Here we go again!

Well, let's blow the dust off this thing once again...hello all! And welcome to Round 3 of Ryan's Antarctic adventures.

As with the beginning of last year's entries, I've decided to restart the blog on the day I've re-entered hobo mode, at a hotel. However, unlike last year, the hotel I've chosen tonight looks quite nice - and the sheets smell perfectly fine. I'm in Nottingham, at the moment, checking out some frickin' laser equipment for upcoming seasons. After this, I'm going to head down to Cornwall for a week of meteorology training. I'm expecting this to be as enjoyable and informative as Karthaus, my similar pre-south trip last year. I've started off tonight by visiting a favourite old pub - the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which claims to be Britain's oldest pub (a disputed claim; but it's more than 800 years old, regardless).

It's half cave - and has many oddities like a model ship that hasn't been cleaned in 200 years...because everyone who cleans it, dies mysteriously shortly afterwards. Nice.

Since my last entry, it's been a relatively quiet summer. Here are the highlights:

- After my usual start in Cambourne, Cambridge's planned community, I pulled some strings, used some contacts (Blumenthals and porters), and acquired myself a nice little flat downtown. This was wonderful, and lasted me until September. At this point, I had to move temporarily into a less-than-salubrious student place on the far side of the tracks on Mill Road. Nice people - not so nice place. I never really knew who or what was ever there. I did find certain mind-altering substances on the kitchen table one morning, and was visited in my bedroom on two other separate occasions by a white rabbit and a black cat. Other than that, not much to say about the place. After this interlude, it's back to Cambourne for three more weeks before taking off south again.

- Did manage a round-the-world trip shortly upon my return. Visited Bangkok, Brisbane, and Canada over two weeks. The trip was great, but a bit tense at the end when a certain family member had a bit of a health crisis. Said family member was rebuilt stronger, faster, and smarter by the time I got home, though, so a completely happy end to my trip.

- I bought myself a bi-cycle. Clever invention, that. Mine is 23", a rather large one. I bought it off a short French fellow who didn't even finish assembling it before realizing he couldn't remotely fit on it. Since then, I have rediscovered the joy of random county exploration. I'm itching to take it to the southwest and explore Devon and the Cotswolds. Ah, the pubs I shall find...

And that's the end of my "What I did last summer" report. Stay tuned next week for the sites and sounds of Cornwall...and then, following that, we shall outline the game plan for the 2009-10 Antarctic summer.

See you soon.

Ryan

End game...

Cambourne. The future of British lifestyle, a planned community centred around a Morrison's supermarket. It's quite a distance from the nearest five-star pub. But for the moment, it's my home. I'm back.

My visit to the Falkland Islands lasted from Saturday morning to Tuesday morning. I was woken up by the Falklands by its smell - a smell of green stuff. It was delicious. Signy had its own smells - primarily seal crap - but real civilization and grass and so on was a great smell. On Saturday, we couldn't moor up - there was no dock space - so we just sat out in the bay, and used a small Fast Rescue boat to shuttle anyone ashore who wanted to go. I was first in line. Oddly, many people had no urge to go ashore - perhaps they were institutionalized already. I, for one, was ready to go to the Antarctic halfway house, Stanley.


Stanley has 2000 people, give or take. It is by far the largest community in the Falklands, and it has one grocery store, about 3 bars and 3 hotels, and several knickknack shops. Its main industry is servicing the tourists and the military base - there's a bit of a wool trade too. And us, I suppose. Feels a bit like Newfoundland, actually, which probably isn't surprising.


Definitely a strong military feeling here. The invasion and subsequent liberation of the Falklands was about 25 years ago - and the island is still riddled with land mines and spent shell casings. On the second day, I took a walk looking for a beach of penguins. Cutting across country, I got into an area surrounded by land mine danger zones. Fortunately, they're well labeled. And I got to the beach....


and saw a few Magellan (?) penguins.


On the way back, I had a good view of some ships. Two worked, two didn't.

The two beached hulks each have their own stories - which I can't recall at the moment - but the one on the left was actually used as storage for awhile. Really tempting to swim out and check it out, but it's strongly discouraged for safety reasons. The two working ships are right in the middle, off in the distance. That's us. The Ernest Shackleton, and the James Clark Ross. The British Antarctic Survey's entire fleet, side by side.

The Shackleton is more fun, I believe - the JCR is built to be a science vessel, and we're more about logistics. But we have a good place to watch movies and relax; they have more boardrooms and such.

Anyway, we spent a few days poking around - some went to the bars, some went hiking. I mostly did the latter, as Stanley's pubs all gloriously failed my criteria for pub greatness. And then finally, Tuesday morning, we went to the military airport to board our plane. I was bracing myself for a Hercules - a military transport plane that was light on entertainment but at least had some legroom. I was totally unexpected for what I saw.

A sidebar here. I've flown a lot between the UK and Toronto. I've flown BA, Air Canada, Zoom, Air Transat...and FlyGlobeSpan. I like BA, boycott Air Canada (they stole my airmiles, another story), Zoom went bankrupt, and Air Transat is unpleasant. But FlyGlobeSpan was the worst. They were nine hours late - and I know people who've had much worse. Their plane has no entertainment. And hoo boy, is it cramped. After one trip of that, I swore never to fly it again.

And against my will, I was forsworn. For I found myself staring at a FlyGlobeSpan plane as I arrived at the military airport. Of all the places in the world. FlyGlobeSpan was outsourced for the 16 hour Falkland Islands run. Needless to say, not much sleep was to be had on this flight.

We did stop in the Ascension Islands in the middle of the night. They stuck us in a chainlink corral while servicing the plane. The Ascension Islands are halfway between Brazil and Africa - right in the middle of the South Atlantic, in other words. Still pretty far from anywhere.


And then we were back. Brize Norton, a military airport in Oxfordshire. I took a shuttle bus back to Cambridge, messed around in the office a bit, and ended up back here in Cambourne. And that, dear readers, is the end of another Antarctic season.

There might be one more season for me. Next year will begin early - October, probably, but possibly even September. Until then - I've got a round-the-world trip starting in a few weeks, but other than that, should be a quiet summer.

I'll leave you with a video shot by Tony, one of our RAF mast erectors who joined us at Halley this year. This is a fur seal, who (like any fur seal) doesn't like people and gave Tony a bit of a chase. A good test for Tony's balance and fitness to run backwards and try to keep the camera properly aimed!

Thanks for reading along again.
Ryan

Signy: A cosy little research station

My last night on the Shackleton. Last night in the southern hemisphere, for that matter. Tomorrow morning, at 5am, we boogie on outta here and catch a military flight back to the UK, via the Ascension Islands. 16 hours of flying. Ugh.

But! I'm not here to talk about that - or the Falklands, where I currently am. I'm here to talk about Signy.

Here it is.

Signy is a very small base - I think there was eight people there this year. It was our first solid land for quite some time, and our job was to shut it down and winterize it. This job mainly involved loading things onto the ship - actually, loading them onto a little ship called the Tula, which then took it out to the Shackleton, which was too large to get close to base. We also covered up windows, shuffled around fuel drums, and did other minor things. About five hours work.

Many differences between Signy and Halley - the major difference is that Signy is full of wildlife. I saw one penguin - a gentoo, maybe? - and fur seals, which are mean, fast little gits. But the stars of signy are the elephant seals.

I think the word "sloth" is wasted upon the three-toed sloth. Granted, they may move slower, but elephant seals epitomize the concept of fat, lazy slob. Here's a pile of them, outside the back door of the base.

A seething, heavy breathing pile of flesh. They gurgle, fart, burp, yawn...and that's about it. They do scratch themselves. They look like Homer Simpson when they scratch their asses - although identifying the ass on a fat cylindrical creature is tough - and they look really puzzled when they scratch their heads.

Two of them were engaged in an activity that was either a) courting, or b) male territorial rivalry. They would stand nose to nose and belch at one another for awhile. Then, one would use its head to poke the other one in the neck. The poked seal would bellow in rage - or perhaps it was just gas - and then bang the other one similarly in the neck once with its head. Then they would lie back down, all tuckered out, and catch their breath. And then recommence.

This went on for several hours.

When compared to rutting stag deer, smashing each other at high speed until they're bloody, elephant seals seem pretty lame. One of them happened to be in front of a door we need to access. So it had to be moved. This was the comedy highlight of my day. Toddy - my erstwhile field companion from Halley who spent this year at Signy - used a combination of flexing a metal sheet and kicking the seal to get it to move. Which it didn't.

The funny part of this was that you could exactly see what the elephant seal was thinking at this behaviour. Roaring and farting in rage, showing its teeth, it was clearly saying, "I outweigh you by several hundred kilos. I have vicious teeth, and I am a brutal dangerous predator. And I would turn around and rip you to shreds if I wasn't so damned tired! Now piss off!"

Eventually, though, the seal grudgingly flopped a few feet away. I believe they are actually quite energetic under the right circumstances - aquatic circumstances, I imagine. Seemed hard to believe at the time.

Anyway, off to bed. Early flight tomorrow. Later this week, I'll cap off the blog with the Falklands, Ascensions, and any other adventures that may happen between here and regular life!

A tour of the Shackleton

The big journey is over. It's been ten days at sea now, and we've dropped anchor at Signy Harbour on the South Orkney Islands. I've always wanted to go to the Orkneys ever since getting to England - family roots there, and all that - but I had no idea that I'd hit the southern ones first. Didn't even know they existed, then.


Not that we're staying long. It's a day at Signy, packing up the base, then continuing onto the Falklands. But that's not far away.

In the meantime! I have been fully institutionalized onto the Shackleton. Hopefully, this is the closest I'll ever get to a prison stint - nothing to do, limited mobility, not much to see.
It was nice to relax, at first, but now I just have the urge to jump off the ship and run up that mountain in the picture, flailing my arms and screaming incoherently.

Actually, it hasn't been that bad. But I can boil down my existence in the last 10 days to four pictures.

1. My cabin. Shared with Lance and Bryan. A good choice of cabin-mates - we're all quiet people. My bed is on the left. We have our own toilet and shower, which has been a nice luxury.


2. The "social" room. Scrabble, movies, and crosswords dominate this area. It's adjacent to the smoking room, which is slightly unpleasant if you're feeling marginal and you catch a nasty waft.


3. The mess hall. This is a wonderful room, because the food on the Shack is very, very good. We had some freshly caught tuna the other night, that easily qualifies as the best cooked fish I've ever had. I would have given anything to get it in sushi form.


4. The cargo hold. I come in here every day at 4:30 pm for circuit training. This is two hours of running around that container in the middle, and doing weights, etc. at several stations. It's been an institution religiously adhered to by the doctor and captain for the last couple years; and if it wasn't for this daily exercise, I'd be "Ryan the Hutt" by the time I left the ship. As it is, I'm barely keeping up to my food intake.


But now, I'm itching to get ashore to Signy. I'm on "heavy lifting" duty, for things that will be brought aboard as they shut down the little base for the winter. I can see hundreds of penguins onshore from here, with binoculars - hopefully there'll be a chance to get a bit closer tomorrow.

And now, I shall go to the social room and see how the Scrabble is coming on.

Back Smashin'

Back on the ship. In the same cabin, even. Halley is behind me. Next stop: Signy, in the South Orkney Islands.

The last few days were slightly hectic, but finished on a good note. One interesting development: no sooner does one mention a Norwegian, and suddenly poof! They materialize in your midst. Suddenly, Norwegians asserted their treaty rights to a base inspection.

As stated in the treaty, any signatory nation is allowed to spot-inspect any other base, to make sure they conform to the treaty - mostly on the environmental end. So we had a Norwegian ambassador and his entourage come to Halley for a couple hours visit.

Of course, the visit is fairly social as well. The Norwegians are our neighbours - their base, Troll, is one of the two closest bases to us, and our science overlaps quite often. We actually have a few of them on the ship now, as well.

But the visit was a good excuse to clean the Simpson building, which we did thoroughly. Then, they moved on...and we started moving people down to the ship on Saturday. I was one of the last to go, on Sunday morning, with last year's winterers.

One of my last Halley tasks - shave off my beard. I was quite proud of it - I can grow a damn good beard.


After this crucial task, we took off for the coast, where the new winterers saw us off with the traditional firing of flares...


and they are now on their own until next November. They weren't the only ones to see us off...there was an honour guard of emporer penguins there as well. Although they got bored eventually and wandered off to go for a nice warm swim (at -10C).

And now, here I am. Internet is even patchier than on the way down, as the path between the satellite dish and the satellite happens to be blocked by the crane, whenever we travel northwest. And that happens to be the direction we'll be travelling in, for the next two weeks.

With a bit of ice smashing along the way.

Halley tour III: The Drewry

Well, one week to go. It's been a short season - we got in late, and we're leaving early. And, as you may have read between the lines, it's been busy. I may have dropped the occasional hint to this effect, like entries titled "busy busy busy"!

And it's not letting up much yet. I'm giving a talk tonight, and have been busy packing and labelling equipment to go back to Cambridge. And there's still code to write. But the bulk of it is done, and if I was hit by lightening tonight, it would be a successful science season.

Actually, if I was struck by lightening at Halley in February, we'd have a hell of a good science paper to publish.

Anyway. I shall continue the Halley tour - started last year with the Simpson and the Laws - by introducing you to the Drewry, which is my current home. The Drewry is a building for summer staff only, and is decommissioned every winter.

The outside:


Note that the Drewry can actually be dragged around by a tractor. On the inside, the decor is a plywood motif, marked with plywood accents:


It's the only two-level building there (the garage, to be fair, is 1.5), with the bedrooms upstairs...

...and one big main room downstairs:

One can eat breakfast here, or watch a movie at night. The social dynamic of the Drewry is interesting. One can choose to socialize here, or back over at the Laws. Everyone who lives in the Drewry does a bit of both, but some people lean towards one or the other. Myself, I spend most evenings at the Simpson, wander through the Laws for a Guinness, keep going to the Drewry, and poke my head in this room for a second before wandering off to bed.

And that's the tour. Again on a different note - this week's chuckle (more of a smirk, really) was at a phishing e-mail I received on my BAS account. Here it is:

Kjære uio.no konto Bruker,

Det vil være en generell oppgradering i systemet mellom Februray 2 til 20
2009.På grunn av anonym registrering av uio.no kontoer og antall
av sovende kontoer, vil vi kjøre denne oppgraderingen for å fastslå
nøyaktige antallet abonnenter vi har i dag.

Du blir bedt om å logge deg inn på uio.no og bekrefte hvis
Kontoen er fortsatt gyldig og sender umiddelbart den folowing:

Brukernavn: :................................( Obligatorisk)
Passord :...................................( Obligatorisk)
Fødselsdato :..............................( Valgfritt)

You don't necessarily need my rusty Scandiwegian language skills to pick up that this is a password-phishing scam to users of the University of Oslo. Sent to my British Antarctic Survey account. Replying to this e-mail sends your info to a Lithuanian address.

Now, as a fellow Baltic citizen (or, at least, passport-holder) I'd like to offer some advice to these aspiring Lithuanian identity thieves about phishing.

The idea of phishing - and any e-mail scam - is to send out mail to a large number of people, and hope that some of the recipients are naive enough to send their personal information back via e-mail to the wrong address. This is best done by impersonating a large public institution - like a bank - where a significant chunk of the general populace has a reasonable chance of being a member.

Sending out a e-mail from the University of Oslo in Norwegian to British e-mail addresses is not a good example of this strategy. And even if it was, a university-enrolled expat from Norway - arguably one of the most computer-literate nations in the world - should not be your target demographic.

Get your feet wet first with some good-old "male-enhancement" e-mails. Then maybe move up to stock pump-and-dumps. Then, once you've got a bit more experience, maybe you're ready to tap that lucrative Norwegian university student segment of the population.

Mast raising. And economists.

On one of my recent trips, we brought the new Halley doctor, Susanna. The Halley base doctor gets some strange responsibilities...like, fueling the plane. She fuels the plane for most trips, because she has to be at the skiway anyway, in order to revive our burned carcasses in the event of a fiery inferno upon takeoff or landing. So she has to sit and watch us go off on adventures, day after day. Until this day, when Mark the pilot said "Get in the plane, you're coming with us." She proved to be a helpful companion on this trip, to a place called HH00.

HH00 is my furthest site from base that has daily radio modem communication. 40km away. Accordingly, I issued a challenge to Rich, my long-time field companion: let's build the tallest antenna we possibly can. Here's our team:


Me, Mark the pilot, Rich the field assistant (i.e. mountaineering/ice expert), and Susanna the doctor.

We began with a 14m antenna. It didn't work. Bent 90 degrees, actually. The pole is 1 inch and hollow, so it's pretty bendy. So, we tried again...


We removed the bent segment and went with a 12m mast. And it worked.


We were all pretty proud of it. Rich was our foreman...and he just came off a night shift, so he did it half-asleep. Not that we could tell. But the mast is transmitting back to base 40 km away at 115 kbps. I could get passable Internet over it if I so chose.

Anyway, that's that - I just got Susanna's pictures so I thought I'd share them (with her permission).

Something else I'd like to share, on a completely different note, is more copyrighted material that I've been chuckling at lately. I've never been a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but in the Halley library I picked up a book he published in 2007 called "Making Money". Very prophetic - it's about a crook who gets in charge of a central bank and switches it to a fiat currency.

The excerpt below is an exchange between the guy in charge, Moist, and the bank's economist, Hubert, who has a mechanical-hydraulic contraption that models the economy. I find it hard to believe that Pratchett wrote this before everything went down the toilet!

"Show me...show me what happens when people get fed up with banks," Moist said.

"Ah, yes, a familiar one! Igor, set up program five!' Hubert shouted to some figure in the forest of glassware. There was the sound of squeaky screws being turned and the glug of reservoirs being topped up.

"Igor?" said Moist. "You have an Igor?"

"Oh, yes," said Hubert, "But don't let that worry you. Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha," agreed Moist.

"Ha hah hah!" said Hubert. "Hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahahahahhhhh!!!!!!-"

Moist slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. "Sorry about that, it's the air down here."