Dawn in Antarctica

Vlog #2, filmed later on November 22, 2011:  (Filmed November 22, 2011 and posted February 20, 2012.)

I wasn't very good about writing blog entries while at Lake Untersee, so I tried some video ones.  Here's the first one, which covers a bit of getting to Novo Station and then concentrates on getting to the field and the first week there.  The flashing colors made it unwatchable until I put some still photos relevant to what I was saying in for the images.  My iSight camera doesn't like my tent and orange jacket! (Recorded on November 22, 2011 and posted on February 20, 2012!)

The banya! This morning, I woke to the sound of Ian and Dale washing dishes from the VIPs the day before.  It was an amazing number of dishes.  I helped.  Velodia, who runs the guest house, came in while we were doing dishes, and thanked us profusely.  He was overcome with gratitude and expressed it continuously for an hour.  We then ate excellent leftovers for breakfast, including beef rolled with greens and cheese and then roasted.  It was accompanies by excellent bread, specially baked for us by the Russian base cook as well as fresh fruit.  Velodia promised us an extra special evening in the banya tonight.  I’ll write more about that after it happens.  After breakfast, we looked at the clothes from Woolrich.  I snagged some nice long underwear.  The shirts and vest were too big for me. I then helped Ian with generators and a jiffy drill, and spent the rest of the morning going through freeze dried food from the expedition 3 years ago.  I pulled out some veggies that I can

My first day at Novo, yesterday, we had to spend most of the day away from the Oasis Guest House and our gear because of the VIP visitors.  We spent a lot of time in the dining room of the Russian station.  We’ve been eating there, too.  The food is very Russian, not surprisingly.  The kaska for breakfast was good.  For lunch, there were noodles with white sauce, boiled liver in sauce, boiled chicken in sauce, and soup.  The bread was excellent.  For dinner, there were leftovers from lunch plus boiled fish steaks (some medium sized firm white fish), fried fish fillets, and heavy mashed potatoes.  The bread was excellent.  There was fruit compote for both lunch and dinner as well.  Our food was in sharp contrast to the lunch and dinner for the VIPs, which were prepared by Georgio who owns and is chef at the restaurant 95 in Cape Town.  We’ve been eating leftovers today. In addition to eating, we talked, read, and worked on computers.  There was a constant background soundtrack of R

We boarded our IL76 at Cape Town by expedition.  There was a group of VIPs on the flight, who paid a great deal each for one day in Antarctica.  (I’m smelling their delicious lunch right now, being prepared by an Italian chef, also brought in for the day.) The plane is mostly a cargo plane, with 78 passengers on this flight, which is about the maximum it can hold.  It has port-a-potty type bathrooms (visible in the dark corner on the left in the image below). There were no window seats, but the plane was much brighter once we flew south into continuous daylight from the two windows available.  Here, people are putting on their Antarctic clothing in preparation for landing. We walked down the stairs onto the bright ice.  We’re in Antarctica! The VIPs got whisked away, whereas we hung out on the ice for a while as they started to unload the plane.  And I admired the Basslers. Then Vladimir and I took all our carry on bags to the airbase din

I'm on wireless at the International Departures Terminal in the Cape Town Airport.  We board the IL76-D2 in an hour or so, and we'll be on our way to Antarctica! Our flight is listed 4th from the top!  It's the only flight I've seen that lists a continent as the destination. Here are the team members flying with me: Valery, Vladimir, and Chris from left to right. And here is the check in line: It's a great mix of people (mostly men). When I went through passport control, the officer was more interested in learning about our flight than in my passport.  He asked how many countries were represented by my group, and I explained that there were actually quite a few different groups on the flight.  My group only represents 3 countries, and only 2 on our flight.  He was also interested in why there were so many Russians.  I explained that the company organizing the flights was mostly Russian and that we will be landing very close to the Russian and In

I made quite a few modifications to the tripod for Ian.  The most important change was taking apart the micromanipulator to reduce its mass.  I kept only two adjustments: a coarse adjustment and a fine adjustment, both parallel to the axis of the micromanipulator. Then I bought some nice Ikelite ball joints that are designed for underwater lighting systems.  I mounted one of them on the slider that moves up and down one of the tripod legs and one on the mini-micromanipulator.  They can be clamped directly to each other or a 6 inch bar can be clamped between them. The manipulator is significantly less stable with the 6 inch bar, but it can reach almost anywhere within the tripod.  Without the bar, the microelectrodes can still reach a wide range of angles and mats.  In addition, I added disks (plastic electrical covers) for feet to help the tripod settle nicely on the mat. If we want spikes as well, I can put long screws through them.  It will be exciting to see how well

We had our pre-flight briefing from ALCI at 11 this morning.  Our flight was delayed because there has been a bottleneck of people at the ALCI Airbase, several kilometers from the Russian Novo station (see map below).  ALCI uses Bassler Turbo 67 airplanes to take people from the Novo area to other bases and into the field (see DOMLAN flight network map below).  However, their planes were grounded elsewhere, so the people on the first flight (IL76-D1) were stuck at the airbase.  There are more than 70 people scheduled for IL76-D2, my flight, and there wasn't a place for them/us to stay.  Thus the delay.  The Basslers (or at least one of them) is in action now, so people are leaving the ALCI airbase and there should be room for more people.  My group is staying in a recently renovated previously abandoned building half a kilometer from the Russian base, and our gear is stored in another old building and a shipping container nearby.  Thus, the "Oasis" is more convenient fo

I had a good day at the Cape Town waterfront - lots of tourists.  This evening, I saw the rest of our team: Chris McKay, Valery Galchenko, and Vladimir Akimov.  I've known Chris for years, but was pleased to finally meet Valery and Vladimir.  We had a pleasant dinner after a stressful day for the others.  Chris just flew in from California today, so he is very jet lagged.  Valery and Vladimir flew in from Moscow yesterday, but their bags (including all their science gear) didn't make it with them.  They spent most of the day tracking down their bags, successfully.  Thus, the day ended well. Valery and Vladimir talked with the ALCI folks, and our departure for Antarctica is likely to be delayed by a day or two.  We'll meet at 11 tomorrow morning at the ALCI offices to get the latest updates.  It looks like I need to plan an afternoon adventure. I have a software problem with my computer, and I can no longer download images from any of my SC cards with my computer'

On Wednesday, I flew up to Johannesburg to see my friend and colleague of more than 20 years, Nic Beukes.  His Paleoproterozoic Mineralization Research Group had its annual presentation of their research on Thursday, and Nic invited me to give a short talk on our Antarctic research.  It was great to catch up with Nic and his family, Elsa who has been working in the UJ geology department for 27 years, and various other member of the department I've interacted with over the years.  As an additional benefit, Sharad Masters, now a professor of geology at the University of the Witswatersrand, was also there.  It was great to see him again. When I first came to South Africa in 1990, Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison.  The University of Johannesburg was then Rand Afrikaans University, and I interacted with a number of the students in geology then.  Most Afrikaner students had been raised in a culture of fear and prejudice, and many could not imagine living in a country

Yesterday was mostly clear, so Ian and I decided to go up Table Mountain.  We left in the morning, and the cable car wasn't running because of wind at the top.  Thus, we walk up.  It was a beautiful trip, with lots of interesting plants and plenty of exercise.  The cable car was running by the time we were ready to head down, but we decided to walk anyway.  I'm stiff today, and it sure feels good to have gotten the exercise! The fluvial sandstones making up the cliffs are impressive! The top of Table Mountain is marsh with almost no soil.  However, it is wet enough to support a low nitrogen community including the tiny carnivorous plant below. And plants that don't need many roots.  Others grow where soil accumulates.