As I can see the end of this season on the horizon, my thoughts turn to “what’s next?” The last season that I worked on The Ice, I had the next 12 months of my life planned out to the last detail. Planning ahead didn’t work out so well for me. I ended up blowing off at least two plane tickets that I had purchased. One plane ticket that I had, I ended up changing so many times that it ended up costing me nearly twice as much as the original flight and then I was offered, and accepted, the position that I am now in; effectively canceling out any and all of my travel plans, but giving me the financial resources to have one hell of a good time in Hawaii – funny how compressing a one-year budget down to a couple of months can really enhance the fun factor. Nonetheless, as the end of this season nears, I feel obligated to make some sort of a plan for myself and have come dangerously close to purchasing plane tickets.

The Options:

Work some middle-east contract

Judging by the traffic in my email inbox, many defense contracts have been either awarded or have received continuing funding. I can’t recall any time where I have seen such a large number of employment solicitations in my inbox. All of the major players are represented and an even larger number of staffing firms. I have been in contact with a number of people from a number of companies who all want to hire me. Does a lot of good for my self-esteem, but I’ve got a bit of a timing problem, as all of these positions need to be filled immediately – they’re all looking for people who can start right away i.e. have all of their paperwork processed and be in whatever country when the fiscal year begins.

I’ve been curious about working one of these contracts for quite some time and with the superior pay that these positions come with I could easily finance a condo on Waikiki without committing for too much time. Certainly worth considering.

Another Ice Job

It’s safe to assume that there’s a position available for me back on the other side of the continent. There are several upsides to pursuing one of those positions, not the least of which is a company-paid round-trip ticket to New Zealand and more free food and cheap beer. The chance to see what happens next has a very strong appeal and another good reason to consider working in Antarctica for yet another season.

Other Overseas Jobs

There are a plethora of job opportunities for someone with my skill set. I have investigated many job opportunities on small islands throughout the Pacific and Caribbean. The most appealing one that I came across was a Chief Mechanic position on a private resort island in Belize. I was extremely interested in this position, but they were looking for a couple and Marsha wasn’t as thrilled about the job (for her, some hideous accounting job) as I. Meh…

Travel

Taking time off and traveling are the most appealing options. At the end of this contract, I will be given yet another free Antarctic cruise with disembarkation at Punta Arenas, Chile, from there I have a company-paid plane ticket all the way back to Wyoming. This ticket is about as flexible as I need it to be, and with time and money I figure I could see and do a lot in South America. Galapagos, Easter Island, Igauzu Falls, Machu Picchu, Chan Chan, The Amazon – these are all places that have a certain appeal to me and most of them are on my “to-do” list.

Ahhh…the burden of choice

So, what will it be then? Well, because, as Marsha says, “God laughs as we’re making plans”, I really have no plan at this point, I’m totally uncommitted to anything and open to whatever comes my way. The biggest challenge for me is to stave off the temptation to purchase a plane ticket and just allow things to unfold. Stay tuned for…well, something.

On one of the last days of July we, at Palmer Station, were treated to a stunningly gorgeous sunrise. We had nacreous clouds in the sky a few degrees above the horizon line and as the sun rose that morning it reflected off of them with an orange and pink brilliance that is indescribable. I captured 38 minutes of this glorious sunrise on video, but the image quality of the resultant footage was disappointingly soft. I came up with a creative idea the other day and decided to use the footage of that sunrise in the project.

The result – perhaps a bit creepy, perhaps not…it was a fun project. Here’s a 2-minute version of a 38-minute sunrise “through my eye” What do you think?

[flashvideo filename=/video/NacreousSunrise-MyEye.mov image=http://www.vagabumming.com/video/NacreousSunrise-MyEye.JPG plugins=viral-1&viral.functions=embed&viral.onpause=false&viral.callout=always /]

‘course now that it’s done I think about all kinds of ways I could have pushed it in other ways…

Required elements for the 2009 Winter International Film Fest of Antarctica:
Props: A roll of toilet paper
“A comedy head piece” (for example ornamental hat, clown wig)

Line of dialogue:
“Do you want to buy a dog?”

Character:
A temperamental, continental chef.

Sound:
Opening a can of drink

Here is the submission from Palmer Station:

[flashvideo filename=/video/GashDanceweb.mov image=/video/GashDance.jpg plugins=viral-1&viral.functions=embed&viral.onpause=false&viral.callout=always /]

Direct Download Link (right click – “save link as” or “save target as” or whatever) : http://www.vagabumming.com/video/GashDance.mov

or for the bandwidth impaired: http://www.vagabumming.com/video/GashDanceweb.mov

My first trip to anywhere that was considered the least bit sketchy was to Mexico. Now, growing up in the U.S. I don’t believe that I was alone in hearing about how violent and corrupt our neighbors to the south were. I think I grew up with a lot of misconceptions about a lot of things actually…but I digress. I was a bit apprehensive about actually going to Mexico…but not so much as to not go. I wasn’t going to to Acapulco or Cancun or any of the special white man resorts, mind you, I was going to the regular Mexico – the one with Mexicans and chicken buses and stray, starving dogs and and roosters crowing and trash blowing and everything.

Before going there, I even looked at the U.S. State Dept. travel advisories for Mexico and there were general warnings about most of the country but nothing specific. The ONLY specific warning was about the EXACT place I would be going – the warning had something to do with violence towards Americans on Zicatela Beach – I think it warned to stay off the beach at night. My apprehension was ratcheted up a few notches but…the tickets were booked at that point and deposits had been made….I was taking the trip.

Zicatela Beach and the entire town of Puerto Escondido on Oaxaca’s Pacific coast turned out to be wonderful (constantly crowing roosters and starving dogs aside) – the people there were friendly and helpful and I managed to stay there AND travel through the interior of Mexico on various buses and vans and taxis and never once was I mugged or stabbed or even pickpocketed (though I was, on a couple of occasions, propositioned to buy drugs…declined though….kept having movie flashback moments of Mexican prisons and tried to avoid even talking to these characters). Anyhow, the point here is, that in Mexico and everywhere else I’ve ever been in the world, people go to a certain place to live for pretty much the same reasons that people would go live in say…Des Moines, IA… They wish to make a life for themselves and their families, they wish to do so honorably and they don’t want to live in a crime riddled neighborhood. Yep, people are people no matter where in the world you go. Just like in Des Moines there will be bad elements in cities and towns across the world, but there is absolutely no place that is sitting, waiting for you to show up so that they can rob you blind and throw you out naked and bleeding.

So why the rant….well, hopefully, more people can relate to the place in this video that is being called a “cesspool of corruption” and a “mess”. If you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, I would think that you would agree that it is anything but a cesspool.

The gospel of Rupert Murdoch is baseless sensationalism.

Last Friday the OSAR team participated in a training exercise. Temperatures here have dropped a bit – I think somewhere in the high teens, possibly lower 20s. Those temperatures really aren’t much of a consideration when around station; not much bundling up is required when shelter is never further than a few short steps away, and in fact, the buildings of station provide a significant windbreak. Out on the open water, however, can be quite a different story. There was a light breeze blowing in the morning with a tad bit of snowfall. I was braced for a day full of misery.

My anticipation of misery caused me to prepare for the worst – I dressed right and fared well during the exercise. It turned out to be quite an enjoyable day actually. Presently there are lots of icebergs out and about and an escape from the constant drone of the diesel generator on station was welcome.

Here we are in the boat – approaching a hairball landing. The intention, I guess, was to boost confidence in one’s abilities to actually land a boat in big swells and go ashore over snowy, ice-encrusted cliffs. As it turns out, the proper motivation needed to scale up an icy rock is 20 feet of ice cold water below it.