Today I took a 20 minute shower.
I started by turning on the water. First the hot water and then the cold and then I turned off the cold and turned up the hot until I felt like I was going to blister. At this moment I realized, this would be the longest shower I had ever taken in Antarctica.
With the water steaming out of the showerhead, naked, I sat down. At first the water was too hot for the delicate parts of my body, so I let the heat hit my shoulders and my head. I put my feet over the drain. I showered for 20 minutes because I could.
I showered for 20 minutes because in two months Penny and I will move into a new dorm. We will once again share a room, because in August, 300 more people arrive in McMurdo. Our shower will no longer be ours and we will have to use a community shower in dorm 203C. I would never sit on the floor of a community shower. That's why I showered today for 20 minutes.
At the South Pole all showers are absolutely limited to two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. And, you're only allowed to shower every other day. I was at the South Pole for six days, so I could have showered three times. But, after the first one hundred and twenty second shower, I never wanted to shower at the South Pole again.
The showers at the South Pole aren't in the same building as the one where you sleep. They’re conveniently located 100 yards away—Outside. To shower you gather up your shampoo, towel, toothpaste, soap three layers of clothes and walk 100 yards in minus 50 degree weather (on the warm days) and then enter the bathroom/Laundromat/shower.
When I think about the South Pole, I think of two things: Death, Piss and Shit.
The showers stunk at the South Pole. Then again, after three days without a shower, so did I. Getting undressed was a procedure. Several layers of warm clothing, underwear, capilene, jackets and boots separated me from the water. Getting into the shower I didn't know if my two minutes began while I spent time adjusting the water temperature or after the water was ready for me. I began counting as soon as I started the water.
One. Too cold. How obvious is this? Of course the water is too cold at the South Pole. Fifteen. Still too cold, but bearable and I jumped into the flow of the water. Forty five. The water isn't hot enough, but I'm all soaped up, trying to lather, rinse and wash hoping I have don't have any suds on my body by the time I reach the cut off point of one hundred and twenty seconds. At 116, the final bits of soap wash down the drain. This leaves me four seconds to enjoy a warm shower at the South Pole. Three. Two. One.
I didn't enjoy that shower. Especially, still wet, I walked outside and froze my hair as I walked to work. Three days later I was medivaced out of the South Pole. I stunk.
Sitting on the floor of my clean shower, I pulled the curtain tight against the edges of the beige shower wall. As little heat as possible was going to escape from my warm, water retreat. This shower will last ten times longer than two minutes. I will heat the parts of my body I missed at the South Pole. Today I took a twenty minute shower, because I couldn’t at the South Pole.
The only fishing in Antarctica is ice fishing. Penny and I got to fish a lot. The first time, though, I was unprepared and didn’t bring enough gloves. The first two pair got wet and I didn’t think to bring six individual gloves.
After drilling through seven to ten feet of ice with a 12-inch circumference drill, we'd lower our fishing line into the water and WHAM, fish on the hook. Fishing in Antarctica could replace the cliché shooting fish in a barrel.
Hardly anyone fishes in Antarctica, so the fish aren't too smart. If it moves, they eat it.
Penny and I had a competition to see who could catch the most fish. She won. If we were smart we would have had a contest to see who could make hot chocolate.
After landing another fish who swam in the frozen ocean with the benefit of having antifreeze for blood, my fingers had lost all their feeling. I tried to bait one more hook, but my brain couldn't maneuver my ten fingers the way they were supposed to move. I didn't realize how cold I was until I looked down and saw the fishhook was stuck in my hand. I couldn't feel it. I only felt cold.
And, because I stabbed myself with a fishhook and couldn't feel it, today I took a twenty minute shower.
Then there was the time my nose turned white. And what about when I stuck my tongue to the pole? Or, when I jumped naked into an ice hole and into the 27 degree Ross Sea? I should have taken a 20 minute shower after each of these Frigidaire experiences, but I didn't. So, today I did.
Honestly, though, I'm lying. I took a twenty minute shower today, because:
The last three hours of work today, I spent in the pot room. The pot room is the windowless room in the back of the galley where the view never changes and all dirty pots come to get cleaned. Spherical silver bowls the size of small igloos covered in oatmeal are cleaned in the pot room. The pot room is home to the worst, burnt, caked-on cookware at the bottomof the world.
Our station manager, Eric Hobday, wanted to see what it would be like to be a dishwasher for a day, so I showed him. In the pot room. Boy did I show him.
After breakfast, I took the oatmeal, egg and cream of wheat two-inch hotel flat pans and left them on the counter of the pot room sink. If you know anything about washing dishes, you'd know those pans should have soaked in the sink. But I didn't want our behind the desk station manager to get off easy, I wanted him to scrub hard.
During lunch, I piled the cheese sandwich four-inch pans on top of the two-inch egg pans and then I placed the dinner spaghetti sauce pans on top of all of these. Cleaning these pans as they came into the pot room would be a chore, then again it would be my job, but to let these sit, without soaking was like watching quick dry cement set.
By the time Eric showed up to step into my dishwashing shoes, there were enough dirty pots, pans, bowls and utensils to last us for several hours.
I gave him two new green Playtex gloves, a see through blue rubber apron and instructions on how to scrub.
"Take this little green scrubbie, to the ready-mix cement that was today’s lunch and if it's dirty," I said, "make it clean. And when it's all clean you can go home."
We scrubbed the breakfast dishes and the lunch pans. We chiseled eggs, cheese and spaghetti sauce. Then, when Eric left after an hour, I spent the next two hours trying to catch up on all the work I’d left for the boss.
Two hours later, as I instructed Eric, when all the dirty dishes were clean, it was time for me to go home. My back ached from scratching solid oatmeal and crusty cream of wheat. My apron had a hole in it and my pants, shoes and socks were soaked from the knee down.
During the three hours I’d spent in the pot room, the weather worked up a surprise of its own by going to a Condition 2. This means, the winds picked up and the temperature dropped.
From the Galley back dock to my front door, it’s 143 steps. I’ve counted and mapped out all of my regular movements around town in case I’m caught in a white out condition. Counting my way home through the snow, around step number 33 and 34, my pants were frozen from the knee down. My socks were cardboard and my shoes were ice blocks.
Today, when I came home from work, I took a 20 minute shower because I was freezing my ass off, again.
There is a name for people who stay the winter in Antarctica, we call ourselves “Winter Overs.” I don’t know if “winter overs” is supposed to be one word or two. Maybe it’s spelled “winterovers.” Come to think of it, maybe we’re just called “Winter Over.” As in, “The reason my skin is transparently white and you’re able to see my blue blood veins running through my body is because I’m a Winter Over.”
As for the moniker “Winter Over” being capitalized or in all lowercase, this is anybody’s Guess.
Many, several or quite some years ago a group of smart people studied the effects of wintering over in Antarctica. They found conclusive, undeniable proof that after staying six to nine months in the cold and dark and isolation of Antarctica, the average person will lose 12-18% percent of their short-term memory. Or, maybe, it was only 9% of the short-term memory and they gained 12-18 pounds, for some reason I don’t remember. But, what I do know with 82-88% accuracy is Antarctica is inhabited by a bunch of people who don’t remember how to spell. I wanted to call these people “Misspellers,” but MS Word said, “’Misspellers’ isn’t a word.”
Words that used to come easily, words that used to roll off the tongue, now get stuck, jumbled and connected on my computer keyboard. With spell check most of the problems are quickly taken care of, but it’s frustrating to type and to have common words get the dreaded “red” underline of MS Word.
“What do you mean?” I look on in disbelief at my computer screen, “Since when did “truckdriver” become two words? Why isn’t “misspeller” a word? And when did it become improper to use two negatives in one sentence?” This is not something I’ll never be happy with.
This week the low class and the high class of McMurdo turned out for a night of wine tasting and fine dining. The conversation turned to spelling, lack of spelling and words we no longer know how to spell. It was a relief to hear other people were having the same issues. We all admitted to using a dictionary for words like, “onomatopoeia,” “paleontology,” or “winterover,” but the common words that we should know these were the ones that drove us the battiest.
For instance,” I said, “No one knows how much wine I’ve had to drink tonight? How do you spell ‘No one?’ Is ‘noone’ one word like ‘anyone,’ ‘someone’ or ‘anybody’ or is ‘no one’ two words, like ‘truck driver,’ ‘spell check’ or ‘Inter Net?’”
Penny took the first crack at trying to spell “no one,” suffice it say there is no “silent K” in Know One, and she spelled it wrong. Joe was certain that "no one" was two words, but someone else was adamant it was one. Neither one of them ranked their surety at over 75%.
I walked over to our station manager, Eric Hobday, on this very day Eric had had a letter to the editor printed in the Salt Lake Tribune, he’s a home town boy and a printed writer, certainly he would know how to spell such a simple word, “No one,” he said, “Is two words.”
“Are you certain?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m at least 80% sure.”
Penny and I canvassed the crowd, interrupting conversations and imposing our line of questioning around the wine tasting party.
“No one,” we’d say, “Is it one word or two?”
Everyone had an opinion, but no one was able to commit 100% to the spelling of such a simple word.
Finally we found Elizabeth. She stood by her answer one hundred percent, “No one is two words,” she said. “Otherwise it would be pronounced ‘nooney’ or ‘none.’ That’s why I’m a hundred percent certain. However, since this is my second winter in Antarctica, I know there are a lot of times when I’m 100% certain and it turns out I’m 100% wrong. The wires get crossed here. I’ve seen it happen, maybe it’s happening now. But, I am 100% certain ‘no one’ is two words.”
By this time a dictionary was found on the shelf next to the least played game in Antarctica, Scrabble, and we, a group of people who are well read, educated and in the dark, looked up the word ‘no one’ in the dictionary.
“It’s two words,” Elizabeth, the person who we most trusted with knowing how to work a dictionary, said.
“Okay,” Penny said, “’A lot,’ one word or two.”
“I’m 100% certain," Elizabeth said, "alot is one word."
August 21, 2002 the C-141 landed on the ice runway in Antarctica.
Stepping out of the plane my nose froze. My nasal cavity said, "This is snot good." Utah was only five days in my past, it was summertime there, in the high 90's. This was not definitely not Utah. It was Antarctica and it was the end of winter, spring time, I guess you'd call it, but it was spring time in name alone. The difference in temperature was one hundred and sixty degrees. Things were different here, there was no doubt. The land was different. The people were different. Anything remotely considered a comfort zone was something I was no longer in or near or had no reference to.
Antarctica was my new reality and would be for the next year. This sterile white place where germs can barely live and people shouldn't live was home. The wind slapped my face.
The next day, August 22 I showed up for work, in my new dishwashing uniform: blue shirt, black pants, blue hat and black shoes. The Galley was my work center and dirty dishes were my job. I showed up for work when the dishes were dirty and I was allowed to go home when the dishes were clean. It didn't take long to learn the job.
I knew Antarctica would be too complex to learn in year, but, the people who surrounded me in my day to day life, it was the people I could get to know. The people could make me feel comfortable, warm and in a comfort zone.
My first day of work I was given a small green notebook with about 72 lined college ruled pages. These books, called "green brains," are issued to everyone when they first come to Antarctica. Most people use them to keep notes about their new jobs, phone numbers, tips to stay alive or not at all. My book became a book of names. Every person I met I put their name in the book, a short description and the day I met them.
On August 22, Jake was the first person I met and put in my green brain. He's simply listed as "Jake--The baker." Single handily Jake was responsible for the average weight gain of 10-20 pounds of last years winter over community. His specialty was all things chocolate, sugary and sweet. His cinnamon rolls were gourmet and they weren't even the best thing he baked. Jake simply was--the baker.
From August 22 until April 18, my green brain was a part of my body. In all actuality it was more important than my brain. It knew everyone I had ever met in Antarctica. If there was a question my gray matter didn't know, my green brain did know it. And then, when the population dwindled to 197, I knew everybody. And my crinkled, pocket worn, dog-eared brain stayed home.
On April 18, I met John. John was the last guy in the Winter Over community I didn't know. He kept to himself, worked on the motors of heavy machinery, and ate by himself so quickly I never had a chance to meet him. One day he needed help with the ice cream machine, I said, "sure, my names Phil." He said, "I'm John." Now, two months later, when I see him I say, "Hi John." And he says, "How's it going Phil?" And I don't answer him, because, I know he doesn't want an answer.
And that was it, that was everybody. In this small town, with only one place to eat and one place to wash your dishes, by April 18, I'd met everyone, knew their name and had them in my green book. End of story.
But then. I heard a rumor. "Did you know there's this guy named Al? He works at the water plant, or maybe the power plant, and he never eats in the galley, he cooks all of his own food and, get this, does all of his dishes. He's a hell of a guy. Real nice. Just doesn't get out."
There's no way. It's absolutely, impossible to hide in McMurdo. It's like saying, "Did you know you had another brother, yeah, he lives downstairs. Hell of a guy, real nice, you just don't know him."
My green brain was on my bookshelf, I didn't need to flip through the pages to see if I'd ever met Al, I knew I hadn't. I considered carrying my pocket memory in case I ran into Al so I could put his name in the book when the occurrence happened, but it wasn't necessary, if I met Al, I wouldn't forget Al. And, I'd know him when I saw him, because if I saw him and didn't know him then I would be certain it was Al.
Al was the only guy I didn't know. I put the word out to my other 196 friends in McMurdo, "I've got to meet Al."
"Al who?" was how most people responded. A couple of people said, "Oh, Al, he's a hell of a guy. Just keeps to himself."
A few weeks ago, I saw Al. Sure enough I knew it was him. He walked through the galley and his head was bald. I knew it was him, because I didn't know who this bald person was walking through the galley. And if I didn't know him, then it meant it could only be Al. I got up from my dinner, walked over to introduce myself, and my friend Zim said, "What do you think of my bald head?"
I told him I thought he was Al. "Oh," Zim said, "I guess you've never met Al. He's a hell of a guy."
The next day Zim told me he "ran" into Al and told him how I had thought he was him. Ignoring the confusing abundance of pronouns, I said, "Do you think he'll meet me?" Zim's bald head kind of nodded yes, but bobbed no all at the same time.
"I don't know," Zim said. "Al keeps to himself. The best place to see him is at the library on Saturday night."
"But, nobody goes to the library on Saturday night."
"Exactly."
The Saturdays have come and gone since this exchange, and I only made it to the library once to try and see Al. Theresa was working as a librarian and when I walked through the door, she put a slash mark in her "attendance" column and said, "You're the second person to come in tonight."
"Was the first Al?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "but he left about five minutes ago, I'm surprised you didn't see him on your way here. He's a hell of a guy."
After checking out a book called "Going After Cacciato," the story of a Vietnam troop in search of an elusive AWOL soldier, I went home.
Was it days or weeks after this? I don't know. I finished the book, but I don't remember if they found Cacciato. It was the middle of the day, but it was dark outside. This didn't matter, because in the Pot Room there aren't any windows. I was washing a five gallon square plastic container. This container, at some point, had held a tomato sauce and the sides were colored in an orange/pink hue.
My blue scrubber was cutting through the tomato paste and I was making this dirty thing clean. And when it was clean, I was going to go on break, because that's how my job works. Then, Erika came running back to the Pot Room.
"You'll never guess who's here?" she said.
"Al," I replied.
"You guessed it."
I dropped the container, the scrubber and my gloves in the sink and went up front.
Penny was standing next to the toaster, warming two pieces of wheat bread. I told her Al was here. We looked at each other, then looked across the Galley, and there he was, a man who we didn't know, so we knew exactly who he was, he was Al.
"We've got to meet him," we both said at the same time. Since her bread wasn't quite toast, I walked over to his table and sat down.
To the left of Al was Jennifer, she works at the power plant on the night shift. Curly, permed hair, but it could be naturally curly, not permed. On Al's right was John Penny. If you have read the book about the lady at the South Pole or saw the movie starring Susan Sarandon about the doctor who had breast cancer, then the name John Penny, or Big John, you're familiar with. John Penny is John Penny and, you know what, no one in McMurdo really cares that we live with someone who had a made for TV movie made with him in it. What we care about is meeting the guy sitting next to Big John.
"Hey, Jennifer," I said, "Hi Big John," I said so nonchalantly it was almost chalant, "Hi, Oh, uh, I guess we've never met, I'm Phil."
"Hi, I'm Al," AL SAID as he put out his hand to shake mine. Nobody shakes hands in Antarctica. Nobody. No. Body. Al really is a hell of a guy.
With two pieces of wheat toast, Penny sat next to me and Al introduced himself to her. And Penny and I talked, talked and talked. We broke out our best Antarctic stories.
I told him about the South Pole and the Polar Sea, Penny told him the best ways to find free clothing in the donation boxes around McMurdo. It was like we were on a first date and had, absolutely had, to make a favorable first impression. However, maybe we talked too much.
After Al left, Penny and I dissected our verbal barrage. Maybe we talked too much? Maybe we scared him? Most likely we were the kind of people that kept Al from socializing. Overbearing, jerks. It hurt to hear it, but this was our reality.
That Saturday night, as I was walking home from work, I was kicking a piece of lava rock, thinking about the days encounter and how our verbal assault could have been better handled. I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking or the people around me. I'd passed a few people and no one had bothered to call out my name. Then, as I passed one of my friends he said, "Hi Phil."
And I looked up, and without the need of my green brain, I said "Hi Al."