Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

A Gift From Me To You

Thanksgiving weekend after a snowfall on a windless day, hiking the Arrival Heights/Hut Point Ridge Loop. Looking north toward the Golf Ball (NASA Satellite dish).

My beloved Mt Erebus, Castle Rock in the foreground to the right. A live volcano, the ice and moi.

This is why I am so madly in love with the place, views like these. It suits me here.

posted by: coldwish at 13:42 | link | comments (9) |
housing 2005-06

I Am My Mother's Daughter

Sometimes I wonder how I could be related to my own mother.

I don't like white chocolate. I don't like coffee. I don't like red wine.

I am not a baseball fan.

But, it behooves me, genetically it seems, to shriek & gibber at the news of the Red Sox/Yankees/Johnny Damon deal.

I cringed in shock & horror when the news was delivered.

Because I am my mother's daughter and they won the series for the first time in her life last year, on the same night I delivered the news I'd be headed to Antarctica.

So, on behalf of my mother's lifelong enduring hopeful fandom, I have to say:

What The Fuck?!

posted by: coldwish at 08:46 | link | comments (4) |
housing 2005-06

The Hazards Of Communal Living Writ Large

What do you get when you feed 1200 people asparagus for the holidays?

Smelly pee.

*holds nose*

 

 

posted by: coldwish at 09:03 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

Peeking Up The Skirts Of Erebus

Last night was the Town Holiday Party, the Housing Holiday Party, and a whole host of other parties happening around town.  Thus began a two-day weekend of drinking and carousing;  kicked off on Friday afternoon at 2pm with the All Hands Meeting (a bi-weekly event for RPSC employees) in which our esteemed leader took it in the chin over the very low morale on station, the lack of package mail for over a month and the now mandatory “volunteer” DA work (looks like the vast majority of shifts will fall to the janitors to fill).  So, even though the meeting was poorly attended, it left town morale even more in tatters and a wake of disgruntled people ready to start their weekend off Now, with Alcohol! Except for the fact the Liquor Line at the store wasn’t going to start for another 2 hours, fostering yet more reason for complaint.

After the grunge of the meeting I went to my room to shower off the days’ scent, dress in my finery and head on down to the Housing Party at Hut 10. I socialized there for a few hours, wandered up to the Heavy Shop (the VMF, Vehicle Maintenance Facility) which had been scoured and decorated for the occasion. I greeted people with holiday hugs, many of which were radically altered by the presence of my cleavage between us. I could see the looks of panic, post-glance at my chest, as the guys realized that I was going in for a hug. Most hugs were one-armed, loose-hold, askew hugs. Definitely my fault for hanging out of my dress so boldly. Despite that, I was in bed by 10:30pm.

I was getting up today, early-ish, to go on another Generator Run with Eddie Q., this time out to Willie and Pegasus. Last time we had done the Ice Runway and then Willie before the weather went to Condition Two and we were forced to go back to town. Much to my regret, as being stuck out at a pre-operational Willie and LDB (Long Duration Balloon Project) in a Condition One would have been such a cool thing to happen in Antarctica.

A Generator Run is when one of the Heavy Shop mechanics has to go out to all the out-of-town generators to do a daily check, regardless of a scheduled day off or a holiday. On days when the regular towns folk have time off, it can be a boondoggle for a desk jockey like me to make the trip with them, and good company for the mechanic on an otherwise repetitive, long, & boring outing.

At 10am I was up at the Heavy Shop waiting for Eddie to start up the Nodwell named T. Rex. What’s a Nodwell, you ask? A Nodwell, or one of this vintage, 1982, is a small crane on Caterpillar-like tracks. A crane is not necessary for a Generator Run, but it is the track-vehicle available. Only track-vehicles are allowed out to Pegasus and Willie at this time of year, when the roads are so soft that Ivan the Terra Bus, full of pax, gets stuck in a drift coming back in from a flight. T. Rex is not a comfortable beast, nor a particularly cute one a la a Pisten-Bully, but it is functional, and the only one on station. I had not been in T. Rex before, so score another vehicle for Genevieve.  There is room for four people in a Nodwell, and the engine is In The Cab between the driver and the passenger. I had to pull up the engine cover to check the oil for Eddie, since it was on my side.

The day, as they have been recently, was largely overcast, with the white ice stretching out to a flat horizon upon which sits the doom-laden grey ominous Royal Societies, indistinct in the dark shadow. It’s an odd effect in a world of largely white, when the land loses its snow-cover and the clouds descend low over us, the dark exposed dirt reflects up into the clouds, blackening the underside of them like the gates of hell. I love this look to the world here, especially when the clouds start shifting aside and breaking up, allowing the momentary glimpse of that blue sky with the corresponding blaze of white sunlight returning to spots and stripes on the mountains and the ice.

The opportunity to get that far out of town and see this again, when I saw it so often last season, is precious.  I loved it last year, and it was what kept me going when the people were awful. I have had more people and less Antarctic bounty this year, and it has taken its toll on me. So when I have this rare chance, I am often in tears behind my sunglasses and smiling with it.

We went first to Pegasus, and then beyond to the downed plane after which the airfield was named. My first visit to it, and one not surrounded by a gaggle of Big Red clad FNGs. It was a very private and leisurely visit, Eddie expounding upon the story of the crash to the other passenger with us, Ben.  I was able to climb onto the silver-white fuselage and the red tail wing of the plane, buried in drifting snow deeper and deeper each year. Grafitti’d thoroughly by previous visitors, and somehow lonely in that white expanse so near the Mt Discovery, Black Island views. It was a stark reminder of the difficulties of this environment, and the cost of doing science down here. Not one in which people died, otherwise--like the vast majority of Death Was Here markers around station--it would have a cross erected upon it.

The ice tends to flat here, it all leans towards swallowing up our human efforts and failures back into the unceasing flat white. The snow blows constantly across the flat expanse, and when it encounters an obstacle of any sort it drifts itself up in the lee of it, eventually creating a drift that becomes itself the object around which the snow builds.  Stationary objects get eventually swallowed up in these enormous crescent-shaped depressions of snow, then the basin holding it gets filled in and the object is lost forever.  We have forsaken planes, and vehicles, and buildings to this constant return to flat white of this world. Perhaps most famously is the South Pole geodesic dome station, now buried deep in the snow and largely abandoned to the New Station built nearby on stilts. There is a building under the snow out near Willie, and another, the Pig Barn, half buried & boarded up inside it’s quite little ¾ circle of mounded three-storey high snow like a stole around it’s neck and shoulders keeping it warm & protected, until it too, inevitably, goes under.

We try to fight against this tendency of the Ice to drift us over by building berms to store things on over the long winters.  Snow movers and bulldozers work endlessly, toward the end of the summer, to pile up the snow in flat rectangular islands with snow ramps on one side. These berms then house the various sleds & buildings & storage bins that must be left out at Willie or Pegasus long term. When we return at the end of winter to start our summer doings again, we find these items sitting on hills of snow that have drifted up around to the tops of the berms, as opposed to the objects themselves. It is a clever solution. We have our buildings built on sleds so they can be dragged away from the snow, down off the berms, as digging them out is a lost cause.  It is far easier to build berms and move the buildings out of the snow than to shovel & plow endlessly year round in useless rescue efforts.

This is why McMurdo is built on the dirt. Snow doesn’t stick to us. What does stick over the winter, melts by this season in the summer.

[This paragraph censored. I removed it in fear that I will get myself in trouble with Mama Ray. If ya want the real dirt, email me at iceDOTspinnerATgmailDOTcom, if I know you and you actually ask, I'll send it to you.]

During the hour long ride to town from Willie, I sat gazing out to my right, deeply ensconced in the noise and vibration of T. Rex, yet soaring inside on the pleasure of the view. Mt Erebus had been obscured all day to the flat sea ice with the heavy cloud cover and its remarkable chorus of colours and fades from navy tints to violet impressions to grey and gunmetal billows. The sun was starting to come out and the cloud cover was pulling up its skirts to show the toes of this great volcano, shiny sharp blue ice fields & crevasses in patches of white soft snow. I watched the view change with the lifting of clouds and the forward march of the Nodwell, and fell in love yet again, madly, truly, deeply with what this place has to offer me.

posted by: coldwish at 18:36 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

Encore J'ai l'Eau de Diesel

I volunteered to work in Fuels again on Friday morning, our last day of work this week ending in the two-day weekend we have all been yearning for since Thanksgiving’s two-day weekend, the first since I got here in August.  After doing the 6-day work week, indoors, at a desk, for four months straight without pause or ease, a two-day weekend almost comes as a surfeit of free time. I sit here on my first day of these two Christmas days off and I am restless with it. It almost feels like there is too much time and it threatens with the potential for boredom.

Except for the wonderful things I have been able to do these last two days: work in Fuels and then today go on the Generator Run with Eddie Q. again. I just got back from the latter, which explains my restlessness. I am sitting still for the fist time in over 30 hours. The last sit-down meal I had in the Galley was yesterday’s breakfast.  I’ve been snacking since: hors d’ouevres, candy, chips & salsa, popcorn, cookies, etc. Anything to stave off hunger.

A Fuel Transfer is when they open the fuel line that leads from town to Willie (the hose under which we placed the pillows at the transition last time I volunteered) in order to fill the 10 fuel tanks they have on a berm out there. The 10 tanks are the each the size of or larger than the tanks you see on an 18-wheeler charging on down the highways at home. They are lined up parallel to each other on top of a built up area of snow (the berm) just off the end of the airfield apron. The Hercs who fly out of Willie taxi over to the Fuel Pits, as this line of tanks is known, to fuel up before their trips to the Pole, Siple Dome, WAIS, Fosdick or Chch. A few times a week the tanks need to be refilled from the town’s supply. All the fuel that goes to the Pole for their stock comes from these tanks too, it is flown down in the Hercs after the tanker comes in with the year’s supply.

It’s a fairly involved process with one Fuelie sitting on top of, let’s say, Tank #4 with a measuring tape-like device with a weight on the bottom “taking dips” through the hole up there. They first confirm that they have “rise” from the fuel line from town, which shows that there is no unexpected fuel leak somewhere along the miles of hose and the fuel is actually filling the tank. Each tank takes about 40 minutes to fill and a multitude of readings of this “rise” until they reach the Safe Fill level of the tank. Each ¼’ of rise means a certain number of gallons in the tank. The tank is not filled completely because with the extreme changes of temperatures and 24 hour daylight here, the fuel must have room to expand within the tank if it warms up. The tank is also never allowed to empty completely, and they must maintain a minimum level of diesel in each tank. It’s not higher mathematics--thank goodness, otherwise I’d be screaming toward a crevasse & flinging myself into at the thought of being hired in Fuels ever—but it is fairly conceptual.

In addition to the Fuelie taking dips up top Tank #4, there is a Fuelie on the snow whose job it is, when the tank approaches Safe Fill, to run like hell to shut the valve on that tank, after having opened the valve to the next tank in line to be filled. Lest you think it’s all that easy, keep in mind that in this environment we have to remember the effects & dangers of static buildup.  Yup, diesel has static.  Apparently in the transfer process along the miles-long hose from town the diesel fuel builds up quite a charge, which if deposited into a tank then immediately drawn upon by a plane, can make it to the plane. Bad thing. Way to piss the ANG off, filling their Herc full of staticky diesel. So, for each foot of rise in the tank, the tank must be left to sit for 1 hour.  Filling a tank at 0900 from 3’5” to 8’2” means that tank cannot be used to fuel a plane until about 5 hours later at 1600.

So we can’t just willy-nilly go about filling empty tanks, we have to leave a few tanks untouched even if not full so that the planes can draw from them at any time. It’s a bit of a game of time & communication & topping off one tank from another more full tank so there is always a tank or two available for fueling.

While these two Fuelies are feeding their gigantic steeds, another Fuelie is on a snowmobile driving along the 8 miles of hose from Willie to the Scott Base Transition checking every link along the lengths of hose, and digging under them to look for leaks. The snow regularly drifts up the sides and it sinks down into the snow, so they ride the length of the hose checking it thoroughly. Shoveling & testing & checking all along the length & back.

A fuel spill here is an emergency.  We do our damnedest to have the least possible impact on the environment here, but there are always mistakes and failures of equipment. Our most recent Big Spill was when a Challenger (tracked tractor used for grooming or moving snow) ran over the Ice Runway fuel hose during Winfly, before the Ice Runway had been completely, or even partially, finished.  The Challenger ran right over it in the dark and the tiny holes created in the hose and the resulting spill were not discovered until 12 hours later. That’s a lot of fuel spilled. Once discovered it was contained and all the contaminated snow was shoveled up & placed in barrels & drums to be shipped off the Ice and back to the States to be disposed of safely. It was a Big Deal down here during Winfly.

So, checking the hose is important.  The Fuels Department has that responsibility, and it is a helluva responsibility. One error, one equipment failure, could be a disaster.  They are incredibly careful with even the tiniest drop of stray fuel even when they are handling it all the time.

I got to see this process, and had it explained to me by Lisa, who has been in the department for 4 seasons now. There is a lot more detail to the valves and the pressure differential in the coalescer (big thing that filters the fuel) than I could pass on without boring you or getting it wrong because my grasp of her explanation was sketchy at best. Of course, it was all out of town. I got to wear Carhartts and a radio, I got to climb up & down tanks and open & shut valves, call in pressure readings and check the fuel for impurities. I even dropped someone else’s radio in an open bucket of fuel. I was just that helpful.

All this, of course, outdoors with the greatest view in the world staring down at me as I worked.  It doesn’t matter to me that it has been overcast a great deal of this season, or foggy, or that Mt Erebus is not delicately wreathed in fluffy clouds against the Sistine blue of the sky when I get outside.  I had my feet in the snow and my eyes on the horizon so far away and I was happy to be there, back in Antarctica. My sense of belonging here is overwhelming at times, as if I have waited my whole life of seasonal winters with their temporary snowfalls and subsequent springs and summers and autumns, just to get to this place where it is always the winter landscape that soothes my senses.  I am blessed with incredible luck to have found this place, to be here a second season now. Regardless of my being at a desk job in a windowless office dealing with unhappy people, a job that has me yearning to be off-Ice and traveling in NZ or Australia even while I am in The Most Beautiful Place In The World, it is worth it to be here. Completely & utterly worth it, and I will be coming back as long as my body does not fail me and I can pass the PQ. There is so much more for me to see and experience and do here, I cannot fathom NOT coming back again and again.

posted by: coldwish at 18:24 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

Christmas Cheer, Not

Ugh.

Not my favorite holiday. Not my favorite season. I have no pleasure in the Christmas craparound.  Give me a Christianity-free country any day. Japan was a sheer pleasure at this time of year, because it just didn’t happen there. I never missed it. I hardly noticed it, but for the stray card in the mail from overseas.

What is it with the self-congratulatory consumerist commercialization of this holiday? Why are we made to feel inadequate if we don’t BUY the right gifts for people and get them wrapped and delivered by the arbitrary date of 12/25?

I opt out.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy giving gifts. I do. It can be a joy to give someone something worthwhile: a good book, a small quilt or something else when I’ve spent time thinking about the recipient as I’ve crafted it. Something personal.

But what am I going to buy that will speak as loudly & as clearly of my affection as something I can make?

Why do I have to do it all for everyone for the exact same deadline?

No. I refuse. I don’t expect gifts, I don’t give gifts. If I do, they rarely make it to their recipient during any one of the date-dependent reasons we give gifts: like birthdays and Christmas. A gift another time is a more worthwhile gift, a gift I have the time to make without panicking about when it is due, is a better gift. I resent the pressure, I resent the expectations, I resent being called a Scrooge or a Grinch when I am anti-Christmas. I don’t trust the sincerity of this season when it has been manufactured by a culture that starts advertising immediately after Halloween.

I resent like hell that even though I am in Antarctica I am being fed those same pressures. Talk around me is all about getting the online shopping done in time for the gifts to be delivered to their recipients by the right date. How much money has been spent, wrapping shit up in time. Decorating for the holiday party, dressing up for dinner.  Argh!! Let me out of here!

I spent 5 years in Japan doing nothing but making sure I had a date each of those Christmas Eves. That was the thing to do there. Gotta have a date. Had a couple of memorable ones. It was a relief to me to not have to think about Christmas outside of that.

I hate Christmas.

Sorry, Mom. I know how much it bewilders you that your child is such a non-participant in the joy of this season. I know you’d love it if I loved to put up a tree, decorate it, sing Handel’s Messiah, wrap gifts. Do the family thing. But it just ain’t there inside me to like this crap. I am devoid of Christmas Spirit and I like myself just fine this way. It’s not your fault at all, though you’d love to think so. Mother guilt being all-consuming.

I have wonderful Christmas memories from my childhood. But the best part? As soon as I was old enough to read we all sat around the Christmas tree READING the books we gave each other, for the rest of the holiday weekend. For hours on end. Just like every other day after school in the evenings. We read together. I have always felt that I could never settle down with someone with whom I could not sit quietly and contentedly reading. It is such a rare ability to have, peace in reading together. Books remain my favorite gifts (outside the handmade variety) to both give & receive as a result of that yearning, and those memories.

So at 10am on Saturday, December 24th,, Christmas Eve, I am going out of town on a Generator Run to Willie & Pegasus. On Sunday, Christmas Day, I will eat dinner at the 3pm seating with Shuttle Bill because he’s the grumpy cynic I’d like to be with at that meal, and then I will go do pots in the Galley. I will not sing carols, I will not be roped into this false cheer of the holiday, I will not exchange gifts with anyone, I will not be around these weird people with their weird rituals of the season. I will retreat to my room with a good book from the library and I will read for the rest of the holiday, imagining that I will be reading with the people I love, the same way I do every day.

posted by: coldwish at 04:49 | link | comments (4) |
housing 2005-06

Shilling for Levi's

Sometimes it’s the small things that drive us nuts down here.

The other day I was putting on one of the only two pair of jeans I have down here and I noticed daylight coming through the ass of them. Not great gaping what colour is your underwear air conditioning daylight, but pin pricks and thinning patches. Around the pockets, where the rivets should be, the fabric was wearing thin. If anyone grabs my pocket, or I catch on anything, I’ll be hanging in the breeze back there. I looked closer and I saw daylight where the belt loops attach too.

My jeans are falling apart on me! Only 14-15 months old, these things, two seasons in Antarctica, and already they are dying away.

Do you think they were Levi’s? Noooo. Gap. I’d gone for low-rise jeans, I’d gone for style. I’d gone for cheap $25 on sale at the outlet in Freeport, ME. But, on that same day I had also bought a pair of Levi’s 505s in the Levi’s Outlet next door.

I can recall I had to go through about 6 pairs of these same Gap jeans in ONE size to get a pair that fit. Each & every pair I tried on fit me differently. One pair were lower slung, one was too short in the legs, one was too long in the crotch, one even had one thigh tighter than the other. When I finally found a pair that fit all around, that I liked, I tried in vain to find a second pair as back up. Went through 8 more pairs and couldn’t find another with the same fit. At all. Tried on every fucking pair that style & size in the store. Nada.

So I went to the Levi’s Outlet. The saleswoman there eyeballed me and handed me the Misses Regular 8Ms in the 505s and they fit. I tried on another pair of the same jeans, they fit the same. Tried on different colours in the same style, they all fit the exact same way. They were $30. I bought one pair. I only needed two pairs of jeans.

So these jeans have the same birthday. I have worn neither pair more than the other, nor washed either pair more often than the other. These jeans have had the identical experience in the past year some. Both came down with me to Antarctica last season as a Shuttle Driver and spent equal time on my ass; oil stains were wiped on the knees, dust was rubbed & worn into them, dirt got all over from climbing around the Deltas like a monkey; and they were each washed once every other week in the incredibly harsh detergent they provide us here. Both were equally comfortable and served equally well. I usually wear a pair for a week then switch & do a wash. (Don’t cringe. This is fucking Antarctica! Whaddya expect? I change my underwear! I’ve got 14 pair of those.)

I’ll admit I’m sitting on my ass indoors in a chair this season, but still, I alternate the jeans and nothing else. Two pair is all I need. One pair on my ass, one pair in the wash. That’s all a girl needs, the rest is just filler.

But my Gap jeans? Failing miserably. I’m in fear I’ll be having a more ventilated day with a cold breeze blowing on my ass if I wear my Gap jeans anymore. So I’m down to one pair of jeans: Levi’s.

How do they look? Gorgeous. The wear & tear on them is primarily decorative, a little threading & thinning on the seams, the hems a bit worn, faded gloriously. Even after I wash them they are barely stiff. Can I see through them? No. Will they last a long time even under these conditions? Hell, yeah. Can I attach my keys to my belt loop and trust that they won’t fall off with the first tug? Yes, I can. I could even put my key in the lock, open the door, and walk right on through still attached by the belt loop and bend my key in half again. I bet I wasn’t wearing my Gap jeans when I did that three months ago.

Am I ever buying a pair of Gap jeans again? Hell, no. Cheap shit, doesn’t last.

So I am now engaged in my first ever on-line shopping experience from down here in Antarctica. Because One Pair Of Jeans Is Not Enough. I’m looking for another pair of Levi’s 505s Misses Regular 8M. And y’know? I know that I can buy these jeans online without ever having tried them on, because they will be the exact same pair of jeans I’ve got on my ass now. They’ll fit the same, they’ll last a long time, and within a few washings they’ll stop looking so damn new. Buying jeans shouldn’t be anymore difficult than that.

Anyone wanna pay me for shilling for Levi’s?

posted by: coldwish at 06:11 | link | comments |
housing 2005-06

Some Hug Theory

There is a whole world of hugs and huggers out there, some preferable to others. Recently I came across a hug that felt more like a grope than anything else. He started it. We’d hugged before without incident. This fellow’s hands were perfectly polite; it was the one-second-too-long hold, the slightly-too-tight pull in when I had already started my release, and the emphasis on torso-to-torso contact when I knew his primary impulse was not his apology delivered verbally seconds before. It was all about my breasts between us, and the extra moment to feel them on his chest. I felt groped, like he’d copped a feel. Yeah, so he was slightly drunk (and seemed maudlin with it), and his reflexes were slightly off, but his entire demeanor was one of frustration and attraction to me and I did not initiate the hug. He did. I count that as a stolen hug.

That’s one of the bad hugs. I don’t like being made to feel that my breasts are the primary reason I am being hugged. Perhaps that’s why I am a winter lover, I’m more likely to be wearing enough layers to make it moot even if that is the intention. But this recent one took place when I was wearing a t-shirt, indoors.

There are many other hugs, and hug considerations to address: Do you forfeit all hugs from smokers because of the stink? What about cologne-wearers? Both of these can have hug aftermaths involving smells clinging to you well after the hugger is unclung. Then there’s the hugger with the wandering hands; the awkward hugger; the insincere hugger; the tickle hugger --perhaps the most egregious of huggers in my book—you get one hug with tickle then you are cut off from all future hugs from me. I hate being trapped in a hug and then tickled. That is a grievous misuse of hug trust.

Other hugs, though strong enough to be mammogram-like, don’t give the cop-a-feel impression, even when my breasts are flattened thoroughly between us. The breasts, they are simply in the way, and the hug is so thorough that anything between us is similarly squooshed. In the case of sunglasses or other hard paraphernalia the result can be painful. In the moments preceding this particular brand of hug you have to do a quick self-scan for the offending items and remove them from the scene before commencing. This hug is not always welcome, as it can take a lot of energy from you on days when there is little energy to spare. But it can also be a great hug. It is entirely mood-dependent. Do I like people today?

Another big hug is the one where the person you are about to hug is not as boney or skinny as you are, and is powerfully strong. One particular hugger of this sort has the habit of squeezing me extra hard if I speak whilst hugging, causing me to squeak or gasp as the air is pushed from my lungs. Of course, I do this to my cat when she meows just to hear the funny sounds she makes. She’s very patient. When done to me it makes me squeal & giggle, and the hugger squeezes harder. I am the accordion he plays. Breasts, mine, are irrelevant to this hug.

This same hugger has the ability to discern when the accordion hug is unwanted and to give me a real hug deposit, with a hug that can wrap around me big & warm and hold me enveloped & encircled such that I am energized afterwards by the contact. These hugs can go on for minutes, and I miss them when I don’t get them. I can put them in my hug account and make them available to hug seekers later in my day.

A hug from a person who is considerably taller than I am, such that I can snuggle in under his arms, feels much like being hugged by a warm bed, I can lay my head against his chest and his arms like blankets encompass me warmly. I could stay there for hours; If the hugger is that generous. The height differential magnifies the ability of this hug to be a comfort hug, because it’s so much easier to cry and no one can see your face. A same height hugger can leave you more exposed.

This brings into the hug discussion a hug theory propounded recently by a friend when queried what kind of hug means what under what circumstances between a man & a woman who might possibly be attracted to each other. What kind of hug do you give when you are interested, to indicate that interest? What kind of hug do you give that indicates no interest & just friendship? When is it safe to hug, and how, with only friendly intentions and affection?

Oh, the quandaries and impossibilities of heterosexual hugging. Of the hug styles, I was told, there are three major ones: the Over & Under, the Around the Waist, and the Over the Shoulders, also known as the Around the Neck. Assuming the female initiates the hug--and that there are not such extreme differences in height that height itself forces the hug style--these all mean something different.

The Over & Under is the hug where the huggers alternate their arms. This is the most platonic of hugs and involves the least breast smooshing, and the heads are at a safe distance from each other such that it cannot be misinterpreted as the approach to a kiss. This one seems most natural between friends. Even when your hug partner is taller than you, he will lean over to engage properly, making the hug even less sexualized because the bodies have space between them. This is a good hug of greeting and farewell for a male friend.

The Around the Waist hug, where the woman hugs the man under his arms, around his waist, and he has his arms over hers doing the Around the Neck, can be quite intimate. It involves the most chest contact and involves going in under the man’s guard and snuggling in quite close to him. It can be used as a comfort hug as mentioned above--again with the height differential being of utmost importance—but it tends to indicate a certain physical intimacy in the friendship. If it fits, this is the one most often witnessed in already consummated relationships, as it gives the most physical contact and can be turned into the Open-Faced Hug with the taller partner’s arm over the shoulder of the shorter person, opened up like a Tuna Melt and facing the world in tandem, still in physical contact.

The Over the Shoulders hug, when employed by the woman, creates the most breast contact and when employed on a strong or tall man, is the one most likely to get the women lifted off the ground and swung around. This can all be quite innocent, as in the Long Time No See Airport Hug, but it can also be the most dangerous to passers by as bags get dropped willy-nilly and legs and feet often are spun out with the centrifugal force of the spin. When I employ it, it can often be the most emotional of hugs, meaning Don’t Go Please Stay, used when saying good-bye.

I was faced with the Which Hug To Use dilemma recently, when a friend of mine was leaving the continent and I was very unhappy about it. Actually, I was more than unhappy, I was in mourning at the potential loss. I don’t like the frequency or the permanency of the good-byes here; I am giving way too many of the Don’t Go hugs in which I am left teary-eyed post-release. I was not sure exactly what message I wanted to send with this friend, since I felt what we’d had was something more than a friendship, though not quite an acknowledged flirtation, I definitely wanted to send a message of attraction, but since it was a farewell hug, I wasn’t sure if that was best left out. So, I consulted. Thus was I presented with a friend’s Theory of Heterosexual Hugging.

All this is rendered moot somewhat by the fact my theorist is male and of taller than average height. I imagine the hug theory of a shorter man may be different. We have employed all three hugs during our friendship, to varying degrees of success. The vast majority of our hugs are of the Over & Under variety. But as we are both avid back scratch receivers, and recognize this in each other, we often just go with the height difference and easiest access: I go under, he goes over, we scratch each other’s backs. We’ve been told to Get A Room, but that’s by short-sighted, ignorant people who Do Not Understand the Zen of Back Scratching.


How do you hug?

posted by: coldwish at 15:48 | link | comments (3) |
housing 2005-06

Fuelie Wannbe

I made it up to the Fuel Barn on Wednesday. I was ill-equipped, clothing-wise, for the half day’s work I was hoping to put in with that dept, but I had been reassured that they had plenty of extra Carhartt overalls and work gloves I could use for the afternoon. Generally desk jobs don’t call for the heavy work gear distributed at the CDC before we head down here. So I did not have what I’d need in my ECW kit this season for outdoor work.

Once I was dressed I was sent out with four other Fuelies to the Scott Base Transition where the fuel hose to Willie Field had begun to sink into the water & ice. The fuel hose is a dark olive green hose about a foot in diameter that runs all the way from McMurdo alongside the road to Scott Base, down the cliff side and across the transition between land and sea ice, along the road a ways then straight out to the fuel pits at Willie Field. It’s how we fuel the planes. Because the hose is darker than the surrounding ice & snow it heats up faster than its surroundings in this 24/7 sunlight we have. So the heat makes it sink.

This area is particularly volatile, as it is where the sea ice meets the land, with little leeway before the Ross Ice Shelf becomes involved with its huge ancient pressures. A little offshore there are rollers and pressure ridges of great height, depth and blue ice glory. This raucous scene shows us what’s pushing what from where, and usually something’s gotta give. When sea ice meets land and tides, it’s the ice that gives. So there is a lot of standing water, upended plates of ice and the occasional Adelie Penguin. You’ll usually find penguins and seals where the ice cracks open, allowing them to come up to the surface.

The hose runs across this area and will sink into the water when the ice splits and melts. I watched the Fuelies last year at the end of the season when the water had frozen OVER the hose, then embedded the hose in the ice and sea. Removing the hose for the winter was an arduous superhuman effort involving wet suits, digging, chipping, shoveling, etc. I watched over a period of days from the comfy perch of my Delta as I drove back & forth between town & Willie. I thought to myself: Now there’s a job I wouldn’t want.

Well, that’s sorta what I was doing today. With glee.

As we came over the Scott Base hill from town, looking out toward Mt Erebus, mon amour, we emerged above the fog that has wreathed town for the last few days, squatting wrapped around us and the ice so flights cannot come in or out. We were above this white fluffy mass that covered the ice from land mass to land mass. We felt as if we were on the highest peaks above the clouds looking down. We descended into the transition & the fog to our goal: To lift that hose and place air bladders under it so it would float above the water, not sink.

I had been told to wear my Bunny Boots, since there was a chance I’d be wading, or better yet, fall through the ice into the water. Mostly it was solid, only within a few areas was it a pale blue, slushy, watery goop about 8-10” deep (like a Slurpee). We performed our task admirably, for all of us, even the four Fuelies, were new to this. I was able to contribute my memories of last year’s transition and the air bladders that I had witnessed. There was some singing of Ethel Merman songs involved and on the drive home the entire crew burst into whistling, a Christmas song. There was a moment of panic there, when I thought, “Crikey! Is this part of the job description?” If forced to whistle while I work, I'd much prefer it not be Christmas tunage.

I had fun. Good people, I was outdoors and I could feel the sun & the wind on my cheeks, doing physical labour with a tangible goal. I'm astonished, having grown up on a farm shirking my chores as much as possible, to find that I am yearning for a more physical job in my life. There's this feeling that physical labour, of the non-housekeeping/cooking/cleaning type (endless repetition with no glory, no advancement, too Sisyphean an effort) is somehow a more honest way to make a living. The tangible sense of accomplishment, the feeling of recognizing my muscles when I use them in the service of a job and not a sport. That feels right to me. Right now.

But does that mean I like raking my own leaves? No. I am a lazy person. Well, maybe not lazy, but in my own life I do procrastinate. But employ me to work around big vehicles shifting cargo or fuel and I'll work hard and well, then I’ll be fucking exhausted at the end of a day. But I won’t be complaining. I'll be satisfied that I'm doing something better than shifting paper & pixels around a desk.

I even got to drive my first snowmobile, after a 5 minute lesson. The Fuelies are a small dept, and often quite difficult to get into. I am hoping, by volunteering my time this season that they will consider hiring me for next season. This is a way of testing each other out.

While out there I marveled at something I had never seen before. I don’t know if it was a function of the fog, or the wind, or if this was common doings at ground level in that area. The snow and ice was covered in hoar frost, or as close to it as I can understand it. In thin razorback ridges, clusters, or carpeted like delicate translucent silver fairy forests, even in spiny balls like miniature glass medieval weapons, the ice crystals displayed their geometric magic. The needles of frost were inches long, shards of glass as fine as gossamer and as sharp, but as fungible, as collapsible, as destructible by a mere breath or touch as the “feathers” on a butterfly’s wings. I tried to pick some up to get a closer look and each time it collapsed into nothingness in my gloves. Had I been on my own, I would have been on my belly inches away from these structures, trying not to breath their death on them, enchanted.

This is what I have missed this year, the surprises and revelations, as tiny as hoar frost and as grand as a bloody sunset; that used to be daily sustenance, no matter how bad it got with people. Fuels got me outside again, outside in Antarctica.

The pleasure of walking back into the housing office after working in Fuels, and still smelling that vague whiff of diesel on my hands, on my hat, despite having changed out of the clothes I’d worn, was akin to smelling the scent of a new lover on your pillow after their gone. Like some sense trigger that leaves you grinning at the memory it brings forth. I would have no hesitation, based on these few hours, in working in that department next season. If they’ll have me.

posted by: coldwish at 10:58 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

Words Words Words of the Ice

This too was inspired by an email I wrote to Bill in direct response to some questions he asked me. Blame him:

Boomerang: Any flight that takes off anywhere on the continent and is cancelled post-take off due to weather or mechanical reasons such that it returns to its origin. The worst boomerang is the one where you fly all the way from Chch to McMurdo and circle Mt Erebus, but can’t see the runway through the fog/blowing snow/cloud cover so you boomerang all the way back to Chch, only to try again the next day. Yeah. People can lose days in a row with repeated boomerangs. Earlier this season after McMurdo opened and we had the southbound Polies in town, there were several flights that went all the way down to the Pole (3 ½ hours flight time) then circled the Pole for almost TWO hours waiting for that elusive one degree warmer weather to happen that is the cut off for To Land or Not To Land. That did not happen and back the Polies came winging our way to stay another night. Over & over again. Meanwhile we had Polies continuing to arrive from Chch by the planeload. We couldn’t get rid of them.

posted by: coldwish at 14:23 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06