Nowhere To Go But Up

I decided to do a little volunteer work around the station since many of my experiments have been finished with the appearance of the sun. Last week I was helping with demolition in the dome. Other than getting covered in insulation that I was pulling down on my own head, or tearing up the floor that I was standing on, or freezing my butt off in a place that has long ago had all electricity cut off, or using hand tools in a situation where power tools would be much more effective, or stooping into positions not really suited for a tall guy like me, or working for kiwis who don't speak a bit of plain English (actually, the kiwis were pretty cool to work with), other than all of that I had a good time being the demo guy. There is probably no more satisfying job down here than getting to bring down a building. You get to see the fruits of your labor at the end of each day. Plus, it's just fun to tear things up. You can't go wrong. You might put something together incorrectly, but when you are breaking it, you know when it's done right.

The project I was involved in was the Old Comms building. In addition to being home for South Pole Communications since about the time I was born, it also has been the office area for the station leadership, the home to the game room and TV room, and the IT area. Before I had started, the rooms had all been gutted and the metal siding had all come down. During my couple of weeks working in there, I helped bring down what was left of the second floor. Basically, Old Comms is now a one-story building.

Here are some pictures, before and after:

Awhile back I added a site meter to my blog just to see how many people stumbled by here on a daily basis. Nothing much surprised me, I was getting about a hundred hits each day and most of that came from the people who are leaving comments anyway. What I did find fascinating, as anyone who has any kind of site meter does, is the keywords that are used in search engines that provide links to my site. Below are the results for today:

	Num	Perc.	Search Term
	1	16.67%	divorced roommates,indianapolis
	1	16.67%	shaved off beard clean shave face
	1	16.67%	nude 6th graders
	1	16.67%	steph cop aro green
	1	16.67%	it jobs in antarctica
	1	16.67%	rechelle antarctica
	6	100.00%

* OK, the first one I can sort of see happening. I used to live in Indy, so I'm sure I have mentioned that. My parents are divorced and I have mentioned that. I know I have talked about roommates at various points. Put them all together and it just seems, I dunno, random.

* The second one is obvious, I talk about facial hair a lot on my blog. It's nice to know that there are other people fixated on some of the same things as me.

* WTF???? I have one posting about a 6th grade class writing letters to me and another one about me running around the pole naked. Now I'm attracting pedophiles. It does give me a certain satisfaction that some sicko was looking for naked kids and saw my hairy ass instead. Hopefully it grossed them out enough to make them stop.

* #4 is a bit of a head-scratcher. I work with Steph from ARO, but she is neither a cop nor green.

* Go to Patrick's site buddy.

* There is a Rechelle here, whom I had to search for to see how she showed up in my blog. It was the group photo of everyone on station that I mention her. This is the third time somebody has done that exact same search and ended up on my site. Maybe I should tell her she has a stalker....

I am from a place called Mitchell, Indiana. I grew up there. I spent my first 19 years living there before going off to college and other adventures. Before I moved away though, I got to learn what a persimmon was. Each autumn in Mitchell, near the end of September, the town would gear up for the annual Persimmon Festival. Now, everyone who has never been to a small midwestern town in the United States may wonder why the heck we would celebrate a small gooey fruit that falls off of trees, gets stepped on by everyone, picked at by birds & squirrels and gets crawled on by ants before we scoop them up off the ground to pour them into puddings, pies, and ice cream. The answer is that it's what we have to do in our town. Every town celebrates something and we celebrate those strange fruits. The town to the south celebrates dogwoods and the town the to north celebrates limestone (neither of their festivals are nearly as interesting, by the way). Every year we have a party to celebrate our fruity trees.

So what is there to do at the Persimmon Festival you may ask? Well, besides the delicious treats that I mentioned that are made from the fruit, we also have: horseshoes, foot races, queen pagents, carnival rides, cookoffs, a candlelight tour of the local state park, a big parade, arts & crafts, live music, a car show, and of course, lots and lots of food. The festival is often a time of reunions and an event to see and be seen. I have gone home during the festival a few times since I have left home and I always, always, always, see people I went to high school with and haven't seen for ages.

I remember being in school and the school bus would drive past Main Street where all of the rides were set up. I knew that I was going to be worthless at school, thinking about riding those rides all day. The teachers knew it too and had mercy on us by not giving us (much) homework. I would go out at night with my friends or my sisters and get into all sorts of mischief: spitting off the Ferris Wheel, having a friend get violently sick on one of the rides (which should be expected after cotton candy and elephant ears), and hiding in the haunted house (actually, haunted trailer) to scare smaller kids. Of course, now going back I see my freinds pushing their kids around on strollers or my sisters' kids running around doing the stuff I used to do.

I was back in town last year, just before finding out about coming to the South Pole. I got to see my aunt & uncle, rode some rides with my cousin's daughter, showed my dog what the Persimmon Festival was all about. Normally there is very damp & cold weather this time of year in southern Indiana, but we had remarkably good weather. I spent a lot of time walking around with my dad and seeing familiar faces. I saw my best friend and his family, his kids are growing so fast. I ate quite a bit of my favorite dessert in the world: persimmon pudding. I don't think there is a better dish to be found anywhere, but to the average person it looks like a good dessert gone bad.

I have to admit that this is one of my favorite times of year back home and it's too bad that I'm missing it.

For the entire winter, since mid-February really, I have had my window covered with a piece of cardboard. There are pull-down shades built into the windows in the berthing areas, but they allow a certain amount of light through. The cardboard, though not pleasing to the eye, provides a near-blackout condition for the room. During the endless sunshine of summer, the darkness is handy when trying to sleep. The reverse is true in the winter, the light from our rooms is kept from polluting the light-sensitive experiments going on outside. Since the sun has been up for a few days and I could see light trickling in around the edges of the cardboard insert, I decided yesterday to finally remove it and see what kind of view I have now....


Yes, that's ice formed around my window. It's about an inch (2cm) thick at the bottom and it's completely solid. I tried scraping it off, but it won't budge. I'm not about to try breaking it and risk having a cracked window that leaks (more) icy air. I noticed early in the winter that I would get cold laying in bed (my bed is even with the window), so it must have been the cool air trapped behind the cardboard that kept forming a layer of ice to insulate my room better.

My view out the window is Destination Zulu (DZ), which is a high-traffic area used to access the back side of the station. People come in and out that door constantly. I decided not to give them a view of the inside of my room and to replace my insulating cardboard cover.

This weekend, Michael made another wonderful BBIA (Biggest Breakfast In Antarctica) on Sunday, but that's secondary to the fact that I helped clean up afterwards. Here is photographic evidence:


The previous night, during the sunrise celebration, everyone got to sign the plaque that will be with the pole marker next season. There weren't many places to left to sign by the time I came along, so I got to be right in the middle.

Around here, we celebrate everything pretty much the same way: eating, drinking, and taking pictures of it all. Yesterday was official sunrise, where the disk of the sun is halfway over the horizon. We celebrated with a caribbean themed dinner. Jerk chicken, shrimp, and of course, dead oinks. My new favorite drink is pisco sour, those things sure are yummy. It was a fun night, I even showered and put on a clean shirt. At one point I had a crustacean on my head, which is why my hair is a little messed up in the picture below.....

Everyone down here is running around with cameras to take pictures of the sunrise. Of course, when I finally decided to go out with my camera, it was hazy. So, here is a hazy sunrise picture.


...and a picture in the other direction, which is a pretty cool color.

I have been corresponding with students (about 6th grade) in the Ukraine. They ask me all sorts of cool questions: does spit freeze before it hits the ground? do nose hairs freeze? do I see penguins? do I like it here? am I coming to the Ukraine? what do I do? am I crazy? (The answers are all "C", please mark that on your paper and hand it to the front of the class).

Answering the emails is a blast because I still think like a 6th grader and they call me "Antarctica Dude". Also, I actually got poetry from one of them. Ok, so I don't have a poem by a Ukranian, technically she's an American living in the Ukraine, but close enough. Anyway, here it is:

Snow is everywhere,

On the ground,

In the sky,

Looking out,

I wonder what makes them fall,

What if it’s a queen?

The cold but beautiful queen,

Who makes them all by hand?

She is never cold even if it’s cold and harsh,

Maybe she likes it,

But maybe not,

Living to make snowflakes,

Then I see a cloud up there,

But wait there is a face,

Of a snow white lady that is shining down,

While I look up,

And I understand,

Who makes the snow.

From Lizzy

The NOAA tech informed me today... "Neal, you can tell your mother that the camera is back on". So, click here to see the station. The camera will be tilted down just after sunrise to avoid being burnt out by the sun's deadly rays.

I don't want to post anything today, so I'm going to refer everyone to Michael's site to see what happens to the average person in this equation:

The sun is well on it's way back. Walking outside it feels like the sun is already back above the horizon, with the huge disk actually being there. The entire landscape is illuminated by the glow of sunlight bouncing over the horizon. The tradeoff of having good outside visibility is that we no longer have any hope of seeing the wonderful aurora. I have to say that I already miss the night sky with all that it had to offer, even with the prospect of sunlight. My daily walk out to ARO just isn't the same now.

I decided today to take a few pictures of some familiar things just to see them in a different light, so to speak. If you're wondering why most of the pictures are blurry, I'm not trying to be artsy it's just that if I use a flash, I get the reflection from all of the ice crystals in the air. The only time you really can use a flash down here, is when you don't need it...in the middle of summer when the sunlight overwhelms the flash. If I used a tripod, then I could reduce the blurriness (except that the tripod would probably shake a bit in the windy conditions we're having). The good news is, you should have a decent idea of how bright it is out there because these pictures are only using the ambient light.

Look, it's that big snow drift in front of the station that I was trying to photograph awhile back.

I can always tell when it's time to trim my moustache because I can start to see it without a mirror. It's always right there, just in the bottom of my vision. It's like having somebody stand just in your peripheral vision and wave their hand and make faces at you. This is a little worse though, because that person is actually a caterpillar attached to your face and is trying to steal your food as your eat. Of course though, at the south pole, there is no such thing as trimming, so I'll just keep tossing snack to my little friendly caterpillar living under my nose. It won't be long before I can see my beard as well, which is like having a ferret to chase the caterpillar.

Yesterday I crowned Jeff as the king of anaologies at the south pole, I wonder what he'll think of that last one...

Yesterday the temperature dropped below -100F (around -74C) again for the first time in about a month. As everyone who reads my blog (or any other blog about the south pole) should know by now, that means it's time for the 300 Club. This time I did it with Jeff and first-timer Patrick. There's nothing much different about this trip out compared to my first time, except that this time I actually stopped to pose for a picture at the pole marker with Jeff & Patrick. It was Jeff's camera, so he had first shot at editing the photo. Somehow, he felt that I only required the small red smiley while he warrented a large yellow smiley.