Not your typical day off

For some reason the images won't upload....so here is a little bit of text. Sorry.

Down here at McMurdo, recreation is one of the most important activities that one can do to pass time. As I have mentioned before, there are boondoggles, but there are a couple activities that one can do at anytime. Most of these things are housed in "Acey Ducey" or Building 63 down here. It is often referred to also as the weight gym, it is one of the oldest buildings down here. Back when the Navy ran the station it was the officers bar hence the name "Acey Ducey". Now it is a multi-functional recreation building; it houses the bowling alley, the weight gym, ceramic room, arts and crafts room and bouldering cave. All of these activities help break up the "Groundhogs day" effect that often affects the staff down here. The building is roughly 53 or so years old, and it shows.

Just a couple months ago, the building was going through an inspection when someone noticed that one of the main support beams was bent. The building was closed and the NSF met to decide what to do with the building. Unfortunately a structural failure was only one of the problems with the building, it appears that some of the supports have sunk into a fuel spill/leak under the building. So the building was closed and made into a restricted zone. This upset a lot of us on the Fire Department, because we use the weight gym a lot. There is a cardio gym, but I'll be honest...I'm not a big fan of cardio. So for the past 2 months or so I've only been working out with Cardio...and then I got some news.

The new was that they are going to be moving the weight gym to another building. The Fire Department stepped up and started to help out with the whole move. Since it was my kelly day, I helped out the other shift with the move. We were able to organize and strip most the gym in less than an hour. We have to wait for cargo to be ready to move the machines, but hopefully within the next couple of weeks we will have a new gym. It is good for the fire dept. to be involved in activities like this so that the public can see how effective we are as a team, and also see our positive affect within the community.

Final cut

Here is the final cut of the Captain EMO film. This was what was shown at the Film Festival...and now for your enjoyment:

Hut Point Hut

So today I finally went into the Hut Point Hut. It is actually called Scott's Hut, not to be confused with Scott's other hut at Cape Crozier. This hut was built for both Scott and Shackleton out of some African hardwood, built in 1904. So it is very impressive that it is still standing with its original construction. The hut is closed mostly all of the time and only a certain amount of tour guides have access to it, so it is limited what time it is actually open to the public.
Luckily there was a special firefighter tour today, given by one of my buddies here on the department. We walked down to Hut Point, just in time to see the Fuel ship leave. The fuel ship has been here for the past week, dumping 5 million gallons of JP-8 and Mo-gas. Which is pretty cool. That supply of fuel is for both here and to be eventually transported to the South Pole as well. The fuel ship was stuck in the ice though, it has been so cold here the past week that the boat actually had ice form around it. So I took this photo of the ice breaker actually towing the fuel ship out of port.


The Supply ship is coming Feb 2nd, rumor has it. The supply ship will affect this base a lot. Here is a photo of the "Restricted Travel" areas. Pretty nuts huh? Basically this is because there will be a ton of loader traffic and moving all sorts of supplies around the base. The are anticipating so much traffic that they are watering the roads down. Yes, that is right...watering the dirt roads. You would be surprised how dry and dusty it is here.





So back to the Hut...We walked down and were let into the hut. The hut hasn't been lived in since 1930 or so. But all of the supplies in it are from the last expedition from Scott. It was funny that Scott wouldn't let Shackleton use this hut when they both were exploring the area. The hut was never intended to be used for people to sleep in, it was more made as a supply depot or at least that is the excuse for the construction. You would see it if you came here, the ceiling is way to tall to really contain heat effectively.
It took a lot of seal blubber to burn to keep it warm. There are still stacks of seal blubber and hay in the hut. Scott made the horrible decision that ponys were better than dogs to take on his adventure. While ponys can pull more weight, they can't walk in the snow...and if food gets scarce they can't eat other horses. Shackleton did this with his dogs who didn't make it. He would take the dead dogs and feed that to his other dogs to keep them alive...it is a harsh continent. So the lesson to take from this that ponys suck and dogs rule (Right Cody and Kobalt? Shout out to you guys!)
But anyway, the inside of the hut was neat. If you feel adventurous go and explore my blog, I visited the other supply hut earlier in the season. It was good to finally see the hut at hut point. I have been meaning to go there for quite sometime. But since work has been so busy, I can't sneak out for it. I hope you all are enjoying your Monday, since I'm sure most of you are reading this while you are at work. Yay for productivity! Anywho, take it easy and see you all soon!




Oh and if you have a free moment read this: http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE50O0YC20090125?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

McMurdo Film Festival

So one of the many interesting recreational activities that are infamous down here is the Film Festival. They host several during the year, the one I entered was the "Summer" Film Festival. It sort of is the end of the summer film festival, that people look forward to. The film festival is a very big deal for the community as a whole. It breaks up monotony of life down here. The galley usually hosts the film festival and many people come to view the films. I would say that there were about 500+ people or so gathered today. So it wasn't a bad showing. They showed roughly 8 or so films from McMurdo and 6 from South Pole. The films are all saved and put on DVDs so one can rent them and view them whenever they want. I believe that I participated in the 6th annual summer film festival.

The rules of the Festival were that the film had to be in either Quicktime or Windows Media format and had to be less than 5 minutes long. I figured I might as well use my
degree and make a short film one day. But, the truth of the matter is that I never really intended to enter this short in the film festival at all. I made this short when I was bored at one of our stations. This short is a homage to the Captain of my shift, Capt. Shields. He is a wicked cool Captain, one of the best ones I've had. (Shout out to Capt. Brohm and Capt. Bedford, you guys rock too.) He got a big kick out of it and told me that I should submit it to the film festival. I figured why not, and finally used my degree for something. I hope you all enjoy it. No, this isn't my music...and if you can't recognize it, then for shame to you.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy it. I'm not sure if there are awards with the festival. I was on duty so I only stopped in for a little bit. Anyway have a Happy Sunday and I'll talk to you all later.

NOTE: I'm going to try to upload the film...right now the network isnt allowing me to.

So here is the "Rough" Cut...I had it on facebook. The final cut just has a different intro picture, but this is basically the short. Maybe the Network will let me upload the final clip later this week...so this is just to keep you all entertained until then.

32 days and a wake up...

So I'm winding down my adventure down here. It seems that I just left, but I've been gone a long time, I guess. I only have 32 days and 1 wake up down here left, hence the title of this entry.

I have the countdown not because I'm looking forward to leaving here, but I do miss a ton of people from back home. You guys know who you are. So the fuel ship arrived last night, so we have 2 out of the 3 ships down here, which means soon the bars will close for ship offload. The ship offload is basically the biggest thing that goes on this season. A successful and fast ship offload would help a great deal to get the ball rolling for the station to start winterizing. The whole winterizing process is very fascinating. For example buildings are evacuated/emptied and shelters are set up around the roads. The whole stations one goal right now is really focused; to ensure a safe winter season for everyone who stays behind. I know if I stayed a winter I would like everything done correctly, because working outside when it hits -100 is not my idea of a fun time. But back to this offload process...What I think most of you will enjoy the most about the shift offloading process, is the trucks that they use. Here is one of them.

It really show the dedication that the Vehicle Maintenance staff have to these trucks. These trucks are at least 20+ years old and still run and fuction very decently. Wish I had these guys working on my truck back home.

I feel bad that I haven't written in a while up here, I've been busy. The flights, are starting back up. We are having several Kiwi C-130 flights a week now. The flights bring cargo down, and slowly are bringing scientists back home. The C-17s start back up Sunday, with a special trip planed. Rumor has it that it is a special Military flight, we have a grand total of "Tweleve Stars" on board. Of course this is refering to the stars on the uniforms. So basically I guess we will see some 2 star and maybe 3 star Air Force personnel in the near future. I'm not sure why they are coming, but the NSF is getting a free C-17 flight out of the deal so they are happy.

So the fuel ship was sighted last night off of Hut Point, but didn't dock until this morning. I was at work, so I missed it. The Oden has been cruising around the area for the last couple of days and it is really neat to look at it crushing ice. The boat in this picture is the fuel ship.

What is really mind blowing is that the ice that I see out at Hut Point is really sea ice and not just regular snow/ice that blends in around here. It is hard to think about that since I have driven on it many times. Eat that Ice Road Truckers! (Does anyone really watch that show?) In fact, Station 2 is basically sitting on top of the ocean because it is sitting on the same ice. WOW! I know, I just blew some minds reading this.

Since the C-17s are going to be starting once again, I have come to terms that the next couple of weeks will be very busy. The leadership within the Department have informed us that our "Kelly" days will be pretty rare, if they happen at all. The air force requires a certain amount of ARFF firefighters/ARFF Agent count to be on standby when the flights come in. That means that we will have to staff it with double the amount of men we currently have been the past couple of weeks. As the planes get bigger, so do the ARFF stand by crews. But due to the amount of injuries within our own Department and people leaving, everyone will have to do more than their share of work for the weeks to come. This also means that the firefighters will stay down here a bit longer than the other base personnel, until 90% of the flights leave. I don't mind it that much, because the crews that I work with have really grown on me. But this did affect my plans for back home greatly. Shout out to Dan Bedford and Jess Tiff-naff-ney! (They are getting married, FYI)

To celebrate or rather to enjoy this being my last week freedom, a whole bunch of us who were off duty today went for a hike to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is the longest hike that we offer down here, roughly 9.8 miles. And if you are following the blog, you would know that I ski-ed it pretty recently. (Shout out to Sam, the number 1 fan of this blog!) So, thirteen of us, our whole shift is roughly 18, went on the hike. We started the side near Scott Base first. This meant that we had a climb, for most of our hike, all the way up to Castle Rock. The hike up was pretty tough, but we all pulled through. I wish I got a photo of the trail because really it is steep. The motivation for making it up to Castle Rock; was the promise that we could see open ocean from the top. You would think that living on an island down here we would see open ocean all the time, but we are surrounded by ice. The reason for this is, as I have mentioned in the past, is a major ice berg essentially blocked off this area for a couple years. The sea ice then never melted, and just kept getting thicker. The iceberg has since drifted away, but the result of this whole ordeal was thicker sea ice and less marine wildlife around station.


After we made it to the top of the steep climb, we decided to acesend Castle Rock itself. The climb requires one to use an anchored rope line to safely climb. Please refer to the photo of this...pretty crazy huh? This portion of the trail was closed last time I went, so I was excited to climb up. I have heard that the view from the top is really awesome. After a safe climb, I celebrated my hike and cracked open a beer.

As an Eagle Scout, I was prepared, and brought a whole 6 pack for the hike. I passed out a couple beers to my friends and my fire captain. There was a decent amount of beer hiked in, so we all could toast our last week of freedom. That is why I like my shift, we all have similar ideas and thoughts. It was great to cheers our season and enjoy the view. I was really happy sipping on my cheap New Zealand beer and eating a packed lunch that I made. I really hope these photos give the view justice. The visibility was great!











After a couple group photo shots, we started our decent and walked back to McMurdo just in time for dinner. The hike to McMurdo was a bit shorter and mostly all down hill. All and All it was a great hike, and a beautiful day! (It was only 5 degrees.) So I will catch up with you all later, hopefully I'll be writing more...sorry about that. Take care everyone!

Room with a view?

So, I just want to let you all know that this blog entry is going to be one of my favorite ones. This will be one of my favorite memories of this season, no doubt. Now with all the build up...what did I do?


Let us start the story with yesterday, I was enjoying my "Kelly" day off, when I got a page from my captain looking for volunteers to cover the Pegasus airfield for an incoming flight. Pegasus, while very fun, takes a long time to get to now that the transition road is really crappy. The drive is roughly 2 hours of a bumpy one way ride in a Piston Bully. I volunteered, and gritted my teeth for what would be long day off. Turns out, my Captain, signed me up for a "boondoggle" as a reward for volunteering for this. I found out about this after I showed up to work, so I wasn't really expecting it.

A "Boondoggle" is a type of reward that often some of the work centers will sponsor for employees. It really is a morale boosting trip for hard working people. Yes, I still qualify, I do actually do work down here....jerks. So, a "Boondoggle" can be anything from helping a team of scientists in the field to dive tending, pretty much anything can happen. It can include work, but sometimes it can be purely recreational.


My trip was I think the best one that they offer down here. There is a trail that goes up to the top of this peak/hill and the trail end is called "Room with a View". It looks up to Mt. Erebus, and looks down to all of Ross Island. And the only way up there is via snowmobile. Yes, I said it...SNOWMOBILE. I was wicked excited. Though I didn't have my best friend in the world, and my favorite snowmobiling partner, Mike Brohm with me. (Shout out to Mike Brohm and all of my MV A6 family!!!) But I made do what I had.


The group was only 10 people, and thus, we did 2 per snowmobile. My partner was a DA from the galley. A "DA" is a technical term for a dinning assistant, basically a dish washer/kitchen slave. We started the day at 1300 hours, with a quick run through of the map. They asked if anyone had snowmobile experience...(I knew I went to school in NH for a reason! Stay in school kids.)

So after that we rode the piston bully out to the Happy Camper area, and got on our snowmobiles. This drive took roughly a half hour, the transition was very rough...again. I let my partner drive first, mostly because I wanted to take some video and photos. The journey took us roughly 45 minutes to get to the top. The visibility got really sucky at one point. One of our instructors stopped the group and asked us if we wanted to go back. "Evacuate?!?! In our moment of Triumph?" (Mr.Berman that quote is for you good sir. And anyone else who gets it.)

The group said no and we pushed forward. The visibility was like 20 feet or so during this portion of our journey. So yes Mom, it wasn't probably the safest thing I've done down here. I'm just kidding, it was great and totally safe. We made it up this wicked high peak to a lone scott tent. The visibility was wicked bad at the top, so our "room with a view" was similar to my sisters window in New York City. That means sucky. (Shout out to my sister! Yay Katie!)

But then, the winds picked up and we were able to get a great vista. The top of Mt.Erebus was still hidden, but the rest of Ross Island was clearly visibile. I could see Castle Rock, Willie Field, McMurdo, Scott Base, sea ice, Oden breaking ice, and last but not least OPEN OCEAN! It was really awesome. And the view that day I was told wasn't up to normal par. These photos don't do it justice, Tust me on that! While the visibility and the flat light made all the photos we took look horrible, I just sat there and enjoyed the view. I played a little Frisbee too. And had a snack, because snowmobiling is such hard work.


After a while, we had to get going back home. So I drove the way back. I took my time to enjoy the ride. Though after riding on a piston bully for the past month, 30 mph seems like 80 mph. And it doesn't help that everything is in kilometers on the snowmobile. I had to do a double take a couple times because of this. Our ride back was uneventful, but fun. I like tooling around on a snowmobile. This was probably my only moment where I wish I was back in Rindge. (Shout out to all the Rindge peeps...)


After we were back, I realized that I really enjoyed that outing. It sunk it deep. It put some energy back into me that has been drained by the groundhog day effect down here. Now, I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow and give 110%. It is amazing how a small outing away from McMurdo can really recharge you. So I hope you all enjoyed this entry. Obviously I wish I could portray this more. Anyway people, I'm having a blast down here. See you all in forty something days!

The Oden and Fred

So, for the past 48 hours the Oden has been working its way to McMurdo. The Oden, is the Swedish ice breaker that is the first of many boats to come into McMurdo in the next couple of weeks. The Oden began its journey many weeks ago, and it finally came within view of hut point yesterday. The ice breaker basically will spend the next week or so here, constantly cruising around our harbor breaking up ice. It has a top speed of 16 knots and has roughly a crew of 80. What is really cool is that it makes a turn basin so that supply ship can turn around when it is done with its off load. Everyone down here looks forward to the Odens arrival. This is because that when it breaks up the ice often wildlife slowly comes in. I have heard that whales often show up in the channel that is formed by the Oden. There was a penguin who came in after the Oden. I have a couple photo of sleeping and this photo of his actually doing something is from another one of the firefighters down here. If you know an Adam Birzer from Colorado...give him a high five. The penguins name is fred. He also brought along 4 Skuas as well. So the wildlife is already kickin' up. Boo ya.

The next boat to come in will be Fuel Tanker and lastly will be Supply ship. The US navy to my understanding also makes an appearance down here to assist with the offload. The only negative aspect to the town is that during this entire process, the bar and the store stops selling beer and wine. This process can be over a period of two weeks. I don't think I personally will have an issue with this, but it is slightly annoying to the rest of the townsfolk. I just recently started to enjoy the Coffee house bar, which serves wine and "irish" coffee. This ship offload might affect where I hang out after dinner because of this no liquor policy. Why no liquor you might ask? I hear that a couple years back the off loading crew got a little rowdy and thus, we make McMurdo a dry town for a couple of weeks to prevent anything from happening.

I really like watching the Oden today, I think I may spend a little time tonight watching it from Hut point. Oh and for those of you who are having the case of the Mondays, enjoy this video of the ice breaker. Take care everyone and talk to all of you later.

Boston Ladder 26

As most of you know, I consider myself a Boston native. I was checking my email and news before dinner down here this evening when I got an email from my best friend and former roommate Mike Brohm. Back when Brohm and I were in college, after our Fire 1 class, we would often watch TV in our apartment. One of the shows we used to watch religiously was Firehouse USA: Boston. The TV show was wicked funny and it showed Boston Firefighters and how they operate in a really good light. In fact, I was really upset when that series ended prematurely. But, the point of this story is that Boston Ladder 26, one of the crews followed in the show, unfortunately lost one of their men today in Boston responding to a call. Lt. Kevin Kelly, one of the main characters from the show was in that accident. The accident, was horrible and I can only imagine what the firehouse and his family are going through.

So, please take a moment out of your day to follow Lt. Kevin Kellys story. From all of us down here at McMurdo FD we send out prayers to the Family, Friends and Boston Fire Dept. Take care everyone.

For more information on Lt. Kevin Kelly feel free to check out these sites:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/01/kelley_remember.html

http://www.universalhub.com/node/22649

http://www.wusa9.com/news/columnist/blogs/2009/01/lt-kevin-m-kelley-boston-fire.html

NOTE The picture from this post is from Boston.com

Welcome back Condition 2

So this entry is going to be short and sweet for you all. I'm working at the airfield today, and the weather has been strange all day. Since Thanksgiving, it has been pretty warm down here. Due to this the ride to the airfield now takes almost double what it used to. On our drive this morning we saw a couple cool sights. One of which is Ivan the Tera bus stuck in the road. The ice melts due to run off from the snow around here and makes these really annoying and deep potholes. If you though Mass. roads were bad, wait until you drive down here! Its so bad that now regular trucks can't travel from the airfields to town. We were in our trusty Piston Bully, which even though the ride is rough, it gets us to and fro work. Picture storming the beaches of Normandy or preforming a beach landing. The bumps are that extreme. Ivan, since it has really big wheels it can usually make it across the transition. But as you can see, it needed a bull-dozer to pull it.


The drive into work was really cool. There was a ton of fog, so one could only see the tails of the planes. The weather then warmed up and it was defiantly T shirt weather. The views also were really awesome today, though Mt.Erebus was sleeping today. I couldn't see the top of it, so that was slightly different. I really like seeing it steaming/continuous eruption when I come out here. Things started to calm down until tonight. Then the fog came back in. Right now we are in a condition two here at the airfield. Due to the visibilty. And I hear its going to snow later tonight. So take care everyone, I'm going to enjoy my condition two.

Fire Expo/Open House

Greetings everyone. This past Sunday down here, was our Fire Department open house/expo for the general public. Since we are such a small community down here, it is important for everyone to understand what we, as a Fire Department, do down here. What is weird is that the Fire Department down here is somewhat of a hybrid or combination of many other departments. Besides the Fire Prevention, Protection, Suppression, Rescue and Medical operations that most Fire Departments do down here, we also are the police force in some aspects. We have to enforce the noise violations and any suspicious activity we have to investigate. For example, a couple of drunk people decided to walk around the Ice Pier down here. We had to send one of our engines down to escort the people off the restricted ice pier for their own safety.

This sometimes negatively affects our image with the general public, because that is the burden of being an authority figure. Only a small handful of people down on the base see what we do on a daily basis. Mostly people who work at the airfield, and the medical staff have a very good understanding of what we do down here. But a majority of people don't really understand the need for a Fire Department down here.

So, in order to promote and remind many people of our positive aspects, we organized an open house in where people could see what we do on a daily basis. I helped with marketing of this event and did several other duties for the event. We ran serval Television spots, or ads on our scrolling information channel. I finally got to sort of use my Mass Comm degree, shout out to the best Mass Comm major at FPC and my home-boy Sammy Stolzar!!!
We also set up posters and of course advertised that we were making real chili. The chili I think was the biggest selling point. The firehouse down here is infamous for their chili recipie that one of our Leutenants has. It was fairly good, and you'd be surprised of the hoops we had to jump through to make it. Due to the horrible economy, they cut alot of programs down here...and our food has also suffered. One used to be able to order some ingredents from the kitchen, but now we have a very restricted menu in which to order. But thanks to us escorting a medivac to New Zealand, we were able to smuggle in some supplies and make said chili.

The activitys that we had open to the public were really cool. We used a smoke machine to smoke up the upstairs bunk rooms of our firehouse. Then turned out the lights and had people gear up and find the rescue dummy we hid up there. The whole bay got very smoky, as you can see from the image earlier. We also had a hose spraying relay, and a car cutting/hydraulic tools demonstration. I helped out in a couple of those events as well as did a hand tool demonstration.
All and All it was a pretty productive and rewarding open house. The head of the Nation Science Foundation down here came by and she really enjoyed it.

I think the open house went fairly well. Take Care everyone, and I hope you all are enjoying your mondays.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. I was going to post this yesterday, for your New Years...but I got busy at work. The whole town had the day off, but of course we never close. It was a pretty good day at the Station though. We finally have all of our trucks working, so we took this opportunity to train with them. Unfortunately Antarctica is a harsh continent, especially for our fire trucks. It seems that almost every week or so one of the trucks has to go to the machine shop here. But, as a Department we manage to adapt to any of these issues without a hitch. These type of issues reminds me of my days at Franklin Pierce. I really do miss that 1969 truck sometimes. Our tanker down here is a left over truck from the old Navy days here. It recently came back from the dead. The tanker is so old, that the company that made it has disappeared. They had to manufacture a new part for the tanker down here at one of our very own machine shops. The training was pretty cool to work with the tanker and our other apparatus. To answer everyones question, yes we do use water down here. We also have a hydrant system as well, for those of you who are just joining this blog. All that training yesterday made me "le tired" and thus I went to sleep before posting this...So, once again sorry for the delay in posting.
So all of you must wonder, How does Antarctica Celebrate the New Year? We'll at McMurdo we have this event called, "Icestock". Its basically a big party outside with live music from 7pm-Midnight or so. There was free food, and other fun activities. The live music I think was the most interesting. The bands were made up of townspeople/staff who signed up to play, and the music was very diverse. We had some blue grass music then some Jam Band and then metal. It was quite extreme, but somehow it all flowed nicely. Anyway here are the photo's for you all to enjoy. The countdown was in the New Zealand time zone, so I was the first of all of you reading this to enjoy the New Year. New Years eve was also my shifts holiday party at Hut 10. That was also quite fun. Hut 10 is perhaps one of my favorite buildings down here. I won't repost photos of Hut 10, but you can explore this blog and find them.

So take a break, enjoy these photos and slowly recover from last night. You deserve it.

Happy 2009 Everyone!