Bingo, Film Festival, Fletch

I've had a busy and fun weekend. Saturday, after dinner, I practiced with my band. We had a really good practice and I think we'll have a great show next week. Saturday night was James Brown Bingo. James Brown is the head chef in the galley down here and every once in a while will host a bingo game. I only arrived for the last two rounds, but I think I got the gist of it. James Brown, dressed like William Wallace from Braveheart, complete with kilt, blue face-paint, and sword would pull bingo numbers and yell them to 50 or so drunk people. He would start by yelling the letter and then people would start guessing the number and if you guessed right, he would point at you menacingly and yell "YES!". It was quite a site. Of course, for certain tiles, there are standard responses. For example, if B4 was picked, everyone would yell "and after," or B2 "bomber" or B1 "with the universe". Naturally when O69 was drawn, the crowd would yell wildly. During the last round of bingo, where you had to black out your entire card instead of just get 5 in a row, when O69 was drawn james brown picked up a 3 foot long wooden stirring spoon (more like a paddle) and smashed a giant gingerbread house to pieces. It was quite entertaining. Afterwards, a bunch of us went into the game room and played pool, foosball, and drank. Much later on, I went with the firefighters to the "bar" at summer camp. Summer camp consists of a bunch of Korean War surplus Jamesways, one of which is a lounge that is used as a bar over the weekend. There, we had some whiskey and scotch. Outside of the bar was an ice-core from the Ice Cube experiment. This ice was upwards of 10,000 years old, so I chipped some of this ice off into my drink and had scotch on the 10,000 year old rocks. Thanks again to New Zealand's extraordinarily weak beer, I felt fine the next morning.

That morning there was the Polympics. Originally, the events sounded fun, but then there were all these stupid rules so it was more like games you'd play at a picnic than actual athletic events so I didn't feel like doing them. After lunch, I played volleyball from 2-4:30 and then soccer from 4:30 to 6 so my legs were quite tired after dinner. There's a film festival this weekend called the South Pole International Film Festival, or SPIFF, where people at the south pole make movies and submit them for judging. I decided to borrow an HD camcorder from the IT department, wrote a script, practiced some editing with iMovie and started filming. I plan on trying to make 2 movies: one will just be a documentary-style movie where I interview people around the base as to why they decided to come down here to work and the other will be my best attempt at a coen brothers style movie. The movies are only 5-10 minutes long usually, so it shouldn't take to long to complete... maybe a couple of days. I've got my actors lined up and a camera man and have shot some scenes already. It's a lot of fun. After SPIFF this weekend will be the open mic where my band will be playing. It's going to be a busy weekend.

Last night, after doing some editing, a bunch of us got together in one of the lounges and watched Fletch Lives on VHS. It's funny to watch a VHS movie on an HD tv... It was a very silly movie. Oh Chevy Chase... used to be so funny.

Today, the other guy in my group finishes his work with the telescope, so I can take over and start running the schedules that I want. I'm heading out there after I finish this post.

Soccer at the Pole

After breakfast and the meeting yesterday, I was feeling a little light-headed, so I took a nap. I woke up, grabbed lunch and walked the 1km to the lab. It's fairly warm, for south pole weather, only about -10 so I only really needed my wind pants and a fleece (along with gloves, a knit hat, and goggles). I spent the afternoon reacquainting myself with the lab computers and equipment and started some simple data analysis. Later, I trudged back to the station for dinner and then played some soccer. I still wasn't acclimatized so the doctors would have definitely advised against playing, but I did anyway. I just tried to take it a little easy. Playing soccer at 10,000 feet is like playing soccer in space. Every 5 minutes we have to stop to catch our breath. You breathe, but you don't feel any better. It's strange. I just can't wait until next week, once I'm fully acclimatized and can really start running. After soccer, I was feeling pretty dead, so I went to bed.

Woke up this morning and had a big breakfast of steak and eggs and headed back out to the lab to do more data analysis. I also wrote a schedule for our telescope to run which should give us some useful information. I'm currently working on another, longer schedule to be run later in the week.

I think there's volleyball tonight, which will be totally awesome and then I'll probably have a few birthday beers with some friends and go to bed.

It's hard to determine when to celebrate my birthday... Back in the US, it's tomorrow, but our timezone is across the international date line so it's a day later here. I figure, if I moved to Australia, I would be celebrating my birthday on their 13th, not the US' 13th so I'm going to celebrate today. Of course, maybe I'll just have a 2 day long party...

Soccer in Antarctica

Finally, there was a soccer game down here. It was only a 3 on 3 but it was still fun. We played for about an hour in a half. It's very dry here, so it took a little while for my lungs to adjust but once they did I was able to hit my stride. The games were in the big gym so we didn't have to brave the elements.

Now I'm watching more playoff football on AFN. Oh, there's a new public service announcement. Aside from our troops having big problems with suicide, domestic abuse, driving drunk, driving fast, driving motorcycles in general, being drunk, not knowing how to put out fires, and giving away secrets on facebook, apparently they also huff aerosols. Well done America. It wouldn't be so bad if these were spaced out throughout the day, but since they're all on back-to-back for the entirety of the commercial break, I'm starting to think our military needs some better role models--or maybe a hug. They had a commercial with an ex-NFL star quoting all his accomplishments and saying he was mostly proud of being a team player and then said "over 100 troops die a year in auto related accidents. That hurts the team." I did not see that coming.

Almost 200 degree club

Yesterday after soccer, we decided to hit the sauna. Yes, there is a sauna for some reason on base. I think it's tradition. It's a really nice sauna. It could probably seat 8 comfortably. We cranked the sauna up to around 165. It really felt good, especially after playing soccer. After a little while, I decided to run outside just to see what it felt like. It was pretty cool. It was probably around -20 without wind (-35 with). Of course, I couldn't feel it. My whole body was steaming. When I came back into the sauna, the other guys commented that I was completely dry. In the 20 or so seconds I stood outside, I went from completely soaked to bone dry. Pretty crazy. It was a lot of fun. I'll definitely do it again. Maybe next time, I'll make a run for the pole!

During the winter, they usually try for a 300 degree club. They crank the sauna up to 200 and go outside when it's -100. Now that's nuts. I can't even imagine...

Things are progressing pretty well. 3 more team members arrived last week with our new focal plane. We've been working to integrate everything, and then put it in the cryostat. Should have that done by the end of today if we're dumb and work through dinner, or tomorrow if we actually take our well-being into consideration. I'm guessing we'll take the dumb route.

In other news, I should be home next week! I'm really excited to be leaving the ice. Don't get me wrong, coming to the South Pole is by far the most interesting thing that I've ever done, but I do miss civilization. And the ability to not be surrounded by work for 5 seconds. Not to mention my wonderful girlfriend, who actually put up with me going away for 6 weeks, and does not intend to kill me when I get back (so far as I know).

Tomorrow night is the open mic night, which was essentially the "let's have a concert before Jon leaves" concert. I'll be playing some solo stuff, then later, my violent femmes cover band will be closing the show. Hopefully everyone will be good and drunk and make the show a blast.

Another delay

Not sure exactly why, but now my flight has been delayed until tuesday. There was a new group that came in yesterday, so I imagine some of them have priority on the monday flight.

Last night after the nature cruise, we all went out for dinner at this place called beer and burgers. It was very very cool. The logo was a black and white 1950's style school-girl vampire eating a burger. Really kitschey. They had posters on the walls of cartoons that would say "don't fight! Eat a burger" and would have one frame with two people fighting, and then the next frame would be the two people in the same position but with burgers in their hands. Had the same for "don't drink and drive! Have a burger" but with one of the patrons up in a tree. Very cool restaurant. Good food and good beer. We then went to Bailies for more drinks. It's right in Cathedral square and was full of usap people. There was also a soccer game on tv with NZ vs Bahrain. NZ won, but their team looked like shit. Got good and drunk, then went home and had a nice sleep! I like new zealanders. The innkeeper made an announcement that breakfast would be closing instead of just closing it. That allowed me to get up, throw some pants on, and get a decent breakfast.

After that, I went for a run in the park and did a quick workout. I think Phil rented a car, so we may take a longer excursion today. Hopefully, we'll be able to get into the mountains!