An assortment of Ross Island humor...
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| My last post about the ships, I mentioned a funny story about the ice pier. The ice pier is made by creating a "reverse cofferdam" during the winter with walls of snow, then pumping sea water into the form and letting it freeze. This process is repeated several times, until the pier reaches a thickness of about 12 feet. When the vessel arrives in late summer, it will dock next to the pier and unload heavy cargo directly onto it. The ice piers tend to last for quite some time, that last one for 11 years. This is that same ice pier. See it? |
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| Last year, a storm broke the pier from its moorings and it blew out to sea, where it was lost. Back around November, a helo pilot returning to McMurdo was surprised to see a semi-trailer, telephone poles, and a Jamesway tent out in the middle of McMurdo Sound! (Zoom in for a better look!) |
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| Mt. Washington is in New Hampshire. This cart is in the McMurdo galley in Bldg 155. |
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| What the snowplow drivers drive to work... |
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| This is one of the trucks from Scott Base. Gotta love the Kiwi sense of humor! (Hint: enlarge this one, too!) |
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| And boy, is it ever...!! |
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| The grantees (scientists/researchers) are often referred to as "beakers". On a telephone pole in front of the Crary science building, this is probably the only street sign in Antarctica. |
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| Hubba-BUBBA...!! |
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| A-Snoopy-dragging-Linus-by-his-blanket windvane. |
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| A world map outside of the post office, in response to overwhelming complaints of the lack of mail. (Enlarge to see who all gets mail instead of Antarctica.) |
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| Storage container outside of the galley, on runners to allow for repositioning by a forklift. |
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| Long story, but to suffice all waste - everything - in McMurdo is sorted for recycling and/or shipment back to the States for disposal. Everything. Everything. Example: A box of flight lunches, sandwhiches and the like, had expired and were to be thrown away. Back home, the whole box would be pitched in the trash and nothing thought of it. Not here! A co-worker and I spent nearly an hour unwrapping all the sandwhiches, cookies, etc... placing the food in one bin, the plastic wrap in another, juice boxes in another, the brown paper sacks in another, the plastic utencils in still yet another... Every hallway, in every building, and every street has bins and bins and bins for sorting and collection. Typical bins include Food Waste, Plastics, Mixed Paper, Non-Recycleables, Glass, Broken Glass, Batteries, Light Metals, Heavy Metals, Skua, and on and on... Furthermore, each bin will have a laminated sign specifically indicating those items which qualify for disposal in that particular bin, and those which do not. These are large, heavy, cardboard bins called Tri-walls. The "Wasties" from the Waste Department collect the tri-walls and further sort and package their contents for storage and shipment. The Wasties also have a fun sense of humor. See it? |
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| What can, and cannot, be placed in the glitter bin. (Absolutely NO Mariah Carey movies!!!) |
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| The Wasties had cleverly placed unsuspecting tri-walls about town for people to happen upon. This, for discarded Romance Novels, outside of the Air National Guard dorm... |
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| A place to place your Dreams... |
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| Skua. A practice common here. When you want to discard of an object that still retains some value (at which point, this becomes very subjective) - be it clothing, or an old phone, a broken lamp, a worn backpack, or a half-used bottle of shampoo - you place it in Skua. Others, looking for a good (i.e. FREE) bargain, will pick through the Skua bins to see what they may find - first come, first serve. You never know what you may find: one co-worker found a brand-new, never used, pair of hiking boots still in the box. My roommate found a extension cord/power strip that makes for a great fire hazard. A common conversation in McMurdo may be, "Hey, I like those (fill in the blank here)!" "Thanks! I Skua'd them!!" Skuas are also literate seabirds. |
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| This, in the Carpentry (Carp) yard. I have no idea what a Rocket Toilet is, but it sounded good enough! |
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| The Carps pride themselves on their off-kilt handiwork. The following pictures being storage units named after nefarious cities around the globe. This, Havana, Cuba. |
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| Pyongyang and Tehran. |
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| Moscow and Baghdad. |
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| Savannah... |
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| Storage yards tend to be arranged in orderly, numbered rows. Or perhaps by letter. Our Carp yard is organized by mustache. |
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| The Van Dyck and, my favorite, the "Imperial". |
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| And, as the novelity that is McMurdo wanes this late in season, I thought this building in town made for a fitting conclusion. |
