16 May 2008
I left Antarctica on 24 February 2008, six months and 4 days after arriving. Six months was the perfect number of consecutive months for me to spend on the ice. Following are some photos I didn't get onto my computer until after I left the ice, and lastly is some information on my post-ice activities.




Room 238, aka The Northern Duck Bird Lounge, aka The House of The Black Flag, aka home. Home was a dorm room on the second floor of Building 155, the building which also housed the Galley and several service offices, so it was the effective center of McMurdo life. During the summer though, all the rooms would house 4-8 people, so 155 generally hosted people who either had low-ranking jobs, or had little or no seniority like myself. I only had one roommate during WinFly, Casey on the far right. My other two roommates arrived at the start of the summer season: Micah, second on the right, and Pepe, on the far left. Photo by Stephen Pepe.


A better view of my living space, with Pepe posing beside the bed. All summer Pepe was working a day shift while I worked a night shift, so we shared a bunk bed. Pepe was on the mattress on top, and my mattress was concealed by the beige pad draped below Pepe's bunk. Photo by Stephen Pepe.


The Beer Fountain, which lulled us to sleep every night. I found a small broken submersible pump early on, so I fixed the pump and built the fountain, largely as a monument to the large amount of free time I had on my hands. The air is so dry at McMurdo that this thing lost about 300mL of water a day to evaporation. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


Our room's other beer-oriented artifice, the Beeramid. Micah started it and finished it, Pepe typed up a spreadsheet that calculated how many more cans we'd need at any one time, and we all contributed. Photo by Stephen Pepe.


This is an inflatable palm tree that lived in our room. Here it's outside our room, mimicking what the average McMurdoite looks like at 3am on a Sunday morning. On an unrealted note, the piece of paper that for months we left on the wall outside our room is a recruiting ad from a company trying to take the USAP contract from Raytheon in 2010. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


This was one of our neighbors, another night worker, who got out of bed to complain about the noise level and was impressed to find that none of the four of us were working and three of us were already drunk, despite it being 11am on a weekday. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


Adelie penguins waking up from a hideout at Hut Point, waddling toward the cold horizon. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


Now that I'm no longer using NSF-controlled internet access, I can upload politically-oriented materials. Above is a photo of me sporting a t-shirt promoting my presidential-candidate-of-choice, during my trip to the South Pole in February. It was -43F when the photo was taken, so next time I'm putting more thought into my campaign medium. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.

As a resident of Alaska, there was no way for me to vote in the Alaska Presidential Primary as Alaska is a caucus state and does not allow proxy votes. So I joined Democrats Abroad, a branch of the Democratic Party that held a primary vote online. DA was impressed that someone voted from Antarctica, so they interviewed me and mentioned me in their initial press release, an action which saw me mentioned in newspapers, blogs, and online articles around the world (see the Google results). I was also interviewed by the New York Times for an online article and for a printed article in the International Herald Tribune.


Muffin Monster, one of several bands that formed during the summer at McMurdo. The singer is Zack, one of the cooks, and on the drums is Nate, who worked in the Waste Water Treatment Plant and the Power Plant for a while. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


Inside of the McMurdo chapel, looking back from the pulpit. The chapel was used for religious services as well as yoga sessions, alcoholics annonymous meetings, etc. We always had one or two unpaid pastors on hand, which originally annoyed my secular senses considering the shortage of bunks and the cost to the government of flying people to McMurdo, but then I realized that those of us who didn't have any Christian bearings were consuled by the government with three bars, free condoms, an abundance of Buddhist and other literature in the library, and jobs that existed almost purely to support scienctific research, so what the hell. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


This sign appeared outside the galley shortly after the winterover employees arrived, so presumably Jim J. is in for a long winter. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


View of McMurdo from Hut Point. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


The summer season closed out in late February with a series of C-17 flights to the Pegasus White Ice Runway. By late February all the US stations in Antarctica were prepared for the oncoming winter, and the LC-130s and Twin Otters had already left the continent. The South Pole closed up for the winter in mid-February, and for 8 months there will be no flights to the Pole. McMurdo's airfields were scheduled to close on the 23rd of February if memory serves, but would reopen briefly in April for three mid-winter LC-130 flights. I caught the second to last summer season flight, and we left 3 days behind schedule. Shown above is the C-17 that would take me back north. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.


About to board the plane. A minute later I was sitting inside, but a minute or two after that one of the loaders accidentally pierced the plane with its forks while lifting cargo into the back of the plane. A hole in any part of a jet aircraft might seem like a problem, but being a military aircraft, having a few holes poked in the plane was a design consideration. A long hour later, at last we roared across the white runway and into the sky, flying 5 hours over the empty sea and touching down in New Zealand. Photo taken by myself, and I release it to the public domain.

Stepping off the plane in the night, the air felt hot and humid, we could smell spores and blossoms in the air, and a glance around at the airport showed more human infrastructure than exists on the entirety of the continent we had just left. Patricia had left the ice a week prior and we met at the airport and embraced, her arms bare in the evening's warmth. New Zealand was alive, and nothing was ordinary, and nothing was taken for granted.


Since Antarctica I've been bouncing between continents. I spent some time in New Zealand, I toured the coast of California and Baja with Patricia, I've visited friends in San Diego and New York City and Seattle, and I visited my brother and volunteered full time for the Obama campaign in Pittsburgh. The above photo is from another stop, in Maui. Photo by Hawaiian Sailing Canoe Adventures.

To see more things that I've never seen before, I've signed on to become an officer with the US Marine Corps Reserves, and in two weeks I begin training in Virginia. For now I'm in Malaysia, listening to breaking waves and watching the resident gecko crawl up the wall of my beachside bungalow. Assuming that my training goes well I'll deploy with the Marines next spring, bearing new skills, and following a new federal government. It's uncertain what fate has in store for me, but things should, as always, be interesting. Wish me luck, and thank you for reading.

Nov 2008: Long story, but the Marines were a disappointment. After some time off I took a job with Crowley Maritime as a traveling port engineer.


I might get some more web pages up and running, and if I do they'll be listed here.


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