Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Home » December 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Christmas Escapee

I was sitting in the Willy Galley taking my last few bites of the midnight meal, having stayed to fuel a late departing plane, when I looked out the window in front of me and thought I was hallucinating. From a bright blue sky evening the view outdoors had suddenly, in mere minutes, become completely obscured by fog. The sky was still blue above but I was no longer looking out at the plane I had just fueled sitting in the Aft Pit.
 
Fog had rolled in over us, completely blanketing the area densely and silently until even the buildings of town, right out my window were paler by half. I hadn’t been out in the fog since my first season. I knew it heralded miracles of ice and frost and snow to come. I had a shuttle to catch, the last of the night at 12:15am, and I was expected in early to work the next morning, though with some forgiveness for the late hours I’d kept this night. I would have stayed otherwise.
 
Fog in Antarctica is rarely the water vapour it is at home, where dampness is the work of fog, creeping cold moisture licking at your skin and raising the tiny hairs of your arms in salute. No, Ice fog is just that, ice fog, moisture frozen into tiny diamond shards of ice drifting just at the freezing point to land and fur all about it with a delicate snowy mantle of icy frozen breath.
 
I traveled home in this, and was driven out of it back into the dust and misery of town. The Fuel Barn was still awake with Fuelies at 1am doing last minute Christmas preparations, Secret Santa gifts being finished and wrapped up in ingenious ways with odd skua’d materials unique to the Fuelie world. I had opted out, and lucked out, of the whole rigamarole, by choosing my own name out of the hat when it was passed around, but had enjoyed watching, from the sidelines of PM Pits, co-workers enjoy the seasonal fun in the last week.
 
I was in bed by 1:30am and back to the Barn by 9:45am the next morning. It was a slow day of decorating and cleaning and anticipation for the Town Christmas Party and a Two Day Weekend. The few flights had been covered by AM Pits and Jon was already out there. All there was to do was fill a few drums, so I inspected some in town, Brian Harms and I loaded them up and trucked them out in One Five Oh to Pits to fill.
 
We were all three back in town before noon, and off to lunch. Back at 1pm and it was all about Christmas, as the Fuels Department wound up its week in preparation for the Fuelie Party, held at the barn. Candy in bowls, cookies on trays, jello shots and beer in the fridge. All we had to do was clean up personally and get back to the barn by 3pm or so.
 
I, too, was caught up in the fun, though not looking forward to the gift-giving/receiving. I came back to the barn in jeans and a t-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt; unwashed, but in my civvies and unscented with diesel, lighter than a feather out of my heavy work gear. It was nice to hang out in the office with the early comers as everyone relaxed into the coming weekend. We were almost all in house, imbibing of beer was under way, and fun was getting louder. We were on the verge of the Secret Santa exchange when the phone rang.
 
Could we come out and fuel a Medevac flight to Christchurch?
 
A classic Saved By The Bell moment for Genevieve, I had been handed the ideal escape from the festivities. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my co-workers immensely, and even enjoy their company, but I am still happier alone than in groups like that, specially drinking groups. I had actually been looking forward to seeing what insanely creative and funny gifts had been skua’d, made, invented. But an out is an out.
 
Before the phone was placed in its cradle and the look of panic and resentment had spread to the entire room, as no one wanted to leave, I had leapt up and said “I’ll take it.” I was out the door and into the Barn, climbing into my Carhartts and boots before people even realized who would do it had been settled. I dressed over my jeans and t-shirt, grabbed my hat and gloves and was off like a shot in One Five Oh to Willy.
 
Back out of town, alone in a vehicle, driving back into the white, Erebus to my left, off to fuel a plane. Solo. Happy. Free. Music turned up loud on the radio. Big smile on my face.
 
I was smiling not just to have escaped People, but because it dawned on me that this was proof to me that I was a Fuelie in good standing. I had had no hesitation at all in grabbing the opportunity to get out of town, but also to operate the Pits entirely on my own, opening, fueling and closing independent of any back up. I hadn’t even considered what I had to do, because I knew my job at Pits. There was not a doubt in my mind that I knew what to do. From a season where I have felt often stupid and unintelligent, forgetful and useless, this was my first moment of absolute unthinking certainty as a Fuelie. Or my first ineffable proof of it, to myself.
 
Imagine that, I can do this completely on my own. I felt proud of myself.
 
I was also escaping at exactly the moment when I had most needed to have a reason to duck out without being rude and weird within my department. I am already considered odd to some degree. Don’t drink, don’t much like people.
 
I reached the Pits, parked One Five Oh next to the Warm Up Shack, and promptly fell asleep on the couch waiting to find out from which pit the plane would be fueling. I heard the Hobart (they plug the Hercs into these machines to keep their electrical systems going) started up outside the Shack, and opened the Aft Pits for the expected plane.
The light shifted outside, from bright sun to clouds overhead, the shadows dancing across the flat white, tickling Castle Rock and sleuthing across White Island, but it was when I looked down at the ground that my heart leapt.
 
Hoarfrost. The fog of the night before had left a carpet of hoarfrost on the snow and ice. The change of light had lit up the frost flakes beneath my feet differently than the flat light sucking white of the usual footing and had rendered it into an iridescently scaled fractal universe of hoarfrost, collapsed in piles. Not freestanding and delicate trees as I’ve seen before, but each hollow in the snow held silvery piles of perfect individual snowflakes and frost that had not condensed. I knelt down and scooped up hands full of this snow, this frost, and each perfect flake fell unique and independent of its cousins into the palm of my gloves, perceptible to the naked eyes the architectural geometric life of frost, created in the fog of the night before.
 
It doesn’t get much better than this for Christmas. Not for me. I don’t need gifts beyond those discoveries, those moments of sheer beauty, heart thudding in my chest with love of this place.
 
I fueled the plane and headed back into town, ready for the Town Christmas Party at the Heavy Shop, ready to socialise, ready to mingle with people for the whole night long.

posted by: coldwish at 22:18 | link | comments (6) |
fuels 2006-07

Fuel Tilt Boogie

Most everyone complained about the weather Tuesday. Except me. Tuesday was gorgeous blue sky warm sun and everyone was saying How Glorious! and I would reply, "It wasn't as good as yesterday's weather. Yesterday was wonderful!" and their short term memory synapses would kick in, tiny frown lines would appear, eyeballs would roll back in their heads as they'd try to reconcile their mental image of a Good Day's Weather with their memory of the chill blow and wee blizzard we’d had and they'd start looking like they were worried about their own sudden onset Alzheimer's.

It doesn't matter if I am in Antarctica, the land of white, ice, snow unto infinity, there is never too much snow falling from the sky for me.

I walked out of my dorm late in the morning, my first glimpse outside of the day, to be engulfed in a swirling mixture of fine snow and fine dry dust. I looked up and the whole bowl of town danced with the stuff. I wondered about the weather at Willy Field. Would it be clear and sunny, or would we get a real storm? The grey white horizon looked promising for weathuh!

We drove out to Willy into the white, wind crisper than it had been for weeks, skin biting even, that we who had so foolishly become sun-adjusted, warmth-basking, had left exposed in our newly casual approach to working outside. I was smiling.

The work day started easy, with a calm pass down from AM Pits to PM Pits, then escalated into a frenzy. I had Aft Pits for the day (closer to the Warm Up Shack, has the Twin Otter nozzle, so can consequently be busier) and our first Herc (Hercules LC 130), of an expected three for the evening, was to be mine. News soon came in that Herc number two would be in Jon's pit, Fore pits, with both of these Hercs parked in such a way as to allow a THIRD Herc to taxi in between them. They were eager to get fueled early. We can deal with that, no issue. We can only actually fuel two planes at one time, since we only have two Fuelies and two pumps, but the third Herc would be dealt with. They can come fast and early and we'll get 'em fueled: bang bang bang all in a row.

But it really helps if the Hercs park close enough to the pumps so the fuel line will reach. My herc taxiied up kitty corner to my pit, as is the norm, but misjudged the distance, Jon's taxiied up to his moments later. My Herc shut down, and the crew left it. Ummm...can you come on back here and repark this thing? My fuel hose won't reach. Nope. Not an option. That's sorta like asking the Space Shuttle to scoot on over a dozen feet for a better photo op. They parked too far away, by about 10 feet. The ground crew was apologizing all over, unbelieving and disgusted in themselves to have so misjudged the distance that they were causing me this extra effort.

So, only thing doing was to extend my hose. Of course, I'd never done that before. I knew what I had to do, on a basic level: grab an extra 50 foot length of aviation hose (rolled up in the pump house), clamp off the extant aviation hose at the mid-point connector (standard hose is two lengths long with one connector in the middle) with a clamp on each side, open the hose at the connector over a drip pan to catch the fuel, hook up the new section (rolled out), and get back to fueling. I grabbed the aviation hose and the clamps, and then ran to get Jon. I wasn't just gonna charge in willy-nilly to do this.

Of course, y'all recall Jon was up there in his pit with his own damn Herc.

I was walking in his direction when he got word that his Herc had decided, with what blessed timing, to have a wee mechanical meltdown, to the extent that they needed to switch out planes, not just fix the problem in pit. So I told him the situation and he stepped into my pit to work things out. I had the concept right, but was missing a few things. Jon had only previously had to do this add a connection due to a bad parking job dance once before, so he radioed to control to confirm the process. What I hadn't known was that we'd have to recirc the hose again once the extension was on, in order to clean out the rolled up hose of any crap that may have collected in it. Keep in mind that anything in the aviation hose is POST-filter, and would go to the plane unfiltered. We don't do that. Our fuel is CLEAN when it hits that plane.

So Jon started the extension as I trotted around reconnecting the recirc hose to the back of a tank so we would have the closed loop necessary to recirculate the fuel in the hose.

Given all this big hoo-ha about extending the hose, logic would deem you, the reader, ask, "Why not just leave the extra length on the hose?" Extending the hose is something we CAN do but it is not something we WANT to do. The extra 50 feet of full aviation hose lends itself to several issues: it's bloody HEAVY and awkward to drag out to the plane and back when it's full of fuel; the extra connections add two more points where fuel can leak/spill. We shouldn't have to increase our daily work and risk just because a plane parks all cattywampus in the pits every so often.

Just as all this started the weathuh! moved in on us. Snow started flying, big fat flakes drifted swiftly past in the wind, the flat horizon receded toward us and the distant Willy Town buildings started becoming less distinct.

In these conditions I started the fueling.

Immediately, a Twin Otter taxiied up, buzzing by curiously, trying to figure out where best to be fueled, since we had bizarro Herc parked in my pit. Jon hailed them to his pit and ran off to fuel them, grabbing my Twin Otter nozzle (detached from the recirc hose). Twin Otters take maybe 10 minutes to fuel, and he was done and back in the Warm Up Shack in no time.

Meanwhile, I stood there next to the pump house in this quickly developing blizzard, peering between flakes at my man under the wing of the Herc. We fueled. Behind the Herc in the near distance the buildings of Willy Town faded out and blinked into white. We fueled. The three Hercs parked behind mine on the apron, lined up side by side facing White Island, whited out one by one, pixilated whiter and whiter in the scrim of fat fast flakes. I was reaching for my radio to contact Jon and ask him to assist in the fueling if we went blind when the tail of my plane started fading out and my man under the wing gestured largely with a throat cutting slash to stop the fueling, and that was the last I saw of him as the snow took him and his plane. I closed the control valve, released the deadman, jotted down the end time and total gallons of the fueling, and went to walk to the Herc. It had reappeared vaguely before me at the end of the hose I followed. Though it, too, an obstacle on the ground to the blowing snow, was rapidly being covered over in large soft flakes like goose down.

I wrapped up the fueling, dipped my tank, pulled back my hose, sumped the filter, released the pressure from the hose and turned to retire to the Warm Up Shack. Just then, with the snow lightening somewhat the replacement Herc for Jon’s pit pulled up, and the third Herc taxied over to park close between the two others. Depending on the parking job, it’d be my pit, my plane, or Jon’s. I caught it, closer to my pump house than his. It became my second plane.

It was still snowing, but less intensely. The thirty or forty minutes we’d had it heavily snowing was more than enough to create 2 to 3 foot drifts and banks of snow downwind of our vast collection of blue arctic hose connecting the 11 pit tanks. Anything like the aviation hose, lying on the packed snow, had drifted over. I pulled it out foot by foot from its disappearing act and laid it on top of the drifts.

Hose cleared of snow I approached the ground crew for SK 90 and we began negotiations for fueling the plane. Skier 90 (Nine Zero) has two tanks, the external wing tanks, where the sensor that judges if the tanks are full or filling is completely dead. This day, this benighted Herc, was to be flown north to Christchurch in a pre-Christmas rotator (where ground and flight crews are rotated on/off the Ice) to be repaired for exactly this tank issue. Because it had to fly so far, and into a headwind, it had to have every snippet of fuel it could carry for the trip: 8 ½ to 9 ½ hours depending on the winds.

I was more than happy to assist this Herc in its northward repair-bound efforts, but we needed to figure out how. The crew would have no idea on their end of the hose if and when the tanks were filling, and when they reached full. I’ve heard stories of wing tanks being overfilled in the past and Fuelies witnessing fuel spewing from the top of the aircraft wings. I would have the only clue as I watched the meter on my end as it slowed down or came to a dead stop. At which point I’d have to signal them and stop pumping. Then they’d have to break out a ladder, climb it and peer inside the tanks to confirm they were full.

Just as we reached an agreement as to the pounds and gallons and hand signals and timing of this delicate procedure, a new ground crew arrived to take over. It was the end of the day shift’s work day and it was time for the night shift to take over. ARGHHH! My original crew didn’t want to relinquish this fueling, abandoning me to the new guys. They were feeling guilty enough about the bad parking job they’d inflicted on me earlier. But switch they must.

So there we were, Fuelie G and her four Guard guys, 2 day shifters, 2 night shifters, once more explaining/figuring out the situation when a member of the flight crew came out of the cockpit and got involved. As far as I was concerned it was none of his damn business and I could care less about his demands that I fuel his plane faster than the low idle I intended to fill his faulty tanks. He wanted it faster. I put my foot down and told him clearly that I will not feed those tanks at anything but a low idle on my pump because I refused to have my pump and hoses dead head at a higher pressure, risking the hoses the pumps and a catastrophic leak if the pressure was too much. My pumps, my pit. Back off.

He backed off and I and the night crew got under way with relief he was gone. I’m not sure of the hierarchy within the Guard but I suspect I was the only one under that wing who could deliver that NO! as clearly and firmly as that to him.

We fueled SK 90 and between us we gave it all the fuel it needed without any incident. I didn’t see my hose jump like a scalded Anaconda, the pump remained at low idle and communications were clear and easy. I thanked them at the end, and they thanked me for making it easy.

Meanwhile I had been outside in the bitter wind and blowing snow for a good long while, and all that hauling of the hose out of the snow had made me a touch damp; my gloves were soaked through. The wind drove in through the tiny cracks in my gear and stole away with my stores of body heat, bit by bit, sneaking down my neck, in through the corners of my goggles, sliding in between my gloves and sleeves and cooling my wrists. Because of the angle of the wind and the direction I had to face to fuel the planes, I could not turn my back to the wind, nor hide in the lee of the pump house.

I stood there staring out at the Herc wishing I could be like the wild Sable Island ponies, head down between my withers, long furry ears forward, winter-furred haunches into the wind, snow gathering on my hindquarters, tail whipping to the side as the flakes blew past me, one hind leg cocked.

But I was not unhappy, nor was I really cold. It was just some more of that same mild discomfort to accompany my glee and joy at working outside in Antarctica in these conditions.

I was, however, relieved to finally retreat to the Shack and then head over to dinner at the Willy Galley. Our planes were done and we had only to close our pits and disconnect the added section on the hose. That could wait until after I ate.

Closing pits was more of an effort than usual, what with all the snow that had banked downwind of everything, covering all the hoses. I unearthed (unsnowed?) both buried aviation hoses and flaked them for the night, I dragged the recirc/Twin Otter hose to the back of the right tank (as opposed to the closest tank in our earlier rush) for the AM Pitters to recirc the next morning. We updated dips and boards, and covered up the skidoo.

Then I stopped. Done. All this time I had been resisting the urge I had to PLAY in the snow, piled softly up in pillows and thick blankets and folds of white here and there. I’d had to get around and through and under and over it all as I worked to shut down, but now I was finished fighting against it.

I approached the biggest drift near my pit, easily 3 feet high, mid-thigh at least. I turned around with my back to it, stretched out my arms and sighed as I fell backwards into it, ass first into the powder. I nestled into this downy blanket of exploded snow until my body head to toe was encased by it. I relaxed into its hold on me, gazed upward through my goggles and let memories of childhood snowbanks flit through my mind. I closed my eyes and felt the crisp solid snow hug me. I thought of Robert Frost, “ice/ is also great/ and would suffice.”

I could have stayed there forever, content, comfortable, ensconced in the snow of an Antarctic blizzard, as momentary and as sudden as it was. The fag end of a long day, dead tired, pooped, satisfied in my exhaustion, held by the rare powder snow on a glorious busy day of challenges. I am so lucky. I continue to love my job. I am challenged every day, and ensorcelled by the beauty of the environment where I work.
 

posted by: coldwish at 22:06 | link | comments (2) |
fuels 2006-07

Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Scents and Sensibilities

I shower only twice a week here: Wednesday and Saturday nights after work.
 
You may think this odd, given my job and its reputation for being ultra fragrant. Too true. But I can’t behalf-arsed to shower more often when I get off work and I’m exhausted and just want to have time to read and eat and sleep, maybe even write. I also find the more I shower the drier my skin gets, and down here that's an issue. I don’t smell bad once I shed my work gear, which stays at the Barn, or the Warm Up Shack at Willy Field lately. I arrive at the Barn each morning in my long johns and slip on shoes, a hat and a light jacket. Then I change, putting my Carhartts on over, lace up my boots, change hats, grab my work gloves, and I’m prepared for a day in which I encounter fuel, mostly diesel.
 
I launder my undergear and socks once a week, on Saturdays or Sundays. It rarely has anything but a light smattering of fuel scent on it, but no actual fuel. I wear the same items, except socks and panties, the entire week. The Carhartts are laundered by the miraculous Barb in Laundry, whenever we feel they have reached a state of disgrace such that even we can’t bear them, let alone wear them. Usually this happens immediately after one of us has acted as a walking talking human absorbent for some flying spewing fuel that has spurted from some hose connector unexpectedly while changing it out. Better us than the ground or the snow.
 
I don’t mind the smell. When people here wrinkle their noses at the idea of being a Fuelie who stinks all the time and deals with fuel so intimately, I have to laugh at their delicacy. Also at their shortsightedness. It is a minor discomfort to trade for the access to the outdoors and the views I crave here. In fact, it isn’t even a discomfort. It is a badge of honour. I don’t court their wrinkled noses, I don’t dab AN8 behind my ears and Mogas in my (admittedly well-disguised) cleavage, but I do snort amusedly at them, dismissing their complaints easily.
 
I have, however, become a bit jaded nasally. It happened the last two seasons when I was not a Fuelie and not cavorting with one of McMurdo’s most ubiquitous scents. The lack of humidity in the air here dries my sinuses out to the extent that I do not smell as well. There is also a distinct shortage of scents here, on which to keep one’s nasal passages practiced. Food, diesel, and other people make up the world of odours here. Even scented, fragrant moisturizers, or soaps, shampoos and other bodily unguents fade in their efforts to scintillate the schnozz after a few months.
 
But, in the service of smelling different, I have succumbed. Normally I exist scent-free, fragrances in lotions and crèmes being anathema to me, often driving me to sneezing sniffling responses. But here, I lather, I oil, I slather, I smooth strongly scented, opinionated moisturizers and crèmes onto my flaky desperately dry skin. I swoon for cinnamon-scented moisturizer from Holiday Inn, I flutter over the Body Shop’s Mango Body Butter, I faint for the vague hint of orange in the little Curel I have left.
 
Don’t give me Dove crap, or artificial perfumes and fragrances competing for my attention and making my nose run, I’m not into musks and flowers and perfumes for perfumes’ sakes, at $100 an ounce. I want fresh, fruity, full-bodied, buxom bodacious scents to make me salivate with the flavours. I want crisp exploding citrus, I want northern berries strong and sure, I want tart, I want tropical insouciance, I want to smell like mysterious chai spices, I want attitude. I want to taste when I smell, tease my taste buds with what we lack here, comfort myself with the possibilities.
 
On Wednesday after work, I take my shower long and hot, luxuriating in a heat I am always surprised I needed. I step out wet and warm and am profligate with mango head to toe, I float in a cloud of fruity scent, skin bathed in buttery soft yellow crème, soothed into a moist state of contentedness, inhaling greedily as the warmth of my body releases the scent into my own nostrils.
 
On Thursday morning I rerobe in my same longjohns, my same work gear, my same boots, and am once more draped in the miasma of diesel. Occasionally later in that day, when I adjust my Hot Chillys turtleneck I will catch a scent of mango rising from me and I will smile to myself to be smelling something so rare in a continent with few scents we have not introduced ourselves. It pleases me.
 
It doesn’t go unnoticed. I rode home on Saturday after work, a full three days since my last shower, and I could see the confusion on my neighbour in the van. His nose wiggled quietly, he sniffed delicately, his eyebrows rose just a hair. I knew he smelled the diesel. That I cannot help. But it wasn’t the diesel that confused him: it was the fruity diesel that got to him. I had to laugh.
 
All hail the mango-scented Fuelie.
 
 

posted by: coldwish at 11:41 | link | comments (6) |
fuels 2006-07

Escape From The Dust

Each day these last few weeks I have escaped from town, and its ubiquitous red dust, to Willy Field. I filled in for two days on AM Pits, paired with the divine Trevor “Hocho” Ortiz, during the two most blue sky days I can recall here. AM Pits is quite different from PM Pits, in that we start at 5:30am by catching the shuttle out to Willy, arriving there with two big grey Hercs already parked and waiting for fuel in our pits, one in the Aft Pit, one in the Fore.
 
But first we open the pits, we recirc the hoses and take samples from the nozzles, we check the hoses and the connections and get ready for the day. Recircing, or recirculating, the hoses involves running fuel through the hoses and into a tank, then out the front of the same tank into a closed loop of hose, tank, hose, through the pumps. It doesn’t go anywhere but around this closed circuit. Why? Because the fuel that sits still overnight, or over a weekend, in the lengths of hose that lead from the pumps to the planes needs to be re-filtered before it is fed to a plane. So we close the loop, and run enough through that any fuel left in the hose we use is freshly filtered.
 
The Hercs wait patiently for this. They know the drill. Then we feed them. It is a more leisurely pace, even if at first it seems more hectic with the Hercs and the Guard waiting on the completion of our morning rituals. But it starts the day off concisely, with few surprises, a repeated few steps and two Hercs are full-bellied winging their way to the Pole. At most only two Hercs left in our day, with three or four more to be fueled later by AM Pits.
 
Though perhaps my impression of AM Pits is heavily influenced by Hocho’s calm demeanor. Either way, I look forward to more AM Pits next season, preferably once the shift has been made to Willy Field, away from the Ice Runway. Later in the season, once the Hercs have worked their mechanical kinks out, things become much easier at Pits.
 
I loved the commute both mornings in Ivan the Terra Bus, along with the Guard shift change for 6am. It had been a long time no see of this slow reveal of the view that stole my heart and blasted my mind every day of my first season here at a Shuttle Driver. Mount Terror was crisply sparkling in the morning sun, eruptions of jangled ice exposing the inner blue. Terra Nova sloped mildly between Mt Erebus who was clear right up to the peak with a plume long and elegant stretched all the way over to Mount Terror. Castle Rock peeked redly around as we crested the Scott Base Hill and progressed down and around the transition, white cliffs of wedding icing drooping gently almost overhead, a fringe of icicles descending over the internal blue to our left as we trundled past.
 
This week, and last, I was back on PM Pits, starting at 12:30 each day after a morning’s solo debauchery in my room, reading, writing, sleeping in late, luxuriating in the rare privacy in my room. I am pleased to be getting out of town. Though Town Crew allows for a great deal of variety and new things are thrown at me to learn every day, I hadn’t realized until my first chance at a day at Willy, how much I craved the white, the vast ice shelf of snow in which it sits.
 
Willy Field is so white and isolated compared to the Ice Runway, which squats right in front of town on the seasonal sea ice. Willy Field is snow, not ice. The Pits have 11 tanks to the Ice Runway’s 6, the Ice Runway being on temporary ice the concern is with the weight. Willy is on the Ross Ice Shelf, a constantly shifting yet relatively immutable and solid base. The Pits sit further from the apron, off to the edge, such that when we face out from the pits, Erebus is directly at our backs and we look out between White & Black Islands directly to Minna Bluffs. Willy Town is off to our left somewhere out of sight, not interrupting the view. I can stand by the pump house holding the dead man, fueling a Herc, and my view, my job, my focus on the man under the wing of the aircraft, is framed by the ultimate in Antarctic expanses, vast and white. Even the large grey looming beast that spews ugly fumes that hover in a hideous brown cloud over the airfield on a windless day, parked directly in my face, is humbled by it. I cannot help but smile to be there.
 
This week has been one of games played, peekaboo and demure hints of Erebus, by the clouds. Largely overcast, though warm, all week, the clouds have moved in and out, streaking and bunching and fluffing about the view behind us. We have had days of blue horizons and flat light, with only Terror’s twinkling icy toes dressed in sunlight dancing under the cloud cover. Another day Erebus sat draped in a fleecy lace mantilla of cloud that dissolved into an explosion of down cloudlets. Another day had us in cloud and grey until late in the day when suddenly out of the sky came sunshine spotlighted on my as I closed my pit. I was on a stage of white snow glowing brightly, brilliantly illuminating my shutdown, surrounded by flat shadow, bluish grey. I wanted to stop and sing, to dance, to skip merrily in this patch of sunshine.
 
Views have been long and short, bright and close, dark and far, distances measured by shadows and streaks of light on the vast flat white between us and the mountain range we face. Some days they appear immediate and solid, other days mirage-like and faint smudges in the distance. Light plays funny tricks here, moments happen where Erebus cannot possibly be solid, not real, so pale blue does she seem, gently pastelled and thumb smudged in on the horizon. Other days she is sharp, crystalline, jagged and pocked with harsh edges and icy eruptions from her white snow muscled flanks, unseemly in her blatant blazing glory.
 
I like PM Pits, too. Willy Field is a beautiful place to be, and my partner, Jon “The Body” Benfatti suits my mood these last few weeks. When asked questions he addresses the question head on, willingly explaining in details crisp and clear the hows and whys and whats I wonder about. I learn a lot from him, and he’s not selfish with his time and patience. But he is also, generally, a quiet person, and I have discovered great gobs of silence and ease in between planes in the Warm Up Shack with him sitting across from me. It has been peaceful.
 
We have our jobs, we alternate Pits, Fore and Aft each day, and take what comes to our pit on that day. Some days one person does more than the other, some days so much so that the one with the extra planes can be heard gently snarling, “My pit, my plane,” as the other pitter hovers with nothing to do. I have sent him home before me with the My Pit My Plane mantra, and he has sent me home in kind. I even stole a plane from him one night, by rerouting the Guard flagging in the plane to my pit, not his. Yes, I used my feminine wiles to pull a plane into my pit, right out from under his nose, then I sent him away. He’d had the vast majority of planes that day and I sought redress and balance. We have become slightly territorial of our pits. Benfatti started it, as he gets restless when unoccupied, I have simply returned the favour.
 
This week I do PM Pits on a day by day basis, awaiting word when Lisa Chaiet will be cleared to return. I wish her the best, even as I dread the return to the dust of town. Every night, on the shuttle back from Willy, halfway up Scott Base Hill on the dirt road, I lose the air so clear and crisp that I have been privileged to breathe all day at work. Once more the brown closes in on my senses with dirt and dust that changes the way everything tastes and smells. I can taste the dust in the air as it hits and the purity is sullied, and the shroud descends upon us. The grit is back. The change is shocking each time.
 
But, tomorrow, I have another day at Willy.

posted by: coldwish at 11:39 | link | comments (1) |
fuels 2006-07

Saturday, December 09, 2006
Tribal Markings

I’m starting to sport the classic Working Outdoors In Antarctica facial markings, like some cult of which I have become a member inadvertently. I certainly don’t look as evident as many of my cohorts, with their reverse raccoon white stripe across the eyes, cheeks brownish red, noses more burnt umber to Rudolph red. This look is a cumulative one this season. I have not seen the sudden onset ozoneless day of radiation red burns of last season. Which is odd, given that this season is the Season of the Ginormous Ozone Hole. The biggest one ever over Antarctica in recorded history, going back to the 1950s, when measurements started.
 
I am lucky so far. All my efforts with sunscreen and remaining blackmasked and anonymously goggled even on days we are above freezing, has stood me in good stead. But these last two days I have gained some freckling. Despite massive sticky applications of 40 SPF sunscreen to my face, multiple times a day, my freckles are starting to coagulate. Other people may tan, I freckle in such a way that my brown tones are entirely freckles, approaching solid. Perhaps it’s just the mirrors in the bathroom, or the artificial lighting, but they look to me like they have a greenish cast. So I look closer and damned if there isn’t a little pink tinge peaking through; which means burn. Minor enough at this point.
 
But my cheekbones are gorgeously highlighted the way that all the blush and all the make up artists in the world could not achieve.  They look lovely really. The perfect scattering of freckles shadowing their lines and curves, such that my face suddenly leaps out in some relief from its normal flat self. Because the sun does not just strike us from above here, but reflects from the snow we work on, the freckles also underline my cheeks quite well. I look bizarrely healthy. Glowingly so.
 
Until I take my hat off. Then the paleness of my forehead shines through, like the rest of the folks here. We are ochre and tan and pink and brown from the bottoms of our sunglasses to our chins, we are the Arizona desert spectrum of skin colours, but only on that small area of our bodies, the rest of us is pale and winter ugly, pasty. (The vast majority of folks here are Caucasian, so I generalize.)
 
I am aware I need to protect my nose better, so I plan to attach a nose guard of fabric, or paper, or duct tape (I have some great purple or neon green stuff!!!) to protect my nose. I find it too hot nowadays to cover my nose and breath through my gaiter. I cover everything but this small circle in the center, out through which my nose sticks. Making me identifiable to all & sundry because of my nose ring, otherwise I’m all ninja dark colours and anonymous.
 
I don’t want more skin colour. All I really see on my face, despite the illusion of glowing good health, is sun damage, skin damage, possible cancer. I’m too much a redhead not to be concerned about it.

posted by: coldwish at 21:21 | link | comments (6) |
fuels 2006-07

Room Feeder

I have become one. Most of this week, except for breakfasts, I have dashed into the Galley, filled my Tupperware with edibles, and dodged ungreeting and unseeking of friendly faces in the seats, out of there, back to my room. There I eat alone, listening to music on my iPod (through my laptop), reading the New Yorkers my mother sent me (THANK YOU!!!!!!!), snacking on Mike & Ikes (THANK YOU DIANE!!!) and being by myself: recovering. It’s what I do to de-stress, to heal from the rawness of dealing with people even when I go to the toilet to take a self consciously noisy crap.
 
I haven’t been writing much lately. Town is brown and dusty, people are just about the same way right now, dry and fragile, blowing every which way. Christmas approaches and I am in full avoidance mode. Ack! Fuels does a Secret Santa gift thing each year, and I was fully satisfied to draw my own name from the hat, thus excusing myself from that pressure. I hate the whole deadline to impress nature of giving gifts at work. I know people are trying to replicate a family holiday atmosphere by doing these traditions here on Ice, with the meal, the party, the gift giving. I want none of it even when I’m off the Ice, and even less so when I’m here. Why can’t I be far enough away from that here in Antarctica to be excused from the commercial crap and faux cheer of the holidays?
 
I’d love to be sent to the Pole right now, or placed on a night shift if it were available to Fuelies. The best I can do is another week on PM Pits, but this time out at Willie Field, replacing Lisa Chaiet who has broken a bone in her hand/wrist. This injury is depressing not just for her--she is a talented singer and guitarist, with rhythms and melodies that startle and please in a way similar to Tori Amos, I even hear echoes of Bruce Cockburn in her finger picking--but for the rest of us who do the same job and see in her how easily it is to be temporarily or permanently disabled by our job here. My luck is her ill luck.
 
At this point I’ll take what I can get. PM Pits it is, starting Monday, with Jon Benfatti. One week of pure white snow and blissful views of Erebus reminiscent of my first year in Shuttles, out of the old dust bowl of town, away from the people here all the time every where. I’m even too exhausted to do much one on one with folks. I’m making space for myself this year, braving the social disapproval that any disappearance from the community brings.

posted by: coldwish at 21:16 | link | comments (1) |
fuels 2006-07

Town Crew

I have been on Town Crew lately. Town crew is sort of a catch all collection of Fuelies who get the odd duties, the regular daily, weekly duties, the periodic tasks. Sometimes we fuel things, sometimes we drain things, sometimes we fix things. The possibilities are endless and fascinating. Town Crew is the bulk of the department, we work from 7:30-5:30 Monday through Friday.
 
Thus far, on Town Crew I have been on Drum Duty, Fuel Mule, Delta Scharen, Power Plant Transfer, Ice Runway Transfer, Willie Field Transfer, Chem Lab and FIR Dips. And those are just the tasks with titles, there are many other tasks I have completed. I like the variety, and I feel I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot.
 
Drum Duty, or to be “on drums” involves filling 55 gallon drums with the necessary fuel: premix (50-1 Mogas-oil mix), AN8 (jet fuel), and plain Mogas (unusual). These drums are then sent to science camps, the South Pole, fuel caches on the continent, and around town to be the fuel source for whatever vehicle or machine needs juice. This is a fairly onerous duty for many people, as it is repetitive, often messy and if you are dealing with Mogas it stinks to hell.  People comment more on your fragrance after a day spent with Mogas. I don’t mind being on drums so much, though I have not done it as much as some folks have, for weeks on end down at the Helo Pad.
 
The Fuel Mule*, alternately spelled Fule Mule, is the tanker truck with which we fuel the town buildings on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and other machines (soil cooker, air compressor, Bowser, odd Fleet Ops vehicles not close enough to a fuel station) in town. This is a solitary duty, and I like it a lot. In the morning I back the Mule into the filling station, attach the hose, start up the pump, open the valves and open the Bulk Fuel Tank D2 at the Beta valve, and fill her tank up. This modern Fule Mule is a cool white and silver truck with all the mod cons, built for the Ice, to our specifications, replacing the aged and decrepit and hard done by old Mule.
 
Once filled, I close and detach and pull away with a printed list of thirsty buildings around town. I trundle about full of fuel, up hill to the soil cooker, down hill to the Old Aquarium, into town to the dorms. There I pull up slowly and creakily, brakes squeaking as I approach within inches of the ladders to the tanks on the sides of buildings. I check the fuel in the tanks, using a measured dipstick, or a dip tape, and fill if necessary. Some tanks are simple: pop the nozzle in, turn on the pump, watch the gauge rise. Others are more challenging, having no ladders, and no sense of how fast it fills without having to ascend via weird routes and straddle it peering down into the depths past the nozzle and guessing based on sound and splashback, dipping regularly. Some tanks even have ropes into which one places the nozzle, in order to pull the dang thing all the way up to the top of the tank once you have climbed the two story ladder up. Some tanks can’t be approached very closely and you have to unroll this heavy blue hose with this great metal nozzle on the end out from the front bumper of the Mule until you can reach the stairs to climb to the tank.
 
But still, it is one of the few solo tasks, now that I am trained and confident, available to me. I had forgotten how glorious it was to be in a vehicle alone in McMurdo, as in much of my Shuttles season. At home, my car is an escape, a place to be alone and going somewhere simultaneously. I relish the privacy of my car, and this Fule Mule lends me some of the illusion of that. Add in that the truck is totally awesome and it’s like tooling around town in a Maserati.
 
Delta Scharen is much the same, but she ranges further afield, filling all the buildings and machines at the three runways, and she also sucks. Scharen gets you out of town, a lot. That’s also fun. I have yet to do her alone. She’s a bit more challenging, being an older vehicle, and having fewer of the mod cons that make things so smooth on the Mule, but I think I prefer her. For her territory is vast and unusual, and her tasks often bizarre, requiring tight maneuvering and creeping up on things to achieve. It’s startling how delicate and precise one can be with Scharen, even more so than with the Mule, who has not the advantages of being articulated. Working with her can be like swinging around on a jungle gym, and a day of it can be felt quite tangibly in your muscles, with the climbing and the descending to reach the valves in front, the climbing and descending to start the pump, the climbing and descending to open her top (for air pressure relief on the tank whether sucking or fueling). It’s all about ladders and leaping about on different levels of the Delta front and back every few minutes.
 
Power Plant Transfers take place on Mondays and Thursdays. There is a team of two devoted to this, one person for the top half with the responsibility for opening the Bulk Fuel Tank that releases the fuel into the hard line that leads windingly and bendingly through town between buildings and mostly down hill, and another to walk the lower half of the line to the Power Plant checking valves to make sure they are open or closed as required. There is a lot of radio checking in with Control (our dispatcher). We stop in front of the valve in question, confirm by touch and play that it is indeed closed then call it in:
 
“Control, D27”, says the Fuelie
 
“Go D27,” is heard from Control.
 
“D27 confirmed closed.”
 
“D27 confirmed closed.” echoes Control.
 
A few paces later you hear…
 
F: “Control, D29 with three valves.”
 
C: “Go D29 with three valves.”
 
F: “D29 confirmed closed.”
 
C: “D29 confirmed closed.”
 
F: “Drop 9 confirmed closed.”
 
C: “Drop 9 confirmed closed.”
 
F: “Air 15 confirmed closed.”
 
C: “Air 15 confirmed closed.”
 
Etc. For about 20 valves down the line to the Power Plant itself.
 
Fuels is wicked careful about the transfer of fuel. Once the fuel is flowing from the Bulk Fuel Tank (usually J13 for the Power Plant at this point) to the Power Plant and we have positive rise (confirmation that the fuel is making it into the intended tank and not headed somewhere else, generally done through dipping a tank) the top Bulk Fuel Tank Fuelie walks down the line, and the bottom Power Plant Fuelie heads back up the line, both eyeballing the pipes and valves for seepage, leaks or oddities until we meet in the middle. We check and double check and triple check. It’s not paranoia, it’s smart.
 
Sometimes we get to fill other tanks on the hard line between J13 and the Power Plant, such as the Galley tank, the Firehouse tanks and a few others. Once the Power Plant tank is full we shut that valve and open the midway tank and fill from the same process.
 
An Ice Runway Transfer, an affair now rendered moot by the end of this year’s Ice Runway, is much the same process in the general sense: we are moving fuel via a gravity transfer down hill from the Bulk Fuel Tank (BFT) to the tanks at the Runway Pits, partly through a hard line until the edge of town, then through the soft hose from the transition to the Pits. That involves a fair number of people: One person to do the Bulk Fuel Tank, another to sit at the control valve (Ice One), three more to be at the Pits. Of the three at the Pits, one rides the line by skidoo, checking the line and its gender (male ends to female ends of hoses) or mender (where we have cut the hose and reconnected it to remove a weak point or a seep hole) connections from the transition to the Pits and back. The other two stay at the Pits and dip tanks, open/close valves, take fuel samples off the transfer, and report tank dips and coalescer pressures.
 
An Ice Runway transfer, as are all the transfers from BFTs to tanks in town are done largely through gravity. The BFTs are up hill, all we need to do is open a few valves and gravity will feed us the fuel to the bottom, plenty of pressure. A Willie Field Transfer is hugely different, though the concept of BFT to Pits remains the same. Except this time the distance traveled by the fuel is so great (8 miles, several up and over Scott Base Hill via hard line and then 5 miles across flat snow via hose) that gravity will not suffice to push it and we must use pumps near the BFTs. I have yet to be involved, except peripherally, in a Willie Transfer. It can be quite nerve wracking, because if the line blows at any point, or if pressure builds up somewhere because of a valve being left inadvertently closed, or we do not keep an eye on the Pits tank levels, we could have a real fuel spill of huge proportions. The gravity transfer pressure is simply that of weight, whereas with the pumps pushing it the pressure can rise so much faster and have a bigger impact if an error is made, or a weak point is discovered by the fuel in the lines anywhere between town and Willie.
 
Chem Lab is where we test the fuel. Every day we take samples of fuel from everywhere we feed planes or helos. These samples are run back to the Fuels Barn and tested in the Chem Lab. We test for water, sediment, conductivity, temperature and to see if it looks good (Clear & Bright). Our fuel is in excellent shape. If a plane or helo ever crashes, the book of results is the first thing the FAA will request from us during the investigation. The Chem Lab can be a nice break from physical outdoor work, and many of us play music while testing. As an occasional thing, it can be quite peaceful. But largely our Fuels GA, Emily of the FNG enthusiasm and Big Antarctic Love, remains in charge there. She knows her shit in the lab. I respect that.
 
At the end of each month, someone has to go around to all the BFTs and dip them, also taking a temperature of the fuel in the process. These are the FIR Dips (Financial Acronym Unknown). A dip tape (a measuring tape like a fishing reel with a handle to reel it in) with a thermobob (a 6” metal weight with an inset thermometer) at the end is hauled up each of the tanks' ladders, a dip taken and for three minutes the thermometer in the bob is held at the halfway point in the fuel for a temperature. The dip can vary according to temperature, as heat expansion can make a difference. All tanks are filled only to a certain level, called Safe Fill, the space remaining left there to give the tank’s fuel a place to expand into when the temperatures rise in the 24/7 sunlight we have. If this Safe Fill were not observed, the fuel could expand to the point where fuel could blow through the valves and dip ports at the top like a whale breaching. I’ve heard tales of these geysers, these spouting tanks, and I hope I may never see one in person.
 
There are a myriad other tasks, random and useful, to occupy the town crew. I have babysat a pump pumping melt water out of a berm near the pump house at the pass. I have repaired hoses, chauffered people around town, trained on a variety of tasks. I like town crew. I never know what I’ll be doing until tasks are assigned during our daily morning meeting. It is here where I get to interact with my fellow Fuelies and learn from them. We’ve got a bloody amazing crew.
 
Everything is new now, and fun. I am constantly being challenged and learning new things. I like the sense of accomplishment when I have learned something, often through much repetition over a period of months. That’s the one handicap to Fuels, I spend a lot of time feeling awfully stupid, as I am rotated through tasks fast and furious. Then after having spent half a day on a task it doesn’t come back to me until 6 weeks later and my brain is so full of other stuff I can’t recall much of my previous training enough to use it. So I feel stupid all over again, possibly even more so, since there is definitely the feeling I Should Know This. But hell knows, I don’t have anything but a vague recollection.
 
I’ve certainly learned a lot about myself and how I learn in learning to be a Fuelie. I need the whole context of a task, the hows and whys and wherefores for it to stick. It has to make sense. I can’t just do something by rote unless I have had it repeated over and over again ad nauseum. I am also much more dyslexic than I ever thought, reversing words and numbers and directions constantly. I cannot hold numbers or thoughts in my brain for more than a few seconds, and will lose it completely if interrupted before I deliver the information. Usually I have a better memory, and I am often startled by the loss of it, or the absence of it here. I have to struggle to keep things in mind. I don’t know if that’s a function of the cold, the constant dehydration, a lack of protein in my diet, bad sleep or the constant interaction with fuel, sniffing it, huffing it, splashing it on myself like a Don Juan with cologne, till I leave it in tufts and drifts as I pass by, wrinkling folks noses across station.
 
*Fule Mule is the old name for the old fuel truck, our new truck has yet to be named, and this has occasioned many discussions, votes, and near coups as we try as a dept to settle on a name for the new truck. It may never happen. It may just be the Fule Mule The Next Generation for the rest of its life. When I radio in to Control, I refer to myself as the Fuels Truck, avoiding the whole name thing.

posted by: coldwish at 21:13 | link | comments (1) |
fuels 2006-07

Monday, December 04, 2006
It's The People

I am exhausted. So much so I think I have run through my quota of words for the season. Or so I feel. I have certainly reched that point in the season where I am over people. Not that I am terribly enamoured of my fellow humans at the best of times, but the constant wear and tear of eating every meal with 3-400 other people, using the toilet with 1-3 other women, living with one other person...has reached me and made me tired.

The capper, it seems, is Thanksgiving weekend. What kind of weekend is it when you get two days off only to be unable to leave town and get away from all the same faces you are stuck with on a one-day weekend? Then to go to the fancy dress meal and have bloody Werner Herzog sticking his damn camera all over the place. I was mighty disgruntled about that. Not that I expect great things of the whole meal thing, but I was not happy with the camera in the face, camera roving the room for his new documentary about McMurdo life that he's making.

I went to the Scott Base Skirt Party, and was so feeling at loose ends that I've pretty much decided I need to hermit it until I go to Pole. TYhere was Herzog with his damn camera filming me dance. I walked off the floor. No more parties, no more socializing outside of meal times, unless it's one on one only. Manageable doses.

It's the people. Nothing against them individually, but en masse as everything is done here, and I tire of them. Thank goodness for my job getting me out and about.

I'm just tired. This last week is the first this season where I woke up on a Thursday bemoaning the fact I had to get up and go to work. Nothing to do with the work, just the getting out of bed, facing people again. But then, on Saturday when we did the Ice Runway move to Willie Field, it was a glorious blue and white and grey day of ever changing surprises and fog and shadows all over Mt Discovery until Erebus late in the day stole in and outshone Mt D's earlier efforts. A five minute wait for the truck to come back and get me and I fell to my knees in gratitude and exhaustion, facing Erebus, a smile on my face in recognition of the bounty that has not been wasted on me, the beauty that makes my heart soar, my head roar.

Indeed, it's the people, not the place. It is in the interstices between the people, when I remember to look up, that I find the balm I seek, the energy I need to face people again.

posted by: coldwish at 13:32 | link | comments (9) |
fuels 2006-07

 

C'est Moi, Genevieve:

Blogger:
Name: Genevieve Ellison
Loonatick redhead in love with the Ice.

Wanna search my blog?



powered by FreeFind

Send Me Stuff From The US:

Genevieve Ellison RPSC
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400
APO AP 96598-1035

Send Me Stuff Guidelines:

Everything has to go through NZ to get to me at Pole, and from the US it will take 4-6 weeks. My season ends in early/mid-Feb, so mail accordingly.
Do not send packing peanuts, or things that can't freeze.

My Photos:

Other media

Counter

visited *loading* times


unique visitor counter