teeks

After flying for seemingly weeks and weeks and months and a few ice-ages, we settled into our cabins and stowed our belongings, before hitting the bar on board. The Shackleton hasn’t really got a bar, but a series of rooms called ‘rooms’ painted in nice calming colours like red and green. In one of these so called ‘red rooms’ we have the fridge, which is stocked with all kinds of marvellous beers, lagers, ciders and ales. These are ours, and if we fancy a wetting ones whistle, we just take one out and mark in the sheet with the appropriate type of drink. Small beers, ala bottles of Heineken, Stella, Grolsch etc cost us a whooping 60pence. Spirits 65p, Large bottles of ales (bishops finger, spitfire, black sheep etc) £1.10 etc .. all silly prices that’ll induce liver failure in a matter of weeks.

With the memory of the flight still fresh in my, erm, memory (awake time: 28 hours), we drink a few beers and catch up, before heading out into the streets of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. We decided to visit a samba bar, so 13 of us set up shop on the street and drank the local beer while chatting. As the evening went on, the group slowly evolved into a bunch that embraces exhaustion and mocks the tired – we were going samba dancing!
I suck at samba, and I suck even more after being awake for 40 hours, but Tamsin and Alister were determined to make a decent go of it – so we stayed until 2:30am before a 40pence taxi ride back to the ship, and a much needed 6 hours sleep.

Typical Spanish street. Or is it?

Alister and Tamsin doing the Samba!

The next day was spent wandering around the city itself, absorbing the culture and being a goody tourist. You’d be forgiven if you thought Monte was somewhere in Europe, it has a definite Spanish vibe to it all. New impressive buildings alongside dilapidated and crumbling tower blocks, busy streets with fruit stands all eager to steal your dollars for a small orange.

Bizarre contrast between buildings. This was in the main square …. along with…

For lunch, I was lucky enough to visit the meat market, and despite sounding like a dodgy nightclub somewhere in Essex, it’s actually an indoor market filled with restaurants, selling virtually every kind of meat – and cooked directly in front of you on a massive BBQ. The smell alone was intoxicating, and I’d imagine working on the grill in the middle of summer sucks more than Dyson’s R&D department.

My steak. Yummy.

Next up … The Falklands

Filed by admin at 7:29 pm under antarctica
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After an uneventful goodbye to my old closest friends at check-in, and an enthusiastic hello to my new closest friends at the boarding gate, my travelling had started. Antarctica was over 4 weeks away, and the time between leaving my Colchester home and arriving at my Halley home will be a mini adventure in itself.

I arrived at Heathrow at 9, was checked in by 10 and found my gate by 10:30, where I bumped into a few friends I’d be spending the next few years with. I’d met most of them at the training courses at Taunton and in the Peak District, but I still managed to forget everyone’s bloody name – bring on mandatory visual ID cards, at least I’d have a fighting chance of not embarrassing myself every time I meet someone thats familiar.

The plane, a United Airlines 777, left Heathrow at midday and arrived at Washington Dulles at 3:30pm local time (19:30GMT). We headed to the nearest bar, which was one of these traditional English pubs. It’s typical, I fly for 7 hours to start my trip and end up drinking in an English bar, with a nutcase marine that was an interrogator in Iraq…

We eventually left Washington and flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina which took a little over 10 hours, and figuring out the time was getting difficult, but a coffee or two and we worked it out to be 12:45pm local time (05:45GMT). More faffing about in another sodding airport, getting scanned and bag checked (Argentina had the highest security so far) we left Argentina for Montevideo, Uruguay at 14:00 local (07:00GMT).

Still no sleep at this stage, and I’ve been awake for 24 hours … slowly getting fed up. We arrived in Montevideo about 30 mins after take off, which took the piss. It’s such a small flight, you’re given the in-flight snack before take off. After a quick fiddle with the watch, it read 13:30 local (07:30GMT) and we were only an hour’s bus ride from the ship.

Joy and elation set in once the docks were in view, and as we drove passed the palm trees and rundown buildings, I could detect a sense of urgency and enthusiasm slowly building. A quick hour sorting our passes into the dock yard and we had arrived at our new home for the next 4 weeks. The RSS Ernest Shackleton, an ice-strengthened ship that had all our cargo, beer and equipment for Halley.

We stumbled on board, stowed our gear in our cabins and chilled out in the red room. Total time awake so far; 26 hours, but going strong. More tomorrow, I’m knackered and need sleep tbh

Filed by admin at 3:58 am under antarctica
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You never know just how much crap you own until you have to move it. I never realised I had so many clothes, and fitting them into 2 bags wasn’t easy, but its not the bulk that worries me, its the weight. We’re allowed 2 bags at 23 kilos each, but I have no idea what 23 kilos feels like. I’m so strong and beefcake, I could probably lift 50.6 bags of sugar no problem, and easily lift someone that weighs 3.6 stone over my head.

As you can see, I’ve resorted to comparing 23 kilos to real life things, and not an arbitrary number that wont cooperate with my imagination. If you ever hear yourself asking ‘does this bag weigh the same as 40 pints of beer?’ then save everyone the hassle and shoot yourself.

Not content with having too much stuff to take with me already, I’ve spent about a gazillion british pounds buying stuff that I’ll get to use everyday, yay!

Canon 20D DSLR Camera + 2 lenses, memory card, polarising thing, bag etc (very swish)
Pentax T10 Compact Camera + memory, bag etc
HQ Montana 9.5m Kite + harness – I’m not happy with having a fully working skeleton, I want to smash it into pieces
Phillips electric razor – For my legs and back
Phillips beard trimmer – for my chest and arms
Loadsa socks, pants, t-shirts, thermal undies, books, USB-Serial adapter (stupid laptop) etc.

I have no idea how I’m going to it all into my bags. I have visions of an angry security guard in Washington demanding I unpack everything, and then ordering me to reduce the weight by 50 pounds, where I slip him some money and I get a nice new orange jump suit and a 3 month holiday in Gitmo.

Filed by admin at 7:36 pm under uk
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You know that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning, look at the clock and its 5 minutes away from the alarm? The dread and despair that fills your entire chest, knowing you only have 5 more minutes before you have to get up and go to work. The desperate bargaining with the Almighty and/or Dr Who to let you travel back in time for a few hours just to have more sleep. Then you realise its Saturday, and you don’t need to get up at all, and in fact could stay in bed for another 48 hours if you really wanted to – almost as if God himself changed the days just to let you get some more sleepytime. Imagine that moment of absolute joy for a second … then imagine the exact opposite of that feeling. That’s what Dartmoor feels like.

It was a desperate place, and I felt a deep foreboding as I travelled the thin, unforgiving roads over the moor. Lonely rocks populated the scene, sharing company with the cold wind and unrelenting rain. Hotel was nice tho! 4 stars, big roaring open fire, decent Jail Ale at the bar, if a little expensive – food was orgasmic. There was an alarming disparity though, despite being a lovely hotel – there was no internet. Let me type that again … there was no internet at this hotel, you could say the the hotel was internetless. Mr www had checked out and Mrs http wasnt available for sexytime. Mr Mobile Signal was also absent, and the usual texting-of-mates-when-bored pastime was unavailable, so it was down to Mr TV and Mr Book to keep me entertained. Man normal TV channels are boring. There’s nothing of interest on there, how do people manage?! I watched some hairdressing program and a documentary about cheese making (did you know that cheese is essentially flavoured fat??!)

Anyways, enough about Hotel Le DARKTIMES OF NO CLUE, the course was pretty wick, yo. Dartcom are a leading satellite systems operator which deal with weather-based polar-orbit imagine systems. You know the weather reports with the maps and fancy pictures of clouds? Well like that, but cooler. These non-geostationary satellites pass over the south pole at regular intervals (like 10 a day, maybe more) and these birds (tech speak!) send lovely images of the areas underneath, utilising swish cameras and detectors to determine cloud temperatures, levels, make up, taste, favourite colour etc. we end up with massively cool photos full of colours and information – used by the met people at Halley to determine weather patterns and forecasts

A typical image of Halley and the surrounding sea ice. These are usually 2000×2000…

I have to help Terry (Mr Coms Engineer for BAS, staying at Halley for the summer) install and configure this system, so I’m going to be busy. We have to mount with 1.3m dish and accompanying mechanics onto the roof of the main building, which should be fun. The technology is way in the James Bond spectrum, and the servos alone on this beauty are M-esque, as it needs to track satellites orbiting 800kms above moving at 7km a second! I’ve been warned NOT to be in the dome when this is tracking, not only can it break every bone in my body, but it’ll mess up my hair too, and we cant be having that.

So that’s 3 independent satellite systems I’ll have to look after at Halley. VSAT, INMARSAT and DARTCOM. Piece of piss tbqfh.

Filed by admin at 11:46 am under training
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Well, it looks like this is actually happening.

I’ve received my itinerary for the trip, and I’m leaving on the 25th November, flying from Heathrow to Washington, then down to Uruguay. It still hasn’t sunk in yet, and I’m sure it wont sink in until I’m on the ship … oh wait, better not use that term.

I’ve got two weeks left of UK life before I’m sent to pris… I mean before I go to the great unknown that is Antarctica. Ok so its not that unknown these days, but I plan to find a spot that is unknown, and call it Deano Place, or maybe Coast of Dean. Chances are that the only new bits I’ll find are fresh crevasses, so I’ll have to make do with Deano’s Crack, or Hole of Dean …

I’ll have six hours in Washington, and I’m hoping to get some sight seeing if I can squeeze it in. Maybe I can visit whats his face, the guy that lives in the White House, John or something. The flight to Montevideo, Uruguay is 15 HOURS LONG. 15! That’s like eight more than seven. They better have decent seats, I barely survived the flights to Calgary and Denver when boarding (lol so cool) and they were ten hours … so not cool.

So, time to get my stuff in order and get things done. I’ve made a list of things I want to do before I leave… things like go to Colchester Zoo, go see Tottenham play, go see Tottenham play at Colchester zoo etc.

Ohh and Medlock’s girls, GET TO WORK!

Filed by admin at 4:36 pm under uk
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If you want an awesome night out with a load of friends dressed as school kids, then the only way to do it properly is to tell them you’re moving away for 2.5 years. They might get upset once they find out you’re lying, but the party will be worth it.

Around 30 of my closest friends around Colchester were decent enough to turn up to my leaving do last Saturday. The theme was school uniforms, and virtually everyone complied with the somewhat dodgy dresscode. Some of the uniforms were fantastic, namely Paul as the headmaster, Lucy as the school nurse, and Tom, who came dressed as a student on a ‘bring your own clothes day’ ie, he didnt even bother – what a bellend.

It was truly fantastic to see everyone, even if I only spoke to half of you. You made a great night even better, and especially the girls, who made the evening much more memorable by looking so hot and sexy.

I took a load of pictures, which can be viewed here;

PICS PICS PICS PICS poopdeck PICS

Filed by admin at 3:54 pm under uk
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