Whoops.

I got home last Tuesday.

If there was a smiley face for a guilty grin, I'd put it up here.

I will eventually get all the photos and interesting things up here. In a while.

Cheers...

PENGUINS!

I SAW PENGUINS. Admittedly from a fair distance, but they were definitely penguins. Adelies!

I have some blurry photos, Dale has some good ones, and I am going to go look at them again now because I think they came closer. I will post photos tomorrow.

THEN, I won a game of gin in two hands against Lee (met him at pole, he's here now), and THEN I won my first game of Cribbage against him. WOoooooooooooot.

Penguins still win by a country mile.

That is all.

Love,
Yael

Dale and Nils's Castle Rock photos - in no particular order

At the top; by Dale (much nicer view than the ones I took)

Nils, looking graceful, doing the YMCA on a kitchen tray. I'm not sure what letter that was. Photo by Dale.

Castle Rock on the right. Photo by Nils

Happy campers, halfway up castle rock (after the hard part) L to R: Nils, David, Dale and me

David sledding

David after previous sledding picture, having executed a dive and a roll and an epic slide to stop himself crashing into the cameraman (Nils). One of many such landings.

Dale, in his own cloud. Photo by Nils

Pretttyyyy. Photo by Nils.

'Kiwi Crossing' sign, with a picture of a kangaroo. yessssss. Phot by Nils

Back in McMurdo

So, on Tuesday, we said goodbye to all the lovely people at the South Pole. Our plane arrived and departed on time, and delivered us to McMurdo with absolutely no trouble at all. We were scheduled to fly to Christchurch at 3am on Wednesday morning. It was cancelled. 3am Thursday morning. Cancelled. Our next go is 3am Friday morning (in twelve hours). At the moment, it's foggy as buggery at the airfield.. I'm still hoping that goes, because my ticket home is for 4pm on Friday. At the princely sum of... $460AUD. Via Brisbane. Seriously folks, that is a) the cheapest ticket by a long shot b) on a plane that is currently 3/4 empty, and c) ridiculously expensive. I am glad I am not paying. Although, if I was, I reckon I'd just stay in Christchurch another couple of weeks til the price dropped. Or drive to Auckland, which is actually probably cheaper. ... the same ticket, but in the opposite direction, is about $100. ??

Yesterday Nils was getting grumpy at being cooped up (well, he said he was, I couldn't tell), and dragged David and Dale to the outdoor safety lecture, while I wandered around inside taking photos of paintings of Antarctica.. this one is my favourite. It is of ice falls, painted by one David Rosenthal.

 
Nils then dragged all of us to do the Castle Rock loop (it didn't take too much convincing), since the actual Castle Rock was open for climbing. It took us 5.5 hours, and we (I) thought it was 7miles, Nils was convinced it was 9miles.. when we looked it up afterwards, it was closer to 12miles. Which I think is about 20km. Which makes me feel much more justified in being tired today. When we started, it wasn't too promising.. it was warm (honestly, I never thought I would consider zero degrees warm..) but it was warm, no wind, but foggy as buggery - we couldn't see the mountain we were aiming for..

The start! (after most of the uphill..). Dale is waving, David is in the middle, and Nils is on the right.

Nils photographing. I went and stood behind him, and as far as I could tell, he was photographing white. Except when we looked at the photos later, all of his photos were lovely, and none were white...

 We made it to the first apple - a bright red, round, warm shelter.. also the only privacy anywhere near McMurdo, so it is advisable to knock first.. thankfully this one was empty.. and made in Tasmania!! and it was still foggy.. but somehwere between the first and second apple, the fog cleared, and we could see Castle Rock, and blue blue sky. It was all very exciting. Also amazingly pretty.

A photograph of Dale taking a photograph of Dave and Nils taking a photograph of Castle Rock, just peeking out of the fog.

Also, apparently, I walk fast - I only note this down because I'm sure that anyone who's ever had to walk anywhere with me is dying of laughter at this point. I'm going to forward the opinon that short legs are easier in snow. Also. Dunlop Volleys.
Also, sundog behind Castle Rock!!!!!!! I'm sorry the photo isn't that great, but it's the best I've got.

The walk is pretty easy - there's a bugger of an uphill right at the start, but it's a dirt track, and the rest is a fairly gently uphill (through ankle deep snow, mind you), until you get to the base of Castle Rock. Then it is a fairly steep uphill over a deceptive layer of snow hiding lots of slippery ice. Getting up was reasonably slow. Getting down, we slid, mostly. Much easier.

Clown 1 and Clown 2, standing happily on the volcanic rock at the bottom of Castle Rock. The perspective is not great, but the curved path is the beginning of the downhill section of the track, and it is a looong way down.

The view! Only partway up, but so pretty! The mountain in the background on the left is Mt Erebus, the tallest mountain in Antarctica (I think), and the one on the right is Mt Terror. The view is (again, I think) North and slightly east, towards New Zealand.

Climbing up to the top was probably the easiest part of the walk - it was just rockhopping, and since it was rock, your shoes gripped properly. When we got up there, it was sunny, windless, and warm. We should have brought a picnic.. instead the boys had cookies and I had mini m&m's. Still good.

Dale climbing up, Mt Terror and half of Mt Erebus in the backround. There's an awful lot of white, and even though we're not very high (I think about 600m) up, it felt an awful lot higher.

Left to Right: David, Dale and Nils on the top of the rock. McMurdo base is almost directly behind Dale.

Getting down was reasonably easy, and then we got to the downhill ski slope, and employed the plastic trays that we'd borrowed from the kitchen. Oh so much fun! Dale was ever-graceful, he made it look so easy, and he never fell off.. (he got up a decent turn of speed, too), I have no idea how Nils managed to fit all 7feet of him onto one 50cm dining tray, but he did.. and David was definitely the fastest, in a fairly kamikaze fashion. He definitely had the most entertaining wipeouts. I was slow, and it took me a long while to figure out how to steer the thing (you don't really want to end up too far off the path.. apparently it's crevasse country).. sitting on it was OK, and gave my stomach muscles a good workout, but kneeling was the go. Much easier to steer, and all kinds of fast. I have not had so much fun, or laughed so hard in ages.

At the bottom of the hill. Triumphant dining-room-tray-boarders. The round green thing in the background is the last apple shelter - green because it belongs to the New Zealand base around the corner. The Kiwi ski hill is just off to the right. From here, it's about 5km back to base, and about half of that is on snow.

The walk back was gorgeous:

If a little long for some..

Nils wandered off to take some photos, and Dale gave up, sat down with a whumpf, and started eating his cookies. I nearly died laughing.

We made it back to McMurdo at 9.15pm, to discover that burger night (which we'd been dreaming about since about 7pm), finished at 9... So we contented ourselves with hot showers, cereal, toast, and icecream (with hot chocolate fudge). Til David found some soup. Which is exACTly what I felt like.. chicken and ham, and, apparently... lots of cheese. I couldn't finish mine, but apparently it suits American taste buds (according to Dale)...  then I slept for a good twelve hours, and here we are.

I do believe it's dinner time, and the thought of hot chocolate fudge is remarkably appealing.
I will add that I have just gotten a bunch of AWESOME photos from Nils and Dale, mostly to do with the downhill section, and I will put them up after dinner sometime. Possibly tomorrow. :)

Leaving tomorrow

This is just going to be a list of things I have done and don't want to forget. The people too. VERY rambly. I wouldn't bother reading, if I were you.

- Thursday night drinks with Casey and Dave (remembered his name!), Sidney, Jase and Colin (and briefly Nils, who looked like he was going to fall asleep the whole time) in the library. Sidney is one of the stewards (same as Casey and Dave), and spends 60 hours a week cleaning up after people. In real life, she's a graphic designer (I think), on websites. She's one of those can-do-anything people. She's about 6 foot tall, plays basketball, plays piano, loves hiking and so on, is really easy to talk to, and just lovely. Jase is one of the cooks  - but not the main one, but a gooood one. He's from a farm in Alaska (I think), and will be over-wintering (I'm jealous). He's also really easy to talk to, really likeable and lots of fun (Casey told him he'd be a fantastic big brother, which I think describes him perfectly). Colin is very similar to Anton. He looks and moves the same, and he can't really sit still.. he's here for a week from McMurdo, to help in the kitchen. Apparently (and I did not realise this, so credit to them), the kitchen staff have been one person short since the beginning of the season. Equally apparently, the reason I did not notice this at all is Jase, who's been essentially doing two people's jobs. So the decision was to send in a new person each week from McMurdo..
Casey, Dave and Jase ran a 7-hour marathon on their Saturday off, managed to make it through dinner and drinks on Saturday night, and were back working their ten hour shifts standing on their feet yesterday (Sunday). 7 hours doesn't sound amazingly impressive, until you realise that the furthest any one of them has ever run (I believe) is 13km, and not at 3km altitude. I am going to miss these people!

- Friday, I think was a fun day. I can't remember what else I did

Also. A story. Probably funniest camping story I have heard. I dare say it will lose some of the funninness with me retelling it, but just imagine facial expressions, and it will be funnier. It is true, but I'm not saying names. A girlfriend and boyfriend were camping on a beach (I think in Spain, but I may be wrong). Their toilet was essentially a sheet up against the side of their car for privacy - held out from the car by the other partner when in use, and a hole in the sand (standard practice at this campsite). They would dig a hole, do whatever was required, chuck the toilet paper down the hole, burn it, and cover it back up. In this particular instance, the girl (not yet a seasoned camper) got all the way to lighting the toilet paper part, put the lighter down, on top of, or quite close to the toilet paper, and as boyfriend (holding the sheet out of the way) went to make a comment, there was an incredible bang, girlfriend came rocketing out the other side of the sheet, pants around ankles, in some sort of shock.. in the middle of a beach full of campers... anyway. It doesn't sound nearly as funny as hearing it first hand, but I tells ya, I was on the floor.

- I think Friday - for some reason I didn't sleep - it's funny - I haven't been tired here. I blame the eternal light.. - and Adam had cabin fever, so we went wandering around camp and found a sled, and then took it down all of the man-made snow hills in sight. The steepest was the most fun. THEN I went to bed.

- Saturday night was a cheese and wine party, in one of the science labs. They also had cookies. I went for a bit, spent most of my time in the hall talking to Sidney and Colin, a little bit of time talking to Martin and Grant T, two of the Grantees on the SPUD project (5 telescopes, looking for Cosmic Microwave Backround bits and pieces, and kindly sharing their building with us),- also lovely people.. and I met the infamous Cathy (I think that's how you spell it), with a very quick tongue and a wicked sense of humour. and then it was too many people that I didn't know, and not enough wine, and I went and hid in the library with a book.  

- Sunday morning I slept in (so much for the intention of going to work early), helped clean up in the kitchen for a bit (good company in Casey and Dave), met a guy in line for food (fresh eggs! cooked by Jase!) who was on the first of two South Pole Traverses this year (on land, from McMurdo to South Pole - making bridges across crevasses on the way). His name is Paul, he's a climber/crazy fit outdoors person, and when he's not here, he's working in Yellowstone national park as a search and rescue person. He has climbed El Cap four times.. and if we ever make it to that point, Andy, we're supposed to let him know we're coming so he can show us around. We had a good chat, then I got introduced into the Mate (South American tea pronounced Maat-ey) drinking ritual. The first rule about drinking Mate is that you don't talk about the Mate. Met a friend of his, Teague, and then we went to watch the traverse leave. It's pretty impressive. Imagine 8 (big) tractors on treads, towing at least 15-20m of trailers, from empty sleds (that held the fuel coming in), to I think three half-size shipping containers, all in one massive line. While we were waiting to leave, Teague and I went and had a play in the climbing gym. and then missed them actually leaving, by about a minute. but we saw them off in the distance..
- played volleyball (all sorts of fun after I remembered how. I need to find a team when I get back), played indoor soccer, which was also all kinds of fun, and amusing for everyone who wasn't on my team, and for the first time, actually felt physically tired enough to explain my out-of-breathness, took photos at the 'new' South Pole, went to work to finish soldering temperature sensors, got halfway through and remembered that Craig and Michael were giving a talk on our project, ran back, and got there just after the first slide. It was a good talk. I now know what HEAT (the project that we built our power system for) is actually doing - it's looking for Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules, to figure out how stars actually form. Apparently no-one's ever seen that before, because you can't see out the earth's atmosphere at those frequencies... except at Ridge A.
- went on a tour of the .. will remember the name in a minute.. facility, given by John (who will be in Sydney at some point shortly and I've volunteered myself as a tour guide). They are also looking at the CMB, at comlimentary frequencies to the massive South Pole Telescope (SPT) that Nils and Dale (and 20 other people) are working on. John had to change the liquid helium in the telescope, and the gas coming out was so cold that the liquid condensing on the pipe was not, as one would normall expect, water, but was in fact, liquid Nitrogen and liquid Oxygen. I would say that that takes the cake for the coolest thing I've seen here (bwahahahaha pardon the pun).

- today, I am up ridiculously early, because I have been using my phone as my clock. It is on Sydney time, and so I have to add two hours. This morning, it was flat, and I used the clock on the phone in my room, and added two hours. Which was incredibly intelligent and resulted in me eating breakfast at half past 5 this morning...

There is an air drop at 8am that I would like to see, so I will stay awake til then, then wander out to work, finish temperature sensors, test temperature sensors, fix up CAN power box in the engine module (forgot to thermal paste it), and come back and pack, and bag drag (check in), and find everyone to say bye to..

Sundogs and marathons

So today, turns out, there is the South Pole Marathon. note capitals. This is for all those people who feel like running 42km in temperatures between -25 and -40C, on snow. Which I would imagine is very similar to running on soft sand, at altitude. That would be probably be the fittest people I am ever likely to meet. I believe the winner came in at about 4 hours 3 minutes. I saw the second guy, at four and a half hours. Me not running the Sydney marathon, which is flat, temperate, and at sea level, seems pansy in comparison. So. Anyone want a running partner? Highly unfit but willing to improve. Elo? Lauren? Martha? keen? we could have an awesome international team happening....

Yesterday, the weather was ice crystals. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded sharp and spiky. Turns out, it's just sparkly, and very very pretty. Also, it is perfect weather for a sundog. Up until yesterday, the only time I've ever seen that word is in the Terry Pratchett book dark side of the sun - Elo, you'll know what I mean. Turns out, it's not that. We saw a double sundog - think a circle of double rainbow, all the way round the sun - outside the dining room windows, raced outside to have a look at it, and discovered that it was reasonably pointless to try and look directly at the sun. I didn't have my brain on enough to take a photo, although I suspect there are much prettier ones on the interwebs anyway (try here) We also saw an almost-double-sun,  the sun was up as high as it can get, but also looked like it was just rising. I remembered to take a photo this time - more importantly, I remembered I could reduce the exposure time, and actually got a photo that wasn't entirely white..

I figured I should actually mention the people I'm working with, too. We're on a joint project - us from UNSW make the power system that runs an observatory for some lovely fellas from the university of Arizona. It's a TeraHertz observatory, called HEAT. They are Craig, Abram (Abe), and David. Craig and Abram are somewhere around 40, David is I think around 25 - I haven't actually asked any of them. All three are really nice ( I suspect you'll here that a few more times in the next paragraph). Craig is the boss (heh), and is everything that a boss should be. He never criticises, he's always ready to help, he knows everything that's going on, and tells you, and he works silly hard, doesn't sleep, and is somehow always in a good mood. but mostly he's just really really really nice. He's about my height. His partner in crime is Abe, who is probably seven feet tall, longest legs I've ever seen (Craig reckons it's three of his steps to two of Abe's - I reckon it's probably more like two to one..), has a terrible sense of humour (the kind I like), and cheers us up by telling us such things as he has a box of truffles (the chocolate kind) waiting for him at home.. the only chocolate here other than the things the kitchen cooks are m&m's, which I think have often expired. David is a PhD student, beats me in every game of gin that we play, and for lack of a better description, is really nice. He does a bit of the programming and a bit of the electronics, and has a few sensors of his own going in, I believe. The only problem is that Craig and David are about the same height (heh. Craig David..), and when they are dressed in jeans, and the standard issue big red parka, goggles, beanie and face mask, it is a little difficult to tell them apart..

In terms of progress, today I finished the engine electroncis plate, and I think all there is left to do is to exchange the wavesculptor thermocouples on the engines, which will probably take an hour or so. Getting the old ones of will be some sort of magic trick, I think. After that, I thiink that the power generation system is done. Done, done and done-ski. There are a few experiments that UNSW would like to run, too, so those need to be checked and setup, but they are not vital to anything, really - more of a would be nice.

On that note, it looks like mild panic has set in, and Michael has asked Craig to extend the length of my stay. So I may be here a little while. I don't know how much longer as yet, possibly the 10th, possibly longer. I don't hugely see the point - I have had a whole lot of practise at making cables, but in the case that something does break, the majority of the people here are elec people with far more experience and knowledge than me. Unless there's something that I don't know about. So, on that note, I am just going to have a chat with Craig and see what the reason was :)

The other thing is that all the people here are friendly - I know I'm only here for a short time, so it's the honeymoon period, but I'm OK with that. I just want to write down their names so I don't forget.. - there's Nils and Dale, from the University of Colorado, who work on the South Pole Telescope. I haven't yet seen either of them grumpy - although most of my time in their company was spent being pleasantly drunk in McMurdo, waiting for our flights to here. Dale reminds me a little bit of solar car Jared. Best conversation was the one in which he (an American from California) declared that he didn't have an accent. Lots of fun. Also Brian, who's from a different uni, also starting with C, also working on the South Pole telescope. Sorry. Vague. Also lovely. A lot quieter than Dale.. :)

Adam, the welder, who enlightened me to the fact that there is a climbing gym here (yesterday, so I haven't been yet), and who will be playing in one of the bands at the new years eve shindig in the gym tonight.

Casey and her husband ( I can't remember his name, and it's been too long to ask.. argh...) who are seriously lovely. I'm guessing they're around my age. In real life, Casey studied a degree similar to social work, but it also sounded like it included a fair bit of psychology as well, and her husband is a civil engineer, specialising in structures. Before they came here, he was working on nuclear reactors. Here, they are kitchen/general staff. When they go back home (Colorado), the current plan is to buy a boat and learn to sail, and then come visit me in Sydney :) awesome, awesome people.

There is Guy, a 40-something French-Belgian, pronounced Gee (not jee), who works for a company that monitors seismic activity everywhere on earth, in the hopes of catching out unauthorised nuclear testing (I think. I'm probably oversimplifying). He works our summers down in Antarctica, and the northern hemisphere summers in alaska, greenland, the arctic etc. That seems to be a fairly common schedule for a lot of the people here.

Lee, I think is a grad student, possibly a postdoc, from Madison, Wisconsin (I'm learning a whole lot about US geography here, by the way),  and works on various weather stations - he has never been here for longer than three days - except this time, and he's attempting to teach me how to play Cribbage. I THINK he's mentioned all the rules now. It's a bit like cricket really. lots of little tiny rules for specific situations.

Pretty sure there are a tonne more, who will be mentioned in time, when I remember names.

Alright. Done talking. (I know. Miracles never cease)

Ciao!

South Pole!

Yo. I am not feeling particularly verbose, and I can't think of a huge amount to say, although when I'm not in front of a computer, I have heaps to say.  So in the hope that this makes me remember what I meant to say:
Things of note, in no particular order

Actual view out of the dining room window (zoom in on the sign..!):

People here are just lovely.

Skidoo is a legitimate form of transport. I have had my skidoo training course, and one day when I don't feel guilty about it, I'm going to borrow one to ride the 500m from the station to where we work. heee!

The food is amAZINg. Sample menu :

and for dessert.. your choice of delicious apple pie and ice cream, these chocolate nut things that they made for christmas that taste like ferrerro (??) roche(????)s, etc.
There is also always fruit, and the know how to cook veggies properly.

They have a greenhouse! Salad last night was from there.

There is one kiwi, known as Kiwi Dave. He was absolutely stoked when we showed up with 2 more kiwis and 2 Australians..

We watched Mad Max 2 as a movie last night, and were informed (by an American) hat it was all filmed on the Spencer Highway. We're pretty sure she meant the Stuart Highway.

Our stuff all arrived yesterday. I've finished fixing the electronic boxes, for the yellow box (instrument module, runs all the experiments), and today I spent the day battling with the engine gear plate - the equivalent electronics rack for the engine module (green box). It was half designed by someone (I name no names) who didn't tell anyone his plans, didn't finish it, didn't start it until the night before we shipped, and didn't document anything. Not that I'm bitter. Actually, it's kind of fun, like a jigsaw puzzle. Except someone's got there before you and glued bits to the table that may or may not be in the right place. Anyway. Pretty sure I've got it sorted, and I should finish it tomorrow. Which, I believe, finishes off our electrical system, so we can test.

It is DRY. I didn't drink my usual glass of water at breakfast today, and I had a headache by lunchtime. All good now, but man! if you think a desert is bad!

They employ people on an interesting basis. There was one guy here who's been working for three summer seasons now. The first two were as a general assistant (cleaning), and then this one he's a welder. Which is what he's actually qualified for..

I have been to the South Pole. Both the ceremonial one with a few hundred flags, and the real one, with a geological marker and the US flag. On the first of Jan, they'll move the real one ten metres thataway ->, since the ice shelf that we are on is slowly moving.

Said ice shelf is approx 3km thick.

Satellite up time is: Great coverage 4-11am, intermittent coverage til 5.30pm, no coverage otherwise.

There is supposed to be a band and dancing in the gym on New Year's. Given that I think I'm still operating on Sydney time, my bedtime is about midnight, which suiits me fiiiiine.

We are playing lots of gin, to 100. My highest score currently is 95. I will win a game. I will...Dad, I'm slowly remembering all the things you told me....

When we arrived, the first room I found was this one, and I knew I was going to like this place..comfy chairs, a piano (keyboard) out of sight around the corner...and books!

Also: This is a later edit. I don't know if I've put this in another blog post or an email, but.. SOUTH POLE!

I think that is all I can think of at the moment, and the satellite goes down in about three minutes, so..

byeee!