To the Dark Sector

New Blog location!

2008-11-20T15:55:00.007+13:00

After a lot of deliberation and poking around, I've decided to move my blog back to my personal Web site, johnj.com. The new link is http://johnj.com/southpole/2009/. I hope to see you there!

A Bath

2008-02-18T22:58:00.002+13:00

Anakiwa Boatyard Tracks

"Sing ho! for a bath at the close of day."

Legs now completely turned to rubber after my two-day, hilly, scenic marathon. I pushed the pace this morning because it looked like time might be tight to catch the water taxi at the end of the track, but I wound up arriving two hours early and the boat was an hour late. In the mean time I rested from my walk, went wading on the beach, and talked to a nice young British couple I met on the path. Turned out they both had degrees in physics and so were very curious about the details of IceCube.

The end of the Queen Charlotte Track, closest to Anakiwa, is busier than its beginning at Ship Cove; there are more mountain bikers on the path and motorboats on the sound. But it is still quite beautiful in spots, and I'm glad I went as far as I did (and no further, for the sake of my aching leg muscles).

Things seen up close today:

Goats with horns as long as my forearms.

Mussel shells the color and size of eggplants.

Thousands of translucent jellyfish surfacing as we passed through the wake of the ferry from Wellington.

Best of all, and unexpected, the cottage I have at the Gables has a bath, my first in more than a month.

Tomorrow I go to Wellington to see Neil and Amelia, eat sushi, hopefully see some art, and relax for a few days before diving back into winter in Chicago.

Green Marathon

2008-02-18T22:54:00.002+13:00

QC Sounds Opening

2/16/08 Debrett's backpackers, Portage Bay, NZ

I am halfway done with my walk on the Queen Charlotte Track and too tired to do anything physical other than sit and write. Today and tomorrow are basically each half-marathons in mountainous terrain (mountainous by Chicago standards, anyways).

Despite a tight schedule, things have been smooth since I left South Pole on Wednesday, just two and a half days ago. The process of getting reintroduced to the planet has unfolded in stages, the highlights of which I will now share with you:

1. The Trans Antarctic mountains as seen from our C-130. Glaciers, crevasses, nunataks, mountain peaks, ice falls. I never tire of the views from the plane.

2. At Pegasus field outside McMurdo, twice the oxygen I've been breathing, and the sights of Mt. Discovery, Ross Island, Black and White island. The pleasure of actually seeing something on the horizon. Unlike the last two years, our C-17 actually arrived just after we landed, though we had to wait a few hours after that for cargo offloading/loading and for passengers to arrive by bus from McMurdo.

3. Night in Christchurch: darkness for the first time in a month.

4. Wandering around town, shopping, eating non-Pole food; saying goodbye to friends/colleagues.

5. The train to Picton. Rocking sleepily through rain-blurred green landscapes. Watching sheep fleeing from the tracks as we passed. Meeting and comparing notes with other Ice people.

6. Getting on the mail boat in Picton and seeing Marlborough Sounds from a completely new perspective (in the past I have just taken the ferry straight to Wellington). During the four hour or so trip, the mail boat visits a dozen small homes or clusters of homes reachable only by water. The first time we approached a house/pier, I was sure we were actually going to ram the shore! But our skipper stopped on a dime just short of the pier and brought the boat close enough to exchange mail bags and a few words with the gentleman who came out to meet us. Then we were speeding off to the next harbour. The jocular skipper asked where I was from.

"Chicago," I replied.

"Chicago!!! Do you have a rat-a-tat gun?"

"Uh, sorry...."

"No?! I thought everyone in Chicago had a rat-a-tat gun, like in the movies."

There are dozens or hundreds of isolated homes on the Sounds, most probably reachable only by boat. Any of these would make a perfect getaway, or movie set.

7. Arriving at Mahana lodge, whose dilapidated dock looks like something from a Tarkovsky film (I fell in love with it instantly). Ann and John's home-cooked meal was by far the best food I've had in five weeks, accompanied by rain, thunder, and (!) hail. Sleeping in a room with three other people and being so tired I just fell asleep instantly.

8. Walking here. The Queen Charlotte track takes about three days, two days of which I'm doing. The mail boat takes your bags from lodge to lodge while you walk. The track winds over low mountains through terrain varying from dry scrub to rainforest, with vistas of the sounds opening up now and again on either side. I saw, in no particular order, birds called "wekas" which look exactly like a cross between a chicken and a kiwi bird; a dead worm the size of a small snake; gazillions of tiny pink mushrooms and a few large bright orange ones; strange plants with a straight stalk and long rigid leaves like green knives serrated on both sides (I had seen these in the Christchurch botanical garden but was convinced they were from another planet); and maybe a dozen people.

Most of the time it was just about the walking, with plenty of time to think or just look at all the growing things.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, though perhaps a little easier going. Which is fine with me and my sore legs. Then I have a night in Picton all to myself in a small cottage attached to a B&B, and finally to Wellington for three nights until I fly home.

Sprung

2008-02-18T22:35:00.002+13:00

View from Desk in B2 Lab

2/15/08 En Route to Picton

The view to the right of the train is the sun-speckled green Pacific, a welcome change from the ocean of white I have been living on for the past month, over whose skies alien prototypes of clouds lay flat, singular and as wide as the horizon.

Here the rain clouds pile in a hundred layers of dark steel grey and tufts of brilliant cotton white.

Despite rumors of drought here on the South Island, green growth is as abundant as oxygen here. Night and rain fall again. I am back in the world.

Outta here

2008-02-13T07:03:00.001+13:00

LC130 Departure

Weather permitting (knock on any wood if you can find it), we are flying out of here in about four hours. Something has not been right with my stomach the last 48 hours, and yesterday was a bit uncomfortable. At least one other guy here has a bad cold, so we're getting out of here in the nick of time.

On my way from Christchurch to Wellington, I will walk the Queen Charlotte Track near Picton, staying at two different lodges on the way (a boat service carries your luggage for you while you walk, so it's at the day's end destination when you get there - how nice!). On Debrett's lodge's Web site they have a list of things to bring, including "a good book."

Well, I was bringing my copy of "V" down to the library to leave here, so I figured I was going to have to do without the book. But as I was depositing my book I noticed that they had TWO copies of Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon." Figuring the odds of two winter-overs beating their heads against it at the same time were slim to none, I left Victoria's ("V"!!'s) personalized, enormous hardcover copy of M&D undisturbed on the shelf and took the paperback, which still must weigh in at several pounds. Passing Jerry Marty in the hall, he looked at the book in my hand and said, "uh oh, that looks serious." Mmm hmm, just the way I like 'em.

Sandy has a room for me for two nights at the Devon. Pray to Zeus for me that the weather holds.

Lame Duck DAQer

2008-02-12T04:22:00.001+13:00

IceCube Party in Summer Camp

"Tengo get el f--- out of aqui," a young Kit Traverse mutters to himself under his breath while studying vector mathematics at Yale in Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day." The phrase keeps rattling around my head as the hours count down to our straight-through flight to Christchurch the day after tomorrow. My eyes are tired, my brain is fried after 30 days with hardly half a day off, and my stomach has just about had it with the food here. I have hit my wall and, while I will do a bit of work tomorrow, mostly the day will be about packing, enjoying the surroundings and taking it easy.

Oddly enough, the work has also hit its own wall. The DAQ software which worked rather smoothly throughout a month of tests finally met its match when trying to read out all forty IceCube strings. I believe the situation is very workable, but a days' worth of debugging didn't uncover an easy fix. Still, we are at least a week or two ahead of our original schedule. I find it ironic, though, that the last test (and most important, at least psychologically) would be the one to give us trouble. At any rate, we have a month to find a solution, which still puts us light years ahead of where we were last year (where we were putting the code together with spit and duct tape at the last minute before the last flight of the season came to yank us off-station).

As things wind down I want to check in with some of my other goals for the trip.

Complete and abject failures:

Regular drawing practice. I filled maybe three pages of drawings the whole month.
Skiing to the "love shack" at the end of the skiway. I didn't make it there, it just seemed too darn cold to get my rear in gear and do it.
Pynchon's "V" - I made it a good 150 pages or so but the book is staying here in the library, as I promised myself. "Against the Day" and "The Lord of the Rings" in audiobook form wound up being my fiction fixes.

Qualified successes:

Kept to a meditation practice perhaps 3/4 of the days here.

Exceeded expectations:

Ran almost every day, and made it up to nearly 5 miles. Beat my previous South Pole/high altitude mile record of 8:47 by a whole minute. Lifted weights and stretched. Physically this was an enormously helpful antidote against long hours at the computer, and cabin fever.
Work-wise I managed to meet not only most or all of my planned goals but also got a chunk of work in on a new project which will likely occupy a lot of my time this year. Also strengthened work relationships and managed to help several other people with their projects.

Unexpected surprises:

The eclipse was a lovely natural and communal event.
Going out on the deck at random times without bundling up (in shorts even) and enjoying the electric chill and the stark blazing white ocean of ice for a few moments before taking refuge back in the warmth and chemical smells of the station.

It's getting past bedtime - 8:40 PM and I am still up. I'm more or less on New Zealand days now. But just like this place is somehow like no-where, it is also somehow no-time: no night; arbitrary New Zealand time zone; shifting sleep schedules; and having to be aware of at least five different time zones (I regularly do time zone calculations in my head for all US time zones as well as Greenwich, England, which is the standard scientific/astronomical time base known as UTC).

At any rate, it is time for bed -- this much is clear. Until tomorrow...

Eclipse Town

2008-02-09T06:05:00.001+13:00

South Pole Solar Eclipse

Four days left to go. I'm on a 1AM - 5PM work schedule right now. The schedule has picked up considerably as everyone tries to fit in as much work as possible before we redeploy back to New Zealand.

One noteworthy event happened a day and a half ago: a near-total (80%) eclipse of the sun. I stayed up several hours later than usual to see it. A bunch of us "beakers" went out when it started in order to see the light change and to take pictures. Wind chills were about -75F. You know it's cold when your eyelids try to freeze shut when you blink, or when you can eat the icicles forming on your mustache.

We stood outside for awhile and struggled with failing batteries, aching fingers and fogging glasses, got a few blurry pictures of the eclipse, then took a few shots at the Geographic and Ceremonial Poles and headed inside to warm up. Once inside, we found out we were too early for the real action. Soon most of the people on station were crowding at the windows and doorways (unwilling to face the mustache icicles by bundling up and going outside). Several people had sheets of aluminized mylar which served as an excellent filter for photography. I was glad I had brought my big lens, as it made the above picture possible (see Flickr for more pictures).

The neat thing about the eclipse was the light really changed - after 25 days of mostly blazing sunlight, it was as close to night at the South Pole as I am likely to get. While the eclipse did darken everything, it had the effect of increasing contrast and adding a liquid silver tonality to the snow surface which usually sparkles like powdered diamond dust.

We hit a record low of almost -55F during the eclipse.

It was a late day for me but the sights and photos (and camaraderie with other shivering, clicking and squinting Polies) were worth it. As an added benefit, I am half-way shifted over to the day schedule now, which will make returning to NZ more restful.

One More Week

2008-02-06T04:31:00.001+13:00

Ice Crystal Halo over Dark Sector

I've had a good couple days after suffering through a 24-hour stomach bug which seemed to spread through the station population like a fire through an abandoned warehouse (people were apparently wandering the hallway doubled over with hands on stomachs...). Coming out of that, I was surprised to realize the trip is already drawing to a close: I leave in seven days and a few hours. It is time to think about getting back onto a day schedule (NZ days, anyways).

Time is very strange here -- it seems like I just arrived today, but this day has been measured in hundreds of hours... which is in fact the case (the sun won't set until March).

Temperatures had plummeted to record lows, -45 F or so (-65 wind chill), but have risen a bit since it got cloudy (the clouds act as a sort of insulation). Oddly, despite the cold, one can go out on the deck for several minutes without any gear whatsoever to take pictures like the halo above; anything longer than that and things start to go numb.

We are expecting a near total solar eclipse in about 30 hours, which I will try to stay awake for -- should be a treat after a month of blazing sunlight.

Work has been progressing well. There are still two more batches of strings to be added into the detector -- we are at 34 out of 40 strings and things seem to work ok (knock on wood). When not running tests of my own I'm helping other people with theirs, and working on learning about Web development frameworks in Python, which I hope to use for a new work project this year.

I am also planning out a short vacation in New Zealand, a two day hike along the Queen Charlotte track along the coast of Marlborough (which all you wine aficionados will recognize as wine country), followed by a trip to Wellington to visit Neil and Amelia and a stroll up and down Cuba street.

In short, not too much to report other than the relatively strange routine of living life in Spaceship Pole, punctuated by trips outside to wish people farewell when their C-130's arrive (half the IceCube crew left about 20 hours ago).

IceCube Laboratory Video Tour; Midrats Finale

2008-02-01T03:37:00.000+13:00

Tonight I jogged half a mile across the skiway to the IceCube Laboratory (ICL). Oddly enough, it was my first time out there since I arrived two weeks ago. This has been the first trip where physically interacting with the computers has not been required since all the hands-on work is getting done by other people this year. You might ask, why go at all then? There are a few reasons. First, the satellite connection to South Pole from the real world is slow and lasts perhaps 12 hours a day at best; for much of my time here, it's been rather less than that. My work is 100% focused on interacting with the computers, so a good connection is important. Second, there are many things that could go wrong which would require hands-on work (as has happened all other years previously). Also, there are several people here who I need to assist with various things. And finally, one gains special knowledge by seeing the physical system one works on (sensors, cables, building, station, ...), which is hard to quantify but important nonetheless.

Still, as various systems get more reliable, there will be less call to have so many people on-Ice. When construction is complete, there will probably be only a few seasonal people and one or two winter-overs for IceCube.

For my part, though, it was a treat to get out and see the experiment. It makes the work more exciting and vivid. Even when back home in Chicago, I spend a lot of time "inhabiting" the computers in the ICL, logging in from over the satellite, fixing things and running tests. Seeing their hyper-functional rack-mounted exteriors "in the flesh" was an experience somehow akin to looking in a mirror... the face you see in the peering back out of the looking glass doesn't correspond necessarily to your sense of self, yet it's somehow "you" nonetheless.

Jogging out to the Dark Sector was also a heck of a lot more fun than the treadmill in the Gym, despite -60 F wind-chills. On the way back, I got "stuck" on the far side of the skiway - the crossing beacon was on, indicating the approach of an aircraft. I zipped up and hunkered down for a 10 minute wait out on the snow. But in just a few minutes, the incoming C-130 touched down and I was free to finish my jog back to the station.

Software serves up endless intellectual delights, but nothing beats physical "meatspace" for animals like us.

Speaking of meatspace and physical pleasures, tonight's Midrats (midnight meal) was the season finale. Here's the menu (details included for a certain special chef!):

Bacon-wrapped Filet Mignon
Grilled scallops
Stuffed Portabello Mushroom Caps
Mixed Vegetables
Baked potato
Sushi bar
Harvest Salad with Apples, Blue Cheese, Cranberries, Onions and Roasted Pecans
Triple Chocolate and Mocha Mousse
Iced Tea

I told the Midrats chef that it was the best meal I'd had in seven seasons on the Ice -- a comment I heard her passing around to her crew. We also had tablecloths and candles (a rarity at the Pole due to fire safety concerns). The meal was explicitly off-limits for day shift but there were so many people there I suspect some folks snuck in.

Today is the first of February, meaning I'm more than halfway done with my stay. With any luck, work will continue to go smoothly (we are still about five days ahead of schedule). At any rate, all IceCube folks are leaving Feb. 13 on a straight-through flight to Christchurch. After a week decompressing in New Zealand, I am coming back to Chicago on the 21st.

SPIFF, Party, Shift Change

2008-01-28T22:12:00.001+13:00

IceCube Party in Summer Camp

Several things happened this weekend which have made station life interesting. Saturday night we had SPIFF - the South Pole International Film Festival, where the whole station packs into the galley and watches the summer's crop of films made by Polies. Accompanied by free champagne, popcorn and raucous hoots from the audience, the festival is a true festival of camp, inside jokes, gutter humor, and heartfelt South Pole community spirit. Among others, two IceCube drillers (Tom Pi and Forrest Banks) each had multiple offerings.

One poignant film celebrated Sir Edmund Hillary by featuring his radio conversation with the South Pole from a few years ago, when he was at Scott Base (next to McMurdo).

After the SPIFF, the IceCube party in Summer Camp (from which there are many pictures posted on Flickr). I surprised myself by bartending for an hour or two.

Saturday we also had a change of shift, with Mark leaving and several new 'Cubers arriving. Things instantly got very hectic and all of a sudden I am very busy mornings and evenings discussing plans and helping the new arrivals. It may be quite hectic for the next two weeks. Fortunately I am the only night-shifter at the moment so I get a few hours of peace to do my work and nap if I am short of sleep that day (which is the case pretty much every day).

The gym is truly a lifesaver, and the cushion too. I'm going to try to get up to five miles, fast, before I leave. It is quiet enough nights now to meditate in the greenhouse, which, though noisy, presents a bit of humidity and an intoxicating panoply of smells.

Good things come in threes, or 18s

2008-01-26T09:20:00.001+13:00

Hole 53

Good things to enjoy together after a long day at work: Walt Whitman, music of Brazilian Girls, Bass Ale.

18th string currently being deployed by the day shift. Eden called it again. Eden, fair IceCube oracle, named the number of strings three seasons in a row. Mazel tov to her and to IceCube!

South Pole Index

Number of days at Pole so far: 14
Days missing sitting meditation: 3
Physiological altitude: 10587 ft.
Best mile time on treadmill: 8:22.64
Pages of sketches drawn: 4
Times ventured outdoors (not including plane landing): 3
Times not including deployment: 2
Average hours of sleep/"night": 6
Average times/"night" woken by construction noise, talking, doors slamming, sneezing, etc.: 5
Hours of daylight per day: 24.0
Current temperature: -30.8F (-53.6F wind chill)
Current station population: 239
IceCube strings deployed: 18
Total strings in the ice: 40
Final goal for the project: 80
Maximum number tested simultaneously to date (old+new): 30
Days until station close: 20

Sleepless in the Station

2008-01-24T01:04:00.001+13:00

Dark Sector view

Have been running a bit short of sleep; got paged on the station PA around 1 PM because of problems with the detector, which I managed to deal with. Woke up around (station) dinner time; vacuuming in the corridors at 6 kept me from getting back to sleep.

"Survival routine" helps: wake, vitamins, treadmill, weights, stretch, shower (30 seconds/day since last shower), sit. Plus the nap which I'm going to take in a few minutes, until my 3AM phone call starts.

Things are going well down here; 17th string out of 18 was just deployed today by the day shift. It's still up in the air whether the day or night shift will deploy the last string. Eighteen strings (if we get the last one, knock on wood) is really a phenomenal achievement, one which won't mean anything to anyone except those who remember broken drills, exploding hoses, accidents with cables, strings which had to get pulled out after deployment due to a constriction in the hole, and strings stuck at the wrong depth. The technique has really come a long way since the early days.... a super-specialized technique which will probably be useless a few years from now when the construction is finished. There should be a word for hard-won expertise which is only relevant for a limited time.

Meanwhile, my own work with the software is going ok, smoother than I could have hoped for so far ... for which I'm grateful, though I somehow miss oxygen and plants and darkness more than I remember doing in the past. Ah well, only 18 or so days left... and work will likely get busier and busier towards the end.

This morning, sitting by myself near a window in the galley, feeling slightly frayed and prematurely toasty [burned out on the Ice], I leafed through a five year old National Geographic magazine, looking at photos of exotic deserts in China, and I thought, "I should really go see some interesting places some time." Then I caught myself, looked out at the limitless white horizon, and chuckled.

Post Deploy

2008-01-21T04:35:00.001+13:00

IceCube String 53 Deployment

Well, two more strings to go. Deployment was exhausting but, frankly, the most fun I've had since I got here. We attached all the sensors in the span of three hours, much faster than I've ever done it in previous seasons. Efficient team & streamlined procedures made the difference. I was pretty tired afterwards, but it was a good tired, and a chance to get out and about (we took the snowmobile sled out to the site, but I walked back and stopped by the South Pole markers).

I took it easy today and am back at scheduled tasks in earnest tomorrow.

I just posted 70 or so new pictures on Flickr for your amusement and edification: South Pole views, deployment action, South Pole Traverse tractors (driving from McMurdo to Pole and back), McMurdo scenery (including Adelie penguin).

IceCube and The Beatles

2008-01-19T23:23:00.000+13:00

SOP ("Standard Operating Procedure") these days is to fall asleep in my cubbyhole listening to my iPod Nano to drown out the myriad creaks, clicks, thumps and coughs. This morning, listening to the new Beatles CD, "Love" (a very fun remix by George Martin and his son, released last year), I was thinking how much genius still shows through in their music, 40 years later. How did four kids from Liverpool turn into such a musical colossus? What synergies of place, time, talent and personality had to fall into place, "just so," to create music so new and rich that few others who came after could surpass their contribution ... not even the band members themselves, working separately?

It made me ask similar questions about IceCube (admittedly not as important in the great scheme of things as The Beatles, except to a few of us) -- a three hundred million dollar project in an exotic locale performing (we hope) the amazing feat of detecting cosmic neutrinos. We are all here working together on this project thanks to a sequence of accidents in geopolitics, physics, technology and personality. Many things could have killed the effort at early stages of the game (and some still could). My own involvement in the effort arose out of a similar arc of happenstance; yet there is a certain feeling of inevitability or rightness to it, like a strange song that comes together in the right way.

While I was thinking about these things, "Here Comes the Sun" came on. I chuckled. The sun has been up here since last September.

Now it is night (by the clock only; sunlight blazes across the tack-sharp snowscape all the way to the horizon). We are deploying the 16th string of the season starting around 3 or 4 AM.

Midrats

2008-01-19T00:58:00.001+13:00

Tank at Pegasus Field

1/18/08 2350h NZT

A quick update, since it's been a few days.

It's just before Midrats (the midnight meal) here, which would be lunch for me. Some skiers just arrived at the Pole, from God knows what coastal part of Antarctica. From the desk where I'm sitting I can stand up and see the actual geographic pole just a hundred yards or so away.

Things are going pretty well. I'm gradually getting synced to the night shift schedule, and am pretty well acclimated, aside from dry skin and occasionally having to catch my breath. I'm up to over 2 miles on the treadmill, most of it running, and managed to sleep 6 hours today, a record since I arrived.

I'm a little embarrassed to say I haven't been outside except to take a few pictures... and to learn how to drive a snowmobile. Several of us took a safety class down at the Garage Arch after one 'Cuber got slightly injured in a snowmobile accident. The instruction boiled down to learning various ways to start the thing, what the speed limits are, what terrain to look for, and safety around heavy machinery. I don't anticipate driving around much but it's actually a good survival skill to have down here.

Work is going well, and is actually a bit slow at the moment since we are waiting for strings to freeze in before I can do all the tests that are planned. I'm actually stuck at the South Pole waiting for water to freeze -- go figure. In truth I have plenty of work to do and am using the gaps to catch up on work I would have to do in the North if I were there. It is a good opportunity to catch up with the pulse of the project and get reacquainted with everyone. I also got a fascinating explanation from Steven Meyer of the other big project down here, the South Pole Telescope (ironically based out of University of Chicago just a few blocks from where I live). They are doing some very cool science. Maybe I'll try to explain it here in an attempt to understand it better sometime.

The project has drilled 15 holes this year, already a record, with the 16th to deploy in 24 hours or so. If it's another nighttime deployment (they have mostly been, for some reason) then I will help out on this deployment.

Not too much else to report at the moment, other than that I just posted several photos from the journey here on my Flickr page; I'll try to post a few every day or so, time permitting.

Video: Flight to South Pole

2008-01-17T01:10:00.000+13:00

I just uploaded a video of our flight to the Pole ... enjoy!

The Pure Land

2008-01-16T00:44:00.000+13:00

A nod to Ira for the title.

I've been at Pole about 30 hours and am getting used to the altitude. Getting off the plane was a thrill as always (I have video which I will post as soon as I can get some cozy time with the satellite).... the blast of sound from the propellors, the bite of the air, the endless white, familiar structures, and colleagues waiting to greet us. No need to attend the orientation for old hands - just march over to your room and start to unpack. Same faces as last year in the corridors, and the same smells in the air. And the same feeling of oxygen starvation....

My room is again in the station. It's louder in here than in Summer Camp but I prefer it because everything is close at hand: work area, gym, galley, Quiet Reading Room for meditation, bathrooms... all without having to go outside. Of course, it's a recipe for shack-wackiness, but you can't have everything.

The night shift are getting ready to deploy the 14th string of the season. The "stretch" goal is 18, and still in reach. There have been a few injuries but nothing serious so far. So we are keeping our fingers crossed. Many things from drilling through my software work are much easier because procedures are in place and, for the most part, people are better trained than ever.

I will sit out this string deployment to give my blood chemistry time to finish adjusting to altitude. I had some headaches and the usual symptoms but the adjustment is going at least as well if not better than last year.

Almost there

2008-01-16T00:42:00.000+13:00

I'm sitting on the floor of a Hercules LC-130 cargo plane, back propped up by a pile of orange carry-on bags, staring at a cargo palette full of scientific equipment; being lulled by the gentle shaking of the aircraft and the roar of the engines; hurtling through the atmosphere above the Ross Ice Shelf. These planes are by now at once exotic and familiar, their hyper-functional innards a muted military Christmas palette of green and red. Sometimes I find the most utterly functional of things to be the most beautiful.

I suspect I've flown in as many Hercs as any other kind of aircraft during the last decade. Give me the leg room of a C-130 over coach in a 747 any day. Though the drink selection is limited: you are required to empty, and then refill your water bottle at the drinking fountain before being driven to the plane.

During takeoff I sat next to the McMurdo NSF Science Representative who is on her way to Pole for a day. I asked her how many times she'd been to Pole.

"Just once so far," she said.

I told her, "It's my seventh time, and I'm still excited."

Then she told me that she's been to the North Pole eight times, and while the plane lifted off we talked about the impact of global warming and the reduced ice coverage at the North Pole on air operations there (small Twin Otters can land but not the bigger planes, at one of the spots she worked at). I expect I won't get to the North Pole before it turns into open water (at least in Summer).

In contrast to our cloudy arrival in McMurdo, on the way to Williams Field this morning the views were crystal clear, with Erebus and Discovery gleaming frosty and intricate, seeming much closer than they really were. When the weather is right, it seems as though you can see forever in Antarctica. It's like that in space, they say. Well, this is my space journey, my Sci Fi experience. Planet Antarctica: empty voids filled with rocks and ice, strange creatures which waddle, swim and croak, and dusty humans with sunglasses and greasy hair.

Time to get up and look at the glaciers.

Short-timer

2008-01-13T19:45:00.001+13:00

Liquid Helium Conduit on C-17

Hotel California, McMurdo Station, Antarctica
This is going to be short, cause I'm for a shower and bed soon. Just got back from Bag Drag, which is more or less what it sounds like -- you have to carry all your luggage from your room to the "Movement Control Center" (MCC) where they weigh you with all your stuff for the flight. The new wrinkle this year is that the same TSA restrictions r.e. liquid, gels etc. that you get in the real world applies here, which meant I had to pour some shampoo in a plastic bag for tonight, and then check the rest of the bottle (which Sandy from the Devon gave me, and I'm still using since my other bag STILL HASN'T SHOWN UP... apparently it is due at Pole on or around Wednesday our time).

The other piece of bad news is that my good camera is out of battery juice, so no nice pictures of the Beardmore Glacier or other beautiful Antarctic terrain for y'all, at least going south. The good news though is that I spent a lot of that juice clicking pictures of a lone Adelie penguin who made its way past Hut Point this morning. It was talkative and more active than any penguin I've ever seen up close and personal. Apparently some Polies saw 40 penguins near the same spot a week or so ago. But I still feel lucky, since I haven't seen one for a few years. Sitting out on the black rocks at the edge of Ross Island, staring out at the mountains and listening to the croak of the Adelie waddling past and skidding around on its belly, was probably the highlight of the trip so far. I will post some photos and maybe even a clumsy video or two when I get some more time.

Transport for our South Pole flight is at 0700 tomorrow. With luck I'll be at Pole for lunch. Then I can start to settle in while my body chemistry scrambles to adjust for only 1/2 the usual oxygen....

There are no mice in the Hotel California Bunkroom

2008-01-13T07:59:00.001+13:00

Clothing Issue at CDC

Collapsed about 1930 last night in the top bunk of my bed in the Hotel California. Merciful Mary... I slept nearly 10 hours despite the scratching noises in the ceiling tiles just over my head. I was somewhat amazed that mice were living in the walls and ceiling. Huh.... Mice in Antarctica, I thought.... Who knew. Those suckers will live anywhere.

This morning as I was waking up I could tell that the wind had picked up and was actually shaking the building. It became clear that the scratching sounds were just wind rattling something inside the walls.

A huge chunk of sleep did wonders for my mood. Better yet, I just got an e-mail that my luggage has been found and is in McMurdo. What a luxury it will seem to have more than two pairs of underwear....

Sleepy in MacTown

2008-01-12T18:07:00.001+13:00

C-17 Pax

Surprisingly enough, we made it. I figured we had a reasonable chance of boomeranging back to Christchurch. There were rumors of a snowstorm on its way, which was why we were manifested at 0200h or "o dark hundred" for the earlier flight of the day. So far the snowstorm hasn't materialized, though the view was pretty hazy when we landed, and despite the lack of windows I noticed by the various vibrations and leanings of the plane that the pilot had to make a second pass at the runway before he put us down.

I've had an hour or two of sleep and am not at the top of my game at the moment. I keep almost losing things (gloves; hat; the plastic bag of bananas which I've carried in my hands from New Zealand, and almost "donated" to the Crary Lab IT techs). I'm in a bunkroom in the Hotel California with many beds and probably many snoring men, so the situation isn't too likely to improve any time soon. Once I get to Pole I will have to switch to night shift as well, causing further circadian disruption and general lack of correct neurotransmitter flow.

But I'm still happy and am relatively content to just be exhausted. I'm of to dinner at the galley, and then I might write some more or do a little work before heading off to try to fall asleep listening to The Lord of the Rings on my iPod in The Bunkroom. [Sorry this is absolutely vapid writing, but that's where my head is. --Ed]

Sir Ed

2008-01-11T21:13:00.001+13:00

A footnote to toast Sir Edmund Hillary, who died today at 88, first to summit Everest (with Tenzing Norgay) and a member of the first group after Amundsen and Scott to reach South Pole (this time, by tractor). I saw him at the Pole in '97 or '98 when he came through for a visit. A soft-spoken explorer, humanitarian, philanthropist and advocate for the environment, he was by all accounts a remarkable man.

I guess if Hillary and Norgay could climb 5mi Everest in -30 degree temperatures and 100 MPH winds, I can handle being flown to Antarctica in the middle of the night in the relatively luxurious comfort of a C-17 without complaining too much, bags or no bags.

Shortcut to Toast

2008-01-11T17:45:00.001+13:00

Photo: View from courtyard of Christchurch City Art Gallery

Ok, well, so much for comfortable beginnings. We fly at 0200 tonight, a time when everyone except Santa Claus and the Angel of Death should be asleep. Worse, no baggage yet, and no word from the airlines. Likely I won't see anything until it gets to South Pole in several days -- assuming it ever does. If I don't get my baggage at all it will be an interesting month. I hope they have some t-shirts left at the Station store, otherwise it will be a smelly month, since I have only one on me.

Of course, anything can happen - flight delays, luggage miraculously knocking at the door at all hours. Today's flight was delayed until tonight, and that's the one we're on now, too. But this particular flight has several "DVs" (Distinguished Visitors, i.e. senators or other big-wigs) who are trying to get to Pole for the inauguration ceremony for the new station, which is apparently officially complete. So it's unlikely it will slip unless the weather gets real bad in McMurdo.

But, it's off to Sala Sala sushi for me... might as well enjoy summer while it lasts (another 12 hours or so)!

Pynchon, redux

2008-01-11T07:43:00.000+13:00

"Everyone has an Antarctic." --V

During last year's trip, I strained to finish Gravity's Rainbow while at Pole. I'd lifted my copy of Rainbow from the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) at Pole in 2000, and brought it back with an eye to finishing it and leaving it behind. I failed, but finished it a month or so later, and then tackled and summited his latest, Against the Day, which, while longer and less poetically gorgeous than Rainbow, was an easier read, and just as fun.

This year I thought it fitting to bring down, in Rainbow's stead, my copy of Pynchon's V, purchased in Geneva, Switzerland in 1990. Never managed to finish it despite several attempts, but after Rainbow and Day it should be doable. I'm going to see how far I can get until Station Close - I have a month. We shall see.

I think Pole is a great place to read Pynchon. Here's why Antarctica feels like a Pynchon novel:

Dozens or hundreds of quirky but poorly-elaborated personalities advance and recede from view, colliding in myriad ways, like solitary molecules bonding in various configurations and then flying apart;
The tenor of Science lurks everywhere, a kind of unifying thermal paste holding the whole thing together, but you're not sure exactly how or why;
Lots of strenuous effort bent in all sorts of absurd ways (drilling holes 2 miles into ice? Christmas trees made out of metal parts in the machine shop? Driving for hundreds of miles across icy wastes searching for meteorites? Running naked from 200 degree sauna out into -100 winter air?);
Lots of stuff happens, sometimes exciting, often tedious, often painfully beautiful, usually strange; but there really isn't much of a plot.

Superposition of Luggage States

2008-01-11T06:59:00.001+13:00

3 johns

Slept ok after dining on mussels and Belgian beer with Serap, Theresa, a very nice Aussie named Andrew, and IceCube drill software guru Matt. Still no luggage, and I realized that my long camera lens and both camera battery chargers are in my checked luggage. If we fly tomorrow and our luggage still hasn't made it, it means restricted photo options until I get to South Pole 3-5 days from now. Oh well -- I have my sketchbook.

Speaking of photos, there are a few more on my Flickr page.

Flights: Round 1

2008-01-10T11:11:00.000+13:00

En route from Auckland to Christchurch

A fairly good trip so far, though not without ups and downs. Our layover in LA was 1.5 hours which is enough time if everything goes smoothly. But the weather in Chicago has been more like New Zealand summer than Midwest winter, with thunderstorms and temperatures in the 60s – truly spooky weather for January. Yesterday (well, two days ago modulo the International Date Line) the weather had started settling down but things were still squirrely enough to delay us almost an hour. That made for an exciting transition in LA, running with carry-on bags for our International check-in, inevitable stop at security, and finally a sprint to the gate, where we made it with minutes to spare before they closed the gate, only to sit on the aircraft for an hour until they could push off.

Last year I came home from Auckland in Business Class, where the flight attendants were practically waiting for you with your cocktail before your Business Class Butt hit its fully-reclining seat. Now returning the other direction across the Pacific, my seat towards the front of Steerage had, as its view, Business Class, where the cocoon-like seats beckoned like a mirage across a threshold of just a few feet, or a few thousand dollars, depending on how you look at it. The space under the seat in front was half-occupied by some sort of machinery (entertainment system? Ejection seat hardware?) so that my legs could only fit in at an oblique angle, much less my carry-on. Worse, next to me, reading USA Today, sat a man (also in the Antarctic program, turns out) as tall as me but twice as wide [Editor's note: in the shuttle from the airport in Christchurch, this guy filled us in on the flight schedule, as he manages flights out of McMurdo. We fly to Mac Town on Saturday, and Pole on Monday]. With negative elbow- and leg-room, my chances for sleeping or even resting peacefully throughout the flight had essentially vanished. This wasn't going to do. I'm interested in expanding my comfort envelope, not shattering it. I asked the characteristically amicable Qantas steward if he could reseat me should the opportunity arise. This turned out to be a good move, as a few minutes later he returned to show me to two empty seats adjacent the aisle towards the back of the plane.

The rest went according to plan: dinner, Chardonnay, in-flight movie (you might be skeptical about "The Bourne Ultimatum" on a four inch screen, but try the Moroccan fight scene during heavy turbulence while holding a hot cup of tea in your hand), followed by iPod+Tylenol PM which afforded a few hours of unconsciousness.

Of course, our luggage didn't make it – it's still in Los Angeles. I get to push my "packing light" philosophy to the limit until tomorrow. Travel makes your world grow (three continents in three days) and shrink at the same time. For 48 hours I am living out of a small backpack. After lunch in Christchurch I will have to go find a toothbrush.

Update: Arrived at Devon, home-away-from-home, lunch at Dux De Lux awaits, following a shower. Life is good.

Update II: After shopping for some essentials (toothbrush, shorts, underwear), was able to go for my favorite run along the Avon, opposite the Botanical Gardens. Now, having blissfully napped for an hour or so, it's time for dinner.

Packing for the Pole

2008-01-07T17:36:00.001+13:00

(Photo: Dave and Kael "bag dragging" last year in McMurdo. There is obviously an advantage to carrying less stuff).

Well, packing is underway. I started this list of less-than-obvious things to remember a few seasons ago and still find it useful:

Portable zafu
Lightweight microfiber towel (a la Tim Ferriss)
Basic toiletries (in case the tiny store at Pole runs out)
USB keyboard and mouse (to fend off repetitive strain injuries from typing on laptop 60 hours/week)
Extra bag for storing things in Christchurch
Cameras/lenses/chargers
Sketchbooks / drawing media (a whole fun list in and of itself, but probably not of general interest)
Running shoes, shorts, running pants and shirts
Spray bottle for humidifying room
Saline spray for dry nasal passages
Emergen-C (vitamin powder)
Clothesline (clothing washed before bed will be nearly dry when you awaken, and will humidify your room as an added bonus)
NZ maps (Wellington, Christchurch, ...)
NZ power adapter (most electronics works on 220V if you have a small outlet adapter)
NZ currency/coins (as the dollar continues its nosedive towards toilet-paper valuation, this becomes more important)
LED flashlight (for navigating darkened Jamesways at Pole or dorm rooms in McMurdo)

Believe it or not, you'd probably do OK bringing nothing at all other than a few pairs of underwear and the clothing they give you in Christchurch. But even this "extensive" packing list will take up only half a suitcase, to which I'll add obvious clothing items, laptop, passport, etc.

Goals for Trip

2008-01-06T06:36:00.001+13:00

IceCube is growing again this year, from 22 strings in 2007, up to 32-40 strings. 32 is guaranteed, since 10 new strings were deployed already since the season started in December. 40 is the outside ("stretch") goal.

My primary work task for the trip is to get all these new strings integrated into the Data Acquisition System. There will be a lot to do, about which I will probaby write more about more as matters progress.

Main non-work goals:

Keep meditation practice going, 10-20 minutes minimum per day if possible
Exercise daily (stretch, strength training, running; decrease high altitude mile time, from 08:43)
Daily drawing practice from life and imagination (anatomy and other fundamentals)

Also this blog, photography, and notes for the drawing class I've been writing out on my Web site. Enough to keep me out of trouble during the 0.00125 hours per day when I won't be working or trying to sleep....

And, of course, to stay safe, have fun, and connect with colleagues and friends.

Balaklavas

2008-01-04T18:39:00.001+13:00

Gotta get those balaklavas ready.

Current schedule has me arriving in Christchurch on the 10th (you lose a day in flight, and a day for flying over the date line), getting my clothing the same day (ugh), and then flying to McMurdo the next day. Of course, mechanical delays, weather, etc. make schedules very soft.... we shall see. Either I get to enjoy New Zealand (or LA, or Chicago) or I get to Pole quick and can just settle in.

Tree and Man (Test Post)

2007-12-28T13:08:00.001+13:00

This is a test post, using a photo from Flickr, taken in Lincoln Park near my old apartment on the north side of Chicago.

Schedule

2007-12-16T10:34:00.000+13:00

Just an update for any curious people whom I haven't spoken to in person for a while: I'm scheduled to leave for South Pole again on Jan. 8 or thereabouts ... still haven't gotten my tickets, though I've "physically qualified" (PQed) and have been working hard to get ready for the season.

More news in this space as we get closer to then!

How to mail stuff to John at the South Pole

2007-11-25T05:15:00.000+13:00

John Jacobsen, IceCube
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400
APO AP 96598

Better mail it before Jan 25 or so, or it won't make it before the end of the season.

Summer and Winter

2007-03-06T04:59:00.000+13:00

View from upper deck of 747 en route to LAX

Writing this from my flat in Chicago where I have settled in and started in with many projects - if any of you are still reading, two bonus features for you: a video of the last plane leaving South Pole Station, filmed by Brien Barnett, 2007 winter-over (not shown: me, on that plane!!!).

And last but not least - my last photo set for that trip. Enjoy!

View from rear car of Tranz Scenic train near Akaroa, en route to Picton.

Window into one of Wellington's 10,000,000 gorgeous stores and cafes.

View from my apartment window - snow and ice again. Sigh.

Homeward Bound

2007-02-22T09:24:00.000+13:00

Glacial flow seen en-route north to McMurdo

Latest photo set

Once again rattling north on the Tranz Scenic train from Christchurch to Picton. I have just a few days in New Zealand due to the restricted availability of flights out of Auckland (I had to choose to leave Friday or be stuck in NZ several more days). Across from me is colleague Dave reading in the Christchurch edition of The Press, about the exodus of Ice people flooding into town, and of New Zealand's upset victory against Australia in cricket last night, which we watched from our restaurant booth downtown. Colleague Mark, who had explained the finer points of US Super Bowl tactics at Pole to me at Pole, grew up in Scotland (somehow retaining not even the merest trace of an accent) and managed to acquire an uncanny skill at darts, pool, ping pong, lawn bowling, golf... seemingly any sport involving directing matter into targets of various sorts. Fitting, somehow, for a physicist. He gave us a detailed explanation of the rules of cricket, to the point where we not only could follow what was going on, but were on the edges of our seats at the end of the game when New Zealand prevailed in the last few pitches of the final over.

There are a nearly infinite number of things to do in New Zealand involving outdoor activities in incredible scenery (bungee jumping, hiking, swimming with dolphins, riding helicopters atop glaciers, filming adaptations of Tolkein stories, etc., etc.) but I keep returning to the train + ferry combination up to Wellington - a soothing way of passing a day sliding past a good chunk of typically gorgeous NZ landscape - mountains, farmlands, coastlines and open water. A sort of gradual Northwards decompression after the dry frenzy of seemingly endless effort and sleep deprivation on-station. Post-Ice, I always seem to become afflicted with a paradoxical combination of intense lethargy and buzzing creativity which I actually enjoy quite a bit. We'll see if it goes anywhere productive after I return home this weekend.

I wrote down some goals at the beginning of the trip and I do want to have a short reckoning of how things went. Work-wise the trip was a qualified success. We incorporated all 22 IceCube strings plus the IceTop surface array into the new DAQ. The software itself is limping along (requiring babysitting from the winter-overs and by the three of us as we gravitate Northwards) but it feels somehow more in hand than last year – we shall see. Team interactions were fruitful and good-natured and I feel there is a good foundation going forward for the next few months of troubleshooting.

Personally, the upside was that, a few headaches aside, I managed to stay healthy throughout the trip (possibly a first for me) and maintained a workout schedule throughout, getting my high-altitude mile time down to 8:43 and logging as many as five miles a day on the treadmill. Daily work with weights helped counter the punishing schedule at the keyboard. On the downside, meditation and drawing practices went down the tubes and stayed there. Oh well. Also failed to finish Gravity's Rainbow and to return it to its rightful place on the shelves of the station's Quiet Reading Room – but I'm still enjoying it so I have borrowed it for a second time. Perhaps I'll send it South when I'm done with it. I have until November before the mail starts up again.

The main thing, of course, is that everyone got in and out safely, something I do not take for granted. I expect it's fairly safe to travel on the Ice but I am mindful that I am carrying in my luggage pieces of an LC-130 that crashed at South Pole (with no serious injury or loss of life, I should add). When we were first scheduled for the Soft Close there was talk of taking us out in Twin Otter aircraft after the Air Guard stopped flying. That would have taken us to Patriot Hills and then up through Tierra del Fuego – how we would have gotten home after that I have no idea; there certainly would have been no stopover in Wellington on the way home (anyone for Panama City? Rio?). The Otters are small aircraft with a shorter range than the 130s, requiring stopovers at fuel depots along the way (thoughts of landing at unmanned stations literally in the middle of Antarctica appealed to my adventurous side but the obvious added risk did give me pause). In the end the nominal Soft Close bought us only an extra two hours spent nursing DAQ along and eating hot cinnamon buns from the galley (a last-minute contribution from the departing breakfast chef) before we were serenaded off by one of the winter crew members playing saxophone as we filed out of the station into -80F wind chills and piled into our Herc. A combination of rapid temperature drops, logistics and, undoubtedly, opaque and mysterious Ice politics got us out of there, in the end, earlier than expected – so here I am in a train being jostled soothingly, watching dolphins jump off shore, rather than banging away at the software with a few winter-overs hungry to be rid of us and to begin their long hunkering-down for the winter.

Scenes from the straight-through flight to Christchurch

Saxophone serenade - so long, Summer.

The last flight (ours!) to leave South Pole until October.

View en route to McMurdo.

Our ride from Pegasus field near McMurdo to Christchurch.

First sunset in three weeks

"Big Red," the familiar parka, is surprisingly comfortable to sleep in.

Schlepping ECW gear to passport control, customs, and check-in at CDC.

More from this photo set

Redeployment

2007-02-19T19:36:00.000+13:00

Redeployment is the military term for leaving wherever you were. I've always thought it was an odd term: it sounds like you can never go home, you just get re-deployed somewhere else.

Fortunately in my case I have been re-deployed to Christchurch, home of cabbage trees, running water, ducks, Scottish shuttle drivers, lawn bowling (I could, and might, write a whole blog post about how fun lawn bowling is!); fresh juice, Indian food; warm, fragrant air, and, unfortunately, too many damn Ice people, tourists, etc. making it hard to come by hotel rooms and flights home. When we arrived late last night I discovered that my darkest dreams had manifested into horrid reality: I had been billeted in a motel out by the airport rather than downtown.

After passing an extremely abbreviated night's sleep I did manage to find rooms tonight and tomorrow in separate hotels on Armagh, tiding me over until I leave for Wellington on Wednesday. I had similar trouble getting a flight home from Aukland to LA - I'm leaving NZ two days earlier than planned... the alternative was staying another five days!

These logistical hurdles sorted out, I can enjoy a few days of summer before heading home to the apparently still-frozen midwest.

I will try to write about yesterday's trip, a very long day (a real day, ending in night!) - and I have lots of pictures which I will put up. But it's time to go eat Indian food with my colleagues.

Short-timer

2007-02-18T07:53:00.000+13:00

After a few false alarms yesterday, we are scheduled today on the 1PM flight to McMurdo. Temperature is -52F, -77 with windchill.

After working 19 days straight and shifting to a day schedule to sync up with the Real World(TM), I was so exhausted last night all I could do was play pool, watch Fifth Element in the video lounge, and crash. Now I'm ready to pack up. I could be breathing Christchurch air tonight!

All-call just announced the first flight launched an hour early - they want to get us out of here!

The Cleanest Air in the World

2007-02-17T01:55:00.000+13:00

Your intrepid author collects his own air sample from the top floor of the Clean Air Building.

Well, still no confirmation of whether we're getting pulled out tomorrow. Apparently they want to fly everyone out, even the so-called "soft closers," because it's getting colder fast, but the weather forecast for McMurdo calls for snow and poor visibility. So, we'll see. We might all be stuck until Sunday or later. We can use the time here but I'm getting toasty [Ice slang for Ice burnout] about as quickly as the mercury falls.

But tonight, we had a real treat - a tour of the Clean Air Facility (see photos). South Pole (upwind of the station) has the cleanest air in the world, and there is an entire building devoted to its study. Not surprisingly, two of the most prominent measurements are ozone concentration and CO2 concentration. South Pole is one of five similar clean-air stations spread from north to south, from here to Barrows, Alaska, where CO2 measurements have been taken for several decades and show an inexorable and dramatic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. We saw how they do the measurement. The ozone measurement was also very interesting technically, and the explanation for the ozone hole, while too lengthy to recount here, is fascinating. At the end we got to collect our own sealed samples of The Cleanest Air in the World - a souvenir to put over the fireplace, though seeing the carbon curves does dampen my enthusiasm for lighting any fires.

Scenery on the way to the Clean Air building.

Laser for LIDAR measurements of high-altitude cloud formations.

Seven -, count them seven-paned windows on the second floor.

Fifties-era flasks still used for air sampling. Apparently measuring CO2 concentrations back then was considered somewhat silly; now it's probably the most important measurement done at South Pole (my opinion).

Guest book for Distinguished Visitors (DVs), including Sen. McCain, who apparently gets the global warming thing and commented to the other DVs last year, "See? See? I told you," during their version of the same tour we had today.

Other, less-distinguished visitors.

Our home, for a few more hours at least...

More photos

One more day (?)

2007-02-16T21:53:00.000+13:00

Rumor mill now has us leaving tomorrow!?!!!

Apparently the forecast has the mercury dropping.... We shall see....

One more week (?)

2007-02-15T21:28:00.000+13:00

Winter-over Sven shuttles us out to the Dark Sector to move heavy stuff.

Eighth photo set is up.

Approximately one more week to go. Tonight I have to pack up my things and clean out my room. I'll get to stay there, but with only one carry-on bag. The rest gets crushed onto a pallet for loading onto our Herc, whenever it arrives. Living out of a single bag -- sort of like having your luggage lost on a ski trip (0.1" of powder, 2 miles of base).

To prevent us from getting lost and missing the last flight out, we're supposed to carry radios around or stay near the all-call (PA system). When they tell us they're yanking us out of here, we have to check in with comms so they know they don't have to come roll us out of bed, dispatch search parties, etc. so the plane can leave on time. They don't want to keep the plane here any longer than needed, partly, I think, out of concern for safety (the reason they don't fly here in winter is that the cold doesn't play well with various mechanisms on the planes).

Newest part of the new station awaits its fancy dark-blue siding.

Various things are shutting down - midnight and Sunday meals, Post Office; store hours are reduced. Population is less than half what it was when I arrived. It will be less than a hundred after tomorrow, then 55 after we leave.

Winter-over Claire salutes for the cause.

Work has been back and forth - it seems that every other day is a good day. We diagnosed one problem and Dave heroically spent 36 hrs implementing a fix. It helped, but just enough to uncover the next problem. More than ever it's a race against time (against the weather, the flight schedule, our flagging reserves of energy). The soft close buys us a little extra time, which we certainly can use to get things into shape.

Posing with an IceCube sensor in the counting house.

Closing Softly

2007-02-12T05:34:00.000+13:00

Been a few days since writing but there is not too much new to report. The routine is the same: wake up, work out, work 12-14 hours, curl up in bed with Battlestar Galactica, sleep (modulo fire alarms or other noise). Iterate.

Our work has finally started to come together, with the new DAQ collecting data from nine strings as I write this. IceCube deployed 13 more this season and we will gradually be adding these in as the DAQ improves and the strings freeze in. It takes several weeks for the strings to freeze fully, and six months or more for the strings to cool down to the ambient temperatures in the ice - around -55C, though it gets warmer the deeper you go due to geothermal heating of the ice closer to the bedrock.

The station has quieted down substantially, having shed almost a hundred people since we arrived. The sun is a little lower on the horizon, as well. A taste of what winter will be like, perhaps. I do appreciate the quiet. Being a light sleeper teaches you to be careful about your own noise in the sleeping quarters. There is an art, for example, to closing doors softly: turn and hold the knob, let the door pull itself closed, release the knob after the door is shut so the latch doesn't clank.

Speaking of soft closings, we three DAQers are participating in the "soft close" of the station. In general the station closes for winter on the 14th to the 17th, with almost everybody but the winterovers leaving on one or two flights on the last day. The closing date has been typically set by the Air Guard based on average weather conditions - they don't like to fly once it starts to get too cold, about -50 to -60F.

This year a few of us are staying later, after the bulk of the summer folks leave, as late as Feb. 22. The caveat here is that we have to check our bags in advance and live out of one carry-on bag after the 17th, and be ready to leave literally on a moment's notice. "Soft close is 100% weather dependent. If our temperatures begin to drop, you may be notified of your departure with EXTREMELY SHORT NOTICE. It has happened that we have received word that we will depart on a flight when it is already enroute to Pole. Be prepared to depart at any time (and don't stray too far from the all-call!)." In other words, no leisurely strolls through the Dome or around the cargo berms for pictures.

So, until they tell us to drop everything and head out to the plane, we're writing documentation, fixing bugs, training the winter crew, scrounging leftovers from the galley fridge (the midnight meal ended yesterday for the summer), writing our last postcards, playing a game of Settlers of Catan now and then. Not quite allowing ourselves to think about the cold beer and warm late summer breezes on the outdoor patio of the Dux De Lux in Christchurch.

More photos

2007-02-09T03:59:00.000+13:00

Made it out to the actual Pole markers with Dave for our obligatory "hero shots," including one of the sign for Linda's math class. It was -66F with wind chill, not too bad, so we headed down into the Dome - my old haunt from visits before the new station went up. I hadn't been there this trip.

The buildings have either been removed or are being stripped down. The old Science building is a demolition site now. There was no power but the camera flash served to light our way just like it did in the gun emplacements we explored near Christchurch. I spent a lot of time in the back of science and, as you can see from this photo, it is just a shell now. Ah, impermanence.

More pictures: the Dome entrance:

Buried crossroads near the smoking bar:

See also the rest of the pictures in this set.

Super Bowl Wednesday

2007-02-08T02:41:00.000+13:00

New photo set going up as I type this.

Temperature -40F, wind chill -70F. Tonight was the Super Bowl in the galley - Super Bowl Wednesday. No live TV for us here, and the tradition is to have a news blackout about the Super Bowl until the recorded game can be played on-station. Normally I don't care too much for the 'Bowl or for football in general, but given that Chicago was playing, I thought it might be fun to check out the festivities here at Pole, which included a pig roast (head mounted proudly on the serving counter), HDTV recorded off of Armed Forces Network and played back ultra-low-def, and four feisty cheerleaders festooned in feisty bright skua [recycled] clothing with the letters "T", "I", "T", "S" emblazoned across their backs. I can assure you it was a scene not to be missed. Strangely, most of the Polies were rooting for the Colts. Colleague Mark explained the finer points of football rules and tactics that somehow didn't get beaten into me as a young boy growing up in Wisconsin. Though some kind soul fast-forwarded past all the commercials, I could tell that America's Finest got a rather different selection of commercials via AFN then the rest of us Stateside folks - lots more camouflage, anyway.

Last night while debugging a knotty communications issue with our sensors I managed to crash a computer out in the Dark Sector and had to suit up and head out. It was about 5:30 AM local time and very few people were out - just a few Caterpillars winterizing the IceCube drill camp. I walked about a mile in -55F to a deserted two story blue building just to push a single tiny button on one computer. It was a nice time, actually - not too cold with all my gear on, and the sky was lovely, and the scenery breathtakingly simple. I'm sure I enjoyed it more for having been inside for a few days and glued to the laptop.

Not too much to report - just the new picture set. Enjoy.

Night Owls

2007-02-06T08:41:00.000+13:00

I have about 15 minutes to post this before we lose satellite connection. Still alive down here, just been very busy working. We have been fixing bugs roughly as fast as finding them, which is a good thing, though it makes the apparent progress seem slow. But we've accomplished a lot and have started progressively more difficult tests, including a first try at operating the new IceCube strings and the old AMANDA detector (IceCube's prototype) together.

The routine I'm settling into seems to be, get up in the afternoon, have a small breakfast, go to the gym, do treadmill + weights + anything else I feel like doing, take a 34 second shower (we're allocated 2 showers per week at 2 minutes each - that comes to 34 seconds per day), work all evening and all night, punctuated by mealtimes and occasional wanderings about the station, or perhaps a movie in one of the lounges. At the end of the day I crawl into my tiny cubbyhole, watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica or read a little Pynchon, put on the white noise mix I made with Garage Band (crickets, night campsite, distant erupting volcano, cave drips), and fall asleep for 5-6 hours. Then do it all over again.

I don't think I've been outside in two or three days.

First Week

2007-02-02T22:38:00.000+13:00

Latest photo set

Haven't had time to write much, due to work becoming all-consuming. We have gotten a lot done since arriving but we have a long way to go. For the first few days I was working in the Dark Sector daily, poking around in big racks of equipment inside the IceCube Laboratory (ICL), or "counting house" (a venerable physics term for the hut where your data piles up). A shuttle leaves from the station every 20 minutes for the Dark Sector, until 4:30PM. After that time, you walk the half-mile distance (there is an IceCube van and some snowmobiles but I haven't used them for commuting yet). After two days I got things fixed enough that I was able to work remotely from the station, and haven't needed to go out since then. (You might ask, what's the point of going to the Pole if you can work remotely? The answer is complicated but boils down to needing 24/7 high speed network connectivity, face time with colleagues, and getting a sense of what's going on with the detector that is simply impossible up North - plus, of course, actually building and fixing the instrument, much of which we missed by coming down so late in the season).

The drawback of not having to go out to the counting house, however, is that if you are bunked inside the new station, you can easily go days without going outside. You have to force yourself to go out, or volunteer for or get picked for various cleanup or other chores.

Yesterday DAQer Keith left Pole, and we saw him out to the plane (see new photo set) - my first time outside in 24 hrs. There are often several flights a day during the week, mostly for cargo, but there is something special about the passenger (PAX) flights. Folks you know leave or arrive, or both, or you do; there is a certain community feel, a party atmosphere tinged with bittersweet and laced with frosty beards and eyebrows, while they wait to load cargo before they let the pax on board (keeping the pax well away from the propellers to keep any giddy beakers [scientists] from turning into pink spray on the snow). I have an affectionate feeling for the planes. The Hercs are special in that they are the only way home. Unless you decide to walk... some people do. Those people are even more crazy than we are.

Also stepped outside briefly early this morning without my gear on to take pictures of the following halo and sun dogs (perennial phenomena here at Pole, and very beautiful - see photo above).

To stay sane I have been going to the gym, and have really enjoyed the new facilities (last few years they have cannibalized various rooms in the old station for this purpose until the new gym was completed at the end of last summer). However, the combination of working out, changing to night shift to match the satellite, sleeping poorly (there is a lot of noise on station), and basically working all the rest of the time has left me feeling exhausted and with a chronic enough headache that I saw the doctor a short while ago (all indications are that I'm fine, so don't worry). So I'm going to be taking it a bit easier, and in fact just watched Fargo in the video lounge, and am going to take a nap. A hot bath would be nice, too, but that will have to wait until New Zealand, or home.

It looks as though they may try to keep a few of us past the nominal station close on Feb. 14. So that hot bath may have to wait a few more days.

Some annotations for the photos:

Lower hallway of the new station

0300h - lights on in the greenhouse... the humidity and smell of tomato plants are AMAZING.

Mustering for the flight North

More photos

More Ice Pix

2007-01-31T01:32:00.000+13:00

More pictures for your viewing pleasure. This one contains a bunch of aerial shots which you may enjoy, but a few others require comment. First of all, did you know McMurdo has an ATM? In 1997, I flew down on the plane which had the first Antarctic ATM machine - this one is at least one generation newer than that one.

The plane itself, the Hercules LC-130 is perhaps familiar to many of you - here is ours, and one of several others from the same NYANG unit at Williams Field:

Once inside, we all pack in like sardines. Actually, there is more leg room than on Qantas economy class...

The dark band on this shot is the contrail of our C-130 on its trajectory through the atmosphere.

A few of us were lucky enough to be invited up on the flight deck. I was particularly intrigued by our flight plan.

Hard to believe the flight was just 36 hours ago. It's been a productive day, and now it's time to crawl into my cubby hole and get unconscious.

Settling In

2007-01-30T21:57:00.000+13:00

Been here a bit more than 24 hours, and I'm settling in. Mostly I've been preoccupied with debugging a particularly nasty system error in our device driver; hopefully I'll have that wrapped up soon and can join Kael, Keith and Dave in higher-level deployment and testing of DAQ (the data acquisition software).

Once I get acclimated to the altitude I'll be much happier. It's been hitting a bit harder than last year, though I took the diamox they encouraged us to take in McMurdo. Unfortunately the diamox makes my hands and feet and face feel like they're buzzing, which is irritating. And I'm generally out of breath, and have to pee constantly (apparently the body adjusts its pH to the new altitude this way). Out in the Dark Sector (the radio-quiet area where our experiment is) the facilities consist of a "solar" (i.e., painted black) toilet; the solar toilet is essentially an otherwise unheated outhouse with a styrofoam toilet seat built over a half-buried waste barrel. Ah, the life of luxury.

All is pretty good, though, and it's fun to see familiar, sunburnt faces with unwashed hair (remember, 2 showers per week, 2 minutes each, folks!), and the same old tracked vehicles and space-age buildings and the endless horizon and the great big open sky with long simple cloud shapes a seemingly infinite distance away. I'm settling in and with any luck we can start to get stuff done quickly.

Time to catch the shuttle out to the Dark Sector.

NPX

2007-01-29T23:33:00.000+13:00

Finally made it to Pole early this afternoon. It is always a rush to get off the C-130 and smell and hear and see this place. There is something very special about this desolate piece of nowhere.

My room is in the new station, a very cosy cubbyhole similar to last year's. I went out to the Dark Sector right away and made progress with our communications issues - with luck tomorrow I'll have the problem licked.

My challenge now is getting used to the altitude and getting onto night shift so I can work when the satellite's up.

The team here deployed the thirteenth string of the season just before we arrived. Congratulations to everyone on the summer team, and to Eden for picking the correct number of strings two seasons in a row!!!

I have lots of cool photos from the trip, but until I get them posted, here is one courtesy of and © Mark Krasberg: the plane we came in on, as it taxied towards the station.

Pole Bound

2007-01-28T21:27:00.000+13:00

After tonight's "bag drag" (weigh-in for our flight) we are scheduled on tomorrow's 10AM flight to South Pole. Many of my fellow passengers are winter-overs returning from their week long furlough in McMurdo, which they are required to take (presumably so Raytheon can poke at them a bit more, and so they get a taste of something slightly less surreal before the curtain of winter draws shut for eight months).

I did not, in fact, go to Castle Rock today, as we three DAQers had work to do and I wasn't feeling energetic enough for a 5hr or so walk. Instead I took off for part of the afternoon and hiked up Hut Point Ridge Trail for an hour or two. Some of the terrain is a bit lunar-looking, as you can see from the above picture or the third photo set, which I have just uploaded. I did, however, see some skuas and seals, small ponds, strange buildings as you can see from the photos.

Also, this view of McMurdo seen from the hills above gives an idea of how the town is laid out:

For those who may be interested, here are the luxury accommodations in my portion of our McMurdo dorm room (I have three roommates here; won't have any at Pole). Let me assure you I'm more tidy in the real world.

Tonight we had an interesting science lecture in the galley about meteorite hunting near the South Pole. Crews go out to remote spots (yes, there are places here far more remote than the Pole) and ride snowmobiles side by side for hours on end searching for meteorites atop glaciers which have been exposed by wind. They find hundreds or more per year. Great care is taken not to contaminate the meteorites when they are collected. Some of them have lain on the frigid ice for thousands of years and have never been exposed to liquids of any kind. Some are pieces of Mars or the moon which have shattered off into space due to various impacts and fallen to Earth. Some contain some of the same complex amino acids needed for life.

It will be nice to get to Pole tomorrow (though you never know what will happen with weather or the planes) - I have been traveling for seven days now. Get off the plane, let the cold air bite deep into my lungs, get lunch and a briefing, move into my room, do some laundry, start getting used to the altitude and get to work. Get into a routine, connect with old friends, help the effort along. It looks like we may miss the last IceCube string deployment of the season by a few hours - ok by me, as I have done a lot of deployments, though my travelling companions have not. This has been a very good season drilling-wise, with twelve strings successfully deployed and one more on the way. We need to get to Pole and do our job so that data can actually be collected from the now greatly expanded instrument this Austral winter.

Bad dirt

2007-01-27T20:05:00.000+13:00

Annie Proulx has two collections of short stories set in Wyoming. The second is titled Bad Dirt. They are gritty, dark, full of sumptuous detail and compelling characterization. If she were to write stories about McMurdo, I would pick them up in a heartbeat. Some of the craggy, dust-spattered characters here could have come straight out of her stories.

But that's neither here nor there. The big news for the day is: the second set of pictures is up! And, for your entertainment, I'll post and annotate a few of them here as well, starting with...

Interior of "Futuro" flying saucer house by Matti Suuronen, in Christchurch Botanical Garden.

Very large tree in the Botanical Garden. Note diminutive figure of author at base of tree for scale.

The next stage of our commute from Christchurch to Antarctica: a ride in a C-17 flown by the New York Air National Guard.

Arrival at Pegasus field.

En route to McMurdo from Pegasus, we see a C-130 landing at Willi Field. Note picturesque exhaust clouds.

Running water alongside the streets of McMurdo. Temperatures have been in the 30s up to 40F here.

Fish in the Crary Lab aquarium at McMurdo Station. Note open mouth in bottom right image.

Catching my own reflection in window Scott's Hut at Hut Point.

Hundreds of seals dot the sea ice around McMurdo - this group is outside Scott Base (the New Zealand base near McMurdo).

These are only a sample - have a look at the rest.

The morning's adventures consisted of missing breakfast, walking out to Hut Point to look for penguins (no joy), and then getting our safety briefing for recreational travel around the station (i.e. the walk to Castle Rock, which I've never been able to do). After lunch and a nap, I jogged a few hilly kilometers to Scott Base. After McMurdo went out of earshot around the hill behind me, it became utterly silent. Just me, the dirt, Scott Base and the sea ice below, and Erebus to the north, emiting it's white puff of volcanic breath. The only disturbance in the air was a faint, silent breeze. Strange to be in such a big space, as big a space as I'll ever find, probably, with no sound at all but my own breath and heartbeat. We are never truly silent until we take our last breath.

The Last Laugh

2007-01-26T21:07:00.000+13:00

Hurtling over the sea with sixty other men and women, all of us stuffed into our various unders and fleeces, plus Carhartts, wind pants, military field trousers; red parkas, Swedish Polar research dark blues, paler blue kiwi overalls, ears plugged with foam plugs, noise canceling headphones, or just not giving a damn about the auditory shredding provided by the four jet motors hung from the wings a few meters outside the fuselage, I sit facing sideways once again in the ritual commute South to the White Continent. The C-17 brighter, cleaner and more comfortable than a C-130 or -141. Weather in McMurdo foggy (reprieve from early departure, thank you very much, but loud, drunken kiwi youth carousing outside the hotel at 0545h ruling out more sleep), then clear, then foggy with no wind, then apparently clear enough to inject us all into the airspace between Christchurch and Antarctica. In three hours we will have either landed (my preference) or started our boomerang back north (my prediction). I haven't ever boomeranged before - quite lucky, actually: the record is seven boomerangs in a row for one sorry lot. If the weather deities have mercy on us we will have dinner and bag-drag (weigh-in for tomorrow's flight) in Mac Town this evening.

Of all the faces on the plane, there are a few I recognize from previous trips, whether from McMurdo or Pole I can't say. There are lots of jokers like myself who do this over and over again. Their reasons vary. I'm not sure of my own reasons; I guess there are many, but I suppose the foremost is simply that it is my job.

Best case scenario is to arrive at South Pole tomorrow, one day behind our scheduled date. Though last night's Thai food is still disagreeing with me enough that I'm not real excited about arriving at altitude, there is much to do now and any more days lost mean, well, that much more pressure when we arrive at Pole to fulfill our goals, which are many, and ambitious. The data acquisition system (pDAQ) is our responsibility, and while the building blocks are largely the same as last year, much of the glue that holds it all together is completely different (better, perhaps, but newer, and therefore probably rich in unexplored bugs). In addition to our group effort to finish, test, and fix pDAQ, I have to fix some low-level communications software, which alone will take hours or days (or possibly more). And we may have a deployment to do as well, plus the usual acclimatisation to the altitude, dryness, the spinning around upside-down on the Earth's very axis (when we finally arrive, I imagine that by turning slightly I will be able to point to each of you up there reading this, just by pointing at a slightly different arc of longitude passing through 90 South).

Last night after sketching along the river for awhile, and our adventure with the Thai food (which was very good at the time, before the late night's rain and the witching hour of stomach churn arrived), we wandered through the immense botanical garden and admired the trees, all of which were beautiful, enormous, and rather different from anything I've ever seen east of the Rockies, or anywhere in North America for that matter). As dusk approached, far away shouts and yells drifted through the garden, which we zeroed in on to find one acts of the Christchurch Buskers' Festival in progress. (Busker == theatrical comedian, I guess.) The performance was based on "The Great Books" i.e., literature, mostly western, and was hilarious, despite a meagre attendance of a few families scattered throughout the grass.

Now we are back once again in our own comedy of errors, courtesy of NYANG (New York Air National Guard) and the weather on the Ross Ice Shelf. Staring at sixty sleepy passengers, the loadmasters dressed in camouflage, several tons of cargo pallets, wondering who will get the last laugh. If the fog does, Sandy still has room at the Devon for us. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking until the station closes for winter.

Postscript: today's score is NYANG 1, weather 0: the weather took a bye this time - we landed in McMurdo after all. However, we're not flying to Pole until Monday. Looks like a weekend of penguins (with luck) and dirt (in any case) for me until then. The outdoor hiking safety lecture is tomorrow, and I have never been able to take that before; we may be able to do the famed castle rock walk afterwards.

There is liquid water running down the sides of McMurdo streets... how strange.

Nope

2007-01-25T11:00:00.001+13:00

Well, we got briefed, weighed and suited up, but no joy - weather in McMurdo today, so I'm back at the hotel. Got some sketching done while waiting around the CDC though... and I think a nap may be in the picture this afternoon.

Now it's starting to feel like a trip to Antarctica.

First delay

2007-01-25T06:31:00.000+13:00

Well, I managed to get up at 0500h this morning for our 0530 shuttle, but after packing out to the kerb to wait for the shuttle (and locking ourselves out of the hotel) we were told by the shuttle driver that the plane was delayed 2 hrs. Now we are back inside cooling our heels until 0730h, or Raytheon calls with more info.

Fellow Polie Jeff says he's never had a flight to the Ice without a delay. That sounds about right to me as well.

Batteries and Sheep

2007-01-24T07:39:00.000+13:00

Photo courtesy and © Kael Hanson

With a day to kill yesterday, Dave, Kael and I put our heads together with Sandy, our proprietress at the Devon, and decided to rent bicycles for a trip to the ocean. Sandy said that there were a bunch of WWII gun batteries worth seeing near the entrance to the harbor where Lyttleton lies, south of Christchurch. That sounded pretty good to us. Within 20 minutes the bike rental guy was there, providing us with mountain bikes, helmets, locks, and a suggested route and we were off, pedaling furiously first through Christchurch traffic, then up a fairly wicked mountain grade, past residential zones at first and then just trees, rocks, wet clouds and, when the clouds parted, amazing views.

The first photo set for this trip will tell the story better than any writing I can come up with - suffice it to say I was pretty astonished that such rugged beauty lay within a vigorous pedal of Christchurch. And, that we were all thoroughly wasted after more than eight hours of biking up and down the mountains south of CHC (sometimes on paths as challenging as a BMX bike course). At one point, as we juddered down an especially challenging path, I jokingly asked Kael if this wasn't one of those team-building exercises to get us ready for the Pole.

Of course, no blog about New Zealand would be complete without a picture of a sheep:

The gun emplacements were also amazing. For reference, they are at Godley Head south and east of Christchurch. We had to get the bikes back by 1830h so we could only see half of what was there. I've seen WWII defensive emplacements in southern France, on Corsica, and in California, and these were much better preserved and much more extensive than any I'd ever seen. The coolest part was a set of underground rooms and tunnels, completely dark (Kael's flashlight and my camera focus-flash kept us oriented). Here's a teaser, but do see the complete set:

Today we get our clothing, if I can actually get my battered carcass going.... Breakfast may help.

All for McNaught

2007-01-23T06:56:00.000+13:00

Since its swing through perihelion a few days ago, we should be able to see Comet McNaught from here. Last night, a decent meal of sushi (punctuated by green tea ice cream to die for), we went looking for the comet in Hagley Park, a large open area ringed by trees not far from the Arts Centre and our B&Bs. As the hot winds from the north buffeted us, we saw Venus, a lovely sunset, and amazing, hurricane-like clouds of the sort I suppose you only get to see in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- but no comet. We're going to try again tonight. No other plans yet.

It's strange to have summer, an 80 F January thaw... but nice. I'm already starting to get used to it, which is a very bad idea.

Giacometti

2007-01-22T14:30:00.000+13:00

Just got back from a tasty lunch at the Dux De Lux followed by a visit to the Christchurch Art Gallery, an attractive little museum a block from the Devon.

They had a lovely show of Giacometti prints, drawings and sculptures. Giacometti and I share a birthday (Oct. 10) and he died the year I was born (1966). His sculptures are haunting and deceptively simple-looking - tall and thin figures standing rigidly erect, features all but obliterated in a field of surface vibration. But I found his drawings and prints even more attractive. Very simple subject matter again: a head, a chair, a small group of figures. But rendered loosely as spare lattices of visceral response to.... something, seen in the few models he employed over and over again (his mother, his brother, his wife, his mistress). Made me want to make etchings again, and lithographs.

Also a wonderful set of small rooms filled with drawings and paintings by the spookily gifted 19th c. New Zealand/Dutch artist Petrus Van Der Velden - in particular, a series of sketchbooks and studies for a painting called the Dutch Funeral. Gorgeous drawings a la Rembrandt or certain 19th c. Russian artists like Ilya Repin, but moodier, darker, quieter, seemingly obsessed with beauty in death and suffering. Some of the sketches were tiny, no more than a couple of inches on a side, brown pages taken from battered sketchbooks... haunting, inspiring, and very humbling.

Tomorrow we have the day off; Wednesday we get our cold weather gear, and Thursday we fly to McMurdo.

The Big (Really really big...) Picture

2007-01-22T11:26:00.000+13:00

In case I don't get to it any time soon, Keith has done a decent enough job explaining the big picture of Icecube on his blog.

Descent

2007-01-22T10:50:00.003+13:00

Dawn over the Pacific, and 30 minutes left in the Big Flight from LA
to Auckland. The first couple of hours were the worst. We had to
wait for luggage at the gate for almost an hour and I was already
sore and restless before we took off. But I managed to distract
myself with "Gravity's Rainbow," songs on the iPod, a decent dinner,
a glass of Australian chardonnay, and, most helpfully, Gregory's
suggested Tylenol PM which put me out while trying to focus on the
first few minutes of "Miami Vice."

So the upshot is that I managed to sack out for at least 1/3 of the
flight....

... now I'm safe in Christchurch having landed perhaps 30 minutes
ago. Staying at my favorite hotel, the Devon, and not flying until
Thursday. So it's time to relax and enjoy summer for a few days (it
was rainy in Auckland, but it's hot and sunny here).

t=0

2007-01-22T10:50:00.001+13:00

Under way at last.

My flight to LA leaves in 40 minutes - the first of five flights, a migration of sorts. Flying south for the winter. Well, summer...

This is trip number six; as such, what I write about won't be a complete blow-by-blow as I have done in earlier years (see the links to previous years on the sidebar), but you will get to see the trip digested through the eyes of an "old hand." To get in the mood, let's start with a few excerpts from my first trip, ten years ago...

December, 1996.

FLYING TO NEW ZEALAND

8:47 AM New Zealand time, Aukland airport.

New Zealand is cool!!!!
Everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. It's green and wet.
A cyclone is expected to hit tonight. I totally love this place already.
Gotta go, we're taking off.

[...]

I think I have found the one place in the world more beautiful than Wisconsin. Way better than Hawaii, California, Switzerland... we'll have to see about France.

On the coast near the Aukland airport, tiny green trees stick out of the shallow water like little puffballs. Everything is green and lush, a shock after Wisconsin. Apparently it frosts only a few times a year, and those are the bad winters. Lots of tiny roads and houses
scattered about on irregularly-shaped land. Impending cyclones with 150 km/hr winds provide added excitement. I believe our aircraft took off just ahead of the storm.

Before takeoff, I thought we had a problem--smoke or steam was drifting into the cabin above our heads through long slits. No one else seemed to mind, so this is apparently normal. Maybe they want to keep people from drying out. I sure could use a hot bath, come to
think of it.

Horse racing and cricket figure predominantly in sports news in the New Zealand Herald.

On the airplane telly last night (gotta start talking like the locals) there was a blurb on some sport that looked like it might be rugby, but I couldn't tell. It was total mayhem--people running and kicking a football-like thing, catching it, tossing it around. Pure action but much more three-dimensional than soccer or football; it looked more like the pure hand-to-hand combat that all sports must have arisen from. [It was Australian Rules Football.]

Time for the second airplane breakfast of the day. I'm having fun!

4:45 PM, Jan 1, 1997, Hotel California, McMurdo Base, Antarctica
Temperature, about 30 degrees F.

[...]

FLYING TO MCMURDO

"Few people have ever seen this," said Neck [our pilot]. I felt amazed that I had ever doubted that I would want to make this trip.

What began as a faint line of mountains gradually became a spectacular view. As we approached, I studied the approaching topography on the navigation chart, noticing the special symbol for crashed aircraft, and finding where one lay on the map not all that
far from where we were flying. But the view soon overwhelmed my interest in the chart. I took many pictures which I hope will mitigate my inability to describe the mountains and long, winding glaciers. I [tried to see] the aerial view with both scientific and artistic eyes. Looking at rivers of ice and the clouds that flowed around them, I could see that ice and clouds/air have a lot in common in appearance and underlying form. Both flow through available channels, though on different timescales, and reflect the light hitting them with so much purity that one is not distracted by color, and can appreciate the near-still dance of pure form.

Especially beautiful were the contrasts between the raw, jagged faces of exposed rock and the breathlessly smooth contours of white, flowing ice, occasionally ripped in striations caused by sudden shifts of inclination in flow.

[...]

We passed close by town before landing on the skiway on the ice sheet beyond. From the air (and from the ground too), the town itself looks more like a collection of industrial freight boxes on black dirt and rock than a real town. It is, however, an actual town, with
a peak summer population of 1200, a post office, a bank, a chapel, bars, apartments and dorms, laboratories, "roads" (stretches of dirt that people drive on, as opposed to stretches of dirt people don't drive on), a hospital, and a power plant. As far as I know, the only thing McMurdo lacks is a cemetery. None of this is really apparent to the new observer from the air, cockpit view notwithstanding.

We passed the town and the rocky point it is on, and descended to the runway just behind it. All this while the crew was going through their landing checklist, acting very efficiently and professionally. I always like to see people do something they're good at. And it was
of course a tremendous thrill to see the runway rise up to greet the aircraft with a soft thud. Suddenly we were sliding down the ice, slowing down with reverse thrust, watching odd, orange tracked vehicles and equipment slide past. We went to the end of the skiway,
turned 180 degrees, and parked. Not long after, I thanked the crew, and the other "beakers" [scientists] and I were led out on the ice towards a van with big tires and high suspension (like most McMurdo vehicles). It was quite warm, warmer than the Wisconsin I had left
just a few days ago. I looked around. There was a great expanse of ice, and then mountains across the bay; nearby, the black hills hiding McMurdo from us jutted into the white plain. A single seagull or skua stood not far away. I was very excited. I had landed on The
Ice.

[...]

AT THE POLE

I dozed and listened to music for a few hours, unpacked a few things, and pondered my situation while taking several trips in the snow out to the toilet and shower shack. It was there I met the guy who told me about the piss cans [makeshift chamber pots]. We also talked
about other things about the Ice in general. I told him my impression of McMurdo was better because there was scenery there. He replied, "There's scenery here, too. All you have to do is close your eyes." Words to live by.

There really is no scenery here. It's like being out in the middle of a frozen lake, except there is no end to it! The dome, various buildings, odd tracked vehicles known as "sprytes" as well as other trucks and construction equipment, the runway, and the ceremonial and
true geographic poles, are it. They are within about a mile of each other. This is a small speck on an immense plain of ice. To think that Scott and his men made it here on foot boggles the mind. (Amundsen, who beat Scott by a few weeks, used sled dogs both to move
men and gear, and to feed the men as well towards the end of the
expedition. Amundsen made it back alive. Scott didn't. The station
is named after both of them.)

Fast-forward to 2007.

Airborne now en route to LAX, listening to "Dub Side of the Moon," a thoroughly postmodern Reggae-Floyd mash-up (thanks, Todd) on the new red Nano courtesy of Santa Jobs and the Apple-cheeked elves of Cupertino. Fell asleep already before takeoff, and realized as I
awoke to the trill of the engines that I could happily stay asleep until magically waking up in my small room in the A wing of the station, go for a quick jog on the treadmill, take my 2 minute shower, and start working. Sad, eh? I'm ready to be there before the trip has even gotten under way. I may think I know what to expect, but I know enough to know that there can be surprises(*) good and bad when traveling to the Ice. If nothing worse than previous
years occurs, I'll be perfectly content. Once I get to Christchurch I'll be in good shape. The concatenated series of three flights (4+13+2 hrs) is the hardest part of the trip.

((*)surprises I or other colleagues have experienced en-route: wandering herds of penguins; tours of Scott's Hutt; unexpected cabin depressurizations; being invited to sit in the cockpit during landings; flights "boomeranging" (having to turn back due to weather or mechanical issues); scenic flights over active volcanoes or through canyons; and, of course, sitting around Christchurch or McMurdo for hours to dozens of days, waiting for the weather to clear
or for a needed replacement aircraft part to arrive from somewhere in the US military's global infrastructure.)

For newcomers to the blog, the flight sequence is ORD->LAX->CHC->MCM->NPX: Chicago to LA to Auckland, NZ to Christchurch, NZ; get extreme cold weather (ECW) gear, fly to McMurdo station on the edge of Ross Island, then to South Pole. Acclimate to the altitude, then accomplish miracles.

A suitcase, a small backpack and a manly-purse are my only luggage items. Packing light is a challenge and a pleasure. Most of the way I won't have to schlepp the big bag, but a long schlepp it is indeed, and I know what not to take now. Colleague Bob Morse told me, "all you really need is a toothbrush and some underwear." He's not far off. A laptop and a towel are the other necessities, though some people manage to do without the laptop (how?) and one colleague I know forgot his towel and had to suffer through until a fellow South-bound traveler could liberate one from a hotel in Christchurch for him. Some things I do take I wouldn't have thought of on the first trip: spray bottle for extra humidity, clothesline for same (most
clothes hang dry in <8 hrs in the driest, highest desert in the world). An extra bag to store summer clothes and other stuff I won't need in Christchurch, and for gifts on the way home. Similarly, I give back perhaps 1/3 of the ECW gear in Christchurch, since I know I
won't wear it.

As the engines gunned for takeoff from Chicago I thought of the software tests on "new DAQ" we have been running for the past few weeks. Three or more of us in separate offices, separate cities, tethered together by online chat and daily conference calls, putting the software out on the "runway" (a bunch of networked computers), giving it lots of gas, and watching with bated breath to see if it took off. Cheering when it did, sighing when it crashed and burned, sending us back to the proverbial (digital) drawing board. It's not exactly the way you build jet engines -- thankfully, I thought, as we soared into the skies above O'Hare.

Or is it?

A few small personal and work goals for the trip:

- Help to achieve and maintain hitherto-unseen stability and elegance in the data acquisition (DAQ) software;

- Stick to a routine of sleep, meditative stretching, and running that keeps me healthy and positive. Keep up my running conditioning for Shamrock Shuffle and '07 Chicago Marathon;

- Maintain good-natured and constructive dialogue with colleagues. Steer as clear as possible of any of the ugly politics that tend to crop up during summers at Pole;

- Finish or at least take a good whack at Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," a brown-paged paperback copy of which I "borrowed" from the AMANDA lab in MAPO in the Dark Sector at Pole in 1998. I'll be leaving the book (sans overdue book fines) behind in the library in
the new station. I like Pynchon but have had trouble finishing anything except "The Crying of Lot 49." But I've beaten Stephenson's amazing Baroque Cycle (almost 3000 pages) twice now, so I may be ready for the "'Rainbow," and if I can finish that maybe I'll try "V" again or his latest brain-bashing brick of a novel;

- Keep moving my drawing forward in bits and pieces. It has been a real source of pleasure of late to return to drawing. My focus has been on figurative drawing from life and from imagination, steered by a measure of storytelling or narrative intent. Originally I was going to make this a blog of drawings, and I may post some drawings if they "work," but I'm going to leave it open-ended for the moment. But I have four sketchbooks and plenty of implements to play with;

- Get completely caught up on episodes of Battlestar Galactica (my new favorite guilty pleasure);

Of course, the first goal (doing the actual work) will probably take up 99% of my time and energy.

Other differences between this trip and last year:

- I'm supposedly lodging in the A wing rather than the B wing of the station - which may mean a larger, or at least a quieter, room.

- The new gym (and, in fact, the remaining half of the newly-constructed station) is available.

- I have no management responsibilities, since Kael (IceCube DAQ software lead) is coming at the same time - whew!

- This trip is shorter by a week - also a good thing. Anything shorter than three weeks is perhaps not worth the long slog to the Ice. Anything longer starts to feel too long, though I've done six weeks and, of course, some people go for a year or more....

About this blog: apologies in advance if things are not explained enough or background details (such as what we're building) go missing - if people have specific questions, they're more than welcome to write -- I'll try to answer them here. Check out the old blogs too.
Later!

Video tour

2007-01-20T08:40:00.000+13:00

Fun little YouTube video tour of part of the old and new South Pole
station courtesy of colleague Keith Beattie:
Video, Part I and Part II

How to subscribe to blog updates

2006-12-11T06:15:00.001+13:00

This year I will be posting directly to the blog, rather than sending out e-mails to everyone like I've done in previous years.

The easiest way to get notified of updates is via a news aggregator. A news aggregator is similar to your Web browser, but with the added feature that it lets you know when new posts have appeared. This saves you the chore of having to check the Websites you are interested in "by hand." In other words, it's sort of like an e-mail inbox for the Web.

It's a big advantage for the blogger too, because he or she doesn't have to collect e-mail addresses from everyone or send out daily e-mails to hundreds of people (this is especially nice when posting from a remote site like the South Pole). Anyone can subscribe or unsubscribe at any time without the blogger having to do anything.

In order to set up your news aggregator, first you'll have to install some software. I recommend FeedReader for Windows, and NetNewsWire for Mac (free version available here).

Once you have your news aggregator installed you "subscribe" to a blog by giving your news aggregator software the URL for the blog. This will be something called an "Atom feed" or an "RSS feed." Use this link as
the feed for this blog (right-click or, on the Mac, option-click on the link and say "Copy link location" to capture the URL). The exact method of "subscribing" depends on the software, but should be fairly obvious once you have the software installed -- on NetNewsWire Lite, I use "File->New Subscription" and paste the URL in.

Many of you already look at blogs - most newspapers have RSS feeds too. It's a really nice way to get fun stuff off the Web (cuts down on the advertising, too!).

Happy reading!

p.s. to colleagues, friends and family - If you have a blog you'd like me to link to, please drop me a line.

Example news aggregator:

What the blog is for

2006-12-11T05:17:00.000+13:00

On my sixth trip to the South Pole, I will try to publish at least one drawing or photo each day, possibly including some text.