Open Mic Night/SPT party

This Saturday there was an open mic style concert in the galley followed by a party out by SPT (the South Pole Telescope) which is in the same lab as BICEP2. Both were a lot of fun. The open mic went well. There are a lot of very talented musicians down here. I was planning on playing some acoustic stuff but I would have followed a band and the vibe wasn't right so my drummer suggested that we get up there for a "reunion" tour. So we played some of the stuff that we played last saturday.

Afterwards, I caught a snowmobile ride out to SPT for the "cheesy cheese" party, where they had a cheese plate (quite a spectacle down at the south pole) and played cheesy music, projected cheesy movies and were all around cheesy. It was a small party but a lot of fun. SPT went out and bought a lot of wine from the store and were generous enough to provide the libations.

I mostly had fun because I was able to give tours of BICEP to all the people who don't usually get a chance to get out to our lab. Especially when I have a few beers in me, but even just normally, I love to give tours and explain what I do. It reminds you how interesting your work can be when you get lost in the mountains of boring data. I also took people up to the roof and let them see the top of the telescope. It was a lot of fun. I had everyone from firefighters and dish-washers to other people on other telescopes.



Here's a picture of my band playing during open mic.



Peligrisso Gigante made a guest appearance at the party.



I can take Peligrisso Gigante!

Photos, Phinally

Here's a shot of me from a random weekend. I was headed over to the bar in summer camp. It wasn't too cold out and I had a liquid blanket.



The concert in summer camp.


A shot of what I was playing to.



The obligatory hero shot. Yes, it was very cold.

More fun at Pole

Counting the ways that Pole is way better than McMurdo continues. Dinner was much better and way more fun since I ate with a large number of people from my group. Afterwards, I played volleyball (which I totally shouldn't have done) and jammed with this grateful dead cover band down here. It was a lot of fun. The band sounded great and volleyball was a really good time. The weight room overlooks the gym so there were a bunch of spectators who were cheering us all on. It was gooooooood times.

Breakfast this morning was pretty good. There was a 7-grain porridge-like thing which tasted like the mash that you make beer out of. I also had peach yogurt, bacon, buckwheat pancakes, an egg and ham breakfast sandwich, and a fresh kiwi and orange. There's a meeting for my team in about 10 minutes, so I'll have to sign off.

Our amps go to 11

Last night was the Open Mic night concert. It was held out in the summer cam lounge. Summer camp is a series of "temporary" buildings off the main site of the base. At 5:30 or so, we all set everything up. There was a lot of really nice sound gear to hook up. Danny even brought out his computer to try and record the show. Not sure how it turned out yet. I'll find out when I see him. At 8:30 we all came back for a sound check. My band did a little last-minute rehearsal as well. Once the show started, there were probably about 20 people in the room. There were a few acoustic acts first, then a guy who read some of his poetry. It was pretty good, but a little personal. I don't need to know about his family's problems. Then his girlfriend played some songs. She was very good. Afterwards, Mark and his guys got up and played for a while. I felt bad for Mark since the crowd was really obnoxious for most of it. It was understandable. It was their only night off of the week and they wanted to hang out and party, not listen to pleasant music. Mark played with this guy named Brandon who played some fairly crude songs. They were very funny, but it kind of annoyed me. They ended with an acoustic version of Jin and Juice. It's been done before. The crowd was really into it, though. I didn't want to follow that guy. After him, another acoustic act came up. I think his name was Eric. He was really good, but it just wasn't the right crowd for his stuff. I even pulled my solo act from the night because it just wasn't right for the crowd. By this point, I'm several beers deep and really anxious to play. Finally, we go on stage. Everyone was really really excited. We definitely melted some faces. A while back, Danny, Eli, and myself were hanging out in the music room when we started to play Blister in the Sun for fun. We talked about how funny it would be to play nothing but violent femmes songs. Well, the next night, I walk into the band room and Eli and Danny are playing some violent femmes songs. I just hopped right in, and the Violet Phlegm was born. We played a bunch of violent femmes songs last night, and everyone was jumping around and dancing, and just generally going crazy for us! It was awesome! After the set, I switched to electric guitar and danny, oren (the drummer), and I started jamming. This is when I really got to shine. People were really starting to dance once we let into some fast blues tracks. After a few tracks, the people kept yelling for more, so we launched into some hendrix tunes. The crowd was really going wild. They literally didn't let me stop playing. I must have done almost a dozen 'last songs'. It was a lot of fun to play in front of a crowd again. I'm totally in the wrong profession...

After the show people were coming up to me and saying how they were going to try to force me to stay longer. One guy who said that actually has a say in flight scheduling! It was really funny. It made me feel really good.

A lot of my group showed up for the concert. It was cool to be able to show them my passion outside of work. It was also cool to see some of them very drunk. I will leave names out of it since they may even be reading this, but at least one was really really drunk, and it was cool to see. Oh, the SPT (South Pole Telescope) people were there too. We've had a good relationship with them, since we work in the same lab and do similar experiments. One of the SPT girls was a little too drunk. When I refused to dance with her, she bit me in the shoulder. I was not amused.

It was all around a good show, and a great night. I love playing music for people. It's just the best.

I've played at some really incredible venues in my life, but I think headlining at the south pole might take the cake.




A pic of the stage




Me and my band!

Violent Femmes in Antarctica

So, sure enough yesterday about after lunch I was feeling much better. After lunch we went back to the lab to work. A new group member got in yesterday, so now we're up to 5. It was actually a pretty awful afternoon. A lot of sitting around. Wasn't much for me to do. I hate sitting on my hands, especially down here. After a while, Jamie (the new one) went back to rest and Rashmi and Phil went back because they were assigned the day's house mouse (cleaning the station), so it was just me and Walt. We were working on the computer systems. We spent a lot of time modifying and mounting the monitors to the computer rack and at the end of it all both of them didn't work. A lot of work for nothing. After a while, we decided to head back and get some dinner. All day we had been waiting for a call from cargo to get these 2 crates. First they said after 2pm. Then they said that the swing shift (the late shift) might be able to do it, but maybe not today. Well, when do they call and say it's ready? The second I start to climb the stairs into the main base. So I have to turn right around and walk aaaaaaaallll the way back to the lab. Very demoralizing. And of course, once I got there, there were 2 planes that flew in, so the skiway (the area you have to cross to get from the main building to the lab) was closed for about 40 minutes. So I just sat there in the lab for nearly an hour with nothing to do. Finally, the cargo arrived. Believe it or not, this is when my day started to get really good. Rashmi brought his iPod and we were blasting some pink floyd which always puts me in a good mood. I suited up in my ECW gear and then strapped on the body harness and we hauled these crates up. For the 2nd crate, I literally operated the crane, opened the gates, and moved the crate myself. I did the work of 3 people. The group got a kick out of it. I was just really pumped up and wanted to get the hell out of there.

We had already missed dinner at this point, and we were none too happy about it. When we got back to the galley, I asked about leftovers, and to my surprise, there were some leftover steaks. Jackpot. Although the adrenaline rush from moving the crates already put me in a good mood, this definitely pushed it over. After dinner, some people from the Ice Cube project came up and played Simpsons Clue with some of my group. I declined because I wanted to go into the music room and jam.

When I got down there, Danny and Eli (mandolin) were working out some violent femmes songs. I immediately picked up a guitar and started playing along. After a little while, a drummer joined us as well and we had ourselves our own violent femmes cover band. We must have played like a dozen of their songs. They're so easy and so much fun to sing at the top of your lungs. We were all having a blast. A little later, Mark joined and we started jamming on some blues and bluegrass stuff. Mark printed out the lyrics to Iko Iko after really liking the arrangement of it that I played. We all played it and sang and had like 3 part harmonies going. It sounded really good. We all had a blast. We're definitely playing tomorrow night after soccer, but I'll probably end up playing again with them tonight.

After jamming, I met back up with my group and played a little foosball before going to bed.

I'm still having trouble sleeping, and I'm waking up feeling just awful, but it fades as the day goes on. I think today or tomorrow I'm going to take a break from work and just rest.

South Pole Station

The C-130 cargo plane that flew us from McMurdo to the South Pole (about 3 hours flight)





Me just getting off the plane by the station, in full Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear. It was about -35 F outside with a windchill of -50 F.



My teeny tiny room.

The flight left this morning at around 9 am. We flew in a C-130, which is a propellor driven military cargo plane. It was really loud. They passed out earplugs before the flight. We had two 2-star generals and two 1-star generals on the flight, which was really cool. We figured that if anything should happen, we'd be rescued right away. Those guys are valuable. They said that they were just on a tour of the station, but I figure they were probably going to examine the alien spacecraft hidden under the ice. Since we were so heavy, we could only climb to a max altitude of 24,000 feet. About half way into the flight, the ice/mountains were over 10,000 feet, so we were really close. At one point, we dropped in and flew between the mountains. It was really cool to look out the window and see the side of a mountain. The landing was incredibly smooth (seeing as how we landed on skis on an ice runway). When we deplaned, the temperature was about -35 degrees F. It was coooooooold!!!! We entered south pole station and got our debreifing.

The crazy thing about the south pole is that is sits at an elevation of 9,3000 feet, and with the pressure and temperature, it feels more like over 10,000. So the biggest thing when you arrive is to make sure that you don't get altitude sickness. I started taking Diamox in McMurdo which helps prevent symptoms of altitude sickness, but it's got some weird side effects. Apparently, it works by ridding your blood of carbonate, which makes it more acidic, which triggers your body's natural reflext to breathe more. In ridding the carbonate, it does it one way--it makes you pee a lot. Like every 3 hours. I haven't had any of the other side effects yet, but apparently it can make random parts of your body go numb for random periods of time. Sounds kind of fun.

Here, I have my own room, well more like closet. It's got a bed, a desk, and a closet. I think its dimensions are 6'x10'. It's small. No windows either, which is probably a good thing since it will be easier to sleep. The station is really nice. It's brand new, opened last year. There's a gym for basketball/volleyball/indoor soccer, a cardio gym, and a weight room. The cafeteria is open 24/7 but has normal meal times. The rest of the time you can have left overs or cereal, etc. Lunch today was good, and I'll grab dinner in an hour or so. Lunch was beef sloppy joes (which were really tasty) and they had all sorts of sides, from fries, to fruit, to salad.

After lunch, and unpacking my things, I went to their music room and played guitar for a couple of hours. They have some nice equiptment. I started playing a Strat through a fender blues deluxe, then moved onto a Gibson SG, then moved onto an acousitc (made of carbon fiber).

I haven't been to the lab yet. I'll go tomorrow morning at 8am to check on the status of all our crates.

I haven't gotten a chance to upload pictures yet. Internet can be spotty--it depends on when satellites are flying through. I didn't even see a scheduled internet time for right now...

Weird things about south pole so far:

- Allowance of 2 2min showers a week
- 1 load of laundry /week
- they really REALLY emphasize washing your hands
- The station is on stilts
- the actual south pole is like 20 feet away from the building
- all waste gets shipped out (especially poop)
- all water comes from melted ice
- it's at an elevation of 9,300 feet, of which 90% is ice.
- There are 231 of us here right now

I'll post more of these once I learn more