Today we tried to take a trip out to Cape Evans. Cape Evans is the point where Robert Scott called home base for his attempt to make it to and from the South Pole. Going to Cape Evans is like going back in time almost 100 years. Salt, biscuits, dog food and seal blubber is still in cabin as though the old Antarctic explorers are going to return in just a minute.
This trip to Cape Evans would have been the first time in eight months that Penny and I traveled more than 4 miles away from our home in McMurdo.
It was cold. The wind blew so hard we could almost lean against.Download file
The nine to ten mile trip would take about one to two hours because travelling is so slow in a Delta. A Delta is a large people transporter that bounces across the sea ice on gigantic five feet large black tires. The vehicle is orange and clumsily rumbles verses drives smoothly. It's necessary to buckle yourself to your chair, not because you might crash into something, but just to keep your head from flying into the ceiling as you're launched off of your bench towards the metal roof three feet above you.
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Unfortunately, after driving an hour and being just half-way to Cape Evans, our Delta became a "Delta non-grata" stuck in the snow.
We tried to dig, we tried to rock. And, in the end, three hours later, we had to wait for a tow from an even larger vehicle with tank like tracks called a Challenger.
In the end, we made the most of our trip and, although we didn't see Cape Evans, we did push Penny over.
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Keep in mind, I'm not a computer savvy, HTML genius--I'm just a dishwasher, man. Perhaps this is why it has taken me one year to figure out that I can post short video clips on my website. So, here's a few things that Penny and I have seen, LIVE, for your viewing pleasure. (simply click on download file after the description).
Since we’re limited to uploading only one megabyte, the clips have to be very short. And it also takes about 10-20 minutes to do this, so a few more to come.
THE STORY:
We were near Inaccessible Island and at the point where the sea ice presses up against the island pressure ridges are formed. This is how we entertained ourselves. The flatness you see is the Ross Island Sea covered in 10 feet of ice. In the background is the edge of the volcano Mt. Erebus.
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Now that I'm about to leave, I think I just learned how to put small video clips on this site. I'm testing with this short video. Castlerock is in the background. click on "download file"
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It’s been a good run, I have to admit.
When I first arrived in Antarctica, the only time I’d ever washed dishes “professionally” was when I was 15. Working at Week’s Family Restaurant near my home in Madbury, New Hampshire.
The special of the day, as advertised on the outdoor marquee was “Home Cooked Soard Fish.” A family restaurant that can’t spell together, I suppose, cooks together.
It’s easy to remember the special of the day, because I only worked one day. All it took was one six hour shift to realize that dishwashing was the absolute worst job, not only at Week’s Family Restaurant, but at every restaurant, café and upscale diner in the whole world. From Guatemala to Greece from the North Pole to the South, at 15 I realized washing dishes was a job for morons, ex-cons or those with 43-45 chromosomes.
Yet, this has been my job for the last year and 25 days. Since I don’t have an alter ego who bides his time as a lawless renegade with a rap sheet as long as a four-inch hotel pan, then I must be a moron or a retard. How have I kept this job for one year and 24 days longer than my last dishwashing job?
The thrill of being a dishwasher IN ANTARCTICA only holds its sheen for so long. Like a week. Maybe two. Maybe less than that? No, I had to play mental games with my mind. I looked for the thrill in being able to mop an entire galley floor in 9 minutes. The first day of work it took me 27 minutes to mop the same floor. The difference was, on the first day of work: I cared. I was able to make the floor clean. Now, give me nine minutes and I’ll make the floor wet. I don’t care. I just fake it clean.
As the dishes come slowly marching out of the back end of the dish machine, I can grab six dishes (three in each hand), put them away, reach for the four different types of bowls approaching the back of the machine ever so sweetly and quickly sort them by size and color on the rolling rack positioned at my waste. I have several tricks I can do with bowls. Tossing them in the air, catching them behind my back, stacking them with acrobatic flipping flair, like a Chinese performance group. The Hobart dish machine never comes to a stop while I’m unloading her (I know it’s a her, because I talk to her. “Bertha, I say, “You’ve been my friend for over a year. I love you.”).
My first day of work. The day I didn’t know Bertha by first name, I felt like I was living an episode of I Love Lucy. That one where the conveyor belt of candy is spitting chocolates back to Lucy quicker than she can put them in the box. She stuffs chocolates in her mouth, down her shirt. She put bowls on tops of plates, broke three glasses and had slippery silverware fall on her feet.
No matter how fast I worked, it seemed like the dish machine was hooked up to a Cummins diesel engine chugging out clean dishes like a truck driver with his hammer down and a load to make Milwaukee by midnight.
This talent I now have to unload a dish machine will soon be like one of the thousands of useless bits of knowledge I’ve acquired at this job. I’ve learned to flip coffee filters, clean sugar shakers, sweep an industrial kitchen, clean mega-sized pans, take out the trash in 40 below without wearing a jacket, clean juice machines, take apart an ice cream machine, sort hundreds of items of silverware and on and on and trivial bits of information on and on. One cap of bleach will wash an entire roomful of tables. Two caps of bleach in a bucket of water will eat your hands.
Different tricks, mind games, karioke, memorizing peoples names or coming up with new nicknames for myself got me through some rough moments. The final stop I’ve had to pull out is the stupid outfit I’ve had to wear for the last year and twenty five days. The black pants and blue shirt, a “Chef Wear” outfit, I wear daily has made me look like a sissy in a world of rough cut, hard working, carpenters, mechanics, tradesmen and, even, janitors.
While others have worn thick Carhart overalls, Dickie outfits and tool belts, I’ve been forced by job nature to wear turquoise, pink or yellow Playtex gloves. But, no more. My boss, Jan, gave me a blue jump suit. And I’ve switched my outfit and my attitude.
Knowing I could not mentally handle being a dishwasher for another day, now I pretend I’m in charge of sea going vessel. My outfit makes me the captain of the USS DISHWASHER. I’ve sent out a memo to all the crew who works for me and said, “From now on Phil would like all people to refer to Phil as ‘Captain.’ And, if you have any F#$&ing dishwashing questions, address them to Amy, because Captain no longer cares about washing F#$&ing dishes. Today is September 16. On September 30 I will report for my last day of work. Consider this my Two Weeks Notice.”
Download file(This Excel document shows how much longer I have in Antarctica)
On one hand it seems like a minute ago. A second has elapsed. A moment in time so incalculably minuscule it would take 297 of these instances to equal one blink of the eye.
My residence, my place of habitation for the last year has been in Antarctica.
Then, there’s the other hand. Actually, there are two other hands. Both of these hands have cracked and bleeding knuckles, calluses, cuts and skin rashes. One years worth of hands dunking in other people’s dirty dishwater, their spit, their spittle, their utensil encrusted mouth bile.
One year of taking off that which has been caked on, baked on or burnt to a crisp. On these hands each day has seemed liked like a lifetime. Each second has been an hour and each minute counts down to a time when I will no longer wash dishes for another one thousand one hundred forty three or three hundred and eighty one or one hundred and ninety six people ever again.
Over the winter I had many thoughts: I’m cold; cold again. It’s dark; dark again. And, finally, what will I tell the new dishwashers when they arrive in Antarctica.
This new crop of eager to please, hard working “Dining Attendants” will have the vim, vigor and piss and vinegar I had when I first dipped my hands into the soapy suds of my new job.
Concentrating on the odd reality to the fact they are living in Antarctica, they won’t realize their job (many four-lettered words will be a perfect fit to finish this sentence and describe what it’s like to wash dishes and wipe up after an entire community. However, even a four-lettered word isn’t enough to accurately end this thought. No. Sometimes even a “cuss” word needs help) is shitty.
I’ve spent a winter trying to decide what I would tell this new group of dishwashers. Washing dishes in total darkness for five months, my mind imagined the first meeting between the disgruntled “old timer” who has washed dishes for a year and the excitement of showing up to work the first day to wash dishes IN ANTARCTICA.
I’d been there, I knew what they were thinking and I had two options. First, I could build up these energetic minds with the dream they are hoping to live on this--the Seventh and Frozen Continent or secondly, I could squish their hopes and give them the reality of what it will be like to live in this frozen environment that is referred to as “The Big Dead Place.”
Option Two seemed like a better idea.
That scene from Patton, where George C. Scott is marching back and forth on a stage with a 48 star flag, as large as a movie screen, draped behind him was the kind of pep talk I hoped to give these new dish washing recruits.
“Look at the dish washer sitting on your right,” I planned on saying with a giant image of a green bottle of Palmolive on the stage behind me as I held our first Antarctica Dishwashing meeting. “Now, look at the dishwasher sitting on your left. Now, look at yourself. Which one of you is going home early? Which one of you won’t be able to make it? Who will cry themselves to sleep tonight?
“Ever since the first men stayed a summer in McMurdo there have always been problems in the Galley. On board the Discovery, the ship Scott and Shackleton used to first explore Antarctica, the cook, who was also the dishwasher, could not hack his job. Scott had to chain the dishwasher on deck to keep him in line. They would have sent him home if they could. They can send you home.
“Last year we had two dishwashers quit during the season, a third went semi-nuts and once a week someone went home crying. The year before nine people left the galley early, the year before that, well…you get the picture. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s your friend. But one of you won’t see the sunset on Antarctica in February. Statistically, one of you is already a quitter.
“I was recently asked what it would take to get me to stay here another six months, in other words, to do the job you’re about to do. I said, fifty thousand tax free dollars, a helicopter ride to the Dry Valleys, a room in the best dorm and two days off each week. You’re only going to make six thousand dollars. Your world will revolve around a 1/2 a mile of black and white and diesel fuel, your room is 7.5 x 14 and you’ll share it with someone you won’t like. You’ll work 60 hours a week with one day off. Your take home salary is $4.14 an hour. Paperboys make more money than you do. You are just a dishwasher.
“Look at your hands. Smooth and soft. Soon enough your hands will have so many cracks, bleeding joints and furrowed lines a Palm Reader will need eight days to chart the grooves and canyons in your hands.
“Finally, here’s three words for you: I, bu, pro, fen. What you once used to know like “the back of your hand” you’ll no longer recognize, because you are about to inherit the hands of an old man. Your joints will be stiff, your fingers won’t move. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night and your fingers will be curled like three in the death grips of rigor mortis. Ibuprofen will help, working through the pain is another alternative. So is going home.
“Well, quitters, welcome to Antarctica. Now, go home and get drunk just like every dishwasher did last year and the year before that and…well, even in 1902 they got the picture. Welcome to your shitty life.”
And then, they showed up. With an energy that reminded me of me one year ago. With a desire to work and to explore and to be adventurers. So I canned my “pep talk” and unfurled a giant photo of a bottle of Joy liquid dishwashing detergent and energetically exclaimed, “Get your rubber gloves and let’s go wash dishes.”
Then, I walked back to my boss, Jan, and said, “They’re a bunch of suckers. Get me on the first flight out of here.” And he said, “At least none of them signed a year contract and I’ve already reserved you a seat next to mine on October first.”
The photos are of some Nacreous or mother of pearl clouds. These kind of clouds rarely appear and most likely in polar regions. Super small ice crystals diffract the light and cause a kaleidoscope of colors in the clouds so varied that even Crayola Crayons hasn't invented some of the hues we saw in these formations. And, one photo of the sun. If you walk 1/2 mile to Hut Point, you can see the sun for about an hour. This is how it looks and it's the first time seeing the sun since April 14. It was brighter than I remember, but it sure wasn't warm. (penny took the photo of the cross)