we're ok.
I dress quickly and make my way through the jumble of beauty products to join the other clients and staff in the parking lot where the therapists gather together to say "Fucking Hell" or "Holy Shit" or anything that can even come close to express the enormity of their fear. This was way stronger than the one in September, they tell me. The other clients seem fairly unphased, at least until one beautician realizes that she's left a leg with the wax unremoved. She runs back into the salon to get the tape to remove the wax around her client's kneecap who is busy trying to get cellphone reception. The ladies at Total Body Concept are nothing if not thorough.
They all attempt to reach someone on a cellphone and I am offered a phone to try to call Michiel back at our friend's house, but no one has reception. I thank my massage therapist, who apologizes profusely for cutting things short (again, so very professional) and I head out onto the road to decide what to do next.
The main bus station was back in the city center and for some reason, I turn that direction to start down the street. The scene is something out of a Hollywood movie - crowds of people in business clothes rushing towards me and beyond, gray billows of smoke and an odd smell of fire and other things I can't identify. I stop at a street corner, avoiding a puddle of brown mud (liquefaction). Two young businessmen are discussing what to do and I decide to stop and ask them for advice. They looked, I don't know - nice.
One of them offers to give me a lift out of the city center to see if I can catch a bus further out on the bus line. (OK, we are all still in denial. Of course, there would be no bus service that day - or for the next several days.) He drops me at a bus stop on a main road. Shortly after, a lady tells me that she had been on a bus when the quake happened and was quite sure that no buses were running.
I stick out my thumb and almost immediately get a ride from a former nuclear engineer who had been working towards going to Antarctica to do aging on ice cores. He had never gotten to go and was pretty excited that he had gotten as close to Antarctica as chauffeuring someone who'd just come from there. I probably shouldn't be so "interesting" because it is hard for him to concentrate on his driving which was challenging as it was (deep holes, deep water, huge gridlock, chopped up pavement).
He takes me as far as he can and I trudge through a combination of liquefaction (water churned up through the soil as a result of the earthquake) and probably sewage. A blonde lady runs by with a big bottle of sanitizer and asks everyone "are you ok?" She is running from downtown out to the same suburb I was heading to in order to get her kids. She insists on holding my hand through the deep sludge and I try to oblige except that I am carrying a big bag of cold weather clothing that I was planning on mailing at the CDC later that day.
I take note of the impressive effects of pure adrenaline and keep slogging through the muck. Groups of people are parked on the side of the road and a yound Maori boy yells to me, "Are you okay, ma'am?" "Yes, I'm fine. Are you okay?" His brave efforts cheer me.
I am joined by an older lady who was working very hard at staying clear of the power lines; she laments the fact that she had just yesterday shined her shoes. After chatting for a while, she points out that it is strange that I am smiling. I hadn't realized....
After yet another lift, I run into sanitizer lady again, who drives me the last mile or two towards the house (I thought about the sewage and took a good dose of sanitizer). Michiel is not at home but he is good enough to leave a note on the door telling me that he's out walking.
He had done some cleaning up of broken glass around the house and was checking on things in the neighborhood. He'd viewed water spouting up from under the soil all across the estuary and had been served tea by a neighbor. From this gathering, he started to assemble information about the severity of the damage to the city center and I'm sure he was worrying about me but I'll let him share his perspective in another post (if he wants).
The after shocks that night are strong, frequent and severe. You never do really get used to the feeling of some giant shaking the house from side to side but the home had done beautifully during the quake and sustained very little damage so we felt essentially safe.
Thankfully, our friends had left behind some food, a battery-operated radio (our only link to the outside world), a big bottle of water, and candles.
February 23: We venture out to find a phone to notify the US Antarctic Program and Christine and Antz that we are ok. We ask them to send word to the family, but I'm sure that the prior 24 hours were a hell of waiting and worrying. We're very sorry that they and our family and other friends had to go through that.
February 24: We'd learned the day before that the airport was re-opened and that our Antarctic friends had all been evacuated out to the Antarctic Clothing Distribution Centre (CDC) and we were eager to lay eyes on the people we'd been worrying about. Some of them had horrifying tales to tell of watching people getting crushed by awnings in Cathedral Square and many of them had sad stories of how they'd lost everything in their hotels - passports, clothing, etc. but there were hugs and tears of relief that no one was injured.
We walk over the airport to get onto our scheduled flight to Sydney. Qantas opted to send a much larger aircraft than planned in order to evacuate as many people as possible. We hear more sad stories in the check-in queue that many of them had lost all of their luggage but just wanted to be anywhere other than Christchurch. On the plane, the flight crew acknowledge our difficult days and pour the alcohol freely. The Australian guys sitting next to us are Earthquake Inspectors and they had been doing 3 week stints in New Zealand since September's quake. They are trying to put on a brave face but I think they are shaken up by the damage of February 22nd's quake at least if the amount of booze consumed was any indication. I can't blame them, though. It takes us a couple of glasses of wine (and whiskey for Michiel) before we are able to breathe again.
Feb 25: We're in Perth, Australia. We've put a huge distance between us and the after shocks - at least physically. We're finally seeing photos and videos of the damage and feel, again, that we were so very lucky. You just never know what the results of your seemingly arbitrary decisions will be.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Reason For All Those Penguins
Now we understand why there were so many emperor penguins close to station this year. The ice edge was so close that the penguins didn't have to go very far to find a place on the ice to molt. In fact, this season was so warm that the ice broke out completely in Winter Quarters Bay (the water right in front of station) all the way to Cape Armitage. This probably doesn't mean much to those of you who haven't done time in McMurdo, but to those who have, you know how special this is. The last time the ice broke out completely was in 1997. After that, an enormous iceberg blocked the opening of the channel and held back the ice - until several years ago when that iceberg (B-15) broke apart and drifted away from the channel opening. We've been waiting since then to be able to look across OPEN WATER at Mt. Discovery!
Here are some photos of how things looked yesterday. It is truly amazing to hear the waves lapping on the shore and see actual waves behind the chapel. There have been minke whales and orcas swimming around and we spent one evening watching seals close-up swimming near the shoreline. What an unexpected treat!
Here are some photos of how things looked yesterday. It is truly amazing to hear the waves lapping on the shore and see actual waves behind the chapel. There have been minke whales and orcas swimming around and we spent one evening watching seals close-up swimming near the shoreline. What an unexpected treat!
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| The Nathaniel B Palmer in Winter Quarters Bay |
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| Ice Floes at 10 pm before all of the ice moved out |
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| View from Ob Hill Loop |
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| View from Hut Point |
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| View from Cape Armitage |
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| View from the Platform in front of the Waste Water Treatment Plant |
Monday, February 14, 2011
Marathon Number 5!
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| Pre-Race Stretching |
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| And...off we go! |
At the end of each marathon I do down here I mutter: "never again" and at the beginning of each season I think; "why not?" So I trained throughout the season to get in a reasonable shape, but not following any schedule I never quite know whether I will be ready in time. As soon as possible (October or so) I try to escape the crowded, boring and oxygen-deprived gerbil gym to run outside. It requires a bit more time and planning to get the clothing right, but I wear less than most people would expect because by running you create your own heat.
This year I participated a bit in the preparations of the event by sharing my marathon experience with others during a couple of meetings with runners. Partly because of gorgeous weather and the absence of wind the run itself was excellent for the first half. The second half I was met with pain in the ball of my foot which was being exacerbated by the very loose snow. Initially the various support vehicles and aid stations did not have any painkillers for me, but after a while a snow machine pulled next to me and handed me some. The wonderful support system also allowed me to ask for the bag that I had prepared in advance and change into a spare pair of shoes which allowed me to finish the race. I felt that all this and stopping for breaks would surely result in a bad time, but I had almost the exact same time as other years. 4 hours and 17 minutes resulted in the first place (out of 3) for runners over 40 years old and 6th out of all 17 full marathon finishers.
There would have been 3 runners from South Pole, but flights were canceled so they ran laps on their airfield instead. There were also 10 or so half marathon runners and full marathon skiers. After the welcome home ceremony and free massages, we enjoyed a nice ice cold water dunk in one of the science labs tanks that normally contain sea creatures that are being studied. Next year number 6?
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| Going Strong |
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| Pain Killer Delivery |
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| Change of Shoes |
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| Unexpected Spectators |
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| Always time to pose for a picture. |
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| My Certificate |
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| The Route |
There was also a journalist from the New York Times who wrote about us:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/sports/30antarctica.html
Michiel's First Winfly season. (August 2010)
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A sunset on the mountains, with the airstrip in the foreground.
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Winfly, which stands for Winter Fly in, starts at the beginning of August and is supposed to bring McMurdo a small group of people who will be making the preparations for the masses that follow in October. Personally I think that the reason is also to be able to ship some people off continent who misbehaved, didn't perform well, got (home)sick or otherwise needed to leave as soon as possible.
I cannot believe that I have always been so reluctant to come at this time. It has proven to be a great way to start my new season. The nights are still real nights, with real darkness and stars and a chance to see auroras (no luck for me there) and beautiful nacreous clouds. There are very few people on station, compared to summer time and you can find terrific skua** stuff. I also found it interesting to be apart from Sheri for the first time in years and had to get used to rooming with a stranger. Having been away for a season, I felt a new appreciation for this place and all its little perks and quirks which I hoped would last for the season. (which, in retrospect was a very naive wish).
Nacreous Clouds
**A Skua is a scavenger seabird - one of the few types of birds we see on station and is mostly known for dive-bombing unsuspecting carriers of blue trays with food from the dining hall. Skua is also known in McMurdo as an item that has been donated to the community for re-use. There are "skua" bins on every hall and pretty much anything that hasn't been nailed or chained down and doesn't have a sign on it saying "NOT SKUA" is skua.
Uses: "I found some great skua today. Check out this sweater!"
Can also be used as a verb: "I skua'ed this North Face jacket. It is in almost new condition!"
Skua is a way-of-life and an obsession for many (including Michiel, who cannot pass a skua bin without peeking inside) We've all talked about how great it would be to have skua in the "outside world".
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