Saturday 10/31/92
Hello,
Today is Halloween (and my mother's birthday) and tonight there is going to be a Halloween Party. I brought a costume down here with me, so I will be dressed for the occasion. The official type parties here are supposed to be pretty good, but I will see for myself soon enough. It is a big form of entertainment here. Speaking of entertainment, I will outline the various forms: There is a closed circuit TV system here, but you have to supply your own TV. There are lounges on each floor that have TV's in them. Luckily (or maybe not) my roommates had one before I moved in. There are two channels that have programs. There is a radio station, also. Both of these are run by the Navy, so we get standard Armed Forces broadcasts. In the evening volunteer disc jockeys do shows on the radio station. There is a large and rather random selection of records and CD's in the radio station to choose from. Another form of entertainment is the clubs/bars. There are four of them. They are of the Navy type: Officers-Club, Enlisted-Club, Chiefs-Club and an All Hands Club. However, this year the O-Club has been turned into a coffee house and the Chiefs-Club is now the Officers and Chiefs Club. Last year the O-Club was non-smoking, but it's not a drinking club anymore. Therefore, to appease us non-smokers the other clubs alternate being smoking/non-smoking clubs. Predictably the club that is designated as smoking for a given night is much more packed than is the non-smoking one. One of the more energetic forms of entertainment is to go for a hike. There are two kinds of hikes you can go on; one you have to check out and say where you are going and how long you will be gone, while the other is just a casual stroll. There is a couple of routes marked out for people to go on that go for quite a distance and go into semi-dangerous areas. This is the type you have to check out on. The main one is out to Castle Rock. I have not gone out there yet. To just take a stroll around town or to a couple of spots near town all you have to do is go. The New Zealand base (Scott Base) is about two miles away along a nice, well used, road. About a half mile from town is the old wooden hut that the English explorer Scott (for whom the New Zealand Base and the Amundsen-Scott Base at the South Pole is co-named) used. I went out there a couple of weeks ago and took a bunch of pictures. I have been rather lazy about getting out and exploring. I hope to get motivated soon. There is a volleyball league here and I am on a team. We play one or two matches a week, best two out of three games. My team is made up of people I work with, and we have great fun playing. (Yes, we play indoors. The building is even heated. From what I here it was not heated last year, though.) Another unusual trip to take is put on by the Navy. It is a trip into some ice caves. It is really popular and therefore hard to be one of the lucky few to make the trip. They transport you out to the caves, so they limit the number of people. I have heard that it is spectacular. Last weeks trip (there is only one trip per week, and it is on Sunday) was canceled because the caves have become too unstable. They are looking for some new caves for the trip, but I don't know if they have done that yet. I am anxious to see the caves. One last "neat thing to do" that was available last year will not be this year. Out on the ice a big hole was dug through the ice with a giant auger. A transparent tube was inserted into the hole, and it extended a number of feet below the ice. This is an observation tube, and last year they let us peon types go into it on Sundays, but not this year. The excuse that was given was that the scientists would be using it continuously, and there would no time for tours.
Some penguins have been sighted around here lately. I have not been so fortunate, though. This is early in the season for them to be here since there is still lots of ice on the water between us and the ocean. Maybe I should describe the geography of the area. The base is on an island (Ross Island to be exact.) The entire island is surrounded by ice. During the peak of the summer months the ice melts and the northern half of the island is exposed to the ocean. They can even bring in a supply ship at the beginning of February, lead here by an ice breaking ship. There is a pier here that is constructed out of ice. The ship will dock at the ice pier and unload it's cargo. Everyone in town pitches in to unload it. I have heard of times where it has taken three or four days, around the clock to unload it. The whole town comes to a stand-still to unload it. There is a permanent ice shelf from this island and south all the way to the rest of the continent. Ross Island is about thirty-five miles East of the continent in the Ross Sea. Seals swim under the ice and come up through breaks in it. They can be seen lying on the ice quite often.
All of our water comes from desalination of seawater. We use the standard Navy type of evaporators. Since water is at a premium we have to take short (Navy) showers, and only every other day. It's not too bad since it's so cold and dry you don't perspire as much and your skin isn't quite as oily as would be expected. One use of water that you are supposed to not skimp on is drinking. It is real easy to get dehydrated in the low humidity. I go through many glasses of water a day. They issue us a pint sized plastic bottle with a screw on cap to carry around with us so we will always have our drinking water handy.
Many people here brew their own beer, since the beer in the clubs is not very good because it is usually quite old and has been frozen at least once. My roommates are some of the home brewers down here. Their first batch should be ready to drink in about a week. They should be bottling their second batch sometime soon. They bought brewing kits which are real easy to use. You just boil some water, add this mixture that you buy and some sugar. You add some more water to cool it down, then sprinkle yeast on top and let it sit for a few days. When it stops making C02 you add some more sugar and put it in bottles. After a couple of weeks in the bottles it will be ready to drink.
Sunday 11/1/92
The Halloween party was pretty good. I went dressed as a member of the crew from the TV show "Star Trek: The Next Generation." My costume got a good reception at the party, although too many people thought it was a uniform from the original series. I think it was a case of too many beers on their part. I have been slothful today. It is not very nice out, overcast, but not too cold at least. Not very good picture taking weather. Yesterday started out cold and overcast, but it was real nice in the afternoon.
My schedule appears to be in mass flux again. As far as I can determine it to be is that the South Pole trip will be delayed by a bit, and that I will be rushed back to Port Hueneme sometime this month. Port Hueneme seems to be the most in need of my services right now. I anticipate that trip to occur in the second half of November, which would make it only two to four weeks away. I have been on the ice for three weeks now. Time is flying by. I think that this is because there are so many places I want to explore, so time is getting short on me.
Tuesday 11/10/92 I went for quite a hike over the weekend. I took a bunch of pictures. The weather had been cold and windy all week, but it was fairly nice on Sunday. I had a good time. I noticed that some of the buildings have doors that are like the doors on commercial walk in freezers. It is really bizarre. I could find no pattern as to which buildings had these doors.
There was a big meeting yesterday and one today about the computer program I am working on and some of the problems that we have had. My schedule has been firmed up some as a result. I am supposed to go to the South Pole for a short period. That trip had been canceled at one point. I will go back to New Zealand for about a week sometime around the first of December, and then back to Port Hueneme. I don't know how long I will be in Port Hueneme, but I figure it will be for at least a couple of weeks. I might even be in Southern California for Christmas by the way my schedule is right now. I have been told that I will probably be making another trip back to New Zealand in March and that I will most likely end up going to Chile. We (my company, that is) have two places in Chile to help support the station on the Antarctic Peninsula. Who knows if they will happen, but they are definitely fun to look forward to. This means that my trip to Bali after getting off the Ice is a no go. If I make the trip in March to New Zealand then I will do the Bali thing on the way back. If I go to Chile I will take some time off in South America. We'll just have to see what happens.
I am going to close this edition of my Antarctic adventures here so that I can get it into the mail so that I won't beat the letter home. Bye for now.
