Just Another Ramblin Man
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Austen Thomas' LiveJournal:
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| Monday, January 30th, 2006 | | 2:33 pm |
Better Yet! So we had a French Canadian Documentary Film crew show up on our doorstep the other day. Evidently they are filming a big piece on the Antarctic, and as it so happens, we are in the Antarctic. So they filmed a bit of it here. They spent a lot of time out with the Birders (plankton and bacteria apparently don’t sell) but they also did a bit of stuff on station. Eventually they tell us it will end up on the Discovery channel so we will have to wait for that. But in the mean time they are posting short episodes from their trip on a web site. It’s pretty cool because it gives a fairly nice cross section of the station and people living in it. The vid… http://www.sedna.tv/html/galerie_videos.php?m=1&a=2006&chemin=PALMERTake care now | | Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 | | 6:29 am |
Web Cam Foo! Want to see what we wake up every morning? Now you can... http://4dgeo.whoi.edu/tsg/I think it goes through several different views so give a few minutes if the one it pops up with isn't all that cool. In one of the pictures you can see the twin masts of a French yacht that is Hero inlet. They have a TV film crew and want to come ashore. We;ll see what happens... | | Sunday, January 8th, 2006 | | 12:58 pm |
Wolrd's worst blogger Yeah, I'm really not much good at this. I get behind on the updates and then put off writing anything because I’m waiting for a chance to write something substantial. Well, screw that. I’m going with the “random as all hell” blogger strategy. Ha! Well, the last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy, hence the disappearing act. We have been gearing up for the big annual LTER cruise. This entails moving everything out of our labs onto the boat, and setting up an entire duplicate system for me to use on station while the rest of our group is on the ship. So that was a bit crazy. It seems that this place is always in a state of flux. You just learn to roll with it for the most part. During January I will be working for three different research groups. They are calling me the lab slut. Most of the time I am still working for the phytoplankton group, but a few days a week I am hunting for, and processing Krill with the zooplankton group. Then, at the end of the month I will start working with the biocomplexity group studying DMSP (a sulfur compound that is produced by phytoplankton and is responsible in part for cloud formation and other atmospheric coolness). What this all means is that I am spending 6 to 7 days in week in a zodiac, and lab time on top of that. So, I’m a busy boy these days. But because so much of it is boat time, I’m quite happy with the arrangement. What else…I still have no idea what I intend to do with myself when I get off the ice. I’m leaning away from working for DNR, and thinking more about travel and potentially another marine job of some kind. There is mild chance that if I log some dives this summer and take a research diver class I could dive down here next year. That would be pretty freaking amazing. Check it off my list of things to do before I die, you know? So, I’m looking into it. That’s the news for now. Take care ya’ll. P.S. Oh yeah, I'm still in Antarctica. I forgot to mention to most of you that I am now staying until late March. Eh, what can ya do? A | | Thursday, December 1st, 2005 | | 8:32 am |
More pictures than you can shake a stick at One of the beautiful things about Palmer is how motivated many people are to share their experience with others who truly appreciate a glimpse of life in the Antarctic. And with the miracles of modern technology, the lazy people at Palmer can simply rely on the creativity of others to get the job done. So without further ado, here is a link to Cara Sucher’s web page http://www.carasucher.com/2005-06_photos/November/index.htmlCara is our Laboratory Supervisor and also happens to be quite a talented photographer. The link is to her “picture of the day” page. If you click on the pictures they will enlarge and tell you about themselves. She updates it regularly so if you want to see Palmer pictures and little tidbits about life down here, it’s a good one to bookmark. | | Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 | | 12:44 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 | | 3:38 am |
And now for a touch of science For those of you who are beginning to wonder what exactly we do here when we aren’t playing, this might help. Since we haven’t been able to get out and water sample lately, we have been doing some sea ice sampling instead. We frequently will hop into bruiser (our boat) and push our way through the ice until we find a nice piece of ugly brown ice. Now, this isn’t like yellow snow people. It’s brown due to the Sea Ice Microbial Community that inhabits within it. At the end of the summer ice forms on the surface of the water, and in the process traps some of the phytoplankton from the water column in the ice. It over winters trapped in the ice in a relatively dormant stage because there is little to no light to use for photosynthesis. However, when the sun comes back and starts melting the ice, the trapped phytoplankton get released into the water column and jump start the primary production of the ocean. Part of the concern with global warming is, if the sea ice does not form it will not trap this microbial community that lengthens the productive period of the Antarctic summer. Production will drop off dramatically and the ecosystem it supports will be in serious trouble. Then the apocalypse will come in the form of a giant rabid whale and swallow all us sinners. I got trained up on the big microscope with photo capabilities the other day. These pictures are from a brown ice sample we collected. Most of them are various diatoms. | | Monday, November 14th, 2005 | | 2:34 am |
cool sky My friend Cara sends out a picture of the day. She takes some great shots. | | Sunday, November 13th, 2005 | | 8:05 am |
This just in... This little adventure went south (so to speak) only a few miles north of us. Take a gander http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?id=1128The ironic bit is, all of these people summited Mount Everest. It's a harsh continent. | | Saturday, November 12th, 2005 | | 2:23 pm |
The Gould strikes again! Okay, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but there was a little mishap with the LMG (the vessel that we take down here and that brings us all our supplies). First of all, you may remember the issue with the propeller shaft that delayed my departure down here for a couple weeks. Well as it turns out, that was only the beginning of the breakage issues for the big orange tub. While we were on our way south through the Drake passage, I woke up one morning from my rocking induced slumber to find that we were moving much slower than we were the day before. So I said to myself, “self, that ain’t right.” After inquiring into this little phenomenon, I found out that we had broken one of the boats two engines sometime in the night and there was no way to fix it until we got to Punta Arenas Chile. This presents a little bit of a safety issue for a couple of reasons. One, the entire purpose of having two engines is so you have a spare to limp home with if one has issues. So if something happened to the second we would be totally dead in the water. And two, the boat is underpowered with two engines because they had to add ballast to it when it was originally built due to the whole 18° list issue. So you can imagine how underpowered this thing is with one engine. But that didn’t stop us from continuing to pound our way south, and fortunately we were blessed by fantastic weather. The only thing that changed was the length of the port call which had to be shortened to make time for a slow trip north. And you may be saying “wow, that boat kinda sucks”, and you wouldn’t be wrong because the story goes on. They got the Gould back to PA and did the necessary repairs to get the second engine up and running, and then loaded the next group of Antarctica bound passengers on the ship. Well, this group of passengers happens to be all of those people who are coming down for the Palmer Station site review. We are talking about a bunch of representatives from the National Science Foundation, and all the Principal Investigators who aren’t present here at the moment. These are the heavy hitters of the Antarctic science community. So, the Gould began it’s trek south yet again with a belly full of important people, and this time they didn’t even get out of the straights of Magellan before they lost an engine again. The same engine that was broken before. I’m sure somebody’s face was a little red when that happened. They stopped all progress for a couple days at the Southern tip of Tierra del Fuego to see if they could sort out the problem. They finally concluded that the problem could not be solved out at sea, so they were left the decision of whether or not to proceed south with one engine again. I guess it went to a vote with the Science personnel and they decided as a group that the best idea was to head back to PA for safety reasons, given all of the mechanical troubles of the boat. However, the company that owns the boat didn’t like this idea because they would lose money on the deal. So the ultimate decision came down to the NSF central office. After much deliberation, they said go for it. This added a bit to the tension on the boat, because it wasn’t the necks of the decision makers that were on the line. Anywho, they charged on, or rather, putted on down through the Drake. Fortunately, they were blessed once again with smooth seas and favorable weather. And we await their arrival tomorrow evening. But as of now the ice is packed in so tight by the wind that it’s questionable whether or not the boat will even be able to get into the pier. And since the site Review has been cut down to just two days, any delay in the port call may mean a cancellation of the review entirely. You gotta love the Antarctic. More news to come. | | Sunday, November 6th, 2005 | | 4:29 pm |
snow people We had our first day off today, and the agenda went something like this...wake up, eat some food, play on the glacier, eat more food, go to bed. We had a crazy game of ultimate frisbee in the snow whcih, as you might imagine, was rather challenging. I don't think I have ever been that winded from running ten meters. The rest of the pictures are just random stuff. | | Saturday, November 5th, 2005 | | 7:49 am |
The Pink Dress
Okay, I think my halloween costume deserves a little bit of explanation because it seems to have thoroughly disturbed my mother, and potentially others. We arrived on station two days before Halloween, so we had virtually no time to prepare a costume for the annual party which is taken pretty seriously around here. Then, on the day of the party I was sitting in the lab putting caps on vials or something, and my buddy literally just walked in with that entire costume and set it in my lap. So what's a guy to do? I was desperate! (insert pathetic sobbing) | | 2:45 am |
You may call me... ZORO! This little guy is an Antarctic Tern. I really want to give one a little red sash and rapier. Then I'll teach it to squak with a bad spanish accent and fight crime. | | Friday, November 4th, 2005 | | 7:42 am |
| | Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 | | 6:00 pm |
notice the giant pit stain Okay, a little update. First off, I have realized that I start almost every sentence with either okay or so. Having had that realization, I intend to do nothing about it. So, what’s new down here? Well, it’s back to the Palmer routine of being constantly surrounded by work, interesting people, incredible surroundings, and all sorts of classes and activities to take part in. And once again I have entered the struggle of how to balance all this amazing stuff with the little things like doing laundry, getting some exercise or reading a book. It’s not an easy task (so if it takes me a while to email ya’ll back, please don’t hate me). I have this complex that I think many other people have where, if people are having fun without me I get all antsy and want to be involved in it. But the problem with this is, somebody here is pretty much always doing something fun and interesting and there simply isn’t time to do it all and maintain one’s sanity. So, at some point you just have to learn to sit a couple of these things out. I’ve taken to disappearing into the gym after dinner for a little sadistic fun. It does wonders for me after a day of work. There are some interesting science tidbits in the works here as well. First off, and I think I mentioned this before, the station is undergoing a site review by the National Science Foundation this year. So in a couple of weeks we will have a bunch of higher ups in the organization descending upon us to check on the LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) projects. That should be a hoot and a holler. There will be lots of presentations by the science types and an opportunity to learn how this ecosystem works and what exactly we are studying. You’d think I would know that by now but there is just so much going on it’s hard to keep track of what it is we all do. The tendency is just to focus on one little tidbit of a giant picture. That’s sorta the nature of science really. But I want the whole thing damnit! Another interesting bit…We have a couple of guys down here who are installing a fancy piece of equipment to detect small amounts of radioactive material in the air. The purpose being, to find out if anyone is testing nuclear weapons and not telling anybody about it. So they fly all over the world and install these things. And the whole thing is just utterly steeped in politics. They are fascinating guys to talk to. Total physics dudes, it’s great. Every science has it’s personality archetype, funny how that works. Anyway, they are installing these things for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It’s a treaty that does what it says, and it has been signed by dozens of countries around the globe. Take a wild guess what little country hasn’t yet joined this lovely treaty. Did you guess it? Did you figure it out all by yourself? That’s right, the U.S. of A. Apparently we have signed it but not ratified it or some shit. Basically they are keeping their options open. And the funny thing is, we are funding the installation of these detectors even without being an official member f the treaty. We don’t wan to promise not to test nukes, but we sure as hell want to know if other people are testing them. Pretty interesting stuff. That’s why I love this place. Where else am I going to run into physicists who detect nuclear explosions? That’s just rad. | | Saturday, October 29th, 2005 | | 6:40 pm |
Home again Well, I’m back at Palmer. It’s almost like I never left. I just spent way too long putting up pictures so this will be a pretty short entry. Anywho, the gist of it is that I’m stoked to be back on the ice. I’m not entirely sure how I’m ever going to fully walk away from this gig because it’s just so damn cool. The crossing down was crazy smooth…almost like we weren’t even in a boat because there was almost no swell. We put in the same field station that we did last year, and I was once again blessed with the opportunity to play in the water. The “surfers” are responsible for taking cargo out of the zodiacs and schlepping it up the beach to other people who take it to the camp. The picture attached is of the surfing crew. The guy on the far left happens to be the first man to climb the tallest mountain in Antarctica. He tells some amazing stories. Okay, more soon. Austen | | Thursday, October 20th, 2005 | | 4:33 pm |
Chile today, hot Tomale
...is that how you spell Tamale?
So I'm Alive! Yes, not dead and in extremely southern Chile. I'm in the City of Punta Arenas...land of stray dogs, freezing cold wind, and prostitutes. Just think of the possibilities, eh?
Chile is one of the more wealthy South American countries. Lots of people have personal cars, shop in super markets, and they are much better dressed than I am. The weather is pretty much like Washington in the middle of winter i.e. cold wind and rain with that ever pervasive drizzle that makes you bitter toward the entire world. I will take Antarctic summers over Washington winter any day. And because the flight makes the voyage go by so quickly, it’s almost as if I haven’t left Washington. There are just more stray dogs and everyone speaks Spanish…oh, and the hooker part. I guess my point is, the world just seems really small when you travel by plane. Nothing really seems all that remote. I mean, I could fly to Antarctica from here in a matter of hours, and people consider that to be like the most remote place on earth. Kinda crazy when you think about it. I really didn’t get a feeling for the how far away this place was until Eli and I took a bus from Chile to Ecuador last year and actually got to see the countryside change as we went, that and the progressive contortion of my spinal column from sitting in one spot for 86 hours.
Right now we are just hanging out and waiting for the boat to get packed up and all the personnel collected before we head South. It’s nice to have a day or two to acclimatize to the time zone and wander the streets looking for food with a vegetable in it. We move onto the boat tomorrow and then sail out the following morning. It’s wonderful to see a bunch of familiar faces and some of my great friends from last year. There seems to be this bond (for the lack of a better word) that forms when you live in close quarters with somebody for a while, even if you don’t get to know each other all that well. And it makes you really happy to see them again after time apart. I guess you just get used to seeing somebody’s face you know? It’s like that with all my field jobs. I was lamenting to my friend Laura the other day that the problem with these jobs is that you are always having to say goodbye to people (that could be said for this stage of life in general). And she responded, “Yeah, but you are always getting to say hello to old friends as well.” And she’s right. It’s wonderful to go away for a bit and then have the pleasure of being reunited with all those great people who you have been away from. Good stuff.
….more soon, and I’ll try to get some pictures of P.A. to put up.
Cheers,
Austen | | Monday, October 17th, 2005 | | 11:56 pm |
And he's off! okay, haven't written for a couple weeks so here's a brief recap. I spent a fantastic vacation in Bellingham, during which I got to hang out with lots of great old friends and generally have a blast. My days were spent doing yoga, sailing/windsurfing, and going to parties that I am really too old to be attending. It was like being in college without those annoying classes to get in the way of having a good time. This last weekend was spent out in Moclips Washington on the coast digging razor clams at my buddy Brock's ocean house (thank you Brockstar). The pictures from which can be found Here... http://themunkyhouse.blogspot.com all taken by illustrious Derek (Derek I can't spell your last name so I omitted it). Razor clam diggin is the best thing since mud pies. You get all sandy and salty while chasing mollusks...who could ask for more? And now it's off to Chile to catch up with the boat that should theoretically be repaired (I'll believe it when I see it). So, cheers to you all and I'll see ya in a few months. Lots of pictures to come..same Bat time, same Bat channel. Peace yo! Austen | | Thursday, October 6th, 2005 | | 7:53 pm |
The little things in life... For some reason this picture of my friend’s dog fills me with indescribable joy every time I see it. There is just something about the disproportionately large head and manic eyes that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Peace Yo | | Thursday, September 29th, 2005 | | 11:13 pm |
Just Kidding! The big Orange boat is busted! I'm referring to research vessel that I was scheduled to take down to Palmer station on Sunday of this week. I guess the seal on the port prop has failed and it's leaking a significant bit of water into the bilge. So, she's on her way to drydock to have the shaft removed and the seal replaced. This means that I will not be going back to the chilly South for another two or three weeks. It's a bit of a blessing in disguise for me because I just finished up my DNR job yesterday and was preparing to fly out for Antarctica tomorrow. This will give me some time to just mellow out and remember the joys of being a bum. I have some buddies in Bellingham with an empty room that I will rent out whilst I spend my days playing in those fantastic fall storms on the lake. I can't wait to get back on a hobie cat with twenty-five knots of breeze behind me. Life is good. | | Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 | | 10:18 pm |
Somebody please explain this to me. The Pharmaceutical industry must have finally figured out who their best customers are. I think this place caused me to do a tripple take, followed by a twenty minute bout of giggling. I mean REALLY, what were they THINKING? |
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