Ever have those moments where you wish you were still a part of a story long since moved beyond you?

Grand wishes to those with whom I’ve shared writing credits in the tome of life before and who now I read from afar…

Posted by noblehobo at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So in the end, my travel plans for the next month are a far cry from my original intents. Kudos to the exes who have put up with my travel style in the past (a complete avoidance of plans). Today I had to actually plan things out - spent the afternoon calling and booking flights and reservations.

All told, here’s what I ended up with:

Sunday, Nov. 23, fly to Cairns, Australia from Christchurch, New Zealand.

Nov 23-25, bum around Cairns and the beaches of the Gold Coast in Australia.

Nov 25-Dec 2, take off on a live-aboard diving cruise in the waters in and around the Great Barrier Reef. Spend time on ten to twenty more dives, get my PADI Advanced Open Water certification, and in general notch up my “ocean-time” by a great deal. I should see all manner of colorful things animal and plant, including sea turtles, manta rays, numerous tropical fish, and possibly sharks.

Dec 3 - fly to Melbourne, Australia to meet up with three Polie friends for a road trip to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock).

Dec 3-12 - The above road trip.

Dec 12-16 - Possibly fly back to NZ, possibly continue on with the road trip to Sydney.

Dec 16-18 - back to NZ for certain, then off home to Minnesota for christmas.

Should be a fine ol’ trip, and though the economic troubles back home do not bode well for my return to the workforce, in the mean they have left me with excellent exchange rates in NZ and AU (almost two to one). My savings will be little affected by these adventures and plans for next summer will still be funded.

All in all, it’s strange to have such an itinerary but nice to no longer have to worry about it. Now all that is left is packing up and shipping out!

Posted by noblehobo at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the greatest advantages of working contract positions in Antarctica is the ability to travel and explore new pursuits at the finish. For myself, I took after getting certified for open water scuba diving. I’m resting up tonight at the tail end of my open water dives, sunburned, salt-watered, and happy.

In the end, four of us signed up together to take a class through PADI (an international diving certification organization) at a local diving company in Christchurch. Our original class schedule was to have one day of review, testing, and closed-water dives (in a pool) at the dive company in Christchurch and then two easy days in Kaikoura (two and a half hours north of Christchurch) on the Pacific Ocean. In a whirlwind plan to account for rapidly deteriorating weather however, we bounced to Kaikoura a day early, rearranging hotel reservations and packing in under ten minutes after our closed-water dives were completed.

Our instructor (an ex-special forces military man from Quebec) drove our van and trailer at break-neck speeds north to Kaikoura last night, blazing like a rally car driver in the mountain roads to reach Kaikoura in time for our first dive before the sun set.

Rushed is what we all felt, and it built up, adding to the mental game of diving that one must get over in order to do so many things alien to human nature. Our first dive at sunset involved a six foot leap into the ocean off of a dock in full gear into rough water. The visibility was very limited (I could barely see my fins on my feet) and after one of our group had a small panic attack we had to abort the dive. In truth, I was relieved as I was borderline on the mental game of panic myself.

Our later dives, however, were a hell of a lot more successful. Though not everyone in our group finished all of the necessary dives, two of us did. We spent this morning on our final runs, going through open water skills such as mask removal, regulator loss (air), running out of air, underwater navigation, and the like. Realistically, while the surface water can be intimidating and easy to bring panic about, underwater was calm and beautiful. People are not lying when they say that you can move effortlessly and gracefully underwater. The waves disappear, the visibility increases, and new things are everywhere.

Personally, I’m glad that I have not snorkeled in tropical waters before - I had nothing to compare to so the simple browns and greens of the bottom growth plants and the few fish (and giant lobster) we ran across kept me more than entertained. I had a hell of a time following our instructor, not because of any problem swimming but because I kept getting distracted by new things. I would have happily stayed under for hours.

That, however, is not how training dives go. Though they seemed like much longer, our dives were between twenty and forty minutes each and likely never got any deeper that six or seven meters. Still, to me, it was all new - a world unexplored and situations that my body had never before had to deal with. I’m tired tonight but satisfied.

Tomorrow we meet to take our final exam (on paper) and clean up gear. After that I’ll try to reconnect with a couple of friends with whom plans were wrecked in the flurry of our class changes. Then, it’s off to determine just how I’ll be spending the next four weeks. Do I join Lance, Sue, and Jared in Australia for a road trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock)? Do I take advantage of my new (presuming I pass tomorrow) certification and go dive on the Great Barrier Reef? Or do I stick to New Zealand and my original (very vague) hiking plans?

No idea yet what I’ll go after but it’s damn nice to have choices.

Posted by noblehobo at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We touched down in the Christchurch, New Zealand airport Thursday night, November 13, at 7:24 PM. Christchurch has a sense to it, a feeling based on the weather, the nearby ocean, and flowering spring. That sense of life, of the city-soul, made it’s way into the plane before we were even able to leave. It led us to the door with frantically waving arms to emerge to a new sky. The sun was low on horizon, the clouds brilliant, and the humidity welcome like the best of old friends.

I first landed in Antarctica on October 9, 2007. For four-hundred days I never once left the continent.

My feet now know other land again - grass, pavement, crowds, sand, ocean-water, and cool, moist dirt. My eyes bear witness to color that has been in poor abundance, my nose is lost in the scent of a fresh-blooming summer, and my ears are ringing with the calls of unfamiliar birds.

I came out on nearly the last flight of winterovers from Pole. Of the sixty of us who spent the winter together, only two are yet in Antarctica. The remainder of us have flown to the various winds, seeking travel, home, and friends as necessary for us to adjust back to normalcy. There aren’t many of us left in Christchurch but we’re easy to spot. If you walk through the Botanical Gardens, we’re the only barefoot people wandering through the grass. We might be bending over to stick our nose in a flower bed for a few minutes or be lost in watching the bees at work. Could be we’re just staring at new clouds in the sky with a dumb-founded grin.

The horizons are thick with new things, experiences lacking over the last thirteen months. Simple things like going to sleep in the dark and waking to the sun, the humidity and warmth of the air, city noises, strangers, having a choice of food… All are part of a great myriad of things that many of us take for granted.

I’ve been told that this would be a shock to my system, that I would be incapable (at moments) of comprehension, prone to panic or simply wanting to leave to the quite of my Pole family. While its true that there is a great deal yet for me to encounter, my reactions have been calm and I’ve been proud at how my head has wrapped itself around the experiences of my return.

Call it a Zen Buddhist state of mind - enjoying and accepting each experience but letting go before it can overwhelm. A lifetime of moving, changing schools, homes, careers, friends…it has left me resilient to culture shock. While far from a purposeful pursuit, I have been born, bred, and built to be a traveler, a contract-work explorer. Stasis confounds me. Being on the move does not.

Having spoken with many friends about this, about their similar needs to travel, to move, and having dug into the archives of history to read up on the hobo lifestyle of the turn of the century, it turns out that we are it. Those of us in the world bouncing from country to country, job to job, community to community - we are the post-modern, globalized evolution of the old hobo.

Posted by noblehobo at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Antarctica is sliding by at six hundred miles per hour outside the window. I’m crashed out on the empty cargo bay floor of a C-17 on it’s way to Christchurch. There are so few northbound pax on the flight that the Air Force crew outnumbers us.

The transition from winter at Pole, to station opening crowds, to turnover, to a night in McMurdo, and now to here, has been eerily simple. My expectations of leaving winter have been filled by others with stories of shock and awe, moments of panic and exasperation. Each new thing, however, has calmly passed by me, celebrated in simple pleasures, and then been let go of. Thus far I’ve had no great moments of panic or epic joy, no severe highs or lows.

Truth be told, I actually found a deep and subtle satisfaction in turning the station over to the summer crew, to the new winterovers for the next season. I was able to let go, wandering around the station with a lop-sided grin and observant eyes, knowing that my story was moving on and that others were just beginning. Thus far transitioning away from winter has been easy.

But now I’m three hours out from New Zealand, three hours out from humidity and grass, traffic and city mayhem. Three hours out from thousands of new faces, the crush of large stores, the smells of the botanical garden, the sea-salt of the Pacific, dogs, children… Three hours out from a whole fleet of experiences I’ve not encountered in over thirteen months.

I expect it to be interesting.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Radios are beeping ceaselessly, the galley had a line for food for the first time in months, questions for the IT department are coming in rapid-fire, and new faces keep popping up where no one previously tread.

The first load of new folk came in yesterday and the mayhem on station has multiplied many-fold.

We’re fortunate to have a ‘soft’ opening - up to seven flights (weather dependent) of the Basler over ten days, only seventeen people per flight. It gives us a chance to acclimate to the new people and the summer pace without such a shock to our system - a little bit at a time.

Previous to last year, the first day of station opening held three flights of the LC-130 aircraft. Isolated winterovers suddenly had to deal with the station population tripling - 120 new people thrown at them in a rush.

The altitude plays hell with newly arrived folk. As winterovers seek quiet from the hubub we’ve coined our altitude-affected replacements the, “hypoxic avengers”.

______

Many of the other winter-overs are keeping up a good run on our lives here as well. Give them a read. Also, I’ve added Keith, our Canadian cosmologist to the mix.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:57 PM | Permalink

The first plane to land came through just a few minutes past - the Basler (a modified DC-3) stopped to fuel on its way to McMurdo station. We stood on the deck, laughing in the sun (-60 F), counting the new pairs of legs on the ground in the fuel pit.

In two hours one of the Twin Otters (another small plane used in deep field access) will land. The pilots will spend the night. They will be the first new faces we will have seen in our home since February fifteenth.

The orange people are coming.

(that would be the tan people, as opposed to our near-translucent skin)

Posted by noblehobo at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Regarding the long winter’s effects on our short-term memory, a quote from a friend:

“I left work to go to the bathroom and walked right by it. About a hundred feet down the hall I remembered…I forgot that I had to pee.”

Posted by noblehobo at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You encounter, over winter, a tremendous range of the human condition. Few places outside of warfare bring about the close-quarter mess and encounter that emotion and reason go through in a South Pole winter. I came expecting to encounter tests and challenges in droves, in large dramatic moments. Instead, I’ve found subtlety and self.

Time and the steadiness of the long dark lead to interactions that last over days and weeks, the drama spread as thin. Encounters are not so alien to those of the outside world but we cannot leave or escape at the end of the day. There is an ebb and flow to our patience, our anger, our satisfaction, our resentment.

In the rush of station opening, the long ebb and flow is building. Tempers and patience are short, arguments quick and hot, and reason requires a great deal more mental effort than usual.

I find my own patience tested regularly, find my own depth of calm far more shallow than I would like. I am tired, worn-down from a year of mental drain. I do not listen well right now, I am far less likely to compromise, and my anger rises quickly. We retreat to those friends who know us well enough to shrug off our quirks, to those whose patience is rarely tested by our actions.

I do count myself fortunate, however, that I still retain the ability to step back and look at how I am reacting. While not always the perfect response, it offers a chance to step away from a reaction that would be permanently damaging and to rectify my actions in the future.

My perspective is clear, even if my ability to control it is not.

How I change as I recover from the winter will be enlightening.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:30 PM | Permalink

The first flight that we’ll have seen since February fifteenth is scheduled to arrive next Tuesday (this is, of course, as weather dependent as everything here). The planes will be the Twin Otters and Basler coming through from South America on their way to McMurdo Station. They won’t be here long (the first flight with summer crew will be next Thursday) but they’ll bring fresh faces and fresh fruit.

It’ll be intriguing to see how we all react, especially considering how strange its been just to see one of our members who shaved off a year-old beard…

We’re in the midst of station opening - the rush of tasking to get the place ready for incoming flights and for the pile of people that populate the summer. I’ll have a couple of weeks of turnover with my replacements in IT and on the emergency response teams, a couple of days in McMurdo with friends, and then off to New Zealand on November tenth.

The thought of walking barefoot in grass in the middle of a rainstorm is very, very heavy on my mind.

In other news regarding life here, one of the three satellites that we use to connect to the outside world had another component fail. In response, before they lose control entirely, Intelsat will be de-orbiting the bird on November 30th. It won’t affect me (I’ll be on a beach some where) but it does point out the fragility of communications here.

All of the satellites that we rely on were built before I was born - all are on their last legs. There are backup options and plans but with every change comes some sacrifice. With this one, the available window for satellite communications (internet, phones, email) will shrink from eleven hours a day to nine. Of those, only about six will be decent enough for web browsing and phone calls during the summer.

It will alter things in small ways but then that’s life. The constant ebb and flow of action and response, of maneuvering with the unknown that unfolds daily.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:22 PM | Permalink