The Dukie News
31 August 1995
Fast Breaking - Ice Breaking News
-YES!!!! We REALLY are moving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Announcements: Lecture 1300 31 Aug. Jocelyn - CTD's and chocolate
fish. Mess.
1900 31 Aug. Mark - The Dwarf from Walt Disney to
the 1600's, Historically represented in Art.
TV Lounge.
-From the Captain: At 4:30pm, we were at 63 17' S, 62 44' W.
That's changing rapidly!!! The wind was at Force 10. Just right
for drying your washing.
-From the Engine Room: The engineers have been busy casting spells,
and making magic down in the engine room - we now have more power
on the main propeller. This means we can smash more ice!! Please
excuse the occasional power outages - this is the price we pay for
more power to the propeller.
-Keep saving water. We can't make anymore until we're out of the
ice. You can shower if you smell.
Words of the Day
Norwegian: Dritafull - How the crew will be when we get to PA.
See 'hammered', Dukie News, issue dated 30 August 1995.
Kiwi: Sussed - Understood, problem solved - as in "the crew have
really got the ice sussed now!"
American: Dis - Short for disrespect, as in "you really dissed me,
man!"
Chilean: Borracho - Also how the crew will be when we get to PA!
See 'dritafull', 'hammered'.
Trivial Pursuits
Yet more useless drivel. Did you know that:
-The man (Mr. Bott), who invented the cateye (that's those upraised,
reflective bumps in the middle of the road), gets royalties of 2
cents for every cateye sold.
-Also known as Bott-dotts.
-New Zealand, in the Maori (indigenous inhabitants) language is
Aotearoa, which means "Land of the long white cloud." Which
explains why it rains so much there.
-A kiwi is in fact a small brown bird, which lives on the forest
floor. It is a nocturnal bird, and is also flightless. It has
several claims to fame - it lays the largest egg proportional to
size of the mother of any bird; it's nostrils are on the end of its
extraordinarily long beak; and it is the national bird of New
Zealand.
-A kiwifruit is not actually kiwi at all. It is a fruit native to
China, known as the Chinese gooseberry until a few years ago, when
some intrepid New Zealanders discovered that it grew very well in
New Zealand, and could be exported for huge amounts of money
overseas.
-A kiwi can also refer to a person from New Zealand. We don't even
mind!
-New Zealand's main national security problem is not invasion from
overseas, but rebellion of the 70 million sheep. If the sheep were
to attempt a coup, they would easily overpower the 3 million human
inhabitants, by sheer numbers alone!
-New Zealand has the highest per capita of helicopters of any
country. We are all dizzy!
-The USA has the highest per capita of television sets of any country
in the world.
-The USA also has the highest number of remote controls!
-There are more people living in the Los Angeles area than in all of
New Zealand and Norway put together.
-There are more people living in California than in New Zealand,
Norway and Chile put together.
-Wellington, New Zealand, has some of the world's cleanest air (not
counting Antarctica, of course). Baring Head (at Wellington
Harbour) has one of the world standard clean air stations. This
may have something to do with the screaming Southerlies that blow
uninterrupted all the way from Antarctica!
-Chile boasts the world's most Southern city, and we're still 700
miles South of it!!!!
-The Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, is the driest place in the
world. It hasn't rained there in 400 years.
-Chocolate is the most popular flavour in the world. Every culture
has embraced its delights into their own culinary style.
-Cocoa (the basis of chocolate), originated in South America.
EXTRA, EXTRA ! GIANT SPACE ALIENS ABDUCT AND ABUSE ANTARCTIC
ICEFISH TO PERFORM BIZARRE GENETIC EXPERIMENTS !!! Global freezing
ensues !
Word just in from our RVing reporter, Polar Duke. Seems the
Southern lights observed in austral skies ARE NOT electromagnetic
perturbances of the ionosphere, but actually fumes from faulty
catalytic converters of alien craft. Our roving reporting vessel,
the PD, has some late breaking news on the activities of these
exhaust-emitting extraterrestrials. THE EARTH IS NOT SAFE !!!
After becoming tired of burning perfectly circular holes in
cornfields of the MidWest, and abducting countless bored American
housewives for unmentionable activities, the aliens are onto a new
scheme for Earth supremacy: ANTI-GLOBAL WARMING !!! These
intergalactic devils have concocted a fiendish plot to take over the
planet, and have enlisted the help (unwittingly) of prominent
Antarctic biologists in their schemes. After studying the work of
Dr. Art DeVries, and following his activities for many years, the
aliens have applied their advanced technologies massive havoc on
the Earth's Climate (as well as on the funding of billions of Global
Climate Change scientists). Their plan, largely based on DeVries
discoveries, can be summarized in 4 simple words: ANTI-ANTI- FREEZE
PROTEINS.
Somewhere between Smith and Low Island, the alien plan has already
been enacted ITS TOO LATE to GO BACK NOW. Heres the scoop:
Sometime in the mid 80's, after careful study of icefish antifreeze
proteins, the aliens developed the genes for its opposite, ANTI-ANTI-
FREEZE, and cloned it into icefish. The protein basically acts to
exponentially increase ice crystal growth in a chain reaction.
These genetically-jimmied fish were then relased back into native
Antarctic fish populations. Scientists on board the Polar Duke
unwittingly captured some of these alien recombinants, allowed
them to freeze, and threw a few back overboard - the fatal mistake.
Once the freezing chain reaction was started in the Southern Ocean,
it expanded immediately, first entrapping our hero the Polar Duke, in
its icy claws.
Our noble vessel was thought to be "toast" but its looks now like
the jelly side is right -side up, and the PD may be able to break
free of this subzero grip by dumping hoards of DeVries peptides into
the water, to counteract the deadly ANTI-ANTI-FREEZE. However, the
bulk of the ice front is still rapidly expanding, and is expected to
reach Hawaii sometime late tomorrow. THERE IS NO ESCAPE !
Be prepared to entertain a lot of noisy, gum chewing, Polaroid
snapping extraTs in the near future - (there will be big bucks in the
tourista T shirt market) And stay chilly !!!!
(Next week: Man gives birth to a 60 cu foot icecube !!!! Stay
tuned....)
Coincidentally..., part deux
Carol Crossland
After working a full year in Antarctica I was REALLY ready to travel.
I began with a five week bicycle tour around the South Island of New
Zealand and then met up with three friends from McMurdo in Cairns,
Australia. We had planned this trip to dive and snorkel in the Great
Barrier Reef while we'd been icebound. Early in my touring I
discovered what I later found to be an international phenomena. No
matter where we were visiting, the local people would pose a
question, with infinite variations but all with the same objective
"You're from America, maybe you know my friend in New York?" or
"Say mate, you're from the States, perhaps you know my chum in Los
Angeles". I eventually learned that the correct response to this
query is always a tactful "Well, New York (or LA) is a big place,
but what's your pals name?"
I came to this conclusion the oddest of ways, however. From Cairns,
one Angstarctican, K and I headed into the sunset, toward Darwin.
The other two had reasons to be with their familiars, Lydia to her
boyfriend in Japan and Nancy to her beloved puppy, Bucky, in
Minnesota so they traveled east. K and I had read you could fly to
East Timor from Darwin fairly cheaply and then make your way through
the Indonesian Archipelago. We also had read that we could encounter
problems entering Indonesia this way but were willing to give it a
go.
The airplane was met by a large military contingent but they all had
the nicest smiles on their faces and our trip in a developing nation
got off to a wonderful start without a hitch. Now most of the other
people on the flight were Darwinians off for a weekend on the beach so
we left the other tourist crowd behind and found ourselves to be the
tallest (K's shorter than me) people in the group and we actually
drew quite a lot of attention in this city that apparently not had
that many foreign visitors that didn't sit in the bar on the beach.
We tried to pick up some Indonesian early on but most of the people
we met wanted to practice speaking English. I can't even begin to
count how many times we were asked if we knew John in Canada or Joe
in Florida. It got to be quite funny after a while.
Our itinerary, which we usually made up along the way (completely
defeating the purpose of the itinerary but adding an element of
spontaneity to everything we did), tentatively included seeing the
Three Colored Lakes of Kelimuto on the Isle of Flores, the Komodo
dragons, Lombok, Bali, and Java. I told my brother I was going to
Bali and he suggested I look up a friend of his from Denver, now
married and owner of Bob's Borneo Bar on Sanur Beach in Bali. By the
time we reached Bali we'd sampled every conceivable mode of
transportation from horse and cart to "specialized fishing boat"
(I'll leave that to your imagination to figure out except to tell you
that it barely floated before twenty people boarded) to Cessna
flights over the rice fields. We'd been stared at since we left
Australia, scrutinized, pointed at and had offers for "transport,
miss?" or "change money" etc.
Women much smaller than us carrying hundred pound sacks of rice on
their friends would laugh hysterically and K and I in our dresses
with backpacks. We thought it would be a fun change to meet a North
American who'd been living in the country so we set off in search of
BOB.
First of all, finding Bob's Bornea Bar was no easy task. We reached
Sanur beach with relative ease, on the backs of somebody's
motorcycles. We were deposited at one end of town and begin walking
down the street, making local inquiry along the way, trying to avoid
shopping because we had a task at hand. Sure enough, everybody knew
about Bob's and sure enough it was always just a little farther down
the street. This happened all day so by the time just a little
farther down the street really was so we had worked up a powerful
thirst.
We had been scheming for some time that when we finally reached this
place we would belly on up to the bamboo bar and say to the blond
bartender "Hey fella, you don't look like you're from here, maybe you
know my brother Chris from Colorado." He was then supposed to offer
free drinks around. The first time he didn't hear the name, though
and said, "Nope, can't say as I do." We were immediately
disheartened, our hopes dashed. So I said "Well, he knows you" and
Bob asked me to repeat his name. "Sure I know Chris! He saved my
life, what a pal, who'd you say you were?" The upshot of the whole
ordeal was that he sent some tee-shirts home to Chris and never did
offer us a beer.
K and I spent a little more time on Bali, and ended our adventure by
flying to Singapore from Java and taking a train to Bangkok via
Malaysia. She went off to see Lydia in Japan and I returned to
Minnesota where Nancy had helped me find employment in the Boundary
Waters, not far from where she lived.
Most of my job as a wilderness ranger consists of portage trail and
campsite maintenance but when the mosquitoes leave the woods and the
people arrive in hordes and droves I am also to check permits at
campsites. I was near the end of an eight day trip when I
encountered a fairly large group of folks on a campsite. They had a
tripod in place to take a photograph of the whole bunch before they
left. I checked their permit and spoke with them about their trip
from Walnut Grove, California to Minnesota. I gave them information
about additional campsites and points of interest and they asked
if they could take the photo with the ranger as I consider myself to
be non-photogenic even at the beginning of an eight day trip but they
insisted, the camera was self-timed and I couldn't leave the site
unless I complied.
Two weeks later I got a letter from K. She said a bunch of her best
friends from work had just gotten back from a canoe trip to the
Boundary Waters. She'd asked if they met a ranger and they produced
the photo. "Impossible.", she wrote. "Why didn't you ask them if
they knew me?" Sure, I could just see it "You're from California,
maybe you know my friend K?"
Epilogue
I always ask now, no matter how remote the chances may be of knowing
somebody who knows somebody , etc. Last year, after I had toured
southern Africa I did a little bit of bike touring in Scotland. I was
staying at Youth Hostels and came across an Australian man who not
only had been to the ice (Mawson) in IGY but who also was a regular
at Bob's Bornea Bar on Sanur Beach, Bali.