Trav's Travels: Quick Trip Back To EP

6/18/16

Today for our safety rescue training we dealt with a patient with HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) which is actually fairly common here when people first fly in. I was the patient in our scenario today. The main treatment for HAPE and HACE (High altitude cerebral edema) is to get the patient DOWN. But sometimes that just isn't possible, as in the case of waiting for an evac flight. So there's something called a gammow bag, which you can pressurize to simulate lower altitude. So today I got put in the gammow bag and they pressurized it all the way down to 7600ft, the same pressure as my home of Estes Park. So it was like a quick trip back to Estes! Sure easy to breath down there!! But no elk in the gammow bag!

My mom liked the little descriptions of some of the people here, so I thought I'd describe a few more.

I talked with a guy the other day, named James, who lives in Missoula. He's originally from Buena Vista and while in buena vista he got into raft guiding. He's guided all around Colorado and Arizona and now he's guiding up on the Lochsa near Missoula. He's a heavy equipment operator here and down on the Ice as well. He brought his own fat-tire bike here and he wears this bright pink one-piece, skin tight suit when he bikes. A suit that definitely highlights his package..haha. He's big into gardening and his girlfriend sent him pictures of the garden at their house and he was going around showing the pictures off. They have a cute looking house in Missoula

The current station manager here is Kaija (pronounced Ki-ya). I met her briefly in McMurdo as she came through Crary lab as the camp manager for WISSARD camp. She's been the camp manager for 4 different deep field camps in Antarctica. She's super sweet and very fun. She's just really sweet. And she lets everyone kind of do what they want and let's them get away with doing things that probably the big wigs wouldn't allow, which everyone appreciates. She's from Duluth area. Her husband is working down on the Ice right now, and she'll be rejoined with him once she goes back down after this season.

There's a guy here they call Commander. He's been here for 12 seasons, and he can't remember how he got the nickname. He's an older gentlemen and extremely smart. His knowledge of trivia is crazy. He's the reigning chess champ here, and so far no one has been able to beat him this season. He's extremely well-read and knows a lot about the science here and the history of the polar regions. He's also extremely good at crosswords, which is very popular here. In his spare time you can often catch him napping on the couch with a book on his lap, mouth wide open. But he likes to knit and sew a lot as well. He always puts on a fresh and fancy shirt for dinner to dress up. In the evenings he also can often be found playing the guitar and singing softly. He's really quite the guy. He's someone that my dad would get along well with. He's on the carpenter team here.

There's a guy here they call Dog. He's the lead carpenter, and a really nice guy from Denver. He has a wife and kids back in Denver that he likes to show pictures of. His real name is Doug, but he had a Russian guy working for him once who when he said Doug, it sounded like Dog, so that's how he got that name. He's really big into hunting and at night he says he sits and watches hunting videos and one of the things he misses the most being here is the wildlife.

Kathy the cook I've mentioned a little about. She's originally from Colorado, but now lives in India in her off seasons. She also is the supervisor at camps in Antarctica as well. She's big into astrology and Asian religions. She does yoga on a regular basis and is a real crossword fiend. I briefly caught a glimpse into her room (the cook gets her own room) and she had incense candles and little buddha statues and other things in their. She speaks some hindi and of course she's the one in charge of Bollywood Thursdays.

I've also mentioned some stuff about Storm. He's the biggest character on the base. He's always carrying around his little toy dinosaur (Dino) around and sometimes other toys. He likes to talk about Dino over the radio or at morning meetings. Storm is a super nice guy. He's worked many years here and in Antarctica. He's from New Hampshire, and when he does happen to be home, he is a tour guide up Mt. Washington. He said you can tell the tourists pretty much anything and they'll believe it. He's the fleet ops foreman and runs heavy equipment. He's also driven snowcats on ski areas. I told him that being a snowcat driver at a ski resorts is one of my dream jobs and he said it is truly awesome. One of his main jobs here is grooming the skiway (did you know we have the longest skiway in the world here?). It seems like a cool job. He puts his little iphone on the steering wheel and watches movies while he drives. There's no one out there (except the random crazy skier..me) and it's just driving back and forth in straight lines. He's a crazy hard worker. He got up today at 3am and worked til 5pm grooming (on a Sunday) as the plane is coming soon.

Andrew is the cargo guy here. He's from South Carolina and has a very strong accent and hates the Gators. He's a very jovial and funny guy and likes to use the phrase "go out and make bad decisions" which I think comes from pitch perfect. He's really into singing shows like pitch perfect and Glee. He's also a very proud Taylor Swift fan (T-swizzle as he calls her) and has everyone of her songs and knows tons about her. He plays her music a lot, which is fun b/c most people here know the words to sing along.