bogen.org

It’s Monday, and that means House Mouse duties for me.There are no comprehensive janitorial service at the South Pole like you might be used to seeing in public buildings in other locations. Quite frankly, it’s just too expensive to keep a large, dedicated janitorial staff on board here. So, the bathrooms and other commons areas are cleaned by the station residents on a rotating basis. When it’s your turn to pitch in with these cleaning tasks, you’re the House Mouse.

The House Mouse empties trash cans and recycling barrels (which outnumber trash cans by nearly an order of magnitude), cleans the bathroom(s) on their berth floor, and generally tidies up. Since this gets done every day, it isn’t a huge chore. The only bathroom on our floor of the berth is the women’s bathroom, so at 16:00 local time today, I found myself cleaning the women’s bathroom. This is all taken rather matter-of-factly by most station residents as women are often seen cleaning the men’s bathrooms. The station managers go out of their way to make the House Mouse system work even though their most serious disciplinary measure for failing your House Mouse duties is public shaming. They make sure that each janitorial closet has a good supply of janitorial supplies, paper products, and other necessary items.

Tonight at dinner I learned that McMurdo will soon lose their dedicated janitorial staff and adopt the House Mouse system as a cost savings measure. Their admin folks called up the South Pole folks recently to ask about “that Mouse system.”

I spent most of the day working out at the ICL as we started to move in earnest towards completing one of our major goals. The ICL is about a mile or so from the Elevated Station, so it’s a hike out there and back when the wind is blowing in your face. Fortunately, I managed to catch a ride in the shuttle van once, and on a sled towed behind a snowmobile twice. The van is okay. It’s a regular Ford fan with big tires on it driven by one of the General Assistants (GAs). The snowmobiles are more fun, even though they’re much colder. The wind chill is usually south of -35°F and adding twenty or more miles per hour of wind due to the snowmobile can make it downright frosty in a hurry. However, it seems like a better connection to the outdoors to have the wind and a plume of snow in your face than to be sitting on a seat in the back of a big red van.

The skiway, where the LC-130s and Twin Otters land, lies between the Elevated Station, ICL, the IceCube Drill camp, and several other outbuildings that house science projects. So, I cross the skiway several times a day going to work, and back to the Station for meals and the like. Of course, the Powers That Be (PTB) aren’t particularly interested in seeing pedestrians run down by a landing Hercules, so they have beacons that warn pedestrians and vehicles not to encroach upon the skiway when it is in use. On my way back to work this afternoon a plane was landing, so the beacons were on. Next thing you know, there’s the Antarctic equivalent of a traffic jam (two snowmobiles, one front-end loader, and one crawler) as we wait for the plane to finish landing.

It’s a big night for me. Shower night. Here at the Pole, where there are few substances more dear than water, showers are limited to two two-minute showers per week. It’s all on the honor system, but again, public shaming is a potent weapon to ensure compliance and from what I’ve seen and heard there are few violators. Suffice it to say that I’m a bit pungent today since I last took a shower four days ago.

A number of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations appeared around the station. That’s all well and good, but it’s hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year. No baking. No tree of our own. No dark nights and short days. It just doesn’t feel right.

On my way back to the Station tonight after putting in a few more hours at the ICL, I was treated to an interesting meteorological display. A pair of sundogs flanked the sun while 3/4 of a full rainbow was visible. The picture shows just one of the sundogs. Photographing a rainbow that large was a task just a bit beyond my skill and my equipment.

Sunday is something of a down day at the Pole because many of the Polies have the day off.Of course, that doesn’t mean that the scientists who are down here for a relatively short while take the whole day off. Our group is no exception. IceCube drills with three shifts, seven days a week and the schedule is very tight. The Data Handling group, of which I’m a member, spent a good part of the day preparing for tomorrow’s chaos.

Even so, we still found time to relax a bit before the upcoming week. Some of my co-workers and I took some time out to take our obligatory “hero shots” at the geographic South Pole. Since the Pole will be moved on 01 Jan 2007 by the US Geologic Survey, I’ll have to take these photos again just before I leave.

There was plenty of excitement around the base today as we got word that the ANITA balloon may be visible from the Pole at some point during the day. The ANITA balloon is an absolutely massive balloon that is conducting neutrino studies high in the atmosphere. One person familiar with the project said that the interior of the balloon could hold the entire Astrodome and part of the parking lot; another person described the enclosed volume as similar to that of the Sears Tower. Understandably, we were all eager to see such an unusual thing. The balloon hove into view in the late afternoon and was visible well into the evening. Even though it was better than one hundred miles away, it was visible as a noticeably man-made item in the sky.

I should note here that any unique person or phenomena will generate high levels of interest here at the Pole, especially among those who’ve been here for a while already. It wasn’t that the station personnel were particularly interested in the ANITA project or its results (though some of our scientists certainly were) that got people out to see the balloon. It was the idea of something different. When you’re in a place as dead as this one, with two hundred odd souls in close proximity and not another soul or habitation for hundreds of miles, different suddenly becomes very good.

The biggest downside of the day was that I had to attend another briefing. This one is known as the Outdoor Safety Lecture (OSL). A woman flew in from McMurdo on my flight and she conducted an overnight camping trip away from the station last night, and the OSL briefing tonight. Suffice it to say that hypothermia was starting to look pretty appealing as an alternative to sitting through the OSL about half-way through the briefing. At least with hypothermia I’d require immediate medical attention which would have rescued me from the conference room. The OSL course is required before Raytheon employees or NSF Grantees are allowed to do some of the more interesting hikes, ski trips and the like away from McMurdo. Since there is always the possibility that I’d get stuck in McMurdo on my way off the continent, I decided to get OSL out of the way so that I would have more recreational opportunities if I got stuck in McMurdo.

The OSL is a prime example of the difference between the Pole and McMurdo. At McMurdo, going on certain hikes (even over to the Kiwi base) means paperwork and bureaucracy. First, you have to file an eFoot Plan, which is a fancy name and computer application for “tell us where you’re going, with whom, how, and when you’ll be back so we know when to start looking for you.” Some trails require you to travel only in groups of two or larger. Many trails require you to take a radio and checkin at the Firehouse before and after you hit the trail. Of course, you can’t do any of these things until you’ve wasted an hour of your Antarctic experience sitting through OSL.

Here at the Pole you can pick a direction (North, perhaps?) and start walking until the station can’t be seen over the horizon. If you’re well-prepared or lucky you’ll even get back without assistance. There is no helicopter here to assist in a rescue and the snow is so hard that the folks here aren’t likely to find your tracks in it. It’s just assumed that if you’re here, you are probably not dumb enough to put your life at risk by doing incredibly stupid things. And if you are that dumb, no amount of bureaucracy is likely to stop you, so why bother?

The kitchen runs with a smaller staff on Sunday and only serves two meals: brunch and dinner. Since I’m not a huge brunch fan, I got up early and served myself cereal and a peanut butter and honey sandwich before the galley opened. Then, I had the tail end of brunch for lunch. Dinner was pot roast. Ugh. Under the best of circumstances I don’t like pot roast so I didn’t even try it. Those who did were universally disappointed by dry, fatty, tough meat. Instead of the pot roast, I had a vegetarian curry pot pie-style dish, a big helping of broccoli, and a big serving of salad. Part of the salad greens are grown in the station’s greenhouse, so eating the salad is as close as you can get to eating locally grown food at the Pole.

I’ve started carrying my camera around the station with me as there are some funny and unusual things that seemingly pop-up for a short period of time and then disappear. For instance, this seemingly odd scene could be found for a period of time at the base of an emergency exit on the station’s second level. My guess is that they were trying to close an air leak with spray foam, but I found the sign funny nonetheless.

I took my GPS unit out to the Pole today while helping someone take some shots for a fifth grade class. According the to the unit, I’m now 9179 miles from our home in Madison, even though I’ve gone eight hundred miles further south than my last reading. However, there is some supposition that the unit doesn’t gracefully handle a situation where a user is at a Pole. The unit also had trouble deciding where the Pole could be found. Initially, it displayed S90°00.00′, but then it would never display exactly ninety degrees again, even though I had accuracy down to fifteen feet. Perhaps it just got cold and wanted to be taken indoors for another try on another day.

As Saturday evening draws to a close at the South Pole, it is time to look back and reflect on the day.
Those who’ve never experienced 24-hours of sunlight, may not be aware of just what all that sun does to the human body’s sense of time. If there weren’t clocks on the walls here, the station would be seemingly timeless with nothing to help one gauge the passing of time. 07:00 looks the same as 12:00. 12:00 looks the same as 01:30. Even though I won’t be able to post this writing until the morning, I’m writing it about 23:30 local time. I’m sitting in a room with windows and there is so much sun pouring through the windows that it feels like 14:00 or 15:00 hours on a sunny day in Wisconsin.

All of that sun makes sleeping and waking times almost arbitrary. The so-called Night Shift goes to work in bright sunshine, eats their lunch in bright sunshine, and gets off of work in bright sunshine.

When I get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, the light streaming in through the windows on the way to the restroom trigger my body’s waking mechanisms, which makes it somewhat difficult to get back to sleep.

Then again, as the Northern Hemisphere moves rapidly towards the shortest day of the year, I’ve got all the sunshine I need to avoid the seasonal blahs.

Today was something of a laid back day for the group of which I’m part. We’re waiting for some work to get done so that we can leap in to action on Monday and create 24-48 hours of chaos while we rip the still beating heart of the network out and replace it with a newer, better, faster one. Or, that’s the theory at least.

That’s not to say that I didn’t do any work today. Most everyone at the Pole works six days a week, at a minimum. Instead of engaging in some complex and risky systems administration, I spent my time exploring the existing systems looking for potentially difficult situations to manage come Monday. Many of the systems have lacked for a relatively disinterested party to oversee them, so there are some rough spots that need to be smoothed out yet.

As part of that process, I toured several of the out-buildings that house some of IceCube’s legacy systems, as well as equipment and systems for other scientific projects. You’ve never seen so many oscilloscopes, build-it-yourself cables, one-off computers, and other crazy science gear.

While I was putting some gear together in the B2 Science Lab, I took this photo of myself with a webcam that I was configuring.

Dinner was pizza tonight and while it looked good, it’s not about to knock any of My Top Ten Pizza Joints off the list. Interestingly enough, the only vegetables or fruit served tonight were on the pizza itself. At almost every meal, at least one form of vegetables is available, often more than one. While none of the cooked vegetables are remotely tasty (frozen vegetable medley isn’t likely to make anyone’s list of favorite foods), they are a good way to get fiber and nutrients that meat just doesn’t provide.

After dinner, I took a tour of the old station known as The Dome. The Dome was the station of record before the current station, the Elevated Station, was built. The Dome and its attached tunnels, known as The Arches, are being slowly swallowed by the snow here. The Dome is a geodesic dome, but if they don’t remove The Dome soon, it will be crushed as the snow is piling up unevenly on the surface and starting to warp the Dome.

Life in the The Dome was vastly different than what we know in the Elevated Station. If I want to eat a meal, I just climb a flight of stairs from my berth, and walk down to the other end of the station. In the Dome, I would have been forced outside of all heated structures to find the galley. The walk wouldn’t have been far, but in -80°F, even a twenty foot walk is a test of endurance in street clothes.

The Dome is still used, but now almost completely for storage. There are boxes and boxes of food stored there. Boxes of frozen seafood, beef, tomato paste, and whatnot are stacked all around the Dome, waiting to be hauled into the Elevated Station for use by the kitchen. There are no mice, rats, raccons, or mammals other than humans here at the Pole to nibble on the food stored so completely unprotected. In addition, there are no bugs to infest things like bags of flour or boxes or cereal. In short, the very deadness of this place helps to keep the food safe.

While I out scouting the outbuildings and the Dome earlier today I discovered some little luxuries that I appropriated to make myself more comfortable. I was quite excited to discover a cache of unused hangers which I immediately raided to supplement the one hanger that was in my berth when I got here. In the States running out of hangers is no big deal. You just run down to a drug store or department store and buy a pack of new hangers. Here at the Pole, getting more hangers is a bit more involved. Let’s say you want to get twenty hangers delivered to the Pole. First, you create the necessary paperwork detailing your needs and then you send that paperwork to the States. That paperwork is processed somewhere in the South (I’ve heard somewhere in Louisiana, though I’d be more inclined to believe Denver). The results of that processing might generate an order for twenty hangers, or two thousand hangers, you never know. The order is then fulfilled by government contractors. The hangers are then placed on a flight to New Zealand (if the hangers are needed urgently and it’s the austral summer). Otherwise, the hangers are placed on a ship bound for New Zealand. Once the hangers are delivered to New Zealand, they are flown to McMurdo as part of a cargo bundle. Once in McMurdo, the hangers are placed in a queue for flight to the South Pole. Eventually, the hangers make their way on to an LC-130 and they are delivered to the Pole where half of the shipment is immediately scavenged by others who need hangers. So, you will get your hangers, but it takes time and the end result is that you end up with some the world’s most expensive hangers due to the involved transportation costs.

It can be difficult to take pictures here. When you exhale in cold Polar weather, your breath immediately forms a little cloud of frost in front of your head. So, if you forget and exhale just before you push the shutter, you get a nice cloud of frost in front of your intended target.

The skylight at the top of the Dome. You may notice the rubber chicken that some enterprising winterovers suspended from the top of the Dome.

One of the frost-coated and snow-carpeted entrances to the Dome.

Your faithful correspondent reports tonight from a berth at the South Pole.

We got our seemingly obligatory early start this morning and after breakfast and the like we got dressed in our ECW gear and hauled ourselves and our hand carry items back up the hill to Building 140 (where we had to go for Bag Drag the night before). Once there, we were once again issued ear plugs and directed on to a shuttle bus that would take us to the LC-130 airfield.

Shorty after the bus left Building 140, it stopped on one of the ice roads so that we could jump out and snap some pictures of Mt. Erebus, the active volcano in Antarctica that has provided much of the volcanic soil on which McMurdo is built.

Shortly after that, we arrived at Williams Field, where the LC-130s and the Twin Otters operate. For those not familiar with the designation, the LC-130 is a turbo-prop cargo plane that is significantly smaller and older than the C-17. The LC-130s that fly in Antarctica are also rigged with skis for use during landing and take-offs. The Twin Otter is a somewhat renowned aircraft in that it is durable, capable of landing on short air fields, and tolerant of very cold weather. The Twin Otter isn’t a terribly large plane, probably about the size of a small turboprop regional passenger aircraft.

There were fix or six LC-130s and a pair of Twin Otters at the field and after driving around and past most of the planes our bus stopped outside an LC-130. The New York Air National Guard (ANG) is charged with flying the LC-130s in Antarctica The door opened and one of the ANG crew members got on board to give us a quick briefing. Part of the briefing covered how to place a mostly opaque bag over our head if the plane loses pressurization.

The ANG was significantly more laid back than the Air Force guys, so it wasn’t long before we were all on board and the plane started taxiing towards the runway. Shortly thereafter we were airborne for hour three our flight to the Pole.

In this space not too long ago I made mention of how loud it is flying on a C-17. Today I learned, first hand, just how limited my experience with loud aircraft interiors is. The C-17 may be deafeningly loud but the LC-130 is soul-crushingly loud. We were joking tonight at dinner that the plane was probably made that way deliberately. If paratroopers spent six or eight hours on an LC-130 they wouldn’t have to be encouraged to jump because the troops would be begging to go.

The LC-130 was obviously never designed to be a passenger plane. The urinal in the front of the plane is nothing more than a green curtain pulled around a funnel attached to the forward bulkhead. Our plane was a relatively modern version as the bucket and curtain in the rear of the plane had been replaced with something like a flush toilet and a curtain.

An hour and a half or so into the flight, the plane flew over the Trans Antarctic Mountains. The mountains seemingly rise out of a featureless white plain with huge black peaks and massive glaciers. It really is quite a sight and it goes on for quite a while. Once the mountains fade into the past, nothing lies ahead but a featureless white plain and the South Pole.

Eventually, the flight landed at the Pole. As the plane was taxiing, all the passengers were busy layering on the ECW gear and their glacier glasses to disembark. When the door on the left side of the plane opened we all walked out and carefully took a right turn. Since they don’t stop the motors or the props at the Pole, taking a left turn would be a quick way to end your polar experience.

Once in the South Pole Station, it was time for another briefing, of course.

After that, I found my room/berth. It’s not spacious, but it is a single with a small desk, a phone, twelve power plugs, a clothesline (they encourage you to air dry your clothes here since it is so dry and energy is so dear), a closet, six drawers, and one coat hanger.

They encourage everyone to take it easy for their first couple of days, because the rise in the altitude is very noticeable. I don’t much notice it except when I’m climbing steps and then I notice it quickly. Everyone is doing their best to not need or want my help while simultaneously encouraging me to sit back and take it easy.

I went out to the IceCube Lab (the ICL) this afternoon and took a look around. Since that is where many of the systems I’m going to turn up are located, I’ll be spending some time out there. However, once I get everything working well I can also do work from my room, which is nice.

Because the air is so dry here, and because our bodies need plenty of water as they try to acclimatize to the altitude I’ve been drinking water and tea like it’s going out of style. I probably drank a close to a gallon of water in just an hour or so after arriving and I was still thirsty when I was done.

In my last writings I wrote that I wasn’t going to post any pictures until I got off the continent. I’ve obviously changed my mind and I’ll try to post a handful of small pictures each day.

I didn’t get a chance to take a GPS reading when I arrived here today, but since I’ll be here for three weeks, I should have plenty of time to do so.

After a long day of flights and briefings, I’m writing tonight from Antarctica.

Today began with my 03:00 wake-up call. The night before I had carefully arranged everything so that I could get out the door with a minimum of functioning brain cells in the morning. I set two alarms (each seven minutes after the other) in addition to the wake-up call. Then, I put the alarms on the other side of the room from the bed so that I would be forced to get up and walk across the room to quiet the alarms.

When I got to the front desk to check-out (03:25), the night manager commented that I was getting an early start on the day. I told her that I like to check-out early to avoid the rush. As I finished, my cab pulled up to the hotel. I threw my bags in the trunk and we were off to the CDC and the Antarctic Passenger Terminal (APT).

Once at the CDC, I had to repack my bags, since I had to work out some way to get my ECW mostly out of my hand carry (a term used to describe the not insignificantly sized orange bag we’re all issued to use as non-optional carry-on luggage) and onto my person while transferring the contents of my backpack into the hand carry, all without exceeding the strict size limits imposed by the Air Force on hand carry items. Oh, and while being repeatedly examined by New Zealand Customs’ drug sniffing dogs.

Finally I had all my ECW gear on my person (remember, it’s not really that cold in Christchurch and the twenty or so pounds of gear I’m wearing is designed for sub-zero temperatures), and I lugged myself and my checked baggage off to the APT. Once there, I was weighed with my ECW, my hand carry was weighed, and my checked baggage was weighed. Once the Air Force had all my mass measurements I was issued a boarding pass and told to report back to the APT waiting area by 05:10 for a pre-flight briefing.

At precisely 05:10 a pre-flight briefing was conducted by an Air Force load master.

After the Air Force man finished, we all got to watch a video reminding us that Antarctica is dangerous in a variety of big and interesting ways for a variety of unchangeable reasons. Having said that, most people get hurt in Antarctica by the same stupid stuff that hurts them back in the States. That is to say that most injuries are sprains, strains, broken bones, and whatnot caused by fatigue, carelessness, or both.

Once that video was done, we were treated to another briefing about how to get through security, the process for loading the plane, and the importance of using the toilet before getting on the plane. Since the plane can’t empty it’s one toilet once it gets to Antarctica, the 130 or so folks leaving the ice on that plane would face a mighty uncomfortable ride back to CHC if the toilet was full.

Then, one of the more surreal parts of the day began. We all had to put our hand carry bags through a commercial X-ray system while we were trooped through a metal detector. Unsurprisingly, nearly every single person set off the metal detector since we were all required to be wearing our ECW which is absolutely festooned with all sorts of heavy metal buckles and straps. So, we all got wanded, too. Whee.

Let me pause here to inject some editorial commentary. Why in the name of all that is green and good were we all put through such a useless security screening. Who goes through all the trouble to get accepted for travel to Antarctica just to get on an Air Force C-17 so that they can hijack the plane?!? In speaking with one of the numerous Air Force guys on the plane, we found out that a C-17 in the States can travel with a few as three crew members for routine missions. This particular plane had 14 Air Force crewmen on it. In addition, there were no less ten members of the New Zealand Army traveling to Scott Base. Those sound like pretty poor odds for any hijacker, no matter how determined.

Anyway, we were issued ear plugs as we went through security and then put on buses for a brief ride over to the plane. We got off the buses, were handed a brown paper bag that contained a lunch and then got on the plane. The plane had fifty seats (ten rows of five) that were essentially like commercial airline seats. The seats reclined, they were padded, and they faced forward. However, they had heaps of leg room. Those who didn’t get or didn’t want one of the forward facing seats were seated along webbed seats on the side of the cargo hold. I chose to sit along the side of the plane so I could have an easier time getting up to walk around.

Already on board the plane was a fire truck that was being delivered to the continent. Once we were all seated the Air Force guys, along with their New Zealand counterparts, got somewhat busy loading our checked luggage into the plane, along with a few spare rows of seats for the return flight. Once all the cargo was loaded and secured, the primary load master gave us another briefing about what to expect during the flight. Soon thereafter the plane taxied and took off into the sky. The time was just before 07:00.

Unless you’ve ever been on an Air Force cargo plane you may not understand just how loud it is inside the plane while the it is flying. The cargo hold is not insulated at all to protect the cargo (trucks, passengers, tanks, troops, etc.) from the noise of the air rushing past the fuselage or the engines running for all they’re worth. It’s like being in an incredibly, terribly, awfully loud factory that makes metal things like cymbols or jackhammers. There wasn’t a single person on the plane who didn’t use their ear plugs for the entire flight.

Five hours later, we touched down at an airstrip (made entirely of ice) in Antarctica. We all got off the plane into sunlight that would have been blinding if we hadn’t had on sunglasses. A short walk took us to the legendary Terra Bus for the long ride to McMurdo across the ice.

We finally arrived in McMurdo and were promptly led into, guess what, another briefing! That particular briefing was delivered half-heartedly and absentmindedly by the NSF Station Manager. Once he was done, we got a briefing from the housing folks. With those briefings out of the way we split up into two groups of people: Raytheon employees and NSF Grantees (which is the NSF’s fancy word for “scientists and their support staff”). Of course, that meant it was time for another briefing. This time, our return travel to the States was the subject of the briefing. Let me tell you, there was nothing I wanted to think about at the moment more than a whole bunch more air travel.

Of course, once that was done, it was time for…wait for it…another briefing! This time, folks traveling to the South Pole were the target audience. We were all harangued into considering consumption of Diamox, a medication used to avoid altitude sickness. Since the Pole’s perceived altitude is really never less than 10,000 feet, and can be more than 14,000 feet depending on atmospheric conditions, altitude sickness is a real problem there. The doctor who gave us that particular briefing mentioned that they had medivaced seven people from the Pole in the last ten days for symptoms of either High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (the lungs filling with blood and fluid) or High Altitude Cerebral Edema (swelling of the brain). In addition, we learned that Norovirus is going around both Pole and McMurdo. Norovirus is the delightful virus that periodically drives a cruise ship to port with 300 people all afflicted with stomach cramps and diarrhea.

Once that briefing was done we were finally free. Most of the housing at McMurdo is dorm-style, so I’m sharing a room with two other IceCubers who will also go to the Pole tomorrow. Down the hall are two rooms filled with Kiwi Army guys who, upon arrival, promptly hung up their All Blacks banners and started the dangerous but necessary mission of reducing the apparent beer surplus here in Antarctica.

Once I had a bit of free time, I took it upon myself to find the geocache located in the hills above McMurdo. The wind was fabulously strong, but with my ECW jacket on I hardly felt the cold. What I did feel was the wind threatening to blow me down the back side of the hill and onto the ice that covers the bay. Geocache located, it was back to the dorms and dinner.

Dinner is served buffet style here in Antarctica and tonight in McMurdo we had beef stroganoff, vegetarian pakora, and baked chicken. None of it would qualify as good, but none of it was actively bad either.

Post-dinner, those of us bound for the Pole had to get dressed up in all our ECW gear, grab our hand carries, and lug ourselves and all that gear up the hill for…another briefing! After this briefing (topic: show up here tomorrow at 07:00 for transportation to your Pole flight), we were all weighed once again (why, I don’t know. How much weight could I gain or lose in six hours?) and then released to our own devices once we lugged ourselves, our ECW, and all our gear back down the hill.

That about sums my day. It’s now just about 21:15 local time and I’ve been awake for something like eighteen hours. Since we have to wake-up at 05:30 tomorrow for our flight, I’m off to bed soon. There probably won’t be many, or any, new pictures posted to the Photo Gallery until I get off the ice. Bandwidth is incredibly limited here in Antarctica and pushing a whole bunch of pictures through a small pipe shared by numerous people isn’t terribly kind to others. So, even though I’m not posting the pictures at the moment I haven’t stopped taking them.

Finally, I should mention that my GPS unit reports that I’m currently 9299 miles from our home in Madison. For those interested parties, my current coordinates according to the GPS unit:

S 77°50.770′
E 166°40.275′