Cuba

At the end of a few days here in Wellington, I am flying home today.

This is one of my favorite cities in the world. It has been fabulous to see Neil and Amelia again, to go shopping (the US dollar is finally stronger after several years in the gutter), to go to art galleries and to walk up and down Cuba Street.

Yesterday we braved the crowds at the Cuba Street Carnival, then came home and made dinner for some of N&A’s friends, including one of my favorite New Zealand painters.

Friday, I met Amelia’s mum and dad and uncle. Uncle lives in US and goes to McMurdo every year to lead expeditions on Mt. Erebus. Dad is an amazing architect. They have a full acre quite close to Wellington, with a garden full to bursting with strawberries and corn, and chickens aka ‘chooks’ (your Kiwi word of the day). Mom, sure wish you could have seen their garden.

More pictures

Every year at the end of my South Pole trip, primed by a bit of rest following weeks of unceasing mental effort, and stimulated by the intoxicating beauty of this country, I get inspired to put more effort into my art. This year has been no exception and I’m excited to get back into the studio.

This will be my last post of the year on this blog, but I will continue blogging on my art blog as time and energy allow. Thanks to everyone who followed along.

Peace!

Wickets

Monday morning and Jan, Timo and I are on the Northbound train from Christchurch to Picton. Outside, greens and browns of grasses, dry scrub, and trees blur together with grey skies, rain and the dun coats of sheep. It always seems to rain during my train trips here. It’s hard to believe that just Friday morning we were at the South Pole.

Thursday night, having Bag Dragged and then sweated in the sauna (‘Epic’ was how colleague Stephanie described that last, crowded, lengthy steam-bath—with multiple trips outside to Destination Zulu to photograph the steam rising off our bodies, trips which were surprisingly pleasant despite the 260 degree Fahrenheit temperature transitions involved), the younger crowd stayed up partying all night, while comparatively ‘old’ folks like myself turned in for a few hours of sleep. Friday ‘dawned’ (not a word which applies literally at South Pole for more than one long week per year) abruptly, with the announcement of the early off-deck of our plane from McMurdo… an announcement which I missed somehow, but caught on the online ‘scroll.’ Given that the flight was going to arrive, and therefore leave, early, I spent a few minutes tracking everyone down so that nobody would miss the flight.

The last few summer flights from Pole are somewhat bittersweet for all concerned. The winter folks are glad to have the Station to themselves at last, but of course it marks the beginning of eight and a half months of isolation. The Summer crew eagerly await oxygen, moisture, ‘freshies,’ night, family, vacation and sleep. But many of us will never return to the Pole.

Winter-overs Camille and Erik came out to say goodbye to the last ten or so of us ‘Cubers to leave. The flight came and we huddled around in the -50F air like a bunch of penguins until we were signaled to approach the plane. Awash in the deafening roar of the props near the nose of the aircraft, I turned and waved to Erik and saw his wave in response. Then it was climb the stairway, stuff myself and my bags into the nearest available seat, and buckle in. There actually weren’t enough seats for the available passengers, so Stephanie, who got on last, was pulled aside and got to experience take-off from South Pole with the flight crew in the cockpit. After takeoff the pilots pressurized the cabin to more atmospheres than I’d had since Jan. 20.

We arrived at the Pegasus ice runway to overcast weather, with Castle Rock and Ob. Hill barely visible, Mt. Erebus not at all. The Herc disgorged us and our bags and immediately took to the air again to land at Williams field, a mere handful of miles away. We had our choice of rattling around on the ice outside (the weather was certainly warmer than Pole, with Real Snow™ but rather windy) or the ‘pax terminal,’ a grungy orange box on skis, big enough to hold fifty or so people. After taking the obligatory photos of the various firefighting vehicles nearby, we packed inside and settled in for the two hour wait for the C-17 from Christchurch.

We debated whether we could feel the difference in the altitude. Stephanie was the only one who said she felt nothing at all. I could, as usual: I find the sensation of returning to sea level to be a vertiginous cross between a caffeine dose, a feeling of having come in from the rain and changed clothes, and, paradoxically, being so relaxed I feel like taking a nap (though that last part could have more to do with shifting from night shift to days in less than 48 hours).

To kill time we set up my laptop and fired up The Incredibles (with subtitles, because of the noise of other people talking), the audience eventually expanding to include a couple of non-Cubers. The C-17 arrived just after Helen and the kids were shot down in their aircraft and ‘paddled’ to shore. The plane’s arrival meant we all felt we had to suit up and watch the unloading and loading of cargo despite the fact that it clearly would be a full hour before we were waved onto the plane.

At some point each of us started to remember that it doesn’t have to be -50F to feel extremely cold (it was probably about 20F but much more humid than at Pole). But soon enough we were packing into the C-17. Just before I entered the plane, I turned around and took what may have been my last look at Antarctica: a panorama of whites and subtle, pale grays… a few distant mountains shrouded by low-hanging clouds, outcroppings of rock, and a handful of human artifacts out on the airfield. Not much to look at, but special somehow in some way I have never quite been able to articulate.

One’s first look at Antarctica is thrilling: here you are in a place most people will never see except in pictures or on film or TV. It is an otherworldly place whose few native inhabitants, while familiar through media and popular culture, are quite alien up close. (Penguins, for example, are somehow much odder ‘in the flesh’ than one would expect). The people, too, tend to be a breed apart somehow. Many of them young, most of them white and lower to middle class, they come from all over the world but often hail from the US Midwest or mountain states; are often better educated than their on-Ice job descriptions would suggest; and have robust senses of humor and very tight social ties with one another. ‘Repeat offenders’ such as myself tend to be both specialists who have niched themselves so tightly into their work that they are hard to replace, and people who cherish the sense of community that exists on the Ice. In addition to the colleagues you know and don’t get to see except on the Ice, it is somehow reassuring to see all those other familiar faces season after season, even when you don’t know their names. One feels like one is part of something, though it is hard to say what that something is. Surely, we are there to do or to support science… but there are geopolitical angles as well, a fact which adds a slight tinge of artificiality to the whole enterprise. And then there is the fact that one reason we are there is… because it is there. Antarctica is a mountain to be climbed, a planet to visit, a river to cross.

In November, an expeditioner named Todd Carmichael set off from a coastal location called Hercules Inlet and broke the world’s speed record for unassisted traverse to the Pole. His ski bindings broke soon after beginning his trip, so he proceeded the rest of the way on foot. By the time he reached the Pole he was so disoriented that he talked to his sled and had trouble finding the station even when it was right in front of him. A colleague interviewed him on video while he was recovering in the medical clinic at the Pole. At the other end of what had turned out to be a near-death experience, Carmichael talked about endurance not just as a means to reach a goal but as a value in itself. “Hard things are good for you too.” That value resonates for me, and I suspect it does as well for other travellers to the Ice.

Sometimes, after sweating through my daily session in the station’s gym, I’d step directly outside into the cold air on the upper level deck outside the Station. With nothing on but running shoes, shorts and a t-shirt, someone who is warmed up can last up to a minute or two outside without even getting particularly cold. It’s enough time to reestablish the sense of where you are: the incredible brightness; the view of the experimental buildings in the Dark Sector; the crossing beacon for the skiway; a thousand half-buried flags indicating buried cables, buildings, fuel lines; the view, off to one’s left, of Summer Camp and the cargo berms. The cold so sharp it makes your lungs ache to take a deep breath. A momentary flash of the South Pole, of the diamond-crisp beauty of the place, the infinitely flat wisps of clouds on the rim of the sky at the very edge of the world. No longer novel, Antarctica, but personal, and deadly, and dear.

The C-17 flight back to New Zealand seemed short thanks to my having slept, sitting up, through most of it… waking often, sore, desperately wishing for a bed, and then falling unconscious again. By the time I woke completely we were readying for our descent into Christchurch. People stripped out of their gear and emerged as individuals, with long hair, piercings, tattoos, shorts, sandals. You have to go through customs again before they’ll let you back into New Zealand. The customs officials ask, “Did you fly to the Ice from Christchurch?” Not being Todd Carmichael, the answer, of course, is always yes. Night time, humidity, wait for a shuttle, then back at the Devon, were the beckoning of the bed trumps even that first, long shower.

The weekend was spent shopping for gifts from home, delighting in real food (bananas, beer, fish, salads, Banoffee Pie from the Dux again!) and, Sunday, watching a four hour cricket match at a park on the outskirts of town. Stephanie and Suruj, both colleagues from Canterbury University in Christchurch, were there to teach the rules and the finer points of strategy and culture (trivia question: Who played the first international cricket game? Answer: the United States vs. Canada). I would always rather watch a sporting match in person than on TV, and would rather play than watch. Suruj presciently obliged by bringing a cricket bat and ball: at half time we took to the field with about a thousand underage Kiwis and he taught us how to bowl and to bat.

Now it is Tuesday and I am perched in the top floor of a house looking out over the Queen Charlotte Sound, about twenty minutes by boat from Picton. My gracious hosts at the Fern Ridge Homestay are Nicki and Neil. I spent the morning walking a four-hour portion of the Queen Charlotte Track, similar to what I did last year. Nicki took me by boat to Torea Bay and picked me up at Mistletoe Bay. As I walked along the Track, cicadas as large as small hummingbirds thudded against my hat, their collective cries throughout the bush loud enough to drown out a C-130. I also passed a six hundred year old rimu tree, a specimen of the kind that used to cover much of New Zealand, a tree similar in size, age and kind to the redwoods of California. On our way back, after picking me up, Nicki stopped the boat in a small harbor along the way to feed breadcrumbs to the herring and mackerel, which swarmed so thick to the food that I could feel their slimy, wriggling bodies as I swept my hand through the water.

I have another night here and another day on the Sounds; then a night in Picton, after which I take the ferry to Wellington to see Neil and Amelia. The it’s back to winter in Chicago, which will hopefully be almost over. I am looking forward to seeing Eden, family, friends, to being in my studio, and to being in one place again for awhile.

More pictures, from the Pole

More pictures, Post Pole

Safe

Just a quick one-liner to let everyone know I’m safely in New Zealand enjoying oxygen- and moisture-rich air. Will post photos and more details tomorrow or as time allows.

Broken Glasses

Less than 30 hours to go before we leave, and time is whipping by so fast my ears are starting to ring. As always, the last few days are the big crunch time due to the fact that we have to wait for our holes to freeze completely before turning on new strings.

Just a few hours ago we ran the first successful test with all 59 deployed strings. It was very touch and go for awhile since several things didn’t work properly at first, but now it looks good and it’s a big relief – the climax of the third act.

As our test was running, we traipsed out in -50F (-75F windchill) to the Dark Sector for a tour of the South Pole Telescope. IceCube and SPT are the ‘big two’ at South Pole and it was very cool to see the other one. Like IceCube, SPT is a simple device by the standards of modern physics (compared with detectors at CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider, for example) but the SPT folks are doing very exciting, fundamental physics, using galactic clusters to probe the role of Dark Energy in the evolution of the Universe. (Not only is the science exciting, but their device makes a cool sound while it’s running, unlike the IceCube counting house which just sounds like any old data center.)

Back in the station and running our final tests now. There is enough time to finish our tests, sleep a bit, pack and get out of here—barely. A great season, though. If it’s the last time I come here I will feel good about it, even though I haven’t gotten out of doors much, at least in comparison with my earlier seasons.

The biggest technical glitch of the summer seems to have been the breaking of my glasses this morning out at SPT. I have a spare pair, but they are too geeky even for me. But, if looking like an uber-geek is the sacrifice to be paid for getting 19 new IceCube strings commissioned and running, I guess I’m willing to pay it.

More pictures

End of the Second Act

Almost exactly one week to go, for me. It is sort of the end of the second act, when you think you know what is going to happen, but surprises can still occur, and the final conflict has yet to sort itself out.

Things are going smoothly enough that we (the night crew) were able to watch “The Big Lebowski” in the B1 lounge after midnight. Those who got up early were able to see the Super Bowl (at breakfast, I caught the amazing play just before half-time, which was enough football for me, and got to watch all the Springsteen-style Americana with my German, Dutch and New Zealand colleagues). I cannot actually remember the last time I saw a Super Bowl in the US… but they are entertaining to see here, because of all the Armed Forces Network commercials in between plays, tempting people to reinlist. Hmmm…. Army, Navy or Marines? So many choices….

Actually, it really is like being on a very roomy and safe aircraft carrier in some ways. I haven’t been outside except to poke my head out on the upper deck for a couple of days. When planes land here, comms broadcasts the announcement that “the aircraft is on-deck.” And then there are the two-minute ‘Navy’ showers, which I am actually feeling used to. Though I could get used to a hot bath pretty quickly. Fortunately nobody is shooting at us, the pay is better (for some of us, anyways), we don’t have to salute, and, for us summer folks, the tour of duty is mercifully short.

Though at times uncomfortable and stressful, this trip has been quite vivid in a way, with almost a sort of real-time nostalgic feel to it. I feel peaceful about the likelihood that it’s the last time I’ll be here, and I find myself noticing the texture of the station floor, the views out the windows, the galley food, the unwashed heads of hair, the grumbling in my stomach and the smiles in the hallways of people I’ve seen year after year, whose names I have never learned.

Pigs and Fish

There is a short list of adventures one can have in the US Antarctic program. You can experience landing in the cockpit of a C-130 (done it). You can fly over the crater of Mt. Erebus (done it). You can go to ‘Happy Camper’ school and learn how to sleep in your own snow- or ice-shelter (never done it). Here at Pole you can ski out to the ‘Love Shack’ a few miles from the Station (never done it). You can do an outdoor hot tub in -30F and feel your hair freeze solid (done it). One thing I’d never done until tonight was go down into the utility tunnels underneath the station. I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story, including the temperature (-60F). It was really cool! (And cold.) Afterwards we had a sauna, followed by the Midrats Season Finale with Filet Mignon, seafood skewers, stuffed portabella mushrooms, sushi, chocalate chip cookie chocolate sandwiches, and upside down peach cherry pie.

Life isn’t all bad at the South Pole.

Yesterday I headed out to the IceCube Laboratory (ICL) with Thorsten from LBNL to debug a nasty little low-level problem. We made some progress and I took some more pictures in and around the ICL:

Last Arrivals

Timo and Jan arrived from Mainz today—the last arrivals for IceCube this season. They are working on a system within IceCube to detect stars which explode in or near our galaxy. Our nightshift roster is now complete.

Lily White

Followup to yesterday’s post: then there are the times when you are quietly pedaling the stationary bike in the gym while your iPod plays your favorite audiobook, and a couple of lily-white guys (^) come in and crank up some of the more vulgar and un-musical hip-hop on the gym stereo.

This is a place of compromises.

(^ Did I mention it’s mostly lily-white guys here?)

In A Dry and Waterless Place

I’ve had some of my most intense music experiences in this place, often while working out. (Anyone else had similar experiences at high altitude?)

Just got back from my daily workout in the darkened aerie above the gymnasium where they were playing the U2 concert film “Live in Paris: The Joshua Tree.” Songs from The Unforgettable Fire taking me straight back to freshman year, 1985: friendships and first loves… my incense-filled room across the street from the hospital where I was born; learning to program on a 256k IBM PCjr… taking my first steps on the long, strange trajectory that lead me to this work, in this place.

Music has the power to reach across time and space, to cement and trigger memory and to connect people, all in ways that film, literature and visual art cannot. I wonder if Bono &co. could have imagined during their concert in 1988 that their music would fuel the workouts of a few South Polies twenty years later. That’s the way it works, I guess… most of the time we swim in a sea of ignorance about the effects we have on each other and the world.

Time for a 20 second shower before today’s first meetings.

And who are you that reads this? In what day / year / millenium? And in what strange place?

Immortality

Despite the morning’s wind and low visibility, colleague Joanna just arrived from Berkeley hand-carrying some cables and a special surprise from Jerry at LBNL, carefully packaged in anti-static plastic and bubble wrap.

It’s the printed circuit board from one of our Digital Optical Modules, one which failed visual inspection and is therefore scrap for engineering purposes. I.e., a nice, flat, attractive paperweight. I’m touched, particularly because it has my name etched on it along with those of several of my current and former LBNL colleagues, and because I have just been told that all the the DOMs deployed in IceCube are thus enscribed.

Though it’s not quite a burial fit for a king (not to mention the fact that I’m still alive and kicking), our names entombed inside the polar ice cap will endure for many millennia, far beyond the current age of the Pyramids of the pharaohs. When some future civilization visits the barren ruins of earth and goes prospecting for technological artifacts in the polar ice, they will find the sigils which make up our names and wonder at their significance. Or, in a hundred thousand years, when the flowing river of ice finally reaches the ocean, they may rust free of their mutual tethers and drift the ocean currents… five thousand messages in spherical glass bottles to be found by whatever forms of life might remain to roam the seas or shores of future Earth.

Thanks Jerry and Joanna.

Routine

The weather today is strange – quite warm (almost minus 10F) but with 21 knot winds, making the wind chill about 50 below. The snow is blowing high and visibility is poor at times. But it’s quite beautiful.

Life is settling down into a routine, of sorts. Wake up as late as possible, usually before dinner. Clean up room, go to gym, meditate, have breakfast. Start work when satellite rises around 11:30 PM. Work until mid-morning, and then wind down until I have to do it again.

Most of the other late-season ‘Cubers are on night shift. Our ‘days’ consist of testing new pieces of the detector and new bits of code, troubleshooting, adding features, all somewhat endlessly. We have regular consultations with colleagues up North via phone meetings and instant messaging; and a daily 8 AM face-to-face meeting here just to check in and make sure everyone has what they need to get things done. There are a lot of things happening at once and it turns out I have to orchestrate and schedule quite a bit. But, so far it’s going ok. We have tested an additional 9 strings combined with the 40 we ran throughout 2008. If we can get the remaining 10 more strings added in and calibrated, that will be a good start to the winter season. In addition, the experiment control software I wrote throughout 2008 is starting to come together and be fully operational here.

One strange feature about being here is that current and past summer seasons blend together into a sort of day-lit constancy, where the real world up North seems not exactly unreal, but somehow parallel and separate in both space and time. The sameness of the surroundings, the work, and, to some extent, the people (many of the denizens here are ‘repeat offenders’ like me) all contribute to this. Lots of people have a summer home… mine seems to be a January slot in a late-season population of 250 or so people dreaming of Christchurch and points beyond. Part of the strange timelessness of this place is also the absence of people who have been here before, never to return, and whose spirits somehow knock about the place still.
What part of me will be left behind when I get on that northbound plane for the last time?

It was delightful at first, but quickly turned terrifying because everything started to melt and submerge. I knew that when the cold came back everything would be frozen in place. I have no idea what that means, but images of liquid water are powerful in a place where showers are tightly rationed and the daily per-person water consumption is flashed up on the video scroll in the galley.

More pictures here; added to older posts, below, as well.

Tourists

Many more IceCube people are leaving, however… most of them drillers. It will be nice to be here when things are a bit quieter. The winter-overs are already talking about how great it will be when we summer folk are gone.

Some people pay a fair chunk of change to fly here for an hour or two, look around, and leave. Tourists, we call them. Others fly in for McMurdo (‘sleigh rides’) to see the place, or to work for a day. Still others ski here from various points remote, and camp a few hundred yards from the Station (I’ve already given a few impromptu tours to various frost-bitten groups). Those of us here for the Summer are called ‘tourists’ by the winter crew.

Of course, everyone is a tourist in Antarctica. Despite what repeat winter-overs may sometimes feel, there are no true Antarcticans. We are as much visitors here as we would be to Mars. Take away the airplanes, and we all perish.

I have posted a video of the last string deployment.

Meanwhile, a group of five or so of us are up all night, every night, fussing with software to read out the newly-deployed strings as they freeze in. We still have two weeks but it will go very quickly, and we tourists will redeploy to various points North.

OK but busy

Posting here just so y’all don’t worry I’ve fallen off the map. I mean, any more than expected. Been here a week and all is going pretty well, though very busy. I have a meeting with the North in four minutes but will try to post more tonight when I wake up.

Passing Notes

Been here about 58 hours so far and the reason I am counting in hours instead of days is that my sense of days is pretty shot. I have a screwy sleep routine: 10 hours awake, 3 hours asleep. Lather, rinse repeat. I am trying to be up at night (we keep New Zealand time here) for the satellite hours but usually that entails a long nap in the middle, which curtails my sleep during the day. I’ll figure it out.

Despite the goofy schedule and the altitude, last night I felt well enough to walk with Dave out to drill camp and watch the nineteenth and final IceCube string deployment. Being outside reminded me of how beautiful it is here and how hard that is to see until you are actually out in it, seeing the changing sky, the sastrugi, the myriad structures scattered about the snow, structures which do not qualify as architecture but are solely and completely engineering.

Seeing the last deployment was a real pleasure, partly because I didn’t have to work it—I was a tourist, a real treat after having worked on perhaps a dozen or so deployments myself. It was also sweet because the drilling and deployment went so well this year… and also bittersweet, perhaps, because it was the last deployment I’m likely to see. I took photos and some video which I will post as soon as I can.

Around midnight we decided to head back. A bunch of the drillers were driving back in the “Ford Gran Neutrino” (the modified van which IceCube uses to shuttle back and forth to the Dark Sector), and Dave and I squeezed in. After we crossed the skiway, the van stopped and the drillers started discussing the expedition which was camped near the station. A small handful of jacked-up and modified Toyota trucks have driven here from a Russian base in support of a ski race across Antarctica. It was decided to pay the campers a visit, so we drove the van over there and piled out, admired their trucks, and started talking with a member of the expedition.

Apparently about 300 people have skied, walked, or driven to South Pole this Summer. These people live in a sort of parallel universe which is disconnected with that of the station. They are allowed a cup of coffee inside and not much else; and few people walk over to their makeshift camps near the Pole marker. So it was a treat to talk to this fellow who has had a pretty different experience in Antarctica. After a few minutes of conversation he pointed to Sven and said, “Hey, you’re Sven!” Then he handed him a note written on a scrap of paper from a case of beer. It was given to him by a member of yet another expedition which he encountered during his trip, to give to Sven at the South Pole! We all laughed. Even though it is nearly as empty as Mars (i.e. nearly zero people per square kilometer), Antarctica is a small place!

After delicious burgers at Midrats, we started work. There is ever so much to do and I am starting to get acclimated enough to be able to focus on it. The task at hand is to connect the nineteen new IceCube strings to the rest of the detector, and to calibrate them to prepare for the new physics run starting April 1. Also to carry out a variety of software upgrades and make sure everything works correctly. Also, to report progress to the north and to coordinate all the activities to minimize conflicts.

This evening, after another short sleep, we watched highlights of the Obama inauguration, hand-carried on a DVD on today’s flight. (The CBS news clips carried over the Armed Forces network carried the word “Live!” at lower right, which was certainly ironic in this setting, days after the fact.) It was pretty amazing to see our Hyde Park neighbor take the oath for the Oval Office.

Now for a first foray to the gym, and to start into work again.

Translation

10:07 PM New Zealand Daylight Time and I am well-socketed into my room in the station at the South Pole, watching videos, napping when I can, drinking as much water as I can stomach and waiting for my body’s chemistry to adjust to a physiological altitude of… let me check… 10,455 feet (the local air density here depends on the weather, and is displayed continuously on the monitors and the local Web site).

To kill time while I acclimate, I just watched “Lost in Translation” which, with its parables of jet lag and alienation, seem somehow appropriate even for this very different destination. “Translation” in physics means moving from one place to another. I have definitely undergone some serious translation.

My stay in McMurdo was very short for a southbound trip—less than twelve hours. Which suited me fine. We arrived after 10PM, fairly exhausted from the long and crowded flight, had the usual (relatively extraneous) briefing, and then immediately bag-dragged for the Pole flight. The weather was pleasant and sunny, with a small stream of water flowing downhill past the Movement Control Center (MCC) where we weighed in.

After a brief midrats (midnight meal) we turned in for a few hours of sleep in the dorms. Then we trudged back up the hill at 0645h to the MCC for transportation to Williams Field our flight South. The air had chilled quite a bit during the ‘night’ and the stream had frozen.

Today’s flight was quite a bit easier than yesterday’s. Two of the Air Guard loadmasters hung out and chatted with us in the airfield cafe while we waited for our plane to be readied, and then rode out in the van with us. There was no briefing, just ‘get in and go.’ There were only 7 passengers this time, so there was room to spread out after take-off (I even got to lie down for awhile).

The scenery was lovely, as in previous years, but another veteran and I compared notes and we were certain that today’s flight took a different route up to the Polar Plateau than in the past. (I think it’s fun to be able to know the route well enough to be able to tell the difference with no map and no human landmarks.) Low clouds obscured some of the terrain which made it both harder to see anything and more beautiful, as sky and ice merged into one milky mixture punctuated by craggy, chocolate-colored rock.

Before we knew it the plane began its landing approach and we suited up, goggles, balaclavas, neck gaiters, boots, glove liners, mittens, fleece, and Big Reds (the ubiquitous parkas). Always a student of economy of means, I enjoyed watching the senior loadmaster giving the order to his subordinate across the plane to put on her gloves, by wagging his leg at her and raising one (gloved) hand.

And then we were down, out, breathing those first breaths of cold, rarefied air (an experience I will miss, assuming this is my last trip) and looking out at the minimal snowscape punctuated by the hyper-functional structures of South Pole Station.

Mark and Dave came out in the -21F cold to meet us, which is always such a nice thing—to come to the end of the Earth, and see friends and colleagues, familiar faces, to have someone carry your carry-on while you suck your first breaths of high-altitude air, to make your way to your room and start the slow process of unpacking and settling in. I am here until February 13… long enough that I have to think of it as home-away-from-home. After seven times already it should be pretty easy.

I will post more drawings and photos soon, and will back-populate some of the posts with pictures, so check back for updates.

Soon the satellite will be up!

More pictures from the flight to the Pole

RNZAF

Well, this is a first for me. I am one of about 5 or 6 Polies traveling south to McMurdo along with a gaggle of New Zealand Defence Forces cargo loaders. We are flying in a Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130 stuffed to the gills with cargo, a lot of it bound for the South Pole. I have never traveled courtesy of the Kiwi military before. So far it seems a bit more relaxed than either VXE-6 (US Navy) or the New York Air National Guard, as exemplified by the lack of x-rays, metal detectors, pat-downs, etc. during check-in, the short and casual briefing by the flight crew, and the people sleeping here and there on top of various cargo pallets (including our carry-on luggage, from which I just had to rescue my stash of bananas before they turned to mush).

When we took off the plane was so loud that it echoed in the cavern of my mouth. I could change the pitch of the sound rattling through my skull by opening and closing my mouth or moving my tongue. It was like being able to sing without breathing—very strange.

We were delayed an extra couple of hours taking off due to weather in McMurdo, and we’ll arrive later than usual because this is a slower plane. I like C-130s because you can see their insides better and because they’re sort of an iconic military aircraft, but the C-17s are faster and more comfortable. The trip on a 130 is almost eight hours instead of the usual five in the C-17. In another hour or so, by my reckoning, we pass the point of no return (after which they have to land, as opposed to boomeranging back to Christchurch, even if the weather is sub-optimal). At any rate, we’ll get in for a late dinner, probably get weighed with our bags again, sleep, and then fly (hopefully) to the Pole tomorrow morning. I’m ready to get there, cosy on into my room (whether in summer camp or, more likely, the station building) and start getting stuff done.

Inflight video tour:

More photos

The Usual Delays

Woke at 0550h this morning to get the shuttle for our Ice flight to McMurdo. After a quick shower and hauling half my bags downstairs Sandy told me there is a two hour delay. At least they told us before we left for the airport!

Yesterday morning was devoted to buying extra food for the trip. Last year my stomach didn’t like the food at Pole towards the end of my stay. So I bought bananas, granola, apples, dried fruit, granola bars, vitamins… things I know I can eat that I won’t be able get there (or at least as much as I would like). I’m going to try to eat the plain stuff and steer clear of a lot of the rich food there (which can be challenging).

So, I went to the supermarket in a mall south of town (Sandy drove me which was nice) and walked back past all the lovely little shops. The day started out cool but got quite warm, probably almost 80 F.

After lunch we met out at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) to try on all our clothes. Just to review, they give us about 40 pounds of cold weather gear, all of which has to be tried on and exchanged if they got your size wrong (or if you just don’t like it). They seem to know more or less exactly which items I take each year now so I didn’t have to give back as much stuff. Nevertheless, despite having done this eight times now, I was STILL the last person to finish!

We had an afternoon thunderstorm, which was a real treat. Then I had a delicious dinner at the Dux De Lux: ‘groper’ (grouper?), 4 salads, a beer and a delicious dessert called Banoffie Pie, which is essentially a banana cream pie with caramel or dulce de leche—amazing. Then I took a walk in the Botanical Gardens—Mom, if you’re reading this, I so wish I could take you there—you would think you were in heaven. They have thousands of plant species from all over New Zealand and the world. It is truly the perfect place to wander before heading to the coldest, driest, highest, most sterile desert on Earth.

Today, with luck, we head South. Apparently it might be on a Kiwi Herc(ules C-130)—the Kiwis take our planes, and I guess we take theirs sometimes. Several days ago when the Kiwi Hercs were away on some training excercises, they contracted an airline to fly commercial Airbus jets to fly to McMurdo! I’d certainly never heard of that. Anyways, the bummer is that the flying time is 8 hrs on a C-130, as opposed to the 5 hrs I’ve gotten used to on the C-17 they’ve had here the past few years (the C-17 is supposed to be back by the time I head North again).

So, maybe we fly today, maybe we don’t. Sometimes one delay leads to more delays, or a cancellation. We shall see. But for now: breakfast.

CHC

Spent the day so far meandering slowly around Christchurch. I tried to see my friend Neil Pardington‘s photos in a gallery south of Cathedral Square, but the gallery was closed. As I wandered around the area I realized I had made a mistake in past years by sticking close to or north of the Square. I had sort of written off the south part of town as a place for sex shops and fish and chips places. But the place has been transformed in the past few years into a hip mecca full of achingly tasteful, creative stores selling clothing, used books, antiques, gifts, skate clothes, and ethnic food, with miniature cafes and bars sprouting from tiny alleys. I felt as if I was in a Calvino Invisible Cities -style reworking of Christchurch, turning it into a southern version of Wellington’s Cuba Street, minus the cold wind off the Cook Strait.

It has been great people watching here, though I haven’t been able to do them much justice in my drawings so far (it’s hard drawing people who don’t hold still!).

Most people are either young and so hiply-dressed that they should be working in an art gallery, or old and so sun-wrinkled that their faces look like dried fruit (some of these look like the gallery owners). Tourists seem to be mostly Chinese and Japanese families. I am a complete outsider here (I have seen very few Ice people so far) and don’t mind a bit. People seem to be relaxed, friendly, and happy. It’s as if New Zealanders are too busy for unpleasant matters such as wars or economic meltdowns and would rather stay in their own country and sip coffee at outdoor bars or create incredibly beautiful books, furnishings, clothing, etc. It would be nice to take some of that back home.

A fun day so far. I hope everyone up North (or way South) reading this is doing well. For those who are curious, I started uploading some drawings and photos.

Did I mention it’s about 79 degrees Fahrenheit here (25 C)?

Detox

Auckland Domestic Terminal

Made it to Auckland after two smooth flights, despite weather delays in Chicago, whose temperatures currently come close to rivaling those at the South Pole (albeit with a lot more blowing snow). While waiting in O’Hare for my first plane to come in, I sat and drew the architecture inside the Terminal 3 food court. I do not usually expect food court architecture to draw my interest, but the space in question was particularly non-rectilinear, which made it fun (and hard) to draw.

We finally boarded and, after we managed to alight from the wind-swept snowscapes of Chicago (a twinge of homesickness setting in almost immediately), I brought out the drawing and kept working on it. This turned out to be the icebreaker for a long conversation with a nice law professor from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Our shared interests in science and Buddhism gave us a surprising amount of territory for discussion.

Changing planes in LA used to be a hurried, two-terminal affair with extra security checkpoints—now it takes all of two minutes to walk from one gate to another. I killed the rest of the time by playing Tap Defense on my iPhone (thanks to Gregory for the new addiction).

Several weeks ago, at one of those random literary urges that strikes from time to time, I picked up Pynchon’s latest novel, “Against the Day” and started re-reading it. Since it weighs in at almost 1100 pages, and since packing light for is for me is almost a religious principle, I planned to leave it behind. But, while I was packing, the book kept calling out to me. There is something about this trip in particular that ties in well with his books (return readers will recall I was reading him at the Pole last year). And, while thinking about my art recently, I realized that he does in fiction something which I would love to do in visual art, which is to create rich tapestries of strangeness, hinting at the corners of mathematics, science, and occult spirituality, that are so beautiful that, though fantastic, they somehow become true, or seemingly so.

A hermitic muse, of sorts. So the book now occupies perhaps 30% of the weight and space of my carry-on backpack.

At the moment, having just downed a freshly-squeezed ‘Detox’ juice from the Tank Juice Bar (have to get in those freshies while I can), I have less than an hour before flying to Christchurch. Get bags, take shuttle into town, check into the Devon, go for a jog, take a shower, have an early dinner, and early to bed for me. Night shift at the Pole is my destination. Time to get my plane.

Packing

Despite a lingering cold, and yet another weather front due to hit Chicago,
I am packing up for my flight which leaves around 3PM tomorrow. If my
flight gets cancelled, I’ll just cab it back home and try again whenever Raytheon decide to send me.

At some point you have to trust that your planning has been adequate, and that
you are prepared to deal with the consequences of any omissions, or changes of fortune. Once more into the breach!

Nails

No trip to the Pole would be complete without the preparatory spa treatment.

Yesterday: massage + acupuncture (to treat cold and ward off tendonitis)

Today: teeth cleaning and flu shot (the latter now required per USAP guidelines)

Tomorrow: haircut (short, to adapt to infrequent showering—2×2 minutes per week).

I almost feel like I should get my nails done to round out the treatment.

Gearing up

Chicago, IL (N41.798195, W87.585547)

Well, it’s that time of year again. I leave for the Pole in eight days, for a three week stay on the Ice.

After winding up a busy year of programming for IceCube, I went with Eden to Wisconsin for a vacation at Mom and Jim’s, which was mostly wonderful except for the stomach flu during the last few days, which has morphed into some sort of cold-like affliction.

Now there is no delaying preparation for the trip—fixing boots, tying up loose ends on the Northern Hemisphere side of work, getting my flu shot, buying various supplies, seeing friends one last time before leaving.

Between sojourning in New Zealand, military flights to Antarctica, and settling into a routine at high altitude, it’s an awfully strange yearly commute/migration to participate in, and even stranger to have it become routine. I’m thankful that we’ve had an especially wintry winter so far. It may make getting used to Antarctica again a bit easier.

Let’s set some objectives for the trip:

• Fulfil my management/work tasks with grace, skill, and good humor
• Engage with sitting practice daily, and carry some of that into postmeditation
• Daily weights/aerobic/yoga practice
• Do more drawing than I’ve managed to get done in the past. Drawing has become a pretty consistent regular practice for me again. Best case for this trip: actually complete some on-site sketches worth showing to y’all, or someone. But mostly I just want to keep a bit of momentum going.
• Send postcards/gifts home to more people

Oh, and lest I forget:

• Help get the newly-installed parts of the detector working
  (commissioning of the Data Acquisition and IceCube Live systems)

I wish I’d had time to prepare for one more fun project: record some high-quality audio from various places in the station/environs. I’m not sure why this appeals to me, but it does. At any rate, I didn’t get the equipment together for this (any recommendations, in case I ever get the chance again?).

The Pole season, by all accounts, has gone quite well so far. As of today’s writing, twelve new strings have been installed, with a target goal of 19, still definitely in reach. If we got 19, we’d have a 59-string detector which would be already 50% larger than last year.

As we approach our end goal of 86 strings, the project is now changing in character quite a bit. Many of the engineering challenges, from drilling to software, have been solved, and there is enough data to start doing real science. This is where a lot of the action and dialogue are focusing now. It’s fun for me, since I came into this field as a scientist, but it’s also slightly bittersweet, because the work I really love to do is building tools to solve especially hard technical problems. The tool-building time is winding down a bit. There is still plenty to do, though, especially (for me) on the experiment control/monitoring/visualization project which I’ve spent the last year creating, known as IceCube Live.

Catch up with y’all again once I start actually vectoring out of here…. Happy New Year!