Q & A 2.0

Ok, I recieved a few more good questions & comments on the blog, so I figured I would pass them on. Also, this is my 3rd post today, a new record!

Q: Do you receive mail from USA? How often? Do you have a library with current magazines & daily newspapers besides the books? Have you heard of KABLOONA?

A: Yes, we do recieve mail from the US. Bliss actually just got some mail from home. Letters take a few weeks, packages longer, as space on the C-17 transport planes is limited, and personal mail has the lowest priority. That said, 3 weeks for the other side of the world is not terrible.

There is a Library at McMurdo. Basically it got started as everyone is usually reading something around here (there is not much to do during down-time), so they started collecting up the books so people could share. Its mostly airport quality paperback novels (e.g. Clive Custler's Dirk Pitt series), but its stacked floor to ceiling and there are other resouces as well. Beyond Scientific Journals I don't they they keep anything else up to date, there just are not enough resources for hardcopies for non-research realted documents.

There are 2 newspapers, although they are printed on standard 8.5x11 paper and stapled together. The Antarctic Sun comes out once a week, covers news and goings on in McMurdo and the rest of Antarctica, and is linked from this blog (look right). The Times is also once a week, and pulls artices from all around the world to keep us in touch with everywhere that is not frozen under 90 meters of ice.

I have not hear of KABLOONA, but according to Wikipedia:

"Kabloona is a book by French adventurer Gontran De Poncins, written in collaboration with Lewis Galantiere, first published in English in 1941. It recounts Poncins solo unsupported journey in the Canadian arctic near King William Island where he lived with the Inuit (in those days, still generally called the Eskimos) for about 15 months during the period 1938 to late 1939..."

Q: Do they serve Penguin for Thanksgiving?

A: No. Penguins (and Skuas unfortunately) are protected under the Antarctic Conservation Treaty, and thus if you were to eat one (provided you are not a seal), it had better be good because that mean cost you at least $10,000. They fly in a bunch of frozen turkey, and by a bunch I mean 1,200 lbs of it (including bone). Thats a lot of turkey! Over 1lb per person! I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner tonight, and hope that its real mashed potatoes, not the powedered stuff.

Of course, this also means I can't stuff a penguin in my suitcase to bring home for anyone. I will try to bring Antarctic rocks & ice cubes, they are easier to take care of anyway.

Q: How do I take these pictures?

A: I use the digital camera provided to ym by the APL A1C group. Thanks! Some of the time its not so cold I can't take my gloves off to take photos, other times I just leave them on and hope for the best, I can correct it in Picassa later. I'm not the best photographer anyway, so I just take a whole bunch and hope for the best. I almost always carry the camera around in my pocket, but the cold when hiking kills the batteries pretty fast so I have to keep in inside my jacket. The i-Pod has been holding up pretty well. There are not many pictures of me because until recently I was hiking alone. Besides, you want to see the pretty landscape not me bundled up in extreme cold weather gear anyway.

Observation Hill Photos!

Last night Pietro, Matt and I climbed Observation Hill behind McMurdo for a little post-dinner excersise. The weather turned out to be fantastic, warm and clear, so I got some great photos. Unfortunately, the softer snow was not as good for sliding back down on, which is 1/2 the point of the hike in my opinion. We took bets on its height, I won with my guess of 750ft (its right around that, or 800), fortunately for the rest of SBI I prefer the cheap $2 CD beer, so they don't owe me much ; )

The sun never sets here, but it did reflect off the distant Trans-Antarctic mountain range to create some shades of color, the closest I have seen to a sunset or sunrise in a few weeks. The photos of this turned out rather well (also thanks to a little tweaking in Picassa), and are probably my favorite shots from teh trip thus far. Also, I don't mean to be scowling in the last shot, it was just surprisingly bright out, even though it was 8:30 at night. Antarctia would me an insomniac's dream.

More pretty pictures:

11.14.06 - Observation Hill Hike Photos

Scott's Discovery Hut

On Friday the SBI team was able to take the morning off and take a tour of Scott's Discovery Hut, right near McMurdo. This hut is almost 100 years old, but looks almost new from the outside. Because of the Antarctic environment, there is nothing to break down the wood, or even rot the mumified seal carcass only a few feet from the main door!

As the hut is now considered a historic site, only small groups of 5-7 people are allowed in at a time with a guid, a few times a week. There we learned a variety of interesting history about the hut, Scott's expedition, and other Antarctic lore. What I found most interesting was the hut was pre-fabricated in Australia, and was designed for the desert, thus had a double roof to shed heat and keep cool. Somehow the British explorers though that this design would also shed the cold and stay warm. This is an odd idea, its cold in the UK in the winter, you whould have throught they would know better. Of course, it worked terribly, and was so cold people rarely could stay there are was used mostly as a supply store. Various Antarctic expedition parties also visited the Hut throughout the ages, including some of Shackletons crew. Take a look at the old English expedition biscuits (by the same manufacturer as the dog biscuits too), cocoa, and other odd things they brought with them.

For more info, see Wikipdeia.

Here are Bliss's photos, as I had forgotten my camera*

11.24.06 - Scotts Discovery Hut (Bliss)

*won't happen again, sorry.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Willy Field crew, consisting of the CSBF balloon support crew, SBI, ANITA, and BLAST science teams all had a fantastic thanksgiving lunch today courtesy of Matt, our resident field cook extraordinaire. Matt is the best cook on the continent, really, his soups alone are reason enough to drag ourselves to work every day when its 40 below freezing. Seriously, the great food out here really helps the morale being stuck out here for months at a time, particularly the poor CSBF support crew, who do this year after year for the whole season. You guys all rock!

Matt & Melissa

Thanksgiving down here is actually a little different. As well as the fantastic lunch today (I doubt much work will be going on this afternoon, I'm dozing off as I type this), there is a main thanksgiving dinner at McMurdo on Saturday. This is because a lot of people on base are working or otherwise busy during the usual dinner hours. Its split into 3 time slots so everyone can make it for some turkey and trimmings. After all these big Thanksgiving dinners I think I'm going to haave to go hike the Castle Rock loop a half dozen times so I can still fit in my ECW gear!

Here is the Thanksgiving lunch gallery:

11.23.06 - Thanksgiving @ Willy Filed

And we thought Ivan the Terra Bus was bad . . .

Ivan is in the shop today (or unavaliable for some reason), so we got to ride the Delta All Terrain Transport vehicles to the field camp today. They are big, orange, and even less comfortable than the Terra Bus. In fact, because the cab is completely seperate from the passenger compartment, you have to communicate with the driver via a radio. Good times.

The Delta Transport, looks . . . utilitarian

The pair of Deltas that took us to Willy Field today

Otherwise things are going well, the SBI team is just waiting for some clear sunshine so we can point the telescope at the sun and get everything aligned and calibrated.

Football & Beer

What seems to pass as the traditional way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the US is a little more challenging here on the other side of the world. For starters, Sunday is actually (early) Monday morning here, and we usually go to work on Mondays. I was asked a few questions regarding this activity, specifically:

"What brands of beer do they have out here, and can I watch NFL Sunday ticket?"

As for the beer part, the answer is fairly simple, the bars have 4 varieties of beer:

• Cantebury Draft *(CD) [$2] - NZ's Miller Lite, but better
• Speights [$2] - The pride of the South (NZ that is) thats better than High Life
  
• Coronoa [$3] - Somehow the sunny beaches line of advertising works here too
• Sierra Nevada [$4] - Still classy at the bottom of the world

The store has a fairly good selection of beer, I have seen Guinness and other brews, along with bottles of wine shared at dinner in the cafeteria (seems to be the thing to do on Fridays, its not like there are any restaurants to go to for group dinners or dates).

As f0r football, much of the group that shares the bay with us, ANITA (seraching for Neutrinos, good luck guys!), are from Ohio State and thus were engaged by the Michigan-Ohio game on Monday. Monday you say, yes Monday, remember the above statement that we are 16 hours early here. We only get military TV here, which includes a lot of sport channels I hear. Personally, I have not watched any TV since arriving here. So, thats a long winded "no" to the Sunday NFL ticket. Particularly as it would not even be on Sunday : )

*I could not find a website for CD. The 1st site that pops up on Google is actualy this, another McMurdo beer report. Someone needs to let the Kiwi's know about the interwebs.

Hut Point Ridge Hike & Snow

Well, the excitement on Friday peaked with the onset of "Condition 2" weather out at Willy field, resulting in leaving the site a 1/2 hour early. Thrilling. Not much to report over the weekend, its been steadily snowing which usually I'm all for, but its preventing us from calibrating our telescope and completing the alignment we need to get finished. Any sunshine sent our way is greatly appreciated by the whole SBI team.

On Sunday I hiked/ran up Scott's Hut Ridge Trail, a short 2.5 mile hike starting from Scotts hut and climbing the ridge along the shoreline. The snow came it which didn't make for great views, but the light dusting of snow on the ridge was quite pretty. I took a few photos along the way:

11.19.06 - Hut Point Ridge Hike