...and so the sun rose....

On October 23rd, two days ago, the sun set at 1:20am.  It hovered just under the horizon for a brief bit then rose at 1:54am.  The sun will set again......at 1:23am FEBRUARY 20, 2013!  We are in  the longest day of our lives, like a good version of Groundhog Day.

Let's Pretend We're in Antarctica!

Only in Antarctica...Part Uno

Over the course of the past month, we have learned of some absurd, ridiculous, and downright peculiar things while living in Antarctica.  So we have decided to share them with you in some fun filled easy installments…

 South Pole Traverse: The American Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is located 995 miles South of McMurdo.  To supply it with all the fuel that is required to run the station year round, they have the South Pole Traverse team  go out on  tractor-like machines pulling sleds with inflated balloons of fuel on the McMurdo-South Pole Highway (nothing more than a flagged route on compacted snow).  These machines top out at a back breaking 7 mph and it takes them about 50 days ONE WAY to reach the South Pole.  They also pull trailers for the drivers to sleep in and a small kitchen. Last year a storm rolled in overnight burying the tractors up to the roof with snow and delaying them a week.  The next day the British roll by in their souped up vans driving on top of the tractors’ roofs which were at snow level.   Rumor has it that these machines do have cruise control and they are planning on having every other machine be manned…brilliant or potentially disastrous….only in Antarctica!

Did you know that if a Weddell Seal reaches maturity and dies it will probably be from DROWNING?! The Weddell seal requires air and often they have to use their teeth to gnaw a hole into the ice.  When they get old and their teeth become worn down they will no longer be able to chip away at the ice and will drown. 

Antarctica is the best place to find meteorites.  That’s because everything is white and if there is a large black rock on top of the snow it’s probably a meteorite!

 McMurdo Station is located on Ross Island.  Currently, the Ross Sea is frozen and the ice is expected to break up around January/February.  While the ice is solid they have an Ice Road which is a path flagged out and checked regularly by the F-Stop team to deem it safe for travel and free from crevasses and snow bridges.  The green flags marking the way are on BAMBOO poles…in Antarctica!!!

McMurdo has a surprising number of receding hairlines.  This has nothing to do with Antarctica.

  

A Weddell Life

McMurdo Station is located on Ross Island and this is a photo from our bedroom window overlooking the frozen Ross Sea.  That's not a snow field but actually the frozen ocean.  We are across from the   the Royal Society Mountain Range and the glacier in this picture is Blue Glacier.

Down at Scott's Hut a half mile from McMurdo lies a dead Weddell Seal.  This seal is 100 years old and was killed by Scott's men for food and fuel.  It still sits outside of the door of his hut.  

Here are some pictures of Weddell Seals that we saw at Hut Point near Scott's Hut.  Often we can see seals laying on the ice from our bedroom window.  But they kind of look like turds on the ice from that far away....

I'm just a WEDDELL COLD!

Our Blog!!!!

We have finally gotten around to setting up a blog together.  Hopefully this makes things a little bit easier to share pictures and keep in touch with everyone (not everyone is on the Facetube).  We'll try to keep it updated as best we can and we would LOVE to see messages from everyone.  Please feel free to comment on posts, pictures and just send good vibes, even if you don't really know us :)

We're still working on figuring out how this all works so the page may change a lot.  If anyone has ideas or suggestions, let us know!

(holy cow my grammar is awesome tonight!)

Arrival At the Bottom of the World

Like any good Americans we found our jobs through Google.  No crazy connections, deep conversations with someone we met on a train, or a distant family relative that referenced us for a position.  We simply googled "jobs in Antarctica" applied and a few short months later (plus viles of blood, full medical and dental checkups, and more fax machines than we've ever used prior to this point in our life) we were on THE ICE! 

We each left separately and a day apart from JFK airport, after receiving our flights a mere 5 days before take off.  I flew through San Francisco with only mild visa issues.  Some nonsense about not allowing me on the flight because I didn't have a round-trip ticket or a visa.  (This is not the first time immigration has had it in for me).  Finally dropping the words, “I’m moving to Antarctica”, seemed to move the process along and I was soon on a flight to Auckland and then Christchurch.  The following day Chris arrived in Christchurch as well after experiencing much more turbulence than I had.  We had orientation and were given our Extreme Cold Weather Gear and instructed to be back for the boarding of our flights down to the Ice a day later.  I had the experience of taking an AirBus down to Antarctica, not quite as cool as the Airforce C-17 Cargo Plane but it did have some great window seats with epic views over the Transantarctic Mountains and aerial views of McMurdo and the frozen Ross Sea.  Chris arrived the day later by C-17.  We arrived almost 3 weeks ago, landing on the frozen Ross Sea and shuttled into some Delta vehicles (dubbed the Delta Death Traps due to the high number of manufacturing flaws) and were quickly thrown into life at McMurdo Station! 

The Transantarctic Mountain Range

 My Airbus Flight

 Ivan The "TERRA BUS"

 Chris' C-17 Flight

Aboard the C-17

McMurdo

I added a link to the right side of the home page that will take you to the United States Antarctic Program website where you can see live webcams for a few of the U.S. bases on the continent.  We are at McMurdo Station.
In the cam for McMurdo you can see several buildings.  The large blue one on the right is where the galley is as well as several offices and some dorms.  That building is roughly in the center of "town".  The smaller building, with the red roof, just above the galley is the medical building and the one directly above that is the fire department.  The tan building to the right of the fire department is Crary Lab, the main location of the scientific labs used for research here at McMurdo.  The hill at the top of the cam is Observation Hill, the top of which is where the other webcam on base is located.

There are currently 746 people on base (29% women/71% men), with a few more hundred expected to arrive over the next couple weeks.