Birthdays in Antarctica

Completely oblivious to the person inside

Sorry this has been the longest stretch without posting.  The good news is that we have been incredible busy... the bad news: not much sleep.  So as you all read last time, I had pretty much the best day possible the day prior to my birthday.  However, that didn't stop us from enjoying the rest of the week.  Rachel threw me a surprise party, although they kind of forgot the small detail of actually getting me to show up.  The party was highlighted by a gigantic cardboard cake.  At first I was confused, and then shocked as Clint jumped out after the singing, half-naked, carrying a bottle of whiskey.  Needless to say, scientists down here are all a little whacked (it's unclear if Antarctica does this to you or it's a preexisting condition).

Do-it-yourself passport stamping

Now it would be sad to come all the way to Antarctica and not get your passport stamped.  Seeing as we are not actually in any country (and are located at more of an American military base), I had heard it was illegal to stamp your passport.  Still, stories told that one could sneak a stamp when mailing a letter.  All my carefully laid plans though were unnecessary as the mail room has a clearly labelled "official" passport stamp.  I was pretty psyched to get that stamp on my actual birthday.  Thus, I repeated the feat two days later (on my sister's birthday) at Scott Base (NZ territory).  Since we are 17 hours ahead of EST, we decided that Wednesday was also my birthday as it was still Tuesday back in Boston, where I was born.  With beautiful weather (which unfortunately means no snow in our baskets), we took the advantage to truly explore our field sites.  

Visiting our local Weddell seal

Laying out for a frisbee in front of our Iceberg

One of the neat programs down here is the Morale Trip System.  Scientists who need an extra field hand (or simply have room for one), can submit a request to get a moralee for the day.  This is an incredible opportunity for the moralee to get out into the field when their job at McMurdo might keep them on station, or even indoors, all day.  We've taken several people who in 7 years working here have never been on a helicopter or deep out onto the sea ice.  Seeing as we generally have an extra seat on our helicopters, we have been lucky and able to invite someone nearly ever trip, very much enjoying the extra help, particularly when we are taking sea ice cores.  Wednesday we took Michael, someone who had been on our Happy Camper training and had been dying to join us in the field.  We had budgeted an extra hour at the Iceberg site to circle the berg and GPS its coordinates for analysis of size and impact on winds.  We first visited the Weddell seal that now lives by the north edge of Chip, our Iceberg.  Everywhere along the north side are what appears to be a bobsled course, but are in fact tracks from seals.  I tried making like a seal and sliding along, but was woefully unable to replicate the grace of these 1,200 lb creatures.  The ice conditions are surprisingly different along the backside of Chip, with large areas of no surface snow and regions with large rafted ice blocks.  It was a good indicator that these icebergs are indeed playing a major role in how surface snow blows across the sea ice.  Alas, we completed our Chip adventure and returned to the helo.  However, as we were flying back to McMurdo, we spotted quite a few Emperor penguins near the ice edge.  To celebrate this never ending birthday, our pilot touched down relatively nearby for some good photo ops.  A perfect ending for a great day.  Michael (as have many of the others) summed it up best: this was the best day all season that he would have on station.

Rachel cartwheeling on the backside of Chip, the Iceberg

My sister's birthday (11/1/) was also spent having a sweet field day with a moralee.  This time, our mode of transportation was snow mobiles, and we were out on the sea ice taking ice cores and snow samples (more on this in a later post).  Snowmobiling and ice coring all day is surprisingly tiring, and we all returned exhausted for a well-earned dinner.  I had originally planned to play some pickleball as soon as we returned, but the gym was being cleaned and my body did not mind being fed rather than another workout.  After dinner, Paul and I decided to ski over to Scott Base, where every Thursday night they have "American Night," and we can come over to visit their shop and bar (the Kiwis have better beer than the Americans).  Everyone thought we were crazy for skiing since the winds had picked-up in the afternoon.  However, after spending all day snowmobiling and working out on the sea ice, I actually found the evening weather was quite nice, especially after working up a sweat while skiing.  We didn't stay for the beers though, as we wanted to catch the shuttle back home to watch the Banff Film Festival being shown at McMurdo.  This ran into about 10:15 pm and....

How we treat moralees that don't work hard

I'm ashamed to admit that I committed the #1 crime on station: missing a check-in time (which had been 10:00 pm).  This is actually a real serious issue because safety is understandably of the utmost importance.  Whenever you go into the field or on certain recreation routes (such as the ski trail to Scott Base), you are required to check-out and check-in with the firehouse.  If you haven't radioed 5 minutes before your check-in time, the firehouse has already initiated the search and rescue procedure.  This begins with sending alarms to 60 of the highest ranking people on station (and now I'm sure my name is blacklisted on station).  By the time I realized we had never checked in, they had already sent vehicles to Scott Base and onto the ice.  There they found the shuttle driver (a friend of mine) who remembered driving us back.  The general punishment is public shaming with your face pictured on milk cartoons, although somehow we fortuitously avoided this.  I merely received some good-natured ridicule from friends who had heard about the incident.  Paul had it a little worse since he works in communications and also had to return the radios back to the firehouse (technically he had been the trip leader).  I now have the dubious honour of having search and rescue called on me in both the Arctic and Antarctica.  For those of you who haven't heard the Arctic story, I had been advised to lay down and carefully examine the sea ice before working with it.  Thus, on one of my first days up there and after letting others know where I was going, I walked 100 feet offshore and laid down in the snow (any further and you need to have a bear guard with you in the Arctic).  Someone happened to drive by while I was getting to know the ice, and from their perspective saw a motionless figure face-down and called the police.  30 minutes later, the car stopped by the side of the road was shocked as that motionless figure popped up and started to walk home.  They informed me that one can not simply lie down by themselves on the sea ice up in the Arctic, and the police would be arriving momentarily.  Oops.

You live and learn (and hopefully don't cause too many people heart-attacks along the way).

Emperor penguins dressed in their tuxedos