Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

The Hungry Continent

I do try to eat right, whenever they give me the opportunity to have more than just frozen boiled veg and the carb product du jour, I do eat as much right as I can. Though I am also wary of certain foods. A few weeks ago, I took a few bites of some vegan lasagna they'd made specially for us lactose intolerant folk(s) and I really lost my appetite soon into it, it was so bad. But I persevered, knowing that I needed to eat enough to work on. Well, less than 35 minutes later I'm vomiting up the meal in the loo, and feeling heaps better immediately post-heave. So, at this point, if I'm taking a few bites of food and I lose my appetite, I'm not really pursuing the whole Gotta Eat It Anyway scenario. When I can get the food down, what they have on offer, I wolf it mightily, knowing that my next meal may be questionable.

I realize that the whole About To Barf thing, specially after a few bites of breakfast (my most problematical meal), has gotta be more than just the food itself. I'm not subliminally dieting, or starving myself, as far as I know. I've never been a conscious dieter, post-teen years, I'm lucky that way. When I want to lose weight I just stop eating as much of what I eat, and it melts away. Down here I'm experiencing great hunger, frequently even. But many meals I just can't get past the first few bites, the easing of the immediate hunger, and then no appetite whatsoever to continue. I then play with my food. I yearn for a decent hot meal. I am tired of getting the food from the food line and having to wait in line to microwave it at the one microwave the Galley makes available to us. I'm tired of meals made up pretty much entirely of rice/potatoes/pasta and butter (the only dairy left to me, and a desperately needed source of fat in my diet) with the boiled veg. I eat to fill myself at those points, and often it even tastes good. Anything tastes good with enough butter.

This comes and goes, each season, outdoor or indoor job, throughout my time here. There will be weeks where I eat everything just fine, then there will be a week where the food is so unappealing that I crawl back to my room and eat Skippy peanut butter straight out of the jar on a spoon. Much of it has to do with effort. This continent exhausts me. Even when I sat in a windowless office for 6 months in Housing, I had these same awful food issues. Working outside as I do now, it has simply become more extreme. My response to a wander through the Galley's offering, only to find that everything has cheese/meat in it, can often be an instant depression so severe that I verge on tears of frustration and anger. I have, several times this season, entered the Galley, picked up my bright blue tray, my white plate and two dark blue plastic glasses placed on it, and walked right out the other end of the food line with nothing on the plate, in the glasses, or on the tray. In some disbelief. Though that disbelief is fading as it happens again and again. I have no energy left to me. I can't imaginatively re-enter that awful purgatory of people wandering from bread to salads to drinks to silverware to desserts to hot (ha!) food line and scrounge up some toast with peanut butter, or get back in the sandwich line at lunch and wait in line for a sandwich made up of bread, mayo, and hummus because y'know, the other choices? Meat & cheese. Some days they have veggies, and I'll spring for that.

But, even now, distant from that thought, and hungry because I skipped breakfast, the thought of one of those sandwiches makes me nauseous. The thought of most food makes me nauseous. Even if I had access to fresh sushi and fish & chips and Indian curry with jasmine rice, the thought of it right now just upsets my stomach.

I don't understand that part. That complete and utter loss of appetite in the face of hard work and actual physical hunger. That part worries me, and it has an impact on my ability to work as hard as I need to for my job. I do not need to be any weaker than I already am in relation to all my co-workers. I do not need to be handicapping myself under the extreme circumstances of working in Antarctica. I am normally a person who takes great pleasure in food, I enjoy having a well-stocked kitchen and cooking well. I like to experiment with new recipes. I like to cook with people. But here and now, I'm not even able to rustle up the energy to have food FANTASIES.

Each season, as I pack for the Ice, I plan ahead for these circumstances to no avail. I can provide myself with all sorts of microwave curries, peanut butter, cans/bags of tuna, instant noodles, cup soups, whathaveyou that can be prepared with nothing but water and a microwave in the dorm lounge. But the EFFORT of going all the way to the Galley, discovering that there is yet again nothing to eat, then going all the way back to my room to try and make some kind of decision about what in my stash I can deal with when I've already lost my appetite, is too much. Popcorn and peanut butter again. The popcorn often falls by the wayside because then I'd have to go DOWNSTAIRS to the lounge to microwave it. The tuna on toast meal was some kind of miracle that I achieved despite the instant onset of depression post-Galley visit. I mean, really, I had to plug in the damn toaster, fetch the bread (always stale, this is the driest continent on the planet), wait for ages for it to toast, then butter it, wrap it in plastic wrap, walk back over to my dorm room, rummage through my food drawer, open a tin of tuna and sit there in tears forcing myself to eat.

I didn't finish the tin. Too much effort, and I'd lost my appetite long before.

This worries me. Am I depressed? Am I just a picky eater? Am I such a control freak that if I can't cook my own food I refuse to eat? Where does this come from? I can't point the blame entirely at the Galley. Though I do not recall having this issue when I spent 5 weeks at Pole last season. Though there, with the cold and the work, it was a question of survival eating, and the cooks were magnificent to me. I felt like I was being given a gourmet meal every meal, even when I ate the same as everyone else did. It felt personal, and damn, it tasted fine to a starving Fuelie.

Yes, I've lost weight this season. Quelle shock. Every year. I usually gain it back alright by the end of the season, or it has transformed itself into muscle, and the weight remains the same but the body looks drawn. When I shed my ECW gear at the end of the season, and come storming off the Ice to enjoy a few months of travel solitude and friendship and exploration in the innocence of a NZ autumn, I know I look hard worn. I see the extra wrinkles on my face, I see the translucence of my skin, the dark circles under my eyes. I see the twig thin look of my arms, leavened by some smattering of muscles under the pale skin, and the pale deep cave grub look of my feet. I am barefoot and half-clothed and recovering my sanity at the expense of the Kiwis, who step kindly and gently around me. I gain my weight back, mostly, I gain some ability to socialize without looking traumatized by the effort.

This continent eats me alive.

posted by: coldwish at 15:01 | link | comments (5) |
fuels 2007-08

Tasting Tasting 1 2 3, Is This Thing On?

Today I learned what jet fuel tastes like.

I am back on AM Pits this week, unexpectedly. I was not originally scheduled to do two weeks of AM Pits. I'll admit that when my current Pits partner, Jared Hendee, told me this news on Saturday, after the longest week of hard work and bad weather I have ever experienced in Antarctica or elsewhere, my face fell, and I was near tears with the thought of another week like that last one. I saw the expression on his face, and rushed to reassure him I was looking forward to a week of working closely with him, on some level training him, as he, like Jesse, is a new Fuelie this season.

As much as I loved last week, and it jump started the return of my joy in Antarctica, it thoroughly kicked my ass. There was not a single day in which Jesse and I did not get smacked hard by weather, yet each day we got the Pits opened, recirced and sampled. Only to find ourselves open for business with no business, and having to go back out in the deteriorating weather to shut down our pits. We had some long hard days and some bad weather, and some great times.

There were moments when I was forced to flake hose (collect it in one area in a sort of accordianed series of loops) on my hands and knees, because if I stood up I couldn't see the hose at my feet, and/or the wind would knock me right back down. There were other times when we were evacuated from the Ice Runway due to incipient bad weather, and I was out there deep in that same weather that had already arrived.

I found myself stumbling over boulders of cracked snow, piled knee and waist high, from where Fleet Ops had valiantly attempted, in between storms, to clear out the heavy drifts of snow around our tanks. We accumulated so much snow on our end of the apron (already heavy with 6 tanks of 20,000 gallons each) so quickly that the surveyors found the sea ice on which we float had dipped alarmingly, creating a deflection that was not healthy. So Fleet Ops got in there with dozers and plows and draggers and pulled as much snow away from our Pits as possible. Leaving in their wake lengths of aviation hose left high and dry and untouched on waist high dykes of snow, surrounded by blue ice. Dykes I had to climb up and down and over every time I moved around the pump house or tanks.

I stood there during one break in the weather fueling a Herc, maybe 150 feet away, and a wall of sudden snow blew in from White Island with such vigour, that I lost my Guard fueling partner on the other end of the hose under the wing of the aircraft. I asked Jesse to stand midway between us to relay signals, and he leaned back into the wind in an almost relaxed posture, when not actually struggling to remain upright in the gusts. I hung onto the pump house with one hand, clutching the dead man in my other. The Guard guy hung onto the ski of the aircraft and the hose.

The closest part of the aircraft to me was the wing tip. I'm fully aware that aircraft have wings, but I was until Saturday, blissfully unaware that said wings FLAPPED, completely denying their designation as Fixed Wing Aircraft. That was a scary sight, watching the entire Herc bouncing up and down, wings flapping by as much as several feet vertically, shaking with the effort to stay attached to the fusillage.

So, after that week, I was exhausted, completely tapped out. The entire week has blurred into one big blizzard of white and effort in my mind, and I had survived it on some level by thinking, until Saturday afternoon, that it was only the one week. I slept nearly ALL day Sunday, after staying up until 10:30 pm on Saturday to play cards with some friends. I have a standing date to attend this card game. It was my birthday, and I wanted to be awake and out of work for some of it. I garnered a lot of hugs, and won one round, though I suspect that in itself was a birthday gift from an opponent. Then I crawled to bed, barely cracking the covers for food and toilet visits the next day. I was prone, almost distraught with exhaustion and the thought I had another week of the same ahead of me.

What rot. This week has been completely different. It still hasn't been normal, I'm giving up on my notions of normal AM Pits, to which I have clung thus far with a hint of desperation and hope, that my life will not always be this hard.

The weather has been as opposite last week as it can get and not be tropical. We still spent the first few days dealing with the aftermath of the storm, breaking the Pits apart (each of the 6 tanks are connected by one fuel line from 1 to 6, through which we draw the fuel, depending on how we open and close valves) to pull the hose back so Fleet Ops could remove the remainder of the drifts between the tanks, not just in front and back as they had managed already. Breaking the lines is not easy. The hose line, a 6" Arctic Blue hose, that leads from tank to tank all along the front of the pits, is heavy enough when empty, but when it is full of fuel, I can't even lift it high enough off the ice to get my fingers under it to have a grip. But before we could get that far, we had to dig it out from under the 4-6 foot solidly drifted snow atop it. Trenches waist deep, 20 feet long, were dug by a team of perspiring, sweating, steaming Fuelies, to reveal the hose at the bottom, which was then dragged up out of the trench and moved close alongside the tanks to leave the between tanks area safe for Fleet Ops to move the snow.

Once the snow was removed, we reconnected the hoses. Early on Tuesday, our first few hours of recircing and sampling done, our subsequent fueling of planes was interspersed by the dragging and reconnecting of the Arctic Blue hoses. Jared would fuel a plane, and I'd be back there moving these hoses inch by inch with the ability and strength I had available to me. Which at the best of times, I'll freely admit, is not that much. But I was starting with a deficit from last week. I'd pick up the valve end of the hose and pull it as far as my hands, wrists, back and shoulders could move it. It'd get caught on leftover boulders of snow, and I'd have to lift it over them, mostly done from my knees. When that option was exhausted, I'd sit down next to the hose, ass flat on the damp ice (it's been getting warmer here) and try to shove the hose further toward my goal with my feet, using the strength in my legs. I grunted, I squeaked, I made all manner of noises of effort, and could not get it that last foot up onto the spider valve (behind each pump house is a cluster of valves where Arctic Blues come together, it is placed on a stand over a large drip pan, should anything leak or be spilled) to actually make the connection.

When came Jared's turn to reconnect hoses, he had an easier time. Jared is built. He works out, body builds, and has a body built exactly for this function: moving heavy shit around. He gets this sweet smile on his face when he witnesses my best efforts, and it makes me wonder what life must be like with great strength, to have that confidence and ability. I do the best with what I have, and mostly I get it done. It always takes longer and leaves me panting, sweaty and at the very end of my tether, but I keep on trying. In the face of the ease with which physical effort comes to the big men I see around me, I know it can't mean much but to me and my own pride.

But he also found it heavy and challenging, and pulled the skidoo into play to drag the hose back into position. Did I mention he's smart, too?

He's a quiet guy, keeps himself to himself for the most part, but makes a great Pits partner for the smaller, older woman that I am. We have a lot in common, not so much in terms of personalities, but in terms of music interests. Despite my having probably more than 10-15 years on him, we listen to much of the same music, and as a result, our world views and cultural references skew similar. It's an interesting comfort zone I find myself in with him. He works hard, asks questions when he needs to, and has done a really good job of learning the AM Pits duties very independently. I like Jared a lot, this week has needed more his calm presence and less of the cursing and laughing at the elements that Jesse brought to last week.

Because this week, when we open for business, we have planes scurrying up and demanding to be fed at the jet fuel trough, sucking through our fuel stores, forcing us to have regular infusions from the town bulk tanks. Independence has been essential in my partner, when we are both fueling planes in different pits (Fore & Aft) simultaneously.

This week, instead of a cluster of blizzards and bad weather, we have had the human and plane equivalent: a major cluster fuck. Planes parking in the wrong pit, planes breaking down, planes being double parked to make room for other planes, planes skittering up and sneaking behind other planes. Organization has been a bit of a rarity this week in AM Pits. All this does for us Fuelies is make it pure hell to fuel planes, when we have planes too far away from the pits for our hoses to reach and have to add sections to reach, then pull the hose out to the distant plane on the back of a snowmobile because there aren't enough hands available to get it out there. We've had Skier Maintenance and Flight Crews and AGE (Air Ground Equipment) and the Runway head honcho and Fuels all miscommunicating and getting frustrated with each other, until planes are all over the place practically crawling up their own asses.

Personally I'd rather have the Perfect Storm of Antarctic Blizzards like last week than this kind of disorganization. Weather makes me laugh, people frustrate me.

When we have good weather it causes other issues in the Fuelie world. Thermal expansion being one. Because we have 24 hours of daylight, and our fuel is in dark hoses and tanks against a white background, the solar radiation can heat the fuel inside until it expands. In tanks, that's okay, we provide the space and the air vents for the expansion by only filling them to a certain point. In hoses, we can relieve the pressure by cracking open valves into tanks or draining nozzles. In one particular filter housing, the Coalescer, through which all the town fuel is filtered before it hits our Pits tank farm, there is no in-built pressure relief. Today was warm enough out that pressure built up regularly in this filter such that we had to relieve it by sumping it (draining fuel out a small valve in the bottom into a 55 gallon drum) regularly. Each time I walked by the pressure had risen, and I had to open the hose at the bottom and crack the valve to let off pressure.

I underestimated the amount of pressure on the hose the first time and when I removed the cap, the fuel shot spitting out before I'd removed it completely, so it splashed back all over my front, including all over my face and sunglasses. Not a terrible amount, not requiring a shower, and certainly none in my eyes. I wiped it off on my sleeves as best I could, catching the true flavour of last season's tanker of fuel on my lips. I relieved the pressure, recapped the hose, and headed over by skidoo to the Ice Runway toilets to wash my face and hands as best as possible.

Jet fuel tastes like petroleum jelly, Vaseline.

I put this stuff up my nostrils every night to keep my sinuses and nasal passages moist in the dry air here. Makes me wonder.

And today? Today was as close as I've ever gotten to a "normal" day in AM Pits.

Can I go to bed now?

posted by: coldwish at 20:22 | link | comments (6) |
fuels 2007-08

The Insidiousity of Snow

Jesse is sick of the wind.

I'm tired of the shoveling.

But still we soldier on. As tired as I am, as physically whipped as I am, still I shovel more snow, chipping away at yet another night's deposit of the white stuff. If it just fell softly, that'd be something else altogether, but it pounds itself, wind-driven, into solid squeaky masses and mounds, creeps into every tiny opening, sneaks around all the doors and windows, revealing the flaws in our buildings.

Yesterday's snow was the most invasive of all. It even hit town, giving me my first ever Condition One. I slept through it. Solidly, like the dead. But all night it blew and accumulated inside the pump houses, outlining everything in white. This confusing mass of multicoloured dirty pipes, hoses, valves, filters, pumps, was coated on every surface horizontal, perpendicular and underneath, with a few centimetres of white rosettes. It looked clean and inviting, as opposed to dirty and intimidating to the uninitiated. Everything was smothered in this softening, cleansing blanket of white.

But outside the pump house, the snow differed. To uncover my Herc hose, though only 6-10 inches beneath a smooth white surface of snow, took me WAY TOO LONG. For it is not normal digging I do, it's chipping and cracking into the solid surface. Sometimes my shovel enters easily and flakes a huge arrowhead of snow up off the hose, then the next shovelful resists all leverage and maneuvering until I approach it from another angle. I spent 50 feet of hose mostly on my knees, cracking through the surface and lifting by hand the top layer of packed snow. The direction of the wind that built these drifts creates strength in the snow at some angles, but weakness like inclusions in a diamond in others.

Though we opened the pits 2 hours late--due to the drifting on the road to the Ice Runway being too severe for the shuttles to pass--we still had to have the Pits open for the planes that were scheduled. So we recirced and sampled and shoveled and dipped. On Jesse's side of the pits there was a drift packed tit high on me over some valves he needed. It forced him to use a different tank to fuel the Twin Otter that came by soon after we opened. Later in the morning we were able to disinter the valves, but holy crap, the shoveling, the digging, will it never end?

Apparently not. They are calling for more bad weathuh tonight. So our Friday Pits shift should be just another bundle of sweaty fun.

The weather has not just been affecting us in Pits, just more so than others. Other departments, when they get snowed in, call in the big guys to drag their equipment out of the drifts then plow/blow/push the snow away. We don't get that privilege. We can't allow equipment near buried hoses/pipes filled with jet fuel. We gotta clear it by hand. Once we remove the hoses then Fleet Ops can come by and push/blow/drag/plow the snow drifts away for us, so we can start once more on flat blue sea ice.

But we dig first.

The larger picture of weird weather that has descended upon us this week in Antarctica has left our planes stranded all over the continent, unable to get back to us. Two Hercs flew all the way to Pole with passengers and cargo, only to be denied because they had frozen fog and no visibility to land. Back they flew only to find that the weather at home was so terrible they couldn't see to land here either. So what do you do? You fly to our nearest runway equipped neighbours, the Italians at Terra Nova, and both spend the night. Then one breaks down. Over there.

Or, if you are our Basler, you try to get home from a cargo delivery to find no way to land. Where to go? Well, hell, they don't have as much fuel as the Hercs, so they go to the closest flat spot they can find clear: Odell Glacier. There ain't nothing but flat white and fuel caches at Odell. Sure you can land (Baslers can land most anywhere), but when you've got only 10 minutes worth of fuel left and you can't go home, what do you do? Spend the night in the plane until a Twin Otter can arrive to fuel you the next day.

It's been that kind of week.

And I'm LOVING it.

I am hardly compos mentis with the physical fatigue, the food sucks so badly I'm barely eating at all, and I'm expending calories like nobody's business. I'm starving before every meal, but nothing appeals to me. I had heavily buttered toast last night, with a precious can of my dwindling stash of tuna scooped on top. I’m not eating enough. But still, I'm happy. Exhilarated.

And tomorrow we do it all over again.

 

posted by: coldwish at 14:42 | link | comments (5) |
fuels 2007-08

Ass Kicking Weathuh!

Jesse and I are getting our asses kicked this week in AM Pits. Yesterday we get out to the Pits and within 5 minutes of our arrival we went to white out conditions. There we were, once more, labouring away in the wind and snow with little visibility and a lot of hard work ahead of us. We had our pits open, recirced and sampled, well in time for any flights though. Then we continued digging. And picking at the equipment with screwdrivers, tring to remove the hard packed snow from every crevice it filled with white.

Did we have any flights though? Nope, not until 1pm did the first bird show up (a Twin Otter, KBG), and by then PM Pits was taking over. We haven't fueled a plane since Monday morning.

I can't help but smile though, even as I dig and haul and slave away to get the pits open, working up a lather from the inside of all my layers out, exhausted and whipped, drained. This is the most beautiful place in the world, and I'm working outside in the kind of blizzard that stopped Scott dead on his way back from Pole, snow gathering so fast and furious they couldn't dig themselves out for days. We are lucky in our modern gear, with town and technology and warmth so close by.

Each time I fall down, trip on an invisible drift in the flat blowing white, or tumble down the face of a 3 foot snow cliff that wasn't there a few hours before, or bend over for the 100th shovelful of crisp snow shaped like arrowheads and giant white obsidian flakes, or once more try to open/close a valve with frozen suede mittens like slick glass and no grip, or whatever other ridiculously difficult task I have at hand, I laugh. I smile. I giggle at myself in these conditions. Because hot damn I'm working outside in an Antarctic blizzard and ain't it fucking awesome!

I am exhausted and dragging but full of energy and loving it here again. The beauty of it fills my heart with joy and my eyes with tears. It even lends a little lift to my sore muscles, alleviating the would be misery, and translating it into getting on with the work at hand. I cannot fathom anyone luckier in the world than me, to be doing this hard work here in such a wonderfully alien environment that my mind continues to boggle at my own reality.

It took a harsher reminder of my place in this continent to kick my heart back into joy this season.

Today we are waiting for Fleet Ops to clear the road out to the runway, because we had our third snow & wind heavy storm of the week last night. Now 1 1/2 hours from when we were supposed to start...digging...we still sit in town waiting to be allowed out there to open the pits.

I'd rather be out there digging now.

Because I love this place and I love this job and I'm lucky my partner is Jesse this week.

posted by: coldwish at 06:59 | link | comments (3) |
fuels 2007-08

What Fresh Hell

I am working the AM Pits schedule this week, which starts at 5:30am and goes to 3:30pm, slightly askew from the normal town schedule of 7:30-5:30. Fuel Pits is where we fuel the planes, at this time of the year, out at the annual Sea Ice Runway. We fuel the Hercules LC130s, the Basler (specially ski-equipped DC3) and the Twin Otters. Occasionally we fuel the C17 that flies in from Christchurch a few times a week bearing more people, and not the package mail we've been pining for since start of Mainbody (early October).

Last season I worked a lot of PM Pits shifts (12-10pm), a significantly different job. You fuel planes, read a lot of books, listen to your iPod,you shut the pits down, you go home. Even on a busy day in PM Pits there's a lot of space in your day to think, read, write, sleep.

AM Pits is COMPLETELY UNLIKE that. Utterly & totally. Okay, so we fuel planes, but in the mornings they come fast and furious, jostling for position in our pits once we open. And there's the main difference: we open the pits. Opening the pits involves a LOT of work, quickly & immediately, before we can fuel the planes sitting metres away expectantly, thirsty-eyed and looming.

We have to recirculate fuel through all the aviation hoses, get fuel samples from the nozzles, start up all 4 pumps (two in each pit, one primary and one back up), check them for fuel and oil, open a crap load of valves, check the hoses and lines for leaks, unflake the hoses, get the kinks out, sump the filters, start the skidoo.

We hit the ice running, and it never stops, until, if we are lucky, lunch. If not, we fuel planes through lunch until PM Pits comes to relieve us around 1pm. Us, this week, is me and Jesse Wagner, a first year Fuelie, but in his third year on Ice. He worked in the kitchen as a cook his first two seasons. I fell in love with his brother Joel last year at Pole when he fed me well. His other brother, Luke, also comes to the Ice.

I would not want to have experienced today with anyone else.

Today was laced with laughter and obscenity, unbelievably hard work in the kind of weather you all imagine I work in when you read of Shackleton and Scott's adventures, and gloriously unusual views.

It was only our second day of AM Pits, after a few hours training with last weeks AM Pitters on Monday early. Weather came in yesterday in the early afternoon, after we fueled all morning, and this weather brought winds and blowing snow.

Now I may have mentioned before how the combination of wind and snow here lends itself to a certain engulfing of stationary objects. Buildings disappear, shrouded in white with a cowl of drifts, until we give up the plowing and snowmoving and let the building go back to the flat white Antarctica strives to maintain.

It's the kind of wind and blowing snow where in the 27 minutes it takes me to fuel a Herc--with my fuel hose extended across the sea ice from pump house to plane, a yellow bonding cable snaking along side it--the hose disappears into a hose-sized drift, and the bonding cable lifts up off the ground and dances tautly then loosely, occasionally recalling its coiled state in the everpresent blow. Sometimes I lose sight of the Herc, often I lose sight of the other pit, where Jesse fuels a Twin Otter quickly before the plane takes off for points unknown sans pilot or co-pilot. A distinct risk in these high winds. We had wind gusts up to 51 knots yesterday. Several of which shifted me a few feet sideways as I walked across the blue ice from pit to Warm Up Shack. I hunkered, and widened my stance and considered eating bigger breakfasts so I'd be less...flighty...in these conditions. Petite ain't useful here.

Jesse and I breakfasted together this morning at 5am, grumpy at being up so early, but clueless as to our day ahead. Town was calm with barely a sniff of wind, it was warm (in the teens), and we were going out to open Pits. As we approached the pits the weather changed. The wind rose, and we saw the mounds and drifts and bulges and heaving 3 foot heaps of snow that had covered EVERYTHING that lay out on the ice and made up our pits.

I think we used the word "fuck" rather a lot, perhaps even a few "holy fuck!"s and "what the fuck!?"s slipped out too.

We had a lot of work ahead of us and the weather was going to pot. We addressed the snow with shovels, searching for our buried hoses, and addressed the skies with obscenities, as the snow we had just shoveled came pouring within 10-15 minutes back into the 2 foot deep trenches we'd just dug to recover our hoses. We toiled on, laughing at our fates, at the work, at the bloody ridiculousness of our having to do this. As if any planes would be flying in this shit. The winds blew stronger and lesser in patches, the snow rising and striking us horizontally, coating every inch of us with white, filling our pockets and every surface and fold in our gear and stinging our exposed flesh. It stung not with cold, for it felt warm outside and we were sweating under our layers, it stung with the speed at which these tiny frozen particles smacked into our skin. Tiny endless darts of ice shot from the skies of Antarctica against us.

We dug and swore and laughed and dug some more. And kept on digging. There were no other fuelies to ask for help at this time of the morning, they had not even gathered for morning meeting at 7:30am. So we forged foreward with the Herculean task of opening the pits as best we could under the conditions. Pit One was opened and recirced by 7:30, at which time we called in and asked for help. We aimed for minimal fueling capacity, and that seemed almost insurmountable at times.

Meanwhile back in town, they had NO IDEA what we were dealing with weather-wise. This was an Ice Runway weather deal, and despite the continually fluctuating visibility, from nil to miles to white horizontal nil again, there didn't seem to be anything in town. We were alone in this beautiful hell, digging and digging. We could not fathom why no Conditions (weather warnings) had been called at the Ice Runway, limiting travel and work. Nothing came over our radios, announcing the rapidly deteriorating weather out there. As far as we could tell, all planes were go and we were dreadfully behind in getting the Pits opened. When we asked Control (Fuels dispatcher and office in the Fuels Barn) about the likelihood of planes flying, they told us to keep on shoveling.

By the time help had arrived, the weather was no longer "going to" pot, it was full on pot. I could barely stand up against the wind, I was rolled a few times when I lost my balance or stepped wrong. My goggles had fogged and frozen and I had zero visibility unless I raised my goggles and peered out bare eyed. With my back to the wind I could function, barely, but always the snow cast its darts at me and got my eyeballs. An amazing sensation, to have ones eyeballs pelted with tiny ice missiles. I was rendered useless several times until I cleared my goggles and claimed a window of sightedness that would last maybe 7-10 minutes each time. When I was blind I was falling all over the place helpless in the ridiculous conditions on drifted snow formations I could barely see when my goggles were working.

But we dug. We hauled hose back in to flake it behind the pump houses in bent lengths. We collected our hose, got a few samples (heavily tainted by blowing snow), and retreated to the Warm-Up Shack, buy that time whitened with an inch of snow on one side and rocking like a lobsterboat at sea on its skis.

Our much appreciated help departed and we were left to await word if our services, our fuel, was needed.

Both of us were soaked through from the skin out with sweat, and from the gear in with the coating of snow we'd acquired, then melted, then refrozen again. My Carhartts were solid ice and in order to remove them I had to use my channel locks to grasp the zippers, after banging on my legs to crack them.

Throughout this, Jesse continued to crack jokes, work his ass off doing the bulk of the work I just didn't have the strength to do, and be excellent company. As miserable as it may have seemed, with Jesse there, in that quintessential Antarctic weather, we both had fun. We watched the walls of snow appraoch us, we saw snow tornadoes lift skyward and dance up and down the runway, spinning madly, we marveled at how quickly our work was undone, we pointed as White Island came and went on the horizon. And we dug.

It was an excellent day. I feel great.

But it has thoroughly kicked my ass.

posted by: coldwish at 15:18 | link | comments (2) |
fuels 2007-08

I Woke With This Thought

My alarm went off at 4am:

"Here we go, another day in hell."

posted by: coldwish at 04:47 | link | comments (2) |
fuels 2007-08

Struggling

I would say this is qualifying as not a good season. I'm cranky, misanthropic, annoyed, tired, overwhelmed, non-communicative and lack self-esteem. I'm also frequently cold. I've had some good moments, but they are not enough to trump the bad moments, which are largely human interactions.

I can't write about the bad moments. I'd love to write about the good moments, but I'm so emotionally beat down and vulnerable that by the time I get time to write I can't recall them well enough. Or I simply don't want to open up that bag of beans, where I allow myself to be exposed enough to wtite. I'm already feeling awfully tender all the time, and pissed off about it. Antarctica is not supposed to make me feel this way. I love this place, right? Don't I? What did I love about it? Why can't I feel it enough to get over the nasty people?

Why can't the people just all go away and leave me here in a tent by myself?

posted by: coldwish at 04:59 | link | comments (3) |
fuels 2007-08