I don't know that I will, but I feel I should type this one leaving all errors, misstatements and misspellings as is.
In fact, i will.
You see, the decent into madness has begun. Actually, this is a quote (I don't know if I can leave all errors as is, because I just spelled "quote" as "cote") or a paraphrase from the book At the Mountains of Madnes by H.G. Lovecraft. And this is actually based off of the unfinished novel by Edgar Allan Poe "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym."
The point is that as we enter into the month of June, our minds start to act like library books: Checked Out. Our daily routines slow down, our attitudes and our words begin to digress. Today I heard a friend say, "i think I just lost my train of thought." I said, "I don't think your thought ever boarded the train." She said, "You're right. this sucks."
If there's a point, here it is. There is something about living in Antarctica throughout the Winter where you start to lose "it." Whatever the "it" may be, it get's lost.
Short term memory becomes a thing you wished you had. The ability to tolerate becomes a word we call "Crusty." As in, "when Phil lost his shit, it's because he's crusty."
keep in mind, I'm not Crusty now, I was Crusty when I spent 14 months washing dishes. Right now, I am just beginning to feel and log the differences we have. The way we see things and the fact that life is just a bit different when you're in the dark.
For instance, all of the supplies we have on station are logged in a program called MAPCON. MAPCON is a throw back to the days when Radio Shack Tandy Computers were going to rule the world with Vacuum tubes and abacuses built into their hard drive. MAPCON is a DOS based program. Basically, you have to forget everything you currently know about computers, and try to remember what it was like to use a computer without a mouse. All instructions into MAPCON have to be typed in ALL CAPS.
the reason MAPCON doesn't understand lower case is a case for the Font Police. i just know that when I get into MAPCON to hit the UPPERCASE KEY, this is key.
As I was SAYING. Today a friend of mine had a request for grease. he wanted a grease which would transfer heat. A grease that would withstand a certain degree of temperature. A grease which was lightening. Since I work in Supply i am one of the people who is supposed to understand MAPCON better than someone who, let's say, uses their shift key.
MAPCON may not be my specialty, but I have caught onto the ways of this program. I have even taught people who are Kings and Queens of MAPCON how to use MAPCON quicker. So, after spending five or TEN minutes looking for GREECE. I could not figure out why I could not find what I was looking for.
I typed in "HEAT GREECE"
RESULTS ZERO.
I typed in "TRANSFER GREECE"
RESULTS ZERO
I typed in "HOT GREECE"
RESULTS ZERO
Then i tried to "TRANSFER GREECE"
Finally, after batting worse than a MLB player off of steroids, hitting way below the Mendoza Line, I simply typed in "GREECE."
RESULTS ZERO
The fact we didn't have any grease on station was the defining moment of, "Oh Shit. Here begins the decent."
Short term memories and spelling and the level where you're used to function starts to get lost.
This fact has been brought up a number of times just this week. The ruts or routines a lot of people used to be in are disappearing.
People who once were really social are retreating to their rooms. People who used to be able to spell, don't realize that Grease is the word, instead of the country.
This is the point where I would throw this document into spell check, capitalize my "i's" and get all my s's into Madness, but. for now, and tonight, I'll enjoy the decent and see if tomorrow I can remember what it was like when--if someone said, "Stick it where the sun don't shine." This meant "stick it in my ass."
Instead of "my life."
I'm not even going to try and pretend this post is about Antarctica. It's not. It's about my friend Molly. It's even written by Molly.
In 1991 I got a job working with the Navy Department of Environment Safety and Occupational Health. The buttons on my coworkers' jackets seemed to shine with great intensity. I couldn't figure out why, until I met Molly. She explained, "Phil, you're working with the Top Brass in the Navy."
Molly worked in Maryland and I worked in Washington, D.C. This was before the Internet so Molly and I would write jokes and make cartoons for each other and then send them back and forth using a futuristic device called "A Fax Machine."
Molly kept me sane and entertained during this time in my life when my primary job with the Navy was to operate the USS XEROX.
Now, Molly lives in Maryland and she still works for the Navy. More importantly than the safety of our country, Molly also runs a cat rescue out of her house. In one email to me she said she has "several dozen" cats. With this many cats, she lives slightly removed from a near neighbor.
I love cats and my love for Molly is greater than my love would be for several dozen cats.
Molly's boyfriend, Dicksmith, lives in St. Louis. Her cat rescue operation is a non-profit organization-if you'd like to know more, or how to donate to such a kind hearted person, leave a message in the comments.
That's about all you need to know for this story that is reminiscent of the time when Jessica McClure got stuck in a well in Midland, Texas. The only difference: Molly is a grown woman with lots of cats.
Here is the story about the time a friend of mine could have died:
Dear Phil,
Can you picture what a window well is? You find them mostly on ramblers, like my house. If the rambler has a basement, the window well is, well, a window well. It is about two feet deep and almost three feet long, about a foot and a half wide at its widest point - a semi-circular piece of metal that keeps the excavated soil away from the foundation where the window is installed to give light to the basement. If you don't have a basement, like I don't, the window well is installed to keep the excavated dirt away from the ventilation panels to the crawl space. I have FOURTEEN window wells around my foundation, a bit of overkill, if you ask me.
Petey inside The Window Well
Last Tuesday evening, I went outside to get the smoked chicken off the smoker and bring it inside. Then I went back outside to close the vents on the smoker, to put out the coals to use for another day. I closed the top vent, and then reached for the first bottom vent, only a few inches above the ground, and lost my balance. I fell backwards, a lot of momentum (mass multiplied by acceleration, in this case that due to gravity) and whomped the ground. Hard.
Well, not exactly the ground. The small of my back hit the edge of the nearest window well and the rest of me was propelled into that space. I was trapped - nothing to grab onto except the edge of the well on one side, my arms stuck in front of me and no way to get one behind me to push upwards. I struggled gamely for fifteen minutes or so, the best I could do was at least get my head and shoulders jammed against the far side of the well, instead of flat on the ground, my butt jammed against the near side (nearest to the smoker) with my knees at ground level and my shins and feet sticking up over the side.
I realized I was stuck for the night, though I did holler periodically in case the neighbors could hear - my nearest neighbor is within a short walk through the woods, though a quarter mile by car.... No succor.
The night got chilly. Cats came to visit. I think they just wanted to be fed. Except Snip and Petey, THEY wanted to sleep on me. I would have welcomed the warmth, but I didn't have a lot of lung volume and the weight of a cat wasn't helping.
I must have slept some because after what seemed like an hour or so, the daylight was back. I hollered some more - someone must be walking to their car to go to work... I didn't hold much hope that I'd be missed at work that day, though I have never once gone AWOL from work.
I had ordered a teeshirt on Monday and got excited that maybe UPS would show up on Wednesday. I listened intently for the sound of tires on gravel. I could hear my phone ring, then my cell phone..."Call 911, call 911, dammit! There's a reason I don't answer!" I hollered every time I heard a dog bark or a lawnmower, some evidence someone might be near.
No luck. The sun came up and moved across the sky. It felt good, being warm. Then I realized when it got directly overhead it would shine right down on me and I wouldn't be able to move. It got uncomfortably hot. I could feel the sun burn my exposed skin. Then a front came through, and it rained. Finally, the sun started to go down. I knew I was going to feel colder being wet. Sigh. Maybe if I don't die of hypothermia tonight someone will catch on, and there's always the UPS man. Or maybe a heating oil delivery, or the electric guy could come to read the meter.
It rained, it thundered, it lightninged.. No sleep, I'd passed discomfort to pain - I was able to move a little bit to relieve some spots when they got unbearable, transferring pressure to OTHER spots until THEY got unbearable - the bottom of the well is covered with bluechip gravel.
Three minute cycles, and I hollered each time I hauled my face up over the edge with my blistered hands. Petey came up. PETEY! Run for help! Nope. Snip! go get the phone! Bring Mommy the phone!
I continued to holler, thinking I'd be more noticeable at night. Nope. Towards morning I got the idea to holler my neighbors' names, they'd hear that, wouldn't they?
Daylight came, but it was still cold, there was cloud cover. And a front coming through, making the trees sound like gravel under tires. The phone rang five times in succession. Please, assholes, call 911!
Dicksmith was concerned when I didn't call or send a 'goodnight' email on Tuesday. He knew I was in a bad mood. But when I didn't send him an email in the morning, he called.
"Molly, I know you might be in a funk, but call me to let me know you're all right."
At work, my absence was noted but not with undue concern - she must be home sick- even though I didn't answer my landline or cell phone when the boss called- maybe she's at the doctor's office.
More calls and emails from Dicksmith: "Molly, you're scaring me. Please call me."
Sure.
He called my sister Holly, on Wednesday afternoon, and told her he was worried. She tried to call and email. No response.
"I'm really worried, Holly, could you drive down to her house (a FOUR HOUR round trip) to see if she's ok?"
"Sure," says Holly, to Dicksmith. "Yeh, right, asshole," she says to herself.
Poor Holly was beside herself with guilt when she found out I was indeed in trouble. It's ok, Holly, I wouldn't expect you to drive 4 hours on a hunch... John could have asked someone CLOSER to check on me.
The next morning when I had gone AWOL a second time, people at work were beginning to be truly concerned. I had calls from my boss.... Dicksmith had tried to call my office the second day in a row and somehow got the main line instead of my private line. He asked if ANYONE had heard from me in the past 36 hours, they sure hadn't.
This finally caused the boss to ask my brother John if she should be concerned. John sent me an email, tried to call - had his wife Brenda try to call.
What is up with these people, did they think I'd only answer the phone if certain people called?
Many folks asked me how I felt and what I thought about, wedged in the window well for forty hours - dag! A whole work-week, in a hole.
''Did you pray?" a lot of people asked.
Well, not really. Once I realized I was stuck, early on, I said, one sided, 'God? I could try to make a bargain with you. But besides that I know you don't 'do' bargains, you and I both know that I won't keep a single promise once I'm free. If I'm free. Just a note, God, I think it would really suck to end my life in a window well. 'Nuff said.'
Did you sing hymns? Were you scared?
No, I was saving my breath, not to mention I had already decided to 'let go and let god'. Not too many hymns about holes, anyway.
No, I wasn't scared, it was actually a comforting feeling to know I was stuck in a hole and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it.
Later I will send you a favorite cartoon concerning the movie 'snakes on a plane.' That's how I felt about it.
Part of the discomfort/pain was that when I tried to get out by pushing my butt back up the side of the well, which put me at the position I was when I originally fell in, the motion would push my shirt UP my back, and my blue jeans DOWN. I didn't even have enough room or leverage to unbutton the damn things to try to pull them back up. This caused lots of bare skin to come in contact with the gravel, plus it was cold. My left shoulder kept hurting like hell, later I found I had rubbed a deep hole in it, wedged as I was. No wonder.
Finally around lunchtime, I thought I heard tires on gravel. I waited a second, then, "HELP!" It was my brother John. "Where are you?!"
"In back, I'm back here!"
Never have I been so glad to see anyone so much in my life.
"John, call 911. Tell them I'm stuck in a window well and I need to be pulled out."
"What," he says, "are you sure? I can try to pull you out."
"No, if one person could pull me out, I could have pushed myself out. I'm wedged in and they're going to need at least two people to pull me straight up. PLEASE call 911."
Poor John. He calls, and repeats what I said, with his phone number and my address. Pause. He says, "No, I don't know how she got in there. No, I don't know if she was trying to get into the house. I haven't gotten that far yet."
While waiting for rescue John was very kind and got a pillow to shove against my raw and bleeding back, and a cup of water.
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that I have never gone 40 hours without having to pee. I, and the rescuers, were VERY lucky I didn't have to take a shit. But by the time I was found, the cats were sniffing at my butt like they'd found a new kind of litter box. The EMTs were very kind, 'honey, we've smelled a LOT worse, and they weren't even stuck in a hole for two days."
The first folks to show up were two firefighters who were hanging around the local fire station. They drove up in a pickup truck. One grabbed my legs, and the other grabbed my armpits, and on the count of three I was hoisted out and laid on the sidewalk. Where I was too stiff to move much, though I did notice the poor firefighters stood back, not to admire their handiwork, but to get upwind.
I thanked them, and told them they could go away now. I figured, hey, I'm gonna be stiff and sore as shit, and I know I'm dehydrated as well. But I've seen the vet a thousand times with a dehydrated cat. You stick an IV under their skin and pump them full. I figured I'd just drink water until I filled back out again.
They insisted I get checked out by the EMTs, who arrived AFTER the fucking fire truck. Fire? Did anyone fucking mention a fire? No? Then why are you HERE? Just to stand upwind and stare at me?
Geez.
The EMTs came, did my vital signs. My pulse was 122, my blood pressure was 179 over 118, but my oxygen saturation was above 90 percent. That's good.
'Why don't you let us take you to the hospital to get checked out?'
I'm FINE, I kept saying, just a little stiff and dehydrated. But my back feels raw, could you take a look at that?
"Oh, my, some of these wounds look pretty deep and they're covered in dirt and grass clippings (my scalp was unpleasantly sandy). Why don't you just come to the hospital with us, they can clean and bandage those wounds, give you some IV fluids to get you started, and THEN you can go home?"
FINE. John offered to pack some clothes and my IDs - most important the Blue Cross insurance card - and give me a ride home from the ER. The EMTs, both women, laughed - "Just like a man," they said, "he didn't pack a bra for you."
They cut my shirt but slid the jeans off, thinking I might want to salvage them. Into a bright red 'biohazard' bag those went. Later, when my sis showed up in the ER, she told me that me AND my jeans stank something awful, and proceeded to march the biohazard bag out of the room at arms' length and into the nearest burn bag.
Back in the ambulance, where they attempted to get the first three or four layers of dirt, sticks and leaves off my back, amid squeals of pained protest from me, a man's voice comes from the back, 'is she decent? I want to say hello'
It was a policeman.
"Lady, I've already talked to your brother. But I just wanted to tell you that I'm here because the 911 call came over the radio as "Man found his sister stuck in a window well, trying to break into his house..." He tells me this is YOUR house, so I don't need to be here. No crime committed."
"Oh," I said, "true, unless you consider stupidity a crime..."
"Well," he said, "I have to admit, this is a new one on me...."
I suppose you can guess the cats got the smoked chicken...
Later, kid
Molly
After spending five days in the hospital, Molly is now home being attended to by loving family members, friends, Dicksmith and several dozen cats.
The Part that mattered from the last story:
Our days off are the busiest day of our week. After working 10 hours a day, six days a week, life piles up.
Phones calls and emails to our friends and family sit piled high and back logged right next to our laundry. Keep in mind your summer (if you're proud to be an American) is our Winter. Your running around in "next to nothing" is our running around in "next to everything."
The Rest of the Story:
On Sunday I wasn't going to do laundry or make phone calls, I'd spend the week walking around in dirty clothes smelling like most people down here do just to have the opportunity to go snowboarding in the dark in Antarctica.
Sunday came none to soon and with it in blew a storm. The storm was rated a Condition Two which meant if we were to go snowboarding we would have been blown up the hill. Our trip was cancelled, and I can't say that I was disappointed, because my Sunday blew by quicker than the wind.
I didn't do laundry, I only made two phone calls and somehow the only day off of my week was over and my alarm sounded on Monday morning at 6:40 a.m.
It was just after 7 a.m. when I stepped outside my dorm to go to breakfast and the odd thing about this morning wasn't the cold or that the wind was still blowing, what was immediately weird was Jon Siegel was standing on the landing of my dorm, Dorm 208.
"Morning, Jon."
"Morning, Phil."
That was all we needed to say. He knew that I knew. And I knew that he knew. I had to get to work, but today was Jon's day off.
It doesn't need to be reiterated how cold it was this morning. This doesn't call for an "It was so cold the lawyers had their hands in their own pockets" kind of joke, because we don't have lawyers down here. Just cold.
If this story took place in Hell, I wouldn't need to remind you it was hot.
But it was cold this morning. And as I walked into the Galley, I looked over my shoulder and Jon was leaning on the metal railing smoking a cigarette, without wearing gloves. The orange bead from his cigarette seemed to get smoked down to the filter with one puff because of the help from the wind.
Jon wasn't wearing a hat, just a yellow bandana on his head and our United States Antarctica issued big red parka on his body. He was wearing non-slip shoes and thin pants. The kind of outfit you'd wear if you were working in the Galley. Which is exactly where Jon works, but not today. Because like I said, today was Jon's day off.
Nearly every member of our community takes Sunday off from work. However, if you work in the Galley you have to have another day off in the week besides Sunday. Just because the community has the day off from work, doesn't mean they take the day off from eating.
For fourteen months when I washed dishes in the Galley, I took Saturday off from work. For fourteen months, I washed the pots and pans of our Sous Chef Jon Siegel, except on Mondays, because that was Jon's day.
It may have been odd to see Jon outside on his day off, but, behind every great cook, stands a better dishwasher. Jon was the only cook who I worked with the entire 14 months of my dishwashing career. This was the reason we didn't need to say more than the statement of what time of day it was. As Jon's dishwasher, I had to know what meals he was preparing, before the butter even hit the pan. I knew what Jon was doing up at 7 a.m. and I knew Jon knew that I knew dinner tonight was going to be great.
Phone calls, laundry, snowboarding. This wasn't on Jon's schedule for his day off. Instead of cooking dinner at McMurdo, which is what Jon does from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. six days a week, he was waiting for a ride over to New Zealand's Scott Base where he would cook dinner from 7:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. for the small group of Kiwis at Scott Base (about 15-18) and about 30 Americans who had been invited over after work.
Jon Siegel grew up in Maine. Ogunquit, Maine I believe. Possibly someone in Maine is nodding their head right now saying, "Ayup, I know Siegel, but he's from Baw Hawbaw." His parents owned an eight room bed and breakfast. They provided the Bed and Jon provided the Breakfast. This is where Jon learned to cook.
I know Jon but I don't know too much about him. I've heard he was in the military and I wouldn't doubt it. Jon is a ball of muscle, nearly a branch of the Armed Forces by himself. The Air Force is the USAF, the Marines are the USM and then there's the USJS or the United States of Jon Siegel. You've heard of "Big John Big Bad John." Well that's like Jon Siegel except for the bad part.
Take Jon's hands, for instance. When I play poker with Jon and he shuffles the deck, it looks like he is holding the cards with two baseball gloves. The cards don't really get shuffled, so much as they fall into order for fear of being ripped in half. They say you can tell a lot about a man by his hands. For instance, if you make a fist, this is supposed to be the size of your heart.
This must mean Jon has a catcher's mitt for a heart and while others would be dreaming and sleeping in on their day off, Jon was standing on the deck of Dorm 208, holding a cigarette like a toothpick and waiting for a ride to take him to work.
There was a cook I worked with who described fixing meals in Antarctica by saying, "It's like they've hired the best engineers from BMW and then turned them loose in a junk yard and said, 'build us a high performance sports car.'"
Each night (except Mondays) Jon takes the available ingredients stocked around station, and he produces Ferraris, BMWs and the occasional Harley-Davidson. With the help of two other cooks, Dave and Cesar, our dinners down here are like we're eating at a high-end restaurant with the atmosphere of a Denny's.
And this is when Jon has the resources of a junkyard and the blueprints to cook for 202 people. Imagine if he was only cooking for a small crowd. Imagine no more.
For Jon, creating a dinner for 50 people isn't work; it's a day off.
Describing this "day off meal" may give the impression we are living high on the hog at the bottom of the world. This night that may have been true, but it was because of thrifty thinking and expert cooking.
For instance, in years past when we have had shrimp for dinner, we've always had to pull the tails off of each and every shrimp when we ate it. This year the shrimp didn't have their tails. If I'd thought about this, I'd assumed we had a new shrimp vendor who sold us "tail-less" shrimp out of the back of his pickup truck in Corpus Christi, Texas (Hey, we're on a government contract down here, if they can get a better deal out of the back of a truck-I'm sure they'd take it). As it turns out, Jon had been collecting shrimp tails since the summer time. Cutting each shrimp, so we wouldn't have to.
After collecting five pounds of shrimp tails, he sauteed these with celery, tomatoes, some of his own truffle oil and stuff I don't know about and then strained the liquid to make a fish sauce for the shrimp, pine nut stuffed sole.
Donna, the cook from Scott Base who was also working on her day off, had gotten up at 1:30 in the morning to start making the deserts and vegetarian meals.
There was wine, cheesecake, crab quesadillas (Jon had also spent hours collecting left over crab from dinners served over the summertime) and a tenderloin I cut with my spoon. In a way I know I am forgetting everything about this evening like all of the work time and deserts and vegetarian fare that Donna cooked up, the conversations before, during and after dinner, how Scott Base transformed their Denny's-like atmosphere into a four star Zagat ambiance review and, yet, inside my body I know I will forget nothing of this night.
Jon didn't go snowboarding or do his laundry. On his day off, he took care of his community.
You know, sometimes in the dark and in the cold, it does feel like we're at the bottom of a mine. Some people might even say that Antarctica is what Hell will become when it freezes over. Don't get me wrong, by no means do I find this place depressing, but you do look for a light, something to get you through. And some days, we're carried on the backs of members in our community.
But, really, this story isn't anything new or a story that hasn't been told before.
Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell
Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well
Grabbed a saggin' timber, gave out with a groan
And like a giant oak tree he just stood there alone-Big John
And with all of his strength he gave a mighty shove
Then a miner yelled out "There's a light up above!"
Our days off are the busiest day of our week. After working 10 hours a day, six days a week, life piles up.
Phones calls and emails to our friends and family sit piled high and back logged right next to our laundry. Keep in mind your summer (if you're proud to be an American) is our Winter. Your running around in "next to nothing" is our running around in "next to everything."
One, two, three layers of clothing to cross the icy dirt road to work, means three times the amount of laundry to do each week.
This is not O.P. Shorts and Izod tank top weather. Then again this isn't That 70's Show, either. The only thing we might have in common with disco balls and Saturday Night Fever is our temperature has been blowing in the negative 70s and that is not DYNAMITE!
Sunday is my only day off in a week, and I was planning to go snowboarding. The only time I have ever been snowboarding was the last time I was in Antarctica, I strapped on a board, figuring to do a McTwisty Off the Face of Gnarly Ob Hill, and instead did a header face first into a pile of ice.
The scrapes, the scratches and laughs from newly hatched penguins meant little to me at the time. I only had one reason to snowboard on this day, and that was because I don't really like snowboarders. Living in Utah I've ended up at parties with people who have only one thing in common and in life and that is snowboarding.
It seems at each of these chest beating, "my board is bigger or smaller than your board" (whatever happens to be the Sweetest Sized Snowboard) the goal was always to talk over or "one up" whoever just finished their last sentence.
"Oh yeah, well once I snowboarded backwards down the bunny slope of Alta."
"Dude, I boarded down the bunny slope, backwards and hopping like a kangaroo."
"Well, screw all y'all, I once strapped my bindings to two live bunnies and snowboarded all day until I could make my hot ass girlfriend a jacket out of bunny fur."
This was why I wanted to go snowboarding in McMurdo, simply so I could one up the one uppers by saying, "No biggy, but once I snowboarded in Antarctica...can we talk about baseball now?"
(This is where I say "good night" and "to be continued." So far I have written very little about what I had intended to write. I should really stick to an outline.)
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." The words written on this cross for Robert Scott and his men who died returning from the South Pole
There's a new ghost in town.
This one is creepy and crawly. And he will be haunting the dark corners of McMurdo, and during the Winter--all of the corners are dark.
Today we lost Vern.
We lost Vern in the sense that we know exactly where he is, but where we found him when we lost him was shriveled up at the bottom of his 500ml glass beaker. The beaker Vern called home. The beaker that was its own icy glass continent on an ice continent.
Vern was a spider who hitched a ride from New Zealand on our fresh fruit and vegetable order back in early February. He was able to eat a couple of grubs and a few bugs after he arrived. Back when fresh food came in often enough to keep a spider alive. Back when the sun used to shine.
Vern's last meal was an aphid of some sorts who came riding down here on a tomato which was in a tossed salad that Bec, our science tech, found on her dinner plate after the last flight of February 28, 2006
Vern was discovered this morning underneath his cobweb he had so patiently and precisely built inside his beaker, waiting for a bug to fly in for a visit and lunch. Vern lived in a flared graduated cylinder and it seemed like he used the hash marks of milliliters to attach his web to the side of the beaker. Vern constructed a scientifically accurate web. It wasn't a web of mischief or misdeeds, but a web of beauty.
If Vern had gone against the grain and tossed rocks in his glass home, he would not have lived any longer than he did. There's not a bug alive who could have flown through the glass of Vern's home, and there's not a bug alive in Antarctica. If there were, then Vern would have eaten it.
Now there are just memories. Like the time we had two spiders, another one named Vera and we didn't think Vern or Vera would ever eat again so they moved in together. At first they seemed to get along great, then Vern ate Vera. Those were the good ol'days.
Another time, just a couple of weeks ago, Vern was looking pretty weak, so I found a needle and poked my finger trying to drop blood on Vern's head. Sadly, I didn't have the nerve to poke myself hard enough to draw very much blood. It seemed like a lost cause. Then, as I was throwing away the hypodermic needle, I accidentally poked myself in the hand. At that point, there was enough blood for Vern, but he didn't eat. Lucky me, because I've seen The Fly and The Thing. Science Fiction is weird, but Science Fact could have bred an Ice Monster, with eight legs, six eyes and three pairs of black glasses.
I've heard it said that when your pets die, they are waiting at the Rainbow Bridge to help you cross over into heaven. Aside from the dying part, I've always looked forward to the day when I have a big pet reunion in the afterlife with Chipper (she was a good dog) and all of my cats: Mr. Friendly, Vincent 45, Chinook, Mutley and Butterball.
When the rapture takes me away as I'm crossing over the Rainbow Bridge, I'm going to look past the colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo. I'm going to lean over the Rainbow Bridge and check under the color of violet, and hopefully, because I know he was a good spider, I'll see Vern.
Another night's activities in a place where it seems like every day is Halloween.
The party theme this time was Hillbilly.
In the real world, the world that exists up above the Antarctic Circle, I rarely participate in "dress up events." Halloween is still my least favorite holiday. Even as a child, the only thing I liked about October 31 was waking up to a bunch of candy and a bellyache on November 1st.
Down here it's just different. People dress up in ways they never would back home.
In one case there were singing "girls." One two three kick, one two three kick, and so on. The "girls" wore sarongs and their big heavy boots with their hairy legs bare. They wore new white mops for hair and had a black missing tooth painted on. Corny though it was, it sent the audience into peals of laughter.
Oh, wait a second, that didn't happen down here. That happened (nearly word for word) in the Stephen E. Ambrose book Wild Blue. And I really have to hand it to Mr. Ambrose, it really is a lot easier to write a story by using other people's words.
The point is when there are a lot of men and few women and you're on a remote Pacific Island during World War II or on an Antarctica Island while your country is at war, you escape in the ways you have available.
And Howdy, we were Hillbillies.
For a moment during the party, I was completely zoned out looking at all of these misfits living together and dancing like a bunch of inbred rednecks. It's like the old Christmas cartoon where all of the toys with broken parts and missing limbs or rocking horses with square legs happily exist on "Misfit Island."
At the Hillbilly Party, everyone was running around in bare feet, with black teeth painted on. Inside it looked like a bunch of folk were having a family reunion at the lake. Outside it was over 60 below zero.
Joe, the PA who fixed my tooth, was playing harmonica like he was born with a silver one in his mouth. The harmonica accentuated his white form fitting dress. Ben, the janitor, dressed up like the retarded mongoloid byproduct of years of blue grass mountain inbreeding. Chris wore a mullet wig and KB wore a sign that said, "Your trailer or mine." I ended up looking like Ralphie from a Christmas Story.
Corny though it all was, it sent us into peals of laughter.
Nothing says "Happy Mother's Day" like a photo from one of the laundry rooms on McMurdo Station.
I'm certain that my mom will know as soon as she sees this picture that I didn't make this sign. My artistic skills are more along the lines of autistic. Stick figures and coloring outside the lines are the extent of my art projects.
There are three people in our recreation department and one of them made this sign and gathered photos of people around station wishing a Happy Mother's day to their moms with the anonymous "Me" as the hearted signature.
Certainly other mothers knew their sons or daughters hadn't made this sign. Certainly moms weren't duped into thinking this was a carefully planned out art project just for them.
Certainly not.
There are already reportings around station of "My mom cried when she saw this photo." When we're far away from home and our options for Mother's Day are to either order flowers over the Internet, to buy something from Amazon or to make a phone call from the bottom of the world, I suppose this simple sentiment, conceived and drawn by another mother's son or daughter realizes the adage that "it's the thought that counts."
Some people had their photo taken with this sign outside, with an Antarctic backdrop just in case their mothers forgot where they were. My mom hates the cold. Wishing her a happy Mother's Day while standing outside in Antarctica would be like saying "Happy Mother's Day" to her on September 11th. It's just not right.
Nope. I chose the laundry room. Not because I think of my mother as my personal laundry attendant, but because laundry is just one of the many things she did while I was growing up that I never thanked her for.
Thinking back to all of the things I took for granted when I was a child makes me really embarrassed. Embarrassed because I don't know that I've ever said, "thanks."
When I was young we rarely ate out. You cooked almost all of our meals. I would much rather have eaten at McDonald's. Thank you for all of the meals you made using your red checkered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.
Thank you for the home made syrup, hot chocolate, sweet and sour pork, birthday cakes and chocolate chip cookies.
When Juli brought home a stray dog, thank you for letting us keep Chipper. She was a good dog.
Homework. I can remember sitting at our kitchen table with my 7th grade project due the next morning. I was supposed to draw and color a picture of all 50 states. Then write in the state capital, state flower, state bird, state nickname, etc. The kind of project that I thought was so overwhelming I didn't even start it until the night before it was due. As I said, I'm not artistic, I couldn't even draw Colorado, so you stayed up with me, drawing the states as I filled in the details like the First, the Silver, the Keystone and the Lone Star state. That and many other school projects would still be incomplete without your help. Thank you.
You taught me to spell. Thank you.
You taught me to read. Thank you.
You taught me to drive. Thank you.
Today I did laundry. I did the laundry for one person and it took me several hours to sort, wash, dry and put the clothes away. I don't ever remember doing laundry growing up. Not once. I'm sorry. And thank you.
The homework assignment I hated the most was "vocabulary. "Each week, along with spelling words, we had to use the new words we were learning in a sentence. My mind had the most difficult time of taking a new word or a word out of context and then forming a thought or phrase or story around that word. Patiently (I realize now but didn't then) you would sit and teach me the word, how it could be used and a sentence that could work with that word. One word at a time, one assignment at a time, one week at a time you taught me how to write. Thank You.
Happy Mother's Day.
This morning I took a photo of the food we were going to eat for breakfast.
Today this is just a photo of sausage, hash browns, eggs and pancakes but tomorrow this very photo could tell the people of the future (not the "tomorrow" future as in 24 hours, but the future of 100 years from now) what life in Antarctica was like during the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Six.
The New Zealand Antarctic station, Scott Base, which is about one and a half miles from McMurdo has a population of around 14-16 this winter and three of these residents are conservationist.
Their task, this Winter, is conserving items left behind when Ernest Shackleton could no longer endure this area after he made an attempt to be the first person to the South Pole in 1908.
Shackleton built a hut at Cape Royds-about 15 miles from McMurdo. While 15 miles seems as close as a trip to the supermarket, very few us ever get the chance to travel this far to see Cape Royds.
When you sign a contract to work in Antarctica, the emphasis is on the word "work." During a typical season you will be lucky to travel five miles out of town, and then only by going on the longest certified hike out to Castle Rock.
During the summer, depending on the condition of the ice that covers the ocean, there are a few trips on snow machines that take people out to Cape Royds. This year, to my understanding, about the only way to see Shackleton's Hut was to be a scientist doing conservationist work for the Cape Royds hut or you went out there because you happened to slip through your university cracks with a degree in studying penguins.
Cape Royds is home to an Adelie penguin rookery.
Going to Cape Royds is rare. So, for these conservationists to bring pieces of Cape Royds to Scott Base, it's a very exciting event. Once a week, a van load of Americans can travel over to Scott Base and get a tour of the conservationist's work. This week, I got to go over there.
They have nearly three thousand artifacts from the Shackleton hut to restore this Winter. And it was the tins of food that just fascinated me when I was there.
Full cans of dried celery or mutton chops or tripe and onions were the meal du jour spread over this make shift laboratory that was off-set from the Scott Base vehicle maintenance shop.
This was like being backstage at the Smithsonian. Each of the conservationist has their own specialty, either in conserving the material in the boots made out of a horse's feed bag that were sitting on the work bench or in the proper way to clean out rotted, fetid food from these old tins without damaging the historical value of a simple can of food.
Because we are in Antarctica, which is like a walk in freezer that happens to double as a continent, a lot of the cans are still fully intact without the food leeching out of the cans. These cans can get a cleaning to remove the salt from their surface because the hut is right next to the Ross Sea. Only the cans where the food was leaking or seeping out got the full treatment of removing the food by cutting a small square in the bottom of the tin can.
Tripe and Onions about 100 years past the expiration date.
This project is funded by the Natural History Museum of London in conjunction with the Antarctic Heritage trust. They are keeping a blog of their findings, and a photo of my trip over there was recently on their website. Another fascinating item at this website is this webcam which shows what it looks like down here. It's dark because there isn't a sun.
After walking out of the vehicle machine shop, and out to our van, we had to walk through the food warehouse of Scott Base. All of their canned Cokes and corns and peaches lined a shelf ready to be eaten.
It was nearly eerie to think and feel that in a way the only difference is 100 years.
Routine is the way the day to day becomes the week to week and then the month to month.
Soon I know I will fall asleep in Antarctica and then wake up on a beach in the Cook Islands. This isn't a dream, this is a reality about how the time can really fly down here.
This seems to happen because each night of the week is allotted an activity. The same activity. Be it bowling on Tuesdays or watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Mondays. Friday I play poker and Sunday I play a card game called "Oh Hell." My wild nights of variety take place on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Every other Wednesday is Bingo and I also have a bi-weekly on-again-off-again relationship with the Library on Thursdays. This means once every other Wednesday or Thursday I have free. These every other nights are "Me Nights."
On a Me Night I get me self together with a friend and try to play cribbage. What can I say, I'm a people person. Besides, I have plenty of alone time down here. I call that sleep.
With so much of my daily routine regimented, it would be hard to call any of the ruts in my road a favorite, but I certainly do have one moment of my day that I always look forward to and that has been my one o'clock lollipop break.
The company store is open until 1 p.m. every day (except when they're closed on Mondays). After eating lunch from 12:30 to 12:59, I go to The Store and buy one dollars worth of lollipops. That's four pops at two bits apiece. On Sunday I buy eight pops because two bits, six bits and eight bits are a dollar and when I forget the store is closed on Monday, then I holler.
The real variety in my life comes in the flavors of the lollipops I choose. Well, in two of the flavors I choose. I always get two cherry lollipops and then the third and fourth pop is either a grape, cherry, orange, chocolate, sour apple or raspberry lollipop.
Watermelon is my least favorite flavor. I only get that one on accident if I think I'm holding a sweet succulent cherry lollipop. Cherry is on my list twice, because I've been known to get three cherries in one day. Never four cherries, because that's just insane.
Blow Pops and Tootsie-Pops are the two kinds of lollipops I get to choose from, and even though I love Blow Pops better than the Tootsie I usually get two of each kind of lollipops so that one day I won't walk into The Store and only have Tootsie-Pops to chose from because some sucker has purchased all of the Blow Pops.
Lately it's getting difficult to find a good cherry pop in the store because all of the Blow Pops are mostly down to only two flavors: watermelon and grape (coincidentally--my two least favorite flavors). My goal is to find the sucker who keeps taking the choice flavors of my lollipops (cherry) and when this happens I am determined to count how many times I punch him/her in the nose just to answer the question of how many licks it will take to get to the center of their lollipop-stealing head.
And then, it all went to shit.
Yesterday I woke up and I wasn't on a beach of white sand in the Cook Islands asking for another cocktail. Nope. I was lying back in the dentist's chair, saying "I was on my fourth lollipop of the day and my tooth cracked."
Problem #1: My tooth cracked.
Problem #2: We don't have a dentist in Antarctica.
In America I have a great dentist. The greatest dentist anyone could ever ask for. If you live in or around Round Rock, Texas you should quit brushing your teeth just to have your cavities filled at Advanced Smiles Dental. While you're there tell Dr. Eivens her brother in Antarctica said, "Hello."
During the Summer there is a dentist in Antarctica, but in the Winter there is a doctor, a physician's assistant (PA) and a physical therapist.
Oh, and apparently lots of lollipops.
Joe, the PA, has the most experience with dental care. I don't recall how long my sister was in dental school, but I do recall it was for more than five hours. Before coming to Antarctica, Joe was given a five hour crash course in emergency dental care.
When I called Joe and told him I chipped a tooth, he said, "On a lollipop." Notice there isn't a question mark at the end of this statement. Notice it wasn't a question he asked, but a statement that he stated.
I guess when The Store has a sign outside Their Door advertising, "Lolly Pops Phil!" people around town know my penchant for the hard candy with the chewy soft center.
My appointment with Joe was at one o'clock yesterday. When he set up our dental meeting I felt like telling him this time wouldn't work because I would be busy with my last cherry blow pop then grape Tootsie-Pop then watermelon (yuck) Blow Pop and orange Tootsie-Pop, but I didn't think he'd understand.
Through a cracked toothed mouth I had to promise Joe I would no longer eat lollipops and then he spent two hours working on one tooth. If I didn't know Joe wasn't a dentist I wouldn't have known that Joe wasn't a dentist.
Even though I held on to the chair with white knuckles waiting for Joe to stab me in the tongue or use a drill when he meant to rinse out my mouth, the only mishap happened when our doctor came in to assist with the final bonding on the tooth.
Before the doctor came in, I told Joe my sister was my dentist and that she always gave me a bite block to help keep my mouth open. So Joe gave me a bite block. I also told Joe that my tongue has a habit of following the tools around in my mouth while the dentist is working. In the dental world this is called a "Curious Tongue."
I could tell Joe had not learned about the "Curious Tongue" in his five hours of dentistry. He liked the lingo.
So, when the doctor came in and they were filling the gap in my tooth, my tongue did what my tongue does and Joe said to the doctor, "Phil's sister says, 'Phil has a curious tongue.'"
The mishap happened because I saw the doctor's face and I nearly bit off his and Joe's fingers as I quickly spit the bite block out of my mouth and said, "My sister is my dentist!"
In the book, The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard says that in coming to Antarctica "Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, 'What is the use?' For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal."
For an Antarctican, reading The Worst Journey in the World is like a Christian reading the Bible or a geek being able to quote from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the books, not the movies).
The Worst Journey in the World is a very thick book with very few photos or drawings. Simply getting through this book is a journey nearly in and of itself. In the final chapter some of the last words say, "but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal."
I was riding a stationary bicycle in the Winter of 2003 when I read those final words about the worst journey in the world.
Friendships form fast in Antarctica and when I saw that sentence the sweat from exercising soaked my shirt and I cried. The Winter was one month away from being over, and I figured I would see very few of these people ever again. At the time, I planned to never come back to Antarctica. I had been a dishwasher for nearly a year and the pots and pans had taken their toll on my brain. I wanted to wash my hands of this place. When, in fact, I just needed to get the hell out of the dish room and back to Antarctica.
One of the people I was lucky to meet that winter was a painter named Jim Julian.
If it wasn't for Antarctica I would most likely have never meet Jim. Sometimes you might say that the reason you wouldn't meet someone is because you don't "run in the same circles." With Jim this isn't true, because Jim doesn't run in any circle. I don't know if you'd even call what Jim does as running in a straight line, because he is more like the period at the end of this sentence.
For instance, take the Galley where the community gets together and meets for meals and conversation three times a day. There are four different sizes of tables in the Galley. The rectangular table sits six comfortably, the circular seats eight, the square tables seat four and the smallest table, sometimes referred to as the Suicide Table, accommodates one and can kind of fit two.
By the time I get to lunch, breakfast or dinner, my friends are always sitting at a rectangular table. Usually there are seven or eight of us crowded around the six person table. Sometimes we consider moving to a circular table, but change happens in McMurdo at glacial speed. We bump elbows and turn our trays sideways (or "portrait") so we can all eat our lumpy oatmeal or Szechuan beef as a group. Commiserating about the weather, the food, the recreation, the weather, our jobs and the weather.
There are usually several tables crowded to portrait tray status. Like I said when I paraphrased what Apsley Cherry-Garrard said by saying "friendships form fast in Antarctica." We're all sledging down here and that is worth a "great deal."
Sometimes when I'm crowded with my group of friends, I'll look down at the lower level in the Galley and Jim is sitting at a table for two by himself.
In 2003 I wrote a story about Jim (it's the last story at this link) and ended it with that Cherry-Garrard quote about friendship.
In 2003 Jim was a painter, this year, like last year he is a janitor. A lot of people use the job as janitor for a low-level level job to get to Antarctica. Then they come back after finding a different job that pays more and deals with toilets less.
Jim is a janitor, as best I can tell, because it doesn't use his brain. It's like the company gets his body 10 hours a day, but he gets to keep his brain for all 24 hours.
He's been coming down for seven seasons (four times a janitor, once a painter, the hellish job of dishwashing and the dreaded outdoor work of being an insulator helper). I met him his fourth time down here, and when he invited Penny and me into his dorm he said, "This is the first time I've ever had anyone in my room."
We were invited over to see his artwork. This is one of the reasons why he keeps coming back to Antarctica, to work on his drawings. His pictures were meticulous and perfect. One picture, he said, he painted four or six times just to get the right hue.
This season Jim was planning to possibly draw that same picture nine more times or work on a new art project until the day Craig, one of my friends from the rectangular table, asked Jim if he wanted to be in their band.
I don't know if the question was posed to Jim on a lark or how it came about. I recall Craig saying something like, "It's time Jim gets out."
For Jim, I thought, one is company and two is a crowd. I felt like seeing Jim in a band would be like watching Stephen Hawking walk and talk. Sure there's brilliance in the chair, but the chair is where he's always been.
At first Jim would say, "Yeah I'm in a band, but I'm just going to hold a guitar close to the amp and play feedback. The rest of the band will play the music."
One morning at the rectangle, Craig said, "Jim fired our drummer."
I said, "I thought Jim was just playing feedback, how could he fire anyone?"
"He fired the drummer. Pass the napkins."
No one in the band talked about what Jim was playing, but my curiosity starting piquing. Jim lives four or five doors down from me and I started seeing guests coming in and out of his room.
Three years ago Jim had a bed made to military precision, a picture of Merl Haggard on the wall and Jim in his room. Now he was having company? One of the guys going in and out of Jim's place was Nathan. I didn't know Nathan before I came down here, but I know people who know Nathan because Nathan is a musician from Portland and he has played music with Lana Rebel, the singer for the band the Juanita Family, who I listen to on my I-pod. It's even rumored that Nathan once sung back-up vocals with Steely Dan.
Nathan brought down nearly a recording studio of musical equipment for this Winter and he was sharing it with Jim, but Nathan was sharing little with me on what was going on behind closed doors. Once he let slip, "Jim can do things with a guitar that I can't."
I thought this meant, "For instance: Jim plays shitty-and I can't."
My roommate Tad works once a week at Gear Issue or what I call the Costume Shop in McMurdo. He said, "Something is going on. Every week I work, Jim comes in looking for a new costume to wear when his band plays."
Passing Jim on station as he was mopping the floor or cleaning a bathroom, I'd ask him how his band was doing, "Oh, okay," he'd say looking at his mop head, "I just play feedback and then Nathan plays this psychedelic sound on his keyboards. And I'll be using the same kind of guitar and amps that Jimi Hendrix played. For feedback."
Last weekend, Jim's band "Captain Butterfly" played at the community weekend party. Like all bands who supposedly are going to suck, Jim's band played first so they wouldn't ruin the party. I got their early, because I had a feeling this was not just one song of guitar noise.
Captain Butterfly was introduced by Jim's Sophomore year janitorial co-worker Ben. Ben has an almost diarrheal way with extemporaneous words, saying something like, "suckled in the cocoon of the womb of Mother Nature, Captain Butterfly has metamorphosised on stage tonight to spread his wings." Certainly there were then references to genitalia, fecal matter and space docking, and finally Captain Butterfly walked on stage.
Jim wore a tight leopard skin shirt that revealed his Janitorial muscles, his midriff and black leather belt holding up a pair of regular ol'Levi jeans. He was further outfitted with bug-eyed glasses, antennas, plastic flowers in his hair and, of course, butterfly wings. Nathan was a golden lady on keyboards. The singer was an aboriginal Dorthy. The drummer was a monkey and the bass player was weird.
Everyone in the band started playing and then Jim, transformed from the period in a sentence into an exclamation mark. He became Captain Butterfly.
He held the guitar away from the amp, in the wrong direction to play "just feedback," but in the right way to play guitar.
After the weekend, on Monday, Jim was in my building taking out the trash, I said, "Jim, Captain Butterfly was brilliant."
"Oh, no. There were a lot of mistakes." He was no longer Captain Butterfly. He was Jim the Janitor.
"I thought you didn't know how to play guitar."
"Well, I guess I do. I haven't played in 20 years, but I guess I can play. I can hear a note and then play all around it."
Jim played around the note, between the note and underneath the music. His fingers danced up and down the neck of the guitar. When Nathan said, "Jim can do things I can't do." He meant, "Jim can play the fucking guitar."
"Those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal." And I was a good deal lucky to see Jim play, because Captain Butterfly was billed as a "One Time Show." I think during the introduction, Ben said, "The life of Captain Butterfly is shorter than that of a fruit fly. He is here for only one night. Then he'll have sex with everyone in this room and die."
Unlike Jimi Hendrix, some musicians can be raised from the dead, as Jim was walking down the hallway with an armful of trash, he said, "You know, after playing the guitar I went to bed that night. Then I woke up-with this baseline in my head."
Once a month I help one of my co-workers, Ben, gather up all of the food the galley will need so they can cook us the fine meals they prepare three times a day seven Chuck-a-Rama-all-you-care-to-eat days in a row.
The last time I worked in the freezer it was a beautiful day in Antarctica. It was zero degrees outside, but it was minus 30 in the freezer. Spending several hours working indoors in Antarctica in building that was colder than the frozen "March of the Penguins" continent seemed very ironic. Here I was working inside a building in Antarctica, but I would step outside and into Antarctica to rejoice in the warmth of sunshine and zero degree weather.
This month, my rotation in the freezer was completely different. It was still minus thirty in the freezer, but Antarctica lived up to its icy reputation for being cold and threw down a minus 58 day (with wind chill).
The first time I worked in the freezer I had to wear five layers of clothing. There were five layers if you include my jockey shorts as "a layer." And, while you may not count your underwear as a "layer of clothing," trust me when I say, "my boys" appreciate every layer they can get.
The fifth layer of clothing I wore on my food pull day was a thick pair of Carhart insulated overalls. Because I don't wear these Carharts very often, mine are still quite new and very stiff. Imagine what a Gingerbread Man looks like with blue eyes, a Red Hot for a cold nose, black licorice glasses all the while standing on a mound of white frosting and this is my minus 30 freezer attire. In fact, when I have to work in the freezer I wish someone would first bite my head off, because this is the only part not protected by the warmth and brown of Carhart clothing.
Stepping into the freezer this last month, my body felt a drop in temperature of 30 degrees. Yesterday, however, minus 30 was 30 degrees warmer than minus 60. That's math.
Now then, my body took this to mean that minus 30 was warm, even though this was the same temperature it was 30 days ago, the last time I did the food pull. It's thirties--man.
My insulated Carharts were too warm to wear in the freezer, so I stripped down to a comfy four layers of clothing and we began our food pull day.
Ben and I were able to work in the freezer for longer periods of time without taking a break, because if we took a break we had to walk outside and it was just too warm to leave the freezer.
After finishing pulling food in the freezer, we moved up to building #120. Building 120 is where all of the food is kept that can't be frozen like cans of pineapple, peanut butter, cooking oil and for some reason an entire case of M&Ms.
Since we had worked so efficiently and warm inside the freezer we were able to work slower and take lots of breaks in the warm room surrounded by containers of mushrooms and piles of picante.
There are many great traits about Antarcticans, but a universality that permeates this town is the ability to tell a good story and Ben is no exception to this rule. I suppose it's because so little goes on here that we that we have to transport each other through words, to the world where we used to live.
Ben was a Theology Major in college, and at one point as I was standing on the metal floor of 120 calling up orders to him to pull three cases of black olives and two boxes of Molly McButter off the shelf I asked him a question about his perception of God and Jesus.
I recall there was once a story about the Sermon on the Mount. Talking to Ben in building 120, I got the Sermon on the Soy Sauce, because this is the box where Ben was sitting when we discussed Theology.
I grew up a Mormon and he grew up a Christian. Some Theologians would say these two schools of divinity are the same and others would say they have little in common, Ben said (quoting some guy who was probably a saint, but I'd never heard of him because in the Mormon Church saints are reserved for people like St. Nick), "You should share religion where ever you go. And sometimes, you should even use words."
Here's what a wall-to-wall freezer of frozen food looks like in Antarctica:
This is only one of three aisles stacked ceiling to floor with frozen food. Ideally this is one year's worth of frozen food for 202 residents of McMurdo from March to October and approximately 1,100 people from October to February.
In order to collect some of these food items out of their boxes we have to scale this mountain of meat and frozen vegetables like Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Carroterest. Why do we scale this wall of food? Not because it's there, but for Cut Corn.
A lot of the food is accessible by the forklift. Ben drives the "Bendy" and I climb into the "man basket" and get lifted 15 to 30 feet off the frozen floor. Riding in the man basket I feel like Bjork in her music video "It's Oh So Quiet" plucking food for Antarcticans as people around the community dance in glee for flank stank, chicken and love.
