At The Bottom Of The World

Hello from the South Pole! I have been here for a couple of days now
and so far I have acclimatized well and haven't done much else. I have
taken many pictures are the ceremonial South Pole and a few at the
geographic South Pole (its ugly). Hopefully I will be able to upload
them tonight when we get satellite coverage and can have internet
(from 3-11am).

Also today we took a tour of the new South Pole station. Our tour
guide was the current station manager who was also the lead engineer
in designing the new building. We started inside the station which if
you are able to see some of the pictures at

www.flickr.com/photos/finotem

reminds me a little bit of the movie DOOM. The entire time I was
waiting for a giant tomato looking thing to shoot fireballs at me just
so I could blow it up with a big plasma gun twice my size.

After that we went outside and looked at the old station which part of
they are refurbishing into a new garage and food storage. After that
we went into the dome part which you often see pictures of. It pretty
much only used as storage but because it is buried by about 25 feet of
snow they are likely going to take it apart.

Finally we then got a special tour of the sewage tunnels… exciting
huh? They stretch for over a kilometer and are dug through the ice. At
the start of the tunnel you are about 25ft below the surface… which
was the surface about 30 years ago. At the end of the tunnel you are
about 50 feet below the surface. The temperature inside the tunnel
according to the one thermometer there was -62 degrees Fahrenheit. The
guy giving us the tour said that he suspects the thermometer is broken
and the temp is closer to -70. If you look at the pictures you will
see that my nose hairs froze, my eyes started to freeze ☺ and I had
icicles on my eyelashes. My balaclava froze and the fur around my coat
also froze. To say that I was cold today is an understatement.

Tomorrow morning a bunch of us (including me) will head up to AGAP
South camp to start working. First we will have to acclimatize since
camp is at 11,600ft and the pressure altitude is just over 14,000ft.
We will spend 48 hours acclimatizing not including the day of arrival
and then it will be full go! By this time I will likely only be able
to work for roughly 2 weeks assuming there are no other delays.

Off to bed. There is a good chance this will be the last time I am
able to write on here. We will have a few modems out there but they
are super slow and I may not have the time.

Till the second week in January… Adios my people

South Pole!

Im on someone elses computers so I will make this quick. I have some
really cool pictures to show so I will try to post them tomorrow.

Its quite cold here. My nose hairs freeze in less than 30 seconds and
My eyelashes froze too... which was pretty cool

Till tomorrow

Off to the South Pole!

Good News!

Everything looks good right now.... meaning weather is good, planes
are good, Raytheon hasnt messed it up

So in 2 hours or so we should be departing for the South Pole!

Ill update from there. Hopefully Ill be able to upload some pictures
as I run around the geographic South Pole and then the ceremonial
South Pole with pretty things all around.

Talk to you from the bottom of the planet.

----------------------------------------------------------

*I will then officially be Standing Upside Down*

Updated Picture website

I finally took the time to create my own URL that didnt look like NB657FgBhDfg.

So please bookmark the following link for my pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finotem/

This link will no longer change. Once I leave McMurdo Ill try to put up some more pictures. When I can stop being lazy Ill try to post some pictures of the lab, the dorm and other places I spend all time time at while at McMurdo.

Nap time!

Ciao

This just in... again

After all the waiting Sam's flight ended up not going -- because of this I will likely not go anywhere till Friday or Saturday. I have just been informed that there is a scenario out there that would allow me, Sam and Amanda to leave tomorrow... but lets be real, its not going to happen.

Well. I am officially tired of doing nothing. You can only hike the same trails so many times. Maybe Ill go cross country skiing later tonight... I figure it cant be that hard right?

Ok, I will continue to update as soon as I hear something new.

Adios

-Bored and tired.

This Just In...

Latest news is that Sam will be leaving tomorrow... we think. They said she was going then when we checked the flight manifest she wasnt on the list. People are running around now to double check things so Ill update tomorrow if she left. This would leave Amanda and I to just sit and do nothing. We were planning on leaving on Wednesday but it has certainly been pushed back to Thursday but likely Friday.

Time is running out and I still havent done anything. Normally I wouldnt complain that I have nothing to do but this place can get rather boring, especially when weather gets a bit bad.

Off to go watch some TV

adios

Cheese!

Heres the NEW AGAP sticker/symbol/patch. They put in a C17 since those planes are big mamma jammas and helped take a ton of equipment to McMurdo /Pole/ Camp. Note: There was no room to put the C130 Hercules on here.. But we fly those to Pole and Camp.

I put the link for the photos below the title of the blog on the left hand side. Just double click on the URL and then past into your browser.

OR

Just copy the URL here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finotem

Snowmobiling pictures will be up shortly

Ciao

Still here. Done with classes

Howdie all!

Snowmobiling on sea ice when it has started to melt is the funnest
thing on the planet to do! Look above! you can see pictures. Some of
them are mine and others are Mouse's.

Update: Tomorrow Doug, Mouse and Masaki are supposed to head to the
South Pole to start acclimatizing. Its still not clear if they are
going though because their names are not on the flight list but Doug
is trying to figure out what happened.

On Wednesday, Me, Amanda and Sam will then head to the pole but by
that time everyone else from our group will have already left for camp
and then started to work. I will be sure to put up a ton of pictures
up from the South Pole :)

Well, thats all folks.

Marco

PS more pictures will be on Flickr. For the link look below

Still waiting

Hello everyone.

Today we had a meeting with Robin Bell's group (Columbia) to introduce ourselves since we will be sharing a small space for quite a while.

Update: 4 people from our group left yesterday and have started to acclimatize at South Pole. Hopefully on Saturday 3 more people will head to Pole with the remaining 3 going on Wednesday... I have a feeling that I will be leaving on Wednesday... woo hoo! more time at McMurdo! ... Im joking. This place is fun but it would be good to head out to Pole and see whats there. Im told not a whole lot but thats ok, its the South Pole.

Today: So Im about to head out for snowmobile or snowmachine school! Ill try to take pictures as we ride out on the sea ice. After this Im taking the truck driving school and then hopefully Ill be able to drive a Piston Bully (Picture on its way).

Oh! then Im going to try and sign up for the Pressure Ridge tour thats near the New Zealand or Kiwi Base. If you look at the pictures Ive posted you can see small ridges but these are huge!

Till next time.

Adios.

Pictures!

Howdie all!

Im about to head out for some fun but so yall know I just put up pictures on Flickr

Heres the link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24863466@N07/

Enjoy!

Ill update tomorrow. Fun time now, blog later.

More hanging out :)

So, besides the occasional class I have to take Ive pretty much been
hanging out and going to a bunch of different places around McMurdo.
As promised here are some pictures from Snow School and yes, I will
include the one of the penguin that wandered out to our camp.

Start at top and go down.

1: Picture of the Quinzy that we built by piling up all our back and
putting snow on top of them. Once it hardened you took out the bags
and then dug down to create a place to sleep. 2 people slept there.

2: Picture of inside the quinzy

3: So to create a kitchen I dug down about 3.5 feet so that you could
use the ground as a counter. I fell inside.

4: Picture of me on top of the turtle I built with Sam. It took a long
time. Cool thing is that here you can cut snow into blocks using a
saw.

5: After we finished making the turtle. I was exhausted.

6: Me in front of Erebus with little cloud cover. Today, no clouds
whatsoever... see following pictures

7: THE PENGUIN! Ya it looks far away but thats because I didnt zoom
in. Here the picture doesnt look so great but on my computer it looks
great.

8: Picture of me on the mountain behind Scotts Hut (see previous
post). I took it with my wide angle lens so I could get as much of the
mountain range behind me.

9: Picture of the alien rocks that are around McMurdo. Thats
observation hill in the background. I posted picture from atop there
in an earlier post.

10: Me at Arrival Heights with Mt Erebus in the background. Just
passed this sign is protected so we had to turn around. The golf ball
to the left... I have no idea.

Unfortunately because the internet is so slow here I have to really
compress all the images to get them to load. The pictures do look much
better on my computer. When I get back I can show them to you.

Hope you are enjoying the weather back in Ohio and PA. You guys were
much colder than us. I think we hit a high of 33 while you were below
20. Im glad I got to leave Ohios cold to come to Antarcticas warmth.

Tomorrow I have to go to altitude class followed by some OSL class so
I can do the Castle rock loop. This loop will get me a really good
view of Erebus as well as let me slide down a glacier... shown in the
back left of the 5th picture. They told me to take a lunch tray and
sit on it while I slide down. The glacier is about 850ft tall

till next time. adios.

Hanging out in McMurdo

Back from snow school! I will post picture from snow school hopefully
tomorrow. I built a huge turtle... and I cut snow with a saw!

Today we climbed up Observation Hill and pretty much that was it. Its
about 800 feet up and the entire climb is on a huge pile of sharp
volcanic rocks. It got really windy at the top so we didnt spend much
time at the top.

Tomorrow we have to go inspect some equipment and then I have to plan
my travels after Antarctica. Hopefully I will spend a week in New
Zealand then Fiji if its not to expensive. If not Ill go to
Australia... you can find really cheap flights round trip from New
Zealand.

A little about the images:
1 refers to the top image and then count down.

1: This one is of Scott's Hut located about 3/4 mile from my dorm. It
sits on the edge above the sea. It was built about 100 years ago and
because of the cold and how arid it is here everything is really well
preserved. Even the seals that they killed are essentially mummified.

2: Just below the hut you can go down to where the "beach" would be.
In this picture you can see two leopard seals. We were still about 30
feet away but you could hear them breathe.

3: This is just to the right of the previous picture. the mounds of
ice are pressure ridges. As the ice grows it starts to buckle. Later
on i hope to take a trip to the pressure ridges near the New Zealand
base. Those ridges are huge.

4: Picture of me at the McMurdo sign.

5: Picture of MUCaw on top of Observation Hill with Mt Erebus in the background.

Time for bed. Gots to get up early for breakfast to go to garbage
school followed by snowmobile school! Ill get to ride out on the sea
ice! Should be a blast.

Hope winter is good back home. From what I have seen its been colder
in Ohio and PA :)

Back to school, back to school.

Im off to Snow School! Ill be back tomorrow.

ciao for now

ANTARCTICA!

We finally made it to McMurdo! Its not that chilly and the weather was
quite nice today. Its odd walking outside with the sun being out all
the time but eventually I will get used to it. We have unloaded
everything and tomorrow Me, Sam and Mouse head to snow school to learn
how to survive outside.

Over hearing several conversatiosn it appears that things have been
delayed by a couple of days which is ok. The scheduale takes into
account these things but Im not sure how many more days we can be
delayed.

Note: the network is rather slow therefore uploading pictures is going
to be hard. I will attach one now and see if it works but there could
be a big gap in time till I upload the next few pictures.

This place is rather amazing.

Peace out people

Marco

If you get canceled, try, try tomorrow and the day after that.

Change of plans. Bad weather at McMurdo canceled the flight today. We will try it again tomorrow but this time they gave us an extra hour of sleep so we need to be at the airport at 0700.

The rest of the team arrived today and we will go out to eat some place later on today.

Pictures? No doubt

This is what we look like. The coats are huge and too hot to be wearing them in New Zealand.

Heres a picture of part of the crew.
From left to right. Me, Amanda (Wash U in St. Louis), Mouse (PSU), Masaki (Japan) and across the bottom, Sam (PSU).

Look at our boots, theyre huge and weigh about 10lbs.

Hopefully tomorrow we will be on the ice and Ill update yall from there.

ciao for now

----------------------------------------------
“If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.” - Lewis Black

Leaving on a Jet Plane -- literally, a C-17

Tomorrow we will be leaving Christchurch at 0600 hr and heading towards McMurdo.

ya, so thats about it. Im going to go to bed because I have to wake up in 4 hours to take the shuttle to the airport.

I will blog again once in McMurdo. I will put up some pictures of all the gear we have to wear and hopefully some pictures of the base too.

Happy December 2nd. In case you were wondering, it will be a good day. I just went through it and have no real complaints. I just bought a possum hat... its really soft.

Photos -- Some science too!

Internet is working decently well for now... so Ima take advantage and put up some (compressed) pictures.

1)Picture of the tramway that goes through town. There is one of these thats a restaurant so you can eat and tour

2)Im a star ------>

3)Cathedral during the day

4)Yes, there is a Starbucks here. This is the first one. There are 2 others within a 2 minutes walk from here.

5)The Cathedral at night. I will try to go in today but if I cant Ill just go when I come back from the ice

THIS JUST IN:
So far, there is no evidence that proves the water in the toilet rotates the opposite direction just because we are in the South Hemisphere. I will continue to test this.

Also, the sun looks the same here as it does in the north.

And, its still weird to see the cars driving on the opposite side and I still havent been hit by a car.

Im off to wander around town. At 1pm we go drop off our luggage and get all of our gear. Sam and Mouse still havent received their luggage and the equipment they brought... Hopefully it can get shipped to McMurdo.

Adios for now.

If you would like a postcard from the south pole make sure you send me your address.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Hi! So we made it to Christchurch, NZ and the flight overall wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. I havent slept more than a couple of hours on the flight but once I finish this I will go to bed.

Today I just walked around Christchurch. Gloomy day but very nice city. Tomorrow we go to the clothing distribution center to get out gear and drop off our luggage because on Wednesday we will depart to McMurdo... at 4am.

Also, we will go see the Antarctic museum they have next to the airport... when we asked the lady at the front desk to get us a shuttle to go she looked at us weird and said we were the first people going to Antarctica to ask to go see the museum about the place we were about to go to.

Right, so the internet is pretty bad here and Im tired. Ill try to upload pictures tomorrow because so far I havent been able to

Since Im already in tomorrow for all of you.. let me know if youd like me to tell you about the future. So far, so good.