11-4
The base has these things called morale trips (aka boondoggles) for the contract workers to do something fun every now and a very long while to help out with something that scientists need an extra hand on. Usually it's dive tending (which is what Jerod and Elisha did this year). As a shuttle driver, our boondoggle was to happy camp. Happy camp is required for most work centers, but not for shuttles, so that was our boondoggle. Some workcenters don't get the option to do many boondoggles because they are too busy (shuttles). Also, you need to have some seniority to get the good boondoggles (flights to help dig out fuel caches in the mountains or on the plateaus).
The problem with our work center is that Bev believes we shouldn't really get boondoggles from the Chalet (the Chalet is where the NSF reps are and the ones who give the boondoggles for the scientists) bc if the lab is getting boondoggles, people around town might thing Crary is getting favoritism. However, there is one way around this..the so called "emergency" morale trip. Because of paperwork (it's always the paperwork down here isn't it?), a grantee needs to request the need for help 24 hours in advance. Sometimes they forget or have last minute good weather and need someone. If that's the case, they can't go through the chalet and the Crary lab staff "has" to do it. This is how mitch, abe, and bryan got boondoggles to Dive Tend for Andrew Thurber and Stacy Kim's group. I have been offered a few dive tending boondoggles, but the thing is, is that you only get 1 or 2 boondoggles a season likely. So you have to play a bit of a gambling game to see if you should take the boondoggle or hold out for a better one. I'm not too interested in dive tending, so I've been holding out on that one. The boondoggle I hope for the most is a sleigh ride...a trip to the south pole. This isn't necessarily directly through the NSF, so doing a grantee help morale trip doesn't necessarily hinder your chances at that, other than if your work center only gets say 2 sleigh rides, then the 2 people most likely to go would be the 2 people with the least amount (or less cool) boondoggles. Boondoggles in the past have included flights to the dry valeys, flights to different areas around the continent to help dig out fuel caches, flights for aerial studies with grantees, and helo flights up to Mt. Erebus. However, these are very rare, so again it's a gamble as to what you hold out for. If you keep turning things down, you may be too busy when the next comes along or there just may not be a next one.
Anyways, Ross and Rachel (Rachel is the Phd adviser to Ross at Dartmouth. They are studying how bromide is transferred in the snow, and how this bromide is causing the ozone hole over Antarctica) have become pretty good friends with me. In fact, I like them a lot, and I really hope that my advisor-advisee relationship can be as happy as theres. They wanted me to go out on a cool boondoggle with them, so they purposely waited until under the 24 hour deadline for the NSF chalet so that their trip would be an emergency morale trip, and I could go. I still had a pretty good inner debate as whether I should take it or hold out on it for something better, but in the end, I figured it wouldn't affect me getting to the south pole and since I really liked them, that it would be awesome. But after talking to them, I decided to take it!
Their plan was to go out on the sea ice and take some ice cores as well as take a lot of snow samples and measure ice thickness. The sweet thing about going with them, as I would find out, was that they had some data collect, but not too much, so we could have some fun. Also, they think a lot of the NSF regulations are just crazy too, so they were totally willing to look the other way on some things.
So bright and early in the morning, we loaded up their supplies and sled in a truck and headed down to the ice to load up snowmobiles and attach the trailer. I have been officially "trained" on snowmobiles yet, so I'm not technically allowed to drive one, but Rachel said I should! So that was fun. First we sped out to their furthest away field site. I'm not sure how far we drove, but maybe 25ish miles? At first the ice was fairly smooth, but as we got closer to the ice edge, the ice got very rough and there were lots of cool ice features around that we had to navigate through. The last several miles we went much slower, and it was like going through an obstacle course. The cool thing about being on the sea ice is that you can basically drive where ever you want. But as we got closer, there were large cracks and obstacles that we had to avoid and find safe paths through. I would almost describe these features and finding our way through it, very similar to biking on the slick-rock of Utah. You are free to bike whereever, and the bike can handle it, but sometimes you run across features that you can't cross or you have to navigate around. All the snow drifts and ice chunks allowed us to have some fun catching pretty big air as well. And it was just a fun and exhilerating experience to be out there on the snow mobiles, pulling a sled and maneuvering through the sea ice without a road or track. And it was cool bc we were really far from town and civilization. There wasn't safety flags or roads or anything like that. We were truly on our own and having to make real decisions for us. There were seals all around the cracks. Especially the crack Big Bertha, which could potentially be dangerous to cross, so we had to find a safe spot to cross it. It felt like being on those TV shows where they are filming people up near the Arctic circle taking sleds and snowmobiles to get around on the ice. I LOVED it!
When we finally reached the farthest out field site, we were set to take an ice core. We couldn't get the badger drill to run, so we had to do all the coring by hand. We set up all the pieces and then took turns cranking away. I had to laugh bc it was like insanity (the workout) had prepared me for it. The ice where we were was about 2m (6feet) thick. After we had taken out the ice core, taken temperature measurements at different levels of the core, and packed it up, we then measured ice thickness and collected snow for analysis.
At this point we were as far out on the ice sheet as they needed to go for their research, but they wanted to take me close to the ice edge to try and show me penguins as they had seen some along the ice edge when they had a helo ride earlier that week. Problem was that one of our snowmobiles was eating a lot of gas and was at 1/2 a tank. So Rachel said, "we have a few options. 1. We don't go out there. 2. You two go out there and I'll wait. 3. We all go out on both snowmobiles and risk one running out of gas, and 4. We pile 3 of us on one". Option 4 was against snowmobile protocol, but we decided for that option. So we drove out another 3 miles or so until we got near to the sea ice edge. It got a bit nerve racking being out there on the thinning ice, but they knew what they were doing. When we parked the snowmobile and went my foot, the ice was pretty thin, and a bit slushy. We walked out on some very recently formed ice (ice that if a big wind or storm came up, would break out). On this ice there are these really cool ice formation called ice feathers. We got down on our stomachs to look at them and to eat a couple of them (very salty). These things are what Rachel had done her PostDoc on as they had originally thought bromide may be passed into the air by these. Unfortunately there were no penguins, but it was a totally cool feeling to be out there on the sea-ice edge, standing on thin ice. From where we were we could see the open ocean. Also, since we were so far from town, we had some unique views of Erebus as well as some different perspectives of the dry valleys and the Royal Soceity Range.
It was a cold day, about -5F ambient with -25 to -30F when the wind picked up. And rachel was so nice, like a mom. She had made us big piping hot thermoses of hot cocoa. After we left the sea ice edge, we backtracked and stopped at about 5 other sites to collect samples and measure sea-ice thickness.
They still wanted to show me penguins, so towards the end of the day, they decided to skip some sites and do those at a later date and instead take me on a detour to another place that they had heard there were penguin sightings. This detour took us by Big Razorback, Inaccessible, and Tent Islands. Cool rocks sticking out above the ice. It also took us passed the Erebus glacier ice tongue. These are where a lot of the fish huts are set up for the grantee groups studying fish. We didn't see any penguins there, but on the way back to base, we caught up to an Emperor Penguin sliding its way along the ice, so that was cool.
All in all, a super sweet day. It was great to get out of the office and out into the field, into the real Antarctica, and to help out with some important science. Wish I could do that a lot more.
It's Sunday today, last night we took it pretty chill. I had a fun dinner with Clint and his adviser Stacy and a few other people from their team. They are lots of fun and they brought some good wine from the US to share with us. Clint and Stacy are like Ross and Rachel, and they are some of my favorite grantees. I went to a dance party for a bit with the grantees. Then hung out with Cassa (and Spring) for a bit while she had breakfast (she's on night shift now) and we chatted and caught up on gossip. As she always likes to say about all the drama here: "The days of Our McMurdo" after the soap opera. After that I headed back to the dorm and watched a movie with Jerod, Stef, and Elisha in the lounge
The base has these things called morale trips (aka boondoggles) for the contract workers to do something fun every now and a very long while to help out with something that scientists need an extra hand on. Usually it's dive tending (which is what Jerod and Elisha did this year). As a shuttle driver, our boondoggle was to happy camp. Happy camp is required for most work centers, but not for shuttles, so that was our boondoggle. Some workcenters don't get the option to do many boondoggles because they are too busy (shuttles). Also, you need to have some seniority to get the good boondoggles (flights to help dig out fuel caches in the mountains or on the plateaus).
The problem with our work center is that Bev believes we shouldn't really get boondoggles from the Chalet (the Chalet is where the NSF reps are and the ones who give the boondoggles for the scientists) bc if the lab is getting boondoggles, people around town might thing Crary is getting favoritism. However, there is one way around this..the so called "emergency" morale trip. Because of paperwork (it's always the paperwork down here isn't it?), a grantee needs to request the need for help 24 hours in advance. Sometimes they forget or have last minute good weather and need someone. If that's the case, they can't go through the chalet and the Crary lab staff "has" to do it. This is how mitch, abe, and bryan got boondoggles to Dive Tend for Andrew Thurber and Stacy Kim's group. I have been offered a few dive tending boondoggles, but the thing is, is that you only get 1 or 2 boondoggles a season likely. So you have to play a bit of a gambling game to see if you should take the boondoggle or hold out for a better one. I'm not too interested in dive tending, so I've been holding out on that one. The boondoggle I hope for the most is a sleigh ride...a trip to the south pole. This isn't necessarily directly through the NSF, so doing a grantee help morale trip doesn't necessarily hinder your chances at that, other than if your work center only gets say 2 sleigh rides, then the 2 people most likely to go would be the 2 people with the least amount (or less cool) boondoggles. Boondoggles in the past have included flights to the dry valeys, flights to different areas around the continent to help dig out fuel caches, flights for aerial studies with grantees, and helo flights up to Mt. Erebus. However, these are very rare, so again it's a gamble as to what you hold out for. If you keep turning things down, you may be too busy when the next comes along or there just may not be a next one.
Anyways, Ross and Rachel (Rachel is the Phd adviser to Ross at Dartmouth. They are studying how bromide is transferred in the snow, and how this bromide is causing the ozone hole over Antarctica) have become pretty good friends with me. In fact, I like them a lot, and I really hope that my advisor-advisee relationship can be as happy as theres. They wanted me to go out on a cool boondoggle with them, so they purposely waited until under the 24 hour deadline for the NSF chalet so that their trip would be an emergency morale trip, and I could go. I still had a pretty good inner debate as whether I should take it or hold out on it for something better, but in the end, I figured it wouldn't affect me getting to the south pole and since I really liked them, that it would be awesome. But after talking to them, I decided to take it!
Their plan was to go out on the sea ice and take some ice cores as well as take a lot of snow samples and measure ice thickness. The sweet thing about going with them, as I would find out, was that they had some data collect, but not too much, so we could have some fun. Also, they think a lot of the NSF regulations are just crazy too, so they were totally willing to look the other way on some things.
So bright and early in the morning, we loaded up their supplies and sled in a truck and headed down to the ice to load up snowmobiles and attach the trailer. I have been officially "trained" on snowmobiles yet, so I'm not technically allowed to drive one, but Rachel said I should! So that was fun. First we sped out to their furthest away field site. I'm not sure how far we drove, but maybe 25ish miles? At first the ice was fairly smooth, but as we got closer to the ice edge, the ice got very rough and there were lots of cool ice features around that we had to navigate through. The last several miles we went much slower, and it was like going through an obstacle course. The cool thing about being on the sea ice is that you can basically drive where ever you want. But as we got closer, there were large cracks and obstacles that we had to avoid and find safe paths through. I would almost describe these features and finding our way through it, very similar to biking on the slick-rock of Utah. You are free to bike whereever, and the bike can handle it, but sometimes you run across features that you can't cross or you have to navigate around. All the snow drifts and ice chunks allowed us to have some fun catching pretty big air as well. And it was just a fun and exhilerating experience to be out there on the snow mobiles, pulling a sled and maneuvering through the sea ice without a road or track. And it was cool bc we were really far from town and civilization. There wasn't safety flags or roads or anything like that. We were truly on our own and having to make real decisions for us. There were seals all around the cracks. Especially the crack Big Bertha, which could potentially be dangerous to cross, so we had to find a safe spot to cross it. It felt like being on those TV shows where they are filming people up near the Arctic circle taking sleds and snowmobiles to get around on the ice. I LOVED it!
When we finally reached the farthest out field site, we were set to take an ice core. We couldn't get the badger drill to run, so we had to do all the coring by hand. We set up all the pieces and then took turns cranking away. I had to laugh bc it was like insanity (the workout) had prepared me for it. The ice where we were was about 2m (6feet) thick. After we had taken out the ice core, taken temperature measurements at different levels of the core, and packed it up, we then measured ice thickness and collected snow for analysis.
At this point we were as far out on the ice sheet as they needed to go for their research, but they wanted to take me close to the ice edge to try and show me penguins as they had seen some along the ice edge when they had a helo ride earlier that week. Problem was that one of our snowmobiles was eating a lot of gas and was at 1/2 a tank. So Rachel said, "we have a few options. 1. We don't go out there. 2. You two go out there and I'll wait. 3. We all go out on both snowmobiles and risk one running out of gas, and 4. We pile 3 of us on one". Option 4 was against snowmobile protocol, but we decided for that option. So we drove out another 3 miles or so until we got near to the sea ice edge. It got a bit nerve racking being out there on the thinning ice, but they knew what they were doing. When we parked the snowmobile and went my foot, the ice was pretty thin, and a bit slushy. We walked out on some very recently formed ice (ice that if a big wind or storm came up, would break out). On this ice there are these really cool ice formation called ice feathers. We got down on our stomachs to look at them and to eat a couple of them (very salty). These things are what Rachel had done her PostDoc on as they had originally thought bromide may be passed into the air by these. Unfortunately there were no penguins, but it was a totally cool feeling to be out there on the sea-ice edge, standing on thin ice. From where we were we could see the open ocean. Also, since we were so far from town, we had some unique views of Erebus as well as some different perspectives of the dry valleys and the Royal Soceity Range.
It was a cold day, about -5F ambient with -25 to -30F when the wind picked up. And rachel was so nice, like a mom. She had made us big piping hot thermoses of hot cocoa. After we left the sea ice edge, we backtracked and stopped at about 5 other sites to collect samples and measure sea-ice thickness.
They still wanted to show me penguins, so towards the end of the day, they decided to skip some sites and do those at a later date and instead take me on a detour to another place that they had heard there were penguin sightings. This detour took us by Big Razorback, Inaccessible, and Tent Islands. Cool rocks sticking out above the ice. It also took us passed the Erebus glacier ice tongue. These are where a lot of the fish huts are set up for the grantee groups studying fish. We didn't see any penguins there, but on the way back to base, we caught up to an Emperor Penguin sliding its way along the ice, so that was cool.
All in all, a super sweet day. It was great to get out of the office and out into the field, into the real Antarctica, and to help out with some important science. Wish I could do that a lot more.
It's Sunday today, last night we took it pretty chill. I had a fun dinner with Clint and his adviser Stacy and a few other people from their team. They are lots of fun and they brought some good wine from the US to share with us. Clint and Stacy are like Ross and Rachel, and they are some of my favorite grantees. I went to a dance party for a bit with the grantees. Then hung out with Cassa (and Spring) for a bit while she had breakfast (she's on night shift now) and we chatted and caught up on gossip. As she always likes to say about all the drama here: "The days of Our McMurdo" after the soap opera. After that I headed back to the dorm and watched a movie with Jerod, Stef, and Elisha in the lounge
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