Racing Around the World to Christmas

[Me before starting the Race Around the World]

A lot has been going on here at the Pole, most notably Christmas! Christmas was effectively celebrated on December 24. It started off with the Race Around the World. This 2.3 mile race is heald every year, and makes a tour of the different science areas at the Pole station. This year was my first year being here for the race!

When I woke up in the morning of December 24, the weather outside was quite bad. Warm (around 0 F), but really bad visibility and quite windy. Between runners, walkers, skiiers, bikers, and float-drivers, there were about 70 people participating in the race. We all lined up at the start at 10am, and with a "Ready, Set, Go!" we were off.

[Racers taking off for the Race Around the World] Photo credit: anonymous

I decided to start off easy, and work into a good pace, so I let the fast runners stream ahead of me from the start. Pretty soon though, I started passing people. The track was quite hard to run on - it is obviously on snow and they had groomed it that morning, but the persistent wind had blown several inches of soft snow over the track in numerous places. This combined with the very flat light made for difficult running conditions.

[Running in difficult conditions towards SPT] Photo Credit: anonymous

[The Race continues] Photo Credit: anonymous

[Molly Joggeling to the finish] Photo Credit: anonymous

I rounded the first corner, passed a bunch of people on a down-hill, then blew past a few more on the following up-hill. Pretty soon, I realized that there were only 2 people in front of me. I settled into a good pace that I could keep up to the end of the race. For the remainder, I was distinctly behind the two leaders and comfortably in front of the next runner.

I ended up placing 3rd, with a time of 21:06! That was great - I had absolutely no expectations of being competitive at all, so it was a pleasant surprise. For my podium-finish I was awarded a $50 gift certificate to Amazon! The scientists did well this year - the winner was my friend Jamie from the Keck experiment, second was a really nice spanish guy Carlos from the IceCube experiment, and the female winner was Sarah from Keck. Sarah ran a 100-mile trail race, the Wasatch 100, earlier this year, so this race was nothing for her!

[Me arriving at the finish line]

After the race, we all ate a delicious brunch. Then I sat in the sauna for some time, chatting with friends. This was followed by a movie marathon - Indiana Jones then Primer. A well-deserved nap came next, then a delicious christmas dinner. It felt really good to relax for a day, since I hadn't taken a full day off work since arriving at Pole.

As with Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner was fantastic! The appetizers included highlights of Scallops and Idaho Trout. Dinner featured Grilled Maine Lobster and Beef Tenderloin Wellington, accompanied by wine poured by servers.

[Christmas dinner at the Pole - yeah, I was under-dressed.]

[My Christmas dinner plate]

[The Christmas Menue]

After dinner there was, you guessed it, a dance party! My friend Brad took charge of the DJ duties, and pumped out endless streams of 80's dance music - which was perfect for the occasion. We danced the night away, finally retiring by 2am.

On the work side of things, our project is generally going well with the usual hiccups. Our fridge is not getting as cold as we need it to get, but we think we know the reason for this. Today we are warming up after the first run to try fixing problems. We now have everything we need to put together the full focal plane, so the next cool down of the fridge and detectors should be exciting!

Cryostats and Jorts

Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote a blog post 18 long days ago. I'll fill you in with a few highlights.

Mostly, I have been working. A lot. Hence the lack of blogging. Early in December the receiver team arrived, full of energy and ready to go. The cryostat (the "container" that gets very cold and holds our detectors) that we shipped from the states was supposed to arrive on December 6, however due to a severe backup in shipping, it didn't arrive here until December 17. None-the-less, we were able to hook up the new detector readout hardware and software to the old receiver and cryostat, and work on that for a week and a half. This was certainly a useful time for me to work out bugs in the system.

[Programming the second crate and power supply]

The cryostat arrived last Saturday evening, and we have been working like mad to put it together. Just yesterday evening we finished closing up the cryostat, and we turned on the pulse-tube coolers today. It should take about 5 days for it to cool to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, then we can start taking measurements!

[Our focal plane. Ain't it pretty?]

[Working like crazy to assemble the cryostat]

On December 14, 1911 Roald Amundsen's party from Norway was the first group of people ever to arrive at the South Pole. In celebration of this centennial, the Norwegian prime minister traveled to the South Pole and was hosted here at the station. On the centennial, the prime minister gave a speech at the pole, which was broadcast live to Norway. I found it relieving and amazing that in his speech he stated point-blank that we as a globe needed to do something about global warming. A few days before the speech he came by the SPT and I got to shake his hand!

[Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, speaking to commerate the 100th year anniversary of the first people to arrive at the South Pole]

[A ice-cast sculpture of Amundsen]

In conjunction with the celebrations, a number of other people skied in from the coast. A commercial company set up a camp just off station where arriving skiers could stay. At the maximum, there were 93 visitors. One evening we decided to go out to the camp and check it out - apparently some of us had been invited earlier in the evening (I missed that party, was working at the telescope until 11pm). We walked over to their camp, but the hosts had either fallen asleep or passed out so we didn't get a tour, but it was still interesting to see. Tent city, sprawling out for a good 50 tents. We also saw two skiers actually arrive from their 6-week ski into the pole.

[Scientists heading over to the visitor's camping area.]

[The visitor's tent city]

[Skiers who had just arrived from a 6-week traverse in from the coast.]

A few weeks ago, we threw a Jorts party. "Jorts?" you say. Indeed, take jeans, slice them down with a knife into shorts, and voila! Jorts! It was a classic south-pole dance party, with lots of people (yours truly included) dancing like crazy people, blowing off steam. I found a super classy black-glitter top that showed off my midriff, which made me a hit at the party.

[Which way to the Jorts party?]

Over the past few weeks I've been hanging out with the guys who came in on the South Pole Traverse. The "traverse" is composed of a group of 10 snow tractors which drive from McMurdo to Pole over the course of thirty days. Imagine, 10 guys driving 10 to 12 hours per day through isolation. Anyway, it turns out that this guy Paul was the NOLS instructor for my friend Jamie down in Patagonia five years ago. Paul now works for YOSAR in Yosemite in the summer and works in Antarctica in the winter. He was a fun guy to talk to.

[My friend Paul at the climbing gym, fresh off the Antarctic Traverse]

One evening program that was particularly impressive. It was on the two men, Thomas Ulrich and Børge Ousland, who were the first people to make a unsupported crossing of the Patagonia Icecap in South America. It took them 55 days. They did it by putting everything in kayaks and paddling from the east coast up to the glacier. They then used the kayaks as sleds to drag their gear over the icecap. In the middle they had to rappel a 600 m ice-cliff and cross many crevasses. The coolest thing was that Børge is actually here at pole right now! He skied in from the coast - I think it was his second or third time skiing in. He fielded questions after the film. Very impressive.

And I'll leave you with a parting Hero shot taken during a sauna session...

[South Pole Hero shot - me at the exact geographic south pole during a sauna session.]

and ... Great Success!

Me working on the small power supplies.

Thursday - no, Saturday - no, Sunday, I had great success. Finally. I successfully programmed

the power supply.

Perhaps a little background information is in order. The main goal of this year is to install a completely new "camera" on our telescope here at the South Pole. Now by "camera" I do not mean what some of you have packed into your phone. Whereas your off-the-shelf point-and-shoot camera has upwards of 5 million pixels, our cutting edge camera has... 1750 pixels. The main difference between a consumer camera and our camera is that we are looking at microwave light, whereas normal cameras - and the human eye - are sensitive to optical light. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) that we are interested in observing is strongest at the same wavelengths as those in your kitchen microwave.

One of my responsibilities in lab in Chicago and now here at Pole is to set up the detector readout system. A central component of the readout system is comprised of 36 computer boards, which we call "dfmux" boards. These each have their own small computer on board,

and they receive signals from the cold electronics inside of our cryostat.

The setup in lab in Chicago. The Dfmux boards are the 36 boards that have white and blue cables connected. This setup will eventually ride in the receiver cabin of the telescope.

In lab, we have been using small custom power supplies that run around $1200 a piece. Down here at pole, for the current receiver on the telescope we have been using much nicer power supplies that cost an order of magnitude more. This also means that these nice power supplies have a small computer running on them. Thus these power supplies have their own webpage for monitoring, internal voltage and current limits, an integrated fan trey, and the option to program the output voltages. These advantages combined with the fact that we know the power supplies have been successfully running at pole for 5 years means that we would prefer to power our new camera readout system with the new nice power supplies.

Thus I set off on Monday to make the new power supplies work with my readout system. On Monday I figured out how to mount my readout boards into the crate, which only required drilling a few extra holes in the side walls. On Tuesday I found the manual online and figured out how to set the IP address - thus giving me web access - and the voltages from the front control panel. Things looked good. I came back after lunch and I could not turn the power supply on.

"Plug&Play Error. PS Incompatible"

That was the extent of the information I got from the control panel. I spend all afternoon banging my head against the power supply, and figured out that if I set one of the voltages below 6.28V, the power supply became unhappy when I unplugged it and re-plugged it into the

wall. I emailed the company asking for help.

Wednesday the company had replied asking for more information, which I gave to them. Unfortunately they work 9-5 Ohio time, so I could only get one response per day. Wednesday I figured out that there were additional sensors that acted as volt-meters, and would tell the power supply to turn off if you went outside of the specified voltage range. I additionally discovered that one of the terminals of the power supply had +/- swapped from the diagram.

Thursday I got a computer program from the company which I could use to configure the power supply. Unfortunately it only ran on windows. Fortunately we have 1 windows laptop for just this purpose. I plugged in the laptop, and ... nothing.

Thursday after lunch I got Ken to help me out, and we discovered that the d-sub9 cable we were using was not straight through, meaning that pin 1 on one side did not correspond to pin 1 on the other side. This is apparently necessary for connecting computers directly together. We found a straight-through dsub9 cable, and ... SUCCESS!! We were finally able to program the power supply! Very excited.

Friday and Saturday I wired up the power supply with the final wiring scheme. In the last 30 minutes of working for that day, I had everything finished except for programming the final values. I plugged the dongle into my windows machine, and …

"Plug&Play Error. BIN eeprom FAIL"

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I gave up for the day and went to dinner.

Sunday we came in, and noticed that the d-sub connector was not plugged in all the way. We firmly seated the connector, and… Great Success!!! Everything is working now!

We are now all set to test out the nice power supplies with my readout boards!

Oh yeah, there was a 77% solar eclipse a week ago, which was pretty awesome. Here is my best photo:

77% Solar Eclipse

A Southern Thanksgiving

A Beautiful Afternoon at the Pole. The Main Station and the Murderhorn are directly behind me.

This year was my first Thanksgiving at Pole, and it did not

dissapoint! I had heard great things about the Thanksgivings thrown

way down south. After working a full day, my first impression came

from peering down the hall at the spread of hor d'oeuvres surrounding the

entrance to the dining area. Shrimp with shrimp sauce and lemon,

salmon locks with onions and capers, hard-boiled eggs, and sauce,

baked brea, a cheese and fruit plate... We tried not to eat too much,

keeping room for the main dinner.

John scooping out Salmon at Thanksgiving.

There were three shifts, and my friends and I were on the third. The

dining hall was set up super fancy with candles, table-cloths, nice

dishes, music and a video of a fireplace playing on the television

monitors. I felt under-dressed in my MountainHardware maroon

collared zip-top. Many men sported ties and many women wore dresses.

The food was great. Standard Thanksgiving fare: turkey cooked 3 ways

(baked, smoked, fried), mash potatoes, sweet-potato casserole,

green-been casserole, cranberry sauce, fresh salad (!), rolls, etc.

There were servers who walked around continually asking to re-fill

your wine glass whenever it got low. I ate a lot. Enough to be

thoroughly stuffed, but not crossing the barrier into regret.

We somehow ended up with the SPT people all sitting together, and

there was not a single woman an or table. My adviser was very

distraught by this. Hahaha! He eventually got over it and we had a

nice dinner.

After dinner, we were sitting around in the dining room drinking wine

and shooting the breeze, when Keith came back and informed me that

people were sledding on the Murderhorn!

The Murderhorn is this absolutely absurd and amazing pile of snow

right outside of the main station. A major task of keeping the

station running is removing snow drifts. Apparently they thought it

was a good idea to use bulldozers to push all of the snow around the

station up into a giant, peaked mountain. The thing must have been 30

feet high - it was almost as high as the 2-story-plus-stilts tall

station itself! I have been wanting to sled down it for a week now,

and wasted no time getting my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear on.

The Murderhorn in all of its glory

Outside, there was a congregation of around ten people sledding on the

hill. Most of them were scientists from the Keck team. They had a

sled that is used to tow things behind a snowmobile, and a bike which

had been outfitted with broad snow tires, similar to the one on my

unicycle. The bike was awesome! We rode the easily slope where the

dozers had pushed up the snow, then began exploring the steeper sides.

I had a nice line with two drops, one into a middle-section, then a

final drop out the end. I crashed the first try on that, but stuck it

without falling the second time. We also rode a very steep slope

facing the station. My friend Jamie from the Keck telescope and I

were on-par, but this other guy had no fear and no skills. He tried

the steep one, and smashed on the bottom. We all thought he racked

himself, but apparently he just barely missed. We also had some great

boot-skiing down the steepest slopes, which was pretty great.

Sledding on the Murderhorn

Jamie and I decided to try a more technical bike line down the far

slope, which involved a steep, loose initial section, hopping over a

berm, turning left, hopping over another berm, then riding out to the

bottom. Jamie tried first, making it down the first slope. But at

the first berm he got pushed right and crashed. Then the other guy

tried next. He completely missed the line, avoiding the first berm

entirely and smashed straight into a big pile of snow/ice chunks. The

bike came to an immediate stand-still, and he went flying over the

handlebars, complete with a loud "Pop!" He picked up the bike and it

looked like the break had come off. Then we realized that the bike

frame itself had broken in two! The main cross-bar between the

handlebars and the seat had snapped! No more biking... We are going

to try to weld it back together.

And we will morn the loss of our most trust-worthy bike...

Jamie and I took one last sled run. Man, sledding is dangerous. We

launched off the jump at the bottom of the hill, getting at least ten

feet of air, and landing in the flats. I didn't lean back far enough,

resulting in a bruised tailbone and compressed spine. No more

sledding!

Apparently the entire time we were sledding, the medics had been

watching us from inside the station, waiting for someone to munch

themselves. Hahahaha! Fortunately nobody sustained any major

injuries.

After the sledding debauchery, we all headed off to summer camp for -

you guessed it - a dance party! At first it was a bit slow, but

within 15 minutes of us arriving the critical mass of people was

crossed and it became a classic South Pole dance party. Lots of

mildly drunk people blowing off steam, friendly faces of all ages. It

is a great atmosphere. They played one salsa song and I got to throw

down a few moves. Need to get back to salsa dancing!

I checked out of there shortly after 1am, and slept solidly until

10:30 this morning - actually the best I have slept at pole yet. A

late breakfast this morning, and I'm back at work. Good times!

from LASR to NPX, my journey south

Ten days ago (wow, 10 days? really?!!) John Carlstrom (my adviser) and I left Chicago heading for Pole. As an explanation of the title, LASR = Lab for Astronomy and Space Research, the building I work in at the University of Chicago, and NPX is the postal code for the south pole. "NP" for South Pole? Don't ask, I don't know. Between the two of us, we had no less than 8 suitcases, all very close to 70 lbs. This was primarily because I was taking down half of the telescope readout electronics for the new camera we are installing on the telescope this year. This was secondarily because I brought camping and climbing gear plus enough things to keep me comfortable for 2 weeks in India in January. Yeah... John had a < 40 lb suitcase of personal things and I had 2 suitcases... We aren't going to talk about that anymore.

So the taxi that was to take John and I to O'Hare airport showed up at 3pm on time, but it was a tiny suv. We had specifically requested a van, and our amazing secretary Val got on the phone and made sure a real van showed up in 15 minutes. The driver couldn't believe that we had 8 suitcases.

Because John travels a lot, he is some sort of super-duper first-class citizen as far as American Airlines is concerned. By association, I got to live the first-class airline traveler lifestyle, going through the short check-in lines, relaxing in exclusive lounges, getting free drinks. It was great! Except for the fact that I felt like I was living in corporate America - the exclusive clubs contained almost exclusively middle-aged to older white businessmen in suits. Not a fan of that atmosphere.

Flying across the Pacific ocean, I sat next to a very interesting lady who worked with east-asian orphans, helping them get through school and go to college. She was focused on Sri-Lanka at the moment, but had also worked extensively with people in Malaysia and refugees from Tibet. What a meaningful path in life to choose!

We made it to Christchurch in 10 pieces, just as we had left. Christchurch is still deeply scarred by the earthquakes of last year - see my previous blog post for my pictures and impressions of the situation.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. We ask for your patience and cooperation on today's flight since you will be traveling with the King of Malaysia." It was 5:30 am, and we were preparing for our flight to McMurdo. A few moments later an entourage of security guards dressed in suits under Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear came in, followed by the King. I guess he wanted to visit Antarctica? No reasons for the visit were given, but I guess you don't get to ask questions about the King. He seemed friendly.

C-130 Taking off from McMurdo, headed for the South Pole

Our flight went smoothly, and we were fortunate enough to have good weather the following day so that we arrived at Pole on November 22. I went up onto the flight deck with the pilots during the middle of the flight. Not nearly as exciting as you might have expected - the 4 pilots all looked half asleep, everything was on auto-pilot, and nobody was touching a singe control.

In the cockpit of the C-130.

Flying to South Pole in the C-130

Ode to Christchurch

Howdy folks! I'm headed back to Antarctica for my third visit, and it

is good to be back bloging. I'm writing this first post to

you from the bowels of a C130 somewhere over the middle of Antarctica.

We are currently flying form the McMurdo Station to the South Pole

station. I am traveling with my advisor, John Carlstrom, and two

engineers who are helping to put a guard-ring on the telescope. This

guard ring will help mitigate reflections from the ground which can

contaminate our measurements. Things have gone smoothly for us, but I

want to tell you about things that have not gone as smoothly for our

friends in Christchurch.

As many of you know, Christchurch was hit by an earthquake last

February. It was not a huge quake, as quakes go, but the epicenter

was shallow and right in the middle of town. This, coupled with a

tradition of stone-masonry architecture, lead to devastating effects.

In fact, I was in New Zealand when the earthquake hit last year. I was

traveling in the south and heard about it while visiting a local

brewery. Upon returning to Christchurch to fly home last year, I

could not go into downtown and thus did not see much of the aftermath.

This year, we traveled to downtown Christchurch from our hotel at the

airport to observe the state of recovery in downtown. I was not

prepared for what we would find. The entire city center - an area of

approximately four by six blocks - is still completely blocked off.

Buildings up to 20+ stories inside that area are in ruins. Many have

missing windows and cracked foundations, some are visibly crooked.

Speaking with locals, many buildings have been completely demolished,

and from the looks of it many more will follow suit.

I walked around the are for four hours taking photographs on my second

day in town, passing by restaurants I had eaten at and stores I had

visited. Both hotels I stayed at previously are severely damaged.

There are signs of rebuilding. Next to the city center, a shopping

area has sprung up from the cracks, completely build out of shipping

containers. Cranes and back-hoes are all around the city (though

nobody was working - it was Sunday).

Here is a photo-essay of downtown Christchurch, and the efforts to

bring the city back to life. The city is struggling to rebuild, and

has a long way to go.

Downtown Christchurch

A brick masonry wall. This type of brick architecture did not survive well.

An old stonework building in partial repair. The classic stonework of downtown Christchurch was hit very hard.

Another stonework building

Destruction and hope - "We are open"

The city clock-tower.

The Crowne Plaza hotel, where I stayed on my first trip. The gravel lot in the foreground used to be filled with restaurants.

The Windsor hotel, where I lost a laptop to the earthquake during my

second trip. Interestingly, the big fancy hotel still looks like it

was bombed, whereas the small ma-and-pa hotel is being actively

rebuilt.

Cracked old masonry on a walkway by the river. The man-made

structeres were damaged, the river, well, the river was completely

unaffected, almost oblivious to the surrounding destruction.

A building used to be there...

A self-portrait, taken through a window. Notice both the inside of

the building and the reflection behind me.

**Re-building**

Pieces of stone being taken down and saved one-by-one, to rebuild this historic building.

The entrance to the "Shipping Container Mall"

Fancy clothes being sold out of a Shipping Container store.

Innovation - turning a gas station into an Punjabi Food restaurant.

The funky little cafe where I ate lunch. I love these places, unique

and full of character. And the vanilla milkshakes are lip-smackin'

good!

Our thoughts and support are with Christchurch, hoping for a quick and healthy recovery.