Coming soon to a television near you...

The South Pole Project:

In the South Pole, temperatures can drop to more than 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Now, witness as engineers go up against staggering odds to build a 160,000-square-foot, high-tech science facility in this frozen wasteland. Through exclusive access granted by the National Science Foundation, NGC"s cameras give viewers a glimpse of the intense danger & physical challenges of working in one of most inhospitable places on the planet.

source: The National Geographic Channel

Looks like it airs on the evening of September 6th, 12a on the 7th and again at 1pm on the 8th (I'm assuming times are EST..?)

Watch the show and see where I'll be spending February through November of '08. I've alluded to it before, but I've signed a 14 month contract. The first half of it is the normal McMurdo contract that I've been doing, the 2nd half I will be the Power Plant Mechanic at the South Pole. I'll be wintering with approximately 54 other people, completely isolated from the world for 8 months (or so)

tape it for me and send it down :)

Travel nightmare

So...after all of the traveling I've done, you'd expect to hear nightmarish tales of explosive diarrhea and trips on nerve-shattering buses of death from other countries, but the fact is, my travel nightmares are usually domestic. Today, I traveled to Denver for deployment to Antarctica. I decided to rent a car rather than deal with the company provided transportation. Freedom of movement is important to me, especially since I will be confined to a fairly small space over the next 14 months (yes, 14 this time...more later). I decided to save a couple dollars and go with the low budget rental company called E-Z car rental....oh..but wait, first I had to get to Denver everything went smooth getting here until during landing I could smell something that was definitely hot or burning. I didn't put a lot of thought into it because it could easily be explained away by paint burning off of the exhaust cowling or hot brakes from landing...but the smell continued to get stronger, everyone on the plane began looking around, eyes started watering and when they opened the cabin door, there was smoke billowing into the cabin. Not being a fan of fire, I didn't hang around to see what was burning but rather got away as fast as I could. So...I went to baggage claim, got my bags and called the rental company to send a shuttle. I waited outside for the shuttle for 20 minutes at which time I thought about bailing on the rental deal. During the time I was looking up the information for the company paid shuttle, the shuttle for the rental car company showed up. I already had 30 minutes invested in it, so against better judgment I boarded the shuttle. It was a 30 minute ride in a non-air conditioned bus that had a pie box with a half-eaten pie on the floor. This wasn't a gum wrapper that somebody overlooked, but a frickin' pie box...oh and the radio was blaring some crap that I'm sure nobody was interested in. The rental lot is also long term airport parking with cars on blocks and glass busted out. The rental office looked like it was a meth lab just last week, stains on the lumpy carpet, furniture that you would normally see on a toothless crack addicts front porch..just not a pleasant atmosphere. At the rental counter there was one girl checking everyone in, now my expectation would be that since I had called for a shuttle, nearly an hour ago by this time, that they would then get the paperwork etc ready for when I show up so that it's as easy as sign a contract, pick up the keys and go. This was not the case. There were two men who were obviously employees of the rental co. seemingly grab-assing while the girl tried to get everyone's paperwork ready. It was a hard decision at this point to bail on the whole deal, but I decided that to give this rinky-dink outfit my business would be giving them my approval to be treated this way as a customer and that thinking, ultimately, drove me to walk out, catch the shuttle back to the airport and go with a name-brand rental company.

Take home message, don't rent from E-Z rental car company. EVER.!