happy happy happy 2006!

I hope the new year brings you all:

• the love of family
• laughter and merriment
• fulfilling work
• stimulating art and travels
• beautiful friendships

and

• several new pairs of underwear.

come on, admit it -- you need some.

being on new zealand time, we at mcmurdo station rang in 2006 almost a full day ahead of the rest of you, and let me tell you -- it's been a good year so far. I hopped around to several parties, official and unofficial, on saturday night, before finally crashing at around 3:30 am. my friend sandy had sent me some temporary blue hair dye, which I decided to bust out in the name of being festive -- and it was well-received. (much better than my attempt at blue highlights while living in mongolia, which quickly faded to a sickly greenish tint that made it look like I was growing penicillin molds on my head.) see photo, right, of me and my good friend alison at the scott base party, hosted by our kiwi friends 1.5 miles down the road. alison is from the bay area, but lived in the marshall islands for five years working for a government contractor as a recreation expert. she's got this crazy curly white-girl afro that always makes me happy to see it. and she likes to knit and drink tea. needless to say, we get on like a house on fire.

after the scott base party, a bunch of people went to a semi-secret 'milvan' party held in an empty shipping container. these containers, or milvans, are lined up next to each other in a huge storage yard, and someone had ingeniously wired one to a generator, installed some christmas lights and a sound system, and spread the word. we counted down to 2006, danced our antarctic booties off, and consumed respectable amounts of champagne. here is a photo of me and my friend kirk in front of the milvan. yes, he has a checkerboard pattern shaved into his hair. and he looks like a cross between charles manson and fred durst. yet at home in washington state, he's a golf pro. go figure.

on new year's day, after everyone had recovered a bit from the shenanigans the night before and gotten some brunch, we all went outside to take in some live music at IceStock, the annual outdoor music festival. homegrown bands played from noon 'til 6:00 pm -- everything from mongolian throat-singing (surprisingly authentic-sounding for a white boy!) to bluegrass to reggae to country to metal. the weather was cooperative -- probably around 30F and sunny -- and there was a chili cook-off in progress, so everyone ate little paper cups of warm chili and cheered for the performers. here's a photo of me and my friend jessica in front of the IceStock stage.

last week, I had the opportunity to attend snow survival school, a two-day training run by the Field Safety Training Program. our group of 20 -- mostly grantees headed to the field, but also some galley workers, cargo handlers, heavy-equipment operators, and shuttle drivers -- were taken to a nearby snow field and trained in antarctic survival techniques. we learned how to deal with cold injuries such as frostbite and hypothermia, how to build a snow shelter, how to set up and cook on a white-gas camp stove, and how to use high-frequency (HF) and very high-frequency (VHF) radios. (I realized during the cold injury lecture that I have indeed experienced mild frostbite and hypothermia in the past, in mongolia and japan -- I just didn't know it at the time.)

snow survival school is also popularly known as 'happy camper' school, and for good reason. we had so much fun it shouldn't have been legal. the weather was almost unbelievably cooperative and so warm that we were shoveling snow in single lightweight layers. our trainers, trevor and cece, were super-cool and goofy. and the best part: you can eat CONSTANTLY at happy camper, because you'reshoveling snow, hauling gear and burning calories like mad! I ate my way through slim jims, candy bars, dehydrated camp food, crackers and chips like a gorilla on speed. I even took some food to bed with me.

and here was the other great part about happy camper: our group of 20 worked for several hours on a snow shelter called a 'quinzee', and when it was ready, three friends and I got to sleep in it! a quinzee is constructed by piling all of your gear (in our case, twenty duffels full of sleeping bags) into a mound, the higher the better. then you find several friends with shovels and somehow dupe them into covering the entire pile with several feet of snow (see photo). the snow needs to be at least a foot-and-a-half thick at the top, thickening on the sides to two to three feet thick at the bottom. the snow is tamped down firmly and left to set for a couple of hours, during which the molecules in the snow that were broken by the shoveling re-freeze and harden into a kind of baked alaska. then you dig a little tunnel into the side, pull out all the innards, and groom your quinzee for sleeping.

our quinzee was the taj mahal of snow shelters -- it was big enough for four, high enough that we could sit up in it, relatively light because of the midnight sun shining in through the cracks and thin places, and warm and quiet. we all slept like the dead. here is a photo of me and my co-worker erica inside the quinzee.

because the quinzee was only large enough for four, we also set up several 'scott tents' (tall teepee-like tents similar to the ones used by early antarctic explorers) and regular backpacking-type tents for the rest of the group, and built a wall out of snow blocks to shelter them from the wind. snow blocks are dug out of a 'quarry' using saws and shovels, stacked on top of each other, and chinked with smaller blocks. here is a photo of my friend jeff and his co-worker johannes in the quarry. jeff is clearly not demonstrating proper lifting technique, and johannes is not handling his saw with proper care. very naughty. fortunately, no one was hurt in the making of the snow wall.

last week I mentioned that the russian icebreaker was nearly here. well, it's here, and here's the photo to prove it. the Krasin's job is to break a shipping channel through 600 miles of sea ice in order to make a way for the supply vessels to reach mcmurdo later this month. it's an amazingly strong ship with an ice-reinforced hull, and it goes like this, in slow motion: back back back back stop start moving gather speed RAM into the ice come to a stop back back back. then it would do it all over again. totally hypnotic.

the reason we're employing a russian ship to do the job is because the regular ships, the coast guard's Polar Star and Polar Sea, are pretty dilapidated and in need of repair. plus, the russians need cash. so we hire the russkies for lots of money, the coast guard gets extra time to fix their icebreakers, the supply vessel is able to make it to mcmurdo, and everybody wins.

last week we had our shuttle team holiday party at Hut 10, which is a building reserved for DVs (distinguished visitors) to stay in but which also can be rented for private parties. sam, our boss (kneeling on left in black shirt) made us pizzas, and everyone brought wine and other goodies. we had even trained a bunch of general assistants to drive the shuttles for us for three hours so that we could all party worry-free. and we scheduled it so that the day and night crews could both attend, which was nice because you rarely see the people on the night shift. aren't we a happy bunch? damn skippy we're happy -- we've got the best job on station, and we're full of wine and pizza! by the way, six people in the photo (plus two who aren't in the photo) are over sixty! dad, you wanna come down next season, right?

latest random thing I've learned about Ivan the Terra Bus: when you are transporting fifty-plus passengers that have just flown in from CHCH and are all wearing Big Red, bunny boots and multiple layers of polypro, and it's a sunny day, and everyone is roasting in their polypro because the inside of the TB is as hot as the ninth level of Hades, it's a good thing to pop the escape hatches in the roof so nobody passes out.

the C-17 also brought me lovely care packages last week! thank you, thank you, thank you to:

• marnie and andy for the beautiful yarn
• gregory and kam for the magazines and yoga pants
• sandy and stu for the mug, swizzle sticks, new year's decorations, glow-in-the-dark pigs, and other fun things
• and my family for the underwear (see? essential), soap, cough drops and lipstick.

and if that wasn't enough excitement: finally, it happened. I saw my first penguin.

I went out to Hut Point Peninsula on friday night with my friend Sam to look at the icebreaker, which was only about a hundred yards from shore. we watched it for a while, and then decided to go to the other side of the hill and look to see if there was any wildlife, as reports had been coming back for a while that adelies and weddell seals were hanging out. there was indeed a seal sunning itself on the ice, but not much else. and then I saw something dark, something upright, where there should have been neither. it was near the edge of one of the meltwater pools. and then it jumped in.

sam and I were all excited. it was an adelie! he readied his camera (I, like a doofus, hadn't brought mine) and we waited. and about a minute later, the penguin jumped right out of the water and landed upright on the snow!

he did this a couple more times, and then did other penguin-y things like preening, waving his flippers, waddling around and shaking his butt. I was in heaven! my very first penguin sighting. (I decided that I should name him, since he was my first. so I named him Sledge. don't ask me why. I think it's because I have a stuffed dragon at home named Percy. Percy and Sledge.) it was a real 'holy schneikies, I'm in antarctica!' moment.

happy 2006 everyone! don't get frostbite!