Feeling Festive

Sigh...I'll blame it on overwrought emotions, but really I think part of me wanted to get way too drunk.  I went through the motions of eating some breakfast, but you're really stacking the deck against yourself when you wake up at 7am to start celebrating xmas the way this town does best.  I joined a friend for coffee with Bailey's and a room picnic before heading to our department's pre-party "toast."  This conjures the image of a group of classy people clinking champagne glasses, right?  To be fair, there was champagne.  There was also a keg of IPA, and, you know, paper cups are small, so you should fill yours many, many times.  Our revelry only increased when we had to move tables aside and arrange some dunnage for last-minute South Pole cargo to be delivered via forklift.

The main event this weekend is the town xmas party.  They clear out the vehicles and clean the oil and hydraulic fluid from the maintenance garages.  Santa and his sleigh are available for photos (you lap-sitting is strongly encouraged), there's bad dance music, and everyone's devoted to partying.

Suffice to say, I bruised my knees bowing before the toilet, then slept a long long time.  Everything is ok now, and I was able to enjoy my lobster tail and mashed potatoes and chocolate truffles today.  Also suffice to say, many people expressed heartfelt appreciation of each other, including myself and particular friends of mine.  So the dessert and hugs made it a great holiday.

late-night light

-Oh geez, I almost forgot: it was also Solstice Silent Dance Party!  Except because of xmas, we changed everyone's day off, so no one came.  But I had my own private celebration, and let the raw and life-affirming energy of Green Day channel itself through my limbs and out into the Antarctic midnight sun.

Scattershot

The vastness of the landscape neutralizes all urgency.  Our myriad bustling, to-ing and fro-ing -- like frenzied ants picking their way across an endless stretch of desert -- is diminished by massive volcanic mountain ranges, colossal glaciers, towering icebergs, entire frozen seas.

Ivan looms large until one remembers Mt. Erebus is 12,448 ft high.

We had a toga-themed day bar, to which one team lead wore a garment of cargo netting, and another fashioned a more typical bed sheet-type toga with cannabis print.  Awe-struck, I had several questions:
1. Where did someone find bed sheets with pot plants on them?
2. Were they part of a room-wide decor theme, or just a one-off?
3. Why did the owner decide to give said sheets away?
4. How did Tom make the brilliant decision to pair them with a bright yellow fanny pack?

My contribution to the event was determining the ingredients of the signature cocktail: an Alexander the Grape is equal parts red wine and gin.
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Because I'm in a list-making mood...this week, mealtime discussions included the following topics:

- what defines a life well lived
- what is happiness and how long can one sustain a state of happiness
- how to make marshmallows from scratch
- whether or not you need to put on shoes to go to the public dorm bathroom
- that farts are always funny

Industrial skittles, guzzle the rainbow.

Driving Force

It occurs to me that I have not thoroughly described the job of shuttle driver.  So, the Shuttles department is tasked with:

- transporting passengers to and from the airfield
- driving support staff to and from the airfield, including anyone from cargo handlers to ground control workers to the food service staff
- taking crew to, from, and around the airfield (usually divided by role and rank -- it would be tragic for the officers to ride with the enlisted, and the mechanics are busy at different times than the pilots)
- taxi rides around town when people have lots of equipment or heavy/bulky items
- bag drag and bellhop (getting passenger baggage to and from the transport building and dorms)
- driving fancy NASA scientists to the Long Duration Balloon facility to play with giant balloons
- check out vehicles, which boils down to pulling dipsticks, looking for leaks, and noting mileage
- dispatching vehicles while monitoring two radio channels
- in theory, washing vans and windows

Up close to an LC130, waiting for the crew to offload the 

precious urn coffee they require to fly (and survival bags).

Normally things are pretty organized and chill.  I spend a lot of time reading, knitting, applying temporary tattoos reviewing equipment operation manuals in between drives.  But then a flight to, say, South Pole will be delayed by weather.  This triggers a cascade of rescheduling, reassigning drivers and vans, or even driving a Delta -- which achieves maybe 18 mph with the pedal to the floor.  Even when our plans get scrambled, though, it's still pretty chill.

This week we all faced the harsh reality of nature: not one but two adorable baby seals wormed their way to the airfield. That is, the opposite direction of the temporary ice and their mothers (their source of food).  So cute, so meekly confused.  Sorry little guys, we're not allowed to interfere, and could only ogle you on your way to a long cold sleep.  A few of us considered pooling funds to pay the $10,000 fine and scoop you up into the warm van and go joyriding for a day, but you probably would've just been scared and pooped all over.

Maybe he'll reorient himself, or find some abandoned hotdogs to snack on.

Bonus photo: I made it out to the pressure ridges for a record fifth time this season, and I climbed Castle Rock (in the background) earlier the same day.  Loving the two-day-weekend life.

Smoothing Things Out

We've been having some splendid weather -- 30F and sunny and nearly windless, which translates to wearing jeans and a fleece outside.  I like having a sort of work uniform, and so feel a bit exposed without my insulated Carhartts, complete with notebook and pens in my pockets.  But on such balmy days I enjoy strolling around town in my second-hand rainbow-glitter boots. 

This is a social experiment to see if more people click on a post if there's a human in the picture.

I prefer pictures without humans, but I'd guess I'm in the minority.

The warm weather, though, is making parts of the road go to shit.  A crucial half mile section called "the transition" goes from our rocky island onto the permanent ice shelf, and features long cracks, large bumps, and most recently about two-foot-deep sand-like slush.  I first tackled it with some trepidation in (thankfully) a van empty of passengers.  Returning to town, though, I had a crowd of Air National Guard guys, tired after a long shift and full of bro-y banter.  Managing to sound both apologetic and gruff, I told them the ride was going to get rough.  I connected with my deep northwoods roots and powered through this wild stretch of soupy snow and transmission-ravenous ice potholes; we nearly mired down in haphazard ruts and it felt like we were offroading over boulders.  But I sufficiently gunned it and kept pace with the wildly spinning wheel, eliciting cheers from my passengers.

My roomie's fruit hoarding is reaching clinical diagnosis stage: he's squirreled away a dozen apples, a basket of mandarins, several recalcitrant hard pears, and 40 bananas -- "for the winter."  Since ours is already maxed out, he's colonizing a larger warehouse freezer to continue misering his doomsday smoothie ingredients.

Some sort of contraption that supposedly improves the snow road.

Bird Roast

Sometimes a rash proclamation becomes a creative germ.  Thought itself generates existence:

I flamingo therefore I am

This is what happens when a friend mentions they need something to decorate their door—or more accurately, require an identifier in order not to drunkenly stumble into the wrong room in hallway of nondescript doors.  I gathered intel that this person is a fan of philosophy, art, and flamingos, and so whipped up a cartoonish illuminated manuscript to grace the entrance of his abode.

The easygoing pace of work in Shuttles has also allowed me to volunteer some time in the bakery.  This year’s bread guy is great, churning out delicious sourdough, rye, seeded, and all manner of excellent loaves.  He didn’t even really need help with the 2,000 Thanksgiving dinner rolls, but I was nostalgic for manual labor, and he was happy to let me scatter some flour.

Highlights of the holiday weekend included: 

• a reunion show by the band Condition Fun, featuring original tunes about eating bacon and C-17 planes; sunny-blue-sky hike to Castle Rock
• shotgunning my first beer (I’ll do better next time!)
• laughing until breathless while my suitemates played the hit new video game Euro Truck Simulator 2, wherein you real-time drive a semi on a highway from, say, Olsztyn to Gdansk, including stopping at red lights, getting gas, and sleeping
• debating the merits of parenting a seal pup versus a human baby

And there was ham, so I didn’t have to eat turkey, which was fabulous.

Here’s another postmodern sculpture piece, brought to you by the airfield:

Suck it, Rothko.

Binding Resolution

When it is still, and quiet, and the sky is shrouded with cloud, the snow falls as in a snow globe.  The flakes are improbably large, their broad hexagonal arms defined with laser-cut precision.  Sunday at 3am is one of the few times no heavy machinery insistently beeps in reverse, and nary a helicopter domineeringly beats the air.  Sitting just so against the rocks one can meld into the hillside and become the scenery.

Also, there is a soundproofed rehearsal(???) room in the big gym.  This is another quiet refuge.  Or rather, it retains sounds within its walls.

For some reason, when driving alone in the van, I relish the most terrible pop and rap played on the radio.  The contrast between the majestic scenery and the artless music makes me laugh every time.  Such music taps into an emotional current of wild possibility that usually requires being drunk enough to find dancing to said music fun.

The funny thing about such incongruity is that sometimes man-made intrusions—aged shipping containers, cumbrous fuel tanks, air traffic control towers/shacks on skis, and ever-varying cargo piles—somehow assimilate with the stark beauty of the icy mountain landscape.  

two complementary forms

a field of sunflowers

Midnight Delta Driver

Not only is that the name of one of my favorite songs, it is also now—well, me.  We got Tina Marie back from the garage and I took her out to do some wheel packing, which means driving back and forth over mushy piles of snow that develop on the snow road.  And even though it’s light outside around the clock there is still an appreciable difference in the sun’s angle, providing dusky pinks and oranges from 1 - 5am.  It is also quiet as most of the rest of town sleeps, particularly so as it’s been overcast and the weather has kept planes away, meaning I get plenty of time in the office with my knitting project.

view of Hut Point from the beach, 1am

Quite a stretch of cloudy skies has also meant soothing heathery grays:

inadvertent modern art sculpture at the airfield

So far the hardest part of working nights is figuring out what day it is.  Instead of making plans for “tomorrow,” my fellow midrats say, “See you in the lounge after the next sleep.”  (Midrats is a fun term leftover from the Navy days, shorthand for “midnight rations,” a.k.a. lunch.  It’s what we call the nightshift.)  So far the best part of working nights is waking up on my Saturday morning, eating breakfast, and heading to the bar to hear some bands because it’s 9pm.  Even after partying with my daytime friends ‘til they pumpkin, I’m barely halfway into my day off.  Then the nighttime hush steals over McMurdo once more, and we midrats revel in the speedy internet, explore unlocked corridors, and sit uninterrupted in the ethereal underwater murk of the observation tube to listen to seal space-laser noises.  Click to listen!

Night Lights

And just like that, it’s like I never left.  In this place, seasonal workers, wanderers, wilderness guides, bush pilots, and disaffected office workers rest their itchy feet and enjoy the sense of community.  My suitemates’ creativity transformed the bland white rectangles in which we live into a cozy den/entertaining hub.  Cat refers to “the house” and decorated her front door with a plastic cat skeleton; Will picks his banjo and eats lentils by the bearskin rug; Julie fills the air with bird calls and patriarchy-toppling dialog; and I look starry-eyed at the rocks and snow and invite people over for fancy cheese.

me and Gale on the snow road

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Sidebar: As someone once eloquently put it, there is an elasticity to time here.  The endless sunlight combines with the long work days, the long long weeks, and the high frequency and intensity of social interaction to transform time into something simultaneously fleeting and abundant.

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So I drive a van!  And a giant moon rover thing called a Delta!  But, um, not very often—at least, not yet.  The squally weather and subsequent delay setting up the airfield means we have fewer people to drive around.  We’ve done a lot of training and sharing of cautionary/mocking tales of accidents past.  There are checklists and daily duties, checking of dipsticks and lug nuts, and hours and hours of leisure reading.  Also, I’m working the nightshift the first half of the season.  The uncanniness of eternal light and eating breakfast for dinner just unleashed a new dimension of time.

The sun about to emerge from a week-long cloud bank.

Temporary Kiwis

Historically stormy weather caused 500 of us to pile up waiting to fly out of New Zealand.  This triggered contractual spoils: paid-for hotel + per diem (that’s per diem, mind you, not per weekum).  After sitting through eight hours of PowerPoint about repetitive motion injuries, trash-sorting protocol, and “harassment training” [sic], I whiled away a few days with brunch and botanic gardens.  And then, just after reuniting with old pals, we were torn asunder—supposedly, Christchurch ran out of hotel rooms.  With no room left at the inn, a select group was deported an hour away to the backwater of Methven.

The Methven 66, as we now call ourselves, were paired in tiny rooms with naught but a sliding wooden rectangle for toilet privacy.  At first the mood was grim: we scoffed at our white-bread-and-marmite continental breakfast, and the mountains taunted us far, far in the distance.

But we rallied like fucking champs.  I mean, really, things aren’t so bad when you’re being paid to hang out in a hotel.  And then you discover Tony’s Unlimited and Well-Worn Rental Cars and start hiking anywhere and everywhere.  How about a nice communal picnic on Sheep Poop Ridge?

photo credit: Tim Wenzel

Or an easy walk up Peak Hill, with just a dusting of snow?

After 12 days of fresh air and sunshine, more and less successful horse track betting (Abiento for the win!), dolphin viewing, hot pool lakeside lounging, dark sky star gazing, fierce Special Edition New Zealand Trivial Pursuit battles, and so very many meat pies, it was a shock to abruptly transport to Antarctica.  That’s right, I am here, please send mail, and remember our internet bandwidth = two cell phones’ worth of data.

This year I will make choral music happen.  This year I will unwind from a long day’s work not with a Coors Lite shower-beer but instead sip a thimbleful of chartreuse while luxuriating in my Parisian eveningwear.  With luck, there will be ancient glacier ice in my glass.

Hi, Bye!

I guess you could call me a francophile.  No country is perfect, but as compensation for the unabashed promotion of the feminine mystique, I'll take an efficient rail system, subsidizing of pastries, and this fairytale-quality medieval abbey:

Mont-Saint-Michel is stunning.  It sits on a large rock plopped onto a tidal flat that stretches for miles, allowing intrepid visitors to squelch around in the mud around it half the time and alternately gaze it awe at the natural moat that forms around it.

Is that not magical and otherworldly?!?!

But also: Aud's wedding!  Turkish baths with Marta!  Buttery croissants, buttery omelets, multiple forms of soft-as-butter roast pork!  Somehow it was sunny and warm for a week straight in London; also somehow I managed to have a cold for half this trip.  Such a lovely variety of English roses adorned our bouquets, an amount I once would have termed splentiful-spledgible.  The crustless glories and light creamy dainties of high tea, kaleidoscopically delicious Indian dishes, roast and Yorkshire pudding, bao steamed buns, not to mention an unparalleled literary tradition...apparently I am something of an Anglophile.

So it is with a huge store of good things done and consumed that I briefly pause before heading south again to Antarctica.  I will thwart the calendar and continue along with summer (or "summer," what with freezing temperatures), and doubly abscond with time as the sun won't set for five months.  During that long afternoon, I would love you, kind friends, to send notes, funny stories, pictures of flowers, cool stickers, and/or poignant satire when you have the chance.

Claire Veligdan
PSC 769 Box 700
APO-AP 96599-9998
claireveligdan @ gmail.com

Senior Year Abroad

I suppose it’s official now that I signed a contract, am verified tuberculosis-free, and passed the rectal exam with flying colors: I’m going back to Antarctica!  I have metamorphosed to my third phase:

1) cafeteria lady (‘14-16)

2) telephone switchboard operator (‘16-17)

3) bus driver/penguin chauffeur (‘18-19)

Everybody pile into the van, it’s time to drive with extreme prudence!  If I’m lucky, I will pilot the mythic-stature conveyance knows as Ivan the Terrabus:

One of the best parts of being a professional Vehicle Operator is that, to clarify radio communication, I attain the moniker Shuttle Claire.  While not overly creative, it is nonetheless a nickname, something I’ve long (semi-)secretly desired.*

*Cat, I’m embarrassed I asked, but it was kind of you to indulge me with Beans.

**Spence, I adore that you and you alone call me C-Money.

***Tim, I don’t think it counts as a nickname since you actually just think my name is Emma.  Thank you for remembering to say Claire at my wedding.

****Si vous m’adressez en français, vous pouvez m’apeller Sabine.

It’s been…whoa, shit…almost a year, guys.  I missed writing here.  But it didn’t seem like the right place to report on my experiences with online ESL homework, laminated dough and pie baking techniques, or attempting to charm the local 29-year-old male population.  Here are a few key takeaways:

- English language learners benefit from both aural-visual and kinesthetic lesson plans.

- Bake croissants at a high temperature, such as 425F, to prevent butter leakage.

- Pipefitters know all the good dick jokes.

- When a guy says it’s been a while since he was on a date and holds up a splayed palm, he might be indicating not five weeks or months, but years. When a guy says, “Nothing surprises me anymore,” it might turn out his ex-gf was a prostitute.

- When I like a guy I will commit unspeakable acts, such as petting his dog and enduring it licking my face.

That’s mostly it.  My family is awesome, Matt and I are in touch, my friends are there to help celebrate with fine wine or commiserate with Boone’s Farm, we had a real northern MI winter with a fuckload of wonderful snow, I swim and eat good cheese and take pictures of pretty flowers.

I will likely submit dispatches from a Euro adventure in September (Aud wedding! Historically accurate British vintage car race! Marta-Paris-cheese-baguette party!)—and then it’s back to the Ice again, for season four of fantastic people, places, and things* bathed in eternal sunshine.

*OMG YES NOUNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. - Okay, I did try to come up with a version of the blog for life here. Inspired by the at-times-comically-inane rural weeklies, I called it The Boardman Courier and Mail, Rucksack Local Edition.  I never got further than the almanac.  Its mission statement: “Our intrepid reporters will cover the minutest neighborhood developments, the narrowest of civic pursuits, ever endeavoring to fulfill our motto: cogitare umbilicus.”