All Work and No Play... Life with only 4 other people at an isolated research station

makes Jack a dull boy.

9/10/16

One of the famous lines (typed) from The Shining. As I mentioned in a previous blog, we watched the Shining (written by Stephen King at Estes Park's famous Stanley Hotel) a couple of weeks ago as the premise is the same as we have here. Stranded in a cold, isolated, high altitude area care taking several buildings.

Well, the other day while we were launching balloons, and I was waiting for Elissa to make it down to the garage, I was just fake riding the snowmobile. She took a picture of it and put it as the main picture for our weekly science report with the caption "Here's Johnny: Increasing pressure on sanity is beginning to manifest itself at evening balloon launches."

Well, a couple of days ago we got a really strange email from a scientist at NASA named Kelly. We don't really know her as we've only had a couple of email exchanges regarding the NASA ICESat Traverse that we do. On the email was cc'd a couple other NASA folks, Zoe from SCO, and Matt O.

Subject: Come Play With Us

Hi guys- 

I saw these two hangin' in the Greenhouse. They looked lonely. Grab your trike and go play with them. 

----
Dr. Kelly M. Brunt
Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC)
University of Maryland
Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 615, Greenbelt, MD 20771
720.280.3797 (c)

For a whole day, we couldn't figure it out, but then I put it together that she had probably read the science report and realized we were referencing the shining.

So I replied very late the next night with this:

All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy. All work and no play makes Travis a dull boy.

Thankfully Elissa just got trained on driving the snowcat, so she can escape this haunted greenhouse

It was pretty funny b/c Zoe was working late at night in an empty lab and got creeped out.

 Wow, hats off to Travis for the most legitimately creepy ‎email! So glad to be at the lab late at night by myself now.

Zoe

Matt also had something funny to say:

Psych eval schmych eval...

Matt
Sent via mobile device with slow, fat fingers

And Kelly responded as well

Check it: It was optimized for phone screens. Brilliant!!

-k

Dr. Kelly M. Brunt
Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC)
University of Maryland
Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 615, Greenbelt, MD 20771
720.280.3797 (c)

In all seriousness though, living in such a lonely, isolated place with just 5 people while working really long days and weeks can take a toll on people's mental states. There are plenty of stories about people at the South Pole station who have cracked during the winter as well as some stories from here. There's really not much you can do for people if they do have an issue b/c here there are long periods between flights (at the south pole it's even longer: 6 months without a flight, compared to 3 here). They've given drugs to some people who have really gone crazy, but besides that, there's not much you can do.

No one is going crazy here, though I'd say the 3 of us who have been here since June (Nate, Elissa, and Me) are getting burnt out. Marie and Storm who came in on the August flight period are still pretty fresh. I'd say I'm coping the best out of us 3 long-termers. Nate often says he is struggling to care or as he says so eloquently "I'm having trouble giving any f*cks" And I think Elissa is struggling even more. Though I'm in closer contact with her, so maybe I hear it more. She just looks really exhausted all the time.

I'm actually doing pretty good. I'm not too terribly exhausted even though I work longer and stay up way later than everyone else since I'm also working on my thesis. I think the fact that I exercise 1-1.25 hours per day helps me out a lot. I think that gives you energy and helps clear the mind.

The things that make it difficult for me here are:

-The sameness/lack of diversity: we all do the same routine everyday. See the same people. Elissa and I at least get 1/2 a mile from station every other day when we go to station, otherwise the rest of the group doesn't travel farther than the area of 2 football fields put together. We start each day at 8 with a morning meeting. Then do our daily checks. Then lunch from 12:30-1. Then afternoon tasks. I exercise from 5:30-6:30ish while most people lounge around and drink one of Nate's brews. Then it's dinner. After dinner they all head to the Greenhouse to watch a movie or to watch the TV show Orange is the New Black. I either exercise a touch more or start working. Then from 9-9:30 Elissa and I launch a balloon (which is getting tougher as it gets dark and colder out at this time). They usually finish up the movie and then go to bed around 10, while I stay up to around 12:30ish working on my project. I think it's wearing on people to not see other people and scenery, things like that. And things like knowing the only exercise option available is the spin bike gets pretty old after a while. I'd love to break it up with a treadmill or elliptical machine here and there.

-Long days and weeks: It's tough to never really have a day off. We work long days as it is but we don't really get a weekend. We work full days on Saturday and then 1/2 days on Sundays. And even on Sundays we have to wake up earlyish to prepare for a 9am balloon launch and we still have the evening balloon launch as well. So that's hard for sure. Good thing is that the day to day work isn't generally too stressful or fast paced, rather relaxed actually or it could be hard to take.

-Missing Elisha, friends, and family. For obvious reasons. In Antarctica I was able to make good friends, and I had a girlfriend. Here, everyone is nice, but it's not like I'm really friends or have connected with any of them that well

-The damn thesis!  While everyone else gets off work and relaxes and watches movies or whatever, I exercise, grab a quick bite, and then it's off to my second job. A job that never feels finished, that always feels stressful, and that has a deadline.

-lack of topography: It's just flat white for as far as you can see. No trees, no mountains. And you can't drive, hike, bike anywhere

-The cold. It's starting to get quite cold, which is tough. It kind of saps your energy. The science buildings (MSF, TAWO) have to be kept around 60F b/c of the instruments, so it's not like you warm up in there. I do well in the cold, but it does get old after awhile. B/c of the cold science buildings and being outside quite often, poor Elissa spends a good portion of the day with cold and often numb digits. I do better, but I still get chilled often. One of the nice thing about the thesis writing is I go into my room, which as a little electric heater and it gets quite toasty, and I definitely feel quite warm as I work in my cozy room with hot tea. We've had poor weather too, which is hard for me. I like blue skies, but we've had lots of grey days. And long-darkness is fast approaching. As it is now the sun rises at 5:30am and sets at 7:30pm, but each day we lose quite a lot of daylight. A couple of days ago (9/12/16) Elissa actually got some frostbite on her toes. I was actually quite surprised b/c for me on the few times when my fingers felt really cold, I just went inside to warm them up, since we're never very far from a building (except during bamboo forest (still just 20 minutes away) and ICESat (but then we are towing a shelter). But I guess she said that her toes are numb through most of the day, so then she doesn't notice if they get really cold. Luckily I have pretty good circulation so my feet are never cold and my hands only really get cold when I have to take my gloves off to tinker with something.

-I think some people have difficulty with the lack of TV, fast internet and things like that, but it doesn't bother me too much. I do miss watching football, and I really missed the olympics. But let's be honest, even when I'm home I haven't had time to watch much football, and I don't watch TV on account of school. I think I miss more not having the opportunity to have gator season tickets and go to the UF tailgates yet again.

Actually, all in all, it's really not that bad here. In fact I have a couple of unique situations that make it extra difficult, and if even 1 of them was not an issue, I'd probably quite rather enjoy it here. Being away from Elisha for so long is extremely difficult. If she was here, it'd be a lot better. And the thesis is just rather terrible. If I didn't have that, then I could actually have some chill and relax time. 

This place would be really awesome, actually, if I didn't have a thesis to work on and if Elisha was here. B/c there is really NOTHING to do here outside of work, it's just a really good place to chill and relax. The world back home is so hectic. So much going on. Wireless devices everywhere being connected to everyone. Shopping, errands, just hardly any relaxing time in America back home. People hardly just sit around and chill anymore. They've always got a million things going. Not so here! This is a great place to work on projects (thus my thesis, haha), but ones you hopefully enjoy. If I came back and didn't have a thesis, I'd spend a couple hours a week working on my Spanish and re-learning piano (they have a keyboard). Elissa spends some time practicing guitar (they have a couple here as well). Marie is knitting a really fancy Icelandic sweater. Storm reads a lot and builds Legos. Storm and Marie do lots of crosswords. And I do enjoy movies and TV shows, so it would be fun to chill and watch those and not feel guilty that you have something else better that you should be doing. Having a group of 5 is actually quite nice in my opinion as well. It leads to just a really chill atmosphere. There's something nice about the pace of life with such a small group of people in such an isolated place. Of course I imagine it could be really terrible if you didn't get a long with a couple of the group. But conversely, it would be really awesome if you had some great friends, or a girlfriend in the group.

Recent developments have made it either harder or easier to get through days here, not sure which, haha. But I've booked a lot of tickets for visiting family and friends in Tucson, EP, CDA, and Montana. So that has me excited and looking ahead to that time. Also Elisha recently decided to join me on a camper roadtrip through Iceland (we re-deploy through Iceland), so I am very excited about that and have been caught glancing more than a few times at my Iceland guidebook!