Me posing with Miss Kitty. Special thanks to Katie Joy for the Man. Utd flag! (Also, it doesn’t show up well in this, or any, picture but I’m sporting her Darth Vader paintball mask). The round yellow thing on the front is one of our emergency tents in case we ever get caught out away from camp in bad weather.

So for the second straight day we are trapped in our tents. Not trapped in our tents in a “trapped by an avalanche” or “scary monster prowling outside” kind of way (unless you count when Johnny walks to the poo tent), but by something far more insidious…the wind! Today is blowing pretty steadily in the 20-25 mph range, with gusts up to 35 mph, air temperatures about -6 F and wind chills in the -35 F range. For those of you out there thinking “suck it up buttercup, get out there and get me some meteorites”, I have several choice words for you but my editors will not allow me to use them (just know it involves suction).

I think my tent mate summed it up best this morning when he woke up, heard the tent shaking and the snow pelting against the side of the tent, and said without even opening his eyes “This SUCKS” (J. Karner, pers. comm.). Even worse, our resupply flight is once again cancelled, in part because the snow here has actually lofted up 6-10 feet off the ground obscuring the landing, but also because McMurdo is having bad weather as well. We’re okay for all of the necessities, but we really really need them to bring us that groomer so we can get the runway built! I am actually excited about using the groomer, but I think I’m probably over glorifying what is ultimately going to be pretty tedious. Still, I’m going to be pretending to be a Sea Bee when I’m taking my turn on the groomer, like John Wayne in that one movie (minus the pitched battles). I can’t remember the name of it, but Jim thinks it was called “The Fighting Sea Bees”, but I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to get me to shut up. He also admits to “not being a John Wayne guy” (seriously, new tent mate applications are now available on the website), so his views are automatically suspect.

A close up view of some of the gear we carry on our ski-doos. Flags for marking our sweep lines (which I typically do) and the meteorites we find; Ice Ax (mostly for fending off meteorite poachers), and an ice chipper (not shown) for when folks get really persistent about stealing meteorites from your search area (and for chipping holes in the ice). Shannon and her temporary ski-doo Zombie in the background for scale.

Note: Vinciane just stopped by, and was telling us her concerns about her tent mate (I won’t name Christine to protect her anonymity). She’s fairly certain that her tent mate is a dragon (perhaps Smaug hiding from Bard). Her evidence is the geyser of “smoke” rising from the sleeping bag this morning in the tent (tent temps this AM were 18 F). We gave her some garlic for protection, but that might end up just being spice for Christine (sorry…her anonymous tent mate) if she gets hungry.

I’ve already covered what we do to stay busy on tent days. Yesterday I read “Kim” by Rudyard Kipling, today I have “Or I’ll Dress you in Mourning” by Collins/Lapierre on tap. I’m thinking a viewing of Zombie Land might also be in the cards, but then I’ll probably start craving Twinkies (though I am okay with Snowballs as well). I suppose I’ll have to find time in the afternoon to work on my cardio. Also, this blog will take up a decent amount of the day. Finally, I think I’m going to cap everything off by making Lasagna…which I’m pretty sure will be an ANSMET first (sadly, we don’t have ricotta, so it’s going to be more of a lasagna-like substance).

Oh, before I forget, I posted those three “find the meteorite” pictures the other day, so I suppose the time has come to reveal the answers. The answer was that there were no meteorites in any of the images. Now, this may seem like I was being sadistic and mean for no reason. Not true! I had two very good reasons to be sadistic and mean. One, it was fun and there’s not a lot of distractions out here. Two, and more importantly, these were the crappy moraines that we were searching that day, full of shiny black rocks, some of which had reddish stains on them. And don’t forget, we still found 37 meteorites that day…mostly because we’re Harcawesome.

The origin of my ski-doo’s new name. I don’t want to stereotype here, but I’m wondering if this is the work of one Tomoko Arai from a couple of seasons ago.

Johnny working on my ski-doo (again) out on the blue ice field. In this case he’s replacing the black box (think distributer cap), and leaning the fuel/air mixture on the carburetor.

Well that’s never a good site, having that many ski-doo covers open at the same time.

Why God invented ski-doo covers; it takes forever to clean out all of this snow. (This is definitely not my Ski-doo!)

And now for a seamless transition to something completely unrelated…snowmobiles. As I just staggered back from the poo tent, I saw our “faithful” steeds getting slowly buried by blowing snow. I had to fight the urge to go and throw a couple of extra shovelfuls on mine to help speed up the process (we’ll come back to why). I also tried to organize a party to go and completely bury Johnny’s Ski-doo as a joke, but strangely I couldn’t get any takers (cowards). In any case, I think the time has come to discuss our most useful tool in finding meteorites, the snowmobile.

Note: This weather is bad because it gives one lots of time to think of clever pranks on your neighbors. My favorite one so far would be to switch out someone’s propane tank overnight with an empty one…especially if you could do this several nights in a row. The main issue with these pranks is that everyone would know it was me (especially now). I really hope the weather clears up soon.

We use Scandic Ski-Doos, which are a large powerful utility snowmobile. They aren’t going to win any sprints (they max out about 45 mph…er…so I hear), but they will (in theory) take a licking and keep on ticking, and they have the carrying and towing capacity to suit our needs out here in the field (I’ve personally towed over 1000 pounds with one). They weigh in at just over 700 pounds dry (no fuel). Once you add the fuel, all of our gear, and the rider you’re pushing 900-1000 pounds of “nimble” ice machine across the ice. Especially when you get my lumpy butt on one, it’s like having a ballerina on ice, if that ballerina was played by Chris Farley…oh oh…Beverly Hills Ballerina (sadness that this movie will never be made).

The skidoos we are using were all purchased in the late 1990’s to early 2000’s, meaning they have about 15 years of usage on them. Our skidoos age in dog years, however. What we’re doing with these skidoos probably counts as abuse in most states. Our typical day involves driving them across crenulated blue ice (with wind sculpted pits 3-6 inches deep). We also typically drive them for hours at a time just above idle. Neither of these things are what snowmobiles are designed for (hence them not being called icemachines). The mileage on our skidoos is variable, but most fall in the 5500-6500 mile range, with mine being the grand “winner” at just over 7300 miles (more on this in a minute). How have these skidoos survived this long? Basically each one gets stripped down to its component parts over the Antarctic winter (they definitely have a lot of free time), and everything that’s worn out gets replaced.

The system mostly works out very well for us, although the occasional field triage (new springs, new fuel line, etc.) might be necessary. This year, one of the skidoos has definitely gets an attitude, and of course it was my skidoo (who says karma isn’t real and instant). For whatever reason, over the course of 4 days, my skidoo would just randomly shut off. No warning, nothing seemed to trigger it, it was just power down. At first changing the spark plugs seemed to fix it (even it was for the same spark plugs we just took out 2 hours before). Eventually this trick stopped working, and despite leaning the fuel air mixture out the maximum, it still would stall (seemingly flooded). Finally we just started running it with the restrictor plates off inside the airbox, and for 3 days it has been behaving itself.

Now the exact details of what was wrong with it probably aren’t that interesting to you (but I included them anyway cause it isn’t always about what you want). But what is worth conveying is the mixture of shear helplessness, despair, and shame that happens when your ski-doo dies for the umpteenth time in the same morning out in the middle of a blue ice field 5 miles from camp. Why despair and shame? Because when my ski-doo stops, everyone stops. You know how aggravating it is when your car breaks? Now multiply that by -15 F and 7 people standing around getting cold, plus watching your mountaineer have to pull out his hands to handle cold metal tools while getting them drenched in fuel. Fun times all around. I know that everyone said nice things like “we understand” and “it’s not your fault”, when really they were over there using a steady stream of 4-letter words and thinking phrases like “what’s your $%^&ing problem”, “learn to drive you $%^&-@$#”, and “I wonder if he’ll fit in that crevasse”. I’m pretty sure the last time it stopped I saw people sharpening the bamboo flags into spear points and practicing their javelin tossing! The last time it happened I was beyond even being mad anymore, and I just laid down on the ice waiting for the glacier to slowly cover me up (Shannon posted this picture before).

Now minor problems aside, I’m actually pretty attached to me ski-doo, since it’s “mine”. All of the ski-doos have been customized to a certain extent over the years, either with fun names, stickers, or flags (and sometimes all three). Mine doesn’t have a name, but it does have a bunch of Hello Kitty stickers on the dashboard; she is now known as Miss Kitty (and will get named before the end of the season). The name is actually quite fitting since just like a cat, it only works a few hours a day, and stops to bite its owner with no apparent rhyme or reason. Other named ski-doos include Christine’s “Cosmo” (pretty fitting since she’s a cosmochemist), Shannon’s “Space Oddity” (pretty fitting since…er…sorry, the V-chip that NASA installs in all of it’s employees is preventing me from making the obvious joke here), and Brian’s “Flower” (cause he’s just that pretty…except for that shameful beard).

In any case, our ski-doos are our workhorses, and they carry all of our food and water for the day, spare clothes, and our gear that we use when we’re finding meteorites! Rest assured they have minds of their own, and often behave on their own schedule. I think they remind me most of the dragon (or camel) than Yosemite Sam rides in the Bugs Bunny cartoon. You remember, the one where he’s always yelling “wooooow dragon”, and then it stops 15 feet later (typically throwing him over a cliff in the process). I definitely don’t yell “Wooooow dragon” in my mind every time I slide to a stop (though I use the “Dragons is sooooo stupid” line pretty often).

Note: Does anyone else think Johnny looks a little bit like Yosemite Sam? Just dye his hair red and give him a couple of six shooters? No? Er…then definitely not me either. Let’s forget I mentioned this.

Okay, well, it’s probably time to draw this monstrosity to a conclusion. I’m pretty sure Jim just annoyed the weather gods by saying, “hey, it seems like it’s letting up a bit out there.”, at which point a gust nearly blew our whole tent away. He probably just earned us another tent day tomorrow!

– Ryan Zeigler, Davis-Ward, Tuesday, January 13, 2015

P.S. A special hello to my beautiful wife in Vietnam. She’s started sending me texts about how nice the weather is in Quang Ngai…which just proves to everyone she isn’t as nice as she seems! I’m still working on sorting through the 20,000 pictures from our trips over past 2 years (15,000 left to go)…so I get to see you everyday. As nice as that is, we need to start taking fewer pictures!

P.P.S. It has come to my attention that my joke about Buffalo in my last blog was not universally well received, and I have been informed that Buffalo is undergoing something of a renaissance. Now, first of all, I’m pretty sure in Buffalo it’s actually spelled renizanse. Secondly, I’m not sure that slogans of “our potholes are now mostly less than three feet deep”, “Heah, at least we’re not Cleveland”, “Wait, our river never caught on fire!”, and “current home of the future Toronto Bills” signifies a renaissance, but I’m glad to be corrected on these points!