Is it Cookie Day Yet?

Frostnip, Purple K, foam parties, rugby, aborted medevacs, auroras and nacreous clouds.

It's been a busy week. Or two. Or...more? I don't really know at this point. Time is really starting to blur right now. We've been working a lot of extra hours lately for many of the above reasons.

I'll try to explain them as best I can, one by one. Savvy? Sweet as.

To begin, I'll start with the frostnip. For those of you in a warmer place than here, frostnip is an early, reversible, stage of frostbite. It is in no way fun and it will sneak up on you without realizing it.

Continuing, we happened to be out at work one blustery day. We had just completed a few inspections and the weather was starting to turn bad again, which is not an uncommon occurrence here this time of year. (Bad weather here comes up fast, like a summer thunderstorm back home, and can last for days.)

Anyway, I was driving the engine, and we needed to get fuel before returning to quarters. So, a short drive over to the gasboys later I hopped out of my nice warm cab to add fuel.

I wasn't even outside for five minutes. The diesel pumps are pretty quick, and I only put in 16 gallons. I stood there suffering with my back to the wind (face uncovered but turned away from the wind with my collar up) until the pump finally stopped. I jumped back in the cab, and the first thing I hear is my lieutenant telling me that my nose is completely white, a clear indication of frostnip. After I let loose a few less than pleasant words about myself being less than genius that day, we went back home.

I got lucky, though. Since I never got the pins and needles feeling that comes with rewarming the affected area, it wasn't full thickness. My nose will probably peel some later, but it has come back just fine.

Lesson learned, I promptly went to the ship's store and purchased a nice, warm, and windproof face mask. It's been seeing a lot of use.

How cold was it, you ask? Probably hovering somewhere around -30F with windchills in the range of -80F.


Moving on, I'll explain about the foam party and purple k experience.

As I believe I mentioned earlier, we've been having issues with some of our crash trucks. These are unique, one-off systems that are largely untested due to the hazardous materials issues that arise when we discharge agent. However, due to some issues that arose with a truck fire we had a couple of weeks ago, we've been tearing down these systems and inspecting them for issues.

Without going into complicated mechanical details, I'll just say that certain important parts have a tendency to stick in the wrong position, causing problems (and resultant foam parties). Unfortunately for us, we're learning all of this the hard way.

The first time we learned this, we were just coming back into the firehouse after doing some inspections. I was backing the engine up, and the Kiwi kept telling me to stop. After the second time, I was left wondering what the hold up was until he came up and told me that Red 4 had discharged from the turret.

Several loud, less than polite terms were then made audible from myself.

It turned out that while our new mechanic and a lieutenant were working on the system, something stuck in the wrong position. Unfortunately for us, that something caused several hundred gallons of finished foam to spew across the bays, leaving us a mess to clean up.

Two hours, six people, a few pictures, shovels and mops later, we had finally cleaned up the mess. Pleased we were not, but we were done.

Proceed 24 hours later. Then repeat this entire process when something else failed in a similar fashion. It proceeded to dump the rest of the 300 gallon foam tank onto the floor, though with some quick action, they were able to save about two 55 gallon drums of foam concentrate after a quick shutdown. Luckily for me, B shift was on, so I just had the pleasure of hearing about it at dinner.

Fast forward another 48 hours. I'm on my Kelly day (my extra day off every two weeks) and bored. So, I offer to come in to help with the mechanical demon of a truck sitting in the bay. This time we're not testing the foam system, which I was happy about, since it has had a less than spectacular track record in the previous week.

This time, we're testing the Purple K system. Purple K is a special fire extinguishing dry chemical powder often used in airport firefighting equipment. When used in conjunction with foam, it delivers a great one-two punch to fire. We use a slightly different type of Purple K that has an extremely bright and vivid purple dye added to be better able to see it in a fire situation.

Now, the Purple K system has not really had a history of issues. It's an older design that's been used for years in places around the world. Ansul has refined it into a system that we can even trust down in the frozen south. Unfortunately for us, however, we forgot that part of it runs through the other half of the system...

After a successful test of the turret operation by shooting the Purple K into a containment barrel and blowing it down (blowing down removes any leftover agent sitting in the lines) with only the normal mess, we were pleased to conclude the test a success. Thus deemed, I moved the containment barrel to the back so we could test the hand line.

Moving into position, the lieutenant I was working with flipped the switch to begin the hand line test. Upon this activation, the gurgling, whooshing, coughing sound unique to the turret was heard. Knowing doom was impending, he quickly shut the system back down. Unfortunately for us, once the system is charged, it has more than enough air flowing through to make a mess.

Looking forward to the turret, it coughed, hacked, and proceeded to puke a large, brilliant purple cloud. Within five seconds, the back half of the bay was a lovely shade of violet.

Much sweeping and mopping followed. We'll be finding more purple for weeks to come.

While we've been receiving the short end of the stick with these trucks lately, our daytime dispatcher has had the pleasure of seeing each of these events through her office window and not having to be involved with the cleanup.

I would've liked to have seen the jet of foam shooting across of the wave of purple that drifted by her window...


Rugby. This one is a short explanation. We watched the New Zealand All Blacks play the other day. They were up against the Wallabies of Australia in the final Tri-Nations game of the season. While the first half was disappointing, the stunning come from behind victory by the All Blacks was worth it. This win marked their tenth straight and they left as Tri-Nations champs (though they actually won this honor after their last match).


Auroras and nacreous clouds. I'll make this one short, too.

They are incredible.

Not much of an amazing story behind it, but I think you'll appreciate it better if I ever download my pictures.


So we have a medevac flight that's supposed to come down. It tried to come down yesterday, but failed due to rapidly deteriorating conditions out at Pegasus. I had an opportunity to read the Terminal Area Forecast for it, and it was amazing to see how fast the weather went from flyable conditions to horrible conditions. I think it was less than five minutes that made the difference.

Luckily I got to stay in town for the attempt yesterday. Red 4 decided it would be fun to puke glycol again, and made about a hundred yard mess behind itself. This is actually better than the typical half mile mess we end up with, but I still felt bad for the guys that had to go out and shovel it up. I know at least one of our guys came back with a little frostnip from it, though he'll be fine.

They tried to get the flight back in here today, but they canceled it very early on, for which I was appreciative, though I'm pretty sure the poor guy sitting in medical thinks differently.

We're trying again tomorrow. The forecast is supposed to be a bit nicer. I won't get to enjoy driving out to Pegasus and back, though. I'll be at sea ice training most of the day, a welcome escape of a two hour commute in a lumbering Chieftain.


That's about all I have for right now. I guess I'll fill you all in on my sea ice adventures later if I don't freeze to death first. In the mean time, I think I'll start putting together some ideas for my post-Ice travels.

Planeless

There are no more planes. None at all. Nothing scheduled until September 23rd.

It's wonderful.

Sure, we don't have any mail or freshies or neat toys that come down as cargo, but we get to sleep. Our off days are actually off days again. No more having to come in to sit at Pegasus waiting for a plane to drop off more beakers and slowly go crazy from boredom.

Also, the break gives us some time to put our fire trucks back into some state of functional usage. This winfly has been hard on them. We've had issues with four out of six crash trucks. Red 1 got plugged into a three phase outlet when it's built for two phase (toasted the heater package in the back), Red 2 doesn't have a working generator (which prevents us from keeping the package warm when on the move), Red 3 decided it didn't like having a transmission anymore, Red 4 thought it would be fun to not discharge foam when needed (more on this later), and Red 6 doesn't like keeping glycol in it's engine.

Also, one of the perks of not having flights means I don't have to unexpectedly take Red 2 out to Pegasus in the middle of the night when another truck blows its transmission.

Red 2 is a long, slow ride no matter how you look at it. Even with me racing out there last minute with an hour before the flight is due, I still didn't make it in time. I tried, at least, at all four miles per hour.

Driving the ice roads at night is pretty cool, though. There isn't much to see to start with, but at night there's even less. Aside from the tracks from other vehicles and the marker flags, there isn't anything else to look at. At one point, since I was the only one on the road, I turned off all of my lights for a moment to see what it would look like. I was a little surprised to see that when I turned the lights off, a green glow covered everything. I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but in reality, it was the Aurora Australis. While I didn't get to enjoy them then, I did get to see them later in the evening, though less intense than before.

No more looking at C-17s through the fog emanating from a score of tailpipes. As cool as that is, it's still cold and boring. I did get some cool pictures, though. Just wait until I get them downloaded.


Oh, so we had a fire the other day. B shift had the pleasure of enjoying it this time. The fuelie's Ford stakebody truck caught fire out on the sea ice the other day, just shy of town. It's suspected that they burned up the transmission and just kept going until it caught fire, though this is officially unconfirmed.

B shift went out with Red 4 to go put it out. They made it out there without it being completely on fire, so they were off to a good start. The bad news came, however, when they went to charge the system and the foam refused to discharge. While the purple k dry chemical discharged just fine, it is not typically enough by itself to fully extinguish a fire.

The fire was however finally controlled when shovels were put into action and snow was discharged on the remnants of the fire. It's a harsh continent. Creative solutions work.

Unfortunately, this only went to further reinforce the poor image of our current Renegade fleet. It's a one of a kind system that's had more than it's share of teething problems. We thought we had all of the big bugs worked out of it last season, but it looks like we have more work to do.

Drifting onto another topic now, I would like to touch on nacreous clouds. They are an incredible and rare sight in the world. Only a few places down here in Antarctica really only get them. They resemble something of a beautiful, oily smear on the sky and show with every color imaginable. I have a few pictures of the sky looking like it's on fire. It's incredible. Words don't really do it justice in the least. I suggest all of you come down here and investigate it for yourself.

As for the winfly town life, it has been good. The town population is large for a winfly, with it pushing 600 people. A normal winfly would only add about another hundred people or so. We're running at more than double the normal population and that's created its own set of problems.

The housing situation has been interesting. Due to a last minute change by the NSF, 203 turned into a beaker only dorm. This forced the opening of other dorms that tend not to fare as well in the colder months as the others.

I happen to be in one of these chilly dorms. 211 is a great dorm for the most part, but parts of it are not that well insulated. We've had problems with our toilets freezing up and ice forming the bottoms of all the showers. My room gets a little chilly sometimes, too, though it's not bad when you consider it's often -30F outside.

If you're wondering about the weather, it's chilly. If the wind is blowing, it's miserable. We had wind chills exceeding -74F the other day. I'm glad that's fairly infrequent this time of year. South Pole has been hitting new records lately. Just prior to our arrival, they reached a new record low of -104F. Glad I'm not there right now.

If you think that's cold, I hate to disappoint you, but Vostock Station gets even colder...

As for here and now, we're probably around -25F with zero wind. Definitely sweatshirt weather today. I'm going to live it up.

That's all for now. Time for a safety nap.

Behold the Truckie

Apparently this is the effect I have on machinery. This is the yoke from the output shaft on the transmission of Ambo 2.

I am the Truckie, destroyer of Zetron and conqueror of calipers. Powerstrokes bleed in my presence.

It turns out I’m a destructive force here in Antarctica. After my ability to supposedly magically break Ambo 2 and Red 1 a few weeks ago, my list of victims has grown considerably. It has grown so much that Cap has banned me from going anywhere near the Oden, the Swedish ice breaker that finally docked at the ice pier several days ago, lest I cause it to sink or bring some other form of mechanical malady upon it.

Working out at the Crash Shack the other day, my ability to magically make things break came out into full force. During my time there, Ambo 2 failed to start on several occasions requiring jumpstarts, Red 4 decided to have indigestion and spill glycol, and Red 1 determined that stopping via use of the brakes was no longer necessary for a 70,000 pound tracked dinosaur.

The most entertaining of these, in my opinion, was Red 1 not wanting to stop. If you get bored by technical details, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs.

Following a hardstand for the C-17 from Cheech Red 1 needed fuel. Since we don’t normally move the Chieftains from their parking spots as they destroy the ice roads it was the first time it had been in motion for the day. As I shifted through the gears, I kept hearing a loud clunking that I couldn’t recall being there before. As I hadn’t driven it in a while, however, I couldn’t remember if this was normal as the Chieftains make lots of strange noises.

Pulling up to the fuel tank, I lined it up and downshifted to get ready to stop. After having dropped to first gear and then into neutral, I hit the brakes. Normally, this is where the Chieftain would come to a stop. Instead, it decided to roll a few more feet on its own and then stop. This came as a bit of a surprise, though it wasn’t a huge issue as the drag from the tracks and the level ice allowed it to come to a stop on its own.

Puzzled, and now wondering what the smell of burning brakes was coming from, I hopped out and dove under the front of the unit. Crawling behind the front pumpkin, I came to the disc brake that is located on the front drive shaft. Upon closer examination, I found that the front caliper bracket was loose (the cause of the clunking) and the vibrating action had loosened the fittings for the hydraulic brake causing it to dump fluid everywhere. Upon further inspection, I also found that the air brake used for parking was not engaged (I set it before leaving the cab) and that the pads had been loosely rubbing against the disc, causing the burning smell. Looking at the rear parking brake, I found the same situation.

After radioing in and letting Lt. Helitack know, I went to work trying to clean up and patch it. Absorbent pads took care of the spill and a wrench solved the leak.

Shortly after, Lt. Helitack and the rest of the crew came out to stare and provide their opinions.

After nursing Red 1 back to her parking spot, I was a little disappointed (though not wholly surprised) to find that the brake line had come loose and was leaking again.

A little while later, the phone rang in the Crash Shack. It was the Cap. He spoke with Lt. Helitack for a few minutes regarding the mechanical problems and then requested to speak with me.

Picking up the phone, I said, “Grant.”

He responded with “I send you all the way out to Pegasus, put you in the biggest fire truck we have, and you go and break it in half?!”

Before I could respond, I could hear the phone slam down on the other end. He had hung up.

It was worth a laugh. While likely at first appearance to you as an uninvolved reader it doesn’t sound like a good thing, it goes back to myself and the Captain having a unique relationship where we give each other a hard time constantly. It’s fun. He called back a few minutes later to laugh at me and then ask some more questions about the problem.

If you were skipping over the broken Red 1 story, please resume here. If you don’t want to hear about me breaking the Zetron radio console and the T-Site, please get off at the next exit.

For the next shift, I was assigned back in town at Station 1. As one of our dispatchers is on R&R before the winter sets in, we are currently short of personnel in the world of dispatch. As a result, lowly firefighters such as myself are required to fill in at dispatch.

This always creates some amusing situations since most of us haven’t really done much dispatching. This combined with the fact that very few real situations actually arise on station leads to various forms of chaos arising when something actually does happen.

Nearing the end of our shift, I had the pleasure of waking up a little early and stumbling in a half conscious manner down into the dispatch office to relieve Jersey, the overnight dispatcher. After the normal pass down, I assumed “control” of dispatch.

It was a quiet morning, with only a few phone calls from people looking for numbers. I sat in the office and watched through the windows as the rest of the crew swept the bays and did the rest of the morning chores.

After a little while, someone stopped in and told me that Scat 1 was trying to raise me on the radio for the morning radio check.

“Huh,” I thought. “How’d I miss that? I had channel two turned up.”

So I tried to raise Scat on the radio.

Silence.

“Weird,” I thought. I went and told someone to get Clint Eastwood to go back out and try it again, assuming that he’d already come back in. He went and tried, and nothing.

By this time, officers were now wandering into the office telling me that Scat was calling. At this point, after hearing nothing, I advised them that channel two didn’t seem to be working. A few quick checks with a portable radio confirmed this, and my status as the killer of the Zetron was confirmed.

Few were surprised when they found out I was in there when it decided to fail.

After a few phone calls and paging in the head dispatcher, chaos continued, albeit without me as I went off shift and went home for a safety nap.

Later, I discovered that I hadn’t destroyed the Zetron console, but in fact I had magically managed to destroy the transmitter at the T-Site. An enviable distinction, indeed.

Though the true cause of the fried transmitter was an unscheduled power outage during the previous night, I will certainly be remembered as the one who broke it.

Lastly, for any that doubt my amazing ability to create havoc and devastation just by being in the same geographic location as something, I give one final example.

Yesterday, an off day, the page came out looking for volunteers to help unload pallets of beer for the store.

Within minutes, off-duty firefighters appeared out of every nook and cranny to help, including myself.

The reason for the mass desire to help is simple: the store typically gives the volunteers free beer that would not normally be sold as perhaps one can of the six pack was damaged.

The beer offload proceeded as normal for the entire first pallet, with firefighters creating human conveyors moving beer from pallet to carts. The second pallet, loaded with Heineken, did not operate as smoothly.

While myself and a few others were inside offloading cases of beer and soda into stacks in the store, the rest of the group were out on the loading dock starting into the Heineken. The beer was wrapped up in layers of plastic rolled around the sides of the pallet, something that you’ve undoubtedly seen in various warehouse club stores such as Costco or Sam’s Club. Acting Lieutenant was cutting through the plastic in an effort to get to the beer.

As he did so, he came down to a layer that was held on by only a little bit of plastic.

He cut the plastic.

Now, what happened next I have pieced together from eyewitness statements.

Apparently, when Acting Lieutenant severed the last strip of plastic, the angle of the sun, gravity, and assorted laws of physics all came together and conspired to do the unthinkable.

With the last shred of saran wrap divided beneath the blade, the beers shifted under these new forces put on them. They shifted back, further back, and then down. It was a dreadful plummet. Horror ensued. I’m sure the terrified faces of those involved will never be equaled again. Case after case cascaded down out of control to the packed volcanic sands below. A sea of green cans and cardboard spilled everywhere. Hissing and spitting came from some of the cans. A few valiant volunteers dove in to save those wounded, doing their best to shotgun the ruptured cans, saving the liquid gold inside from a miserable fate in the sands of Ross Island.

When I stepped out, I was left aghast at the devastation.

I took pictures.

After cleaning up the mess (and having myself blamed for the disaster due to my destructive skills as a truckie even though I was a hundred feet away), we were each rewarded with a six pack of unfit for sale Heineken.

It’s a harsh continent. Sometimes bad things end up being good, though.

This now concludes the tales of destruction that have occurred in the last few days. I’m sure other things of interest have happened, though I can’t recall them. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is no sense of time here. It is five days until cookie day. That’s all I know.

Ambo Loves Me, Ambo Loves Me Not...

This one isn't mine. Photo credit goes to DA Drew (though I actually took the picture). This is our group out at Happy Camper enjoying some conversation and hot drinks at our kitchen table which was carved from the snow. To me, it's a little reminiscent of da Vinci's "The Last Supper". I'll leave it up to you if you think so, too.


This place is really starting to look like the Antarctica that everyone imagines. The wind has been blowing, the snow has been falling, and the skies have been gray and dismal. The temperature has even been dropping in kind, making has what seemed like the artificial summer warmth of about 40F turn into what it should have always been.

It's been five days since we've seen the sun. It's been almost five days since we've seen the last C-17 come down to the Ice to bring us mail and freshies. The people working over in housing have been going crazy trying to find places for everyone to stay because of these delays. (They also don't like it that we know before them when flights are coming and going or if they've been canceled due to the weather.) Many are scheduled to be leaving, including two of our own.

One of my fellow "A" shifters is going home. He'll be missed by the guys here. He's been one of our more entertaining characters since Denver, and it will certainly make for a shift in the group dynamics.

The other one leaving is our Deputy Chief. Due to budgeting changes, he's returning to the Denver office as our Chief returns to the Ice. Though I never really got to know him well personally (If I'm interacting with anyone greater than two ranks above me, it's rarely a good thing.), I wish him the best to returning to the real world and reintegrating with "normal" society.

Even though the weather has been bad and the Hercs and seventeens have been grounded, it hasn't been uneventful for us here. We've made the best of the time physically isolated from the rest of the world by getting some training in.

Ever since we left Denver, we've been making slow but steady progress towards completing our job performance requirements that are needed to get our IFSAC certs completed.

Tuesday was my Kelly day, but I came in on my off day to get my C-130 training completed. In order to get out to Pegasus for the training, myself and three others who were on shift at Station 1 piled into Ambo 2, fresh out of the heavy shop from its round of preventative maintenance.

We all piled into our antiquated Ford gutbox and rattled our way down past Scott Base and onto the Ice Road. As we settled into the semi-consistent rumbling and sliding down the road, we made ourselves comfortable. I sprawled out on the cot while one of the other guys, a Seattleite, laid out on the bench seat. We traded idle chatter back and forth passing the time. Eventually, we became distracted.

It just kept shaking. It sounded like one of the shelves wanted to rattle loose with the medical bag hammering against it. We thought it was a little unusual, but considering the composition of the road and the general condition of things here, it didn't seem beyond the realm of normal.

Apparently, it had begun to exceed the realm of normal for the two guys up front (separated from us by a window) and they stopped our off road ambulance. After a brief inspection by the driver, he returned to his seat and put the unit back in motion.

It didn't go away, though. It didn't take long for the sound to change, either.

The weird vibration returned as soon as the wheels started turning again. It didn't last long. Perhaps fifty, maybe a hundred feet. Suddenly, the rumble turned into a pop-clunk, at which time all motion ceased.

Turning to the Seahawk fan next to me, I said "there goes the drive shaft".

After getting out of the back of the unit, it didn't take long to confirm my suspicions. Glancing under the unit, the rear drive shaft could be seen pointing up from its hanger and its shattered yoke making contact with the belly of the truck. Looking to the rear of the transmission, the yoke on the output shaft could be seen spinning methodically along as it seemed content to just churn the air.

In some ways, it's kind of sad to realize that I have the knowledge to know just by the sound of something breaking what has broken. Guess that means I've broken my fair share of things up to now. Too bad I'm only really good at fixing the things that I can put a wrench on, and not some of the other things I've broken in life.

To continue, we were stuck. While we tried to get the derelict Ford to move on just the front axle, it didn't have enough weight on it to drag the heavy box end through the snow. Not that it would have mattered much in the end as it would have been extremely difficult to secure the severed rear shaft to keep it from flailing about destructively.

With notifications made to both the firehouse and Fleet Ops and with a short photo and movie opportunity of the damage completed, we entered into a standard "hurry up and wait" formation. We all resumed our seats (or makeshift beds, as were available) and proceeded to make idle chatter and guess who would arrive first, our Captain, Fleet Ops, or a Shuttle to carry us on our way.

My guess was for our Cap to make it out first. As part of our idle chatter, myself and the Seahawk fan took guesses as to what his first words would be when we saw him next. We both agreed that it would sound something like, "Grant, how'd you break my ambulance?"

After our chatter died down we dozed off again. A fairly easy task when you're splayed out comfortably in a warm ambulance that's not rattling down the road. About an hour into our motionless wait, I started to wake up wondering why the ground was shaking. Coming to, I noticed a massive red-orange Delta pulling up past us.

Luckily for us, Shuttle ? was kind enough to pick up four errant hitchhikers. We grabbed our gear and climbed up in the back and were greeted by a small group of Air Guard guys on their way to Pegasus. They seemed somewhat amused at our predicament. With the door closed and the rear steps folded up, we were off again, leaving our still running Ambulance II coughing and hacking for Fleet Ops to magic carpet off to the heavy shop.

After a slightly delayed arrival out at the Crash Shack (and having to run a gauntlet of snowball fire both from janos Diesel and Ghandi and our own firefighters), we met up with Lt. Grandpa and the rest of the "Deuce Crew" for our training. We loaded up into three of the Renegades and made our way out to the flight line to finally get a closer look at the Hercs we'd been protecting.

After pulling up, the crew chief from Skier Maintenance had yet to arrive, so we started the exterior tour without him. Instead of me giving boring technical material to you, I'll pass over it and just say that it was informative and interesting. I learned a few things that I didn't know previously and was grateful for Lt. Grandpa's expertise and knowledge in the field.

After the crew chief finally arrived, we continued our walkthrough of the aircraft and flight deck. We were given the chance to play with most of the doors on the aircraft (a significant technical detail to people who need to get in quickly during an emergency) and look over proper flight deck shutdown procedures.

A few things of note regarding the LC-130. First of all, this variant has the ability to land either on wheels or on retractable skis. The skis give it the "L" designation. Next, I'd like to point out that I was surprised by how small the actual aircraft seemed once we were able to get up close to it. Stepping inside, I realized how cramped it really was. With a few pallets of cargo and some people, the aircraft could easily become very tight.

Additionally, I thought it of interest to note how simple the flight deck was. As opposed to many of the newer aircraft that we saw in Denver and even in contrast to the C-17, the cockpit of the snub nosed Herc seemed exceptionally basic, incorporating a combination of modern glass cockpit technology and classic steam gauges.

Lastly, a final quirk that I noted was that each of the props, save one, had a small image stenciled on it. Two of them had an image of a fire breathing dragon while a third had a raven on it. After inquiring with the crew chief, I discovered that this was done to show who had last rebuilt the props and is comparable to an artist signing his painting.

Our tour complete and our thanks given to the Raven Ops crew chief, we piled back into our Renegades and threw snow from our tracks as we returned to the Crash Shack. Our training complete, myself and the rest of the group that I was with piled back up on a Delta of the little known McMurdo Area Rapid Transit system. Our journey back was slightly shorter than our ride out.

As we walked back into the firehouse five hours later as opposed to the three hour tour we were expecting, it didn't take long for our Captain to find me. The following is roughly what was said. I apologize for the use of quotes for paraphrasing.

"Grant!"
"Yo, Cap."
"I knew it was you as soon as I heard it. You broke the ambulance."
"How'd I break it, Cap? I was sleeping on the cot in the back."
"I've already got that figured out. Since you were the fourth one on it, you overloaded it and caused the drive shaft to break."
"That's a bit of a stretch."
"I know, but I'm still blaming you."

I turn to the Seahawk fan.

"I told you I'd get blamed for this."
"That you did."

That pretty much summed up my day off. Not much of a break, but I don't really like too much of one, anyway. Besides, very few fun stories stem from idleness.


Jumping back ahead to today, I have another brief recap.

The bells have actually been ringing today. By the time I finished this, we had three calls for alarms, one medevac, and an in-flight emergency for a Herc with an engine out (not an unusual occurrence). In short, it began to feel like a slow day back home.

I spent much of my day tucked up under both of our engines. I had been given the simple task to rattle can some bright color on the air reservoirs for the brake system as to make them more visible for new drivers as they can be hard to spot.

I, of course, went the extra mile on this mundane task and created a lovely silver and Cat yellow striped pattern.

Overkill? Absolutely. But it gave me something to do that required some creative effort.

As the day progressed, we received word that a flight had actually made it out after several days of being grounded. The Skier was going to Pole and returning with a medevac. This necessitated that an ambulance go out to Pegasus, pick up the patient and waiting medical crew, and return.

Since I was assigned to Ambo 1 for the shift, it fell to me.

After some last minute ambulance juggling (We almost put Scat 1 in service as Ambo 3), Ambo 2 magically reappeared from its trip to the heavy shop with a reattached drive shaft.

With a mild groan on my part, I loaded up and headed out.

It's a long drive out to Pegasus. It's even longer when you're driving alone in a truck that broke down on you just a couple of days before. With the radio tuned to Radio Lolo on Ice 104.5 (Yes, we have a real radio station here.) I slipped, slopped, and rumbled through the rock of the transition and the snow of the ice road.

After finally making it out and meeting up with an arriving LC-130 with my patient and medical team, I loaded up with four and headed back out.

The drive out had been long and fairly dull, though it was kind of a nice break from the routine we can easily fall into here. The ride back, though not exciting, was still fun.

I had an Air Force medical guy ride shotgun with me, and we had a good chat on the way back (especially welcome as Radio Lolo had ended and the canned pop-garbage of the Armed Forces Radio network had returned). It turned out he was from Guam, was stationed in Okinawa, and his missions typically consisted of two week stints to Hawaii.

Maybe I need to join the Air Force.

As the miles started to pass by, I came up on a Delta parked off on the side of the road. At first, I thought they had broken down. As I came closer, I discovered the real reason for their unscheduled stop. Penguins.

There were three Emperor Penguins busy waddling down the road. An unusual sight to say the least, and one certainly worthy of stopping to see. While the Delta was able to stop with its passengers to take a closer look, I couldn't.

While I was sorely tempted to stop and get a better look at the last bit of Antarctic wildlife I hadn't checked off my list yet, I couldn't in good conscience stop for a photo op while a cranky patient and tired medical crew sat in the back. Instead, I just drove by very, very slowly. Sadly, I have no photos to show for it, though the penguins were amusing.

After finally making it back into town, we offloaded the patient and finally went back to the station for the night. At which point, I began typing this up and relating to you my various adventures.

Now, at the concluding of said typing, a nice warm bunk awaits me in the gen-pop bunkroom.

More to come later.

Of Robots and Sawbucks

Smoke.

I smelled smoke yesterday.

It was an olfactory delight. The thin wisps dancing along the air currents to my nose left me in a state of both confusion and of utter amazement. It was a vaporous taste of charred wood, more aromatic than anything that I've had the pleasure of inhaling in about three months.

You don't realize how many smells you miss out on when the only odors that you notice anymore are diesel exhaust, cigarettes, and the sweet fruity smells from rooms where women reside. (I don't know exactly what shampoo they're using, but you can always tell if a woman lives on the floor the instant you walk in.) The frozen south does not lend itself to the odors of decay or the smell of anything more natural than volcanic rock.

Also, before you get concerned, nothing was on fire that shouldn't have been. The Air Guard guys who live in the dorm next to us were outside barbecuing with real wood. I stopped for a moment and enjoyed it before heading back in.

This was the start of a good day. A very good day.

Yesterday was "Icestock", the McMurdo version of that now famous gathering in a little town somewhere in New York. Our version, however, had far fewer hippies and a no acid trips. We did, however, have robots and ninjas.

The quadrangle formed by the galley, Southern Exposure, and Acey Deucey (aka the Gerbil Gym) formed the venue for our audio and liver celebration. A stage was formed out of three flatbed trailers and about half a jamesway placed on top of them to cover the equipment on the stage.

Bleachers were created from a flatrack (a shipping container with no top or walls on the long sides) with wooden benches added and an old Navy six by six with couches loaded in the rear. Fish huts filled in the gaps around the edges and were used for serving beer, burgers, brats, and coffee at our very own Sawbucks. (Sawbucks Irish coffee tends to be rather heavy on the Bailey's and a little short on the coffee. An excellent deal for a dollar donation.)

Bands were on stage all day, with plenty of variation in both style and quality. Much like any other venue you might go to, the better the band, the later in the day they played.

The music ranged from solo guitar to country to guitar/violin combo to some ska (a trip back in time for me) and the closing act of some funkadelic craziness that left the crowd demanding more.

Some of the bands were excellent. For the rough and tough image that is easy to get caught up in here, the musical talents of plumbers and bulldozer operators make you realize the skills that other people have. One band made almost entirely of janos who called themselves "Safety Band", spent their entire set poking fun at some of the Mactown absurdities.

Another fun even that occurred during Icestock was some between band entertainment put on by the wasties and some DAs. While everyone was milling around between sets, about a dozen brightly colored robots appeared out of nowhere and started dancing up by the stage.

After dancing for a few minutes, giving me some very entertaining video, a group of ninjas appeared out of the same ether that the robots emerged from. The ninjas, however, were far less interested in dancing as in doing what they do best; battle robots.

A battle of epic proportions ensued. It went back and forth for a while, demonstrating how evenly matched an armored cardboard robot is against an agile and armed ninja.

In the end, only one robot and ninja remained standing on the field of conquest. As they closed in at last for final blows against each other, a love story unfolded. It turned out that our remaining combatants had been hiding a secret love for each other. With the exchange of a pair of cardboard hearts, they drifted off together.

I wish them much happiness and beautiful ninjabot children.

The final band of the day certainly went all out. The band, called "Porn Spill", arrived in brightly colored costumes and with a little bit of attitude to go with it. They played a lot of hits from the era of funk and had the crowd going crazy. We were all greatly disappointed when their set finally finished.

Following the conclusion of the main stage of Icestock, a mad rush was made for the galley. The entertainment ended just in time for about three quarters of the station population to rush it in the last fifteen minutes of dinner. I'm sure the DA's were thrilled, though they did close before some had a chance to eat.

The excitement for the day did not end, however. After everyone flooded the galley, Gallagher's opened up for the night with a full evening of even more live musical talent.

The musical talents of McMurdo again astounded me. A bluegrass band started things off and left me impressed. I'm not always a huge fan of bluegrass as it can get to be a bit too twangy for me, but the ice version was quite pleasant to hear. Also, it's not everyday in Antarctica that you run across a mandolin and a slide guitar.

As the bar became more and more packed, the bands continued to become more and more entertaining. By the end of the night, you could barely move and whenever a song started, everyone knew it and sang along.

As far as I'm aware, nothing bad even happened following a day of music and drinking. Everyone was well behaved, and aside from a few bad decisions here and there, I think everyone enjoyed it.


Now, a common transition to the next day may begin "comes the dawn", but as the sun never sets here I can't in good conscience use it.

Therefore, I'll have to use the slightly modified "comes the next shift".

While most people were nursing the effects of their jubilant celebrations of the previous day, those of us on "A" shift were going back to work. While the weather had been fantastic the previous day, the winds had kicked up during the night shift.

As I stepped out of my dorm in the morning, I was met with a sandy, gritty, blast of wind coming down the road. In the few minutes that I had spent outside, I ended up with enough of the the McMurdo mud (in powdered form) in my hair to last me until the next shower.

Since it was a Sunday, the town doesn't normally provide scheduled shuttle service out to Pegasus. As a result, I was sent to check out one of Shuttle's vans with bead-lok tires so we could take our crew out to Pegasus. After picking it up and loading it up with all our gear, we were on our way.

Unfortunately for us, the shortcut road was closed. This left a long thirteen mile drive ahead, though I actually looked forward to it.

Typically, the most that I get to drive is the occasional mile here and there around town in the trucks at about ten miles an hour. It's a rare day indeed that I get to actually watch the second to last digit on the odometer to roll over and the speedometer climb all the way to the blazing speed of twenty-five.

After meandering through the pass, Scott Base, and the transition, we finally hit open ice road.

The road was in good condition with only the occasional wheel engulfing hole ahead. I opened the throttle and let that V-8 roar! (When everything is in low gear, engine noise makes you think you're going faster.)

The McMurdo highway system is something unique to itself. I don't think I've ever described it in detail here, but it's a fairly simple affair.

Every day, Cat Challengers and dozers ply the roads, pulling drags or ox-foot carts scraping and compacting mile after mile of snow into a usable road surface. About every one hundred feet or so, some poor fellow had the honor of jumping out of their nice warm truck, drilling a hole in the ice, and planting a bamboo pole flag which marks the edge of the road. Repeat several thousand times, ad nauseam, and you have a McMurdo highway.

Driving down the empty road is an experience in and of itself. The wind that had been blowing in town hadn't disappeared on the frozen Ross Sea. As I drove down the smooth white topped road, I watched as tendrils of blowing snow snaked and writhed alongside. In some ways it reminded me of whales or porpoises that swim alongside ships.

As the mile markers passed by slowly, the long, straight road with no real landmarks had a slightly hypnotizing effect. Luckily, I was able to make the turn for both "off-ramps" that led to Pegasus without just blowing straight through into a distant and invisible drift.

While the roads didn't have much to look at other than flags and mile markers, the scenery far beyond still impressed me. Mt. Discovery was out, with low clouds skirting swiftly along its peak. Black and White Islands were in full view, and provided me with some distraction (other than the classic rock coming from the radio) as I held the wheel straight.

Even though it wasn't really much of a drive to speak of, I still enjoyed "going fast" and actually going somewhere. I was actually a little disappointed when I pulled the van up to the Crash Shack.

Sunday at the Crash Shack is almost always a quiet shift. The mood is typically relaxed and aside from the morning truck checks, the day is spent reading, surfing the net, playing board games, and some movies.

Hopefully, after this Sunday, I think I've started a new trend in the Antarctic Fire Department. Since there is typically nobody in town on a Sunday, I promptly donned my Hawaiian shirt as we began our daily truck checks. I'm sure that if anyone had been in town at the time, they would have been a little confused to see me inspecting one of our Foremost Chieftains.

Later at dinner, I did receive some unusual looks and a few giggles from the staff in the galley and from the Air Guard guys who were coming on shift. I'm also pretty sure that I received more than one strange look from someone as I walked around between buildings in the snow.

After dinner, another one of my shift mates joined me with his Hawaiian shirt and wore it proudly for the rest of the day. With a little luck, everyone will be wearing them by the end of the season.


In short, that sums up a fun and entertaining two days of life on the Ice. I know this shows itself to be a rather abrupt ending, but the rest of the time at the Crash Shack was uneventful.

Also, as a final note, while I did begin the composition of this entry the day of my last shift at the Crash Shack, it took me until Antarctic Wednesday to finish it (lots of delays and a lack of a conclusion are the main culprits in this situation) and it wasn't published until Antarctic Thursday. My apologies on the timeliness of this, as I know many of you are critical of punctuality.

There is more to come. Far more. Enjoy.

A New Year's Not to be Forgotten

The "A" Shift group picture. All present and accounted for out at Discovery Hut with the exception of Polie D/O Walsh. Also, "C" shifter Cassidy snuck in, but he's really just an "A" shifter at heart.



First of all, a happy New Year to all of you. While most of you have just flipped your calendars over, we've been in the new year for almost a full day.

Those fortunate few down at Pole are coming near the end of their 24th New Year's celebration. Having all time zones in the world intersect under your feet certainly has a marked advantage to the party animal there, provided that you can keep conscious for all of them.

I still need to find out from our newly arrived Polies to see if it was actually as fun as it sounds.

As for my version of New Year's, it was a little different than I had initially planned.

Originally, I had expected to ring in the unofficial (bureaucratically, at least) real new year (on New Zealand time) over at Scott Base with those lovable and funny sounding Kiwis over the hill. Thirty-six hours prior to the big calendar swap, a call came into the Crash Shack telling myself and Caesar that we were to report at 0830 the next morning for "Happy Camper", our cold weather survival school.

Though we had finally gotten into the long awaited class, we were a little disheartened knowing we'd be missing the celebrations with our friends.

After getting transferred back to Station 1 so we could make our report time, we moped around a little for the rest of the shift.

The next morning, after getting off of work and getting all of our extreme cold weather gear together, we reported over to FSTP (pronounced eff-stop and standing for "Field Training Safety Program") to begin our class.

Our instructor for the class was an accomplished mountain guide who sometimes lives out of his van when he's not working somewhere. The man loves his nature.

Anyways, we went through the morning doing some basic classroom stuff, going over the contents of survival kits and how to avoid and deal with the cold. After completing our classroom work, we loaded up on a Delta and went out to the real classroom, the Ross Ice Shelf.

After getting out there, we went over some more basics of survival, including how to use camp stoves. After a boxed lunch, we went to work for real.

We went to work setting up everything a group of ten needs to survive a night out in the frigid Antarctica wild. This included the antiquated but virtually invincible Scott Tent, a few mountain tents, windwalls built from blocks of snow sawed from the ground, a kitchen with its own windwall, a dinner table (we're not completely uncivilized here), and of course, our survival trenches/mansions.

We couldn't have had a more beautiful day to be working out in the snow. The sun was shining (as is now evidenced by my very red face), it was "warm" by McMurdo standards at a little below freezing, and not too much wind until after we had built our initial windwalls.

Also, Mt. Erebus was busy smoking away, giving the local landscape a little more beauty as our crystal clear skies exposed everything for miles around.

As our day of official fieldwork came to a close as we lit the stoves to get ready for dinner, we had made a significant little community of tents, trenches, and walls that made our little village resemble something between a quaint snowy lea with field stone walls and a rabbit warren.

After more digging, we completed the survival trenches that we were to sleep in for the night. Some of these were far more impressive than others. One of our group, an ambition Jano, dug out a cave about the size of a small room, complete with arches made of snow blocks.

My own humble abode was far simpler. It consisted of a hole about four feet down and a horizontal tunnel which I could slide into with a sleeping bag. My roof was nothing more than my Big Red (our issued parka) weighed down with chunks of snow. It actually proved to be fairly comfortable and warm in the end, though in the future I would certainly make a few improvements.

After eating some dinner, (freeze dried meals made in the last decade which taste okay at first, but with each progressive bite become less and less appetizing) we all gathered around the dinner table cut into the snow. We then took a few pictures of the whole group together in a scene strongly resembling "The Last Supper" by da Vinci.

Following that, kite flying ensued, courtesy of Shuttle OJ and general and amusing banter was had by all as we awaited the approach of midnight.

At midnight, we had a countdown and proceeded to make as much noise as possible to ring in the new year. Apparently, we did a good job at it as we woke up our instructor who was sound asleep in his hut about a hundred yards away.

Not to be left out of the celebrations, he jumped on his ancient snowmobile and raced around our camp a few times. He then joined us to ring in the New Year before we all finally had enough and decided to sack out for the night.

Crawling into my hole, it struck me that I had never expected to be celebrating New Year's out a sheet of ice in the middle of the Ross Sea in Antarctica with ten other people ranging from my fellow "A" shifter Caesar, to Drew the Lead DA, to a bunch of beakers I'd never seen before, and a couple of Janos including "Diesel" (A fun and petite Asian girl. Another example of things being just a little different here.).

Seeing the sun still standing tall in the sky with the mountains in plain view with the residents of our snowy village popping in and out of their holes made me just lay in my under-snow cave in amazement once again before the delicious quiet and weariness took their expected course.

After a fairly warm and good night's sleep, we woke up to break camp. All of our group had slept in our survival trenches, apparently a Happy Camper first for the season (though nice weather didn't hurt us). After undoing much of our hard work the day before, we sat down to a less than delicious breakfast of plain oatmeal (harvested during the Clinton era) mixed with packets of hot cider to add some flavor.

Following this, we were again met by our instructor and left our humble town to be taken back to the instruction hut. We went through a few more exercises. For the first one, we went over the shortwave radio set. After setting it up outside, we were able to get in touch with both MacOps (the all listening entity of Mactown) and the South Pole. We were able to extend our New Year's wishes to them, and they to us. We also exchanged weather reports, ours being a little warmer than their balmy -37F.

I think they were jealous.

Following this, we went into the somewhat well known "bucket head" exercise.

Those of you that have seen the Werner Herzog documentary "Encounters at the End of the World" are probably familiar with this. For those of you who are not, a brief description follows:

The object of this scenario is to simulate searching for a lost group member who went out in the middle of a Con 1 white out to use the bathroom. We are given basic tools to try and go out and rescue them. Basically, a rope is extended out to its furthest point and people are spaced out evenly along the rope. Then, with the other end firmly attached to the building, we sweep out in a wide arc, yelling such things as the name of the missing person or "Marco" in a throwback to the swimming pool game. All the while, we are stumbling around with white buckets with amusing faces on our heads to simulate white out conditions.

After a few minutes of stumbling in our arc, I became the lucky one to locate our missing instructor by stepping on him. The day was saved, all because I couldn't see what I was walking on.

Following this, we took a brief glance over at the "SARcasm", an artificially created crevasse used by the Search and Rescue team for training. It made for an impressive hole in the ground scraped out by a Cat D-8 or another close relative.

Following this brief break, we went on to our final scenario of the day. We were given the scenario that our truck had caught fire in the middle of nowhere and all we were able to save was the survival bag and shortwave radio. Our goal was to set up an emergency camp with a mountain tent, a small windwall, contact MacOps on the shortwave set, boil one liter of water, deal with a simulated case of hypothermia, and otherwise not die.

We managed to get everything done in just under ten minutes. Though not sure if this was a record or not, it easily puts to shame the average time of about 25 minutes for a group of 20 to complete these tasks.

Our field training done for the day, we cleaned up and enjoyed chatting, napping, and eating lunch in the instructor's hut until the shuttles came to take us away.

Our day wound down with putting our equipment away and a brief lecture on helicopter safety procedures. Also, Caesar almost set the building on fire, but that's a fairly minor detail.

Wait, you want to hear about how Caesar almost set the building on fire? Is it really that interesting to you? Well, if you insist.

Before putting the stoves away, we had to go set them up and light them to ensure that they were working properly. Caesar, being a masterful fireman, proceeded to check one of these stoves.

Before further looking at the events, I will give a quick primer on the function of these stoves. Below the standard looking burner that you see on most stoves, including the ones in your home, there is a small cup that sits underneath with a fuel line that passes by before going back up to the burner. When starting, the fuel cylinder is cracked open briefly and liquid fuel accumulates in this small cup. The fuel is then shut off and the fuel in the cup lit. This action allows the flame from the cup to impinge on the fuel line itself to preheat any fuel passing through, vaporizing it. After this preheating, the fuel is then sent back through the line and sent as a gas straight to the burner for consumption.

Caesar, had the first step mostly correct, except for the fact that he didn't shut off the flow of fuel. After lighting the cup, he turned away for a moment, and didn't notice that the fuel was overflowing the cup and spilling all over the table with silent blue tongues lapping up.

As the table had a metal top and the wall behind covered in diamond plate (I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last.), I watched, not particularly concerned, as the flame spread about the table.

After watching it for a moment unconcerned, I turned to Caesar and said something like this:

"Caesar. (In a normal and calm tone.) Caesar. (No response yet.) Caesar, the table is on fire, you might want to turn off the fuel."

The third time did it. He promptly spun around, did a little jump, and frantically went to work trying to shut off the fuel. After closing the valve, he picked it up and tried to blow out the large flame coming off the top of the burner, but only managed to spill more fuel and create a large but brief flare up.

After a moment, the flames went out with no damage to the table or the building. Though no real damage was done, I have now begun to carry the torch (pun intended) of instructing everyone at the firehouse to ask him how he set the building on fire.

Amusing anecdotes are already occurring as a result of this, and more are sure to come, though I won't bore you with the mundane details here.

After all of that, we finally went home. It was nice to get a shower and a shave after wearing mostly the same clothes for about three days.

Following that, even though I officially had the rest of the day off, I came into work anyway. It's hard to shake an addiction with firetrucks, sometimes. Also, when you have a good crew, why would you want to skip a day working with them?

While I had initially been disappointed about having to do it over New Year's, in retrospect, I think it was worth it. Who else can say they celebrated New Year's while camping out underground in the middle of a frozen Antarctic sea?

Ten of us can this year. I'm proud to be one of them.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Transportation here in McMurdo is something of an enigma. It's very much like that on again, off again relationship that most of us have found ourselves in at some point in our lives.

We find ourselves attracted inexorably towards someone (or something) that we desire, only to either be disappointed time and time again or left hanging out with the laundry to dry. Even though we do find ourselves stranded (figuratively or literally in the McMurdo sense), we are always willing to race back with open arms to that which failed us yet again.

It's a vicious cycle, one that creates a significant emotional drain on anyone and can easily cause undue stress or misery. It is something that is not desired, but is often difficult to finally end.

For the firefighters here in scenic Mactown right now, we've been stumbling along with our relationship with the shortcut road to Pegasus.

Since the closure of Ice Town for the season, all of our airfield operations have moved to distant Pegasus field out on the permanent sea ice outside of McMurdo. This includes our airfield firefighting operations which require the vigilant omnipresence of six dedicated, skilled, and often napping firefighters.

Since the closure of Ice Town, however, our commute has changed significantly. What used to be a ten minute, two mile drive to Ice Town in Scat 1 has now changed to a forty-five minute (on a good day), thirteen mile drive in either "Ivan" or the ever comfortable Delta (with built in passenger vertical velocity adjuster). This new commute is now the source of the "hate" part of our relationship.

Lest I have you believing that I've led you astray with my previous statements of love and hate, there is a glimmer of hope out there for us. There is still some love available to us firefighters who come back later and later after each shift. Our love is the shortcut road.

The shortcut road comes off of the south side of Ross Island, the volcanic rock that comprises the base for our home here. In earlier times of the summer, it is the road to nearby Ice Town. On the way to Ice Town, however, there is an Antarctic interchange about halfway down. This interchange takes you directly to Pegasus and cuts off roughly half of the normal thirteen mile distance and equally as much time.

We love the shortcut road.

The shortcut road is fickle, though. Her mood changes almost daily, and we're never sure if she wants us or wants us to never come back. Regardless, we always hope. Even with that hope, there is always one serious point of contention between us.

That point is the transition.

The transition, as its name aptly states, is the meeting of the annual sea ice (the thinner variety) and the volcanic gravel we call home. This meeting point is critical. The ice thins out in this area and is prone to melting, cracking, and the abuse of constant traffic upon it. Holes routinely appear in it as well as cracks. It is cared for and given as much attention as possible, but we can't stave off our nemesis, the sun.

As the temperature here has warmed in recent weeks to well above freezing (we reached a high of 43F the other day, warm enough to warrant t-shirts and shorts for many), the transition has taken on a haggard and beaten look to it. The holes and cracks have gotten bigger. There is water seeping through large portions of it. In short, the transition has become unstable.

We broke it off with the transition on the shortcut road earlier this week. We told ourselves that it was for the best and that we had just get used to things as they were.

Things as they were, however, are not fun.

Earlier this week, we loaded up onto Ivan, an almost normal looking bus with tires nearly as high as my six foot frame. We made our way out to Pegasus. Slowly. Very slowly. The road had been drifted over by the winds the night before and the going was difficult. Even with the ground clearance of a small bungalow and the motive power of a semi, we managed to get stuck twice. Our trip out was painfully long. An hour and a half (double the "normal" time) later, we arrived and found the off-going shift standing impatiently at the door of the Crash Shack.

We'd sworn her off, but now we missed her desperately. We thought that we were over the shortcut road. We didn't think it meant so much, but we were wrong.

As our shift, led by the much loved and aurally amusing Lt. Grandpa, wound down after a night of herding penguins off runways (and eventually discovering that it was easier to herd LC-130s instead), we came out of the station to be greeted by our relieving crew.

When they arrived, however, we did a bit of a double take. It was only 0900. We were astounded, amazed, dazed, befuddled, and quite pleased.

"How'd y'all get here so fast?"

"The shortcut is back open."

It hit home like a boxing glove full of nickels. We were back on again.

We loaded onto Ivan with a little extra spring in our step, knowing that we'd be home again soon.

As we rolled down the not-so-long road back home, we enjoyed every bit of the familiar road. All its bumps and curves gave us delight, and with Lt. Grandpa throwing in some of his tawdry anecdotes, you couldn't find a happier exhausted, hungry, and dirty crew.

The ride wasn't all smooth, though. Near the end of our journey, we came back to the transition, the forever rough spot in our relationship. Ivan slowly stumbled through the dips and slushy holes in what was left of the ice. As we came to the end, we found a victim claimed by her.

One of Shuttle's Ford vans (resplendent with huge tires and four wheel drive) had stumbled nose first into a weak spot in the ice. It sat there trapped, the front axle just at the level of the ice water below.

We passed by, realizing that it just wasn't going to last.

Now every morning, a crew of firefighters waits anxiously to hear the news of the shortcut road. We all know that in the end, it isn't going to work out, but we desperately hope that we can just give it one more try.


My apologies to those who didn't appreciate the preceding style of writing. It certainly isn't purely journalistic nor is it what you'd consider a normal conversation from me (perhaps not peppered with enough less than civil comments?). Regardless, it's something I like to do once in a while. It is a skill that I haven't practiced enough in recent years. Life has precluded it harshly, though with more time available here it becomes easier to have some fun with words.

In short, if you don't like it, I don't care. That said, the rest of this will be in a less dramatic style.


In other news, Mactown is changing. For those of you that thought Antarctica was always frozen and covered with snow, I have some shocking news for you; it isn't.

The weather here has been getting warmer and warmer lately. We actually hit a high of 43F the other day, making it a nice day to wander around town in a t-shirt and shorts. It is a far cry from the -30F when we first arrived. The huge drifts of snow that we had on the lee side of buildings have all but disappeared. Ob Hill and Hut Ridge have all but become devoid of the clean, white blanket that covered them.

The melt has happened so fast, in fact, that the streets of McMurdo have become veritable streams and creeks. The running water quickly gouges out ruts wherever it decides to flow in the fine volcanic grit of town. Icy McMurdo turned into oozing MudMurdo.

MudMurdo wasn't long for this world, however. As the snowbanks have disappeared, so have the streams. The sun bakes the ground and drives the moisture from it. What was once mud now turns into blowing clouds of grit that works its way into everything. The wind has found a new way to torment us here, though it's still much warmer than it was and it has lost its bite from the cold.


As far as firehouse life is concerned, things here are still quiet. As I was actually in the middle of writing this, we were put out for the call of one DFO'd (Done Fell Out('d), a technical term) over at the bar.

It felt a little like home again, with the standard dehydrated reveler who had felt the curtain drop for intermission.

Our response, of course, was overwhelming. This can be expected when you look at our exceptionally low call volume and resultant eager workforce. From a personal point of view, it took too long to get the patient loaded and I failed to get ideal positioning with the ambulance.

In the end, however, this was fine. Considering transport time was in the area of thirty seconds of reverse to get to McMurdo General Hospital, I think our slight delay was compensated for. All in all quite acceptable, though I wish we had a few more (non-serious) calls to hone our skills as a team with.

Just another exciting day in the life of the AFD.

Just two more items, and I'm done for this post. I promise. It's getting late here and my fourth cup of coffee is having no effect.

Firstly of two, I am now officially a Driver/Operator of the AFD. After numerous scheduling conflicts and some bad luck, I was finally able to complete my pump test this afternoon, clearing me to drive our fine pumping apparatus on emergency calls. My thanks to the rest of the Station 1 A shift crew for being good sports and not complaining about the layer of ice that coated them by the time we concluded.

I never thought I would actually ever say this, but I'm a wagon driver now. What a cruel end for the eternal truckie inside me.

Secondly, I would like to make a few comments on the most unique piece of machinery that I have ever seen in my life. I would like to congratulate the Foremost company of Canada for creating a Titan of the fire apparatus world, the Chieftain (Our Reds 1 & 2).

Much like the mythical Titans of old, these antiquated behemoths have been surpassed by newer, nimbler, and far more temperamental trucks that never seem to decide if they want to work properly.

The Foremost Chieftain is a marvel of combining systems together to make something massive (roughly 35 tons), complex, and amazing all at the same time. My efforts to create an inspection checklist have led to some interesting finds in my research.

For those gearheads out there, read on. For those not mechanically inclined, skip to the end.

Red 1, the bigger and more complex of the two has three diesel engines (one for moving the unit, one as a generator to heat the water/foam mix in the back and a final unit to drive the fire pump), a drive system complete with not one, not two, but fourteen universal joints, and a strangely concocted hydraulic (which uses aircraft hydraulic fluid) over air braking system that I still haven't quite figured out.

To our northern mechanical monster friends at Foremost, I salute you for making an exceptionally interesting and complex machine. I hope that design revisions over the years, however, have reduced some of this complexity.

Perhaps this is an overly optimistic sentiment.


For those of you that made it this far into it, I congratulate you. Hopefully it remained fairly coherent even with my lack of editing. Normally I try to do a thorough run through for grammar and glaring errors, but my motivation for the evening has dwindled.

Signing off from the most amazing place on the planet, I bid you good nite.

Penguins, Balloons, and Pegasi, Oh My!

I know, I know. It's been far too long since the last update.

But it really hasn't been my fault! Really!

There was that day where we lost power, and then that day when we were living in Station Two with no power or heat and had to urinate into a funnel, and then that day I ended up over at LDB for an afternoon, and then the big fire...

Now I suppose you're going to want an explanation of all of this. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. Not even the penguin.

I didn't tell you about the penguin yet? Oops. Just digging myself a bigger hole every time my fingers move across the keyboard...


If you couldn't tell from what I've typed above, life here actually has been very busy as of late. Busy, at least, by Antarctic standards.

I suppose I should start back towards the beginning. Several days ago (I think it was cookie day) we actually ran a call where I saw both smoke AND flame. Never mind that the smoke was less than that of expelled by your average Marlboro man and the flame could have been easily challenged by a candle, we had a "real" fire.

The fire itself was located in one of the dead ends on the sewage outflow system heat trace. (Heat trace, for those of you unfamiliar, is just a heated and heavily insulated outer shell found on all pipes outside of buildings. As you could imagine, things tend to freeze here if not kept warm.) A pair of electrical junction boxes located on the dead end decided to short out and burn themselves and some of the heat trace insulation.

We responded, arrived, and proceeded to stare at it for some time. Since I absolutely despise having to deal with fires of electrical nature, I proceeded to stand and stare at it (with extinguisher at the ready though I had no desire to discharge it because of the cleanup) for nearly an hour as the electricians attempted to find a way to shut it off.

It took them some time to actually shut it off since it wasn't labeled properly, and they would periodically check it by poking it with voltage tester to have it beep and the junction box fizzle, pop, and arc.

After it was finally shut off, we pulled off the insulating cap and checked it to make sure that the fire was done smoldering. It was, and we picked up and left.

Antarctic heroes are we, bravest of the brave and coldest of them all.

The next day (an off day), our Fire Prevention Officer sent out a page looking for volunteers to help him with some inspections. Having little better to do since my laundry was done, I volunteered. Lo and behold, instead of discovering that I was going to conduct an inspection in one of the regular buildings in town, I was to have the privilege of going out to the Large Diameter Balloon facility with two other off duty firefighters and doing an inspection.

LDB is located out on the permanent ice shelf about halfway to Pegasus Field. It's a decent drive even with a van (one of the faster vehicles around here). After we finally made it out there, we were greeted with clear skies and a stunning view of "The Rock" in the distance.

The facilities out at LDB are interesting in and of themselves. Everything there is on skis and is moved every winter to keep it from being buried in drifts. Their old facility still exists, though since it was a permanent structure, it is more than halfway buried into the snow. The galley out at LDB is also reputed as being the best dining in the greater McMurdo area, though we didn't get a chance to have a meal there as we arrived too late in the day.

The facility has just launched one of their massive balloons the previous day and the area was teeming with scientists and support staff who hadn't slept in the past twenty-four hours. They were busy monitoring the data returning from it and ensuring that everything was working properly. When they weren't too befuddled from exhaustion, they were constantly telling us about their balloon. These guys and gals are immensely proud of the work that they do. While I don't understand exactly what they're studying an why, I can respect their enthusiasm.

One of the interesting things to note is the fact that we can actually visibly see the balloon. Up in the sky, you can see this small, white object that looks like it doesn't really belong. In a way, it resembles a tiny full moon sitting up in the clear Antarctic blue. The really incredible thing about this, though, is the fact that it sits 120,000 feet up in the sky. The huge four hundred foot balloon doesn't disappear at all. Proud scientists with telescopes sat outside taking pictures as if it were a new baby that had arrived for them.

Concluding our mission at LDB, we returned home. This time, instead of a Ford van to take us back, we were met by the world reknown "Ivan the Terrabus" (seen here). After climbing onto this behemoth, it felt surprisingly like a standard school bus back in the states, though with more comfortable seats and real wood paneling everywhere. On the ice, it was a fast ride, though we slowed to a dead crawl on the windy road by Scott Base and the road into town.

Another day concluded, I slept and woke up for the next big adventure.

Ice Town is no more. The unrelenting summer sun and the weight of the aircraft have finally taken their toll on what was once a small, cramped, but proud airfield. All Ice Runway operations have ended for the season. All that remains now is a dirty brown spot on the ice from all the jet exhaust. Luckily for us, the ice never completely gave way and we never fell into the freezing depths below.

The planes need a home, though. Even though they took off and left, we had to collect them again at some point before they ran out of fuel and found their own way to land.

The solution for this is the Pegasus White Ice Runway.

As its name implies, the ice here is white (sometimes referred to as clear) as opposed to the blue sea ice of the Ice Runway. The ice that Pegasus is on is permanent sea ice (the edge of a glacier, if I'm not mistaken) and is roughly 400 feet thick. Since this ice was not formed by the sea but instead by eons of drifts compressing into solid ice, the ice is white.

That lesson concluded, on to the next.

There are not enough structures in all of the greater McMurdo Metro area to fully equip two airfields at the same time. This, combined with the fact that one airfield is annually broken to bits and blown out to sea by an ice breaker, mandates that all structures be built on skis.

As the last flights left the Ice Runway, the buildings started to move. Big Cats from all over started hooking up to each of the buildings and, one by one, slowly dragged them over to Pegasus. The trip with a building takes about two hours, and I'm certainly not envious of the Fleet Ops guys who did this five or six times during their shifts.

For us in the Fire Department, the move was a logistical nightmare for us. Since some aircraft would be coming into Pegasus before the last flights had actually left the Ice Runway, we would have to staff two separate Crash Shacks in addition to our station in town. This left us stretched thin for staffing and lots of juggling commenced.

The previous night, B shift had started staffing Pegasus and moving equipment over there. They were unfortunate enough to have a miserable night cleaning up the mess that Red 1 (one of our antiquated tracked vehicles) made on the way. It decided to leak coolant all over the clean snows of the road for almost a half mile. This meant that the poor guys on B shift had to go out and shovel all of the contaminated snow to be collected by the friendly folks over at Haz-Waste.

I'm sure they were thrilled. Especially since it was late at night.

For B shift, the temporary living arrangements over at Pegasus weren't all that bad. The only two buildings that existed at the time (and for about half of my shift out there) were a Fleet Ops building (with heat!) and an outhouse (whose urinal consisted of a metal funnel stuck into the wall and what sounded like about fifty feet of echoing pipe feeding into a drum somewhere).

After we arrived in the morning to relieve them, we made ourselves at home in the much nicer Fleet Ops shack. We sat around reading, making fun of our lieutenant's sewing skills, and answering the phone with "Fleet Ops...and Firehouse..." which really confused more than one person.

A couple of hours into the shift, we had a sighting. A little Adelie penguin was making his way along outside of our building. We all rushed outside with cameras in hand to see the little guy as he waddled his way along.

The little guy waddled along, stopped for a minute to stare at us in all of our photographic induced insanity, and promptly waddled back along again, crossing active runways as he pleased.

My first penguin sighting. Only took two months. Now all that's left is to see an Emperor penguin. Also, I'd like to note that while Adelies are little, they're pretty quick considering their tiny legs.

With the big penguin sighting over, the next event of the day was to go out and see the namesake for the airfield, the wreck of Pegasus.

The airfield is named after a famous air wreck that happened some years ago. A Lockheed C-69 Constellation (better known among wingnuts as a "Connie") named "Pegasus" decided to touch the ice a little harder than planned and did significant damage to the aircraft. Luckily, nobody was injured in the 1970 incident, though the aircraft was no longer usable. Since it was in the way, it was towed out to the burn pits (still visible next to the wreck) and left to nature.

The snows have buried most of her in drifts, though we were fortunate after getting out there to find that the tail, the top of the fuselage, and a bit of the cockpit was still showing. After taking many pictures and etching my name into the tail like many before me, we went back to our temporary station.

Much of the rest of the day consisted of me sitting in Red 1 watching aircraft take off and land. The C-17 arrived at Pegasus for the first time in months, and we had front row seats to watch it land, park, offload, sit some more, load, load some more, load a medevac (I actually had to get out of the rig for this) and then watch as it taxied and left again.

Luckily I had my trusty copy of Catch-22 to keep me company during this time. (As an aside, I finally finished it. It only took about four attempts and three years, but it's done. While it is slow to start, it really starts to come together in the end.)

During our hardstand, Station 2 magically reappeared behind us. While we were glad to have our familiar home again, we weren't so lucky to have it hooked up to electricity yet. As such, we spent the night in a cold, "dark" (by Antarctic summer standards) double wide. Luckily, we were supplied with cold weather sleeping bags which were more than warm enough for us.

In the morning, we headed back. We almost got Scat 1 stuck several times in the drifts that had accumulated during the night (the winds were howling last night). Luckily, we didn't need to get out and shovel, though I was pretty sure we were going to have to at one point. After our safe return, I went back into my normal day-off routine.

Now, since I'm just about done, I get to contemplate what my Saturday evening activities will be. Right now I am strongly considering Irish coffee over at the Coffee House. Perhaps a trip to Southern will be in order later, also, depending if I can find some other people to join me.

We'll see. Tomorrow is an easy day for me. Sunday at Station 1 riding the buckets of the Tanker. Naps will ensue.

Until my next update (which will hopefully be sooner than this one was), I bid you adieu.