Author: edelaquess92

I have been to some really nice coffeeshops in my life:

Michelangelo’s and Mother Fool’s and Lazy Jane’s in Madison

Racy’s in Eau Claire.

Conscious Coffee in Talkeetna, Alaska.

And then there’s the Coffee House at McMurdo Station. There are so many things I like about the Coffee House:

• It’s located in an old quonset hut, a half-circle wooden building that as far as I know, has been here since McMurdo was founded in the mid-1950s.
• It has a rack of fat tire bikes parked outside, because EVERY coffeeshop needs a mess of bikes parked outside. Even in Antarctica.
• It has $2 glasses of sweet red wine (yeah, it’s boxed wine. Judge me all you want)
• There’s FREE fancy coffees most mornings from 6 until 8 am. I will never be able to buy drinks at coffeeshops ever again after experiencing the joy of a free hazelnut mocha.
• There is an abundance of puzzles and board games.
• There’s a curtained-off area with comfy chairs and a big-screen TV where people watch football games, aurora photo compilation videos, and TV shows during “Hard Drive and Chill” and movie nights (no Neflix down here!)
• There’s a relatively good Internet connection.
• There are huge old wooden sleds hanging on the walls
• There are not one, but TWO coffeeshop stickers, so you know it’s a big deal.
• There’s a familiarity and comfiness that I sometimes have a hard time finding at McMurdo. I have never liked bars, and the two bars at McMurdo have not done much for me, but the coffeeshop is right up my alley. The first time I walked in, I immediately felt at home.

There are a lot of little things that make McMurdo a cool place to live, but the Coffee House is special even by McMurdo standards. It makes a cold, alien, and monotonous environment feel so much warmer, and it has an element of cool that’s hard to describe. You know how sitting at Mother Fool’s with a book and a nice drink can make you feel just so sophisticated and stylish? Take that feeling, add a free fancy drink and a dog-earred copy of The New Yorker that’s two years out of date (since that’s all we have), put that in Antarctica, and you know how I feel at the Coffee House.

I volunteer in two places at McMurdo on a semi-regular basis: the craft room and the library.

The McMurdo library is located in dorm 208, and it’s a warm and quiet oasis for people who think hanging out at the library and talking to 1-3 people in two hours counts as being “social”. I am one of those people.

When I’m on night shift, I have an official volunteer shift for one hour per week, but I often put in some extra volunteer time. Volunteering in the library involves checking books in and out and shelving returned items, as well as tidying and Dewey Decimal-cataloging donated books as needed. I have not yet done any book cataloging, although it’s on my radar for skills I hope/expect to learn here that I didn’t think I would learn before coming here. I’ve already learned the phonetic alphabet, how to use an embroidery machine, and how to play records since coming here, so cataloging library books seems like a good next step.

The McMurdo library has a decent non-fiction and fiction collection, with an especially good collection of travel books. A lot of the books are donated by past USAP participants. They also have a rack full of old magazines and a shelf full of puzzles. You can even check out Kindles. Ethernet cables are plugged into the wall, providing visitors with a sluggish connection to the rest of the world, and there are a lot of comfy chairs and fake plants in the corners. It’s one of my favorite places in McMurdo.

I’ve been looking forward to writing about radio and TV at McMurdo Station. Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that non-commercial radio is one of my “things,” and any kind of unusual/new-to-me broadcasting will attract my attention.

McMurdo Station has not disappointed.

Radio and TV channels are provided by the American Forces Radio and Television Service, or AFRTS (the acronym is pronounced. “A Farts”). As the name suggests, AFRTS provides American and foreign TV channels to members of the U.S. military stationed abroad. Although McMurdo Station is not a military base, a lot of its operations and logistical support are provided by the U.S. Air Force and the Navy, so we are eligible for AFRTS programming.

Television

There are 20 TV channels at McMurdo, although at any given time, a few of them are off-air due to satellite issues. Some of the channels air programming from major US networks like Fox news and MSNBC, we get some sports programming from ESPN, and we also get some foreign TV channels like Air ANG from South Korea and New Zealand’s national broadcaster, the name of which is currently escaping me. One time Gina and I were watching “Animal Planet” and didn’t realize we were watching Air ANG until we were interrupted by a bunch of South Korean commercials.

As well as network TV channels, there are movie channels. There are two channels that play six or so movies a day, and another channel, the “all-day” movie channel, that plays the same movie over and over in a 24-hour period. So if you turn on the TV and “Snatched” with Amy Schumer or “A Muppet’s Christmas” is half-over, just wait an hour and tune in at the beginning of the movie.

Finally, there are a few channels that play slides that show flyers for upcoming events at McMurdo, as well as fixed wing and helicopter schedules, and PSAs like helicopter safety reminders, emergency numbers, and the daily menu for the galley.

I often chuckle while flipping through the channels because McMurdo’s three radio streams are played on the same channels as the McMurdo event/PSA channels. So you can check out the latest helicopter schedule or this week’s restorative yoga schedule with heavy metal from Ice Radio playing in the background. It’s a hilarious combination of audio and visual media.

Channel 9 plays episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation every weekday at 5:44 pm. I was beginning to plan my day off schedule around that, but then I went on night shift.

The McMurdo store also has free DVD rental, which I’ve used a few times. All of the dorm lounges have a decent DVD and VHS collection. I always smile nostalgically when I see a movie on VHS that I want to watch. Takes me back to my childhood. I saw “UHF” with Weird Al Yankovic on VHS last week and seeing it on VHS made it that much better.

Radio

There are a three radio channels McMurdo receives. Two of them are rock, pop, and country music channels we receive from AFRTS, and one is Ice Radio 104.5, our local FM station. Ice Radio is like no radio station I have ever been involved with.

Within about 3/4 of a 24-hour period, Ice Radio plays automated pop, rock, and country music from AFRTS. For the remaining quarter of the day, programming is provided by volunteer DJs. There are currently about 20 regular shows, and another twenty DJs who are “floaters,” meaning they just drop in and do a show whenever the studio is available. I am a floater due to my work schedule, which changes every week.

The biggest difference between Ice Radio and all the other radio stations I’ve worked with is that DJs cannot play their own music. It’s an AFRTS rule. AFRTS sends Ice Radio several CDs a week, with each CD containing a compilation of a dozen or so songs. You can play songs from the CDs, the digital music collection, and the record collection.

Ice Radio’s record collection is pretty impressive. Peter Recjek, then-editor of The Antarctic Sun, did a nice article about the record collection in 2012, saying that “Rumor has it that at least part of the vinyl collection came from Vietnam, and that many of the records were played by none other than Adrian Cronauer on his radio show in Saigon in 1965-66. Cronauer was the music DJ who bucked the military brass, as portrayed by Robin Williams in the 1987 comedy ‘Good Morning, Vietnam.’ ”

The full article can be found here.

I willingly admit to being a world music snob who developed her music host chops playing Senegalese pop music and Mongolian heavy metal on community radio, so I haven’t spent as much time on Ice Radio as I thought I would. Fans of classic and Top-40 rock and country will not be disappointed, however. Nor will Millennials who have never been comfortable playing records, as they have the opportunity to learn this ancient, forgotten technology. I CAN FINALLY PLAY RECORDS LIKE THE COOL KIDS!

You can also do interviews on Ice Radio, which I am hoping to do in my remaining ten or so weeks here (!!!)

Anyone want to be interviewed on local radio in Antarctica?

The Ice Radio studio.

Posters from past shows on the ceiling.

Heavily decorated studio wall.

You can read some fun facts by David Letterman on air.

CDs sent by AFRTS.

The record library.

Looking up records the old-fashioned way!

A record from AFRTS.

Using records = millennial win!

Show posters. I wish all radio stations had their DJs do this!

Star Trek on Channel 9 every day!

For the last six weeks or so, the McMurdo recreation department has been organizing tours of the pressure ridges near Scott Base, the tiny New Zealand research station about two miles down the road from McMurdo.

Pressure ridges are these tall, jagged vertical ridges of ice that form where the Ross Ice Shelf and the sea ice push together. For Madison folks, they are like a much larger version of the ice ridges that form on the shores of Lake Monona and Mendota most winters.

Anyone who has taken the Outdoor Safety Lecture can sign up to go on a tour of the pressure ridges. You sign up in advance, wear your Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, and pile into a shuttle bus that takes you to Scott Base, where a guide will take you and a dozen or so other folks out onto the sea ice.

The tours are a nice way to get out of town, see more Antarctica nature, and take lots and lots of seal pictures! There are a lot of Weddell seals around McMurdo and Scott Base, and I’ve seen several seal pups.

My camera isn’t very good quality, so I don’t have any good close-up seal pictures. Note to self: Bring a good camera next year!

Pressure ridges.

Taking photos of seals.

Since we live on a frozen, plant-free continent, the food we get at McMurdo is flown in from New Zealand. Once it has arrived on station, it’s stored in the frozen food warehouse across from the building 155.

The warehouse staff had a “Freezer to Table” open house at the beginning of November, where the McMurdo public could go inside, climb the 30-foot stack of cardboard boxes in wooden crates, and have their photo taken with “Bendi” the forklift.

And, of course, see where their food comes from.

It was fun to visit, but also humbling to see the boxes of frozen food and think about the enormous amount of resources it takes to feed the staff at McMurdo. Although people here take recycling VERY seriously and celebrate a culture of sharing and reusing clothes, supplies, and other resources (more on that later), we create a very large carbon footprint with our food.

The warehouse

Stoked about the warehouse!

Climbing on boxes

The view from the top

Having my photo taken with Bendi!