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| South Pole Diaries 2000/01 |
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Sunday 17th
December 2000
From
Paolo Calisse.....
Dome C, Instruction for use....
Paragraph 1: waking up
Accomodation for guests at Dome C consists
of a large tent with 6 to 8 beds. Inside, a stove fueled by
special 'no paraffine' kerosene, looking like something out
of a Dickens' tale, provides heat or, if you prefer, as the
stove visible in the Pingu igloo [the cartoon story based
on the perature inside is deliberately kept around 4-5 C to
favourite nice dreams]. The air is dry here, and higher temperatures
could make throats dry, and that doesn't help you to get to
sleep.
The other face of the coin is that
every morning I wake up convinced I'll never find the courage
to leave the bed. Outside is cold, and you just abandon the
warm Morpheo's embrace.
Also today I am silently screaming
against myself in the bed. The "ultimate" question
arises again in my mind: what, the hell, I am doing here?
I'll forget this question as soon as I will have dressed the
last layer of clothes.
Meanwhile, I contemplate the list of
possible gifts for the coming Christmas. Thinking of my son,
I overstrike "The Little Chemist", and write instead
"The Little Accountant".
 Suddenly,
around 5 am, the pilots fired up the Twin Otters engine to
leave to Terranova Bay, the other Italian Station on the coast.
Something quite similar to a Queensland resort. But this is
an old tradition in Antarctic stations: "let the engine
start up at early morning". Nobody knows why. Why leave
at 5 am when you could do it 5 hours later.
Previously, I told all the best things
about that aircraft, handy as a Vespa scooter. No need for
airports, they could just be "chained" in front of
the door of your building, the exhaust completely removed
to increase attention around your 50 cc engine motorbike,
double carburator, oversized carburator inlet just as 14 years
old boys used to do in Rome's outskirt.
Two different aircrafts are mainly
used to move to the Antarctic Plateau: the sky equipped Hercules
C-130, a big beast with 4 propellers and room enough to digest
hundreds of people each time plus some cargo, and the Twin
Otter, handly, light and able to land everywhere without assistance
at ground.
About the Hercules, John Storey wrote
enough last year from the South Pole. Citing by heart, one
morning he wrote "An idiot parked an Hercules just in front
of my tent leaving the engines on, yeasterday night".
Hercules engines can't be safely switched off on the Antarctic
Plateau.
As soon as the Twin Otter fires up
its two propellers, I slowly wake up with the feeling that
a genetical modified mosquito, that smart pointlike animal
spending summer sunrises flying just around your ears at early
morning, is now trying to colonize Antarctica. And yourself.
As so many "little" aircraft,
Twin Otter engines feel too high in frequency, exagerated.
They can't fly, you think in the drowsiness, it's a mechanical
nonsense, the noise is just like the one generated by a thousands
radiocontrolled toy aircrafts started underneath my bed.
The wind brings you the noise in tidal
waves, playing to filter frequencies, and looking as the propeller
is used time by time to slice mortadella. Moreover, heating
an aircraft propeller is a process long enough to move probably
the aircraft to Terra Nova Bay by the ground with a lower
amount of fuel. Sometime you think that damned twin propeller
is at the beginning of the runaways, giving finally max throttle
to take off and get as far as possible by your delicate auditory
organs. But the engine slows down again, it's just kidding
you.
Suddenly, when your are already half
way through eating the pillow, it will really take off, and
any noise, suddenly, disappears somewhere toward East.
Unfortunately my ears, in the quiet
silence of the Antarctic dawn, feature the property to "learn"
any large bandwidth, loud noises, and try to find them in
any quiet noise they found around.
So, for a long time, in a desolate
drownsiness, I feel as the power engine station, very far
and quiet in comparison, is just the noise of the aircraft
that has landed about half mile away from the station due
to a sudden fault. This uncomortable feeling that something
went wrong, after you cursed the aircraft for half an hour,
makes you feel remorse, and doesn't allow you to recover sleeping.
Up to the moment the breakfast is served. Then, you fall asleep.
cheers
Paolo
 
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