Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Antarctica or bust!

Who the hell would want to go to Antarctica? I would.

It all started with this site called couchsurfing.com. If you've never heard of it and you are a traveling adventurous type, then you need to. Basically, there are people who will let you sleep on their couches given that you are not dangerously insane and that they aren't either. Sound scary? Get out more. Check out the site, its genius.

Anyway, every country is listed where there are people willing to lend a place to stay for the night, and there are currently about a million+ people all over the world involved in the experiment. But something caught my eye..Antarctica? That's neat.. So I looked into it and discovered that each austral summer a thousand or so people are hired to live and work in Antarctica to support a small city called McMurdo Station whose purpose is as a base station for scientific research. How could I not apply? The conditions are brutal, the hours are long, the risk to life and limb can be substantial, and during the winter temps can easily hit -110 F with windchill..PERFECT! Away from the station is some of the most pristine wilderness on earth- gigantic ice and rock formations, meteorites, vast expanses of unforgiving oblivion, mountain ranges, volcanoes, penguins on the coast and probably one of the few places on earth where even the sky is untouched by those damn con-trails from passing jets.

In the winter the sun disappears, and about 800 residents remain to tough it out- a physical and mental challenge that would be difficult to match. Its not the time to decide you want to go back home because there is literally no way you can leave the continent that time of year, even if you are desperately ill or something. The beauty remains, however, and the sky comes alive at the intersection of sky and space with the Aurora australis


Nature is awesome

and I..

...can dogmatically accept that.


One of my friends mentioned that I would probably get a job if I applied because who would want to go there? They must be desperate to find people dumb enough to want to live there! But even though employee turnover is very high, so is competition for jobs. I guess I do have kindred spirits.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

ОБАЛДЕННОЕ ФОТО!!!

Ryan Hasty said...

Thanks Miha,
I wish I had actually taken those photos. I guess I never really thought that people in Russia would be reading my blog! Wow!

Rebekah said...

(blog spot has spell check... disperatly has an e ... desperately. not trying to be a punk... just thought it was in your best interest to spell proper)

Ryan Hasty said...

Thanks Ruck :)

StephanieC said...

I would kill to go there, by kill I mean I would squash a fly, or spider or the like. I normally wouldn't uness they are really bothering me, but to go there, i would cross the room and kill a spider.
I have been to the Artic circle, though it was summer so I missed out on a lot of the cool stuff. No pun intended. You should do it, I'd love to read about it.