Spare Parts & Spare Time

Happy Mother's Day:)

I would like to start off by sending my mother all the love in my heart. Her belief in me is part of the reason I made it here. I searched through the pictures I've taken for one that seemed fitting on Mother's Day. Not too many motherly sights down on the Ice. This statue will have to do.

Not something you'd expect to see at a science station? There are several crosses around too, all erected in memory of those who died here. (Eight sailor's died in 1955/56 alone, while building US stations on the Ice.) Each cross has its own story, and maybe I'll set a letter aside to tell them sometime. But I digress. "Roll-Cage Mary" is the most motherly image I've got, so here she is. Happy Mother's Day mom. You'll be getting high-resolution copies of ALL of my pictures when I get home (2,821 and counting).

A lot of the things people make down here are temporary, made of ice, or mailed back to the states. Build something out of solid steel however, and it can become a permanent part of MacTown. Construction projects always leave scraps, bits, and pieces behind. Here are some of the things people have done with those spare parts in times past:

THE SKI MAN (life-sized, overlooking McMurdo):
THE KILLER WHALE (complete, life-size Orca near the sea):
THE BRIDGE TROLL (hiding under wooden bridge):

There are other artifacts lying about as well. McMurdo Station is home to four large anchors, two by the sea, and two by the chapel. The original chapel was constructed of "borrowed" materials, and built by sailors in their spare time. It was named after the patron saint of thieves (having itself been stolen one piece at a time). That chapel and the one after it both burned to the ground. The current chapel, with its 1922 anchors, is called the Chapel Of The Snows. Note Mt. Discovery in the background. That mountain is on the mainland, about 50 miles across McMurdo Sound, but looks much closer. There are mountains in the Royal Society Range twice that distamce that look just as close:



I wanted to include a shot of the igloo we made, but we never made it. Sixteen of us planned a trip for yesterday, but the station went to Condition 2 for over two days. The trip was cancelled. Nasty, nasty, nasty weather. We had planned on constructing a traditional igloo, then lighting it up from inside. It would have glowed bright blue! Our trip has been rescheduled for June 4th. Hopefully, the weather will be safer then.

So instead, I'll include another ice sculpture. My coworkers and I sometimes play little pranks on each other. . .

Some of our equipment is housed in the waste-water treatment plant. Whenever we need to bend or thread a pipe, that's where we go. The plant is very humid inside, and ventilation ducts on the back of the building are usually dripping water. Over time, the dripping water builds up into large blobs of ice on the back porch, which then have to be broken away before they crush the porch.

One day, my friends started "adding" small pieces to the blobs of ice. It was easy. Get a chunk of ice wet and it would instantly stick to the top of the blob. Within an hour, dripping water would obscure any sharp edges, and make it look like it had formed that way. After about 5 days, the little blobs of ice on the porch had grown to over 8 feet in height! I was amazed and confused. It looked totally natural. The shape didn't make sense though. I could see little hollows inside, and weird curves. They kept asking me how I thought it grew that way.

I just shrugged my shoulders and said I had no idea. Good thing too, once I found out what was going on. If I had tried to sound like a "know-it-all" and invented some explanation, they never would have let me forget it. The cool part for me is that, all by itself, their ice sculpture formed a woman's face. The picture doesn't capture her well; I should have taken a better shot. Can you see her face, between the two pillars? She's looking to the right, has long hair, and is wearing a goofy hat:

Before I head off, the National Science Foundation finally gave us permission to save the lost seal that's been hanging around the station. I'm afraid it may be too late. The rescue mission was delayed by our Condition 2 weather. Hopefully, we can find it and move it back to the sea. There is a special sled here, built to weigh seals. We can use it as a transport.
Wish us luck.

UNITED STATES ANTARCTIC PROGRAM

Next post: #10 »