 So, you saw his brother speak earlier about pooping and almost dying. You can just say poop in front of people. And you say poop in people last night. So I met Nate, like I said, 18 years ago. And shortly thereafter, when I came over after a serious battle, I met his little brother, Eli, as this guy over here. So Eli was in fifth grade when I met him. And their little sister, Hannah, was in second grade when I met him. I've had the good fortune of having these three dukes in my life for quite a while now. Eli is, I think, the most interesting resume I've ever seen. He has a series of entry-level jobs with the greatest wage I've ever seen on the resume. So he's got a lot of breath, but not a lot of depth. The past four years, he's gone to Antarctica for a few minutes, and he's going to share some stories about that. Hey, everybody. Can you hear me? No. Is my mic checked up? All right. So, yeah, Shane and I go back to Indiana. And we certainly have a connection in programming. We started in the PHP world and dove into Ruby together. Got neck deep in the depot. It was good. And then I lived in Indiana most of my life in the move to Seattle. I went and stayed with my aunt and uncle, who live out there. And I just happened to time it perfectly so that a friend of the family was coming over for dinner party and a photo slideshow because he had just come back from Antarctica. And it was unbelievable to me. I didn't even think that such a thing was possible. You sort of have an idea that some people go there for research and stuff like that, but you don't really know the breadth of it. And so he came to the slideshow and I became sort of infatuated with it. And it took about a year or so for me to actually land a job there. And then I've been going back every summer there, winter here for the past four years. And so I'm just going to sort of kind of give an overview of the process. It kind of works out to my advantage here because a lot of times in my life now, sort of going through my non-anartica time, the question always comes up, what do you do? And it's sort of a strange thing for me to answer that question because it always becomes a really big story because it's like, you're like, oh, I'm a programmer. It's like, oh, cool. That's nice. But it's like, I work in Antarctica. And then people, it's like, are there roads there? Are there cars there? Do people live underground? You know, it's like there's no real concept. Until recently, a documentary came out that some people have seen. And I forget what it's called right now. Close Encounters. Yeah, Close Encounters at the end of the world. So that was Werner Herzog and he filmed that movie the year before I went down there. So I know some of the people that were in that movie, but myself wasn't in it. So I've been four times now. I was a dishwasher in my first season. I was a plumber assistant. I was an electrical helper. And this last year I was a fuels operator. So I'm going to kind of like meld everything into one. And it works out because I can tell all of you the same story at once instead of having to repeat myself a bunch of times because that never really happens with a group of people. And someone's like, oh, you work in Antarctica? Wow, are there roads there? Are there cars that people live underground? And then like five minutes later, someone else comes over and they start hearing. They're like, well, you live in Antarctica? Wow, that's crazy. Are there roads there? Are there cars that people live underground? It's just like the same thing over and over again. So one of the first things that people ask is how do you get that job? And it's a really boring answer that you just apply online. You just put your resume on the internet and hopefully they like you. And if they say you got a job instead of going downtown, you go to Antarctica. So everything happens to the National Science Foundation and the United States Antarctic Program. And there's three bases primarily. There's McMurdo Station, which is near New Zealand, South Pole, South Pole. And Palmer Station, which is south of Chile, which John has to be wearing a shirt right now. The John M. Gould is a boat. Did you know that John? Yeah, I did. Nice. So everything happens under the umbrella of the National Science Foundation and the United States Antarctic Program. But there's a contract. And currently the contract is Raytheon, which is an evil military arms dealer sort of. But they have one section of their company, which is the Raytheon Puller Services. So you apply online. If they like you, they hire you, and then you go to Denver. And in Denver it's excruciatingly boring. And you have to sit in chairs kind of like you all right now, listen to someone yammer on for two days, like I am right now. And then you all load up in a plane and you fly to Christchurch. And you're there for about two days. And you sort of hang out in the town, but you also get outfitted with lots of cold weather gear. They give you a coat and a few other things depending on your job. So they know you're going to be working outside to get more cold weather gear than if you were going to be a dishwasher, for instance. So from there you load up into a C-17, which is a military cargo plane. And the crew that does those flights is actually out of Tacoma, Washington. And they fly you down to McMurdo, which is the largest station on the continent. In the summertime there's about a thousand people there. And it's a small town. It's kind of dirty. Some people describe it as kind of like a mining town. There's probably a hundred buildings or so. And there's everything from dishwashers and janitors to doctors and dentists and garbagemen and plumbers and just firefighters. Everything that is needed for a small town to run along with all of the research people. And there's sort of a strange divide between the workers and the scientists. And I don't really know why that is, but it's just sort of how it was when I was there. I think there's just not as much interaction between those two groups because the scientists come in and they do their work and then they go out to the field or something like that. And so once you get to McMurdo, it takes a little while to get into it, but the really nice thing is that it's a pretty awesome sort of small community there. There's a thousand people, so you don't get to know everyone, but you do get to know some people and you work very closely with a lot of people and so you become fast friends. You know the people that wash your dishes, you know the people that cook your foods, you know the people that run the power plant. You sort of know every little section of that world. And it sort of, for a lot of people, becomes the world and they keep going back and going back. And as it happened to me, this is my fourth time down. It's possible I'm not going to go back next season, but there's sort of an intention in mind to not get totally stuck into it because I know people that have been down there going straight every year for 30 years. And it seems insane to me. But the community is amazing. Like I said, there's music. There's a band room and there's lots of live music because people want to fill their time. They want something interesting to do while they're there. And there's the holidays are big celebrations every year. And on New Year's there's an outdoor music festival called Ice Stop. And it's just a big outdoor party and it's lots of fun and the whole community gets into it. And it's sort of like because there isn't much to do, the things that there are to do, everyone does them. And everyone wants to make them as interesting and as awesome as they can. So my first season, like I said, I was a dishwasher and that was pretty cool, but not amazing. As you can imagine. It's sort of a common sort of entry level job. And a lot of people do it their first year and a lot of people do it just to get there. There's sort of a pattern in the dishwasher world that it's like from 18-year-old kids to 50-year-old men and women, sometimes even older that just that's a job they can get and so they go for it. So my first season there was a woman working down there, she was maybe in her mid-thirties and she had been a lawyer with Arthur Anderson during the Enron scandal. And she was in the trenches as Shane was saying. And at one point they said, you might want to think about just sort of bailing out now while you still can. And so she said okay and so she left and went traveling and ended up down there working as a dishwasher. She was awesome and there were some younger people working there, some older people, but it's a wide range of people working that job versus my second year when I was a plumber. And that is basically very, for the most part, old, crotchety tradespeople. And it's a really hilarious world for me because I went down there, this was my second season, and I kind of thought, I know what I'm doing now, I've been here before, I understand what's going on. And so I got down there, it was my first day. I woke up in the morning and the of these card overalls and everything, and I took my first shirt off the pile. And it turned out to be a pink shirt. And that's just sort of a coincidence because I happen to like that color. But as I walked into the shop on my first day as a plumber, I walked in and I realized that I probably had made a mistake because to one of my favorite guys that I worked with, his name is Walter, and he was a hilarious, he was like 75, 70 years old or so from Maine. And to him, any one characteristic of me makes me gay. But if you combine all of them into one person and I not be gay, it's an impossibility in his mind. You can see the gear is just like grinding in his head and just like every day he would like learn one more thing. So I walked in my first day, kind of shaggy hair, my ears are pierced, and I'm wearing a pink shirt. And so he started calling me Pinky. And that nickname really took. And as time went along, you know, he'd find out that I was vegetarian. And he was just like, oh my gosh, who is this human? How does such a thing exist like this? And the name really stuck and people kind of ran with it and it was a good time. But in that world, it was basically this world of kind of older, kind of conservative trades people, but it was amazing. They were still wonderful people. He had the best of intentions. I mean, he came by it honestly in a way, you know, he couldn't help it. And I like to think that maybe I sort of changed his worldview a little bit, I don't know. It's just funny to me that a color can have such an impact on people. I don't think there's a color that a girl can wear that is like incompatible with her gender. But like, I can wear a pink shirt and it just doesn't match with people. And people sit and they're like, hey, cool shirt, man. Well, okay. And so I like that. I had a good time. My first season I was working in the, just in the galley, you know, washing dishes for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. And it kind of gets old. That year I worked with the plumbers and it was nice. We got to move around town. We got to go to different buildings, got to go to the airfields. And that's sort of the, sort of on a base level, that's sort of the farthest that I got out of town. Because town is maybe a square mile. I'm just kind of guessing right now. It's kind of hard to say how big the town is. And then the airfields are out on the ice shelf because McMurdo Station is on Ross Island, which is just south of New Zealand. It's not actually on the continent of Antarctica. It's a small island just off the continent. And so it's a big rocky space and they couldn't build an airfield on the island. And the best place to do it was out on the endless sheet of flat ice that just goes on forever out off the, like, off the island onto the ice shelf. So I would go with Walter frequently out onto the ice shelf. We would take a shuttle because there's a lot of people going out to the airfields back and forth every day. We would get on a shuttle and it's a big 15 passenger van with big, you know, big knobby tires on it and go out to the airfield and do sort of just general maintenance on the buildings out there and make sure everything was running okay. And so it was a nice sort of change of pace from the season before I got to work outside and I got to work with my hands and I got to build things and stuff like that. So that was nice. And then my second season I was an electrical helper and so sort of the same vibe as the season before, but I was working with electricians instead. And so similar thing working outside. And then I got to sort of the golden ticket of working in Antarctica is getting off station. That's like people sort of, that's everyone's goal because it's cool to go to Antarctica and you're washing dishes and stuff like that. But then you start to see the, you see off into the distance and you see that there's more exciting things off on the horizon. And so from McMurdo, which is, you know, sort of the hub of most scientific activity that occurs on the continent, people, the science groups go from there out into different field camps. They go from there to the South Pole. They go from there to different points of interest of research around the continent. And so I got to go with the electricians to the dry valleys, which is a helicopter ride over to this special area where there's a series of valleys that for some reason don't have any snow in them. Sort of unknown why that's the case but it is and they're being studied and so I went with the electricians to work on some electrical work there. And so each season has been progressing, each season has been a little bit more interesting than last, each season has been moving along and so I keep enjoying it. And this last year I worked in fuels and in the McMurdo word the fuels operators are fuelies and we smell like diesel 100% of the time basically. You spill it on you, it's like you're just around it enough and so there's a sort of a stigma of fuelies and how we smell and we sort of sit together at lunch, you know. It's sort of, it feels like you're offending someone, you know, it's like someone's sitting down for lunch and then you just, it's like, what was that character in Charlie Brown? It's like I had stink lines just sort of like coming off of me at all times. And the fuels world was definitely bigger than the world's before because it was much more responsibility. I wasn't just a helper or an assistant or something like that, I was a fuels operator and the fuel system at McMurdo is huge and intense and sort of mind boggling at times. I mean the basic system is that a fuel tanker comes down every year, offloads 7-8 million gallons of fuel into different bulk tanks and then that comes out of those tanks and is distributed to buildings to run heaters. It's distributed to the airfields and to get out to the airfield which is 13 miles away out on the ice shelf. We have to run a 6-inch fuel line, 13 miles. And 13 miles of 6-inch fuel line is about 100,000 gallons of fuel if it's just sitting in the line. And so every couple days we would do transfers out to the airfields to fuel the planes primarily so that they could fly to field camps but also so that they could deliver fuel to the South Pole. Because if the South Pole runs out of fuel just like McMurdo but if the South Pole runs out of fuel then it would be bad. And fortunately like I said each season keeps kind of progressing this season I got to go to the South Pole to work with the fuel just as part of the fuels crew because there's three people that work at the South Pole permanently every year in the fuels department and there's one rotator from McMurdo every year. And so I worked at the airfield of McMurdo fueling planes that were flying to the South Pole throughout the year and then at the end of the season I got to go down there and work with them. And so the fuel comes in in a tanker, goes into a tank, gets pumped 13 miles out to the airfield, gets pumped into a plane that then flies to the South Pole and then gets pumped out of that plane into tanks that then run the generators. And they fill up a plane with about 8,000 gallons of fuel, they fly to the South Pole, offload about 3,000 gallons and then fly back. So it takes about a gallon of fuel to get a gallon of fuel to the South Pole. And so it's pretty efficient in the grand scheme of things and there's a push over the last five or six years for and it's continuing now for a South Pole traverse which is where we fill up giant bladders of fuel and people and tractors drive them to the South Pole. And so they're trying to work more on that but working at the South Pole was pretty cool. It was cool to see the whole sort of link in the system, the whole sort of process. And I was there at the very end at the South Pole working before closing because you have to get just the right amount of fuel there before they close for the winter. Because the South Pole is open for about three and a half months in the summertime. And during that time people are coming and going, flights are coming and going and moving through. And then it starts to get too cold because the planes can only operate above minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit. And when it gets below that they just don't work anymore, they have failures and they fall apart and the engines shut down. And so they push and push and push to get as much fuel in as they can. And then at a certain point they just have to stop because it starts getting too cold. So we just barely got in. I think as we were leaving it was just getting to about 400,000 gallons that they need at the South Pole to run the station for the winter. And that's primarily for the generators and for the larger telescope science projects that happen down there. So we finished the last offload of fuel was the plane that we flew out on. So I was at the tanks where the fuel gets offloaded too. And I opened the valve so the fuel would flow in and then I grabbed my stuff and walked up to the airfield. The plane finished offloading and then we just got on that plane and flew out. And everyone that was at the South Pole that was staying for the winter, it was about 50 people or so that will be there for eight months or so. They all came out to the airfield and as we were flying away they kind of like, it's sort of a deal that they, it's like, well there it goes. That didn't happen again for a while, you know. So flew back to McMurdo and then that 13 miles of fuel line that we laid out to the airfield we had to roll up. Because you can't leave it over the winter or it will get buried and then you won't be able to find it. So the very sort of the second to last flight out of McMurdo flew out. There was a tank that was left there at the airfield that had enough fuel to fuel the last plane that came in. And then it was just the winter population and then the fuels people that were staying to tear down the fuel line. And so we broke into two crews, we worked like, within the two crews a little overlap about 20 hours a day just rolling up fuel line. And it took six days I think, total, to roll up 13 miles. At the most we would roll up maybe two to three miles a day I think. And once that was done then the last plane came in before the McMurdo winter. And I was on that last plane and flew out to Christchurch. From there basically you are normally just put up in a hotel for air too. And then you can sort of, you can go home, you can see New Zealand, you can sort of travel from there. But right at the moment when the most, basically the most possible Antarctic related people can be in Christchurch that is possible, was when the earthquake hit. And so there was about 600 United States Antarctic program people sort of around the Christchurch area when the earthquake hit. And it was kind of a big deal for the people that we were still down in Antarctica because we didn't know, I mean buildings were crumbling and collapsing and it was like we had friends in the city and didn't know what was going on. And somehow not a single Antarctic related person was injured. And so then when we were on our way out we were not encouraged to stay in the city at all. We had to basically put us up for one night and then we were heavily encouraged to get on a plane to fly to Auckland to just leave because they didn't want us getting in the mix of things. I stayed on the South Island anyway and sort of just didn't hang out in the earthquake area. And made my way home and in the process of being down in Antarctica, Shane had told me about the conference and told me about this going on and I was hoping it would work into my plans but it didn't sound like it was and I'm really glad that it did because I got to come out here and hang out and I got here on Monday and helped mow the backyard. It's deceiving right now but it was a jungle just a few days ago. And do some other things and it's been fantastic. And so I just want to thank Shane and I think we should all give him a little applause. It certainly takes sort of some, you know, what's that like? Balls. There we go. You sort of like can't be afraid to fail, I think. It's pretty cool. So thanks for your time. If anybody has any questions, be happy to answer them. Mike, sorry over here. I have two questions. Although you sort of answered it with McMurdo but do people at the South Pole all celebrate New Year's at the same time where there are even other from different countries or do they celebrate with their own country? That's kind of one. And the other is how the hell do you roll up a two mile long or whatever? Two miles a day. Is the geometry of it like where does it go? Is there a giant spool? Okay, so McMurdo and the South Pole are all on New Zealand time. So that's just sort of the general rule. Is there all US workers? Yeah, mainly US workers. What about the South Pole? What time do they celebrate New Year's Day and the South Pole? Same as New Zealand time. Yeah, because it's sort of like New Zealand is the logistical hub. So it makes sense to be on the same time as that so they can just orchestrate things. And rolling up the hose, it's in 600 foot sections. Well, there's 600 foot sections but then there's three 600 foot sections that are considered to be one reel and there are about 40 reels. So you roll it up, drive it back, roll it up, drive it back, roll it up. Yeah, it's that time of the season. There's lots of help from lots of other departments. So there's like the heavy equipment operators. There's like a couple of heavy equipment operators that are assigned to us. And it's like a constant thing of like this reel is full, take it away, bring another one. And so it's a big operation to get it done in time. I have two really serious questions. The first one is do you think it's cold right now? I'm freezing. It's a little chilly. Yeah, you adapt pretty quickly. It's surprising. The second one is did they keep calling you pinky after that second year? Yeah, there's some people that only knew me as that. They're like just never learned my name. It was really one of the first times I ever had a nickname, like a real nickname that, you know, there's some people that I know that I even now I've known them for years and I don't know their name. Like I don't know what their actual name is, I just know their name. Some people stuck with it, some people still do. So I was wondering the entire time, does anyone live underground? Are there roads? Are there cars? There are roads and there are cars, but people don't live underground. You mentioned that you guys at outdoor concerts sometimes. How cold is it when you had your outdoor concerts? So the warmest time of the year is right at New Year's. Yeah, the warmest time of the year is right at New Year's because that's sort of like the middle of the summer. And so it is not uncommon for it to be like 40 degrees. And when the sun is shining and you've been accustomed to 20 below, it's like 40 degrees, it's lovely, it's glorious. And the sun is shining, you could be outside in a t-shirt, you'd feel comfortable, you'd be okay with that. What do you have to do about like visas or anything for outdoor? Well that's fortunately taken care of through the company that we work for. I get a special letter that's like to the New Zealand visa people. When you go through customs, that gets us a nine month visitor visa in New Zealand because technically while we're in Antarctica, we're in New Zealand. Because when you go to Antarctica, you're not going to another country. The last country you were in was New Zealand, so that's where you were the whole time technically. And so you get a nine month visa, which works out because the longest stint is usually about like August to February, which is six months. And so when you leave, you still have three months left in your visa. So if you wanted to, you could, without doing anything, you could stay in New Zealand for the three months if you wanted to. John wants to know about background checks and we should also talk about PQ. About what? PQ. Oh, okay. So background checks, yes there are some. I don't know. Yeah, I mean they go through like higher rate with some company that makes phone calls and pokes around. And yes, there's a pretty involved like medical checkup process that once you get hired, you have to go through the problem. You have to have a physical. You have to get blood work done. You have to have a dental checkup. So it's involved and some people get really close to going and then right the last minute something happens and they don't, they fail. They're like, medical says you're not good enough. You don't, you're not healthy enough or something like that. So. So in Antarctica during our winter, your summer. Yep. Is it pretty much day like? Yeah, it is. Yep. Is that? The daylight is less of an issue than you'd think because it's really easy to make darkness. You can just cover your windows and you then start, you know, and you can go sleep. I've never done a winter. So winter would be very difficult because then you can't really synthesize daylight and sunshine. So people that winter said that that's much more difficult. But the constant daylight is actually nice because you can always do stuff outside. It's like if it's late and you feel like going on a hike doesn't matter because it's sunshine. I remember a few years ago there was a rescue mission for someone that needed emergency surgery. Was that on the winter crew? Yeah, I think I've heard that was the winter crew at the winter South Pole. And I think the story I remember was that it was a woman who found out she had advanced some stage of breast cancer. And she was actually the doc and she had to give herself surgery. So she had attendants, like they trained and they sent down through the internet special things for other people. She did most of the work, but there were people there that had some understanding. Who did they get to play ice hockey? Those are all local bands. It's just bands that have formed during the season. I was in a sort of a blues funk rock sort of cover band this year. And we did for iStock, the lead singer who is really obsessed with having a really awesome stage performance. He gets really into it. And so he made the paper mache heads for us to be the Muppet Band this year. So I got to be animal, which is pretty cool. And it's pretty much anyone who wants to do anything. It's really kind of a cool moment for people to just throw bands together and do... There was a group that kind of opened up there with the ukuleles. These two girls that played ukulele and sang. So just whatever anybody can throw together is pretty awesome. I don't know if this makes any sense or not, but I've heard that there's a club, an article where you get a badge for running streaking into a sauna. Is there an official run that you do? It's possible. It's at the South Pole in the winter. I've never done it, but it's called the 300 Club. Where the sauna is 200 degrees and the ambient outside temperature is minus 100. So it's like a 300 degree temperature difference. And so they crank up the sauna and then you're in the sauna and then you run outside. And you have to run around the pole. I think you have to run outside and run around the pole and run back inside. This question is probably kind of lame, but... Sorry. Yeah. What do they do about like weights? Garbage? That's a good one. Poop, yeah. I know all about that. My brother Nate over here was down there. We went down together our first season and he worked at the wastewater treatment plant. Disgusting. So it used to be, and not so distant past, that waste was just flushed into the ocean. And the immediate ocean surrounding McMurdo is a filthy, filthy place. But in recent times they put in a wastewater treatment plant and so that pulls out the waste and whatever. All the other waste is, including the solid human waste, is like contained in these sort of try wall kind of pallet boxes. There's food waste. When you're there, like here, you know there's like, oh there's recyclables and there's trash and there's compostables. There's like ten different divisions of your trash. And it's a big point of like community sort of, like you've got to sort your trash. You have to heavily sort your trash and it all gets divided up. And then there's a resupply vessel that comes down every year and brings in new supplies. You know, dried food, frozen food, you know, anything you can think of. And then it leaves full of trash. So it comes down, it offloads a bunch of stuff and then they onload a whole years with the trash and then they take it away. I have a couple of footnotes to the, I've heard the Anarca stories for a few years, so. And it's too bad Mickey had to leave early because they have a sort of recycle program there called SCUA. SCUA's are the little birds in Anarca. Basically like, I'm done with these shoes, you can't really throw them away or like take them to Goodwill. So there's a room full of stuff you don't want, people take it. That's a pretty cool little program that got going on there. And I've heard a lot of these stories and it wasn't until Eli started putting all his photos on Flickr that it really started to make sense. And we were talking about the other day, books and I think that Eli has the most published photos of Anarca. So it's seriously, it paints a picture, you know, fuller than what he could say. And his Flickr handle is Eli's fan club. And everyone that I've met as a part of the Antarctica circles is just great, well-rounded, you know, like fun, you know, like nice pieces. That's the last thing we have for Eli, so thanks Eli. Yep.