Tuesday
and Wednesday 29 - 30 January
From
John Storey.....
Today's
diary entry covers two days, because they merged into one
anyway.
The
day begins in McMurdo which, as has already been noted, makes
an unhappy contrast to the South Pole. It is as if, having
spent two weeks in the communist fantasyland that is South
Pole, McMurdo is required as a kind of an antidote to prepare
one for life back in the real world. The hard metallic lump
in my pocket is a set of keys - a strange device I now use
for locking doors, an action whose sole purpose is to prevent
someone else from going through that door and doing whatever
it was they were planning to do. In return, as it were, I
am continually confronted with doors that have been locked
by someone else, with no apparent thought for the inconvenience
that might now be causing me.
(Poor
Karl, he was not to know that his ideology would not work
once the village had more than a couple of hundred people
in it. Nor would he have been able to predict that, once the
village grew to a city of a few million, a substantial fraction
of his comrades would be driving around in 2-tonne four-wheel-drives,
purchased in the hope that, should they have the misfortune
to collide with someone they don't know, all the property
damage, injury and disfigurement would be suffered by the
other comrade, not them. But I digress.)
And
there are signs, everywhere, telling me that I cannot go here
or there. At South Pole there are also areas one cannot go
- but always for good reasons. For example, one cannot go
to the transmitting antenna farm, or one might get fried.
One cannot go to where they collect the snow for drinking
water, in case one absently-mindedly does something unmentionable
on the snow. And of course one can absolutely never go to
Old South Pole Station because, as everyone knows, that's
where the aliens live.
In
contrast McMurdo has a lot of signs that contain the words
"no" or "not" or "forbidden",
and no reason is given. Even the shipping containers scattered
around the station are labelled: "This is not a refuge",
as if to emphasise the fact that you're really stuck here,
mate.
The
grim reality is underlined by a set of photocopied signs on
various doors, put there by an anguished researcher bemoaning
the recent theft of his laptop computer from his dorm room
and offering a $200 reward for its return - no questions asked.
Welcome (back) to the real world. And the coffee - oh dear,
the coffee...
Fortunately
the breakfast waffles and maple syrup are excellent. As Robert
Falcon Scott might have said, but didn't: "Great God,
what a waffle place!"
At
10 am we do "bag-drag", effectively the same as
check-in for a commercial flight except you get to take your
carry-on luggage away again once it (and you) have been weighed.
Experienced antarctic adventurers know that it is wise to
include in that one retained bag several changes of underwear,
toiletries, some good books and a pair of comfortable walking
shoes, for you may not be re-united with the rest of your
luggage for some days.
Over
lunch I struck up a conversation with Gonzales from the University
of Washington, who invited me to visit his lab at Arrival
Heights, an area in the hills above McMurdo. Arrival Heights
is an area reserved by international agreement as a Site of
Special Scientific Interest, in this case because it is a
"radio quiet zone" where there is minimal radio
interference. For this reason, no transmitters and all of
the radio experiments for studying the ionosphere are located
there. A few years ago, the New Zealanders set up a two-way
satellite communications facility at Arrival Heights and thereby
created a serious international incident or, to put it another
way, injected some life into the otherwise astonishingly dull
international SCAR meetings. Unfortunately all the fuss seems
to have died down now.
>From
Arrival Heights there is a wonderful view of the island -
Ross Island - which McMurdo shares with Mount Erebus. This
year has been unusually warm, and today was bathed in beautiful
sunshine. I enjoyed the walk of a few kilometres back to McMurdo,
breathing in the dense sea-level air and appreciating the
fact that it was possible to spend more than a few minutes
outside without my moustache freezing to my beard, preventing
me from opening my mouth.
After
working 16-hour days at South Pole for just on two weeks,
it was great to relax. I spent the rest of the afternoon asleep.
At 9 pm we checked in for our flight and climbed aboard the
Terrabus for transport to Pegasus. Pegasus is the sea-ice
runway, some 45 minutes drive south of Mc Murdo, which can
only be used late in the season when the sun is no longer
fiercely melting the ice and causing pot-holes in the surface.
The advantage of the runway is that conventional wheeled aircraft
can land on it, unlike the ski-way which can only be used
by the Hercules and their ilk. Today would be the first flight
from Christchurch for this year of a C-141 Starlifter - a
larger four-engined transport jet. It carries more people
(typically around 90), and flies much faster than the Hercules,
making the trip between McMurdo and Christchurch in just 5
hours, rather than 8 or 9.
Clearly
sensing that we would be disappointed at spending a mere 5
hours squashed together, knee to knee, cheek to jowl, the
transport folk arranged for us to be at Pegasus a good four
hours before we were due to leave. Crammed into the only building
available, some people dozed and others watched a movie. This
was something called, I think, "The Insider" and,
despite having been nominated for umpteen Academy Awards was
so stupefyingly dull that most people either became stupefied
or wandered outside to gaze for one last time at the midnight
sun, now dipping low across the southern horizon.
The
C-141 landed, and then proceeded to taxi up and down the runway
- still fully loaded with its 92 passengers. I discovered
that this was because it was the first C-141 flight for the
season. Before taking off again, the pilot wanted to be sure
that the runway was up to the job and that the plane wasn't
going to fall through the ice at any point. Amongst those
on board who were contributing their body mass to this proof-loading
test was the New Zealand ambassador to the US who - unless
he reads this diary - will probably remain blissfully unaware
of this most useful task he has performed.
Back
in New Zealand I returned all my ECW gear. I then wandered
across to the National Science Foundation office complex,
talked my way past the security guard and found my way to
the bathroom, where I enjoyed the first long, hot shower in
nearly three weeks. Human again, I returned to the computer
room and logged on via the Internet to our experiments at
South Pole. All was running well.
So
that brings this season's diary to a close. For the next 12
months we will run our experiments remotely, relying on Michael
Whitehead and Wilfred Walsh to fix whatever breaks at the
Pole. Be sure to check in next November, to see how it all
worked out.
John
Contact:
|
