Friday, January 18, 2008

Article Link

In case you care, you can find my Economist article here. The photo is mine too...

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Shower Counter

Well, last night was number two. That already ties my total from last year. And considering that I did laundry last week for the first time ever down here, I'd say that I've reached a new hygienic high. I even went for a two mile run on the treadmill last night. With the altitude, that's not too bad either...

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

It Really Can Be a Harsh Continent

In case we needed any reminder that this is a pretty harsh place, we all got a bit of a scare the other day. I was out working in a lab with my coworker Tim at about 4:30 in the morning. All of the sudden we hear this loud alarm go off. We look around because we're freaked out that it was something we did. Then this scary voice comes on and says "Attention. There is a medical emergency at DA. There is a medical emergency at DA." DA is one of the entranceways to the main station. We ran outside to see what we could see, but we were about a mile out, so we could only see some vehicles off in the distance. We figured we had better just go about our business.

We walked to another building where our coworker Sean, a grad student from Madison, was supposed to be finishing up some stuff. He wasn't there, and his work hadn't been done. We cursed him out under our breath and got started finishing the work. Slowly, as we talked about it, it began to dawn on us that the medical emergency could have been Sean. He was in that area of the station. He hadn't shown up where he was supposed to. And he didn't have a radio to let anyone know if there was a problem.

Eventually, someone called and let us know that it was indeed Sean. We hopped on a snowmobile and raced to the station to find out what had happened. He had been out riding a snowmobile, and he hit a deep rut in the ice. He lost control, and somehow his leg got caught and pulled up into the treads of the snowmobile. It was so far wedged in that he couldn't get it out. It was the middle of the night, and he didn't have a radio, so he just laid there in the snow for at least ten minutes, until someone happened upon him and called in the alarm.

Basically, Sean was incredibly lucky. He was hopped up on morphine when we got to see him, but he didn't break his leg, and he hadn't cut himself. If he had torn up his leg and spent ten minutes in the snow before anyone found him, he would have been in some serious trouble. Now he's just got a nasty bruise and is walking around on crutches, all the better for impressing the women when he gets back to New Zealand.

All's well that ends well, but it freaked us all out at least a little bit. We're so far away from anything here, that when something goes wrong, it has the potential to go really wrong. Under the best case scenario, it takes about 24 hours to get to a real hospital in New Zealand. A driller on my experiment was seriously injured a few years ago and it took them that long before they could operate on him in Christchurch. Everything ended up well with him too, and he's actually back down here this season working again. Some of these guys are truly crazy.

In the meantime, I'll say a prayer and knock on some wood just in case. Oh, and I'll be careful too.

I just found out that an article I wrote from down here is going to be in next week's issue of the Economist. It's called "Snow Place Like Home" and it's on the new station dedication. Check it out if you get the chance...

Sunday, January 13, 2008

The New Station

The last few days have been pretty busy around here. Saturday was the official dedication ceremony for the new South Pole station (you know, the fancy new facility that I get to walk back and forth to from my tent every morning and evening). The weather had been really crappy and all flights were being cancelled, but luckily it lifted just in time for all the special visitors to make it in. These included the director of the National Science Foundation (the primary US science funding agency), a few more congressmen, and all sorts of officials from the State Department and Homeland Security and the military. In general, it's annoying to have these people down here, since all work basically comes to a stop so that they can be catered to and given tours. But the ceremony actually turned out to be pretty cool. We took a group photo in front of the old station, this geodesic dome structure you can see in the photo of my coworker Ryan and I below:



Then, the US flag on top was lowered and passed from person to person to the new station, where it was eventually raised. It was generally a pretty moving ceremony, since a lot of people have put in so much time and effort down here to make the new station a reality. It really is light years better than the old facilities (which weren't even heated), and it's the state-of-the-art as far as Antarctic living quarters go. Here it is:



On the other hand, the whole nationalistic thing with the flag and the government officials was a little bit ridiculous. To me, it only underscored the fact that no one can really ever own Antarctica. It's too big and it's too harsh. People can have a toe-hold here, and that's great and really useful for science. But it's not part of the US, and the US can never really own it. We put our flag here, but it's in no way ours.

If you're interested in reading more about the station, you can check out this Chicago Tribune article (thanks Ann!). It's a little misleading, since the dateline makes it seem like the guy is actually down here, which he doesn't seem to be...

In other news, yesterday I got to take part in a live webcast to the San Francisco Exploratorium (kinda like the Museum of Science and Industry or the Adler Planetarium, for my Chicago friends). It was pretty fun. Sorry I didn't let y'all know in time to see it live (I only had time to let my SF friends know) but if you want to check it out, it's still online. The webpage is here and the direct link to the realmedia webcast is here.