Tim Meehan's Antarctic Adventure

Introduction

Call Me Ishmael...

Well, actually, my real name is Tim Meehan. I am a graphic arts professional turned Macintosh computer graphics consultant. My home and office are in a shady little suburb of Denver, Colorado, called Arvada.

Last year I was presented with the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Antarctica as part of the support effort for the National Science Foundation, which sponsors a variety of international research projects there. (How could I say "No?") Naturally, my first hundred phone calls in preparation for this adventure were to Apple Computer, Inc. to figure out a way that Apple and the rest of the world could share in the experience.

Fortunately, I was able to capture the attention of some very helpful and interested individuals in the Apple Solution Professionals Network program (of which I am a member). By immediately having the vision to realize the scope of the project and seeing a global picture, they helped by securing some very impressive technology, including a PowerBook 540c, and a QuickTake 150 digital camera to record and transmit my experiences, real-time, back to classrooms across the United States.

What follows in these subsequent pages are a collection of my journal entries and selected images of everything I saw and did in the four months between October, 1995, and February, 1996. After returning and spending the past 12 months getting my life back in order, Apple has asked me to post my experiences to the World Wide Web, so the rest of the world can enjoy and learn from my experiences.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed putting them together.

Tim Meehan

McMurdo Base, Ross Island, Antarctica - January, 1996

Where in the WORLD?

Prologue:

At this moment I am writing this in a tiny little cave of a room, in a drafty and shaky little dorm, in the dusty little town of McMurdo, on a grey and remote peninsula on Ross Island, just off the coast of Antarctica. (whew! Take a breath...) I am composing a multimedia journal of my travels and adventures for Apple Computer, using some of their best available hardware and software tools. How I got here and what I'm doing is a story in itself. But first a little background...

Here's how Antarctica's land use is described by science:

• arable land: 0%
• permanent crops: 0%
• meadows and pastures: 0%
• forest and woodland: 0%
• other: 100% (ice 98%, barren rock 2%)

As of October 1991 it was reported that the ozone shield, which protects the Earth's surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation, had dwindled to the lowest level recorded over Antarctica since 1975 when measurements were first taken.

Katabatic (gravity-driven) winds blow coastward from the high interior, causing frequent blizzards to form near the foot of the polar plateau Cyclonic storms form over the ocean and move clockwise along the coast. And if that's not enough, there's an active volcano called Mount Erebus on Ross Island!

While Antarctica has no indigenous inhabitants, there are seasonally staffed research stations all over the continent which bring the summertime population to around 1200. During the totally dark winter months the total population is closer to 200.

While no country officially "owns" or inhabits the continent, there is a world-recognized treaty in effect that governs the signatory nations who visit there. The Antarctic Treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 (six months after I was born) and entered into force on 23 June 1961, establishes the legal framework for the management of Antarctica. Administration is carried out through consultative member meetings.

Here are some interesting facts about Antarctica:

Most of the Antarctic continent is south of the Antarctic Circle.

It has a total area of 14 MILLION sq km (est.) (no kidding!) which is just a bit less than 1.5 times the size of the US.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, windiest, most remote place on the planet. But the weather is not the only environmental danger there. Because of the now well-documented depletion of the ozone layer, during summer more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator.

East Antarctica is colder than West Antarctica because of its higher elevation, while the Antarctic Peninsula has the most moderate climate. Its highest temperatures occur in January along the coast and average slightly below freezing.

I worked for the Antarctic Fire Department at McMurdo Base, on Ross Island, where the temperature can range between -120 degrees (that's right, one-hundred-twenty degrees BELOW zero) and +40 degrees (above zero).

The overall terrain of Antarctica is about 98% thick continental ice sheet and 2% barren rock, with average elevations between 2,000 and 4,000 meters.

One of my favorite t-shirts I saw down there said: "Ski the South Pole. Two miles of ice, two inches of powder."

The mountain ranges are up to 4,897 meters high. Ice-free coastal areas include parts of southern Victoria Land, Wilkes Land, the Antarctic Peninsula area, and parts of Ross Island on McMurdo Sound. Glaciers form ice shelves along about half of the coastline, and floating ice shelves constitute 11% of the area of the continent.

Where EXACTLY is Ross Island?

Ross Island is right on the edge of the Ross Sea ice shelf, in the middle of McMurdo Sound. (For which the town of McMurdo is named)

This is a map of Ross Island, showing the location of the McMurdo Base research station. McMurdo is at the very end of the smallest isthmus extending from the island.

This point is called "Discovery Point" and is where the original Antarctic explorers first established their permanent base. Scott's original hut is still standing on the point at the edge of Winter Quarters Bay, so the McMurdo residents sometimes refer to it as "Hut Point".

Getting to Antarctica

Prologue:

Denver to Los Angeles to Auckland to Christchurch to McMurdo and all in an easy four days of airline travel. We got to ride down to McMurdo in a C-5 Galaxy cargo jet, we're the envy of the crew as the C-5 is considered the luxury transport of the fleet. We sat on actual chairs in a temperature-controlled cabin and only 5 hours in the air. By contrast, we'll be coming home on a C-130 Hercules, sitting knee-to-knee on canvas webbing seats in the cargo hold for eight hours back to Christchurch.

Life here is very different from anything I'd imagined coming down here. I'll write about it in great depth as I get time. My schedule is hectic and busier than I had hoped. I have only every other day to spend in personal pursuits. The rest of my time is occupied in firehouse activities.

9510.03

It was a long flight down to Christchurch. By the time we all got on the ground in Christchurch we had been sitting in airplane seats for a solid 24 hours, including a stopover in Fiji to refuel. The last leg of the flight was on an Ansett NZ Air BAe jet that was a real improvement over United's standard of service. The flight attendants were very friendly, interested, the food was passable, the seats roomier and more comfortable than regular coach flying.

We are all in town for 48 hours as we are assigned and fitted for our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear. We get fitted this afternoon, then leave sometime early tomorrow morning. The company has issued us all US$250 (NZ$350) for our expenses in Christchurch. Should last just about right.

The hotel where I'm staying is called the Hereford (on Hereford Street) across from the Christchurch fine arts center. The hotel itself caters to backpackers and low-budget travelers. My room is a cold 8 x 8 foot with no electricity or heat. The bathrooms are right across the hall and you can hear everything/everyone coming and going. But for only NZ$25/night I can put up with it for one more night. It's right across the street from a popular coffee house/bar/micro-brewery called 'Dux d'Lux'. Looks to be a popular hangout of the student/arts crowd. I'll have dinner here tonight.

Who IS this guy?

Tim Meehan, Antarctic Firefighter (no kidding!)

This is a picture of me sitting on the treads of our "Crash-3" Nodwell firetruck out near Williams Field, the snow-covered ski-way where all the C-130 Hercules aircraft land...

Last summer, the Antarctic Fire Department was looking for someone to help them install a new computer dispatch system, and train their dispatch staff in it's use. They got in touch with me and offered me the incredible opportunity to travel to Antarctica and get paid to do it. How could I say "No?"

As part of my training, I was sent to a crash-rescue training school in Arkansas to learn the intricacies of airport firefighting and how to cut open aircraft. Then Washington DC and Chicago, Illinois to learn more about the specifics of their computer-based dispatch system. It's been a great summer for frequent flier miles...

My official job title is crash/rescue-structural firefighter. I work at the McMurdo Fire Department in alternating 24-hour duty shifts with 43 other firefighters. Our mission is to protect the town of McMurdo and their ice-runway airport on the Ross ice shelf. The McMurdo fire department is the largest fire district in the world, covering the entire continent of Antarctica. It is also the southern-most fire district in the world. Our duties include fire prevention, paramedic service, fire protection and training all year round. All over the continent.

Whenever I'm not at the firehouse or the ice runway, I'm spending almost every spare moment in the Crary Science and Engineering Center (CSEC), the new $50 million science and research facility in McMurdo. The town has an extensive network of DOS-based computers running all over the area and far afield, but the Crary Lab has a good sized concentration of Macintosh computers all on a Novell network. I was surprised to learn that ASA does not employ a dedicated Macintosh administrator. So I made a few inquiries and before I knew it, I had a second part-time job down here taking care of all the Macintosh computers! Great for these guys as they were in need of some serious Macintosh support (but that's another story...)

I've been keeping an almost-regular journal of my experiences here, including all the most interesting photos I've gathered. They offer an interesting look at the people, the work, the environment, the science and the life in Antarctica.

...and what does a Macintosh Consultant do in Antarctica?

So what exactly DOES a Macintosh consultant do in Antarctica?

A natural question to follow might be what's a firefighter doing supporting Macintosh in Antarctica, but that begs the question; what is a full-time professional Macintosh consultant doing working as a firefighter? (And in the most remote environment on the planet?)

After all, the company that supports the science, the National Science Foundation, and even the government agencies working in Antarctica don't even support the Macintosh... (no kidding!)

Well, here's the story:

As you can see in my resumé, my career direction has been following the travails of Apple Computer, Inc. since 1984, via the career skills I have developed as a professional graphic designer and illustrator. While my successes in both fields have been significant and very rewarding over the years, my spare time diversions have been split between pursuing adventure and thrills in the air as a paraglider pilot and volunteering my time as a firefighter for my home town of Arvada, Colorado.

All these skills rolled together into the perfect qualifications for becoming a professional firefighter for Antarctic Support Associates, the main contractor providing support services for all the science taking place in Antarctica.

I was committed to documenting this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not only for myself, but for the world, and with Apple's help I was loaned some pretty serious portable hardware to record as much as I could and communicate it to the world via the internet. Luckily, McMurdo was just beginning to take advantage of high-speed net-access via satellite communications and the internet, but the only way to take advantage of this access was to be a part of the science community.

Lucky for me, NONE of the organizations represented there (ASA, NSF, OPP, NSFA or any number acronymed government agencies present on the continent) officially supported ANY computers that were not primarily running DOS-based operating systems. This included Windows OR Macintosh.

While McMurdo has an extensive telecommunications network connecting all the PCs on the continent, legally, none of them could be anything but DOS-based machines. There's a whole InfoSys department that is in charge of taking care of all the systems on the continent, but are barred from providing any support for anything but DOS. Now herein lies the irony of the entire situation!

The entire operation is connected via Novell networks and running simple DOS-based systems for e-mail and databases and CAD systems, yet almost EVERY scientist, researcher, student, medical professional, even the computer department heads preferred to use the Macintosh OS system!

To this end, the base had a rather extensive (but cleverly hidden) network of Macintosh computers running throughout the CSEC. And almost all of these above-mentioned professionals brought their own Macintosh computers with them, or insisted on having a Macintosh system available to them to perform their work!

Can you see the irony present here? A company officially prohibited from supporting a system that almost everyone wanted access to... This is where I came in.

As the company has no official Macintosh support professionals, there's no staff to support their network of Macintosh computers, but here I come, walking in completely unexpected from the McMurdo fire department (which until then had not enjoyed a very professional reputation in McMurdo), an Apple Solution Professional. It was as if some very specific prayers had been directly answered for the director of the Telescience department.

(This also gave me access to the internet and the world wide web. Almost a necessity as you can see by my journal entries.)

I was almost immediately given access to the entire building, their network and everyone's offices so I could help get their network working and their system software upgraded.

Some of the projects I worked on during the season were as wide-ranging and comprehensive as:

• Updating system software for all the Macintosh computers in the building.
• Providing technical support for anyone using a Macintosh. This included researchers, scientists, science staff, students and even the hospital staff.
• Network administration, keeping all the Macs visible and accessible on the network, with access to their giant behemoth 300dpi printer.
• HTML coding for www site composition for the Office of Polar Programs.
• Starting the FIRST Macintosh User's Group on the continent of Antarctica.

In spite of the company's official policy of NOT supporting the Macintosh, and in the face of the demands of researchers, scientists and assistants who must actually be productive in their work, the Crary Science & Engineering Center's Telescience lab actually kept a secret Macintosh network in the building.

It was served by a Macintosh Quadra 950 with 8MB of RAM and connected to the community's Novell network.

When I arrived at the Telescience lab, there were a number of Macintosh computers sprinkled throughout the building. Almost all were on the internal network, had internet access for transmitting e-mail and research data back to the real-world. And almost NONE of them had current system software installed. This became my first project, my first guerilla mission in the jihad... Most were in various offices throughout the building, but there was a row of four Macintosh LC machines in the telescience lab for researcher and assistants' use.

After contacting my Apple compatriots in the US to obtain the appropriate license and permission to upgrade everyone to system 7.5, I undertook to see what kinds of MacOS systems were present and where in the building they were being kept.

This part of the project was challenging and fun for me as it allowed me to show off some cool HyperCard stack creation where I created a floor plan layout of each floor in the building, and created buttons and text fields that would be revealed with a mouseclick. A click would display a field describing the physical location of the Macintosh and which system software it was running. (I love HyperCard)

Then I could set about to scheduling access to each location and update the system and spend a few minutes highlighting the new features that system 7.5 brought to the user.

Most users were barely literate with computers anyway, one of their primary reasons for insisting on Macintosh access there, and were happy to have some support.

I continue to be surprised by the incredible minds at work on some of these projects, who were enabled to make their jobs easier, more effective and efficient with the tools that the Macintosh offered them.

Here was another irony I saw almost immediately. There were DOS-based systems abundant throughout McMurdo for sending e-mail and communicating with everyone else in the system. Hundreds of them. Yet here in the telescience lab, the four DOS boxes sitting directly opposite the Macintosh machines were almost always vacant, while there were users standing two and three deep waiting for a chance to use the Macs for their daily e-mail and TelNet uses. (go figure...)

After upgrading all the systems to what was then Apple's latest system software (thanks to the ASPN program for seeding their consultants with network install disks. I had the tools I needed for the job.)

My secondary official capacity was helping these users with on-site support when needed. This wasn't very often as these WERE Macintosh machines, so I got to spend most of my free time composing and communicating with the real world via their high-speed internet link.

One of my favorite cool projects that I worked on was that of creating a HyperCard stack that would help future network administrators to keep track of their Macintosh inventory and system software status. I created a floor plan layout of each floor in the building, and created buttons and text fields that would be revealed with a mouseclick. A click would display a field describing the physical location of the Macintosh in the selected room and which system software it was running. (I love HyperCard)

While the Macintosh-specific part of this chore was easy enough, everything still had to exist on the building's Novell network, so in order to print on their huge, room-sized 300-dpi, multi-tray, cross-platform compatible HP laser printer, I had to do a little experimenting to figure out why the Novell network didn't seem to like carrying binary printing data to the printer.

Fortunately, Apple's LaserWriter driver software allows the users to switch between binary and ascii. Problem solved...

Shortly after my arrival to the Crary Science and Engineering Center, I was introduced to two representatives from the Office of Polar Programs. They were keenly interested in Apple's QuickTake 150 digital camera. They'd never seen anything like it! Amazing to them, you could snap a picture and seconds later see it, edit it, e-mail it all from your handy, portable Macintosh PowerBook computer!

They were tasked with documenting the environmental impact of some of their science sites, and the QuickTake seemd to be the one and only answer to getting images recorded and transmitted back to their offices in Washington DC.

They initially contacted me a day later and asked if she could borrow my camera, and of course, I said "NO!" Of course I was as polite and diplomatic as I could be. I wasn't so sure that I was comfortable loaning a lot of expensive toys that didn't belong to me to a total stranger (even if they WERE government employees and scientists). So in order to get the images, they had to taek me with them on this day-trip to the Dry Valleys areas outside of Ross Island.

And GET THIS! Following my recommendations and the excitement of several researchers and computer-people, purchase orders have been cut and three new QuickTake 150 cameras arrived in McMurdo today. The science center will never be the same...

As I lived and worked in McMurdo, always carrying and using my trusty PowerBook, I attracted the attention of just about everybody I met. There was almost always a short demo of the MacOS, the cool product features etc, and almost always a little education to be done. I was surprised at how little people actually knew about the Macintosh, and Apple in General.

It struck me one day that we could really further the cause by creating some mechanism to elevate awareness of the features and benefits of the coolest products in the world. Aha! A Macintosh User's Group! Certainly no competition here. But then again, no local dealers to send them to either.

Participation was outstanding. Interest was keen. Almost everyone there had a curiosity about the Mac, and most were seriously interested in buying when they got back to the real world.

While we met every second Tuesday evening in the telescience library, did demos, showed off capabilities and challenged everyone to look for similar (but unreproduceable) features in Windows/DOS systems.

Shortly after posting our first announcement poster, we were waylaid by the InfoSys department. Apparently there was already a group on the island using the name MacMUG! Well, sort of. They were actually known as "McMUG" which stood for McMurdo Mapcon User's Group. Mapcon is the company's pre-historic database software that they use to track inventory. The InfoSys department manager didn't want her users (McMUG) to get confused and attend the "wrong" (and officially unsupported) user's group meetings (MacMUG)!!

I was surprised at how emotional these guys were about the situation. Stern and territorial, there was no room for compromise. From then on we spelled out MACINTOSH in big letters whenever we posted notice of upcoming meetings...

Albert P. Crary Science & Engineering Center

Welcome to the Albert P. Crary Science & Engineering Center, a $50-million science and engineering laboratory on Ross Island, Antarctica. An exceptional facility boasting all the most modern equipment and communications hardware, as well as the most talented and intelligent scientists and researchers in the world...

The entrance to the lab greets every visitor with a fascinating display of historical and scientific artifacts gathered and preserved from 95 years of research and discovery on the Antarctic Continent. These items are historical artifacts recovered from bottom of McMurdo Bay. They are believed to be from some of the original explorers' missions.

Among them:

The Aquarium

Located in the section of the lab furthest down the hill, the aquarium holds large tanks of cool sea water and hundreds of live specimens for ongoing study.

Animals I saw in Antarctica

There aren't actually that many different kinds of animals present on the continent of Antarctica. And the ones I saw were strictly limited to a few species that make the Ross Island area home.

While there are hundreds of different species of marine life living in the ocean and under the sea ice, (and almost all of them being studied in one capacity or another by the scientists in Antarctica) I spent all of my time above the ice and saw only the local birds and seals that travel between the two worlds.

Penguins

Saw my first Penguin tonight!

(Prologue: As I was getting my gear together for my shift at the runway, I had the camcorder in my hand and thought to myself, nothing ever happens out there, and if it did, I'd have plenty of chances later in the season to catch whatever it was again. I put it back in my closet and grabbed a few books and my sketch pad.)

When we're working the crash shack, every time a plane is ready to taxi, the tower alerts us to take the crash trucks out to the runway for a 'hard stand' where we watch the plane take off and stand ready in case there's a problem, accident, crash, whatever.

Occasionally the tower will tell us to go out and inspect the runway. This usually means there's some of the indigenous life out wandering around on the runway. It's our job in this case to drive out to them and shoo them off the runway. Such was the case tonight.

We drove all the way to the end of the runway in the ambulance expecting a small group. A herd, maybe. And that all we'd have to do is shout and wave our arms and scare them off the runway. Not this time. The locals here don't react to human presence at all. These guys are smug. Tonight it was a single emperor penguin, all by his lonesome.

There the little darling sat. Right smack in the middle of the end of the runway, about 50 yards beyond the threshold upwind. It was about 4 feet tall, all shiny black and white with a flash of orange under his chin and a pink brush on his beak. Too cute for words, just sitting there thoughtfully clucking and honking in that soft understated way they have. He was picking at the snow at his feet, his toes upturned like a Disney cartoon.

It looked around, looked at us, sat, picked at the snow, made cute little noises-- and ignored us.

So here's our dilemma. We aren't allowed to interfere with the normal behavior of the animals. We aren't usually allowed to get close enough or even make noise that would cause them to even turn their heads our way. Absolutely can't pick them up, can't shove them, can't touch them in any way. More importantly we can't let aircraft run over them either. What to do?

Ordinarily, the planes are in the air long before they're even halfway down the runway, and this guy was just beyond the threshold at the upwind end. We decided to just leave him alone and alert the pilot not to make too long a runout. This little furry thing could sit here all night and keep any planes from moving at all. We're sure he'll be alright.

I scooted up and laid on the ground and using Apple's hardy QuickTake 150, shot off all 16 high-res images in just a few minutes. Good thing as the camera died on me right away in the cold, and took a good hour to warm up again enough to download the images.

And for tonight's comedy break-- here I am, face-to-face with this wonderful irony of nature, our two species eyeballing each other- one more curious than the other, when I notice the soft tinkle of water drippling somewhere close by. "How cute," I thought, "this little guy is taking a wizz right here..."

I got up to leave him to his business and took two steps back to the truck and noticed that the distinctive tinkling sound was still there. Right near by in fact. It wasn't the penguin at all, but me! I was wearing a genuine Camel-Bak water bottle inside my bunker coat so I could take a sip whenever I needed one. (In fact, there's a humorous anecdote here about how everyone seemed to think this was either the best idea in the world, or the stupidest...) Anyway, the nipple had worked itself off the hose and was freely pouring water out onto the snow, down my back, into my pants and all over my backside. I was soaked completely and every exposed bit of clothing was freezing solid very quickly.

Later, (as my clothes were drying out) while we were getting ready to go back out to the runway, there he was again, right outside the crash shack. Just walking around, craning his neck and looking all about. Jay and Phil were outside with instructions to herd it off the runway and out onto the ice fields. He spread his arms out and stuck his neck as far into the sky as he could to try to intimidate Jay into moving out of his way, but Jay did exactly the same thing back. How funny seeing these two mimicking each other, waddling around. The penguin would look over his shoulder at Jay as he walked away, and Jay would waddle along with him, right behind. I'm still chuckling at the sight of them.

The QuickTake gave up on me for real this time as the battery indicator was flashing empty. Once again, the lesson of never going anywhere without a camcorder to record unexpected sights and experiences is painfully driven home. On a more positive note, this forced me to look at the whole scene through my own eyes, and not through the lens of my camera. A good thing as I think I've been thinking too much about what would make a good shot, not how wondrous the experience was.

See Also

• Apple Solution Professionals Network

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