I'm going to the South Pole

I’m going to THE POLE!  YES!  Last week I was notified that I was PQ’d (physically qualified) for working at the South Pole. This was the last hurdle on my three year attempt to go and work there. It’s been something on my bucket list for a couple of decades and Elsie gave me the green light to go. The reactions from people have been a variety but mostly positive, even envious.  I have gotten pats on the back, comments like they wish they were going with me / I’m going to work there someday, etc.  Then there are those who think my cheese has slipped off my cracker or my train has arrived at the station without any passengers, well, you get my drift.

 

Here is a little bit of history about me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a sense of adventure.  When I was a kid, I read boy’s adventure series books like the Danny Orlis series and the Sugar Creek Gang.  I read a book about the famous missionary pilot, Nate Saint, who along with 4 others was murdered by the Huaorani tribe in the dense rain forests of Ecuador.  The adventure appealed to me and I wanted to be a missionary pilot when I grew up which, by the way, I never accomplished.  As a teen, I grabbed an opportunity to tour Europe with a group known as ‘Future Farmers of America’.  When I got back from Europe in the summer of ’69, American astronauts landed on the moon.  What an adventure!  I had followed the space race closely in the Lancaster, PA daily rag, ‘The Intelligencer Journal’.  Astronauts were my heroes (not football players) and I marveled at what they were doing.

 

That fall, as a senior in high school, I realized I was a little different.  Most of my classmates hadn’t been more than 50 miles from home and places in Europe didn’t interest most of them.  The next spring, the farm was sold and not having any direction, I joined the US Air Force to see the world.  Most of my time was spent in two states, Alaska and New Mexico.  I met my future wife Elsie, in North Pole, Alaska. So we got married and time rolled on.  Now she has put up with me for 38 years.    I quelled the adventure side of me for family responsibilities. Three children (Daniel, Erin & Heidi) came, grew up and moved on in their adult lives.  We did take lots of trips to far places and saw and did many things as a family.  But during the last three decades I have been reading everything that I could get my hands on about Arctic and Antarctic exploration.  I even wrote a Christmas story that occurred in the Antarctic.  Roald Amundsen became my hero.  He ran a smaller leaner meaner expedition and beat Robert Scott to the South Pole something that some of today’s companies can still learn from to be more efficient.  I had this growing itch to go there someday.

 

In 2011, after 30 years I retired from Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.  Three months later, I was right back doing my old job as a contractor with NANA Management Services at Pump Stations 1 & 7.  Being a contractor gave me some leeway to pick and choose a little where and when I worked.  I immediately started applying for a position in Antarctica during the austral summer (our winter).

 

That first winter the United States Antarctic Program was changing contracts and I heard nothing.  Last fall, I got a call from PAE (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) as I was leaving PS01 to return to PS07.  One of the Primary Techs had taken another job and they wanted me on the ice in 9 days.  With all of the hoops that you have to jump thru that was impossible.  With my commitment to PS07 for our winter months, I sadly declined.

 

In early July, PAE offered me a Summer Primary Fire Systems Tech at McMurdo.  I remember signing the offer on July 4^th and feeling very liberated.  A month later PAE changed the offer to the South Pole Station and I took it immediately, not even thinking twice about it.  So I was PQ’d last week which took almost two months because of my out of town work schedule.   So here I am, going TO THE POLE!