McMurdo Shmurdo

Your first view of Antarctica is glorious.  Close to midnight, you emerge from the dimmed lights of the aircraft interior directly into the brightest, harshest sun you’ve ever seen.  The intensity of the light doesn’t match the chill in the air; while it’s a balmy two positive-digit summer day, the light and the cold are so incongruous that the conflict doesn’t even register.  It’s all sun.  You shade your eyes as you feel not just warmth, but as if every single ray emanating from our solar powerhouse is winging its’ way through you.  The air smells of blue like the cloudless sky.  You turn left and see nothing but an endless plain of snow; turn right, and over the wing of your chariot looms the steaming cone of Mt. Erebus, the largest active volcano in the world.  The expanse is of the purest white, the kind of white when the soft snow falls and lies still for just a moment before it becomes stained with terrestrial hues.  The plain seems eternally flat but gradually creeps up the mountainsides, the white interrupted by rivulets of darker volcanic rock cascading down the sides of the peaks.  You linger for a moment, another, and another still.

It’s the second view that brings you back to reality.  You are quickly herded onto a big red crawler named “Ivan the Terra Bus,” which speeds over a flag-marked ice road at a screaming 5 MPH for about thirty minutes.  Ivan then turns onto a one-lane black gravel road that goes up a small hill.  Your first hint of civilization are oil drums, followed by cargo containers.  Smaller metal buildings pass by, and without warning you’re shooed off the bus and alight in the center of town.

McMurdo Station is hard to describe.  It’s a set of metal buildings of varying ages set upon a small rocky outcrop on Ross Island.  There is a small harbor with an ice pier that is opened in summer by icebreakers from the Coast Guard, and looking out from town towards the sea on a cloudless day rewards you with amazing vistas of ice, rock, and snow.  But look inland and you see a cluster of construction sites, heavy equipment, dormitories, and various outbuildings all viewed through a dusty haze.  The structures are mostly prefabricated, many having seen better days and much worse for wear; the ground is simply pulverized black volcanic rock.  There is no greenery, no public spaces, no outward signs of hospitality or warmth.  This is where you do work, dirty work, to tear down and build up and load and unload and fuel and oil.  The rare paean to Antarctic history and science is an afterthought at best.  McMurdo is often referred to as the Largest Settlement in Antarctica, and while there are provisions for life and health, there’s no means for growth, fulfillment, progress, or family.  It reminds me less of a town or village but more of a “man camp”, the kind I’ve seen in the oil fields of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, simply temporary housing for transient workers that might be abandoned at any time without a care for what’s left. 

The things we associate with a settlement, town, or village…schools, homes, shops, civil government…simply don’t exist.  There is a single shop that sells a limited amount of merchandise and dispenses alcohol on a rations system; there is a single non-denominational chapel; there’s a medical clinic, a dining hall, and two bars.  It’s a factory town, where the factory is the USAP and there’s enough money being made that while people don’t owe their soul to the factory store, their souls have nothing more to do.  It is a sad and desperate place, and upon first glance the only aesthetic value I can see is that the next time I arrive, I know I’ll be on my way home.

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As this journey in happening in the age of Covid, the USAP understandably wants to limit the virus here on the ice.  Given that there’s really only one entrance point to the majority of the continent, and that the stations and camps are isolated from one another and rarely interact, from a public health standpoint it’s relatively easy to do, if somewhat draconian in operation.  I had previously mentioned that we were tested twice in Christchurch before our departure to McMurdo; on arrival, you are quarantined for five days in the McMurdo Mountain Inn (MMI).  This sounds much nicer than it is, just like saying someone has a “high forehead” sounds better than calling them bald.  Earlier in the year the MMI was used as the isolation building for positive cases of Covid; now it’s the holding pen for those about to enter the McMurdo community or those going on to the Pole.  It is an old building, two to a berth and a common restroom, with nooks and crannies that haven’t seen the light of day nor the approach of a housekeeper for many years.  Having traveled half the world to get to the Pole, the prospect of nearly a week in McMurdo Mountain Institute was surely unwelcome. 

(To be fair, most housecleaning is done both at McMurdo and the Pole by the residents of the dormitory or berth; given the transient nature of those staying at the MMI, it’s no wonder these chores get neglected.  At the Pole, we have a weekly cleaning duty called “House Mouse.”  The first weeks at the Pole I had Tuesday 4 PM bathroom duty.  I cleaned sinks, mirrors, and countertops; I have taken out trash and restocked toilet paper, sprayed down urinals, cleaned toilets, wiped down stall doors, swept, and mopped restrooms frequented by both genders.  Don’t tell the BGFE or I’ll have to do it at home.  “Use it or lose it,” she’ll say if she discovers these newly-acquired skills.)

I was assigned a roommate for my stay; I haven’t stayed in a room with another guy who wasn’t my kid since college.  It was about 8 by 14, far smaller than my storage locker at home.  In it were two beds, placed so the foot of one abutted the other at right angles with 18 inches to spare; and two wardrobes, one containing a three-drawer dresser and both littered with old telephone cards leading to brown, blocky relatives of the pushbutton Princess phones.  The communal restroom was an upstairs march.  We unloaded our government-issued bags of linens…a mattress pad, sheets, pillow, and a surprisingly comfortable duvet…and noticed that there were no towels.  I fell into bed as an Official Member of the Great Unwashed.  It could always be worse, I suppose…when I was living in Topeka there was a particular hotel that was a great place to stay if you wanted to witness a homicide…but after six nights in a luxury hotel in Christchurch, it was awful.  And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.

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While one hesitates to ascribe psychological motive to things like room assignment, you might be forgiven for thinking our placement at the MMI was an illustration of what the McMurdo folks thought of the Polies-to-be.  There is a definite sense of rivalry between the two…perhaps less rivalry than jealousy…and I think it really only works in one direction.  McMurdo is an older place where the “dirty work” goes on…construction, cargo, administration (which deposits its’ own grime on the spirit).  The folks at McMurdo undoubtedly work harder and without the reflected glory that comes with residence at the South Pole itself.  In contrast, the Pole is a much newer station, more heavily weighted towards science and less so on support.  (I’ve heard with the high concentration of PhD’s here, the South Pole is the human outpost with the highest IQ in the world.  At least until I got there and it dropped.)  And when people think about Antarctica, they either think about the penguins, seals, and whales, or they think of the South Pole itself.  Living on the shore of an ice shelf is nowhere near as captivating to friends and family as being at the Pole.  McMurdo folks know, and it’s absolutely true, that the Polies couldn’t survive without them; but it’s the Pole dwellers who get all the plaudits and praise. 

What do the Polies think of the McMurdo crowd?  It’s not that we don’t think of them; we just don’t think about them.  When we were living in Iowa, my Dad would tell the story of a local booster who went to New York to promote the region.  He asked a group of Manhattanites what they thought of when they thought of Des Moines.  The answer?  “We don’t.”

(This lack of acknowledgement is an ER doctor thing, too.  We are most likely the ones who will literally save your life.  But you’ll be too ill or injured to notice, and your family will be too distraught to recall who we are.  The doctor you’ll remember is the one who took care of you after you left the Emergency Department, the one who cared for you in the days after the crisis, the one who visits with you and your loved ones every day, and not the transient physician who spent fifteen minutes holding you back from the light, but went off shift and will never see you again.  The ER is the McMurdo of medicine.) 

The medical folks at both sites, however, are in agreement that they are often viewed with suspicion by the non-clinical members of the community.  This seems to be related to the fact that everyone who comes to the continent has to pass through a Physical Qualifying (PQ) process operated by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).  The remote physicians who approve or disapprove PQ status are viewed with outright hostility; a video circulated at the Pole the summer before my arrival has a simulated UTMB clinician shredding someone’s PQ file just prior to sacrificing a goat.  Those of us on the ground are not quite enemies; there are folks who ask for and genuinely need medical care.  But they are acutely aware that coming to the clinic to report an injury, illness, or an exacerbation of a chronic problem could lead to Not Physically Qualified (NPQ) status and a trip on the next plane north.  I suspect this is akin to the dilemma of the pilot’s relationship with the military flight surgeon.  The latter needs the patient to be honest about his or her medical issues to insure the best in care, while the airman knows that such frankness can lead to a revocation of flight status.  Confidentiality is also an issue; while in a private office or civilian hospital the patient and I might be joint owners of the medical record; here, someone else has access to that information.  I suspect a fair number of accidents, injuries, and illnesses are unreported and dealt with quietly between employees, supervisors, and on-site clinicians.  We’ll see how this plays out for me over the coming year.

(Paradoxically, I’ve heard that in the Age of Covid there are those who seek out contact with others who have tested positive for the virus, so that when their own test converts they get five days off work to “recover.”  You can’t please ‘em all.)  

So McMurdo is not my cup of tea, but I could see why folks would go there.  First and foremost, it’s where the jobs are.  Many companies pay a premium for Antarctic work, and most of that money is on the coast.  Everything is provided and paid for…room, board, transportation, and health care.  It’s a great opportunity, especially for a young person, to save money and build a nest egg free of the expenses of daily life.  It’s much bigger and busier than the Pole, with more to do, more people to meet, and more opportunities for fun and mischief  far from the eyes (and phones) of family and friends.  There’s admittedly still some aura of adventure that comes with living in Antarctica, even if it isn’t the Pole.  And finally there are souls who simply find their place at McMurdo.  They may be quirky, socially awkward, or running to or from something in their lives.  Free of distractions and pressures to conform, they find their own people here.  The necessities of life accounted for, they gain a sense of peace and continuity that comes with no accounts, debts or commitments.  I’ve met people who are reluctant to leave and re-enter the chaos of the outside world.  It’s a non-denominational version of the consecrated life, the cloister trapped between the mountains, the weather, and the sea, with its’ range of joys and sorrows.  But for me my time in McMurdo is like my residency training in emergency medicine, a rite of passage with some outstanding people, but few fond memories.

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At 9 AM the next day we reported to work at the Medical Clinic.  It’s a white corrugated metal building with brown trim that proclaims itself “McMurdo General Hospital” and welcomes you with a happy illustration that says “Dr. Penguin hopes you feel better!”  The clinic itself shows its’ age; the interior is a maze of walls and partitions, none of which look particularly planned nor permanent.  The nooks and crannies are occasionally interspersed with a patient care bed or two, or perhaps a dental chair; go past the washing machine and presto!  There’s a hyperbaric chamber.  It’s as if someone bought a shipping container full of random items at a medical garage sale and, having no place to put it all and not wanting to wind up on an episode of Hoarders, rented a two-bedroom house and hired a couple of college students to shove everything in it.

This was our home for the next few days was we went through a basic orientation to medicine on the ice.  Our preceptors were a married PA/RN couple who had spent several prior winters at McMurdo.  They were old hands, so for them what appeared to me as confusion was simply the order of things; they knew the place like the owner of a messy desk can find that one phone bill from 1997 without a second glance.  Their self-appointed chore was to teach us more clinical self-reliance than we’d ever learned before.

Perhaps I need to explain that a little further.  After thirty years in the ED, it’s not that I can’t rely on my own clinical experience and judgment to do the right thing (although each year in practice I become more humbled by what I don’t know).  It’s that usually have the benefit of colleagues gathering information for me to review in my final decision-making process, or doing patient care tasks I don’t have the time nor the experience to do well.  For example, when I order an x-ray, a radiologic technician shoots and develops the x-ray for me.  If I need labs, a nurse or phlebotomist draws the blood and the lab tech sends me the results. If a patient needs medication or an IV, I ask a nurse for help. (You do not TELL a nurse to do something, and woe to the intern who tries to do so.)   Respiratory techs give breathing treatments and set up ventilators, pharmacists dispense the drugs, and housekeeping cleans up whatever mess I’ve made.  As for me, I’m the guy who’s perfectly happy to dine at the buffet, but has no real interest as to how the food got there. 

On ice, I am the radiologic technician.  And the phlebotomist, lab worker, nurse, respiratory tech, pharmacist, and housekeeping.  It was the McMurdo crew’s job to try to introduce these skills, and the requisite paperwork that went with them, to a guy somewhat past middle age who was sleeping poorly in a cramped little hovel and really just wanted to be at the Pole.  So exhausted, in fact, that I made a fine first impression by falling asleep sitting in a chair and dropping my glasses as I nosed over…several times…during an explanation of how to enter data in the Patient Encounter Form.  This was not the fault of my erstwhile tutors, who did all they could to embellish the required instruction with vibrant pedagogy.  It was all me, the guy who won the Rip Van Winkle Award three years running in medical school for the ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time in any posture known to man. (A favorite was on the carpeted floor hidden behind the last row of seats in the auditorium hosting Grand Rounds.)  But it’s nice to know that 35 years later, I’ve got skills.

(For reference, the McMurdo Summer staff comprises a physician, two PA’s, a nurse manager, two paramedics, a flight nurse to help with MedEvac transports from the ice, a pharmacist, and a physical therapist.  Air Force crews also bring their own Flight Surgeon, PA, and Flight Nurse.  During the winter, however, McMurdo staffing approximates that of the Pole; a physician and a PA.  The difference is related to the population of each station during the season and the level of risk.  At McMurdo, the highest summer population can exceed 1,000, with a plethora of hazardous activities (construction, fueling, aircraft movements) in full swing.  By way of contrast, the winter population drops to 150 or so souls, mostly focused on simply keeping the place going.  For purposes of comparison, the highest summer population at the pole during my tenure was just above 140, with a nadir of 43 winter-overs.  Both stations have access to specialty consultation via video teleconferencing as satellite passes allow, and mental health services are provided online as well.)

One thing I did take a shine to was learning to work the x-ray machine.  I know how to look at a plain x-ray, often better than the newer graduates.  Back in the day, when we walked to medical school uphill in the snow both ways and we were so poor we had to watch TV by candlelight, plain x-rays were all we had.  During my training, the only way to get an 8-bit, block-by-block CT scan of the head was to call a radiologist at home to get special permission.  No one did ultrasounds in the ER either, and there were no ancillary staff “on call” who could perform these studies for you.  At most hospitals today, there’s 24/7 availability of advanced radiologic exams and radiologist specialty review that an emergency physician never has to look at their own films.  What this means is that while I can mangle my way through some CT scans and most ultrasounds look like washed-out chalk drawing on the sidewalk, I can still function with plain films alone when the CT scan breaks or the computers go down; whereas the young whippersnappers can’t.  This is also true when the EMR (Electronic Medical Record) has “down time” (aka “crashes”) and we have to use paper charts.  Old people know stuff.

But while my generation of physicians was taught how to read an x-ray, we were never taught how to take them.  At both McMurdo and the Pole, there’s a portable x-ray machine for use.  The design likely dates from the late 1970’s; it comprises a yellow box with switches for power, voltage (in kilovolts, which sounds cool) and amperage (in milliamps, which does not), and a little knob you turn to make the square of light that defines the border of the film bigger or smaller.  To take an x-ray, you do the following things:

1.         Determine what needs to be x-rayed.

2.        Lug the x-ray machine over to the patient.  Tilt the steel cradle on its’ oversize garden tractor tires and lug it towards the patient.  Once arrived, extend the legs of the cradle to stabilize the machine.  Realize you don’t have it lined up correctly; repeat x 3.  Say authoritative things such as, “We want to get this just right,” instead of using profanities, which many reputable studies done by people who desperately need tenure say decreases patient confidence.  No need for it to get worse than it is.

3.        Look at the laminated sheet attached to the cart to figure out how many kilovolts (which sounds awesome) and milliamps (which does not) you need to take the film, and the distance the x-ray tube should be from the cartridge.  The bigger you are, the more you glow.  Set the machine accordingly.  It’s a state law.

4.        Grab an x-ray cartridge and out it behind the area to be x-rayed.  (X-rays are no longer “films” but digital-based images).  Open the “Atlas of Radiographic Positions” and follow the instructions to put the right body part the right way on the plate.  Reposition x 1 because it never looks just like in the book

5.        Push the red button at the end of an attached pigtail cord and shoot the x-ray.   Wear lead if you’re still of breeding age.  Otherwise, just kind of hide behind a     chair or something at least six feet way.   We’ve all had practice with that from     Covid.

6.        Look at the films once developed.  Pride yourself on how well you’ve done, or curse that they have to retaken because you forgot to erase the cartridge after the last film and now you have an x-ray that looks like someone’s putting their  putting their little finger into their heart, which is anatomically not impossible, but certainly undesirable for a host of reasons.  In either case, recognize in advance that a radiologist tens of thousands of miles away will send you an e-mail the next day saying the films are “suboptimal” and request that they be done again. 

7.         See Step 1.

Taking x-rays turned out to be a lot of fun.  We practiced mostly on a stuffed monkey whom to our surprise was loaded with trinkets such as carabineer, a hair clip, and three other assorted metallic objects which were not visible from the outside but made their presence known when radiated. As he remained asymptomatic, Mr. Monkey was referred for counseling.

Our other tasks were not quite the adventure.  Pharmacy systems are, well, boring.  Ditto medical records, clinic logs, Medical Situation Reports, patient encounter and work injury forms.  Cardiac monitors and defibrillators?  Been there, done that, shocked the heck out of it.  Running IV pump sand operative basic ventilators?  More interesting, but mostly because the training was mercifully brief.  It’s hard for me to just stand there and nod and retain anything without an imminent need for that nugget of smartness pressing down on me.  Fortunately, my PA colleague remained awake, alert, and oriented at all times when I could not, and his detail-oriented nature was critical in patiently teaching me how to do these same tests when I actually had to do so at the Pole. 

Physicians and PA’s on the continent are also over-winter dentists, and I would be remiss if I did not note that it titillated my neurons to practice squeezing some kind of gunk onto a tooth to replace a lost filling, shining a UV light on it to “cure” the composite, and then grinding it down so the patient bites normally again.  (Fun fact:  You can tell if your bite is off by 5/1,000^th of a millimeter).  It was quite delightful to do these things to an extracted tooth mounted in a small wooden mold; doing it on a live person, especially if I’m sticking needles in their mouth for dental anesthesia, still fills me with angst.  I told the Dental Empress that I now had more appreciation for her work.  She reminded me that they let her put power tools in people’s heads and pull things out of their skulls.  It sounds so much more friendly when she says it.

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We were allowed to walk outside in the exercise yard during our five-day sentence, and one of my goals was to ascend Observation Hill.  I’ve referenced Robert Falcon Scott in my previous notes, and it’s obvious that his story has made a deep impression on me.  I give credit to his nobility, his perseverance, his courage, his literary talent; I see his failings as an objective lesson in the perils of poor preparation and close-mindedness.  Still, I can’t help but admire him and his comrades, and consider their last expedition to surely be  (as in the title of the excellent book by Diana Preston) “A First Rate Tragedy.” Just a short walk from McMurdo Station is Discovery Hut, used by both Shackleton and Scott and preserved in near pristine condition by the cold and arid land.  To walk about inside and see it just as it was left a century ago can’t help but be a moving experience.  

Observation Hill is where the Scott story ends.  After reaching the Pole a month after the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, Scott headed back to Cape Evans, some 15 miles north of McMurdo Sound.  One of his party dies close to the Pole; a second, crippled by frostbite, sacrifices himself for the good of the others.  The three remaining men were caught in a blizzard and died of hunger and cold a mere 11 miles from a lifesaving cache of supplies.  Found by a searching party the following Antarctic summer, their tent was folded down upon them and they were laid to rest, to be covered in ice and slowly, inexorably, begin their glacial march to the sea.

The surviving members of the Terra Nova Expedition erected a cross to memorialize Scott and his comrades at the top of Observation Hill, a 700 meter peak towering over McMurdo Sound.  That peak was my goal on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.  The day was gray, the sun hid behind the clouds, and the wind blew a light dust over the shattered rocks of the pathway.  Not quite your typical Antarctic windy…more like blustery Montana winter eve…but it was my day off, so climbing I would go. 

The rational person would have said this was a bad idea.  His internal dialogue should have gone, “Howard, you just had a near-death experience from a self-induced cardiac stress test climbing the steps to the Devil’s Punchbowl three days ago.  Now you’re in Antarctica where not only do you want to climb a small peak, but you want to do it at 20 degrees outside and wearing an extra 15 pounds of clothing.  Maybe this is not a good idea.  You know that cross up there?  It’s dedicated to the memory of five men led by someone who may have been overly optimistic and untethered from reality.  Sound familiar?”  But of course I didn’t listen, because I was so far past even having such an internal monologue based on the principal that if I got away with it once, I surely could do it again. And at McMurdo there’s the Mt. Everest fitness challenge, to accomplish which you need to climb Observation Hill 37 times.  I was surely 1/37^th as fit as the next guy.  Piece of cake.

I was already huffing and puffing when I hit the first landmark about a third of the way up the trail…an abandoned nuclear plant, which should have been an omen.  I was already sweating inside my three layers of warmth. My heart rate was up, and my breath was raspy.  But no chest pain.  See, I was right.

I started up again, my breathing more ragged, feeling the weight of my body and gear fighting gravity with every step.  I did figure out that I could make more progress per unit of pain if I took small shuffling steps up the slick gavel trail.   A little later I could see the cross in the distance ahead.  It’s getting harder now, and it crossed my mind that there may be room for one more martyr on the staves.  But I’m more than halfway up, and it would be silly to quit now, right?

(The cross reminds me of another story.  An unmotivated and rebellious youngster of the Hebraic faith was sent to a Catholic school as a last resort.  Almost immediately his grades were at the top of his class and his conduct was nothing less than angelic.  When asked why, he simply pointed to the cross with the suffering Jesus mounted at the front of each classroom and said, “Did you see what they did to the last Jewish kid around here?)

Suddenly I can’t find the trail.  The gravel path is gone, having disappeared into the narrow shadows between small ridges of sharp, jagged volcanic rock.  Now I’m plunging ahead blindly, knowing only that if I keep going up, I must arrive.  I’m grasping at shards, pulling myself up with my gloved hands as my feet flail about for a boot hold…

And I’m there.  I edge around the side of a small outcrop and I find I’m a few feet level with the cross.  I’ve gone too far to the left in my blind ascent and I recognize now that I couldn’t use the cross as a landmark because it was hidden form my path, set just in front of the outcrop, facing the ocean.  I pause to catch my breath, and then to admire the view.  McMurdo Sound and the station lie below me to my right, and the ice shelf of Williams Field and it’s ski-shod LC-130’s to my left.  Mt. Erebus looms in the distance.  I pause, take my pictures, and just reflect.  It’s a singular moment.

But it’s time to go back.  Downhill is easy, but I’m not triumphant.  I’m tired, I ache, and I’m feeling an unrelenting sadness for the fate of Captain Scott and his men.  But I did it, and I survived.  So since I’ve gotten away with it twice in one week, why not try again soon?

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If misery loves company…which I believe it does…I was glad to see that after I had returned to the clinic and was working on these very notes, my MD partner came in from his walk.  What he thought was a quick jaunt to see a particularly nice rock turned into a nine-mile odyssey.  But at least he got to stop by Scott Base, our smaller New Zealand counterpart station on Ross Island.  He was so hungry that he bought several packages of overpriced gummy candies.  The expired treats were so old that that the worms within were solid and stiff, as if they had been dipped in Viagara.  Noting that one such gummy worm, even when warmed to room temperature, retained an amazing amount of resilience to being whacked on a table that we thought it might be a good idea for him to send his wife an entire package of them, along with a note saying “Thinking of you.”

Speaking of expired things, Antarctica is the Official Outlet Mall of Old Food and Drink. Many years ago, someone had the ingenious idea that these brave American souls who are on the ice for the glory of our nation are hungry and thirsty for a taste of home.  So to honor their service, let’s give them the taste of home that we couldn’t get rid of anyplace else.  They’ll buy it!”  And we do. 

We didn’t really understand this until someone in the clinic bought a twelve-pack of Diet Coke at the McMurdo One-Room Mall.  It tasted funny, and after an in-depth investigation we concluded that it was most likely because the “use by” date printed on the bottom of the can was July of 2020.  We were more careful shoppers after that, but when you need soda, and your choice is between pure Antarctic glacial water and a sugar solution canned more than two years ago that has been dwelling in maritime cargo holds from the tropics to the pole, surrounded by dancing rats and some kind of cardboard weevil eating away at the carton, which do you chose?  Why the old soda, of course.  Live dangerously.  YOLO.  This goes double for alcohol.  On my desk at the Pole I have a bottle of vodka and two cans of 7-up that expired at Christmas 2021. I have needs.

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A brief aside.  One of our days in McMurdo featured a visit by a US Coast Guard icebreaker.  The Polar Star is the largest icebreaker in the fleet.  I learned that icebreakers don’t cut through the ice with a sharp or reinforced prow, like a Greek trireme ramming their Persian foe.  Instead, the hull is shaped like a bathtub with the hull gently sloping upward as you move towards the bow.  As the ship closes in on the ice sheet, the ship gradually floats upwards, and the weight of the hull crushes the ice beneath.  This characteristic makes it great at breaking ice, but is a poor vessel on the high seas as it tends to rock back and forth like a water-borne hammock.  We toured the ship, and of interest in the medical bay was a rather large stock of valcyclovir (used to treat genital herpes) as well as doxycycline (an antibiotic used for other intimate infections).  You know, because sailors.

In addition to understanding the mechanisms of icebreaking, I now know that boats and ships are different; a ship can hold boats, but a boat cannot hold a ship.  I also discovered that crew on the ship don’t like to be called sailors, but prefer the term seaman.  Joe noted that at one time, all of us were seamen.  Of course, I laughed inappropriately and looked up the number for Human Resources just in case.  I like him more and more.

The worst part about being at McMurdo was simply that I wasn’t where I wanted to be.  I was in limbo. There really wasn’t anything for me to accomplish or a role to play, and it felt like there was no clear purpose as to my presence.  While I truly value the relationships made in that brief time together, McMurdo felt like being stuck in the Newark Airport for days on end, with no relief in sight. Luckily, there was another flight south on my horizon.