Then she took us down to the "Touch Tank" where they have a collection of sea spiders, loopy starfish all white & long-legged, sea urchins, sea squirters, sea cockroaches the size of my hand (related to the little cannonball bugs I grew up with that would curl up into a little bb-sized slate grey armour-plated ball when handled), sea cucumbers & weird prehistoric fish, like sculpin or catfish with big heads & smiles. The touch tank is kept at a temp of 28F water, same as the sea under the Ice here. Ever reached into 28F water to pick up a sea spider with its long fine red articulated legs and delicate movements? Priceless. Dipped in a few times to pick up the white starfish with the 9" legs that curled up like Shirley Temple on a foggy day, legs clutched tight to its center or let unroll unfurl long & skinny like spagetti. I dipped right back in, albeit quickly, and was so numb by then that my attempts to pick up the pink urchin were unfelt by my own fingers. Trying to be delicate with the thin spines while numb from the wrist down was fun, though not exactly graceful. I got some cool pictures, all a little blurred by the water, of these beasties. Took some of myself holding these critters. Yet another one of those huge grins I've been sporting in every photo since I got here.

I am so happy: to be here, to be driving Deltas (despite the frequent appearance of mystery bruises all up & down my left flank), to be halted in the road by an Adelie blocking my way, to be looking up at the Royal Society Range, to be meeting all these new people, to be shitting in Jesus Ice, to be needing to pee every time I drive a Delta, to be travelling between Mactown & Willie so many times a day that the weather is changing like time-lapse photography for me. It doesn't get much better than this.

Now I just have to make sure I don't fall asleep at the wheel and...what? Hit a tree?

Oh, the clouds. On a day like yesterday the sky was flat & white & sat low on the flat white ice, but we still got a horizon with blue sky & mountain ranges as if the weight of the clouds had compressed the sky down to the tips of the mountains & only they were keeping the clouds from closing down & taking away the horizon, leaving us flailing for the way up in a world of horizonless white meets white.

When the wind blows, even on the warmest sunniest day it shreds your defenses and thieves rudely away with your body heat. It's like being mugged & slammed against wall as it rifles through your clothes. It's been so dry & snowless here all season that McMurdo is a brown dusty volcanic grit-bedecked mining town nestled into these hills of brown facing the frozen sea ice & the Black Island, Minna Bluffs, White Island view. The other day I sat in Derelict Junction (a turnaround & parking spot for the big wheels between a series of dorms & 155, the galley) in a Delta waiting to shuttle pax out to Willie and I watched the wind come skedaddling through sending up 8 foot high dust devils dancing & whirling across the dirt.

So much is different from what I expected, a lot having to do with the startlingly snowless landscape & the unusually warm season. The seasoned regulars are surprised too. Last year people were using yaktraks (detachable tracks on shoes) & the snow was blown high halfway up the doors of some buildings. Now the largest drawback is the ubiquitous sneaky dust & grit that gets in every building and crack in your defences. A smile outdoors as you walk 20 ft from galley to dorm has you grinding grit in your teeth all the rest of the day. I brush my teeth here 4-5 times a day just to wash it off. It's nothing like a morning after mouth where each tooth is wearing a little cashmere sweater, this is more like chainmail jackets. It's all exacerbated by the dryness here. It is so easy to be dehydrated here, yet the constant consumption of H2O means peeing all the time, or at the least needing to pee. Some Delta rides, if water imbibing is not timed correctly, are full body bladder-jostling wedgie-inducing trips, specially in the chevron-tired delta which has the roughest ride of the 3 pax Deltas. I'm sure if I drank milk I'd have buttah in my belly before I hit Willie Field. Maybe that's the solution to my lactose-intolerance. I can do butter.

I can't even consider the concept of gas pains & driving a Delta. Yikes. Though it is noisy & smelly enough that I have found myself able to fart with impunity, with pax in the cab of the Delta even. Hehe. It's all about finding out when you can fart safely.

I had a 1/2 a brownie one of my first days here at lunch and was not told it was a cream cheese brownie. Holy shit, I spent the afternoon in agony. I had so much gas I thought for sure I was seriously sick and was gonna get med-evaced (Medically Evacuated). I had no idea why. I worked it through after several hours of slightly hunched walking and surreptitious tummy massaging. Found out at supper why I was having the gas pains. Phew!! They could have launched me as one of the LDBs they sent up last week. I would have easily made it all the way aound the continent before farting & coming back down. At the very least I was contravening the Antarctic Treaty by endangering the Ozone Layer here.

LDB is the Long Distance Balloons they've sent up two of since I got here. One I saw go up the day I arrived. The balloons are 13 acres of silver mylar sent up into the atmosphere with scientific equipment hanging under a parachute under the balloon. Each balloon has a different team of scientists measuring different things. The LDB will float, in a few weeks, around the entire Antarctic continent. Once it gets back around & is over a good place for retrieval they will remotely blow the lines holding the mylar balloon to the parachute, then the equipment will float slowly back down where a retrieval team will head out to find it. One of last year's balloons has not been retrieved yet since it landed in a particularly retrieval-inhospitable neighbourhood.

There is a lot of fascinating science happening down here. I went to Happy Camper School with a foursome of nematode-hunters & studiers. In the Dry Valleys (where there is no snow, the winds carve rocks, & they tested the Mars Rover--it's the environment most like Mars on earth). The nematodes are at the top of the food chain there. I yearn to get out to the Dry Valleys but I suspect I'm not sleeping with the right people for that kind of boondoggle.

I met a geologist, Amanda, in Cheech (Christchurch) before coming down here, who has headed out there already. She took me on a private tour of Crary Lab (science center in Mactown) and showed me a slide under a special double-polarized microscope that took my breath away & brought tears to my eyes. The microscope has two polarized lights shooting into the slide at right angles to each other & the crystals in this thin sliver of stone were highlighted with a rainbow of shocking tropical flower colours, some at different depths. Rotating the pate changed the crystals that popped up & the colours shifted too like a kaleidoscope crazy quilt. I could do that all day long. I wanna be a geologist when I grow up.

I'm gonna put this up in midstream here, or y'all will get nothin'.

I let out my passengers and then Ivan (The Terra Bus) joined us in the staging area, along with a cargo delta and a van. All these big red monster trucks circling around this tiny black Adelie in the center of the turnaround. It didn't move until Ivan moved and the shadow of the bus passed near it. Then it stood up and waddled off into Willie town. I got about 5 feet away from it and circled it taking pictures. The Ivan Driver got out with her camera and we did the photo op thing with the Adelie. Pretty cool photo too, squatting a few feet from a penguin with Ivan in the background.

This is why I'm here in Antarctica.

Every time I look up & glimpse the horizon, or when the wind blows brisk & chills right to the bone, or a skua flies up thinking my camera is edible, I know why I'm in Antarctica. Every time I'm rolling along in 4th on the snow road out to Willie Field in a Delta, flat out flooring it and going at least 22 MPH (!), I get this grin on my face. Most of the pictures I've got of myself are me sporting a perma-grin over whatever amazing thing is happening now.

Yes, it's a bitch & a half getting up at 4:30 am for a 5:30 start to a 12 hour day, but every time I get behind the wheel of a vehicle, be it the Delta to Willie Field or the in-town taxi from Building 175 to Building 155, I am happy. I'm meeting totally cool people on every ride, I get a boondoggle onto the Ice every day. There are people here who've done several seasons and still haven't seen a penguin, here I am my first week and I get a close-up Adelie encounter.

I am charmed, giddy, exhausted, enthusiastic and my mind boggles every few minutes. Sometimes it's something as bizarre as shitting into a hole in the Ice during Happy Camper School. Or, as some people phrase it, Shitting in Jesus Ice. That's how old if not older the Ice is out here. The airfield is on permanent Ice Shelf. As was the outhouse.

Picked up some incoming South Pole beakers (scientists) the other day, out at Willie, in a van. Seven grown men, bearded and crunchy, probably straight out of field camps, sitting mono-syllabically stunned in the back of the van. Talk about culture shock for them. Here we were driving in to the big city of McMurdo and they had been out in the field for gawd knew how long. I'd say by beard growth, about 3-4 weeks. Needless to say even my perkiness & cheery greetings could not break through that wall of silence. But they sure were attentive. Every word I and my partner up front said was followed intently, heads swinging between us like a slow motion ping pong game, gazes unswerving and quiet. It was funny silence, very unnerving. Ask a direct question and we were lucky to get one syllable from one man. Perhaps it was the fact we were female, perhaps that we were new faces, perhaps that we were so blithely chatting away and pointing out things on the Ice. Their heads did that elephant speed swing to whatever we were pointing out too, so we knew for sure they were listening.

Things I'm having to learn about driving a Delta:

1. It's big. I'm small. My biceps are getting bigger with every heave-ho lift of my body weight to the 2nd storey cab. I could barely lift a fork the day after my first 1/2 day in Deltas. Now I look like Guvnah Ah-nold.

2. Sunglasses. Getting in & out of the cold into a warm cab requires some forethought, or just the development of a few new habits. I need to start pulling my sunglasses away from my face before climbing back in, so when I sit down at the wheel I do not get all fogged up with the temperature change.

3. Gloves. Always wear gloves getting in & out. The handholds are metal and over my head a good reach and I have to twist my hands & fingers in funny ways. I have bruised my fingers a few times. Though caution must be maintained when using the backs of my oil, gas, creosote and grit begrimed gloves to wipe my face or nose, as that leaves amusing black marks.

4. If they don't fix the first steps on the Delta I'd recommend soccer shin guards all season. The bottom step, the most accessible, is just a bar of metal hanging from two chains like a tree swing, and I *have* to step up onto that to reach the handholds. Going up ain't so bad, but getting back down...not advisable to leap the last step down (ankles! knees! hips! back! pain!) to avoid the swinging step. So I step on it, it swings under and I bang my shin on the fixed step. I have taken divots out of my shins several times so far. Still figuring out the technique. Then they move me into another Delta and it all shifts subtly.

5. Earplugs. Noisy fuckers.

6. ECW gear. Each time we head out to Willie Field we have to have our big orange bag of ECW gear with us, containing our bunny boots, Big Red (the ubiquitous parka), socks, mittens, etc. This is just in case a Condition 1 or 2 descends upon us. That bag is HEAVY. Mostly the bunny boots, really. In order to get that thing up into the cab it's an over the head shove/toss/heave. Because there ain't no climbing up those steps with that on your shoulder or in a hand. You need three points of contact just to get in.

Still loving it. I like the Deltas. Just need to keep a few things in mind.

I was handed an envelope with a note on it and a key in it, indicating that I was in Temporary Housing until a room opened up for me. I schlepped my stuff to this dorm room to find it was in the same building as the Galley (cafeteria/store/housing/rec offices) and that it was a 6 person room, with me as the 5th woman, in a room that was origianlly supposed to have only 4 people. No place to put the bags except on the bunk I chose. All I can say is Thank Goodness I could choose a lower bunk, because there was no way in the state I was in I would be able to safely climb to the top bunk. As it was I was obviously not in good enough shape to get into the lower bunk without banging my head. Changed out of my ECW gear that marked me as a recent arrival, though the stunned look on my face was that of a FNG. I still have that.

I'm learning the job of Shuttle Driver, bit by bit I am figuring out how it fits. I have a lot to learn but it'll drift into place eventually. I'm not pressuring myself to perform at the top of my game at this point. Sat at the wheel of Ivan the Terra Bus today, started him up, checked his fluids. Didn't go anywhere, but that was enough for now. Thus far I've been behind the wheels of a 4 wheel drive Ford Van hopped up on enormous wheels that stick out from the sides of the van like a Monster Truck, a Ford Truck (dressed up in a similar fashion), the Deltas (which are sweet vehicles capable of some amazing maneuvering given their size).

There will be a hiatus of 3 days before I get back behind the wheel of anything else while I visit Happy Camper School out on the Ice for a night with training. I've got my fingers crossed I'll be able to get into a crevasse (in the safest possible way) while out there.

The weather here is spectacular, clear blue skies, light winds, bright sunny days. The days do change from morning to night, and the light does move like time is passing, but other than the shadows, there's not much more evidence. Though every moment the horizon changes, even when draped in a dust cloud looking into the heart of town, if you glance above it to the horizon, there it is: Antarctica. The Ice. Mountains in black & white draped with clouds wrapping the horizon over a flat expanse of white & blue Ice stretching forever. The air clarity here, apart from the dust we all kick up, is mindboggling. Everything is deceptively close and teasingly distant. We have been above freezing most of the time I've been here, except for the wind which even at 5mph blows through you and leaves icicles on your synapses. But perhaps that's just exhaustion.

I spent only one night in the transient housing, where all the scientists (beakers) stay during their few days or week of staging for a trip to Beardmore Glacier or the Dry Valleys, or even the South Pole itself. I am so glad to be out of 155 (where the Galley etc is) and into a luxurious dorm next door: 211. As a FNG people are stunned when I say where I am staying. I have only one roommate, who is about my age, also a non-drinker, and very quiet: Marsha. Neat person. I didn't even hear her sleep the last few nights.

I'm very tired still. I find myself staying up too late because the evening seems barely underway even at 11pm when the shadows are getting longer. I need to go to bed early tonight, since I can guarantee my sleep will be interrupted if I get to sleep outdoors in the igloo we will be building, or in the trench I hear is also an option. I get Sunday off this week then I am into my regular schedule: Thurs & Sat off, Mon, Tues & Wed I work 5:30 am to 5:30 pm. Sunday 6:30-6:30. Yikes. Wish I'd landed a 3 days/2 days schedule, but no such luck. Not on nights yet. Later in the season I'll probably be switched out.

Skua'd a nice pair of men's LLBean wind pants last night. Huh? You say? Skua'd? The Skua (which I have actually nearly tripped over stepping off the steps of the Willie Airfield Galley) are large seagull-like brown birds with a scavenger outlook and the attitude of a rabid squirrel. I'll get a picture once I stop bumping into them. They eat baby penguins. And peanut butter & jelly sandwiches if you walk out of the Galley on the Ice at Willie Field with one in your hands.

Not very inspired today, very tired, gotta get to bed early. Since I got here I have been putting things down only to turn around and not be able to find them. Amazing how that happens.

I'm completely overwhelmed.

So much to report on that I can barely recall. I've tried creating a list of highlights for myself but I lost track a few days ago.

I should start with the flight down from Cheech (Christchurch) in the ski-equipped LC130 cargo plane, flown by the Air National Guard 109th. I realize now that I'm here and telling people about my flight how damn lucky I was. I was in a flight with only 25 passengers (pax as we call them in shuttles) and thus was NOT jammed in there hip to hip, red parka clad shoulder to red parka clad shoulder, knee to knee with the line of pax sitting down the center of the cargo hold. I WAS cargo, basically, seated in red web netting seats against the outside wall of the plane. There were two pallets in the back of the plane around which we had to spelunk in order to access the loo (cleverly enclosed in light green khaki curtains). But that was it for cargo, except our orange bags. All carry-on luggage had to be repacked into identical orange bags and these were strapped down in the center between the pax lining each side of the plane. Normally the center aisle is reserved for another back-to-back facing line of passengers. Lucky me I could even reach my boots, get up & pee 8 times during the flight without the enforced intimacy of climbing over everyone on the way there. All this while encased in the bunny boots. Bunny boots are hilarious. Imagine a pair of white rubber farmer's boots about size 25 with inch thick soles and linings of wool felt, lace up the front, into which you place your size 8 (women's) feet. So hopping over neighbors to the loo is not exactly a graceful event, nor one that does NOT involve pain on the part of the ones whose feet you are so clumsily tripping over. I wouldn't even call it hopping. Everything I wore for the flight made me so huge I couldn't judge my size, let alone control my muscles for the added weight. I was able to remove most of my layers for the majority of the flight.

I removed all those layers quite often in order to pee. I'm tellin' ya, though the toilet was primitive enough that there were some finicky pee-ers unwilling to use it (and deliberately dehydrating themselves for the 8 1/2 hour flight), it was just fine for me. The one thing that was a bit...disconcerting...was that when I parked my bare butt on the plastic toilet seat and went to pee, there was a brisk Antarctic wind blowing up my hoo-ha. Enough cold to make me wonder if I had quite...finished peeing. I know I know, TMI for most of you. But honest to Pete, I couldn't tell if I was done or not. Every TIME. The crapping will remain for the most part undescribed, though mention is necessary. I don't think I was peeing onto the Coldest Highest Driest Continent In The World, but I believe their sewage tank was perhaps being aired out somehow so the plane didn't stink. Those of you who know how the loo on a LC130 works can perhaps jump into comments and explain why to us all.

But that's not the best part. Sometimes I just thank goodness I was born female, because there are some privileges that accrue to those of us with tits when the entire flight crew (specially the loadmaster) is male and FAR AWAY FROM HOME. I got to spend most of the flight in the cockpit, courtesy the divine Loadmaster Dan. For the most part the view was unrelenting CLOUDS. We were about 25000 feet up and the clouds lay WAY down. Bright light, white light mostly. There was a wee moment in which the clouds broke and the sea showed deep wrinkly blue with white caps. Now, think about this. I was at 25-26 THOUSAND feet in the air and I could see white caps. D'ya think maybe these waves were FUCKING GI-NORMOUS? The wind must've been stupendously killer at sea level. Then the clouds closed over again and it was all white for a few more hours. I did get a few pictures though.

Then we started flying over Antarctica proper and the cloud cover broke and I was looking down through the port-holes onto the Ice. Suddenly the plane was a frenzy of camera-eqippped tourists clumping from port-hole to port-hole taking pictures of the mountain ranges and white waves and peaks of Ice. Even the seasoned regulars (in the literal sense of having multiple Ice seasons under their belts) were doing this. Coming down this late in the season and having this much space gave many people the opportunity to take pictures of sights they had never seen before. You had to be careful though, because the metal seal on the window got so cold that each time I touched it I almost burned myself.

Then Loadmaster Dan started beckoning to people, allowing them into the cockpit for a quick peak and photo op of the view. Toward the end when the stream of camera-wielding pax dwindled down, he beckoned to me and I ascended back into the cockpit for the ENTIRE REMAINDER OF THE FLIGHT. I mean, I was in the cockpit as we descended over Iceberg B15 (the size of Rhode Island if not larger) to 2500 feet (note the lack of a third zero there). The crew had been asked to fly low over B15 (which broke off in 2000 and has been blocking Ross Ice Shelf ever since...how fast do YOU think Rhode Island could move?) and check to see what kind of access may be available to the Ice Breaker for its way into town. So they were flying low all the way up the northern-- everything not at the South Pole is Northern at this point as far as I'm concerned--flank of the berg, across the bergy bits and the ice that had broken off. Then we flew onto the land again and the Royal Society Range, Mt Discovery and Mt Erebus were LOOMING over us as we flew lower and lower around the mountains into McMurdo Sound to land at Willie Field (Williams Field). All this while, until the last 5 minutes of the flight, I was kneeling on my knees on the floor of the cockpit next to the pilot looking out the window at Antarctica. I was completely & utterly overwhelmed with feelings so huge and powerful I couldn't breathe right. I kept on hiccoughing for breath & tears were sliding down both cheeks from under my sunglasses. Everywhere I looked was magnificence, every glance was full of shades of white & blue. Blue so crisp & white so warm it blasted right through my heart and seared itself on my soul.

The plane could have hit Erebus at that moment and I would've been riveted, watching all the way into the side of the mountain. I would have died in BLISS.

Then we landed. They let me stay in the cockpit, though strapped in, as we landed on the Ice. I was in Antarctica.

I took so many photos at first on the flight down that I ran through 3 sets of batteries and didn't have any battery power left by the time Erebus and McMurdo came into sight. I got up to B15 and got no more shots after that. But really, I'm fine with that because I spent the remainder of the flight in such stunned awe that a camera would've just been a filter between me and my experience of this introduction to the continent. I didn't want to be at one-remove from what I was seeing.

The last few days have been a whirlwind.

There has been so little snow down here this season that McMurdo looks like a mining town in an enormous gravel pit. There is so much dust here that when I walk through town I need to keep my mouth closed. I have GRITTY TEETH. I have grit on my gums. Every time I sit down there is a cloud of grit that drifts up from me to resettle elsewhere. There is a fine film of grit settled on everything. Nothing remains undulled by this scrim of dust.

I have driven the Delta. Hehe. Now that's fun. Every trip out to Willie Field is like a boondoggle. Every time I look up a bit I am engulfed in the reality of Antarctica and the fact I am here.

I have happy Camper School on Friday & Saturday. I hope I will be driving Ivan the Terra Bus (the biggest land passenger holding vehicle in the world) by next week. There are big wheeled vehicles pushing dirt & snow here and * I AM BIGGER THAN THEM*. There is great pleasure in that. I get the right of way because even in a Delta I am bigger.

There is so much more but online access is so difficult & slow here it takes over 3 mins (at the fastest clip) to open one page on the web. I will make a valient attempt to keep up, but I could spend my entire time off work writing.