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I spoke to John E. Ward about his work with NASA in observing gamma rays at the South Pole. He down there in our-winter-their-summer of 2012 and 2013. Is he the first Donegal man to visit the South Pole? Possibly! But it was great to capture his experiences.
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I spoke to John E. Ward about his work with NASA in observing gamma rays at the South Pole. He down there in our-winter-their-summer of 2012 and 2013. Is he the first Donegal man to visit the South Pole? Possibly! But it was great to capture his experiences.
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The person being interviewed is discussing their experience in Antarctica. They were there to conduct scientific research on cosmic rays. They explain that the atmosphere blocks these particles, so they had to go above the atmosphere to study them. They used a stratospheric balloon to carry a particle detector up to 40 kilometers above the Earth. They chose Antarctica because of the wind patterns that allow for extended data collection. They flew from St. Louis to Sydney to Christchurch, and then took a U.S. Air Force plane to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. They describe the harsh conditions and the necessary gear for survival. They stayed at McMurdo Station, the main U.S. base in Antarctica. They also mention the base at the South Pole, which is a three and a half hour flight from McMurdo. They explain that McMurdo can have up to 850 people during the summer, but the number decreases during the winter months. They mention the challenges of living in complete darkness for months. I guess the first question would be that, given you're from Glantys, you know, going to a kind of wasteland that nobody wants to live in was quite easy, is that correct? I say, all right, this is how it's going to go. Meanwhile, you know, Ardra was what, the bountiful jungle paradise? Yeah, it would get you quite used to, say, living in Nice or, you know, like Sorrento or, yeah, any of the nice Mediterranean cities, I think. Yeah, squeezing oranges from the crates of the fruit sellers, yeah. But you do have a point, you do have a point, the, you know, complete lack of facilities and, yeah, barren, bleak, yet beautiful landscapes, I think, covers it nicely. I'd say that's just Donegal in general, though. So why, why actually were you there? Yeah, so we were down there because I was doing scientific research with an experiment to detect or measure cosmic rays and I could get cosmic rays or particles that come from outer space. They're like a rain on the earth and the upper atmosphere, but they get blocked by the atmosphere. So our atmosphere is the equivalent of about one metre of lead. So it blocks all these particles. But if you want to study them and you want to understand where they came from, you need to get above the atmosphere. So you can do that with a satellite. But because they're quite rare, these particles, you need like a really big satellite, which is very, very technically difficult to do. So one kind of cheaper, one cheap way to do it is you build a particle detector and you put it on a balloon, a really big balloon called a stratospheric balloon, which will carry it up to about 40 kilometres above the atmosphere, or sorry, 40 kilometres above the earth. And that's above 99.9% of the atmosphere. So you can start detecting these particles. You use Antarctica because in the summer in Antarctica, it's called like a cyclone, but this wind pattern sets up, which is just essentially circles around the South Pole on the continent. You put your balloon up and it essentially floats around in a circle, which means that you can extend your time collecting data. And so when we went down, like all that was organised through the United States Antarctic Programme and the National Science Foundation. So I was, quote unquote, an American down there. So we were on McMurdo Station, which is one of the American bases on the Ross Island. And yeah, then also down at the South Pole Station or the Scott Amundsen Base, as it's known, the Americans also have a base there, it was down there. And yeah, so that was all organised through them, their Antarctic Programme. OK, that's why you were going there. But then... But why? But how do you even get to Antarctica? I don't I don't even understand that part. You would. So, I mean, for example, when I went down the first time, it was St. Louis. I'm going off memory here. So St. Louis to LA, LAX and LAX to Sydney. Then you fly from Sydney to New Zealand. And we went to. Oh, my God, I've forgotten the city. Church, Churchill is the one that got damaged in there. Christchurch, Churchill. Christchurch, yeah. So we went from Sydney to Christchurch and you land there and you go to basically a little hotel and at a certain stage then you go to the US Antarctic Programme have a facility next to the airport. Christchurch and you go there and you get all your gear and then you I think the next day, once you have all your gear, you get on a wee bus and they take you to a special part of the runway in Christchurch where the US Air Force is waiting. And so you go on and it's all these US Air Force guys and they're in their fatigues and like telling you where to sit. And the toilet is essentially like a barrel with a shower curtain around it. So safe to say I didn't use that. And yeah, so that flies you Christchurch down to the Ross Ice Shelf. So by that stage, we flew down, I think, late October. So it's kind of warm in Christchurch and you're roasting because you have to wear all your your cold weather clothing. So it's really funny. Everyone piles off the bus and they're all wearing the big red parkas and their big overalls and their big bunny boots and they kind of shuffle over with all their gear to to get weighed. And then you get you walk out to this transport plane in like really nice weather. And you land, you know, I think on the C-17, they're much faster. So I think it was like a four hour flight. They give you a wee brown bag with like a packed sandwich in it and a wee juice box. And you land near the, you land on the Ross Ice Shelf. So it's actually a sea that's frozen. And so they kind of flatten it to make it a runway at that part of the season. And so you just disembark then on to Antarctica. You're kind of looking around that, you know, realizing you're on a frozen sea as far as the eye can see. And then you see some distant mountains and stuff. So that's kind of that was that was pretty spectacular. But I also flew down the next season on a different U.S. Air Force transport plane called an LC-130, which is like a Hercules, but it's a turboprop. It's a propeller one and they're much slower. They're like eight hours and way, way more cramped. Like we call it the human zipper. So everyone had to pile on and the seats are like those cargo nets, you know, but you have to sit and put your leg into the crotch of the person across from you. So everyone's human zippered, you know, need a crotch all the way. And God help you if you had to get up to use the jacks or anything. And then that took eight hours, that flight. So that's a long one. What do what do you actually pack to go down there? You know, clothing, funny, like I had I bought my own thermals, bought my own boots, sunglasses, prescription, non-prescription, but like really like not just, you know, freaking Ray-Bans. You had to go and get proper like alpine or mountain climbing glasses because you really, really can get snow blind. It's extremely bright because it was day 24-7, you know, and so those were important. And then I brought like funny, you know, your laptop is obviously crucial and a hard drive full of some films. But funny enough, down there in McMurdo Station, you kind of have it had like a little shop. It had a like a rental, a re-rental area where you could get DVDs, you know what I mean? And yeah, I didn't really struggle for entertainment, we'll say that much. So that was kind of the primary stuff. I don't remember really bringing anything that was. Like, absolutely crucial, and I did get a care package at some stage, so my family sent down, you know, a jiffy bag with like a Dunny Golgers unit and and like some potato crisps, which I kind of rationed out for about a month. That was very well met, I must say. One half crisp per day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't journal or anything, you know what I mean? I didn't, I didn't like, I probably should have and just watch myself go slowly mad. But I mean, what, what is there to say? I guess there's something that contained, like, yeah, it did give me a sense of what prison might be like, you know, in the sense that, you know, in McMurdo, it was even worse at the South Pole, but in McMurdo, you kind of lived within maybe a 300 metre radius for three months. There was two bars in McMurdo station, so that was grand. And then the New Zealanders had a base, which was about, God, maybe like a 10 minute drive away. And they'd allow Americans under their base every Thursday, they call it American night, to go over to their pub and just basically drink the thing dry. And they had cans of cocaine, very odd. OK, so McMurdo is like the main, like, US base down there. That's, is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So you were, you're in McMurdo, before we get into the bases and what they're actually like, you're in McMurdo. But you're, there's also a base by the actual South Pole. And how far is McMurdo from the South Pole? It's far. We flew, again, on that LC-130, and that was like a three and a half hour flight. Three and a half hour flight, all right, so like, yeah, that's pretty big distance. Yeah, I mean, Antarctica is massive. It's really hard to get a sense of it. I think it's, I think maybe you could fit like two United States on it or, you know, something, something mental. So, yeah, going anywhere is, it takes a while and it takes a lot of effort. So, yeah, it was a three, three and a half hour flight to the South Pole station from McMurdo. OK, so I'm just looking at a map, McMurdo is, it's like on this island, is it? Just off the main shelf or whatever the hell you want to call it. Yeah, so, yeah, it's on that island. When you land, though, that's all frozen. So you don't really get a sense of it until that ice breaks up later in the season. And then, yeah, then you see like full body water. Although some of it's permanent ice, by the way, so the island's never completely isolated, if that makes sense. There's a section of it that's kind of perma-ice and then some of it breaks up in the summertime. But it seems like how many people are down there at a time? A few hundred. Yeah, so McMurdo at peak would be about, I think, eight hundred and fifty people. So it's like a small village. I mean, Glenties is probably that actually. Yeah, and it can fluctuate down a bit. And then when when the winter over, so, you know, that's in the summer season that you'd have like the most activity. But then when you get into the winter in Antarctica, everyone kind of leaves, but they'll leave behind like a like a core amount of people to maintain the base for like the whatever several months of winter. And I think that it could drop down to like maybe 80 or 90, I want to say. Right. And that's always something I kind of was tempted to do. But I think you go mental because it's complete darkness for several months. And I think people do go a bit insane. You have to be a very special type to do that. It's even worse at South Pole then. God, it could be like ten people, 15, something like that. Several months living in a tin can together. Yeah, it yeah. Did you talk to any of the people who did the did the winters? Yeah, there was one guy. He was heading on down to the South Pole and it was his 12th year of doing the winter overing. And he was a nice lad, but I say a wee bit touched, shall we say. Yeah. And then I did meet one or two lads who'd come back from the winter over. So they were they'd went over at South Pole and they were on their way back to the US via McMurdo. And they had this kind of crazed look about them. It was quite interesting because you hear stories, you know, people cracking plates over each other's heads and freaking out because someone sat in their chair that they'd been sitting in for the last four months or five. And when we flew up to pole, the pool table was kind of broken because some of the winter over people had like flipped it or something. And some of them had like, I think, been had to be collected by a marshal in kind of handcuffs and stuff. Yeah, so you can imagine it can easily descend or whatever. And that was really cliquey as well. That was something that I find really fascinating. It was like, again, and I know you were joking earlier about Glenty's being a great preparation. It genuinely was because it was it's such kind of a limited resource environment. And then there was these cliques like US Air Force guys, the firefighters, they called the scientists beakers after, you know, that guy from that squeaky puppet. Oh, yeah. So, you know, and they were kind of scientists were kind of disliked, shall we say, down there by all the support people. But then you had the stewards, the ones who kind of, you know, did all the cooking, cleaning and stuff. They had their own little cliquey vibe. You do get a bit, I don't want to say mad, that's way too dramatic, but you do get affected a bit after it. You know, that first time, man, it was 96 days, you know, and in that environment and stuff, it was quite interesting. But I was a different guy then as well. You know, I was much, you know, maybe not much younger, but younger, less certain, you know, so it's interesting. But in terms of the work itself, were you out in the ice much or what was the deal? What was the work day? What was a typical day? Let's do a typical work day. So I wake up, you know, I like to read the newspaper. No. Yeah. So I explain my day, you know, you get up, you have your shower in your building where your dorm was, you walk over to the main building, which had a restaurant, a really nice galley. So you go in there and just stuff your face. And then make sure you made your transport and the transport would be it could be anything, but there was a special bus called Ivan the Terror Bus, which is like this weird Canadian bus from like the 70s or 80s that had these giant wheels. And so I would trundle along to Williams Field and that would take you maybe half an hour. So you'd have this really, really cool experience of like going out onto the ice shelf again and seeing like Mount Erebus, which is like the most southerly active volcano in the world. And just see it kind of kind of having smoke come out of it. And this amazing just landscape was you as you head out there, listen to your tunes, you know, and then you get out and you go into our high bay and just get ready, get the experiment ready, tuning the detector systems, testing out the communications. And then you just get ready for for launch. And what was out there in Williams Field, it had its own little canteen, which is like a really special deal, because I think that was paid for by NASA, because I should say that this ballooning work as well was funded by NASA as well. And so you got you got like really like your chef was feeding whatever scientists are out there and support staff, which would only be maybe 20, 30 people. So it was ridiculous. Like the quality of the food was excellent. And but my favourite part out there was something called the long drop. So the toilet, they had like regular toilets, but sometimes they like the plumbing would freeze or whatever. So you had to go to the long drop, which was an outhouse. And they basically just dug a giant hole in the ice and put like a little like wooden box over it. Not yet. Like an outhouse you see in the films. And you had to put a wee green flag out the front when you were using it. And that felt cool, though, sometimes, I tell you. And you're just there with your your pants around your ankles and like reading, yeah, reading something. Yeah, reading Reader's Digest, you know, trying to be as quick as possible. 101 golf jokes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily, luckily, the green flag helped you relax. And you didn't have an awkward moment where you had to shout occupied at someone who trudged through the freezing cold. Oh, yeah, it you get so that I mean, that that's that's that's one entity, this canteen. So someone's just working and they're not money. There's just someone's just serving. I don't understand that the canteen just sitting out there. Yeah, it was a it's kind of Oh God, it had a name for the type of tent, but it was like these hemispherical tents, you know, with with these ribs along them. You know what I mean? That you see in like the military or something like that. So you'd go in there and then at the end would be like a little kitchen. It wasn't big. And you'd find out what lunch was because there'd be a whiteboard and they'd write, you know what it was. And you go in and grab a plate and you get given what you're given. And then you sit down at these long tables and just eat and chat. And then you're your way back. But but that was a real privilege because there was a chef kind of dedicated to that to that facility. What were they making? Yeah, man, I you know, when I think back now. I'm almost having a dream. It might have been a dream that there was lobster one day. And then it would be like, you know, there'd be, you know, standard like burgers. And so I do remember Thanksgiving was was a really nice meal because obviously the Americans are big into that. But in terms of, you know, you get your fresh foods and stuff, but then by the end of the season, you know, there are certain times where the aircraft transporting stuff down would have to focus on more important supplies and stuff. And so your fresh food would disappear. After a while. And so that kind of, you know, the food then would get fairly monotonous, fairly quickly. And they'd put supplements in them and stuff like that. So, you know, to wreak havoc with your digestion the odd time, overshare with your listeners. And yeah, so so it'd be, you know, but the second season, though, they had a pizza machine and not not in not in Williamsfield, but in McMurdo, there was 24 hour pizza. Wow. You go in and there'd be pizzas in this little, you know, stack. And you just pick up a couple of slices, you know, show them what you want. Were there this is also I was wondering with the bars and stuff, there was no money done. Oh, sorry, the bars. Yeah. You had to pay for your boots. OK, so the bars were proper bars. You're getting with cash, I guess cash. So you have cash down there. What I don't know what's going on. Yeah, there is an ATM. How did you say that? You're right. It is ludicrous. There was an ATM. Yeah. I think it was a Chase Bank or something. I actually can't know that you say that just logistically. I don't even understand who did that. Did they just fly someone down with a stack of money? But yeah, the bars you had, there was two bars. One was called Gallagher's. Great. And another one was called Southern Comfort. And yeah, you'd go in there and order and yeah, you'd hand over your cash, you'd leave your tips. So it was like proper really cool wee bars. Was it hard not to just, I guess if you just could stick to beers, was it hard not to just out of boredom just be kind of drinking every evening? No, like it wasn't hard. It was impossible. No, I tippled, I tippled regularly and, you know, the bars, because that was it, man. I mean, what else do you do? Yeah, I know, like you go and wander around and look at stuff. Now, there was some, you could play some music, maybe, except I'm left handed. So there wasn't any left handed guitarists down there. But, you know, there were little things like there was movie nights and things that you can entertain yourself in other ways. I love all these, all these scientists like snuggling under blankets, watching like, you know, When Harry Met Sally or something like that. Man, you joke, South Pole didn't even have DVDs. They had VHS. And so we watched Top Gun on VHS. And like everyone just snuggled in and, you know, little hot Cocos. Oh, man, love it. Yeah, you would. You would definitely, you would definitely partake, man. And yeah. Were the beers outrageously priced or just average, just regular? No, everything was OK price wise. Like, to be fair, they didn't gouge you, you know, and they could have. Now, the New Zealand based though, that's a good point. They used to love, I think, I think the New Zealanders would let the Americans over on Thursday night just so they could fleece them. So they would certainly charge like probably New Zealand prices. But and that's probably how they funded their entire Antarctic program, perhaps. Yeah, I find it kind of fascinating, all these like clans of nationality. Yeah, totally tribes, tribes, people bumping up and they kind of preserve, obviously, you know, preserve their, you know, style of food and drink and stuff like that. Yeah. When they're when they're down there. Exactly. Yeah. Like the Italian base, someone got to go there and they told me that they serve, you know, wine at dinner and lunch, you know, like sitting down, proper, proper good food, glass of wine, you know, all this crack. And they're all super stylish. Their outfit was like all red. So like pure Ferrari style, you know, red, red trousers, red top, beautiful sunglasses. Showing everyone up, but all in a spirit of collaboration, you know, that's one of the really cool things about Antarctica is that there's no aggro and if people, you know, there's deaths when I was down there, you know, and really, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tough stuff like one of the aircraft disappeared in one of the mountain ranges. And then, you know, we knew we knew some of the colleagues of the people who died. Unfortunately, one of the Italians passed away in an accident on their base. And when I was coming back to New Zealand, I think that first season, you know, some of their colleagues came with us, you know, and I think I think that was something quite powerful about that, because, again, I suppose there's claims and whatnot, but everything's done in this kind of sense that it's for scientific research down there. That treaty is very powerful and no exploitation of resources or anything like that. It's just purity for scientific knowledge. And yeah, so I like that. And, you know, the New Zealanders were great crack, you know, I really enjoyed them. I guess that must be a bit, a bit mental, because it's, you're, as you said, you're quite, you know, I guess, domesticated and it's kind of like sitting around the house a lot of the time, but then also like one tiny slip away from absolute, like, you know, hell zone, exposed to the elements, you know, you had your bars and you're like hanging out and your pizzas and stuff like that, but you're actually in an incredibly dangerous zone as well. That must be quite, like, maybe do you forget that sometimes easily or? Yeah, I think I think that's exactly it, until you until you get like a shock to the system again, like those types of things, and they did a lot of that. You know, when we, when we went down first, they were, they brought us out for, they called it snow school. It was kind of like survivor, survivor training stuff. It was like 24 hours, so I don't think I would have learned enough to survive, but that was all very much like, you know, frostbite, like someone had gone out the week before for their snow school and got frostbite. And they just, yeah, they hadn't told the the trainers, if you will, that they couldn't feel their fingers or toes anymore and just kind of kept going until they had, you know, until it became a problem. And then, yeah, they were done. And what was weird is like they showed us photos of that in our training. And so they were they were trying to instill an idea that you are one white out blizzard away from from real trouble. And that was one of the examples. Actually, they put they put a bucket, they put buckets on all our heads and told us like, OK, like they said, OK, you're going to go out to this flag as a team, you're going to rope up, but everyone's going to have a bucket on their head to simulate what a white out blizzard's like. So find your way out there. And then after, you know, two minutes, they would just say, stop, everyone take their buckets off and you're 90 degrees away from the flag. And, you know, had no idea that it was like that. And so they were just trying to instill this thing of like, hey, you might be walking up to, you know, one of the viewing points, but if if the weather isn't good or don't take a risk or you might slip here. And then down at South Pole, that was where I had a moment where I'm like, oh, I actually might be in a bit of bother here because we got a tour of these, well, I guess they're not subterranean. I don't know what the correct term is, sub ice, subsurface tunnels underneath the station. But it was minus 55 degrees Celsius down there. Wow. Fucking hell. And I didn't pick the correct gloves. I was very stupid and I picked gloves that are more suited for like wind. Naturally, if you're in a tunnel, that's not a problem. And after like maybe 45 minutes to an hour, I was like, I really can't feel my little fingers here. And, you know, you put them on your arms. They teach all these things to try and do that. But there was a moment I might be, you know, again, over dramatising, but I was very nervous and I was going to bring it up. But luckily, the tour had just it actually ended about five minutes after I was about to pull the ripcord. But that was, yeah, you know, just those types of things. You could be a little bit careless and you could be bitten for it, you know. Yeah, I guess it's like, you know, that kind of, oh, I picked the wrong gloves and now I've lost my fingers. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's that's yeah, it's mundane choices can lead to very quickly lead to like very scary situations, I guess. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I mean, I have so much respect for the ones that were like the people that had to fly the aircraft and all the support people, because, you know, a lot of the things were named after people that died, like, you know, McMurdo, he was driving a tractor, bulldozer making a runway and ice broke and went under, you know, so you see a lot of names of things like that. Oh, right. OK, yeah. Maybe Williams. I have to check that. But, you know, that's the type of thing. A lot of things are named after people that died. And I guess that kind of, yeah, maybe the danger and stuff like that kind of gets you back to the kind of, I guess, higher purpose of it all. But yeah, the pursuit of science, knowledge, you know. Yeah, is that so that that does kind of drive people a bit or people are inspired by it there? Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, that was absolutely my motivation down there. I'd always dreamed of going to Antarctica and not necessarily like for that just to go there, but also to do the work down there, to be the scientist down there, because I knew it would really push me in terms of like, you know, how difficult it is to do work down there. And I think everyone, everyone, at least in the scientific side of things, understood that from there because that was their motivation. And then the support staff understood it as well, that they were getting, I think the majority of them got a real sense of purpose, that they were driving forward scientific knowledge across the board. Like it wasn't just us, obviously, with the cosmic ray research, but there's telescopes down at South Pole, a huge amount of biological research and geologists, people going around picking up meteorites for that. You know, that was also really fascinating that there would be a lot of science talks as well. So every week there would be a science talk, a colloquium in the main canteen of McMurdo, of the main building, and it would be packed, you know, with hundreds of people in there. And I thought that was really cool, like from all walks, not just scientists, but everyone. And so that was that was a really nice thing as well to see, you know, how do you present to capture all the audience? And I think people understood the mission, if you will, down there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is quite, yeah, inspiring. And I guess going back to those people, yeah, they kind of died for, died for science, for science, science knowledge, for the knowledge of humanity. Yeah, it's quite a, yeah, it's a straight, I guess it's an idea or something like that to die for it. Yeah, it's something to be respected, you know, I guess I hadn't really thought about it in depth, like what you just said. Yeah, it's true. It is something to give kudos for. Yeah, I didn't think that when I was, you know, I wasn't wandering around stroking my beard going, God, I'm going to great. I just I just did this long drop for science. It's like I literally froze my arse for science. But again, an incredible, incredible experience. I mean, the South Pole was was the most amazing place I've ever been in my life, ever will be. Nothing will beat it. Yeah, maybe that's a that's a good that's a good emotional crescendo to this whole thing. Yeah. Describe the, describe the wonder of the South Pole. It is just unlike anything you can have experienced, I guess, and what I mean by that is what I had experienced. But to me, it felt like the surface of the moon. So you you fly up there, obviously, on this LC-130, you land and you get out and there is no features until the horizon and 360 degrees. The only kind of features. I know people have this idea that everything is just completely flat, like a completely plain ice shelf, but that's not true. There's things called Sestrugi, which are these kind of like, you know, when the wind blows, you get these little, it looks like kind of ripples in the snow as far as the eye can see. So there is a kind of maybe a pattern or a feature in that sense. But in terms of mountains or anything, there's literally nothing. So it is completely flat. And the only thing you see is the handful of buildings they have down there. And weirdly, like a tourist camp, which was about, you know, maybe a kilometre away. But there's some incredible scientific instruments down there. And then there's South Pole. There's two South Poles, actually. There's this barbershop pole, you know, those red and white spirally things that, you know, you see in like Santa films. That's the ceremonial South Pole and that has all the flags around it. And that's what you get your photo with. But the South Pole itself, the magnetic South Pole actually moves about, God, like maybe five to 10 metres every year. And so what the what the Americans do is they put a pole at the exact spot of the magnetic South Pole every season and they'll make someone will like fashion a headpiece that's specific to that year. And so you can walk over to that then and, you know, run around it and say you ran around the world and all this crack. Now, that was a strange place to again, even less people than McMurdo. So there, I think it was maybe 70 or 80 people. But, you know, for example, when I was out there, I was out at the South Pole getting a photo. Really not much to do there. Literally, you just got up, put on your gear, walked outside for, you know, 10 minutes until your beard, nose, eyelashes, whatever else, froze and then you got back in. But I remember being out there and a guy showed up on a bicycle and he had cycled to the South Pole from from the Lake Antarctic Peninsula. So all of a sudden, like this lad shows up on a bike and he asked me, he's an American lad, and he's like, could you, could you take a video of me? And I'm like, oh, God, don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Because he just stood there and he was like, hello, my name is such and such. I have just cycled from, you know, Union Camp or whatever. I have been cycling for, I don't know, man, like fricking weeks. This lad was cycling. He was cycling, I don't, I don't get this at all. But he, he was cycling, he cycled across Antarctica, like, how, where did he sleep? I mean, how many, he was, no one. He had a wee, he had a wee, like, sled and his bike, and his bike, like, it wasn't like a fricking rally, you know, with a mountain bike wheels. It was like he had this massive wheels on a bicycle and a wee sled that he pulled. And yeah, no, I'm legit, I'm not joking. He cycled to the South Pole from the peninsula, I believe he came from. And he asked me to just record him while he cycled around the South Pole. And I just remember being terrified that I'd fricking not record it properly. You know what I mean? Like, could you imagine? But did he just cycle off into the distance then or what? I, you know, it's so funny you say that. I have no idea where he slept because he couldn't come into the base. It's only, it was only like US research personnel that were allowed into the building. I mean, I didn't hear him like banging on the windows trying to get in or anything. But, but there was a tourist camp nearby, like full of billionaires that would just, you know, get flown down and camp there. So maybe he went over there. Right. Yeah, it. Wow. And that, I mean, I don't know whether it's better or worse that it wasn't just this isolated moment by yourself or just fricking a bit random that this bicycle. I thought it was fantastic. I don't know what he thought from random fricking Donnie Gallman, but I thought he was losing it. But no, I mean, I, I, that was, that was very special because it was just so surreal, you know. Yeah, geez, I can imagine. And I guess just to wrap up would be when you kind of, I guess you kind of finish your time or you finish your time twice and you kind of went back home. And is it that thing of like, you know, it must be getting back to real life must be bizarre. That first, that first trip back, so, you know, 96 days, I didn't see night time for 96 days. And I landed in, so you landed in Christchurch and you end up coming off the plane and you walk into like the main terminal and you're in the passport queue and you have all your Antarctic gear on, right, big massive boots, big, you know, you know what I mean, the big red parkas, you have three month beard, the most magnificent beard ever. That was, you know, my beard was so long that my moustache grew out over the front of it, like I had handlebars over the main beard body. I would comb it. That's where I started to think maybe I'm getting a bit touched here, man. I would comb it every night just looking in the mirror. When I say it out loud, maybe I was starting to get a bit mental. I think it's good. 96 days sounded just about the right amount of time. But so you're in this queue, right, to get in passport and you look around and there's all these just people in their standard, like, in their standard clothes looking at you going, are they, like, what the fuck is, who are these random ice hobos? And and then, yeah, you get out and you get on a wee bus and you end up going to your hotel. Well, no, they didn't bring it, you go to the US Antarctic thing to give back your gear. And then you're just back in the hotel that night, kind of getting a pint, going, oh, OK, I'll just go out and have a look at the night. And I stood on grass that I do remember. Just smelling things out, that's one thing as well. You know, there's no smell. There's no smell in Antarctica. So when you come back into a place that has grass and vegetation and moisture, because you remember, Antarctica, it's a desert. It's technically a desert. So just that dryness, you know, moisture, no smell. And yeah, that was that was that was really powerful. Night, the stimulation of smells, sensations again. People, you know, being able to eat fruit. Like I had my, I remember very clearly, plainly flying back, I think I was coming back from Sydney to LA and at the midpoint during the flight, one of the air hostesses gave me an apple. And that had been the first apple I'd eaten, I think, in two months. You know what I mean? I know it sounds like, oh, whatever, but just a fresh fruit. I was like, oh, man, yeah, it was it was very special, actually. So, yeah, that's that's sorry. That's that's what it was like coming back. And I still dream about it, you know, I dream about it regularly. I dream about Antarctica. Yeah, I mean, yeah, God, it's almost like a. Yeah, places your subconscious would kind of go to, I guess. Yeah, I would love to go back, man. I would really love to go back. But I just got to become a billionaire first, I suppose. Yeah. Or cyclist or be a billionaire cyclist. Yeah. Yeah. I maybe have someone cycle me to the South Pole. Actually. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's actually way better. Yeah. Back of the sled with a whip. Yeah, yeah. That's I think that's yeah, that's we can do that. And cool. Well, I think that probably I mean, I kind of kind of captured it all, really. Oh, good. Yeah, it was cool. And thank you. And it was nice to reminisce, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And I sit here in a dark room now with a glass of whiskey.
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