Playing Games and Losing Small.

As I listened to Adam’s story I contemplated my next move. I’d check to the river having hit my hand on the flop. My plan worked as someone caught two pair and tried to buy the pot. With my last chips I went all in and got a call. Flipping our cards over he moaned in disappointment seeing my full house. I scooped up my chips and took another sip of Guinness. Although I won the hand I finished four hours later, down eleven bucks. It would be a theme for the week.

I bragged about winning in pub trivia with the team of South Pole Telescope physicists last week so I must admit defeat too. This week I migrated back to the siding carpenters. I wrote our name on the dry erase board: The Ex-Siding Carpenters.

“Why are you guys the ex siding carpenters?” one of the South Pole Telescope beakers asked me.
“We’re not ex carpenters. Say it fast. Ex-siding. Get it? Exciting carpenters.” I replied.
“HA HA Oh now I get it. But why are you playing with them?”
“I’m a siding carpenter.”
“What? You are? I thought you were an electrician or something.”

Some act shocked when I tell them what I do for work. In New York and Salt Lake, I’ve had conversations abruptly end as soon as I reveal my occupation. Why is there such a stigma attached to being a grubby construction worker bastard? What did we ever do to hurt anyone? Every magnificent skyscraper lighting the evening sky is built by us. Each home in which children create memories, we construct. The very roof over your head providing warmth and protection from the elements, nailed together by some grubby guy. At any rate, one of the Bicep scientists hosted this week and started the game with “This day in history”. There were six teams total, three teams of beakers from Ice Cube, South Pole Telescope, and Bicep Telescope, respectively. And three other teams consisted of firefighters, carpenters, and one with a mixture of various trades. A huge chasm separated the scientists and the blue-collar guys by the end of the night.

As the points were tallied I laughed as I fell from first place to last in just a weeks time. Looking at the bright side I concluded we were only one point away from tying for last and three away from finishing fourth. I have no illusions we would ever finish higher. But not to despair, two scientists left the South Pole to be home for Christmas and the team of siding carpenters was dissolved due to half the team getting transferring to the graveyard shift. So I’ll be back with the SPT team again competing for gift certificates.

I’ve become pretty good friends with some of the their crew and received an invitation for a party thrown at the actual telescope on Thursday night. As I walked in, the mood felt like a junior high dance with Christmas lights strung around the ceiling, bad 80’s slow jams meandering in the background, and everyone standing around the refreshment tables filling up on various flavors of chocolate. I sipped wine from a paper cup contemplating how long I was going to stay. Then things got interesting.

Gathering a small group of people one of the scientists took us on an intimate tour of the facility. A repetitive whooshing sound, like the telescope in Contact with Jodie Foster, became louder as we walked down a long hallway and rounded a corner near the receiver. The explanation was simple cryogenics cooling the module to a quarter degree above absolute zero. I pulled out my camera and switched to the movie setting as I pushed the play button. The telescope receiver hung in the air, outlined by blue light. In another room further back, giant teeth stretching across the circumference of a wheel of massive gears remained motionless, waiting to swivel the primary mirror into action. She explained what the telescope is used for and various theories relating to its work. Locating far away galaxies in the expanding universe is a main focus.

“Many things, like blowing up a balloon or inflating an economy, will result in the bubble bursting from too much expansion. Could that happen with the universe?” I asked. Some models indicate just that, a gravitational pull collapsing the universe in on itself, she explained following up with other theories and ideas. We crawled through small doorways, fit for a two year old, and looked into the inner most functions of the giant instrument. I had to crouch low to the ground until I was satisfied with what I saw. I felt like a little squirrel popping my head back out into the main room when we were finished. By this time the party had gone into full swing back down the hallway and in the lobby area as the alcohol had began to infiltrate bloodstreams.

I couldn’t handle all of the bad eighties music and shuffled through the ipod until I found the perfect song to get the party started. Squeals of delight erupted as people rushed and crowded into a smaller side room as Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Starting Something reverberated off the walls. Here, the party shifted from cerebral to kinetic as bodies starting grooving to the beats.

Hours passed and soon only one other woman from our department and myself were left with a bunch of scientists getting jiggy with it. For as much fun as I had at night, the morning was rough. I couldn’t lean over during stretches because I was so dizzy. I kept drinking lots of water and soon just felt sleepy. This weekend I relaxed, as I will for the next few days. Friday is Christmas and I need to begin training for The Race Around the World, which is a two and a half mile course that literally runs through every meridian of longitude spanning the entire globe. Each line converges here at the South Pole, after all. I know I won’t come in first but hopefully it will be a better week and won’t come in last either.

written by  JCinTheSouthPole on December 20, 2009 from Christchurch, New Zealand
from the travel blog: South Pole
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