I Never Got to Old Zealand

 

Prior to this trip, the only thing I knew about Christchurch is that it was the home of a New Zealand foreign exchange student at my high school named Wendy.  The only reason I even know this over 40 years later is that at a high school musical party that I had no business attending, I was sitting on a couch next to her and accidentally swiped her left boob with my hand.  I remember she gave me an angry look, and while I can’t recall if she told me off or not, she certainly would have been within her rights to do so.  I am certain it was an accident, because at that time in my life I was not yet accepted as a member of the boob-touching fraternity, my knowledge of such things being limited to viewings of illicit Playboys at summer camps and trying to find that one clear moment of screen time back when soft-core porn was scrambled on late-night cable TV. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I began to understand the “other” game of baseball, thanks to the music of Michael Franks and Meat Loaf.  Nonetheless, in case I’m someday offered an appointment to the Supreme Court, I regret what happened, it was wrong, I take full responsibility, I should have apologized at the time, and I am not being framed as part of a political witch hunt.  See, Brett, it’s not that hard.

(Speaking of baseball, I wonder what their romantic schemes are like in the Commonwealth where they don’t share our National Pastime.  Do they describe adolescent fumblings in the context of rugby, with scrums sometimes resulting in a try?  Maybe they use cricket terms.  An aggressive Romeo might be a fast bowler, a spin bowler, or toss a googly; if you’re skilled, you can hit for four or air it out for six.  Topics for further research, to be sure.)  

Christchurch is the jumping off point for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP).  It’s the closest place able to support the complex logistics needed to supply McMurdo Base on the Ross Ice Shelf at the edge of the continent as well as the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and multiple field camps on the southernmost continent.  All USAP employees and contractors, as well as National Science Foundation (NSF) grantees, transition through here to board “ice flights” due south.  Your stay includes complementary hotel, fitting for Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, and two Covid tests.

The largest city on the South Island is a pretty lively place, and I was able to get out and take part in some of the fun on offer. However, this did not include hitting the bars, and not just because of the need to avoid close contact and possible Covid exposure.  It was principally because I am in a happily committed relationship with the woman I love, and my fidelity is reinforced by the fact that she can tell when I’m lying and she knows how to use firearms.  Still, it would have been fun to try to impress a middle-aged Kiwi divorcee by telling her I was a doctor headed to Antarctica and would she like to see my South Pole?  (Proper response: “Ceremonial or Geographic?”  But I digress.) 

The history of early 20^th Century Christchurch is intimately tied to that of British Antarctic exploration in the Edwardian Age.  Here is the port of Shackleton and Scott; one afternoon I rode a gondola up a small peak to view Lyttleton Harbor, where one might have sat and watched Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery and Terra Nova and Ernest Shackelton’s Nimrod set out for fame or death, but certain immortality.  Along the Avon River just off Cathedral Square in the City Center is a statue of Captain Scott sculpted by his widow Katherine; I walked past it every day on my morning constitutionals, mostly gazing up at him as a tragic hero, the very embodiment of the character of the English Gentleman.  But occasionally I would recall him as an object lesson in what happened to the last man who went to Antarctica with unrealistic expectations.  (I’m overly optimistic and untethered from reality.  Did you know that?)  

I had a great time in Christchurch.  It’s a very walkable city, and I spent my first day there strolling on the Promenade along the River Avon, past statues of Queen Victoria and Captain James Cook, whom I discovered was not just the first European to see Australia, but also the discoverer of Antarctica.  I paused at the Arch of Remembrance to think about those lost in World War One, and how the Great War has been erased from the minds of Americans but still very much alive in the soul of the Commonwealth.  Lunch at the Botanical Gardens found me doing battle with an evil-eyed gull over my bacon batty; he won a battle or two, grabbing bits of bread when I turned to look at my cellphone, but fortunately I won the war and shooed him away.  I visited the New Zealand Toy and Collectible Museum to see their display of items related to the Supermarionation series of Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds are Go!), and finished the day with an ice cream at the Children’s Playpark, hoping there might be an excuse for me to toss off my shoes and jump into the netting without worrying about crushing a four-year-old with an adorable Kiwi accent.  I also got out of the city, taking the gondola ride over Lyttleton Harbor, visiting Sumner Beach to put my toes in the (chilly) Pacific, and taking the Tranz-Alpine train to Arthur’s Pass National Park for a near-death cardiac stress test from climbing endless stairs to the base of a waterfall and developing suspicious chest pain.  For someone like me who likes Indian and Asian cuisine, the food scene was a joy.  I finally got to eat a meal served in the stackable metal tins that comprise a traditional Indian lunchbox, and had one of the best dinners of clams and lamb at an upscale restaurant called Bessie’s where the meat locker is framed by glass walls through to the dining room and a half carcass of something that used to live on a cloven hoof is suspended on a chain, twisting back and forth in an invitation to “come back and eat me someday.”  My only regret is that I did not get to dine at the eatery called “King of Snake,” not because it was too pricey or the reviews said the service was poor, but just because I would have liked to say I ate at a place called “King of Snake.”

While I’m off having my adventures, my thoughts are never far from the BGFE.  They’re not always sentimental.  I could hear her voice telling me that the Toy Museum sounded boring, and she’d be taking a nap while I scurry off on my little frolics.  But at Bessie’s there was a couple sitting near us that reminded me of us back in the day; she was young and wearing a short red dress, the guy slightly older trying to look cool and detached.  I’m sure that if they noticed me at all, it was as the creepy friendless old guy sitting by himself with a glass of wine and a book.  In my eyes, though, I saw she who would become my Empress. 

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The main reason you’re in Christchurch is to get ready to head south.  It’s here that you acquire your kit of Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.  The United States Antarctic Program (USAP) operates a Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) walking distance from the Christchurch Airport.  (You can tell this is a government operation by the acronyms, right?).  Before you even leave home, you’ve already filled out a form listing your coat, pant, shoe, and glove sizes, so when you arrive at the CDC they’ve already packed a bag for you based on your personal information.  Your task is to try on the gear and exchange anything that doesn’t fit for something in a more appropriate size.

The items that help you dress for success in the Antarctic are Big Red and the Bunny Boots.  Big Red is a parka, a large, Canadian-made down jacket the color of a Mountie’s tunic that extends from about mid-thigh all the way up to the point of the chin.  It’s secured with a zipper on the inside and Velcro on the outside, and has another Velcro strap across the chest to allow for a tighter fit.  The hood is fur-lined and adjustable by means of ties.  It has the USAP patch on the left breast, and over this is YOUR NAME printed on a Velcro strip.  This is so you can be identified when all your physical characteristics are hidden in the act of polar self-preservation. (I understand they use these same jackets in the arctic as well, so it probably makes your remains easier to identify when eaten by a polar bear. It’s also a reminder that just as your name can get ripped off and the parka reused, you are in some way of less value to the government than the jacket.) 

The Bunny Boots and simply white snow boots made of thick panels of rubber.  They have a unique reservoir of air within their lining to act as a further layer of insulation for your feet.  Other than being white like a snowshoe hare, they do not resemble any part of a bunny, nor do they enhance one’s ability to hop, scurry, or enjoy a good carrot.

You’re at the CDC to make sure it all fits…not just Big Red and the boots, but also the other accoutrements that the spiffy Polie would wear…work gloves, mittens, hat, goggles, fleece pants and fleece jacket.  These are all tried on over your own thermals, mountaineering socks and sock liners, thick winter shirt, and pants that  you’ve already put on at the hotel, to make sure it all fits.  That’s certainly the right thing to do…you don’t want to be on the ice with a jacket that won’t close or boots that are too small.  But it’s summer in Christchurch, warm enough that they’ve thrown open the doors of the CDC to encourage Mother Nature’s embrace.  So when you have on all four layers of clothing intended to keep you alive at – 90 F, worrying about the fit is the least of your problems because you’re about to keel over from heatstroke.  You take a single obligatory selfie (because it is pretty cool that your jacket has your name on it), and then you can’t get the stuff off fast enough, good fit be damned; you’re not going to give Satan’s Sauna  a chance to nab you a second time.

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Like the team-building exercise in the states, Christchurch is also where you get to meet more of your potential polar pals.  At the South Pole the medical clinic is staffed overwinter by a physician and a mid-level provider, either a Physician Assistant or a Nurse Practitioner. My PA colleague for this year I first met in person at the San Francisco airport prior to our transpacific flights, and caught up again at the Fable Hotel in Christchurch City Center.  He’s quiet, thoughtful, detail-oriented, and attributes only the best motivations to people until proven otherwise.  Given that I’m garrulous, impulsive (squirrel!), a “big picture” thinker (because that sounds better than scatterbrained), and often quite skeptical, I think we’ll make a great team.  We spent quite a bit of time together in Christchurch, getting to know each other’s ways of thought and how we can complement one another to provide the best care possible to our over-winter family.  I think we’ll make a great team.

Also at the Fable were my physician counterpart and PA for the winter McMurdo crew.  (McMurdo Station, located on Ross Island on the Antarctic coast, is the largest settlement on the continent and the staging ground for all USAP activities on the ice).  My colleague is a family practice physician from Minnesota; the PA is ex-military, a block of muscle and steel with an expression to match and an aura of brutal efficiency.  An honorable American soldier in all the right ways, he also has an American palate limited to recently deceased cattle.

The there’s another doctor who’s a little bit of an outlier to our gang.  I should probably mention that there’s three kinds of clinicians who go to Antarctica.  The first are the long-term worker bees, the physicians and mid-level providers who give direct patient care, offer emergency medical training for mass casualty incidents, and do all the paperwork that’s obligatory with government work.  We’re the ones who  stay for an entire summer or winter season (maybe both).  The there are docs who drop in for a week or two for certain tasks; during our stay on the continent,  a radiologist was at the Pole for a few days to do ultrasounds to physically qualify summer folks for over-winter duty; a dentist stops by McMurdo and the Pole for several weeks to provide dental care as well.  The Air Force sends physicians to care for flight crew on a similar rotating, mission-specific basis. 

Finally, there docs who just pop in for a week or so for what can best be described as a lark.  These are the ones who, typically as part of a training program, spend at least a week traveling south, two weeks on continent, and then fly back again to start their next rotation.  They’re good folks, but they have no particular mission or role.

The spare doc falls into this latter group.  He’s kidney specialist who talks a lot about  sodium (direct quote: “I LOVE salt!”), because kidney folks are really like children with their Gilbert Science Junior Chemistry trying not to blow up the basement.  I might use his expertise to ask how we can mix up bags of IV solutions in a cooking pot, and if we can make a dialysis machine out of Tony Packo’s sausage casings like they did on M*A*S*H.  You know, just for emergencies, although running a cut-rate, cash-only dialysis center in a cargo van using sausage casings and a washtub has a certain entrepreneurial appeal.

I’ve also encountered new friends who will be at the Pole during the dark and cold.  One night we had dinner with our Fire Alarm Technician who was the proud owner a snake family consisting of Papa Snake, Mama Snake, and the freshly-hatched Little Baby Snake.  I made the mistake of asking what you feed a baby snake.  The answer is blended mice.  Fortunately the mice are already dead, because I started to have visions of them being dangled by their by their tails over the whirling blades, squeaking “NOOOOOOO!” just before their plunge into oblivion.  With his departure for the antipodes, that the snakes have been adopted in Ohio, where they’ll be well cared for and the mouse puree is plentiful.

(My favorite Omaha joke comes from an episode of the old police comedy Barney Miller, in a conversation between Detective Arthur Dietrich and his Asian counterpart Nick Yemana:

Dietrich: What about you, Nick?

Yemana : Huh?

Dietrich : You ever feel any longing to return to your home, back to the ancient cultures and traditions, back to the shrines and temples of your ancestors, back to the terraced hillsides and cherry trees?

Yemana : I was born in Omaha.

Dietrich : We got a city in Nebraska sounds just like that.

Speaking of Nebraska, I’ve been led to understand that during Mesozoic times, Nebraska was covered by a vast ocean. But the ocean got bored and left.)

After the pre-requisite introductions and life stories (including, for the medical crowd, lots of those “back in my day the patient bit on a bullet while we took sawed off his leg” legends), we talked about our upcoming adventure and what we heard had gone before.  Some of the tales were truly tragic, such as the fire system techs who accidentally pressurized a building with carbon dioxide and couldn’t escape, the pressure within the building not being enough to blow open doors obstructed by snow and ice.  But most sounded fanciful to start with, such as the one where we can’t have anything but plastic dishware in the galley because someone went crazy mid-winter and started smashing plates over other people’s heads.  There were stories about faking a stroke to get flown out, another about someone trying to design a rocket ship for the same purpose, a season wrap-up report that suggested there should be a TASER committee that would require majority vote to fire, and a year when the first flight in the spring contained a posse of US Marshalls to collar some miscreant bullies causing strife throughout the months of darkness.  Eventually all these stories began to run together, and as they did so the conversation turned to what we might do in the case of a mutiny, where you keep the rebels (outside or in the storage caves below), how did we know we would be on the right side of the mutiny and not wind up outside ourselves, and if we ran out of food was it best to wait for someone to die of starvation and then eat them, or to sacrifice someone with some meat and fat early on while there was still good nutrition to be had?  All of us save one agreed to kill the chubby guy first.   I’m still not sure why my heavy-set McMurdo counterpart seemed uncomfortable the rest of the evening.

Let’s fly south!

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(Fifty point bonus question:  If you’re a mouse and about to be fed to a snake, is it better to be put in the cage and look your killer in the eye, knowing your life is to be snuffed out and your death will be prolonged and painful, or is it better just to be dropped in the blender?  Use black ink only.  You have an hour.  Begin.)