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Christmas on Erebus

It’s Christmas!

We awoke to beautiful, perfect, sunny, windless weather.

Or, maybe we awoke to wind.

The wind has been holding steady at about 20 knots all day, with the temperature currently at –18 C. We don’t think it’s necessarily a storm, but it’s definitely crappy weather, so we’re probably not going to work today. Instead, we’ve had to eat and hang out and open presents.

Are we lacking here in the hut?

Well, we did work Christmas Eve, and it was cold and windy, but we did relax all evening. We ate lobster tails and rice and frozen veggies (we unfroze them before eating them). Let me say that again: lobster tails. We had lobster tails for dinner Christmas Eve on a volcano in Antarctica. And, they were good. After dinner, we dweebed and played cards and did Santa things and drank champagne and Baileys, and opened one present (did you ever get your parents to agree to that?): Ken and Rick and the others, now back in the States with their loved ones, had given each of us an Antarctica thermometer, with both C and F (very helpful with the conversions) and a profile of the continent, including the topography of Erebus. There’s a mirror on the back. The gift will come in very handy for monitoring tent temperature and for checking for goobers before entering the hut.

[Site of skidoo mishap. I rolled it from somewhere above where I'm shooting from to where it is now, sans rider. I jumped off immediately, on the downhill side (counterintuitive, but the way it often works), and then, once I had my footing and realized it was still on the moved, hurried laterally out of its way. The skidoo slid on its side and then rolled over when it caught on a bomb. Nelia and I had to righten it. It ways enough to want to get out of its way, but not so much that two people can't easily turn it over. The rock arc upslope of the skidoos is the outline of a 1984 bomb. Spewed from the crater, about 1/2 km away, inflating, and then landing and collapsing into the shape of a pancake.]

[Nausea Knob.]

[Rime ice at Nausea. The direction of the wind around the rock is recorded in the orientation of the rime.]

[Rime ice on the wind generator.]

[Rime ice on the guy wire, with my mitten for scale.]

This morning, we woke to wind and then congregated in the hut. I was actually driven out of my warm sleeping bag into the cold air of my tent by the very pressing need to pee. (Pee bottle, but no funnel.) So I was in the hut a little earlier than I would have been. Sarah and Rich E. were already in (“I’ve been up since 6:30 waiting to open presents!” Rich said), and Nelia and Bill were soon to follow. Last night, we’d cleared off one of the tables and fixed it up with a red table cloth and a Christmas tree provided by my mother. (Asked RK, “Is that thing real?”) (He was kidding.) The table was already stacked with presents, almost hiding the tree. Bill and Nelia hung stockings with care by the sink. The stockings are really rock bags decorated by Bill and Nelia with permanent markers. They were hung by the sink rather than the stove to avoid melting the contents. It works.

[Table o' presents. Where's the tree?]

[There it is. Barely.]

[The stockings (rock bags) were hung by the chimney (sink) with care...]

[Nelia fully appreciates the images Bill has drawn on the back of her bag to depict aspects of home, including their three-legged dog, Shep.]

[A close-up of my stocking. Santa's got a GPS. Note rocks on cable at the GPS site on the ground (BOMZ, the windy one). Artist: Nelia Dunbar.]

Rich E. and Bill and I hooked up my modest walkman to the hut speakers so we could listen to two tapes worth of Christmas carols sent by my mother. The speakers were originally used to listen to sounds from the volcano from a microphone at the crater rim; the amplifier was taken from the downed helicopter in our backyard. While we got the carols going, Sarah bundled up and headed out with a cup of coffee to RK’s tent to wake him up. She probably even looked kind of like Santa in her red bunny suit.

Once everyone was in, we opened our stockings. They were loaded with food (I, for instance, got chocolate sardines and turron) and gadgets and by the time we were done Sarah and I felt like we’d had Christmas already. It was a challenge to not spoil our appetites for brunch, but there was a really good reason to hold out: Rich E. and Sarah were making eggs benedict, with Rich’s homemade hollandaise sauce. Possibly, we agreed, the best eggs benedict we’d had, ever. Aren’t we supposed to be suffering up here, or something?

[Sarah plays with her new puzzle.]

[Bill dweebs.]

[Rich Esser cooks.]

Then, came the mass present-opening episode. Did I mention that we could barely see the Christmas tree through the presents? It’s a good thing we can’t work today, because it all took a while.

Of note were Bill's wrapping jobs.

[Rich E. unwraps a flag used for marking trails. As Bill noted, the wrapping came with its own ties (black ties at the edge of the flag).]

[Cable ties make great ribbons.]

[Foam secured with cable ties and packing tape is also quite attractive.]

And then the presents....

[Rick K. plays Santa Claus. Beth, have you been good this year?]

[I have! Or, at least, Nelia gave me a pair of mittens. She's been knitting like crazy since we got here, and her efforts have paid off--happy people with warm hands. I love my mittens.

[Sarah loves hers, too.]

[Bill examines the pores on his hand with his new glasses.]

[Bill's happy even with his glasses off, so long as he's listening to the dogs barking Jingle Bells.]

[Rich E. gets a fuzzy new hat.]

[AND Rich got Monster Women. Score. Nelia suggests he NOT take the one that looks like a centiped to his tent with him. She's creepy.]

[My stash, including calendar, t-shirt, food goodies, Squeak Laptop Buddha (compliments of Rich K.), mini maglite, etc.]

Earlier in the day, I began constructing a small army of crystal people to make up for my lack of gifts to give. My family can attest to the fact that I'm terrible at giving gifts. So, the Erebus crystals sprouted some arms and legs. I think I have not yet talked about Erebus crystals. I'll leave that for another day.

The crystals met with 5-minute epoxy and came to life.

And then, the drama began.

Santa was swinging innocently on the extremely sturdy, heafty, burly, strong internet antenna (no wonder our internet went down) that found its end in the wind storm and was brought into our hut as a Christmas decoration

when he was pursued by the scary centipede woman,

who caught him

and dragged him back to her lair!

Poor Santa.

He's been tied to the tree!!

Surrounded by the Monster Women abusing the poor, defensless crystal people.

Maybe we have too much time on our hands.

There’s not much else to do, besides eat pate and, my current favorite, salmon and cream cheese on crackers, and maybe some chocolate. The afternoon was spent playing cards, dweebing, and eating, and the evening brought dinner (turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, dressing) and then a homemade game of pictionary. We all contributed words and Rick K. made a board and made fun of us for the same things that he ended up doing. Still, he and Bill won.

Now the big decision is: Movie or more pictionary? And if a movie, which one?

Hope your Christmas has been as tough!!!

I'll leave you with one thought.
Are there polar bears in Antarctica?

No, only penguins.

Wait! It's a polar bear! According to my mother (in a note attached to the penguin--er, I mean polar bear's neck), there are now both in Antarctica.

Okay, one more: Are there little surfer girls in outer space?

Posted by beth at December 25, 2002 04:05 PM | TrackBack