Race Around the World and BBC Visit

I rushed to the start line with just enough time to pull out my camera and snap a couple of photos. Several people wore silly outfits like Hawaiian print shirts, fake bikinis, or Trojan warriors. People adorned their bulldozers transforming them from hunks of yellow metal to chunks of metal pulling fire breathing dragons, Roman chariots, and even a steamy hot tub that looked like it was made from ice. Then in an instant the 2009 Race Around The World began. I continued taking pictures as the favorites distanced themselves from the pack.

The starting point was meters away from the South Pole and traversed around a small ridge to the geodesic dome. Walking down a hill to the partially deconstructed dome I decided it was getting too cold and boring so I began to jog. Circling the structure my blue jeans prevented my stride from feeling easy. I soon passed a guy who was jogging backwards in a Santa Claus suit. My lungs started burning as my ears felt like they were turning to icicles. I put a balaclava over my head to cover them from the negative twenty-degree temperature. Each successive stride was a labor due to the snowy ground. If you’ve ever jogged on a sandy beach you understand the feeling. Add into consideration the 10,500-foot elevation and it makes for slow going. I circled in front of Amundson-Scott Station towards the ski way where all incoming airplanes land.

Taking a sharp right, I continued down a camping area set aside for the very few tourists that ski here from various degrees of latitude to say they skied to 90 degrees south, which is the Pole. I finished my first lap, running through each meridian of longitude that spans the Earth and connects at the Poles. Getting some much needed motivation from the people at the finish line cheering my name as I ran through; I mustered up some energy for one more lap. I finished the 2.5-mile race in a paltry 27:31, ten minutes behind the winner. I wondered what my time would have been if I hadn’t lingered around to take pictures at the beginning and walked for the first eighth of the course. I soaked up the moment snapping more pictures as I watched Santa Claus running backwards through the finish line several minutes later. Then I had to get some food in my stomach.

The annual South Pole Christmas Poker Tournament would soon begin and I wanted to play. I sliced up my mushroom and onion omelet and proceeded down to the lounge to get a seat. I played tight until I got a hand that would set me up for the rest of the tournament. Peeking at my cards, I raised with Big Slick. Several people called. The flop came out and with an ace, so I pushed and got one caller. The next card came out and he raised me. I wondered if he had three-of-a-kind but decided to continue anyway. On the last card he put me in for all of my chips. I had to call him at this point, I was pot committed. My heart pounded as I thought about the possibility of being the first player out of the tournament. I got a rush when he flipped over an Ace and a Ten. My Ace, King just took down the biggest pot of the tournament to that point. From that point I could be a bully at the table. But all good things must come to an end. I got too bored, impatient, and impulsive and played my cards wrong at the end, finishing in a disappointing second place. Microcosm of my life perhaps?

Christmas came and went much like Thanksgiving, only replacing the stuffing and turkey was lobster tail and steak Wellington. Wine flowed freely and spirits were high. A white elephant gift exchange netted me a four-dollar shot glass inside a box that belted a distorted, tinny version of Sleigh Bells sung by Ella Fitzgerald every time you opened the lid. I destroyed the obnoxious thing shortly after returning home. I’ll probably regift the shot glass. I’m not a big fan of hard alcohol. The guy that gave it to me reportedly worked at Area 51 and has seen aliens and alien spacecraft with his own eyes. While I'm not too convinced of his stories, I have met people that do very interesting things with their lives.

Ones that have trekked the Himalayas to Everest Base Camp. Different bikers, one who not only rode across America twice, but also from the Yucatan Peninsula to Panama City. Now he's planning to ride from Berlin to Warsaw. The other biked all the way through the center of the Australian continent coast to coast and also from Idaho, through the Yukon, to Anchorage Alaska. Another guy boated from Chicago to rivers leading to the Mississippi, out the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, up the Eastern Coast into the New York Harbor, up the Hudson River to Lake Erie, and through the Great Lakes again. Most of the people here are from Colorado, Alaska, Wisconsin, California, and New Hampshire and Idaho. Hearing their stories just makes me want to live a more adventurous life. I’ll have to wait to get my wing suit and settle for merely hanging off buildings right now.

We started another project working at the Logistics and Operations building. The structure has a chamfered side, with a 16 or 18/12 pitch. I have to wear a harness with a fall protection strap lagged into support beams as I literally hang my upper torso over the side to receive the panels being carried up by guys on ladders twenty some odd feet below. The guy working up top with me, an Italian guy from Boston, has to climb over the edge onto the chamfered side on a wood and rope ladder that looks like it was stolen from some third world country bridge. As I’m hanging upside down, holding onto the siding panel and adjusting it into position, he sets a couple of screws. Once it's in the correct place, I can shimmy back up on top to fasten the top edge and upper sides. It’s kind of Mickey Mouse but that is what makes it exciting. Back inside the station another cool thing was taking place.

A production crew from the BBC is here on station right now. They are the same ones who created the amazing series called Planet Earth. Their travels lead them to explore the possibility of shooting a spin off series specifically geared towards the Polar Regions. Frozen Planet will hit the airwaves next year. One of the producers shared various unedited clips with audience in the galley. One clip, which he termed “A holy grail” in wildlife film, showed a pod of orcas systematically creating waves to knock a seal off a large floating ice drift. Each successive pass broke the ice into smaller fragments until the entire iceberg capsizes plunging the helpless prey into the water where it swam for its life. Another clip was almost a blooper reel of penguins launching from seawater to the solid ice above. The high-frame-per-second film allowed amazing slow motion shots of the poor birds getting punched in the beak by ice, from mistimed jumps. Everyone was laughing out loud watching their heads jerk back, beak open, and blubber ripple while small water droplets shot off their bodies. While most of the storyline revolves around animals and how the seasons dictate their lives, the final episode will be about people in Polar Regions.

The crew filmed our ceremony of relocating the official marker of the South Pole, due to it flowing on a Polar ice cap at the rate of about 30 feet per year. This is a tradition here at the Pole each January 1. Several participants formed a semicircle and passed the new marker, created by 2009’s winter-over crew to look like the SPT, and stuck into the ground at the current and precise South Pole. BBC cameras rolled as the station manager and a leading scientist both gave short speeches. Freezing in the cold we listened gave a polite golf clap and then snapped pictures. So look for the series next year. I’m the guy with a freshly shaved Fu-Manchu mustache or as I like to call it, The Montana Cowboy.

written by

JCinTheSouthPole on January 1, 2010 from Missoula, United States

from the travel blog: South Pole

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2nd place in the poker tourney...AWESOME! Did that win you any money??
As for this more adventurous life...lol...oh my..working at the south pole is quite adventurous!!
Picturing you guys freezing in the cold during a speech and giving "polite golf claps" made me laugh.

Hope you had a great new years!

written by squeakers on January 3, 2010

Jake, I absolutely love your writing. I mean really fantastic. You're doing some pretty awesome things with your life and I'm so proud of you. I hope I don't miss seeing you next time you're home. Maybe you'll come to Torrey. I love you sooo much although I don't view you as an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. Auntie Lor

written by Lor Miller on January 9, 2010

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