Trav's Travels: Happy New Year from the bottom of the world!

12/31/17 New Year's Eve

After brunch, Elisha and I hiked up to Castle rock. It was a beautiful and windless today. T-shirt weather hiking. In fact, today was the first day that the mercury rose above freezing down here this year. A balmy 37 as the high. When we got back down to the station around 4:30, Icestock had already begun. Icestock is the new year's eve music festival that they hold annually down here. I think this year there was about 10 acts and 1 performance by the hip hop dance troupe. It went from 4pm until 1am.

When we first got there, we mainly focused on the chili cook-off. There was about 5 teams competing in the cookoff and all were pretty tasty and unique. We hung around eating chili and listening to a few sets before heading off to get dressed up for the rest of the evening. We dressed in bright outfits with wigs and everyone said they really liked our costumes. We pretty much danced straight from 7 til 1am with a couple of breaks to get brats from the grill. Lots of people dressed up, the music was great for dancing, and we all had tons of fun! A big and diverse group of people really dance it out in the front. It was great weather, so you didn't get cold while dancing despite not being dressed in much warm clothes. During Christmas it's easy to be sad and miss home, but New Year's is one of the times you're really glad you're here because the town comes together as one big happy family partying and ringing in the new year. Everyone is hugging and much cheer is being passed along. And liquid cheer too..haha. People pass around wine bags, champagne bottles, and whisky to pass around the crowd and share with everyone.

Icestock has some further significance this year now that Elisha and I are married. It was at this very show in 2012 that I first kissed her. At new year's eve as the bell tolled, I tried to kiss her, but had to compete with at least 2 other guys who also got kisses in, so later that night I pulled her behind a milvan and gave her a real kiss!

A really funny and nice guy that I like a lot, named Darryl, who lives on our floor and is a shuttle driver was the epitome of McM share. He had a helmet rigged up with two large bottles of hard cider with straws and was walking around offering everyone a sip from his helmet. Later in the night, he filled the bottles with water and walked around the re-hydrate everyone. Then even later in the night, he walked around with 5 big boxes of pizza handing pizza out to everyone. He had a really snazzy outfit on as well, but at midnight, he became the new year's baby by dressing up in only a diaper, a diaper fashioned out of a white bedsheet.

Anyways, a totally awesome night! I love dancing around with all my friends and the community, and I love people and costume watching. It's really cool to spend new year's eve with a huge group of people that you know (well most of them) in this special event that is so surprising at the bottom of the world.

1/1/18 Happy New Year

This morning was a special Luau brunch that included a whole roasted pig. After brunch was the much beloved softball tournament. Last time I was here, my team won the championship. I was hoping for a repeat, but it was not to be. Elisha and I were on the helo squad. We won the first game against Medical, but we lost our 2nd game to the carps who eventually beat Cargo to win the whole tourney. But it was fun, and Elisha and I both hit very well. Michael Davis (the ump and coordinator of softball) sent me an email the day after saying "You can hit the ball brother."

It's not the end of the world to exit the tourney early b/c then you get to join the crowd in the stands. It's one of the smallest crowds you'll see at a stadium, but it's one of the best. Since all the fans know the players so well, there is a ton of heckling. Loud and funny heckling. Sometimes borderline cruel, though the crowd seems to know who can take it. Elisha is worried to get heckled when she bats, but they pretty much lay off of the girls (aside from Jen Danis, who didn't play this year, since she is one of the top hecklers). They weren't too mean to me. Just stuff like 'science nerd' or 'do you need a calculator to figure out how to hit'. I was wearing a tiger shirt so there was some remarks like 'tigers are going to be extinct, too bad for you' or 'science can't stop tiger extinction'. As the games wore on the heckling got more intense as more people came down. It was fun sitting in the stands b/c it is cool to know all the players and talk about them and yell at them and root for them. There are free hot dogs and burgers (where else can you get that at a stadium?) and people pass around bags of wine for people to share and take a sip. Everyone crushes and keeps their beer cans and then when a player does something bad or taunts the crowd or the ump talks back or something like that, everyone throws their beer can at the chain fence right behind home plate. Then the beer cans are collected and re-distributed. They even had a kiss cam this year. Someone made a square tv looking thing out of tinfoil and cardboard that said 'kiss cam' and people would pass it through the crowd to make people kiss. Danny and Derryl announced the game over the radio. It was a great day for softball (high of 34) and in the stands with the sun on you, no wind, and packed in with other warm bodies, it was actually quite warm. Lots of sunburned faces after the game.

1/2

Another super beautiful, sunny, and warm day, so we skied from the airfield to scott base again. A chinese icebreaker was spotted in the distant open water (there is open water several miles from station that you can see from the top of the hills). The chinese are planning on building a new base at inaccessible island, which is pretty close to us. Apparently the chinese hare building 5 new bases right now, trying to show some power in Antarctica. We had an interesting morming meeting discussion about all of this b/c it would appear as though the chinese interest in Antarctic isn't so much science and peace but exploitation of the resources here and power and influence. This from wikipedia: "Although annexation of the continent is now difficult, ongoing geopolitics might disable the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) after it expires in 2048, or even before that date. If Antarctica is seized, either by force or deception, this can lead to a global conflict" I figure that one way we could convince trump to stop removing funds to the USAP and instead bolster it would be to tell him that American needs to be the best in the Antarctic again. With our aging stations and ever decreasing funds, we soon won't be the top dog in the southern continent. We were also talking about how the Russians now have this fleet of 8 or 9 brand new icebreakers for breaking ice up in the arctic ocean now that it's starting to be thin enough to break with icebreakers. With climate change, more and more of the arctic ocean is going to be open, especially with the help of icebreakers. And of course the arctic ocean is full of resources such as oil. The US of course has only 1 icebreaker (the one we'll use here), and it just barely limps along. Actually the previous seasons Elisha and I were here, we had to rent out a Russian icebreaker to even make this station run because our icebreaker was in dry dock being repaired. Anyways, it's interesting b/c the poles, with their vast resources (ex. fisheries, oil, minerals), low populations, no political divisions at the moment, and becoming more accessible with a warming climate will make them a hot spot for interest in the future.

1/3

Today was a busy day. Despite the beautiful weather, we did insanity, but then went and played several games of volleyball, then on to Trivia with Mitch and Christian. We had fun but ended up in last place, though we did ace the sports round.

1/4

Another beautiful day with skate skiing

1/5

The shuttles department had reserved Hut 10 for their Christmas party and they invited the extended shuttles family after 8. So Elisha and I went over. It was fun to hang out with everyone! It's crazy how the shuttles department still has a large contingency down here that have moved on to bigger (though not necessarily better) jobs. I found out that Derryl, who I really like here, has worked for VT at Beaver Creek the last 5 or so seasons driving shuttles there like I used to. Funny how many of the same people, 12 years later, are still there. It is a good job, so people stay