Anay Anarticay Anksgivingthay

What do you get when you combine amazing food, Pig Latin, and Captain Picard?

Why, an Antarctic Thanksgiving, of course.


Today we celebrated Thanksgiving, a full day behind the rest of the States. Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays here, and one of the few that actually comes with an added day off. The added day off is actually the primary reason as to why our Thanksgiving falls on Antarctic Saturday - it gives the folks on the town schedule TWO full days off. Sadly, for the Antarctic Fire Department, we stick with our regular schedule, leaving myself and the rest of "A" shift hard at work.

My shift today was another tour out at the fabled Ice Town, a slowly vanishing ghost town soon to disappear into the Ross Sea below. Since today was a town holiday, we found ourselves as the only people in scenic Ice Town as no flights were scheduled and all support personnel either sleeping in or nursing hangovers from their first of two days off.

After doing our usual truck checks while avoiding new cracks and a small frozen over pond that appeared a few days ago (now known as Lake Doherty, a spot that I had intended to try my luck at fishing at before I found ice) and temporarily breaking one truck, we settled into a lazy morning of napping and watching movies.

After a while, hunger began to overtake us. Our normal breakfast had been altered by the Thanksgiving schedule, and those who arrived early enough to eat found themselves savoring cod and baked beans intended for the night shift guys. Being somewhat lazy and anticipating this in advance, I arrived a little later and enjoyed a wonderful and only slightly filling bowl of Cheerios (produced in 1992?). With this hunger and the lack of caffeine in my bloodstream, I suggested in a less than awake manner that we proceed over to the Ice Town galley and raid it for "coffles and waffee". (I told you I didn't have enough caffeine.)

This so suggested, the entire crew rose up and proceeded over to the galley to raid whatever had been left behind.

As I believe I've mentioned before, firefighters are great at getting what they want done. Unfortunately, we're very poor at doing it in a neat and orderly manner. Messes tend to be made and things occasionally broken. Luckily, we didn't break anything beyond repair though we did create a mild disaster area. Had the normal Dining Attendants been in town today, I'm sure they would've started to cry watching our attempts at cooking waffles, eggs, and making coffee. Luckily for them, we did manage to clean up enough where they may not notice how much we actually raided them for, especially in the fresh egg department.

As an aside, for those of you who weren't aware, fresh eggs are like gold down here. Most of our eggs come in some kind of powdered reconstituted form that doesn't quite taste the same. With nobody to stop us, we went to town taking real, fresh, Kiwi grown eggs and throwing in cheese, bacon, and whatever else we could find to make them even tastier.

After our raiding party mission was completed, we headed back to the Crash Shack for another few more hours of resuming our previous schedule before our relief arrived so we could go eat.

Back in town the Festivities started early. Since it was a Saturday morning, Day Bar was in full effect. Word on the street has it that it was well attended and was enjoyable (and possibly with a few more than tipsy). As Day Bar was beginning to wrap up, the first of a series of running events this summer season began.

The McMurdo Turkey Trot went off without a hitch, with many participating in the 5k run to Scott Base and back again. After listening in on the radio, it didn't appear that anyone hurt themselves significantly enough on the icy road up to the Kiwi base. The next few races will build up to a full distance marathon around New Years down the ice road to Pegasus Field.

As the afternoon finally wandered into our day, our relief arrived from Station One with a crew of three so that half of our shift could go and eat. The first half went back to town leaving us with their replacements.

A couple of hours and several games of dominoes later, our turn to eat finally arrived. The returning guys had wonderful things to say about the meal, and came with requests to bring back items such as dinner rolls and caramel apples.

Thanksgiving in lovely McMurdo is a big deal. The cooks and DAs go all out to make this one of the best meals that you could imagine could be served to 1200 people.

The tables were all drawn out in white table cloths. The DAs were even dressed to the nines with clean uniforms and name tags, a very formal touch down here.

Most people are dressed up for dinner. There was an ample number of suits, dresses, and ties, leaving myself feeling a little out of place in my duty blues. I wasn't completely alone, as there were a few jeans and t-shirts floating around, though not the usual mix of Carhartt bibs. In true Antarctic fashion, however, there was one notable exception to the well dressed statement I just made.

Now, not being well dressed is not really true. The B shift Captain was dressed very neatly in full uniform. The only catch to it was that he wore the full regalia of Star Trek Captain Jean Luc Picard.

Now, the food served tonight was exceptional. My continuing digestion of the smorgasbord presented to us should be enough to attest to the quality of the meal to anyone knowing my eating habits.

Freshly baked rolls, pies, roasted turkey, stuffing, tender roast beef, the biggest king crab legs that anyone had ever seen and the most amazing spread of desserts that I've ever seen greeted us as we walked in. Chocolate covered strawberries, caramel apples with decorative sugar glass details, pumpkin pie, and the local specialty and elaborately concocted chocolate mousse skuas. (Who knew that the dreaded skua could taste so delicious?)

After gathering up as much food as possible on my plate while still maintaining some vague semblance of separation between foods, I made my way over to find a place to sit. Since the normal groups and tables were broken up due to the modified dining schedule today, I had to wander around a bit before I was able to locate a table across from Captain Picard with two B shifters, two bottles of wine, and an interesting hour ahead of me.

That hour at dinner led me to believe that B shift was completely off their nuts. Particularly the winfly guys. My dinner with Mountain Goat Larry and Michigan Josh started off normal enough. As the first bottle of wine began to disappear, however, things started to turn. My tablemates began to change the way in which they were speaking. It went from normal American English and slowly drifted its way into Pig Latin. These two went on in Pig Latin without missing a beat and continued on for the better part of an hour. Myself, never having mastered the childhood skill of communicating in this secret language, sat there lost, eating away.

Periodically, I could catch snippets of their conversation. It drifted from intelligent to lewd to hysterical. Too bad I couldn't catch it all, though I doubt that I could recount it for most of you in such a public forum such as this. I will leave it to your imagination as to what a pair of ethanol loosened lips could create for aural entertainment.

After finally finishing the last of my meal, we were gathered up and returned back to our humble abode over at the Crash Shack (not before almost getting SCAT 1 stuck in a drift on the ice road).

Ever since then, we've resumed our normal do-nothing pattern of digesting, watching movies, and napping. After several hours of slowly typing this up with these distractions, I've finally made it to nearly the end.

I would like to leave some final thanks to everyone. I would like to thank you all for the good wishes and friendships that have carried on, even with the minor 15,000 mile difference. I know I'm not always the easiest person to get ahold of or even get along with, but after looking at my messages today, I was happy to see that people still remember me. I'm glad for that, and I still remember all the good times we've had.

And that's something I'm truly thankful for.